Technology

Amazon’s cloud gaming service, Luna, is now available on Android, Amazon announced on Tuesday. Like the iOS version of Luna, there’s no separate Luna app to download — instead, you’ll access the service through the Chrome web browser. Amazon launched Luna in early access in October, where it was initially available on PC, Mac, Fire TV, and on iPhone and iPad via web apps. The service works on a channels-based model, where you pay a monthly fee for each channel of games you want access to. Right now, there are two channels available. Amazon’s $5.99-per-month Luna Plus channel has games from many different publishers, and Ubisoft’s $14.99-per-month Ubisoft Plus channel offers Ubisoft games. (Paying that $14.99-per-month fee for the Ubisoft Plus channel also gives you access to Ubisoft Plus o...

Facebook is moving its UK users out from under the strict privacy protections of the European Union, according to a report from Reuters. Users of the social media site, and of Instagram and WhatsApp, will have to sign a terms of service agreement in the coming months with Facebook’s headquarters in California, instead of its European branch based in the Republic of Ireland. Moving the user agreements to the US means that UK users will no longer be covered by data policies crafted to adhere to the EU’s stringent privacy regime. This change is similar to the one Google made earlier this year. It’s meant to avoid a situation where UK citizens are no longer citizens of the European Union, but have agreements based in an EU country, where Facebook is subject to the EU’s data protection laws. Us...

Facebook will send notifications directly to users who like, share, or comment on COVID-19 posts that violate the company’s terms of service, according to a report from Fast Company. This new feature works like this: if a user interacts with a post that’s later removed, Facebook sends a notification to the user telling them that the post was taken down. If the user clicks the notification, they’ll be taken to a landing page with a screenshot of the post and a short explanation for why it was removed. The landing page will also feature links to COVID-19 educational resources and actions, like unfollowing the group that posted it. Facebook’s updated anti-misinformation notifications.Image: Facebook, Fast Company This is an expansion of Facebook’s previous attempts to combat misinformation. B...

Microsoft announced in a blog today that its dual screen phone, the Surface Duo, will be getting an “enhanced” TikTok app that takes advantage of its design. The company also announced the Duo will be available outside the US in early 2021. When The Verge reviewed the Surface Duo, we liked the hardware of the device, but had concerns with its modified Android software. The Duo was buggy at release and didn’t feature many non-Microsoft apps that took advantage of the dual screen setup. The Surface Duo can run normal Android phone apps on either screen, but using the split-screen features Microsoft designed requires specific tailoring. The group of apps that use Microsoft’s “postures” and multitasking features remains small, but TikTok is a major social media addition. The new TikTok experie...

Hark! The blobs sing! Or at least, they do in Google’s latest machine learning experiment, the awe-inspiring Blob Opera, which will see a chorus of four adorable, colorful blobs serenade you with spine-tingling operatic music. Drag a blob up or down, and you’ll change what pitch they sing in; drag them from side to side, and you’ll change the vowel sound. Each blob will also harmonize with the others, in what can only be described as magical. The Blob Opera just sounds beautiful, with soaring harmonies ringing out from each blob. Four actual opera singers — Christian Joel (tenor), Frederick Tong (bass), Joanna Gamble (mezzo‑soprano), and Olivia Doutney (soprano) — recorded 16 hours of singing (Ingunn Gyda Hrafnkelsdottir and John Holland-Avery also contributed), but it’s not their actual v...

Google says that a “significant subset” of Gmail users are running into errors with the service right now. While users can access their inboxes, they may encounter “error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior,” the company wrote in a message on its service status page. The errors come just a day after many Google properties, including Gmail, YouTube, and Google Docs, were hit with a widespread outage. Downdetector, which monitors reports of website issues, shows a spike of problems impacting Gmail starting around 3PM ET. Users have reported being unable to access their inboxes, while others have said they’re receiving bounceback messages when trying to email someone with a Gmail address. Google said it would provide an update by 5:30PM ET on when it expects the problems ...

Elon Musk’s tunneling venture, The Boring Company, is planning a massive citywide expansion of the currently modest underground transportation system it’s building in Las Vegas. The startup now wants to build a 10-mile sub-surface “loop” that serves the famous Las Vegas Strip of casino hotels and reaches the city’s downtown area as well as McCarran International Airport, all with Tesla vehicles. The Boring Company also wants to build an additional loop that connects properties owned by Caesars Entertainment. The proposed new tunnels would make it possible to go from the Las Vegas Convention Center to Mandalay Bay in just three minutes, as opposed to 30 minutes by surface roads during peak traffic hours, the company claims. The plans, first reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, were det...

Among Us, Innersloth’s breakout hit of 2020, is coming to the Nintendo Switch today. The news was announced during a special indie game-focused Nintendo Direct. The game will feature crossplay. Among Us is an online social deduction game, one in which players have to work together to complete tasks around the ship and figure out who the crew’s imposters are. Imposters, meanwhile, attempt to quietly kill as many other players as they can. Although the game first launched in 2018, it’s become a sensation, thanks to a newfound popularity on Twitch, played by streamers and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Among Us has become so popular, in fact, that Innersloth canceled the game’s sequel to focus on improving the original. The game picked up the award for best multiplayer title of the year durin...

At its latest indie showcase, Nintendo revealed a handful of intriguing titles coming to the Switch in 2021. The biggest reveal is that Among Us, one of 2020’s biggest games, isn’t just coming to the Switch, but it’ll be available later today. There were plenty of other cool announcements as well. One of the most notable reveals was that classic rouguelike series Spelunky is coming to the Switch next year. That includes both the original Spelunky as well as Spelunky 2, with local multiplayer for both (and online for the sequel) in summer 2021. Other reveals include: Fisti-fluffs, a physics-based brawler about cats wreaking havoc in an empty house, will launch in early 2021 Tunche, a hand-drawn action game about exploring a fantasy version of the Amazon rainforest, will be out in March 2021...

How do you want to be remembered after you die? A new documentary from Wall Street Journal tech reporter (and Verge alum) Joanna Stern examines the idea of what it means to pass on a digital legacy, and how we think about preserving our identities after death. She interviews Lucy, a young woman with a medical condition who is bound to a wheelchair and needs a feeding tube. Lucy is acutely aware of creating a digital footprint that will outlive her, but her mother Kate is not so certain about what may comfort her if Lucy passes on. Stern also spoke to James Vlahos, a man who recorded interviews with his terminally ill father and created a “Dadbot” to keep his father’s personality traits — as well as his jokes and his singing — alive after his death. Vlahos founded HereAfter AI, which uses c...

If you’ve been using Microsoft Office on an M1 Mac, it’s about to get better — Microsoft is announcing an update today that brings native support for Apple’s new custom chip architecture to the Windows productivity suite. The apps getting the updates are Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Notably absent, however, is Teams. The updates are making the apps universal ones — meaning these versions will run on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, so any upcoming updates or features will be coming at the same time for both platforms. If you’re a heavy user of Teams, you may be disappointed to hear that it hasn’t been included in today’s rollout of updates. Microsoft promises they’re working on that platform in their blog post, but the company hasn’t announced any sort of timeline. Mean...

Today’s episode of Decoder is a fun one, I promise: it’s about advertising. The modern ad industry is an enormous part of the economy that’s been completely reinvented by technology, that all of us experience every day, and to which most of us don’t pay any serious attention. And advertising is now also a data-intensive operation that has way more to do with technology and how it’s deployed than any of the Mad Men-era stereotypes we’re familiar with. When Mark Zuckerberg testifies to Congress that Facebook is free because it sells ads, what he’s really talking about is a massive ecosystem of data collection, user targeting, and sales tracking that operates in every corner of the tech industry. Facebook and Google have taken the old advertising cliche of finding the right customer at the ri...