Technology

OtterBox, the company best known for its ruggedized cases, has developed a $30 clip that can attach your phone to an Xbox controller for playing games. Called the Mobile Gaming Clip, it’s part of a growing trend of accessories for playing cloud-based console games right on your phone. What makes OtterBox’s clip different is it can also work as a phone stand, separate from the controller — although the phone stand feature isn’t quite as robust as what I was hoping for. OtterBox’s clip is designed specifically for Xbox controllers, and it works with controllers made for the Xbox One, Series X / S, or the Elite Series 2 controller. There’s also a little cutout for the charging port, meaning if you need to connect your Xbox controller to a USB cable, you will not need to remove the clip from t...

The NFL has signed long-term television and digital media rights agreements that greatly expand availability to a variety of streaming platforms. Notably, Amazon has scored exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football in the first ever all-digital package. The deal begins with the 2023 season and extends through 2033. “NFL games are the most watched live programming in the United States, and this unprecedented Thursday Night Football package gives tens of millions of new and existing Prime members exclusive access to must-watch live football on Prime Video,” said Mike Hopkins, SVP of Prime Video and Amazon Studios in a press release announcing the deal. The ten-year deal is rumored to cost Amazon about $1 billion per year, according to CNBC’s sources. Amazon has been the NFL’s streaming med...

NASA test-fired the core stage of its massive Space Launch System rocket on Thursday, rattling its south Mississippi test facilities for a duration well beyond what engineers needed for a clean demonstration. The team carried out its second attempt for the hot-fire run after cutting short an initial firing in January. Pending a review of the test’s data, engineers are aiming to ship the rocket stage to Florida ahead of its debut test flight to the Moon under NASA’s Artemis program. Mounted in a behemoth test facility at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, the 212-foot-tall rocket stage’s four RS-25 engines ignited together for over eight minutes to test the conditions of a real liftoff. NASA and its prime contractor, Boeing, needed to reach at least four minutes of continuous test time to call it...

Intel’s upcoming Xe HPG “DG2” discrete gaming GPUs might be close to a reveal. The company has teased a “Xe HPG Scavenger Hunt” for March 26th at 12PM ET / 9AM PT. The website was hidden in a binary sequence segment Intel stuck in its GDC 2021 presentation that briefly teased the upcoming graphics card. Wccftech has managed to decode the message: the IP address for the aforementioned scavenger hunt website, which promises more information on the 26th. It’s not clear whether Intel will be launching the DG2 cards on the 26th or if the official announcement will come at new Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger’s mysterious announcement on “the new era of innovation and technology leadership at Intel” that’s set to take place on March 23rd. If that’s the case, then it’s possible that the scavenger hunt cou...

It’s always nice to anticipate an influx of cash, especially if things have been a bit tight lately. The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, which was signed into law on March 11th, 2021, includes Economic Impact Payments in the amount of $1,400 or less, depending on your reported income. In fact, as of Wednesday, March 17th, you may have already gotten yours; that was when the first payments began hitting bank accounts. So if you’ve been using direct deposit to pay your federal taxes (or get your tax refunds), then check your bank account. If you don’t use direct deposit and you qualify for a payment, you should get either a check or a prepaid Economic Impact Payment (EIP) card in the mail. Haven’t seen anything yet and want to find out your status? The best way to find out where your payme...

Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri confirms that a version of the popular photo sharing app for children under 13 is in the works, BuzzFeed News reports. The Facebook-owned company knows a lot of kids want to use Instagram, Mosseri said, but there isn’t a “detailed plan yet,” according to BuzzFeed News. “But part of the solution is to create a version of Instagram for young people or kids where parents have transparency or control,” Mosseri told BuzzFeed News. “It’s one of the things we’re exploring.” Instagram’s current policy bars children under 13 from the platform. Kids are increasingly asking their parents if they can join apps that help them keep up with their friends. A version of Instagram where parents have control, like we did w/ Messenger Kids, is something we’re exploring. We’ll sh...

Cricut has announced in a new blog post that its automated cutting and printing craft machine will no longer require a subscription for unlimited uploads next year. The company took a step back when it announced it would postpone the change until 2022. But now Cricut CEO Ashish Arora is reversing the company’s plans entirely, guaranteeing Cricut machines will work how they’ve always worked. “We’ve made the decision to reverse our previously shared plans. Right now, every member can upload an unlimited number of images and patterns to Design Space for free, and we have no intention to change this policy. This is true whether you’re a current Cricut member or are thinking about joining the Cricut family before or after December 31, 2021,” Arora writes. Limits on uploads to Cricut’s required ...

YouTube removed an extremely racist video from conservative commentator Steven Crowder this week, citing violations of the platform’s COVID-19 misinformation policy — not its hate speech policy — as the reason for the removal. Inexplicably, though, the video did not violate the company’s hate speech policies at all, the company told OneZero, despite Crowder and his co-hosts making numerous racist comments about Black farmers. “Our hate speech policy prohibits content promoting hatred against groups based on their race,” a YouTube spokesperson tells OneZero. “While offensive, this video from the Steven Crowder channel does not violate this policy.” If you were curious, here is YouTube’s full hate speech policy. And if you want to hear the offensive comments from Crowder’s show, Media Matter...

Twitch streamer Ludwig Ahgren has been live since March 14th, and today marked the fourth continuous day of his broadcast. The reason? Every time someone subscribes to his channel, it adds 10 seconds to the amount of time he plans to remain live. In other words: Ahgren is running an uncapped subathon because he’ll stay up as long as viewers keep subscribing. Since he’s one of the most popular streamers on Twitch — with 1.8 million followers as of this writing — it means Ahgren’s going to be live for at least a couple more days. (As of this writing, he’s got another 57 hours to go.) Yesterday, when he went to sleep for the night in his red racecar bed, he even managed to become the top streamer on Twitch. This isn’t actually against Twitch’s TOS. A Twitch spokesperson emailed The Verge a st...

On Thursday, House Judiciary Committee lawmakers held a hearing with some of the most prominent players in antitrust enforcement today. Two Federal Trade Commission leaders and two state attorneys general currently suing Facebook for violating antitrust law testified before the committee. But while lawmakers have spoken extensively about breaking up companies like Facebook and Google, law enforcement agencies are the ones with real power to unwind tech mergers, even if their dwindling budgets and measly resources make it more difficult to do so. On Thursday, members of Congress signaled that they want to help them bring more lawsuits against Big Tech. WHAT IT MEANS In previous hearings, committee chairman Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) and others have made sweeping statements about setting ne...

Among Us’ new Airship map will be available on March 31st as part of a free update coming to the hit social deduction game. Developer InnerSloth says the Airship map is the game’s biggest yet, with new tasks and the ability to pick which room you start in. You can get a preview of the new map in this trailer, which released during The Game Awards in December. [embedded content] The new update will also add what InnerSloth is calling a “preliminary” account system to help with moderation. Accounts have been in the works for a while, and InnerSloth wanted to make sure to take the time to implement them thoughtfully, according to a blog post. “A proper moderation system is one that is extremely difficult and time consuming,” the studio said. “It is not as easy as just having a ‘report’ button...