Technology

Image: Ndemic Creations Plague Inc. — the strategy game about evolving and spreading diseases — received an update yesterday with a new mode that flips the script on its original gameplay. The new mode, titled Plague Inc: The Cure, is developer Ndemic Creations’ attempt to simulate the real-life, multifaceted approach required to stop a pandemic, based on input it received from real experts. The game originally launched in 2012 but surged in popularity this March after news of the COVID-19 outbreak spread across the world. The Cure is a response to our current reality, featuring several stages of containing a pandemic, like researching the disease, using techniques like contact tracing, and developing a vaccine. Ndemic stresses that the game shouldn’t be taken… Continue reading&helli...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge PayPal will now let all users in the US buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies right from their PayPal account. The news came in an update to a press release from last month announcing that the new functionality was on the way (via TechCrunch). I’m seeing the functionality available in the PayPal app. For me, there’s a banner about the ability to buy cryptocurrency right at the top of the main screen, and if I tap that, I can choose to buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin. The cryptocurrency section in the PayPal app. PayPal’s support of cryptocurrency is a significant vote of confidence in the digital currencies and could encourage everyday users to adopt them. However, PayPal isn’t the first financial… Continue reading… You ...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Today, Amazon filed suit against an influencer and a range of online businesses over an alleged counterfeiting scheme conducted across Instagram and Amazon’s Marketplace platform. According to the complaint filed in federal court in Washington state earlier today, the influencers advertised counterfeit luxury items on their Instagram page to be sold under dummy listings to Amazon Marketplace. In its complaint, Amazon describes the scheme as “a sophisticated campaign of false advertising for the purpose of evading Amazon’s counterfeit detection tools.” A @styleeandgrace Instagram post advertising a dummy Marketplace post, as seen in the complaint. The complaint centers on a Long Island woman named Kelly Fitzpatrick… Continue reading… You ...

The latest fight over infringing music on Twitch has left streamers stranded on the battlefield Continue reading… You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn rewards by chatting, sharing photos, blogging and help give users back their fair share of Internet revenue.

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Apple announced its second smart speaker to date, the HomePod mini, during its hardware event in October. The device is now available for order for $99. Apple also opened up orders for the iPhone 12 mini and 12 Pro Max, and we’ve laid out all order deals for both phones in a separate article. The HomePod mini is a smaller version of the original HomePod. It features a spherical design with one speaker, and retains the mesh fabric exterior and a small LED display on the top of the device. You can also pair two HomePod minis to use in a stereo configuration. Photo by Dan Seifert / The VergeApple’s HomePod mini We have a review of the HomePod mini if you are curious to know our thoughts on it, but if you are… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make ...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Some of today’s best deals are on PC gaming accessories, namely gaming mice. The Razer Viper wired gaming mouse, shown above, is a good option that’s steeply discounted today at both Amazon and Best Buy. Normally $80, it’s $40. This is a step up in terms of specs compared to the other two mice listed below, considering the Viper has faster and longer-lasting optical switches and more DPI sensitivity. It’s an ambidextrous mouse, too, with side-mounted thumb buttons on both sides, so it’s built to accommodate either right or left-handed gamers. Image: LogitechToday’s deal is on the black G203 LightSync, shown all the way to the right in this image. At Best Buy and Amazon, Logitech’s simple but stunning G203… Continue reading… You Deser...

Photo by Sam March Smart glasses — depending on who you ask — are the future. But if you’d rather not wait for a company like Apple or Facebook to actually sell you a pair, you can do what product designer Sam March did and simply build your own smart glasses from scratch. (March is no stranger to building his own wearable tech, as his DIY smartwatch from last year shows.) Much like the smartwatch build, March has fully documented every step of the process he took in creating the glasses, which feature a connected app and use integrated LEDs to indicate walking directions to a specified location. Photo by Sam March If you do want to build your own pair, it will take a fair amount of technical skill. March’s process involves machining… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make Mone...

Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge Back in 2019, photo storage service Flickr changed its previous policy of offering 1TB of free storage to its users, limiting free storage to 1,000 photos instead. There was, as you could imagine, a great outcry from Flickr members. As a result, we published a roundup of photo services that our readers might want to check out instead. Well, times change, and now Google — which up until now has offered unlimited storage for “high quality” (read: compressed) photos — has announced that “unlimited” is being changed to “up to 15GB on your Google account.” In other words, while photo and video storage currently does not count against your total 15 free gigs on a Google account, soon, it will — along with your Gmail, Google Drive files, and… Continue reading...

David Fincher, the director behind such films as Gone Girl, The Social Network, Fight Club, and Zodiac, says he’s signed an exclusive four-year deal with Netflix. The filmmaker confirmed the news in an interview with French magazine Premiere (spotted by The Playlist) in which he said he has “an exclusivity deal” with Netflix for another four years. He joked that what he works on next will depend on the reception to Mank, his upcoming film that releases in theaters on November 13th, and on Netflix on December 4th. “Depending on Mank’s reception, I’ll either go see them [Netflix] sheepishly asking them what I can do to redeem myself or take the attitude of the arrogant asshole who’ll require making other films in black and white,” Fincher joked. “No, I’m here to deliver them ‘content’ — what...

The PUBG Corporation says it plans to launch a new PUBG Mobile game in India, after being banned in the country in September due to the mobile app’s links to China’s Tencent. At the time of its ban, the game was India’s top downloaded title, with some 50 million users. The South Korean developer said it would create a new Indian subsidiary to oversee the title, and that the game would “maximize data security and cater to local preferences.” The company also pledged to invest $100 million in the Indian “gaming, esports, entertainment, and IT industries,” though it offered no date for when the game might actually launch. India banned a number of apps with links to China due to security concerns The news, reported by TechCrunch, NDTV, and others, is significant for India’s digital ecosystem, ...

Facebook on Wednesday announced an extension on its political advertising ban for at least another month, citing delays in election results due to COVID-19 and unprecedented rates of mail-in and absentee voting. The extension was announced in an update posted to its original blog post on the topic. “The temporary pause for ads about politics and social issues in the US continues to be in place as part of our ongoing efforts to protect the election. Advertisers can expect this to last another month, though there may be an opportunity to resume these ads sooner,” the update reads. “Getting the US election results this year may take longer than in previous elections due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and more people voting by mail. We’ve introduced a range of policies and products to ...

Amazon has rolled out the Care Hub, a set of Alexa features you can use to remotely check in on older relatives in their homes. That could be especially useful during COVID-19, when many folks aren’t able to visit their relatives as often as they usually do. Care Hub is free and easy to set up — your relative just needs an Alexa device. Through Care Hub, Alexa can send you alerts when your relative first uses their Echo device each morning or if they don’t use the device by a certain time. You’ll also have access to an activity feed where you can see an overview of their Alexa activity. (Amazon emphasized that this was designed with privacy in mind — you can see the types of activities your relative is doing, but you can’t see things like the instructions they’re giving Alexa or the specif...