Technology

Looking through the deluge of CES articles is like staring into an unreliable crystal ball: maybe what you’re looking at is the future, the shape of tech for years to come, or maybe it’s something that’ll get talked about for a week and never heard from again. That’s why we here at The Verge like to take some time to look back at the biggest hits from CES shows of yesteryear. What looked like it was just a one-off at the largest tech tradeshow in the world, but actually turned out to be a real product? What got a lot of buzz and then dropped off our radars, only to resurface months later? And, of course, what was simply too good to be true? In that spirit, let’s look at the most popular devices from CES 2020, as well as some products from even further back that are still kicking around in ...

Origin has upgraded its EVO15-S and EVO17-S gaming notebooks and its NT-15 and NT-17 workstations to include Nvidia’s latest GeForce RTX 3000 mobile graphics cards (up to an RTX 3080 with Max-Q design). You can configure both lines with 10th Gen Core i7 Intel processors, up to 64GB of RAM, and up to 2 x 2TB of storage. You can select a 300Hz 1080p display (a new option for the 2021 models), a 144Hz 1080p display, or a 60Hz UHD display (which is an OLED on the 15-inch models). All models have a useful selection of connections, including three USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, one Thunderbolt 3 port, one microSD Push-Push card reader, one Mini DisplayPort 1.3, one HDMI output, and one RJ-45 Ethernet jack. If you want to purchase this NT-17 with RTX 3000 GPUs, make sure you have the right processor option...

YouTube has removed a new video uploaded to President Trump’s account for violating the company’s content policies on inciting violence. The account has also been issued a “strike” and is unable to upload new content for at least a week. It’s presently unclear exactly which video prompted the action on Trump’s account, or what the offending material was. YouTube declined to provide specific details on the video’s content. “After careful review, and in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, we removed new content uploaded to the Donald J. Trump channel and issued a strike for violating our policies for inciting violence.” YouTube says in a statement to The Verge. “As a result, in accordance with our long-standing strikes system, the channel is now prevented from uploadi...

Samsung’s next top-of-the-line smartphone may come in brown, according to leaked marketing renders of the entire Galaxy S21 lineup shared by WinFuture writer Roland Quandt, and I have to say that it’s giving me some serious Microsoft Zune vibes. The phone won’t just come in brown, though — it appears there are five colors planned for Samsung’s Galaxy S21 Ultra, including that brown, and you can see all of them at the top of this post and pictured below. Another render of the S21 Ultra lineup.Image: Roland Quandt on Twitter Other notable phones have been brown-ish. I’d argue that the gold iPhone 8’s aluminum could look like a very light brown in the right light, and the gold iPhone XS’s back has some brown tones. Samsung edged toward brown with the “Mystic Bronze” color offered on the Galax...

Nvidia’s new RTX 3080, 3070, 3060 Ti and 3090 and the AMD RX 6800 and 6800 XT are all incredibly hard to find, selling out instantly whenever they appear, due to an incredible level of demand that makes these GPUs worth many hundreds of dollars more than MSRP. A Trump tax and surging cryptocurrency prices may be about to make them even more expensive, too. Many older graphics cards are sold out online as well. This week, Nvidia and AMD finally have some updates — and it’s bittersweet news. On the plus side, AMD tells The Verge it expects to sell more of its own reference design RX 6800, 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT cards on its own website in the first quarter of 2021 at their sticker prices, which should mean $579, $649 and $999 instead of inflated ones. But AMD is only committing to make them ...

You should go read this Gizmodo report that uses Parler’s leaked GPS data to show that its users were among the mob that stormed the Capitol last Wednesday. The report comes in the wake of the social network’s near-complete removal from the Internet, and is a good read for anyone who’s been following the story. The reporters, Dell Cameron and Dhruv Mehrotra, had to sift through tons of posts to build a map of the riot: Gizmodo has mapped nearly 70,000 geo-located Parler posts and on Tuesday isolated hundreds published on January 6 near the Capitol where a mob of pro-Trump supporters had hoped to overturn a democratic election and keep their president in power. When Parler went down, a researcher was able to exploit some terrible security practices to download almost all its data — includin...

DarkMarket, reportedly the world’s largest dark web marketplace, has been taken offline by a Europol-coordinated international operation, according to authorities (via Gizmodo). German law enforcement arrested the Australian man believed to be the operator of the illegal site, and seized 20 servers that hosted it, bringing an end to what had become a hotbed of illegal activity. Before its closure, DarkMarket hosted close to 500,000 users and had facilitated over 320,000 transactions, according to Europol. The dark web marketplace traded everything from drugs and counterfeit money to stolen credit card details and malware. Per Europol’s estimate, the site traded the equivalent of €140 million in today’s money, in a mix of bitcoin and monero. European authorities plan to use seized DarkMarke...

Apple held meetings with California EV startup Canoo in the first half of 2020 as part of the Silicon Valley giant’s secretive effort to advance its own electric vehicle project, three people familiar with the talks have told The Verge. The two companies discussed options ranging from investment to an acquisition, according to two of the people. Canoo’s scalable electric vehicle platform, or “skateboard,” is largely what drew Apple’s interest, the people said. The platform is different from ones developed by other startups and larger automakers because it integrates more of the car’s electronics, allowing for greater flexibility in cabin design. It also features steer-by-wire technology, which also increases design flexibility and is not yet widely adopted in the industry. Canoo was more i...

Anyone traveling to the United States on an international flight will have to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test within three days before the trip, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Tuesday. The order will go into effect on January 26th. The sweeping requirement comes a few weeks after the CDC mandated that anyone flying in from the United Kingdom must receive a negative test result within the 72 hours prior to their flight. That order was based on concerns about a more contagious coronavirus variant spreading through the UK. That variant is already present in the United States. Testing “can make travel safer, healthier, and more responsible by reducing spread on planes, in airports, and at destinations,” even though it doesn’t eliminate all risk of COVID-19 spre...

If you’ve yearned for the power of the Threadripper Pro, but haven’t wanted to buy a ThinkStation, you’re in luck: starting in March, AMD will begin selling the CPUs directly to consumers, ending Lenovo’s exclusive access to the processor line. While the vanilla Threadripper seems like the peak of computing power to many (myself included), there are certain benefits the Pro line offers that would be seriously beneficial to those who need them: Memory channels are doubled, from four to eight PCI-E lanes are doubled, from 64 to 128 Memory capacity is expanded from 256GB to 2TB (!!!) To sum up those massive numbers into a more real-world picture, the Threadripper Pro allows users to work with larger datasets due to its expanded memory capacity. It also allows double the expansion for users wh...

There aren’t many good ways to lose $220 million, but this New York Times article highlights a particularly egregious one — losing millions of dollars in bitcoin because you forgot the password to your digital wallet. Stefan Thomas’ 7,002 bitcoin (worth roughly $220 million) are locked away in an IronKey hard drive, according to NYT’s Nathaniel Popper. The problem is he can’t remember the password, and he’s just two failed password attempts closer to losing them forever due to IronKey’s strict security protocols. There is the possibility of paying someone to crack the drive, but Thomas would have to have the time and money to make that happen. It’s a darkly comedic scenario, and Popper’s story hits all of the cryptocurrency classics to help explain it. There’s mention of the volatile natur...

Asus is gearing up to release its first gaming monitor to support HDMI 2.1, which boasts enough bandwidth to display up to 4K resolution at 120 frames per second when connected to a compatible Windows PC, Xbox Series X, or PS5. The ROG Swift PG32UQ is, according to Asus, the world’s first 32-inch HDMI 2.1 gaming monitor, and both of its HDMI ports support the latest standard. Connecting via DisplayPort 1.4 allows this monitor to display 4K at a 144Hz refresh rate on PC if you have components capable enough to soar that high. For this feature, Asus credits a technology called Display Stream Compression (DSC) that compresses UHD streams without a perceptible drop in visual quality. Like the Acer Nitro XV28 announced last week, the ROG Swift PG32UQ won’t ship until sometime in Q2 2021. Asus h...