Technology

Photo by Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images Pfizer and BioNTech said on Wednesday that an updated analysis of the phase 3 clinical trial for their COVID-19 vaccine shows that it is 95 percent effective. They plan to file for authorization with the Food and Drug Administration “within days.” In a press release, the companies said that there were 170 cases of COVID-19 among participants in the trial. Of those cases, 162 were recorded in people who took a placebo, and eight were recorded in people who received the vaccine. Ten cases were severe — and nine of those severe cases occurred in the placebo group. That indicates that the vaccine protects against the deadliest forms of the disease. Moderna, which released data from its trial this week, had similar findings. Pfizer also said… Continue ...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge There’s going to be a little more room for Wi-Fi. The Federal Communications Commission voted today to open up a small amount of additional wireless spectrum for unlicensed indoor use, which should help to improve speeds and reduce congestion on 5GHz Wi-Fi networks. The new swath of spectrum (which falls around 5.9GHz) was previously reserved for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications — but since being set aside two decades ago, the auto industry hasn’t done much with it. So now the FCC is taking away a little more than half of the airwaves it reserved and offering them up to the public for use as Wi-Fi. (Despite getting nowhere with this spectrum, the auto industry is nonetheless annoyed that the FCC is taking… Continu...

Sony’s PS5 marketing stunt. | Sony UK Sony has taken over Oxford Circus Tube station in London to mark the launch of the PS5 in the UK. The marketing stunt will last for 48 hours at Oxford Circus, and sees the Tube station rebranded with PlayStation shapes throughout. The walls of the tube station have changed, alongside the decorative roundels for the four station entrances at street level. These four entrances have the PlayStation shapes you’ll find on the PS5’s DualSense controller. Each one is just a few steps away from Microsoft’s big London store, too. The Tube rebranding also extends across London. Mile End station is now being rebranded Miles End, in a nod to Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Lancaster Gate is being rebranded Ratchet and Clankaster Gate, Seven… Continue rea...

Google’s preset “chimeras” show off the potential of AI-assisted drawing. | Image: Google To quote Google CEO Sundar Pichai: AI is “more profound than fire or electricity.” To back up this claim with incontrovertible evidence: here’s an AI tool made by Google researchers that turns doodles into weird monsters. What could be more profound? It’s certainly fun, anyway. The tool is called Chimera Painter and uses machine learning to generate imagery based on users’ rough sketches. This sort of dynamic is becoming a relatively common one in machine learning. Nvidia has done it with landscapes before; MIT and IBM did it with buildings; and now Google is … doing it with monsters. The team behind Chimera Painter explained their methods and motivations in a blog post, saying the idea was to c...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Wednesday, Apple announced a reduction to its longstanding App Store commission rate, one of the most substantial changes to how iOS developers earn money in the history of the iPhone maker’s digital app marketplace, as part of a new program for small businesses. The new App Store Small Business Program, as it’s called, will allow any developer who earns less than $1 million in annual sales per year from all of their apps to qualify for a reduced App Store cut of 15 percent, half of Apple’s standard 30 percent fee, on all paid app revenue and in-app purchases. The company says the “vast majority” of iOS app developers should be able to access the program, but Apple declined to say what percentage of its more than 28 million… Continue reading...

Soon, you’ll be able to see your friends while you play Fortnite together online. Epic is adding a new video chat feature to the battle royale game, where players can see livefeeds of their friends inside the game. It’s launching today, though initially, the feature will only be available on PC, PS4, and PS5. The feature is powered by Houseparty, a chat app that Epic acquired last year. (Houseparty has powered Fortnite’s cross-platform voice chat since last September.) In order to utilize it, you’ll need to link your Epic and Houseparty accounts; after that’s done, you can enable a “Fortnite mode” in the app. When this happens, you can create a party of friends, and their livefeeds will be displayed on the left-hand side of the screen as… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make ...

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Apple has updated its store listing for the still-unreleased MagSafe Duo charger with some more information on how the accessory will perform with various power adapters. As noted by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the Duo charges at up to 11W with a 20W USB-C adapter, maxing out at 14W with an adapter that’s 27W or higher. That means that when paired with Apple’s $19 20W adapter, the company’s cheapest option for USB-C charging, the MagSafe Duo can’t deliver as much power to the iPhone 12 as the 15W solo MagSafe charger. It also means that the fastest possible 14W option can’t match the regular MagSafe puck, either — and Apple’s best option for that will be the $49 30W adapter that’s packaged with the MacBook Air. At $129, the MagSafe Duo was… Continue read...

Not to be outdone by manufacturers gunning to make the lightest gaming mouse out there (like the recent 66-gram SteelSeries Aerox 3 Wireless), Logitech’s new G Pro X Superlight weighs less than 63 grams without the need for holes. Most other manufacturers are punching honeycomb-shaped hole patterns out of their mice to achieve lighter weights, while Logitech’s latest is simple and smooth all over. In fact, it actually weighs about 63 grams, but if you remove the magnetic plate on the bottom that covers the USB wireless receiver, the weight goes down to 60 grams. The G Pro X Superlight will go on sale on December 3rd. The Superlight is a lighter version of Logitech’s popular $130 G Pro Wireless, which weighs 80 grams — and if you haven’t… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make M...

SoundCloud is trying to make sure people can tell who’s an authentic artist by rolling out verified badges, the company announced today. Badges will be given to top artists on the platform, but there’s a list of criteria that has to be met in order to get one. Artists must be “a well-known and/or highly searched-for artist, collective, DJ, label, curator or podcaster,” according to a blog post announcing the news. They must also have a unique profile, no misleading information, and each account must have a bio, profile photo, and one track uploaded. Current artists who have received the verification badge include Billie Eilish, Wiz Khalifa, and Trippie Redd. Prior to SoundCloud rolling out the verified badge, the site had Pro star… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make Money E...

Photo by Susan Walsh – Pool/Getty Images When Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) initially called for Tuesday’s hearing with the chief executives of Facebook and Twitter, it was done suddenly. It was done loudly. And it was done during the last few crucial weeks before the 2020 presidential election. On October 15th, the two Republican senators held an impromptu press conference in the halls of Congress where they tore into Twitter and its CEO Jack Dorsey for the company’s decision to block linking out to a widely factually disputed article about Hunter Biden from the New York Post published on October 14th. Cruz equated Twitter’s decision to “election interference,” telling reporters, “Never before have we seen active censorship of a major press publication with… ...

Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call President Donald Trump announced the firing the official in charge of election cybersecurity, Christopher Krebs, in a Tuesday evening tweet. Before his firing, Krebs served as the first director of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Although the presidential election was widely called for Joe Biden on November 7th, Trump has not conceded, and he and his allies have made numerous claims about supposed election fraud that aren’t backed up by evidence. Krebs, however, has actively debunked voting misinformation, such as denying a false conspiracy theory claiming that secret computer systems have been committing voter fraud. To be crystal clear on ⬇️, I’m specifically… Conti...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google plans to release a version of Chrome that will run natively on Apple’s new Macs with Arm-based processors on Wednesday, according to Mark Chang, a Chrome product manager. Google actually began rolling the new version out Tuesday, but paused the rollout because that version may have crashed unexpectedly. In theory, a native version of the notoriously resource-hungry browser might run more efficiently on Apple’s Arm-based computers. In our reviews of the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini equipped with the new M1 chip, though, we found that the version of Chrome built for Intel chips already runs well on Apple’s new Macs, so hopefully this native version runs even better. When the update is available, you be able to pick which… Continue read...