Technology

Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge Back in 2019, photo storage service Flickr changed its previous policy of offering 1TB of free storage to its users, limiting free storage to 1,000 photos instead. There was, as you could imagine, a great outcry from Flickr members. As a result, we published a roundup of photo services that our readers might want to check out instead. Well, times change, and now Google — which up until now has offered unlimited storage for “high quality” (read: compressed) photos — has announced that “unlimited” is being changed to “up to 15GB on your Google account.” In other words, while photo and video storage currently does not count against your total 15 free gigs on a Google account, soon, it will — along with your Gmail, Google Drive files, and… Continue reading...

David Fincher, the director behind such films as Gone Girl, The Social Network, Fight Club, and Zodiac, says he’s signed an exclusive four-year deal with Netflix. The filmmaker confirmed the news in an interview with French magazine Premiere (spotted by The Playlist) in which he said he has “an exclusivity deal” with Netflix for another four years. He joked that what he works on next will depend on the reception to Mank, his upcoming film that releases in theaters on November 13th, and on Netflix on December 4th. “Depending on Mank’s reception, I’ll either go see them [Netflix] sheepishly asking them what I can do to redeem myself or take the attitude of the arrogant asshole who’ll require making other films in black and white,” Fincher joked. “No, I’m here to deliver them ‘content’ — what...

The PUBG Corporation says it plans to launch a new PUBG Mobile game in India, after being banned in the country in September due to the mobile app’s links to China’s Tencent. At the time of its ban, the game was India’s top downloaded title, with some 50 million users. The South Korean developer said it would create a new Indian subsidiary to oversee the title, and that the game would “maximize data security and cater to local preferences.” The company also pledged to invest $100 million in the Indian “gaming, esports, entertainment, and IT industries,” though it offered no date for when the game might actually launch. India banned a number of apps with links to China due to security concerns The news, reported by TechCrunch, NDTV, and others, is significant for India’s digital ecosystem, ...

Facebook on Wednesday announced an extension on its political advertising ban for at least another month, citing delays in election results due to COVID-19 and unprecedented rates of mail-in and absentee voting. The extension was announced in an update posted to its original blog post on the topic. “The temporary pause for ads about politics and social issues in the US continues to be in place as part of our ongoing efforts to protect the election. Advertisers can expect this to last another month, though there may be an opportunity to resume these ads sooner,” the update reads. “Getting the US election results this year may take longer than in previous elections due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and more people voting by mail. We’ve introduced a range of policies and products to ...

Amazon has rolled out the Care Hub, a set of Alexa features you can use to remotely check in on older relatives in their homes. That could be especially useful during COVID-19, when many folks aren’t able to visit their relatives as often as they usually do. Care Hub is free and easy to set up — your relative just needs an Alexa device. Through Care Hub, Alexa can send you alerts when your relative first uses their Echo device each morning or if they don’t use the device by a certain time. You’ll also have access to an activity feed where you can see an overview of their Alexa activity. (Amazon emphasized that this was designed with privacy in mind — you can see the types of activities your relative is doing, but you can’t see things like the instructions they’re giving Alexa or the specif...

No, this is not a Halloween decoration someone forgot. This robot — “Monster Wolf” — is actually a bear deterrent. The city of Takikawa, Japan, deployed these robowolves to prevent bear attacks. And yes, bear attacks were something of a problem: 157 people were attacked by bears in 2019. But since the Monster Wolves were installed, no attacks have occurred, The Guardian reports. Black bears’ recent attacks are probably due to a shortage of acorns in the Japanese wilderness, according to conservationists. Bears rely on acorns as part of their pre-hibernation diet, and without the high-calorie nut, they’ve started edging closer to cities to forage for food. Deforestation and growing cities have shrunk the barrier between bear and human homes. This leads to more bear-to-human contact, prompti...

United States hospitals were targeted by two major cybersecurity attacks this fall: the first taking down Universal Health Services, a chain of hundreds of hospitals, and the second by a group called UNC1878 threatening hundreds of individual health care facilities all around the country. Targeting health care institutions directly marks a new approach for cybercriminals. “We haven’t seen an incident of magnitude that actually has the potential to harm people, literally all the way up to the point of death,” says Caleb Barlow, CEO of cybersecurity consulting firm CynergisTek. “It crosses a line that I think the entire cybersecurity community just didn’t think was going to get crossed anytime soon.” Many large-scale cyberattacks on hospitals over the past few years have been incidental. A p...

Microsoft’s latest next-gen console, the Xbox Series X (along with its smaller cousin, the Xbox Series S), has arrived. And with it comes a whole bunch of internet con artists trying to meme people into believing the new console is plagued by terrible issues. You might, for example, have seen clips passed around the internet that showcased the Xbox Series X literally smoking. The posts would have you believe the blazing graphics of the Series X are so demanding they can cause an Xbox to catch fire, but the reality is much simpler than Xbox consoles spontaneously bursting into flame. What actually appears to be happening is that people are piping vape smoke into their new $500 consoles to give off the appearance of a fire to troll fans on social media. (Please note that it probably isn’t a ...

YouTube seems to be having issues loading videos right now. Several Verge staffers are having trouble watching videos, and YouTube has confirmed that something is going on: If you’re having trouble watching videos on YouTube right now, you’re not alone – our team is aware of the issue and working on a fix. We’ll follow up here with any updates. — TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) November 12, 2020 The issue appears to affect other services that use the YouTube infrastructure too, including YouTube TV and the movies and TV shows you’d purchase through Google TV (formerly known as Google Play Movies & TV). We couldn’t load them. In our testing so far, the YouTube website seems to load just fine, but videos themselves will continuously show the loading wheel. One Verge staffer got a video to loa...

Showtime’s Halo TV show is bringing back the original actress for Cortana, the series’s iconic AI. IGN reports that Natascha McElhone, the actress originally cast to play both Cortana and her creator, Dr. Catherine Halsey, is unable to finish her work as the AI due to the pandemic. Longtime Cortana actress Jen Taylor will instead take the role, which she’s voiced since the first game released in 2001. Showtime announced a Halo TV series back in 2018. It stars Pablo Schreiber, Bokeem Woodbine, Olive Gray, and David Sapani, though it’s unclear what shape the show’s story will take. McElhone is still set to play Halsey in the series. Taylor has voiced the role of both Cortana and Halsey in the series as well as Microsoft’s digital assistant Cortana. Production on the show was halted due to th...