Technology

California rolled out a COVID-19 contact tracing app this week, and officials — including Apple CEO Tim Cook — touted it as an advancement that would help slow their ongoing surge in cases. Using the app will be easy. Measuring whether the app can deliver will be harder. Nine months after Apple and Google first announced their partnership, contact tracing apps’ role in reducing viral transmission is still difficult to measure. Relatively few people have downloaded the apps, and because of the apps’ focus on privacy, it may be nearly impossible to quantify how well they’re actually able to help prevent disease. “It seems to me that it’s incumbent upon those who are behind these efforts to show evidence that they’re having some effect,” says Ryan Calo, law professor and a director of the Tec...

AMC Theatres is warning its investors that if it doesn’t find $750 million, it will run out of cash by the middle of January 2021. The company issued new public documents today announcing that because executives can’t predict what the supply of movies will be like, and it’s unclear if people will even file into theaters again soon, the company is unsure of how much money it can make. Specifically, AMC’s documents note that executives can’t know with “certainty the impact of the Warner Bros. announcement or any similar announcements regarding the release of movie titles concurrently to the home video or streaming markets.” Conversations with studios like Warner Bros. and Disney have yet to take place, the documents add. Now, AMC is facing challenges that “have been exacerbated” by Warner Br...

“Empire. New Republic. It’s all the same to these people,” comments Migs Mayfield (Bill Burr) in the latest episode of The Mandalorian. For a while, it seems that the show believes it, dressing Mando up in stormtrooper armor as he goes to desperate lengths to save Baby Yoda (neé Grogu) from Moff Gideon. In “The Believer,” it’s not an X-Wing swooping in triumphantly to save our heroes; it’s Imperial TIE Fighters — a symbol that fans have come to associate with the forces of evil in the galaxy, potent symbology that The Mandalorian’s first season finale relied on to great effect. And director Rick Fukuyama works to really sell the audience on the victory of the Empire: soaring music plays in the background, as the base’s garrison rushes out to protect the battered truck, the only one to make...

At first we thought this was going to be a slow news week. Now, it’s Friday and we have published two Vergecast episodes back-to-back to cover everything you need to know in the world of tech. To sum it up: We’ve got another new Apple product to talk about, an interview with the president of Qualcomm, and a discussion on the antitrust lawsuits against Facebook put forward by the Federal Trade Commission and 48 state attorneys general. (I hope you understand now why we separated these into different episodes.) In the first half of the first episode this week of The Vergecast, Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Chris Welch discuss the announcement of Apple’s new noise-canceling headphones, the AirPods Max. Nilay was able to try them out for a brief period of time and gives his first impressions o...

Hyundai is officially purchasing a controlling stake in robot maker Boston Dynamics from SoftBank in a deal that values the company at $1.1 billion, the company announced today. The deal has been in the works for a while, according to recent a report from Bloomberg, and marks a major step into consumer robotics for Hyundai. Hyundai is taking approximately an 80 percent stake in the company while its previous owner, Softbank, will retain around 20 percent through an affiliate. Hyundai says its investment will help its development of service and logistics robots, but that over time it hopes to build more humanoid robots for jobs like “caregiving for patients at hospitals.” Other areas of interest include autonomous driving and smart factories. Atlas, another one Boston Dynamic’s robots.Image...

An Apple support page has confirmed that the company’s new MagSafe Duo wireless charger, which is designed to charge an iPhone and Apple Watch simultaneously, isn’t compatible with its older 29W USB-C power adapter. If you’re using an Apple power adapter it’s best to use one of the company’s newer 30W models, which replaced the 29W model in 2018 and retail for $49. It’s an unfortunate revelation for anyone with the old chargers since the MagSafe Duo doesn’t come with a charging brick in the box. Apple’s page doesn’t say exactly what happens if you plug the MagSafe Duo into one of the older 29W bricks. MacRumors reports that if you do it will only be able to charge a single device, an iPhone or an Apple Watch, rather than both at once. Although the 29W brick appears to meet the wattage requ...

Microsoft Flight Simulator was always planned to come to Xbox consoles as well as PCs, and now Microsoft has finally given a timeframe for its release. It’ll launch at some point in summer 2021 and will be available on Game Pass from day one. Notably, it sounds like the title won’t be coming to the Xbox One, One S, or One X — it’s described in the trailer as “coming to the all-new Xbox,” with Series S and Series X logos. That would make Microsoft Flight Simulator the first next-gen-exclusive Xbox Game Studios title; the company has pledged to bring other upcoming games like Halo Infinite to the older machines for the time being. Microsoft Flight Simulator can be very demanding on PCs, so it may well not have been practical to get it running on the original Xbox One’s limited hardware. Micr...

Disney just made a deluge of announcements at its 2020 Investor Day, including updates on new Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney Animation studios projects, as well as updates on Disney Plus and Disney’s other streaming services. Here’s everything you need to know from the event: Disney Plus Series WandaVision, the first Marvel Studios show coming out on Disney Plus, got a new trailer ahead of its upcoming January 15th release date. The Falcon and the Winter Solider also finally got a full trailer, along with a March release date. A first look at Loki, Disney’s highly anticipated short series based on Tom Hiddleston’s god of mischief character. The show also got a May 2021 release date. Image: Disney Hawkeye is premiering on Disney Plus in “late Fall 2021.” The studio also confirmed that Hailee...

Indie developer Innersloth revealed its fourth map, The Airship, for the online social deduction game Among Us during The Game Awards on Thursday, following the game’s win for best multiplayer title of the year. The Airship features new tasks for players to accomplish, and is far more elaborate than previous maps, including ladders and elevators that players will need to use to access different areas of the ship. The new map will also offer players multiple spawn points following a meeting, to allow them to avoid grouping up (and avoid being easily picked off by any imposters.) The map, first teased last month by the official Among Us Twitter account, features a greater level of color and detail than the existing maps the game has had since its quiet June 2018 release, two years before it ...

At the 2020 edition of The Game Awards, developer Epic revealed the latest character to join the cast of Fortnite: Master Chief from Halo. The news isn’t a huge surprise, as his inclusion was leaked a few days ago. The good news: he’s available tonight. Epic also revealed that characters from The Walking Dead will be in the game this season as well. It’s been a busy few weeks for Fortnite. December kicked off with a season-ending event starring Galactus, which ushered in a new season featuring new characters like The Mandalorian and Baby Yoda. Epic also just launched a new subscription service, called Fortnite Crew, with exclusive in-game items for a monthly fee. [embedded content] You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should b...

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is going to be coming to HBO Max on the same date as its theater release, and the director is not happy. He’s written an article for Variety blasting Warner Brothers and AT&T, saying that the the move to release movies on streaming on the same day as in theaters is “a desperate attempt to grab the audience’s attention.” “With this decision AT&T has hijacked one of the most respectable and important studios in film history,” he writes. “There is absolutely no love for cinema, nor for the audience here. It is all about the survival of a telecom mammoth, one that is currently bearing an astronomical debt of more than $150 billion.” He’s not alone in his anger at WB and HBO Max — last week Christopher Nolan, director of Tenet, also complained about the mov...

The Federal Trade Commission announced it would sue to block Proctor & Gamble’s purchase of razor and body care company Billie on December 8th, citing P&G’s existing dominance in the wet razor market. Billie originally launched in 2017 but has grown since, likely prompting P&G’s interest and the FTC’s concern. Like Dollar Shave Club (but aimed more at women), Billie tried to pitch its razors as a cheaper direct-to-customer alternative to the pricier razors sold at retail. It proved successful, and investors were interested. But if P&G added Billie to its existing brands Gilette, Joy and Venus, it could have eliminated one of its fastest growing competitors, something the FTC feared would lead to consumers paying higher prices. This isn’t the first time the FTC has stopped a...