Technology

Virtual reality startup Virtuix is building a VR treadmill for your home. The Omni One is an elaborate full-body controller that lets you physically run, jump, and crouch in place. Following an earlier business- and arcade-focused device, it’s supposed to ship in mid-2021 for $1,995, and Virtuix is announcing the product with a crowdfunding investment campaign. The crowdfunded Virtuix Omni started development in 2013. It’s not a traditional treadmill — it’s a low-friction platform that’s used with special low-friction shows or shoe covers and a harness. (You may remember the overall VR treadmill concept from Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One.) As an Omni One prototype video demonstrates, the device basically holds you in place while your feet slide across the platform, and that movement ...

Netflix is testing a feature that I am referring to as a “sick day function” — an option to turn off that pesky pop-up that appears after watching three episodes in a row of something to ask if you’re still watching. The new feature looks like it’s been in testing for a while in certain regions, and a Netflix spokesperson confirmed to The Verge today that the feature is still in testing mode. Over the recent weeks, however, excitement over the feature has hit Twitter and TikTok. It is exciting! A box appears that asks if you’re still watching or if you want to “play without asking again.” Hypothetically, if you’re in the middle of rewatching Supernatural and don’t want Netflix to interrupt you every three episodes, hitting “play without asking again” will allow you to binge to your heart’s...

Nintendo has announced that its first theme park area will belatedly open at Universal Studios Japan in Osaka next spring. Super Nintendo World was originally planned to open before the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, but the date was pushed back along with the Games themselves due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Separately, Nintendo will also open a themed cafe and store at Universal Studio Japan’s Hollywood area next week. Here’s what they’ll look like outside and in: Here are some of the items you’ll find on the cafe’s menu, including Mario and Luigi-themed pancake sandwiches, a Super Mushroom drink in a tropical bottle, and mustachioed fruit cream sodas: And here’s some of the merchandise on sale at the store, including a T-shirt, a pouch, and a cushion: The cafe and store will be open from O...

The House Judiciary Committee has released its conclusions on whether Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Google are violating antitrust law. Its 449-page report criticizes these companies for buying competitors, preferencing their own services, and holding outsized power over smaller businesses that use their platforms. “Our investigation revealed an alarming pattern of business practices that degrade competition and stifle innovation,” said committee member Val Demings (D-FL). “Competition must reward the best idea, not the biggest corporate account. We will take steps necessary to hold rulebreakers accountable.” The majority’s report lays out a number of concrete policy recommendations, which, taken together, would drastically change how the tech industry operates. It urges Congress to conside...

YouTube has changed the way it tests new features: it’s now allowing its Premium subscribers access to experimental products in the development pipeline, according to XDA-Developers. Previously, those features were tested by Google users picked at random to beta test. Currently, the new features available for Premium subscribers to test include watching videos with sound and seeking on your YouTube homepage on iOS; voice searching for YouTube videos on-site (only on Chrome); and filtering by topic in additional languages. The language at the top of YouTube’s experimental features page also says that Premium members can only access these features for a limited time. YouTube Premium costs $11.99 a month, and it also gives you ad-free viewing, background play, and access to YouTube Music, amo...

You can’t fly a drone at night. You can’t fly a drone over people. You need to be able to see it with your naked eye at all times — or have a dedicated observer who can. These rules exist to keep dumb drones (and reckless pilots) from crashing into people, property, and other aircraft in the skies. But what happens when drones get smarter, and can dodge obstacles on their own? That’s the kind of drone that Skydio builds, and it appears to be successfully convincing the FAA to create exceptions to that naked-eye, Visual Line Of Sight (VLOS) rule. This week, the FAA granted the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) a blanket waiver to fly Skydio drones beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) to inspect any bridge, anywhere across the state, for four whole years. They primarily need...

The votes are in for Katmai National Park’s annual Fat Bear Week tournament and 747 is the champion! There couldn’t have been a more epic matchup than the championship face-off between two aptly named bears: 747 and Chunk, aka Bear 32. In the end, 747 pulled ahead with more than 47,300 votes compared to Chunk’s roughly 21,900 votes. The annual elimination tournament began in 2014 as a way to celebrate how fat and healthy the park’s bears are. Katmai is one of the most famous places for bear watching in Alaska. Visitors to the park and its Bear Cam webpage can watch the bears splash around in the Brooks River and binge on migrating sockeye salmon. Competition aside, the bears are on a mission to consume enough calories to last them throughout the long winter ahead, when they might hibernate...

Arlo has announced two new security cameras: the Pro 4 Wire-Free Spotlight Camera and the Ultra 2 Wire-Free Spotlight Camera System. You can preorder both cameras now; the Pro 4 starts at $199.99 and the Ultra 2 starts at $299.99. Both cameras are wire-free. That makes them easier to set up and more convenient to place than many other cameras, since you’re not limited by the location of your outlets. The Arlo Pro 4 connects directly to Wi-Fi — no smart home hub required. It produces 2K video with HDR, color night vision, and a 160-degree viewing angle. It also comes with a built-in spotlight to illuminate intruders, a siren, and two-way audio to communicate with guests. The Arlo Pro 4 with the spotlight on.Image: Arlo It can be placed indoors or outdoors, and Arlo says the removable batter...

Facebook has banned all forms of content related to the radical fringe conspiracy group QAnon, marking its most dramatic escalation in the fight against misinformation and what Facebook is calling “militarized social movements.” The company announced the change on its website as an update to its previous moderation sweep in August that banned close to 1,000 QAnon groups. “Starting today, we will remove any Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts representing QAnon, even if they contain no violent content. This is an update from the initial policy in August that removed Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts associated with QAnon when they discussed potential violence while imposing a series of restrictions to limit the reach of other Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts associated with...

James Bond may have been the last straw for Regal and Cineworld, but analysts I spoke to agree: the only thing that will truly save movie theaters in the United States is a COVID-19 vaccine. On Thursday, Regal Cinemas — the second-largest theater chain in the US with 536 theaters and 7,076 screens — will officially shut all its doors in the United States for the second time during the global pandemic. Its parent company Cineworld is closing 127 theaters in the UK as well. Over 45,000 people may lose their jobs or be furloughed, and there’s no timeline for reopening. In what seems like good news, AMC and Cinemark, the first- and third-largest US chains respectively, will not be following Regal’s lead. Each confirmed today that over 80 percent of their US-based theaters are open and will sta...

Ten years after Oracle first sued Google over the code in the Android platform, the two tech giants are finally facing off in the Supreme Court. Since then, there have been three trials and two appeals. Billions of dollars are at stake; many millions have been likely spent on a parade of seasoned litigators, expert witnesses, and bizarre trial exhibits intended to explain programming to non-technical juries. All this may be coming to an anticlimactic close on Wednesday morning, with a teleconference Supreme Court oral argument in the middle of a pandemic. When Google first developed Android, it decided to make the mobile platform compatible with Java. At the time, apps for the iOS environment were written in Objective-C, a language that was similar to the ubiquitous C but otherwise pretty ...

Every Tuesday this month, Vergecast co-host Dieter Bohn is hosting a series of discussions diving deep into tech review season, each focusing on a specific product. This week, Dieter talks with Judner Aura, aka UrAvgConsumer on YouTube, about how the recently announced Google Pixel 5 shares some common ground with an older Google smartphone project: the Nexus 5. The Nexus 5 came out in 2013 at an affordable of $349 and eventually became a much-loved device among tech enthusiasts at the time. Made by LG, the phone had a 5-inch 1080p display, supported LTE, and ran on Android KitKat. Here’s what Dieter had to say about his first impressions in 2013: “The Nexus 5 is as surprisingly inexpensive as its predecessor. Unlike its predecessor, though, it manages to actually support LTE, a complete n...