Technology

Accessory manufacturer Gomi is launching a limited edition Bluetooth speaker powered by batteries from old Lime e-bikes. In its announcement of the partnership, Lime says Gomi will use 50,000 battery cells from over 1,000 old e-bikes. The result is a Bluetooth speaker priced starting at £99 (around $138) that has 20 hours of battery life and will be available for 30 days as part of a Kickstarter launching later today. It’s an interesting initiative that Lime hopes will further decrease the environmental impact of its shareable e-bikes, which are touted as a way of reducing reliance on cars for short journeys. In the past, other shared micromobility options like e-scooters have been criticized for their short lifespans, with one 2019 report estimating their average lifespan at around four m...

Vizio today filed its S-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission as the TV and soundbar maker heads toward an initial public offering. “We envision the Vizio smart TV as the center of the connected home — where families play games together, where friends watch movies together, where work and learning happen, and where all things in between take place,” Vizio founder, chairman, and CEO William Wang wrote in a letter that opens the S-1. “Going public is an important milestone for us as we continue to grow and execute our goals.” The filing reveals that Vizio has sold over 80 million TVs and 11 million soundbars since the company’s founding. It sold 7.1 million TVs in 2020. Vizio’s TVs have long delivered performance and picture quality far above their price, though in recent years co...

Google is updating its augmented reality SDK so that phones with dual cameras can capture better depth information. As noted by Android Police, the most recent update to the Google Play Services for AR app, which is how Google distributes ARCore features, now notes “Dual camera stereo depth on supported devices” in its changelog. For now, it appears that the support will be limited to Google’s own Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, which were both released in 2019. The list of compatible ARCore devices on Google’s developer site says that dual camera support will roll out in the coming weeks. Notably, this means that the Pixel 5 and 4a 5G, both of which are 2020 Pixel phones with dual cameras, won’t see the benefits for now. That may be because their secondary cameras are ultrawides rather than the P...

Clue, best known for its period tracking app, announced that it received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration for a digital birth control function, which it says can help users prevent pregnancy based only on the start date of a user’s period. It calculates the window where someone could get pregnant based on statistical modeling. “It personalizes over time. So as the individual puts in their cycle day one then we’re able to personalize the window of their high risk days vs their low risk days,” Clue’s chief medical officer Lynae Brayboy told TechCrunch. The company plans to launch its digital birth control some time this year. Clue says that its digital birth control is 92 percent effective at preventing unwanted pregnancy when it’s used the way most people do (accounting for s...

Grimes is the latest artist to get in on the NFT gold rush, selling around $6 million worth of digital artworks after putting them up for auction yesterday. A series of 10 pieces — some one of a kind, others with thousands of copies — went up for sale on Nifty Gateway on November 28th. The highest-selling piece was a one-of-a-kind video called “Death of the Old” that involves flying cherubs, a cross, a sword, and glowing light that’s set to an original song by Grimes. The winning bidder took it for nearly $389,000. The bulk of the sales came from two pieces with thousands of copies available that sold for $7,500 each. The works, titled “Earth” and “Mars,” are both short videos featuring their titular planet with a giant cherub over it holding a weapon, also set to original music. Nearly 70...

Roku, one of the most popular streaming platforms in US homes, is acquiring Nielsen’s video advertisement business as it tries to become a central hub for TV advertising. Specifically, Roku is acquiring Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising unit. The acquisition means that Roku will also acquire Nielsen’s automatic content recognition (ACR) and dynamic ad insertion (DAI) technology. DAI technology simply means that advertisers will be able to receive “better targeting and measurement” capabilities so they can hyper-target a specific audience instead of more broad demographics like age and gender. Think of ads for products people might actually want playing before a YouTube video compared to seemingly random ads playing on CNN. It’s often referred to as addressable TV advertising because of ...

YouTube has suspended Rudy Giuliani’s YouTube channel for the second time this year for making false claims of fraud in the 2020 US presidential election and has issued a strike against his channel. It’s Giulani’s second strike within 90 days, according to Bloomberg, meaning that Giuliani cannot upload videos for two weeks. In a statement, YouTube also cited Giulani’s promotion of nicotine, which is against the company’s rules. “We have clear Community Guidelines that govern what videos may stay on YouTube, which we enforce consistently, regardless of speaker,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge. “We removed content from the Rudy W. Giuliani channel for violating our sale of regulated goods policy, which prohibits content facilitating the use of nicotine, and our presi...

Rumors about a folding iPhone are nothing new, but analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (who has a very strong track record) is weighing in with information of his own: he says that Apple could be looking at a 2023 launch, and that the phone could have a screen between 7.5 and eight inches (via MacRumors). Previous rumors have suggested that the screen would be smaller, closer to the size of an iPhone 12 Pro Max. There have been numerous reports about Apple prototyping a folding iPhone, but according to MacRumors, Kuo says that the product has “not yet officially kicked off.” Meanwhile, competitors like Samsung, Motorola, and Royole have all released multiple foldable phones (though they’re mostly expensive and clearly early implementations of the tech). According to Kuo, the screen will be iPad Mini-size...

It’s March, which means Nintendo will soon pull a handful of games released specifically for anniversary celebrations. Switch owners have until the end of this month, March 31st, to grab games before the developer pulls them off the eShop. That includes Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, Super Mario Bros. 35, Game & Watch Super Mario Bros., and Super Mario 3D All-Stars. Similar to Disney’s infamous “vault” tactic — offering films for a limited time before they’re stuffed back into a metaphorical vault and become impossible to get — Nintendo announced last year that it would only offer certain games until this year. It’s unclear if the developer will rerelease these games further down the road or if they’ll remain unavailable indefinitely. Nintendo continues to celebrate...

Twitter announced Monday that it will start labeling tweets that share misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines. The labels will include links to relevant information from official bodies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Twitter plans to enforce a five-strike system for repeat offenders that can lead to locked accounts and permanent suspension. The new labels are similar to Facebook’s anti-misinformation banners or the labels Twitter began deploying early in the pandemic. They appear as text underneath misleading tweets, with links to information from official sources or Twitter’s rules. Twitter says it applies these labels through a combination of human and automated review systems and is starting its rollout with English-language content first. An example of...

Volvo XC40 Recharge electric SUVs are currently being held at US ports because the company is waiting to ship a crucial software update before releasing them to customers and dealers, The Verge has learned. The problem appears to be that these XC40 Recharge SUVs — which is Volvo’s first all-electric vehicle — left the company’s factory without the Volvo On Call software activated. Volvo On Call is a subscription service that connects Volvo cars to an owner’s smartphone, allowing them to remotely turn the vehicle on and off, lock or unlock the doors, and access diagnostic information. One customer, who was supposed to take delivery of his XC40 Recharge at the end of February, tells The Verge his dealer’s best guess is that his SUV may not make it out of the port in Newark, New Jersey until ...

Next year’s Atlantic hurricane season could begin on May 15th if officials decide this year to move its formal start date up by two weeks. The decision will likely be made this spring, during meetings held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 2022 is the earliest that the start date can be officially changed, a spokesperson for NOAA’s National Hurricane Center told The Verge in an email. But come May 15th of this year, the agency will start issuing its Tropical Weather Outlooks, which are routine forecasts that it typically doesn’t start releasing until hurricane season starts on June 1st. The proposed changes come as climate change makes hurricane season more unpredictable and more advanced technology makes it easier to...