Technology

The Overwatch League kicks off its fourth season this week, and while the majority of matches will be played remotely, today the league announced plans to hold multiple live events in China. There will be three events spread across three cities — Hangzhou in June, Shanghai in July, and Guangzhou in August — and the league says they will take place in venues with reduced capacity “in order to comply with local safety requirements.” The events will be something of a hybrid between online and in-person competition. Here’s how OWL describes it: The five China-based teams — Hunters, Charge, Spark, Valiant, and Dragons — plan to travel to each of the events to compete onstage, while the three Korea-based teams — NYXL, Fusion, and Dynasty — are not expected to travel. Matches taking place between...

Near the end, Ludwig Ahgren slept a lot. Nestled in his race car bed with a blanket over his face and something new playing in the bottom corner of his screen, Ahgren exuded exhaustion. It was after all day another day in the streamer’s Twitch subathon; he’d been live since March 14th, and now there was less than an hour left on the clock. Though as he knew, this had happened before. A number close to zero was no guarantee that the stream would end. Except this time was different, because he’d finally reached the limit he’d set for himself — 31 straight days of streaming. Since he started his subathon, Ahgren had become the most subscribed to streamer on Twitch. On the 13th, the day before he took his subathon live, he’d amassed 1,730 subs, per the stat site Twitch Tracker. By April 1st, h...

Gigabyte has announced three new 4K gaming monitors for its Aorus brand, each features HDMI 2.1, the somewhat hard-to-find display connector that allows for high refresh rate gaming at 4K (via TweakTown). Besides having some of the best tech available in TVs or monitors, all three have desk-dominating sizes. According to a press release posted by VideoCardz, the monitors will also feature VESA’s HDR 1000 standard and come in three sizes: 32, 43, and a mind-boggling (for a gaming monitor anyway; we’ll get back to that) 48 inches. The 48-inch version is a little different, and it set off a firestorm of discussion at The Verge, so let’s set it aside for just one moment. The 32- and 43-inch monitors, named the FI32U and the FV43U, respectively, will feature 144Hz panels. Gigabyte is also claim...

A man who was falsely accused of shoplifting has sued the Detroit Police Department for arresting him based on an incorrect facial recognition match. The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of Robert Williams, whom it calls the first US person wrongfully arrested based on facial recognition. The Detroit Police Department arrested Williams in 2019 after examining security footage from a shoplifting incident. A detective used facial recognition technology on a grainy image from the video, and the system flagged Williams as a potential match based on a driver’s license photo. But as the lawsuit notes, facial recognition is frequently inaccurate, particularly with Black subjects and a low-quality picture. The department then produced a photo lineup that included Williams’ pictu...

Samsung has announced a new Galaxy Unpacked event set for April 28th at 10AM ET, teasing the announcement of “the most powerful Galaxy” device. The teaser, as is typical for these invitations, isn’t too forthcoming. But given the nature of the announcement and Samsung’s usual release cycle, there are a few hints we can suss out. First, the description of whatever Samsung is announcing as “the most powerful Galaxy” would seem to rule out a phone, like the rumored Galaxy Z Fold 3. The most generous depiction of a mobile processor — even one as powerful as Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 888 — still isn’t in the same ballpark as a true laptop processor. And despite recent headlines, Samsung is still rumored to reveal the Z Fold 3 at a July event, potentially a replacement for the Galaxy Note’s...

According to the telecom industry news site Light Reading, the big three US carriers are walking away from the Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative. The CCMI was meant to be a joint effort to promote RCS, the next-generation messaging standard designed to replace SMS. But while that might seem like bad news on the face of it, what it actually means is that carriers have given up on a bad plan that would have been bad for consumers. Whether or not they will replace it with a good plan remains, as ever with RCS, to be seen. The CCMI was launched in 2019 and by all indications was a joint effort that was spearheaded by Sprint. It initially seemed like a mixed bag of news. At the time, any effort by carriers to support proper cross-compatibility in RCS was a good sign. But the bad part was the c...

Today’s announcement that federal officials have recommended pausing use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine might hurt efforts to encourage people to get vaccinated. But — critically — that doesn’t mean the federal officials shouldn’t have made the recommendation, says Melanie Kornides, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing who studies why some people are hesitant to take vaccines. “Some people are missing the message — they’re so worried about hesitancy, that they’re not seeing how important it is to address the safety, in order to make people feel less hesitant,” she says. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended the pause while they investigate six reports of rare blood clots i...

Pinterest has been battered with accusations of workplace discrimination for many months, and we’ve followed a large portion of that saga here at The Verge. That includes, most recently, how Ifeoma Ozoma, a former Pinterest employee who accused the company of trying to silence her, helped draft California’s new Silenced No More Act. Today, Ozoma is speaking out in The New York Times about why she believes nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) should not be allowed to keep whistleblowers in check — but Pinterest now says, effective immediately, it will stop making workers sign NDAs that prevent them from talking about such things. That’s the news from Protocol: Pinterest will “not require employees to sign agreements that would prevent them from talking about their personal experiences at Pintere...

Mobvoi is starting to sell the TicWatch GTH today, a $79.99 fitness wearable that features sensors for skin temperature and blood oxygen that are typically reserved for more expensive watches. Mobvoi has generally focused on Wear OS devices in the past, providing a variety of options for Google’s troubled wearable operating system, but the TicWatch GTH seems more like a Fitbit competitor than anything else. The TicWatch GTH has an Apple Watch-esque square body, a noticeably bezeled 1.55-inch screen, and only comes in “raven black.” Mobvoi claims the GTH’s 260mAh battery can last more than a week on one charge, “depending on usage,” and that the watch is also water-resistant up to 5ATM or 50 meters. Despite that, Mobvoi’s website notes that the GTH is not safe for shower use. The TicWatch G...

Anker has announced a new webcam as part of its new AnkerWork line of home office gear. The new webcam, called the PowerConf C300, is a 1080p webcam with a “built-in AI chipset,” which Anker says “provides a high-quality image with accurate color reproduction and unparalleled low-light performance.” The webcam offers three field-of-view options: 78 degrees, intended for closeups; 90 degrees; and 115 degrees, which offers a wider field of view. It also has dual stereo microphones that can pick up your voice. The PowerConf C300 is available at Amazon, Anker.com, and “select retailers,” and it costs $129.99 in the US, €129.99 in Germany, and £119.00 in the UK. [embedded content] Anker also announced a new portable conference speaker, the PowerConf S500. Pricing and availability will be announ...

No matter what you do during your waking hours — work at home or outside of it; commute in a car, a train, or by walking from your bedroom to your living room; or spend your days watching the kids or job hunting — you’re probably spending at least some of that time listening to music. But where do you find that music? And if you already have a site you go to regularly, would you like to try something new? There is a wealth of streaming music services now available to anyone who wants to listen and experiment. Some offer both free and paid subscription versions. Others are completely free. We asked the staff of The Verge to tell us about their favorite music streaming services. Some listen to major outlets such as Apple Music, Spotify, or YouTube Music, while others have discovered lesser-k...

Discord is amping up its restrictions on adult content, with new age gates on NSFW servers and a ban on accessing these servers from iOS devices. Entire servers can now be marked as NSFW if their community “is organized around NSFW themes or if the majority of the server’s content is 18+.” This label will be a requirement going forward, and Discord will proactively mark servers as NSFW if they fail to self-identify. Discord previously allowed individual channels to be marked as NSFW and age-gated. The NSFW marker does two things. First, it prevents anyone under the age of 18 from joining. But the bigger limitation is that it prevents NSFW servers from being accessed on iOS devices — a significant restriction that’s almost certainly meant to cater to Apple’s strict and often prudish rules a...