Technology

It’s hard not to be charmed by a smartphone that comes with a screwdriver in the box, especially when it’s as small and dinky as the one that comes with the Fairphone 3 Plus. In fact, that’s the only accessory you get with the phone. There’s no USB cable, no wall charger, and definitely no earbuds in the box. This little screwdriver is an important indication of what you’re getting with the latest device from sustainable smartphone manufacturer Fairphone. For starters, the phone is designed to be as repairable as possible. It’s an upgraded version of last year’s Fairphone 3, one of only two devices to have earned a perfect repairability score from iFixit. Beyond repairs, Fairphone also attempts to use ethically sourced materials where possible and offer good working conditions for the peop...

When Viana Ferguson was a content moderator for Facebook, she came across a post that she immediately recognized as racist: a photo of a white family with a Black child that had a caption reading “a house is not a home without a pet.” But she had a hard time convincing her manager that the picture was not just an innocent photo of a family. “She didn’t seem to have the same perspective, there was no reference I could use,” Ferguson said. She pointed out that there was no pet in the photo, but the manager also told her, “Well, there’s also no home in the picture.” Ferguson said it was one of several examples of the lack of structure and support Facebook moderators face in their day-to-day jobs, a vast majority of which are performed for third-party consultancies. Ferguson spoke on a call or...

Getting a new phone is exciting, but it can also lead to spending an annoying amount of time adjusting settings, permissions and notifications for all your apps. Cloud backups are supposed to make this process easier, but they don’t always catch everything – for instance, you’ll want to double-check that COVID-19 exposure notifications are still enabled on your new iPhone 12 if you restored from a backup. They might not be, according to BBC News. If you’re concerned you might be affected, you can re-enable exposure notifications in iOS by opening the Settings app, selecting Exposure Notifications, and clicking “Turn On Exposure Notifications.” Users first noticed issues with the official National Health Service (NHS) contact tracing app in the UK. When some iPhone 12 and 12 Pro owners trie...

It might not be the coveted rocket-firing Boba Fett action figure, nor offer quite so many play possibilities as the $800 LEGO Star Wars UCS Millennium Falcon. But if you’re a fan of The Mandalorian, whose second season starts Friday, Hasbro’s $350 Razor Crest might just be the greatest Star Wars toy in a very long while. At 30 inches long, 20 inches wide and 10.5 inches tall, it’s a big enough to re-enact a whole bunch of the Disney+ show’s iconic scenes inside its cockpit and cargo hold — using standard 3.75-inch figures — and the entire ship is chock-full of details. You’ll find a packed weapons locker, a carbonite freezing chamber and Baby Yoda’s hiding place inside, plus seventeen different panels you can remove to see inside the ship, show off damage, or pretend like a band of Jawas ...

This story is part of a group of stories called Only the best deals on Verge-approved gadgets get the Verge Deals stamp of approval, so if you’re looking for a deal on your next gadget or gift from major retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and more, this is the place to be. If you’re looking for a pair of AirPods Pro but do not want to pay the full $249 price, you can buy them right now for $200 at B&H Photo. This is not the lowest price we have seen them, though. Earlier this month, they went down to $190, but aside from that, $200 for Apple’s flagship true wireless earbuds is still a good deal if you missed out during Prime Day. Unlike the standard AirPods, which have a “one size fits most” design, the AirPods Pro include a customizable fit that includes three dif...

Lego has paired with game engine maker Unity for a Lego Microgame, where you can snap together virtual bricks to build the environment of your own custom game world. The Microgame is free and requires no prior knowledge of video game programming. All you have to do to get started is follow a Unity tutorial. Once you’ve designed your game to your liking, you can unleash a Lego minifigure to run, jump around, and maybe even perish to an obstacle in your new virtual world. Creative Mods in Unity will help you do things like build an enemy, customize menus, and change the minifig to an adventurer, pirate, or pizza boy. They’ve worked with BrickLink, so you can further customize by importing sets that have already been built in Studio. There are also asset add-ons like Space Cadet and Danger Zo...

A surveillance startup in Silicon Valley is being accused of sexism and discrimination after a sales director used the company’s facial recognition system to harass female workers. Verkada, which was valued in January at $1.6 billion, equips its office with its own security cameras. Last year, the sales director accessed these cameras to take photos of female workers, then posted them in a Slack channel called #RawVerkadawgz alongside sexually explicit jokes. The incident was first reported by IPVM and independently verified by Vice. “Face match… find me a squirt” Employees told IPVM that a group of men in leadership positions on the sales team, many of whom grew up in Danville and played football together in high school, contributed to a culture of sexism. “Face match… find me a squirt,” ...

One of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2’s coolest new features was the ability to use the phone’s front display as a viewfinder for the back cameras, which could be really useful for things lining up higher-quality selfies. If you’ve wanted that handy way to take better selfies but have been holding on to the original Galaxy Fold, you’re in luck: Samsung is bringing that selfie functionality and a number of other features from the Z Fold 2 to the first Fold through a software update that’s available starting today. Samsung will let you use the front screen as a viewfinder for the Fold’s back cameras.Image: Samsung The Fold isn’t just getting a new way to take selfies. The update also brings Capture View Mode, which lets you frame a photo with one half of the Fold’s main screen and review up to ...

Last year, Google pledged that, by 2022, it would include recycled materials in all of its Made By Google products, a list that includes Pixel phones, Pixelbooks, Google Home speakers, Nest devices, and accessories like phone cases and charging stands. Today, the company announced it hit one of its goals ahead of schedule: all new Pixel and Nest products are now designed with recycled materials, according to Google sustainability systems architect David Bourne. That’s not to say its products are made entirely of recycled materials, but they at least include recycled materials somewhere in the product. According to Google, the back cover of the Pixel 5 is made with 100 percent recycled aluminum, and the new Nest Audio has 70 percent recycled plastic, with the sustainable fabric cover it int...

The Mandalorian’s second season is fast approaching, and Star Wars: Squadrons is getting a small content update to celebrate. More to the point: the game is adding a Baby Yoda bobblehead that you can put in your in-game cockpit, which immediately catapults to the top of the “best cosmetic DLC added to a game in 2020” list. (Sorry, Marvel Fortnite skins.) The “Mysterious Creature” statue isn’t the only thing being added to the space flight simulator game. Each of the two factions is getting a new hologram, decal, dashboard statue, and hanging item, for a total of eight new items. (You can see a few of the new options in the image below.) And yes, that does mean that Baby Yoda will be exclusive to New Republic ships like the X-wing or Y-wing; TIE Fighter pilots will sadly have to continue li...

YouTube is facing a lawsuit from a group of channel owners who say their rights were violated by the platform’s recent moderation actions against QAnon accounts. The users, many of whom boasted hundreds of thousands of followers on the platform, are seeking a temporary restraining order to restore their accounts. “YouTube’s massive de-platforming, which occurred just three weeks before the 2020 Presidential election, worked to the severe detriment of both conservative content creators and American voters who seek out their content,” the complaint alleges. “YouTube took this draconian action so swiftly that the Plaintiffs… received no advance notice and were not able to download their own content.” Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act typically protects platforms from lawsuit...

Amazon received a “blistering” letter last Thursday about copyright infringement and Twitch’s nonexistent licensing deals with major music rights holders, Variety reports. The letter was signed by organizations including the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Recording Academy, the National Music Publishers Association, the American Association of Independent Music, SAG-AFTRA, and more. The document accuses Twitch of allowing streamers to play copyrighted music without getting the proper licensing to do so. (Music copyright is a thorny, complicated subject; if you want to play music to audiovisual content, you need at least two different licenses to do it legally: a synchronization license and a mechanical license.) “Twitch appears to do nothing in response to the thousa...