Technology

In a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the world’s most popular podcaster suggests that healthy young people don’t need the COVID-19 vaccine, contrary to the advice of health professionals trying to stem a pandemic that’s killed more than 3 million people. Rogan said he believes “for the most part it’s safe to get vaccinated” and that his parents are vaccinated. But then he adds: “But if you’re like 21 years old, and you say to me, ‘Should I get vaccinated?’ I’ll go no.” The remarks were highlighted by Media Matters, which published a transcript of Rogan’s April 23rd conversation with fellow comedian Dave Smith. A source close to the situation says Spotify reviewed this Rogan episode and left it live because he doesn’t come off as outwardly anti-vaccine. He also doesn’t make a ca...

Many Verizon customers in Southern California are reporting difficulties making calls on Tuesday afternoon, and the company has confirmed to The Verge that there is a “network issue” affecting parts of the region. “We are experiencing a network issue impacting voice services for some customers in parts of Southern California,” a Verizon spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge. “Our engineers have identified the issue and are working to resolve it as quickly as possible.” If you are having trouble making calls, the spokesperson recommended putting your device in airplane mode or restarting your phone, which they said should fix the issues. And in response to one person on Twitter, Verizon’s support account recommended using Wi-Fi “if possible.” We do apologize, Verizon is currently ex...

Live hockey is coming to HBO Max, thanks to a new seven-year deal between the National Hockey League and WarnerMedia’s Turner Sports. The news may come as a bit of a surprise, as, only a few weeks ago, WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar said sports would not appear on HBO Max in 2021. Alongside HBO Max stepping into the sports streaming spotlight, Turner Sports also announced that TNT and TBS will air the Stanley Cup three out of the seven years outlined in the deal. (Specifically, WarnerMedia’s channels will air the championship series in 2023, 2025, and 2027, according to the NHL.) The remaining years will be hosted by Disney’s ESPN Plus and ABC, as part of the sports league’s other major streaming deal, now that its contract with NBC is ending this year. WarnerMedia’s various properties will a...

I. The controversy that embroiled enterprise software maker Basecamp this week began more than a decade ago, with a simple list of customers. Around 2009, Basecamp customer service representatives began keeping a list of names that they found funny. More than a decade later, current employees were so mortified by the practice that none of them would give me a single example of a name on the list. One invoked the sorts of names Bart Simpson used to use when prank calling Moe the Bartender: Amanda Hugginkiss, Seymour Butz, Mike Rotch. Many of the names were of American or European origin. But others were Asian, or African, and eventually the list — titled “Best Names Ever” — began to make people uncomfortable. What once had felt like an innocent way to blow off steam, amid the ongoing cultur...

Microsoft now has 145 million people using its Microsoft Teams communications app. This is another increase of 26 percent since Microsoft revealed Teams usage had jumped during the pandemic to 115 million daily active users in October 2020. Usage of Teams has spiked over the past year, with businesses continuing to flock to services like Teams, Slack, and Zoom. To put the 145 million figure in perspective, at the beginning of the pandemic, Microsoft had around 32 million daily active users of Microsoft Teams. That jumped to 75 million in a matter of weeks, and these numbers have more than doubled since even the early days of the pandemic. It’s an impressive amount of growth, just as Microsoft has been aggressively pushing businesses to move to the cloud and adopt Teams over the past year. ...

With multiple configurations and various MacBook models available for purchase, including ones equipped with the new M1 processor, finding a deal on an Apple MacBook is not very hard. We’ll run through discounts currently available for the latest MacBook models as well as any deals on the Mac mini computer. Of course, there are frequent discounts available for older Intel-based configurations, and we’ll also highlight those when we find them. Alternatively, purchasing refurbished is another way to save money on an Apple computer. Apple’s refurbished store provides a full one-year warranty on all products and generally has discounts of 15 to 20 percent off the price of a new model. Two other retailers to look at for refurbished MacBooks are Amazon and Best Buy. The MacBook Air is Apple’s en...

The newest movie in the hugely popular Sailor Moon franchise, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal The Movie (which was originally released in two parts), is hitting Netflix on June 3. The movie’s arrival on Netflix marks its premiere for the first time outside of Japan, where Part 1 debuted in January. You can watch a teaser trailer for it here: [embedded content] Here’s Netflix’s synopsis of the film: The upcoming adventures are set in April, when the cherry blossoms are in bloom and Tokyo is in a festive mood as it celebrates the largest Total Solar Eclipse of the century. As the new moon obscures the sun and gradually dims its light, Usagi and Chibi-Usa encounter Pegasus, who is in search of the chosen Maiden who can break the seal of the Golden Crystal. Meanwhile, a mysterious troupe c...

If you were having issues with the PlayStation Network (PSN) this evening or afternoon, you weren’t alone. The service suffered an outage, with multiplayer, store services, and more going down for around an hour. The outage appeared to be global — the official Ask PlayStation Japan Twitter account reported the issue, and we saw many users from Europe also reporting problems. It seems like it’s resolved now, with the PSN status page showing that everything is up and running. I’ve also confirmed that I’ve been able to download a game from the PlayStation Store, and hop into a multiplayer match. The PSN status page at 6:55PM ET. The outage affected all the categories listed on the PSN’s status page — account management, gaming and social, PlayStation Now, PlayStation Video, PlayStation Store,...

One of the scariest concerns about social media is the idea of algorithmic misinformation — that the recommendation systems built into platforms like Facebook and YouTube could be quietly elevating the most harmful and disruptive content on the network. But at a Senate hearing Tuesday titled “Algorithms and Amplification: How Social Media Platforms’ Design Choices Shape our Discourse and Our Minds,’’ lawmakers didn’t appear any closer to finding a solution for the violence platforms like Facebook have internally recognized they cause in the real world. At the top, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said “there’s nothing inherently wrong” with how the testifying companies, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, leverage algorithms to keep users engaged on their platforms. He said the committee wasn’t weighin...

ZTE is offering a feature rarely seen in the budget class of phones: wireless charging. The Blade 11 Prime is on sale now in the US for $192 through Visible and Yahoo Mobile, two MVNOs that use Verizon’s network. It’s an otherwise fairly unremarkable budget device, with a 6.5-inch 720p display shipping with Android 11. In addition to wireless charging, the Blade 11 Prime supports reverse wired charging to provide some power to other devices in a pinch. However, the phone’s 4,000mAh battery is on the smaller side, so the feature is probably best reserved for emergencies. The 11 Prime uses a MediaTek 6762 chipset with 4GB of RAM and offers 64GB of built-in storage. It features 16-megapixel standard and 8-megapixel wide rear-facing cameras, plus an 8-megapixel selfie camera. The 11 Prime incl...

Acer announced in a blog post that it’s getting into the flash storage and memory business with help from a Chinese manufacturer called Biwin. Acer’s brand will be slapped onto each of these SSDs, but it’ll be another company that’s responsible for building them. Even though you’ll see an Acer logo on this storage, it’s Biwin that’ll handle the warranty for these products. Acer isn’t the only major company utilizing Biwin’s hardware. This storage and memory manufacturer also puts out HP-branded products, including portable SSDs, NVMe SSDs, 2.5-inch SATA SSDs, and RAM. The latest partnership aims to release Acer-branded products first in the US, China, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and in the UK. Release dates and prices weren’t shared, but The Verge contacted B...

The annual Pokémon Go Fest is back again this summer, scheduled for July 17th and 18th. Last year’s event was held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, instead of taking place in person in select cities around the globe. It sounds like this year’s fest will once again happen virtually; developer Niantic describes the event as a “global event.” Niantic didn’t share many other details, though it did tease that this year’s event could be particularly noteworthy. “2021 marks both the twenty-fifth anniversary of Pokémon and the fifth anniversary of Pokémon Go, so trust us when we say you won’t want to miss Pokémon Go Fest 2021!” Niantic said in a blog post. Last year’s online-only Pokémon Go Fest was a huge success, with “a record number of millions of trainers” in 124 countries and regions cat...