Technology

January 2021 has been full of important news, but it’s been a bit lousy when it comes to deals. Still, we’ve done our part in scouring all of the major retailers for discounts on products we care about (and we think you care about, too). There aren’t many brand-new deals to be found in this week’s dispatch, but go ahead and take a look if you haven’t been following them closely. If you feel caught up on deals, here’s a reminder that you can hang out here to have a quiet moment from all of the ongoing GameStop and AMC stock drama. Then again, if this is the first time you’re hearing about all of that and want to hear more, check out my colleague Liz Lopatto’s Big Picture video that’s all about it. Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Sony’s WH-1000XM4 headphones are $278, and well worth it Once...

Facebook’s Oversight Board, the independent body empowered to review the social network’s most complex platform moderation decisions, is now accepting public comments on the company’s decision to “indefinitely” ban former President Donald Trump in the aftermath of the US Capitol attack on January 6th. The two posts in question include the one-minute video Trump posted to his account on January 6th repeating false claims that the US election was stolen from him and offering words of sympathy to the Capitol rioters, some of whom were, at that moment, continuing to endanger the lives of Congress members and Capitol police. The second is a written post in which Trump wrote, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & vicious...

The revival of G4, a network focusing on video games with programs like X-Play and Attack of the Show!, is underway. The company announced today that it’s launching weekly series B4G4 on Friday, January 29th. The series will air on Twitch and YouTube. B4G4 is part of the lead-up to the network’s return this summer. It will feature original sketches, music parodies, game reviews, and more. Viewers will also be able to provide feedback on that content via the network’s Reddit community. Twitter accounts for Attack of the Show! and X-Play teased G4’s revival last year during the digital version of San Diego Comic-Con; both shows are expected to return. The network has been hunting for talent via a Twitter campaign. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we re...

Apple’s television adaptation of the podcast adaptation of the real-life soap opera that was WeWork now has some major talent attached. Jared Leto, the soon-to-be leading vampire of Morbius, and Anne Hathaway, are joining the Apple TV Plus series WeCrashed as Adam and Rebekah Neumann, according to The Hollywood Reporter. WeCrashed takes its name from the Wondery podcast it’s based on, detailing the meteoric rise and fall of the real estate company that billed itself as a technology company. Many of WeWork’s problems (and, presumably, the plot of the show) were centered on the Neumanns. Adam Neumann was described as a risk factor in the S-1 documents released before the company’s IPO, and a profile of the Neumanns in The Wall Street Journal didn’t do much to dissuade anyone that they weren’...

SpaceX’s first high-altitude test flight of its Starship rocket, which launched successfully but exploded in a botched landing attempt in December, violated the terms of its Federal Aviation Administration test license, according to two people familiar with the incident. Both the landing explosion and license violation prompted a formal investigation by the FAA, driving regulators to put extra scrutiny on Elon Musk’s hasty Mars rocket test campaign. The December test launch of the “Serial Number 8” Starship prototype at SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas, facilities was hailed by Musk as a success: “Mars, here we come!!” the chief executive tweeted moments after the rocket exploded on its landing, celebrating SN8’s successful 8-mile-high ascent with his followers. The FAA, which oversees ground sa...

Nvidia’s GeForce Now game streaming service has launched for the Chrome web browser and M1 Macs in beta (via XDA-Developers), bringing resource intensive games to laptops and other devices that might not have been powerful to run them on their own. We just tested out the Chrome browser version on a Mac and a Windows 10 PC, and it seems to be running smoothly. GeForce Now already had applications for Windows 10 and Android devices, but expanded to an even wider audience with a beta launch for Chromebooks in August of 2020, and followed it up by beating Stadia to iOS devices with a web app workaround that lets you stream games through the Safari web browser there. GeForce Now running in Chrome on MacOS. Now, theoretically anyone with a Chrome browser can start streaming by heading GeForce No...

NASA will make another attempt next month to test-fire its massive Space Launch System rocket after its first try was cut short, the agency said Friday night. The rocket’s 212-foot-tall core stage will try to fire its four engines for eight minutes at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The attempt is the last milestone “Green Run” test before the behemoth rocket gets shipped to Florida for its debut launch toward the moon. All four of the rocket’s Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 engines ignited together for the first time earlier this month. But what was intended to be an eight minute test only lasted a little over a minute — a much shorter runtime than what engineers needed to proceed to Florida. The SLS core has been in development for a decade, and has consistently been late and over ...

The Asus ROG Flow X13 was one of the most-hyped announcements of CES 2021, with good reason — how often do you see a 13-inch convertible gaming laptop, especially one that looks so cool? — but there was a catch. On Asus’ store, the ROG Flow X13 was only listed in a $3,000 bundle with an XG Mobile eGPU. (This was also the only preorder link given to media at the time of the Flow X13’s announcement.) That’s a chunk of change, and it led most Flow X13 reviewers (myself included) to express reservations about the steep price. But a new clarification from Asus may change the game. On the latest episode of the ROG Pulse Podcast, Asus marketing manager Sascha Krohn indicated that the company does, in the future, plan to sell the ROG Flow X13 by itself. “There was some misunderstanding about us on...

Robinhood only wants users to have a limited number of GameStop shares, and that number keeps getting smaller and smaller. Yesterday, the company halted users’ ability to buy stocks that were associated with r/WallStreetBets, including GameStop, AMC, and Nokia, but the company promised that users would be able to buy limited quantities on Friday. Today, it released a shifting support document that details just how limited things are — and to slightly paraphrase Lando, the deal’s getting worse all the time. When trading opened earlier today, users were limited to owning five shares of GameStop in aggregate, meaning they could only own up to five — if they already had three GameStop stocks, they could only buy two more — but even that restriction hasn’t lasted. Soon, the number of shares you...

The markets are not okay. If you’ve paid any attention to internet chatter this week, you’ve probably seen the names RoaringKitty or DeepFuckingValue — the bullish trader behind the recent GameStop stock phenomenon who’s inspired millions of retail investors to get behind his bet, which has nearly bankrupted at least one hedge fund. Until recently, the person behind the handles has been something of a mystery; they post their balance sheet with their millions in gains and losses on Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets forum, but that’s all there’s been to go on. Today, however, The Wall Street Journal catches up with the 34-year-old behind the sensation: his name is Keith Gill, and he’s a father and certified financial analyst who lives in Massachusetts. In his own words, he didn’t expect any of this...

Tesla’s redesigned Model S and Model X will have a very unconventional and possibly controversial feature: automatic shifting between park, reverse, neutral, and drive (or PRND). There will be an option to change drive modes on the touchscreen, but CEO Elon Musk made the case for automatic switching on Twitter late Wednesday night. “Car guesses drive direction based on what obstacles it sees, context & nav map,” Musk tweeted. “After you drive without using a PRND stalk/stick for a few days, it gets very annoying to go back & use a shifter! You can override on touchscreen.” An internal Tesla document obtained by Electrek expands, slightly, on what Musk means by “guesses”: The vehicle uses its Autopilot sensors to intelligently and automatically determine intended drive modes and sel...

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign announced that it will discontinue its use of remote-proctoring software Proctorio after its summer 2021 term. The decision follows almost a year of outcry over the service, both on UIUC’s campus and around the US, citing concerns with privacy, discrimination, and accessibility. Proctorio is one of the most prominent software platforms that colleges and universities use to watch for cheating on remote tests. It uses what its website describes as “machine learning and advanced facial detection technologies” to record students through their webcams while they work on their exams and monitor the position of their heads. The software flags “suspicious signs” to professors, who can review its recordings. The platform also enables professors to track t...