Technology

The Food and Drug Administration has approved genetically engineered pigs for use in food and medical products. The pigs, developed by medical company Revivicor, could be used in the production of drugs, to provide organs and tissues for transplants, and to produce meat that’s safe to eat for people with meat allergies. “Today’s first-ever approval of an animal biotechnology product for both food and as a potential source for biomedical use represents a tremendous milestone for scientific innovation,” said FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn in a press release. The pigs are called GalSafe pigs because they lack a molecule called alpha-gal sugar, which can trigger allergic reactions. Alpha-gal sugar is found in many mammals, but not usually in humans. Alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), which causes a s...

Working from home has its advantages, but one of the problems that many people have to face is trying to find enough space in a crowded environment. Jon Porter, who is the London-based news reporter for The Verge, has had to be especially resourceful in putting together a place where he could report, write, and review. We talked to Jon to find out how he’s managed to do such great reporting out of a small space. Tell me a little about yourself. What do you do at The Verge? I’m The Verge’s UK-based news reporter. I’ve lived in London basically my entire life, and I’ve been with the site for a little over two years now. Day-to-day, I’m responsible for covering any tech news that breaks during UK hours before the US wakes up. But once the East Coast is awake, I can get down to business review...

The OnePlus 9 likely won’t arrive until spring 2021, but thanks to some photos published by PhoneArena, we won’t have to wait that long for a glimpse of it. The images are of an alleged prototype device complete with unique pre-prod branding, and some software screengrabs reveal a little extra detail about the upcoming flagship. First up: the screen. It looks like OnePlus will stick with the flat screen format it used in the OnePlus 8 and 8T – the 9 has a flat 6.55-inch display with a hole punch camera in the upper left corner. The OnePlus 8 Pro’s screen features a design that curves around the edges of the phone, which we found lead to more accidental touches than occurred with the flat version. PhoneArena reports that the 9’s screen is a 2400 x 1080 panel with 120Hz refresh rate. The pre...

Facebook has publicly launched Collab, an experimental music-making app that first launched as an invite-only beta back in May, TechCrunch reports. The app allows users to create short-form music videos by combining up to three independent videos. So, for example, three musicians could each play a different part of a song and combine them into one video. But each video that’s created is also posted to a public “Collab” feed, where people can view and play along with it if they choose. So you could also record one part, then mix it with two other parts you find on the Collab feed that other people have recorded. Or you can just mix other people’s videos together — you don’t need to be a musician yourself. (Every user is properly credited for their contributions, according to Facebook.) You ...

Today in stories that make you go “Wait, what?”, Disney World is going to stop digitally adding masks to people who don’t have them in their on-ride pictures, according to a report from WDW News Today. Even if you’ve never been to a theme park, you’ve probably seen these kinds of photos: people on a roller coaster screaming or reacting in some funny way to whatever’s happening, captured by a camera built into the ride and sold at some crazy price. In the age of COVID-19, however, Disney has had to adapt to how it handles these pictures. For example, previously, if someone wasn’t wearing a mask on the ride, neither they nor anybody else in the picture would be able to download it in the Disney app or get it printed. It’s understandable how this could cause some annoyance — if you were weari...

This morning, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, confirmed that its mission to return samples of an asteroid to Earth did indeed bring home some space rocks. Engineers at the agency found black sand they believe to be from an asteroid inside the mission’s sample container. It’s great news for the mission, known as Hayabusa2, which launched to space in 2014. The mission sent a spacecraft to an asteroid named Ryugu to collect samples of rocks from the object’s surface and then bring them back to our planet for study. Hayabusa2 wound up scooping up materials from Ryugu twice before heading back to Earth. The vehicle arrived this month, jettisoning a canister filled with the asteroid samples, which then landed in Australia with the help of a parachute on December 5th. Up until...

Apple is offering two-hour delivery for just $5 on “eligible in-stock items” from its retail stores. If you need to get a gift for an Apple-loving person in your life this holiday season, that $5 shipping could be a handy way to get that gift in a pinch. The company says it offers scheduled courier delivery of eligible items “in most metros.” That low $5 fee won’t last forever, though — in the fine print on Apple’s website, the company says it’s a limited time offer. And you can’t use it on customized Macs, engraved products, or orders paid with financing or by bank transfer. If you don’t need your purchase within two hours, Apple says it offers free next-day delivery on any in-stock Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, or Apple Watch, and free two-day delivery on “almost everything else.” The com...

Apple is making good on its promise to provide more transparency around iOS app data collection with the launch of new privacy labels on the App Store. The company first announced its intention to provide these so-called “nutrition label” privacy disclosures back in June during WWDC, and last month Apple disclosed that developers would have to provide this information by December 8th or risk losing the ability to update their apps. Now, following that deadline, Apple is launching the feature officially for all iOS device owners running the latest version of iOS 14. Apple says the new labels will be required for apps on all of its platforms — that includes iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS — and they will have to be up to date and accurate every time a developer submits a new update. Ap...

Apple’s iOS 14.3 has arrived, giving iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max owners the ProRAW feature that was promised when the devices were announced. Other features in this update include search improvements for the Apple TV app, support for Fitness Plus — Apple’s new subscription-based workout service — and the recently announced AirPods Max headphones. iPhones have long been able to capture RAW images, but doing so has meant giving up the benefits of all the computational magic that happens when shooting a standard image with the native camera app. ProRAW is designed to address that: it’s a format that combines the computational benefits of Apple’s image processing with the post-processing flexibility of a RAW file. In iOS 14.3, Apple is flipping the ProRAW “on” switch for iPhone 12 Pro and 12 ...

Today, Snapchat is getting a new original game called Bitmoji Paint. As the name suggests, the game involves Bitmoji — those cutely grotesque customizable avatars — and painting. It’s Snap Inc.’s second title from its internal games studio, which began putting out games last year. “Our goal with Bitmoji has always been to be the world’s avatar, to give people a digital version of themselves that represents them and lets them be themselves online,” says Ba Blackstock, co-founder of Bitmoji. “And so now with games, it’s also letting people play together in a really new and fun and exciting way.” Bitmoji Paint places players on a gigantic, pixelated grid, and lets them paint those squares as a shared canvas. Zoom out, and you get pixel art. You get there by pressing the rocket icon or through...

Multiple Google services and websites including YouTube, Gmail, Google Assistant, and Google Docs were down for around an hour on Monday morning after being hit with a widespread outage. Google acknowledged the issues with Gmail, affecting both its business and personal services, at 6:55AM ET, and said the problem was fixed for the “vast majority” of users at 7:52AM ET. Identical notices were posted across the status pages for the rest of Google’s services. Reports quickly mounted on Twitter after users couldn’t access Google’s basic services, causing the hashtag “#YouTubeDOWN” to trend. At its peak, the status page for Google’s services was a sea of red, to indicate they were all suffering an outage. All services are now green indicating that they’re fully operational. All of Google’s ser...

Pornhub is removing all videos uploaded to its site by unverified users, millions of videos in total, as part of a crackdown on user-uploaded content after two major payment processors suspended service. The decision, first reported by Motherboard, stems from a New York Times report that found the site was hosting videos of people who are underage and videos showing children being assaulted. The site announced last Tuesday that it would begin limiting uploads to verified users only. Uploads now have to come from official content partners or members of Pornhub’s “Model Program,” which requires age verification to sign up. Motherboard reports that all previously uploaded videos are now being pulled “pending verification and review” beginning in 2021. More than 8 million videos have been wipe...