Technology

“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” — President Donald Trump on COVID-19, January 22nd, 2020. “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.” — Trump on COVID-19, February 24th. “It’s incredible. But it’s something that we have tremendous control over.” — Trump on COVID-19, March 15th. Here’s Trump today, on the massive SolarWinds hack that targeted federal agencies and could have exposed 425 of the companies on the Fortune 500: “I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control.” You don’t say. Here are a few perspectives on the SolarWinds hack from entities that do not currently have negative credibility: Do not conflate voting system security and SolarWinds. The proof is in ...

If you read my previous post, you might have noticed a brand-new Twitter label on Trump’s latest wildly misleading tweet: “Election officials have certified Joe Biden as the winner of the U.S. Presidential election.” Yes, Twitter is now calling the election for Joe Biden on Trump’s own tweets. Twitter tells us it’s simply an update to its existing label, designed to “reflect the latest information.” But there’s a staggering difference between this label and Twitter’s previous one, which simply said “Multiple sources called this election differently.” That left room for doubt. Now that the Electoral College has voted, Twitter not only accepting the result, but using it to visibly challenge the president’s ongoing lie that he won the election. You can see the first new example below. Will th...

In a year where so many things went wrong, video games stood out as one of the few highlights of 2020. They were more important than ever, providing new ways for people to connect and creating a much-needed distraction from everything else happening in the world. We saw that when millions socialized via Animal Crossing, or started watching Fall Guys competitions on Twitch. The ability to spend hours disappearing into a beautiful world like those in Ghost of Tsushima or Hades was a welcome respite. As always, narrowing down the best games of the year is not an easy thing to do. But after plenty of voting — and a few arguments — The Verge staff has narrowed a year’s worth of releases down to nine titles that helped make 2020 a little more bearable. Animal Crossing: New Horizons For me, Anima...

The holidays can be overwhelming — even during years like this one when most of us aren’t actually traveling to visit family and friends. If buying gifts is still looming on your to-do list, you certainly aren’t alone. It’s tough to find the right kind of gift for everyone, especially people who have an affinity for tech. That’s where we come in. Below, there are a few great deals you can take advantage of now, and better, they’ll get where they need to be by December 25th. If you’re mailing packages yourself, we’ve pulled together all of the crucial shipping dates for USPS, UPS, and FedEx right here. Deals on noise-canceling headphones Sony’s WF-1000XM3 wireless earbuds with noise cancellation slipped $10 below its best-ever price recently, and you can still get them for $158 at a few ret...

Pokémon Go was ready to kick off a new major event in March. Battle League — which asks players to walk in order to gain entry — was similar in spirit to many of Niantic’s initiatives within its game, one that encourages players to leave home and socialize. But outside, COVID-19 was beginning to take hold. “I remember being like there’s no way that this could be, there’s no way that this is anything,” says Veronica Saron, Niantic’s product marketing manager. “I was so stupid. I had no idea. None of us had any idea.” By March, companies were beginning to send their employees to work from home. For Saron, her last day in the office included a meeting with the company’s CEO and a series of talking heads via video call. She hasn’t been back to the office since. Video games have thrived in the ...

YouTube started the last few years off with nothing short of catastrophic headlines about some of its creators. 2017 saw Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg receive global criticism for a video in which he displayed anti-Semitic imagery; 2018 found Logan Paul uploading footage of a dead body to YouTube; 2019 ushered in loot crate controversies and dangerous stunts by top personalities like Jake Paul who took part in the Bird Box challenge by driving while blindfolded, leading to fundamental policy changes at the company. Those events were only within the first few weeks of each year, too. 2020 was much quieter. The year has gone by without a cascade of egregious misdeeds and public relations disasters. That’s not to suggest YouTube had a perfect year; the company faced ongoing misinformation plagu...

Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) worked together to manipulate 737 Max recertification tests following two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, according to a damning new Senate report. Boeing “inappropriately coached” some FAA test pilots to reach a desired outcome during the recertification tests, and some were even performed on simulators that weren’t equipped to re-create the same conditions as the crashes. In doing this, the Senate report’s authors say the “FAA and Boeing were attempting to cover up important information that may have contributed to the 737 MAX tragedies.” The FAA is also accused of retaliating against whistleblowers The FAA is also accused of retaliating against whistleblowers, possibly obstructing the Office of the Inspector General’s investigation in...

Today, we have another Galaxy S21 leak, which seems to confirm some of the specs that have been floating around, published by WinFuture. Information about and images of Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S21-series phones have been landing almost daily in the run-up to Samsung’s January event. With this newest leak, we now have a better idea of what to expect — especially in the camera department. In short, the hardware appears to be a big part of Samsung’s plan to take on the highly capable iPhone 12 Pro Max. The S21 Ultra will reportedly offer 3x and 10x telephoto cameras (72mm and 240mm equivalent focal lengths, respectively), both with optical image stabilization. That’s one additional rear-facing camera compared to the S20 Ultra’s three rear sensors. Photo: WinFuture The S21’s 10x lens will us...

When signing up for an Instagram account, the service promises that your email and birthday won’t be publicly visible. A bug discovered by security researcher Saugat Pokharel, however, made it so that an attacker could easily get that private information. The bug, which was patched after being reported to Facebook, was exploitable by business accounts that were given access to an experimental feature the company was testing. The attack worked on private accounts, and ones that don’t accept public DMs The attack used Facebook’s Business Suite tool, available to any Facebook business account. The experimental upgrade meant that if a Facebook business account was linked to Instagram and was included in the test group, the Business Suite tool would show additional information about a person al...

Cyberpunk 2077’s second promised hotfix is out for Xbox and PlayStation platforms. The PC version will follow “soon,” according to developer CD Projekt Red. You can read the extensive list of fixes here. While there doesn’t seem to be anything quite as significant as the changes to reduce epilepsy risk made in last week’s 1.04 hotfix, hopefully this new update will make what has been a very buggy game have a few less issues. The game has been out for a little more than a week, and players have been criticizing the game for its numerous bugs and performance issues, particularly on older consoles. The outcry led to Sony offering full refunds of digital copies of the game and taking the unprecedented step of yanking the game from the PlayStation Store Thursday night. As of this writing, the g...

Cyberpunk 2077’s listing on Microsoft’s digital games store now includes a label warning of potential performance issues on Xbox One. “Users may experience performance issues when playing this game on Xbox One consoles until this game is updated,” the warning reads. Players have observed numerous bugs and performance issues with Cyberpunk 2077 since its launch last week, especially on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The dissatisfaction led the company to quickly issue a statement suggesting that unhappy players try to get refunds for the game. Many players had trouble actually getting refunds, though, given Sony and Microsoft’s typically strict policies for issuing refunds of digital games. Since Thursday evening, though, that has changed. Sony began offering full refunds of Cyberpunk 2077...

DJI says people in the US will still be able to buy and use its drones and other products despite being named to the Commerce Department’s Entity List. The Chinese drone giant was named to the blacklist on Friday for “enabl[ing] wide-scale human rights abuses within China through abusive genetic collection and analysis or high-technology surveillance” — most likely a reference to how DJI provided drones and other technology to the Chinese government to be used in its Muslim detention camps in the Xinjiang province. “DJI is disappointed in the U.S. Department of Commerce’s decision. Customers in America can continue to buy and use DJI products normally,” the company said in a statement to The Verge. “DJI remains committed to developing the industry’s most innovative products that define our...