Technology

“Welcome to the simulation” read a card inside the package sent to me by Simulate, the company responsible for the Nuggs brand of plant-based chicken nuggets. Inside the package, nestled among some dry ice, were what looked like several specimen bags. Each bag contained two Nuggs, from version 1.0 to version 2.0 with six versions in between. They were each carefully labeled: “Project: The Verge. Variant: V.1.6.” As I transferred the cargo to my freezer, I felt less like I was putting away some groceries and more like I was participating in a lab experiment. That’s the kind of energy Simulate is going for. Its branding is simultaneously silly and self-serious, and it’s deliberately steeped in internet culture. The Nuggs Instagram is almost entirely memes, with product announcements interspe...

Another iconic meme is going up for auction as an NFT: the text and sunglasses used to popularize “deal with it” GIFs. The auction is being held on the NFT platform Foundation, and bidding is currently at around $8,000, with more than five hours remaining at the time this article was published. The meme was listed by Ryder Ripps, the designer / creative director / “art prankster” who recently made headlines for falsely claiming to be behind the dystopian redesign of the CIA’s website. (Ripps told The Verge the claim was a joke and “so obvious if you have your cerebral cortex functioning.”) Ripps does, at least, appear to be closely connected to the “deal with it” meme, even if the decade-old image’s exact provenance is difficult to fully verify. The glasses and text were popularized in 201...

Last week, Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry debuted on Apple TV Plus. The documentary became the “biggest hit title for young adult audiences that Apple has had so far across its slate of films and TV series,” according to Deadline, drawing a “record-breaking 33 percent new viewers to the service.” Sounds impressive, right? It would if Apple provided any kind of context for declarations like “biggest hit” and “record-breaking” subscriber adds. Instead, we’re left wondering: How many subscribers does Apple TV Plus have currently? How many people actually watched Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry? How many of those new subscribers are on free Apple TV Plus trial plans? How do those viewership numbers and subscriber additions compare to every other title? Without any of thi...

It’s rare that apps come back from the dead, but it seems like that may be what’s happening with Turntable.fm, a site that let you create their own radio-stations and DJ sets with music you curate before it got shuttered in 2014. Even rarer, it seems like there are two versions involved in the revival: the original Turntable.fm site is back up and running (with the involvement of its original founder, Billy Chasen), but there’s also Turntable.org, which will reportedly be launching in beta this April. The two sites seem to be taking different directions — Turntable.org, the new version, mentions that there will be a subscription fee (perhaps not a bad idea, given the fate of the first version), while the original seems to be largely unchanged from the one that shut down in 2014. While the ...

Yuki Moriyama still remembers the first time he saw Pacific Rim. He was a bit of a latecomer, and he ended up catching it in theaters with some friends who had already seen the movie multiple times. It wasn’t long before Moriyama — an art director at animation studio Polygon Pictures — was hooked as well. “It’s the type of film that, once you get into it, it becomes quite addictive,” he says of the straightforward mech vs. kaiju battles. Now, Moriyama and the team at Polygon are releasing their own take on the franchise. Created in collaboration with Legendary Television and writers Greg Johnson and Craig Kyle, Pacific Rim: The Black is an animated series on Netflix that explores a new time period. It’s set after the two films and takes place in a version of Australia that has been largely...

General Motors is considering building a second battery factory in the United States, The Wall Street Journal reports, in order to ramp up its production of electric vehicles in the interest of becoming a completely carbon neutral company by the year 2040. The factory would be built in collaboration with LG Chem, the South Korean battery maker that is already working with GM on a battery factory in northern Ohio. According to the Journal, the second facility is likely to be located in Tennessee, though a final location has yet to be selected. A spokesperson for GM confirmed that a second factory is being discussed with LG Chem, and a decision is expected sometime in the first half of 2021. GM announced the construction of its first battery factory in December 2019. The automaker set up a j...

Qualcomm today announced Snapdragon Sound, which is what the company describes as “a chain of audio innovations and software” that work together to significantly improve audio quality when listening to music through wireless headphones, earbuds, and other devices. The goal is to deliver “high-resolution, wired quality audio, wirelessly,” according to James Chapman, Qualcomm’s VP of voice, music, and wearables. Snapdragon Sound takes advantage of the company’s latest processors, Bluetooth audio SoCs, and codecs like aptX Adaptive to achieve playback of hi-fi music up to 24-bit 96kHz. The concept of high-quality wireless audio isn’t new to Android; Sony has been largely pushing that mission forward with its own LDAC technology, which can transmit up to three times the amount of data that the...

Texas’ deep freeze was the latest warning that extreme weather events threaten to derail efforts to clean up the most toxic sites in the US. In a worst-case scenario, a natural disaster can unleash buried toxic substances. But even minimal damage or the mere threat of a storm can stop or slow cleanup efforts. That vulnerability could become a bigger problem as climate change brings about more weather-related disasters. For years, experts have pushed the Environmental Protection Agency to prepare for the onslaught. “We have over two dozen Superfund sites here in our county, and we are one of the most threatened coasts in the world by natural forces,” says Jackie Young-Medcalf, executive director of the Houston-based nonprofit Texas Health and Environment Alliance. “As long as the waste rema...

Ikea’s new $9.99 / €7.99 / £6 Trådfri Shortcut Buttons and existing $14.99 / €12.95 / £12 Trådfri Motion Sensors recently gained HomeKit support to the delight of many Apple device owners. Importantly, the addition is cumulative for the most part, allowing the Ikea devices to function with the best features of Ikea Home Smart while layering on the best of Apple. I’ve been testing both Ikea Home Smart devices for the past few days and while setup is predictably buggy, when they’re up and running it’s glorious, especially for the price. Motion sensors designed to work with HomeKit aren’t cheap. They range in price from $21 to $57 according to this roundup from iMore. The popular Motion sensor from Philips Hue, for example, is more capable but costs $40, or almost three times as much as Ikea’...

In the weeks before and after the 2020 US election, Facebook content from far-right sources of news and misinformation received more engagement than other sources elsewhere on the political spectrum, a new study from New York University has revealed. The findings suggest that far-right pages have an advantage energizing followers on the world’s biggest social network. “My takeaway is that, one way or another, far-right misinformation sources are able to engage on Facebook with their audiences much, much more than any other category,” Laura Edelson, a researcher at NYU’s Cybersecurity for Democracy initiative who helped compile the report, told CNN. “That’s probably pretty dangerous on a system that uses engagement to determine what content to promote.” Researchers looked at some 8.6 millio...

Microsoft is starting to modernize some of the basic parts of Windows 10 by improving the system icons that are available in the operating system. A new preview build of Windows 10 is rolling out to testers this week, and it includes system icons that now adhere to Microsoft’s Fluent Design style. The new icons include a more rounded and simplified look, and are available as a new font — Segoe Fluent Icons. Microsoft has also updated its new taskbar widget with the new icons, providing a good look at how basic icon changes can modernize even the smallest parts of Windows. Some of the new system icons for Windows 10.Image: Microsoft It’s a small change to Windows 10 that will appear later this year for most, but it’s part of a broader push by Microsoft to overhaul Windows 10. Microsoft upda...