Technology

iRobot, maker of the robotic Roomba vacuums, has confirmed to The Verge that a software update has been causing issues for some users of its i7 and s9 robots and that it’s working on another one to prevent future issues. The catch? It might be a bit before things get sorted out, with iRobot expecting the update to roll out “over the next several weeks.” According to users on Reddit and Twitter, the recent 3.12.8 firmware update has been causing navigation issues. One user described their robot cleaner as acting “drunk” after the update: spinning itself around and bumping into furniture, cleaning in strange patterns, getting stuck in an empty area, and not being able to make it home to the dock. What’s more, some other users are reporting that the environment maps their Roombas made were wi...

Health care company One Medical gave COVID-19 vaccines to people who were ineligible under local guidelines, including friends and family of company leadership, NPR reported. Health departments in Washington state and California said they stopped distributing doses to One Medical after finding out that the company was not sticking to eligibility rules. The company was given vaccine doses in a few states, including Washington and California. Internal messages obtained by NPR show that doctors raised concerns about patients jumping the line for vaccinations ahead of people who where higher priority for the shots. Now, Alameda County, California and the Washington State Department of Health have refused to give the company more doses. In many states, people who are older or who have underlyin...

Disney Plus is getting a ton of new shows in the next few months, with Disney releasing the schedule of premiere dates for new original shows for March through July. Along with shows like The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, which has already been announced for March 19th, the new list also gives concrete release dates for notable series including The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers on March 26th; Star Wars: The Bad Batch on May 4th (also known as “Star Wars Day”); High School Musical: The Musical: The Series season 2 on May 14th; Loki (which had been originally slated for May) on June 11th; and the Monster’s Inc. spinoff Monsters at Work on July 2nd. The list doesn’t include a few major shows that have been announced for 2021, though, including The Book of Boba Fett (which likely won’t arrive u...

Lyft is admitting that some part of traditional taxi services are worth emulating today by letting people in select Florida cities book Lyft rides with just a phone call. The new “Call A Lyft” feature should be “perfect for seniors and folks without access to the Lyft app,” says Lyft. Calling 631-201-LYFT (631-201-5938) between 8AM-8PM ET on Monday through Friday will let a potential rider book a ride. Lyft says that it will tell riders the full price before confirming and send texts to track the ride once it’s paid for and booked. It should be familiar to anyone who’s ever called a cab, though Lyft notes drivers are not expected to offer assistance getting into a car and wheelchair accessible rides aren’t available at launch. Call A Lyft also requires a phone with support for SMS messages...

In 1996, a pair of cute monster-collecting roleplaying games launched on the Game Boy, giving birth to one of the biggest entertainment franchises on the planet. Over the last 25 years, Pokémon has continued to be a massively popular RPG series, but it has also spawned plentiful spinoff games, movies, shows, and more — from the early days of Red and Blue to the phenomenon of Pokémon Go to the surprise hit Detective Pikachu. At The Verge, we’re using this anniversary as a chance to explore how Pokémon evolved over the years and where it may be headed. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn rewards by chatting, s...

HP has announced that it is acquiring gaming peripheral company HyperX for $425 million. The purchase will give HP a major foothold in the gaming accessory market. This transaction will result in HP buying the HyperX brand from Kingston, the current owner, but HP notes in the announcement post that “Kingston will retain the DRAM, flash, and SSD products for gamers and enthusiasts.” HP has been making strides to enter the gaming peripheral space for the last several years under the Omen brand, but it has not gained much traction compared to competitors such as Corsair, Logitech, and Razer. HyperX is one of the most notable brands in this market, with gaming accessories including its line of Cloud headsets, which are among the bestselling gaming headsets right now. Gaming headsets aside, Hyp...

Ring has announced the latest model in its line of video doorbells, the Video Doorbell Pro 2. The Pro 2 is a new top-of-the-line model that comes with a number of enhancements over its predecessor, including a taller field of view and enhanced motion detection capabilities. It is available to preorder for $249.99 starting today, with shipments expected to begin on March 31st, 2021. The most significant update for the Pro 2 is its new square video capture. First popularized by Google’s Nest Hello and adopted by many other video doorbells, this field of view makes it possible to see who is at your door from head to toe. It also makes it possible to see when packages are left on the ground in front of the doorbell. The Pro 2 captures a 1536 x 1536 pixel image and is the first Ring model to no...

YouTube is announcing “supervised experiences,” a new set of restrictions that allows parents to better control what content their children can access on the streaming video platform. According to a blog post, YouTube hopes the filters will help parents slowly introduce their older children to age-appropriate content and features outside of the YouTube Kids app. The program will launch first with an early beta, with a wider beta rolling out “in the coming months.” Parents have three levels of strictness to choose from, which determines the content a child is allowed to view on their account. There’s the “Explore” level, which YouTube says is “generally suitable” for kids nine and up’ “Explore More,” which is meant for kids 13 and up; and “Most of YouTube,” which is pretty much everything e...

President Biden is set to sign an executive order Wednesday to address growing concern over a global semiconductor shortage hampering the production of goods like automobiles and smartphones. The White House’s executive order will direct the federal government to conduct 100-day reviews of supply chains in four sets of products, including computer chips and large capacity batteries, like those used in electric vehicles, according to administration officials. The chip shortage was a result of a number of factors created by the coronavirus pandemic. As more of daily life moved online, consumer electronics manufacturers saw an increase in demand for products like laptops. Production of chips also slowed down in part because of the pandemic, and former President Trump’s trade war with China ma...

If you’ve spent the day playing through Persona 5 Strikers and noticed the voice of the in-game digital assistant sounded familiar, it’s likely because it’s played by the original voice of Siri (via Kotaku). Susan Bennett originally provided the voice for Apple’s digital assistant, and now she’s playing EMMA, the in-game AI. You can hear what she sounds like in the role in the video below, around the 9:44 mark. [embedded content] If you ask your iPhone for directions to the nearest camping store, though, you may notice that its response doesn’t exactly sound like the game. That’s because, while Bennett was the original voice for Siri when it debuted with the iPhone 4S running iOS 5 (though technically Siri existed with Bennett’s voice before it was ever added to the iPhone), she was replac...

A new Oculus Quest feature expands the headset’s Guardian mode by letting you mark your real couch as an object that’ll show up in VR. The Guardian is an Oculus safety feature that lets you draw lines around your environment that act as a virtual boundary and appear in VR when you get too close to the edges; this couch mode is the first time that the Guardian has worked as more than just a simple measure of floor space. UploadVR reports that you can mark out your couch or chair by touching one side and dragging out a virtual blue rectangle across it to define the correct size. Once you’ve done that it’ll appear as a 3D-modeled couch in the Oculus Home menu environment, or as the same blue rectangle when using the Guardian feature in an app or a game, and its position will be saved as part ...

Fry’s Electronics, one of the last big brick-and-mortar electronics store chains in the United States — and a Silicon Valley institution in particular — is permanently closing nationwide, local broadcaster KRON4 has confirmed, following a report from Bill Reynolds and another from Matthew Keys. The company’s Facebook page is also gone and its Twitter feed has been set to private — it was public earlier this evening, though it hadn’t tweeted in quite some time. If you’ve ever visited a Fry’s anytime in the past two to three years, none of this will come as a surprise. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the family-owned business had been pushed to the brink of extinction by online retailers like Amazon, Newegg and more. Initially, the company started a campaign to price-match any item you co...