Technology

I nearly gave up on Demon’s Souls. I should have known what I was getting into. I bought the Demon’s Souls remake for the PlayStation 5 as my opportunity to finally play a “Soulsborne” game. After hearing about the genre for more than a decade, I knew that the game would be extremely hard, that I’d die multiple times, and that the challenge was all part of the process of learning about and enjoying the game. But I wasn’t too worried — I like hard games. I loved the early hours of Hollow Knight. Beating Celeste’s grueling DLC chapter was a thrill. I figured that since I had gotten through those, and because I knew Demon’s Souls would be a challenge going in, I would be able to stick with it no matter what. My resolve was tested immediately That resolve was tested immediately. I died about a...

Electronic Arts has agreed to buy out UK developer Codemasters in a move that could see the US publishing giant wrest control of the racing video game genre. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of next year for £6.04 (~$7.98) a share, valuing Codemasters at around $1.2 billion. Sky News first reported EA’s interest in Codemasters over the weekend, saying that the British company had previously agreed a $970 million deal with Rockstar Games and 2K Sports owner Take-Two Interactive. EA confirmed the agreement early Monday morning. Codemasters is one of the oldest British game developers, having been founded in the ‘80s and producing early hits like Dizzy for systems that were popular in the UK like the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64. In recent decades it’s been best known fo...

Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red has acknowledged the performance issues plaguing the game on base last-gen consoles, and has apologized for not showing the game running on the original PS4 and Xbox One prior to its release. “We should have paid more attention to making it play better on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One,” it said in a notice published on Twitter. The developer said it is hoping to fix the “most prominent problems” with a series of patches to be released over the coming months, but added that anyone who doesn’t want to wait will be able to return their copy of the game. The statement follows numerous ports about how poorly the game runs on the older machines. Players have reported choppy frame rates, weird physics, texture pop-in, and screen tearing. Its performance has qu...

The same Russian government hacking group responsible for a security breach at FireEye compromised the Treasury and Commerce departments and other US government agencies, The Washington Post reported. The group, known as APT29, or Cozy Bear, was responsible for hacking the US State Department and the White House during the Obama administration, according to the Post, and is the group that officials believe targeted COVID-19 vaccine research over the summer. Reuters reported that in addition to hacking Treasury and the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the hackers may have breached other US government entities. Government officials considered the hack dire enough that the National Security Council held an emergency meeting at the White ...

Software giant Oracle moved the company headquarters from Redwood City, California to Austin, Texas, Bloomberg reported, the latest tech firm to depart Silicon Valley for the Lone Star State. Oracle did not immediately reply to a request for comment Sunday, but told CNBC that it was putting into place “a more flexible employee work location policy,” and that the move to Austin would “best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work.” Oracle, founded in 1977, is one of the older Valley tech firms, and is a staple of the area; the San Francisco Giants play at Oracle Park, and the company’s Redwood City campus features its well-known cylindrical buildings. It already has a campus in Austin, which it opened in 2018. Texas Gov. Greg A...

Plenty of details about the Samsung Galaxy S21 have already leaked ahead of its expected January release date. But a new video gives a glimpse of the Galaxy S21 Plus model, showing a flat display with thin bezels around it, and a punch hole selfie camera. The quality of the video from user Random Stuff 2 isn’t the greatest, and it has some sort of distracting music playing under the user’s commentary. It also doesn’t provide a lot of detail about the back of the phone. [embedded content] Three Galaxy S21 models are expected: a standard, a Plus and an Ultra. A series of leaked teaser trailers, showed off redesigned camera bumps, showing what appears to be five cameras on the S21 Ultra and three each on the S21 and S21 Plus. Android Police reported last month that the S21 will have a 6.2-inc...

In 1956, Elvis Presley got a polio vaccination on the Ed Sullivan Show. The shot was newly available and highly effective — but too few teenagers and young adults were getting vaccinated, so the devastating disease was still circulating. Officials turned to Presley to set an example and encourage people to get their shots. Along with other campaigns, the celebrity endorsement helped vaccination rates go up, and eventually, the disease was eliminated from the country. That bit of history raises a very important question: who will be the Elvis Presley of the COVID-19 vaccine? The vaccine won’t help slow the pandemic if people don’t take it, and many people still say they aren’t sure if they will. Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton already said they’ll take the vaccine ...

Tesla will shut down production for its Model S and Model X for 18 days beginning December 24th according to an internal memo, CNBC reported. Why and what the company will do with the two lines during the shutdown wasn’t immediately clear, but workers on those production lines will apparently get a week’s pay, some paid holidays, and will have opportunities to work on other teams within the company. The memo also says the workers can volunteer to help with delivery of vehicles to customers while production is on hold. Auto industry analyst Edward Niedermeyer noted that Tesla asked California for tax exemptions in 2015 for equipment it needed to build 195,000 Model S and Model X vehicles by 2021. The company told the state of California at the time it would expand its production capabilitie...

Workers at an iPhone production plant in India reportedly smashed windows and set fire to vehicles to protest reductions in pay, the Times of India reported. The incidents began Saturday at a facility run by Taiwan manufacturing company Wistron Corporation, where the iPhone SE is assembled. According to the The Indian Express, during a shift change workers who said they had seen their pay reduced damaged the offices, some furniture, and factory equipment before things escalated outside. A local official told the Express that police were investigating the incident. About 2,000 workers were involved in the protest. Apple began assembling iPhones in India in 2017, where it tops the premium smartphone market. However, it only has about a 1 percent share of the total smartphone market in the co...

Google has added 50 new augmented reality animals to Search which can be either cute, or in the case of the giant cat in the photo above, a bit disconcerting. Of course it’s possible that I find the giant kitty menacing because I hate fun (or so I have been told), but I do not think I want that creature to greet me, anywhere, ever, in AR or any other reality. I do, however, want this red panda to play with a pumpkin in my dining room as long as she wants to. Look how cute she is with her little pumpkinKim Lyons/The Verge In addition to the red panda and cat, there’s a giraffe, cow, zebra, pig, and hippo among the new creatures you can welcome virtually into your home (or other space, but we’re all homebound right now). Just search for an animal on Google’s mobile app and tap “view in 3D” a...

Happy Saturday and welcome to the inaugural edition of the Verge Weekender, a short recap of some of the stories we covered this week on The Verge. The big event of the week was Disney’s investor day, where the company announced new Disney Plus series WandaVision, showed trailers for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and the much-anticipated series Loki; as well as slew of new Star Wars series on Disney Plus, including Rangers of the New Republic, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Star Wars: Lando. There’s also a new Alien TV series in the works. Check out the full roundup of everything Disney announced at its 2020 Investor Day. Perhaps the biggest news of the week/year/pandemic hit late Friday, as the FDA approved the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use: The vaccine is authorized in the U...

Origin has made a new, limited edition PC that has the guts of a new model but the face of an ancient 1990s machine, complete with a fake floppy drive. In case you want some nostalgia while you wait for Red Dead Redemption to load, perhaps. The RestoMod has a custom Corsair 4000D case, and the standard build has 16GB of memory, a 2.9 GHz Core i5 processor, 250GB of storage, and a 6GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card, for $2,080. The RetroMod can be customized as desired, Origin says, but they’ve only made 50 of them, so supplies are limited. RestoMod: New but with an old lookOrigin The front face of the machine is where you’ll get the old-school feel, Origin says: By using a custom HD UV print on the steel front panel, the RestoMod PC features a custom design inspired by PCs from t...