Technology

Pokémon Go was ready to kick off a new major event in March. Battle League — which asks players to walk in order to gain entry — was similar in spirit to many of Niantic’s initiatives within its game, one that encourages players to leave home and socialize. But outside, COVID-19 was beginning to take hold. “I remember being like there’s no way that this could be, there’s no way that this is anything,” says Veronica Saron, Niantic’s product marketing manager. “I was so stupid. I had no idea. None of us had any idea.” By March, companies were beginning to send their employees to work from home. For Saron, her last day in the office included a meeting with the company’s CEO and a series of talking heads via video call. She hasn’t been back to the office since. Video games have thrived in the ...

YouTube started the last few years off with nothing short of catastrophic headlines about some of its creators. 2017 saw Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg receive global criticism for a video in which he displayed anti-Semitic imagery; 2018 found Logan Paul uploading footage of a dead body to YouTube; 2019 ushered in loot crate controversies and dangerous stunts by top personalities like Jake Paul who took part in the Bird Box challenge by driving while blindfolded, leading to fundamental policy changes at the company. Those events were only within the first few weeks of each year, too. 2020 was much quieter. The year has gone by without a cascade of egregious misdeeds and public relations disasters. That’s not to suggest YouTube had a perfect year; the company faced ongoing misinformation plagu...

Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) worked together to manipulate 737 Max recertification tests following two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, according to a damning new Senate report. Boeing “inappropriately coached” some FAA test pilots to reach a desired outcome during the recertification tests, and some were even performed on simulators that weren’t equipped to re-create the same conditions as the crashes. In doing this, the Senate report’s authors say the “FAA and Boeing were attempting to cover up important information that may have contributed to the 737 MAX tragedies.” The FAA is also accused of retaliating against whistleblowers The FAA is also accused of retaliating against whistleblowers, possibly obstructing the Office of the Inspector General’s investigation in...

Today, we have another Galaxy S21 leak, which seems to confirm some of the specs that have been floating around, published by WinFuture. Information about and images of Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S21-series phones have been landing almost daily in the run-up to Samsung’s January event. With this newest leak, we now have a better idea of what to expect — especially in the camera department. In short, the hardware appears to be a big part of Samsung’s plan to take on the highly capable iPhone 12 Pro Max. The S21 Ultra will reportedly offer 3x and 10x telephoto cameras (72mm and 240mm equivalent focal lengths, respectively), both with optical image stabilization. That’s one additional rear-facing camera compared to the S20 Ultra’s three rear sensors. Photo: WinFuture The S21’s 10x lens will us...

When signing up for an Instagram account, the service promises that your email and birthday won’t be publicly visible. A bug discovered by security researcher Saugat Pokharel, however, made it so that an attacker could easily get that private information. The bug, which was patched after being reported to Facebook, was exploitable by business accounts that were given access to an experimental feature the company was testing. The attack worked on private accounts, and ones that don’t accept public DMs The attack used Facebook’s Business Suite tool, available to any Facebook business account. The experimental upgrade meant that if a Facebook business account was linked to Instagram and was included in the test group, the Business Suite tool would show additional information about a person al...

Cyberpunk 2077’s second promised hotfix is out for Xbox and PlayStation platforms. The PC version will follow “soon,” according to developer CD Projekt Red. You can read the extensive list of fixes here. While there doesn’t seem to be anything quite as significant as the changes to reduce epilepsy risk made in last week’s 1.04 hotfix, hopefully this new update will make what has been a very buggy game have a few less issues. The game has been out for a little more than a week, and players have been criticizing the game for its numerous bugs and performance issues, particularly on older consoles. The outcry led to Sony offering full refunds of digital copies of the game and taking the unprecedented step of yanking the game from the PlayStation Store Thursday night. As of this writing, the g...

Cyberpunk 2077’s listing on Microsoft’s digital games store now includes a label warning of potential performance issues on Xbox One. “Users may experience performance issues when playing this game on Xbox One consoles until this game is updated,” the warning reads. Players have observed numerous bugs and performance issues with Cyberpunk 2077 since its launch last week, especially on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The dissatisfaction led the company to quickly issue a statement suggesting that unhappy players try to get refunds for the game. Many players had trouble actually getting refunds, though, given Sony and Microsoft’s typically strict policies for issuing refunds of digital games. Since Thursday evening, though, that has changed. Sony began offering full refunds of Cyberpunk 2077...

DJI says people in the US will still be able to buy and use its drones and other products despite being named to the Commerce Department’s Entity List. The Chinese drone giant was named to the blacklist on Friday for “enabl[ing] wide-scale human rights abuses within China through abusive genetic collection and analysis or high-technology surveillance” — most likely a reference to how DJI provided drones and other technology to the Chinese government to be used in its Muslim detention camps in the Xinjiang province. “DJI is disappointed in the U.S. Department of Commerce’s decision. Customers in America can continue to buy and use DJI products normally,” the company said in a statement to The Verge. “DJI remains committed to developing the industry’s most innovative products that define our...

Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto led a video tour of the company’s Mario-themed Super Nintendo World attraction at Universal Studios Japan in Osaka during the company’s latest Direct livestream. The theme park looks to be packed with Mario iconography that will be familiar to Nintendo fans. Even the entrance Mario-themed: you enter the park by walking through a giant pipe that spits you out in the atrium of Princess Peach’s castle that first debuted in Super Mario 64. A smart wristband lets you interact with elements of the park Miyamoto showed how you can you use a special smart wristband, called the “Power-Up Band,” to interact with different parts of the zone. In one example, he punched a question mark block with the hand wearing the device, and the block made the classic Mario coin-collecti...

90,000 Google employees have just received access to free weekly COVID tests. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news that every US Google employee (and its subsidiaries, including YouTube) will be eligible to sign up for a free at-home test. This differs from other companies, like Amazon, which are only offering tests to employees who still have to work in a physical location, like a retail location or warehouse. This is apparently something Google employees are interested in, as the vendor’s website crashed after going live. Employees are promised that they’ll receive the test within two to four days of requesting one, and that they’ll get the results back within two days of the lab receiving it. According to the Wall Street Journal report, Google is paying its partner, BioIQ, $5...

The Food and Drug Administration authorized the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Moderna, which joins the Pfizer and BioNTech product as the second shot available for use in the United States. The vaccine can now be given to adults 18 years of age and older in the US. It was 94 percent effective against symptomatic COVID-19 in clinical trials. The Moderna vaccine also protects against cases of severe disease: there were 30 cases of severe disease among trial participants, and all were in the placebo group. Initial data on the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine also hinted that it could protect against severe disease, but data was too limited to reach a definite conclusion. “With the availability of two vaccines now for the prevention of COVID-19, the FDA has taken another crucial step in the fight a...

Members of the United States Space Force will officially be called “Guardians”, according to an announcement Vice President Mike Pence made at an event celebrating the military branch’s one year anniversary. The organization traces the name “Guardians” back to an old Air Force Space Command motto from 1983, “Guardians of the High Frontier,” according to a short post on the US Space Force website. While a distinct entity, Space Force is part of the Air Force per its establishment with the National Defense Authorization Act. [embedded content] As it exists today, Space Force is mostly a rebrand of Air Force Space Command, but with the authority to make decisions independent from the Air Force. Space Force personnel also mostly come from the Air Force, but there’s been notable transfers — lik...