Technology

Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge Honda made the bold claim this week that it will mass-produce autonomous vehicles capable of performing 100 percent of driving tasks under certain conditions, but that drivers would need to stand by to take control when needed. This type of autonomous driving is defined as Level 3 by the Society of Automotive Engineers. It refers to highly automated driving where the driver still needs to be able to take over the vehicle upon request. Level 4 automation means that the car is capable of handling most driving situations itself, whereas Level 5 is largely theoretical and covers complete automation in any condition. In a press release, Honda says it has received approval from Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism to… Continue read...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Food delivery platform DoorDash filed its widely anticipated IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, and plans to take the company public early next month. The company’s revenue soared in 2020 and it briefly showed a profit, as restaurants closed to in-person dining due to the pandemic, and relied on delivery services. DoorDash had a net loss of $149 million over the nine months that ended September 30th, compared to a net loss of $533 million for the same period in 2019. During the first nine months of 2020, the company reported $1.9 billion in revenue, up from $587 million a year earlier. The company has more than 18 million customers. more than 390,000 merchants, and about 1 million delivery workers, who it refers… Continu...

Image: Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve is getting updated with support for Arm-powered Macs, and a beta version will be ready for owners on day one. Blackmagic Design released a beta of Resolve version 17.1 today that includes support for Apple’s new M1 chip. That means when the first of these new Macs ship next week, buyers will be able to dive straight into a native version of a key filmmaking tool. Resolve is one of the industry-standard apps for color grading, but it’s become far more than that in recent years. The app also includes a video editor, graphics tools, and an audio editor — plus, the majority of its features are available for free, so it’s an excellent app for creators who are just getting started. As Apple transitions creative-industry users… Continue reading&helli...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge We started this week with some reviews of the alternatively-sized iPhone 12s — the mini and the Pro Max. We ended this week with an all-new episode of The Vergecast. All that stuff in between? That’s what our Vergecast crew talked about on the show today. Vergecast co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn start the show discussing their reviews of the new iPhones — Nilay on the Pro Max and Dieter on the mini — and how the really big iPhone and the tiniest iPhone rank in battery life, screen size, and ergonomics. Believe it or not, there was another Apple event on Tuesday. During its “One More Thing” hardware event, we saw Apple debut its own M1 processor chips, which power a new Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, and Mac mini. Deputy editor Dan… Continue reading&...

Purrfect dialogue. | Image: via YouTube/H20Delirious We already knew that Spider-Cat was going to be the true hero of Spider-Man: Miles Morales, but with the PS5 game’s launch yesterday, we’re learning new things about this furry sidekick. Specifically, that he takes a pet, like no problem. Video shared by the excellent and informative Twitter account @CanYouPetTheDog shows Spider-Cat getting a pet in-game, along with a very familiar line of dialogue. (You can also see the line at around 52 minutes in this playthrough video by YouTuber H20Delirious.) You can pet the cat in Spider-Man: Miles Morales pic.twitter.com/2zZsZdI4DV — Can You Pet the Dog? (@CanYouPetTheDog) November 13, 2020 If the phrase isn’t ringing any bells, it comes from this video below, itself from another excellent…...

Photo: Nintendo It’s been a busy week for video game hardware. This week saw the debut of two next-generation platforms, with the launch of the PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S devices. Each platform is built around new advances like ray-tracing and quick-loading SSDs. Meanwhile, today, Nintendo is releasing… a clock that plays Super Mario Bros. It might seem like strange timing, but it’s also perfectly in keeping with Nintendo’s history: this is a company that almost always goes its own way. The new Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. is an exceptionally cute piece of hardware. It’s modeled after the classic Game & Watch handheld — the precursor to the Game Boy — with a color scheme inspired by the original Japanese Famicom… Continue reading…...

Image: Apple Apple’s big Mac event delivered three new computers — a new MacBook Air, a new entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, and a new Mac mini. But really, it delivered one thing that those three computers have in common: the M1 chip. That’s the official name for the Arm-based Apple Silicon the company is going to migrate all of its Mac computers over to. Ahead of the event, I listed out ten things to watch for and though Apple didn’t really go as deep as I would like, it did at least strafe all but two of them. We had wall-to-wall coverage at The Verge, and a good place to start is our article detailing the 5 biggest announcements from Apple’s ‘One More Thing’ hardware event. Here’s my takeaway: Apple is astonishingly confident in this chip, these… Continue reading… You Dese...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is pushing back against claims its platform is helping promote and spread misinformation surrounding the 2020 US election, saying its most popular videos related to the election are from “authoritative” sources. YouTube also claims it takes measures to stop the spread of videos containing false or misleading claims by not surfacing them in search results or through its recommendation engine. “Like other companies, we’re allowing these videos because discussion of election results & the process of counting votes is allowed on YT. These videos are not being surfaced or recommended in any prominent way,” YouTube wrote from its YouTubeInsider account in response to a tweet from Bloomberg journalist Mark Bergen, who criticized the… Conti...

Elon Musk in Berlin on September 3rd, 2020. | Photo by Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images Elon Musk took to Twitter Thursday night to say that he has received mixed results after being tested for COVID-19 and is currently experiencing symptoms of a common cold. Musk says he was tested four times using a rapid antigen test: two tests came back positive and two came back negative. He’s also awaiting the results from two PCR tests but the results won’t be known for 24 hours. Antigen tests work by detecting a small protein on the surface of the coronavirus, whereas PCR tests look for the virus itself. Antigen tests can be conducted quickly as they don’t require a lab, and are often administered in hotspots like college campuses or elderly care facilities. Some states don’t even bo...

Photo by Manfred Schmid / Getty Images Facebook has lost its appeal in a landmark online speech case, as Austria’s Supreme Court determined that it must remove comments that are defamatory in Austria worldwide. The comments, which must be blocked while an injunction is active, insult Austrian Green Party politician Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek. Austrian news outlet Der Standard reported the news earlier today. It echoes a similar ruling from the European Court of Justice, which handed a defeat to Facebook late last year. Glawischnig-Piesczek originally sued Facebook in 2016, arguing that a series of insults — including calling her a “lousy traitor” and a member of a “fascist party” — damaged her reputation. But the comments would likely be protected speech in some countries, and… Continu...

The BioNTech headquarters. | Photo by Abdulhamid Hosbas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Pfizer and BioNTech announced this week that their vaccine was 90 percent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in clinical trials. The data is still preliminary and hasn’t been examined by independent researchers, but it’s good news for both this specific vaccine and for the other coronavirus vaccines in the pipeline — especially the ones that are based on the same genetic technology. “It’s extremely encouraging, in my view, not only for the Pfizer vaccine, but broadly speaking for the platform,” says Ross Kedl, an immunologist at the University of Colorado. Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine is made from genetic material called mRNA. mRNA carries instructions inside of cells and tells them to build ...

The Echo Show 5 (left), Echo Show 8 (middle), and the Echo Show (right) | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge When it comes to the Echo smart speakers, Amazon has a slew of devices to choose from. With so many Echo devices currently available, there is a device for every occasion. Maybe you simply want to add Alexa into a room or you are looking for an Echo device that will allow you to easily manage your other smart home products. Regardless of the reason, these are the best Echo deals currently available right now. Photo by Dan Seifert / The VergeAmazon Echo Dot with LED display Echo Dot (Third and Fourth-Gen) This year Amazon released the fourth generation of the Echo dot, but it looks more spherical in design than an actual dot. But don’t worry, Amazon did not discontinue the third-gen Ec...