Technology

With the restrictions around travel and in-person events, Epic canceled the 2020 edition of the Fortnite World Cup back in April. Now, the developer says the esports spectacle won’t be taking place in 2021 either. “With so much still unknown about what is practical and safe, we do not plan to hold in-person events in 2021, including a Fortnite World Cup,” the company explained in a blog post. “We will continue to provide online competitions throughout 2021 with the hopes that physical events, in some form, can return at some point in the future.” The first — and so far, only — Fortnite World Cup took place in 2019 at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York. The three-day spectacle culminated with 16-year-old Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf winning the solo competition and $3 million in prize money. It was ...

President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming COVID czar, Jeffrey Zients, is facing new scrutiny over his corporate ties — particularly a two-year stint on Facebook’s board of directors. But the Biden transition team confirmed to The Verge that Zients liquidated his Facebook stock earlier this year and will retain no equity when he officially begins his White House role. Zients joined the Facebook board in May 2018 in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal but declined to seek reelection to the board when his term ended in 2020. Securities and Exchange Commission filings show he was compensated with $100,000 in cash and just over $300,000 in stock awards for his work chairing the board’s Audit & Risk Oversight Committee, which met 13 times in 2019. Crucially, the last of his restricted sto...

ReedPop and Penny Arcade, the organizers of the PAX gaming conventions, announced on Friday that they plan to resume PAX East, West, and Unplugged in 2021. Organizers are planning to hold these events as long as it’s safe to do so. The organizers announced that they have no plans to hold PAX South next year, but the show will return in 2022, while information on PAX Australia will follow “in the coming weeks.” As far as the other PAX conventions go, locations remain unchanged, but the dates for PAX East, typically held in March at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, have been pushed back to the summer. Its last in-person convention was held in February With support from local governments and health officials and “pending improvement in the global COVID-19 situation,” the gaming co...

Fitbit is contacting some owners of its Sense smartwatch to offer replacements after discovering a bug affecting its electrocardiogram (ECG) readings. Users on the Fitbit forums have reported receiving emails from the company, warning that their devices are affected by an unspecified “hardware issue.” Fitbit has subsequently confirmed to The Verge that the issue specifically affects its ECG functionality. The emails ask affected users to return the smartwatch to Fitbit, and says they will be given a replacement device free of charge. Along with stress detection and temperature tracking, the Fitbit Sense’s ECG app is one of its major differentiating features compared to Fitbit’s other recent smartwatch; the Versa 3. The ECG feature is meant to allow the watch to read the wearer’s heart rhyt...

Google Podcasts is finally getting a feature that’s already standard across most listening apps: private RSS feed support. The head of product for Google Podcasts, Zack Reneau-Wedeen, made the announcement on Twitter today and shouted out some networks that are especially reliant on private feeds, including Patreon, Slate, Red Circle, and Supercast. To access the feature, tap over to the activity tab in the bottom right-hand corner and slide over to the Subscriptions tab, then tap the plus symbol. You’ll then be prompted to add by RSS feed. You can see the entire process below. This is a relatively standard feature that’s helped prop up the podcasting business for creators. On Patreon, for example, members often pay for access to a subscribers-only feed. To access that content, the creator...

Razer has been talking up modular gaming PCs with streamlined swappable parts for years. Now, after various concepts, CES reveals, and standard PC cases with associated branding, the company is actually selling a pre-built desktop PC for the first time. The Tomahawk is the final version of what we saw at CES 2020 back in January. It’s a simple case design with two PCIe slots: one for a full-sized GPU, and one for an Intel NUC Element board that contains the CPU, the RAM, the storage, and basically everything else you need for a functional PC. The NUC module includes a 45W Core i9-9980HK Coffee Lake processor, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a 512GB NVMe SSD, and a 2TB hard drive. The memory and storage are upgradable, but the CPU is not — unless Intel releases another compatible NUC board that you can s...

The highly-anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 is just days away from its December 10th release. But depending on where you live and what platform you’re playing on, you might get to play the game a bit earlier than you might have expected given the previous guidance. Developer CD Projekt Red shared exactly when Cyberpunk 2077 will be available in a tweet posted Thursday. If you’re playing on PC or Stadia, you’ll be able to start the game at 12AM GMT on December 10th no matter where you are in the world. That means, for example, that if you live on the US East Coast, you can jump into the game at 7PM ET on December 9th. If you want to know exactly when 12AM GMT is in your timezone, check the map below. Console players will get access to the game at midnight local time, according to CD Projekt Red. ...

The next time you get on a plane, you’ll probably have plenty of new things to worry about, but having to listen to people talking on the phone won’t be one. Way back in 2013, the FCC announced that it would be considering removing a ban on passengers making phone calls once the plane was above 10,000 feet. The proposal was unpopular even within the FCC, with then-Chairman Tom Wheeler saying he would prefer people not be allowed to make calls on a plane. The FCC originally announced that it would be considering the proposal on December 12 (of 2013), but it took until today to reach a verdict (via Boing Boing): no. The decision cites “strong opposition,” especially among pilots and flight attendants, claiming that the proposal “[failed] to address significant safety and national security co...

If you’ve ever used Cash App and thought “wow, I wish I could put this on my body…” we may need to talk about your relationship with apps. But also you’re in luck! The payment service announced in a tweet today that it’s launching its own apparel line, called (what else) Cash. According to its website, the apparel line will follow the standard streetwear release model of “limited edition drops”. If you follow this link from the tweet, you’ll first be subjected to some creepy 3D models — you can click on them to make them dance — before you actually get to the shop. Once there, you can browse the “fits” (as I’ve heard the kids calling them). If you need a new T-shirt, sweatshirt, jacket, or pair of pants, and for some reason don’t mind being a walking billboard for a company that make...

Razer released its first set of true wireless earbuds in 2019, with the main appeal being a low-latency mode that made them better suited for mobile gaming. Now, the company is ready with its second pair, the Hammerhead True Wireless Pro, which go on sale today for $199.99 and add active noise cancellation and THX audio certification to the mix. “The Hammerhead True Wireless Pro uses hybrid ANC to nullify both external and unwanted internal noise by generating inverse sound waves simultaneously,” Razer wrote in its press release for the new buds. Passive noise isolation also helps there, and Razer has switched to a proper in-ear design — unlike the AirPods-esque open style of the original Hammerhead True Wireless. (There’s a “quick attention mode” for piping in outside audio when you want ...

A strap for an Apple Watch equipped with front- and rear-facing cameras is finally launching after nearly four years in development. The Wristcam has an 8-megapixel camera that can shoot 1080p video and take stills in 4K resolution and a 2-megapixel camera for selfies. The company says you’ll also be able to use it as a video walkie-talkie with real-time live-streaming. Those might be serviceable cameras, but they’re not likely to replace your iPhone camera. The company sent over a sample of images shot by the Wristcam, which are pretty decent, if a bit underwhelming in the details. A photo taken with the new Wristcam.Image: Wristcam Image: Wristcam Image: Wristcam Wristcam, originally called CMRA, shows images on the Watch screen but has a separate battery, which the company says can last...

A global phishing campaign has been targeting organizations associated with the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines since September 2020, IBM security researchers say. In a blog post, analysts Claire Zaboeva and Melissa Frydrych of IBM X-Force IRIS announced that the phishing campaign spans six regions: Germany, Italy, South Korea, Czech Republic, greater Europe, and Taiwan. The campaign appears to be focused on the “cold chain,” the segment of the vaccine supply chain that keeps doses cold during their storage and transportation. Some vaccines need to stay at extremely low temperatures in order to remain potent. Pfizer, for example, recommends that their COVID-19 vaccine be stored at negative 70 degrees Celsius (colder than winter in Antarctica). That poses a logistical challenge for the ph...