Technology

The year 2020 was when most of us went from going out with loved ones to exchanging recommendations on what type of TV show or movie to stream next. One way to suit everyone’s taste — kids, adults, and sports fans — is to try the Disney Bundle, a streaming pack that consists of Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, and Hulu. Each of these services offers a slew of streaming options, so for a $12.99-a-month price tag, you are getting a ton of bang for your buck. You can also opt just for Disney Plus at a cost of $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year. Here are some of my favorites. We’ve rounded up our favorite and most-used games, apps, and entertainment. Check out our app picks for iPhones, Android phones, PCs, and M1-equipped Macs; our favorite mobile games from Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass; and our top ...

Here’s a big idea that comes with a unique set of problems: replacing meat in the food supply with something that is more sustainable and climate-friendly, yet looks and tastes like the real deal. But that’s what Beyond Meat does — it takes plant protein and turns it into convincing substitutes for chicken, beef, and pork. And on today’s episode, I’m talking with founder and CEO Ethan Brown about how he’s tackling this. I last interviewed Ethan on the Vergecast, before the company IPO’d in 2019 — it’s been quite a ride since then, as the pandemic sharply impacted the stock, restaurants closed, and the entire food world generally turned upside down. But the company has come out of that with a rising stock price, some big deals to supply quick-service restaurants like Pizza Hut and Dunkin, a...

The microwave is a cooking tool designed around precision. Punch in how long you need your food to heat up in a microwave, and that’s what it will do; no more, and no less. But for all the exactitude that governs the microwave — and that the microwave tries to impose on our food and our cooking — the reality is that things can’t be so neatly stuffed into a convenient digital box. Life isn’t binary, so many microwaves feature an “add 30 seconds” button to give us humans the wiggle room we need within the otherwise unbendable numbers of the countdown clock. It’s a button that stands in almost caveman-y opposition to the intended functionality. Instead of calculating the perfect amount of time to reheat or cook your food, it turns out that the best way to actually use a microwave in real life...

A coalition of civil rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union have filed an objection to the proposed expansion of Customs and Border Protections facial recognition at land and sea ports. The National Immigration Law Center, Fight for the Future, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are also participating in the motion, alongside twelve others. Filed in November, CBP’s proposed rule would expand the biometric exit system, authorizing the collection of facial images from any non-citizen entering the country. But in a filing on Monday, the final day of the comment period, the coalition argued that those measures are too extreme. “CBP’s proposed use of face surveillance at airports, sea ports, and the land border would put the United States on an extraordinarily dangerous pat...

T-Mobile has been asked to stop advertising its 5G network as more reliable than the competition by the National Advertising Review Board (NARB), which investigated T-Mobile’s claims made primarily in an ad featuring celebrity scientist Bill Nye after complaints from Verizon earlier this year. But the NARB also says T-Mobile shouldn’t have to mention the speed of its network when broadly discussing coverage superiority in future ads. T-Mobile has said it will comply with the recommendation. But it cast the recommendations as a partial win in a statement saying it “appreciates that the panel agreed that T-Mobile can continue to advertise its superior 5G coverage without qualification.” T-Mobile’s compliance is notable because telecom giants don’t have to follow the recommendations offered b...

A tracking system designed to help ships avoid crashing into each other has become an important tool for spotting bad behavior on the high seas. Researchers can now put a spotlight on corporations that dominate fishing in unregulated international waters where it’s easier to get away with overfishing. And it’s giving us a better idea of how widespread slave labor could be on fishing vessels. That all makes it easier to make companies answer for any abuses they commit Two recently published papers use this technology, the maritime Automatic Identification System (AIS), to make high-seas fishing a little less mysterious. The first study, published in the journal One Earth on December 18th, traces the origins of thousands of high-seas fishing vessels back to big-time corporations that keep st...

On Monday, congressional leaders unveiled their massive spending and coronavirus relief measure, including a handful of controversial copyright measures civil liberties activists fear could penalize internet users for everyday online behavior. Congress is expected to vote on the package as early as Monday. Congress’ $2.3 trillion spending and relief package includes controversial measures previously introduced as the CASE Act, the Trademark Modernization Act, and a felony streaming proposal — all significantly expanding the rights and powers of intellectual property owners. Most controversially, the CASE Act would create a quasi-judicial tribunal of “Copyright Claims Officers” who would work to resolve infringement claims. As outlined in the bill, copyright holders could be awarded up to $...

Marvel superhero Black Panther is now available in Fortnite. You can get him, Captain Marvel, and Taskmaster as part of the Marvel Royalty and Warriors Pack, which costs $24.99. Epic had hinted toward Black Panther’s eventual arrival with the release of the Wakandan Salute emote Monday morning. The salute has become an iconic greeting — something that many of the cast members of the 2018 Black Panther movie have spoke publicly about in the months after its release. The film grossed $1.35 billion at the box office, including an astounding $700.4 million domestically. During Fortnite’s last season, which was Marvel-themed, a large statue of a black panther appeared on the map, and players could find a Black Panther superpower, though a tie-in Black Panther skin never appeared in Fortnite’s i...

Stardew Valley is an idyllic digital space to escape to after a long year — and thanks to its 1.5 update available today on PC, you can now bring friends and family along to your farm with local split-screen co-op. The multiplayer update from a couple of years back made it possible to play and share farms online, but this local co-op addition lets you do the same with the people you actually live with, even if they don’t have their own copy of the game. You can add the ability for local co-op by having Robin the Carpenter build cabins on your farm, or if you’re starting from scratch, you can select to have the cabins already built when you make a new game. Once the cabins are built, you can start local co-op for up to three other people from game menu. The 1.5 update also adds a new “Beach...

Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Chromebook 2 has been revealed in a new leak, showing off the return of the company’s unique bright orange coloring in an otherwise similar-looking design, via Evan Blass. There are some visible changes to the new model, including minor adjustments to the port layout and the extension of Samsung’s application of the orange color. The keyboard on the second-generation model has been made a more neutral black, even as the orange hue has extended to the sides of the laptop. But any more substantial changes will likely be found in the internal specs, which presumably will see some sort of improvement from last year’s model — especially considering that there are new 11th Gen Intel laptop chips out. Combining the improved battery life and graphics performance from thos...

Apple once again appears to be seriously looking at making a car. Reuters reports that Apple is pursuing production of a passenger vehicle by 2024 as well as the creation of self-driving systems and a “breakthrough battery technology.” The report is vague on how it all comes together — it’s not clear that all of this tech is going into the first passenger vehicle Apple hopes to make — but it indicates that Apple is considering vehicle production, after previously shutting down plans to make a car. There have been rumors of Apple developing a car going back to 2015. But in 2016, the project was scaled down significantly, with development of a full car being scrapped and Apple’s team refocusing on providing software that could be licensed out to car manufacturers, according to reports at the...