Technology

Snapchat is now allowing creators to publicize how many subscribers they have. This is the first time Snapchat has given its users any sort of public-facing metric about their followings or audiences, and it represents a substantial change to the platform, as first reported by Tubefilter. In a statement to The Verge, a Snap spokesperson said: “We’ve listened to feedback from our creator community and many of them expressed interest in having the option to show that their community on Snapchat is growing,” which is why it’s making subscriber counts visible. Creators can decide to turn this feature on or off from their settings. The company introduced creator profiles in September, which gives users on the platform more insights on their audience and helps them coordinate with brands. The fa...

Buying a smartphone for under $500 is a lesson in setting priorities. It’s impossible to buy a phone that does everything at this price point, but luckily you will be able to buy a great phone that does the things that matter the most to you. Phones at this price point are better than ever, many coming with features that used to be reserved just for flagships. But instead of getting it all, you should think about the features that you care about and focus on finding a phone that nails them. Some phones emphasize a big screen, others a quality camera, and one of them emphasizes speed and longevity. The trend of inexpensive phones getting better has been happening for a few years now, with companies like Apple, Google, and Samsung making devices that absolutely can meet your needs for less. ...

Election Day is here, and in the next few days or weeks, we’ll know who won — but for lots of people, tonight isn’t just about choosing the next president. It’s also a stress test for online platforms and a measure of how carefully they can handle information when the stakes are this high. By now, we know what failure could look like. In one nightmare scenario, a candidate (likely Trump) could preemptively declare victory before the votes are counted. In another, a fast-spreading rumor could cause serious offline unrest — like a viral hoax or misleading video that encourages vigilante violence. Since election night might not end with a clear winner, sites could be dealing with these threats for days. The biggest platforms have laid out a playbook for stopping false information, but no matt...

A text message campaign is targeting people in Michigan with misinformation about “ballot sensor issues.” The messages claim a “typographical error” is causing people who voted for Joe Biden to have their votes switched to President Trump, and people who voted for Trump to have their votes switched to Biden, according to The Washington Post. The hoax message claims to be coming from the FBI. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel warned voters the text messages are fake. “Dearborn voters, text messages are reportedly being sent to trick you into thinking there are ballot sensor issues,” she tweeted. “Do not fall for it, it’s a trick!” In Flint, robocalls have been trying to trick people into voting tomorrow (which is not allowed) due to supposedly long lines at polling stations. Nessel debu...

It has been 234 days since President Donald Trump announced that 1,700 Google engineers were working on a website that would enable anyone to get a coronavirus test in the parking lots of major retailers around the US. It was always a lie, of course. Google didn’t know Trump would be announcing such a thing, and while another subsidiary of the search giant’s parent company was working on a testing website, it was nothing worth announcing to the American public during a nationwide briefing at a time of crisis. In the end, the small website that did launch was ultimately phased out by some of the larger cities that tried using it, and it remains too hard to get a test with results on a useful timeline for many Americans. (I know because I am one of them: I have virtually no access to testing...

Have you voted? That’s really important. Go do that, if you haven’t already. These deals will be here when you get back. Now then, Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Live wireless earbuds — lovingly referred to as “beans” for their design — are $30 off at Amazon and Best Buy. If you’ve been waiting to take the plunge on these, you should know that this is within $5 of their best price yet. Both retailers have every color available at this cost, including black, bronze, red, and white. My colleague Chris Welch reviewed them (while Becca Farsace provided the video above), and the main takeaways here are that they might be Samsung’s best wireless earbuds yet. They have a bold design, lengthy battery life, and good sound quality. The Galaxy Buds Live tout noise cancellation, but it’s not too surprising tha...

Waymo is pulling its autonomous vehicles out of San Francisco in anticipation of Election Day unrest, The Verge has learned. The Google spinoff is “temporarily pausing” its AV test operations in San Francisco on Tuesday and Wednesday and moving its fleet to Mountain View, where it will be parked in a “secured location,” according to an email from Transdev, Waymo’s fleet operations vendor. The decision was made “out of an abundance of caution ahead of some of the planned protests around the general election,” Chris Cheung, general manager at Transdev North America, wrote in the email obtained by The Verge. Two Waymo safety drivers told The Verge they got the word midday on Monday to manually drive their autonomous vehicles from San Francisco to Mountain View that afternoon. They then had to...

In the recent teardown of the iPhone 12 by iFixit, it was found that the new phone runs into some issues if a user replaces the camera module, basically rendering the cameras on the device unusable if not replaced by an Apple-authorized repair provider. iFixit has frequently spoken out against the control consumer electronics companies have for repairing their products, advocating for policy changes for the right to repair. In a recent post on its site, it questions whether the iPhone 12 is the “end of the repairable iPhone.” In this week’s final episode of our limited-run podcast series on tech review season, The Vergecast’s Dieter Bohn talks with iFixit’s Kyle Wiens and Kay-Kay Clapp about their thoughts on the repairability of Apple’s latest product as well as the fight for the right to...

WhatsApp has redesigned its storage management tool, making it easier for users to find and delete files that are taking up too much space on their phone. The new tool will be “rolling out to users worldwide this week,” says the Facebook-owned company, and will be available in the app by heading to Settings > Storage and data > Manage storage. The current WhatsApp “Storage Usage” tool simply sorts all available chats by the amount of space they take up, listing the number of messages, photos, GIFs, and videos in each chat, and letting the user delete each category with a few taps. This is handy, but doesn’t give users a way to browse the content they’re removing. That’s important if you need to clear out, say, a family group chat, and want to avoid deleting any important photos. The ...

When I first picked up the PlayStation 5’s new DualSense controller I was totally blown away by the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. The PS5 ships with Astro’s Playroom, which is the perfect showcase for this controller and everything it’s capable of. Sony has added haptic feedback to its new PS5 controller that makes you feel the environment in Astro’s Playroom, with adaptive triggers that provide tension when you’re drawing a bow or pulling on a cord. While it’s easy to dismiss it as just another fancy vibration feature, the new DualSense controller goes beyond what I’ve ever experienced on a Nintendo Switch, Xbox controller, or even the great haptic feedback you’ll find on modern smartphones. The key addition are these new adaptive triggers, that really change the way games feel. ...

Retail robots that can scan shelves and update inventory have been one of the most visible faces of automation in recent years, but the success of such machines is far from guaranteed. According to The Wall Street Journal, Walmart — one of the biggest adopters of this technology — is ending a contract that saw shelf-scanning robots appear in some 500 of its stores. Apparently, the retailer found that humans could do the job just as well. Walmart began using robots supplied by Bossa Nova Robotics in 2017, with initial deployments in 50 locations. The mobile robots would simplify routine work in stores, said the company, using machine vision to scan shelves and identify what products needed restocking. Earlier this year, Bossa Nova said it planned to expand to 1,000 Walmart stores. Why exact...

TikTok and Sony Music Entertainment have reached a licensing deal that will keep bringing songs from the record group’s roster of hit artists to the shortform video app. Neither company would tell The Verge any real details about what this means for TikTok users. For the most part, it seems like things will largely stay the same. But that’s still an important development: TikTok has been working toward cutting new details with the major record groups since it exploded in popularity to ensure that it doesn’t lose some of the world’s top songs, and this appears to be the first deal locked in. Sony has had some big wins come from TikTok TikTok is paying “a significant increase” over its previous licensing deal, according to Bloomberg. The companies are also supposed to work together on ways t...