Technology

In the wake of a Facebook ban and dimming electoral hopes for President Trump, the “Stop the Steal” movement is finding a home on smaller platforms and in-person rallies. A movement supporting Trump’s false claims of election fraud and hoping to halt the ongoing vote-certification process, Stop the Steal groups are currently promoting pro-Trump rallies in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Georgia, and organizing through platforms like Parler and Discord. “President Trump has the votes,” wrote Marjorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon supporter newly elected to Congress, on Parler. “But the Democrats, Big Tech, and the Fake News Media are trying to STEAL this election. You and I cannot let that happen! This is the biggest VOTER FRAUD operation in American history…STOP THE STEAL.” Greene has 16...

Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag made his name in Call of Duty. He started his career as a professional player before shifting to become a YouTube star and, eventually, co-owner of gaming lifestyle brand 100 Thieves. But when the new Call of Duty League launched earlier this year, 100 Thieves didn’t field a team, despite much success in the now-defunct CWL. In a heartfelt video posted last year, Haag cited the high costs associated with the franchised league as one reason. But that’s going to change in 2021: the CDL’s latest team is the Los Angeles Thieves. “For the last year, we’ve just felt a gap, or a hole, at the core of our community,” Haag tells The Verge. “It didn’t feel right, after winning two major championships, to be not a part of Call of Duty in some way. We had to get back. The opport...

While eyes were on the presidential election, the United States reached a devastating milestone in the COVID-19 pandemic: on November 5th, there were 121,504 reported cases of the disease, according to The New York Times. That marked two straight days with over 100,000 reported cases. This isn’t a peak; it’s another step on a steady climb. That daily case number will likely continue to grow. “We are in big trouble,” wrote global health experts Abraar Karan and Ranu Dhillon on WBUR. In the spring, the center of the pandemic in the US was in the Northeast. Over the summer, Southern states were hit the hardest. Now, the virus is everywhere — there’s no particular hotspot, and things are bleak across the country. Cases are climbing in nearly every state, and hospitalizations are following clos...

As many predicted it would, the outcome of the 2020 election is taking many days to determine. A surge of misinformation on social networks, led by President Trump and his family, has challenged social networks’ content policies and drawn fresh attention to their enforcement capabilities. It’s too early to answer whether the platforms have risen fully to the 2020 challenge. Given the bellicose nature of the Trumps’ pronouncements this week, their hardest work is very likely still ahead of them. But in the meantime, I think it’s not too early to ask a related question: how did platforms handle the 2016 challenge in 2020? After all, it was the aftermath of Trump’s election win that reshaped public opinion about tech platforms, drew broad regulatory scrutiny around the world, and spurred the ...

I’ve developed an incredibly annoying habit while playing Astro’s Playroom. It’s a game that comes bundled with every PlayStation 5, and it’s designed to show off the new console’s DualSense controller. Most notably, it takes advantage of the gamepad’s incredibly subtle vibrations. And every time I felt something new I just had to share. I’d pass the controller to whoever was nearest and ask, “Can you feel those raindrops?” “What about the crunching sand as you walk on the beach?” “Hey, jump on that platform: doesn’t that feel like shattered glass?” The novelty still hasn’t worn off. Astro’s Playroom could easily have been a simple tech demo, and in a way it is that. Its main function is to demonstrate the possibilities of the DualSense. You can see the ways the controller can further imme...

In a lot of ways, the latest Spider-Man game is similar to the PS4 hit from 2018. That game managed to capture the joy of being a webslinger just about perfectly: swinging through the streets of New York, using webs to dispatch criminals, and clinging to a ceiling as you sneak through a villain’s base. Few games captured the sense of being a specific superhero the way Spider-Man did. The new spin-off, which launches alongside the PS5 next week, offers all of those same elements, but in a refreshed way — and it’s all thanks to a new lead. There are key differences between Peter Parker and Miles Morales as characters, and this is a game that really understands that. Yes, it’s a spinoff that’s slightly smaller in scale. But it also presents an interesting twist on an already great game. It’s ...

Over the span of just a few days, console gaming will change in a big way. That’s because both Sony and Microsoft are launching their next-generation consoles in the form of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X (along with the cheaper Series S). As with previous new consoles, a big focus is on power: these machines can play games in 4K, support features like ray tracing, and load gameplay experiences incredibly fast, thanks to SSDs. And with the exception of the budget-priced Series S, they’re also massive pieces of hardware, towering gaming consoles that will likely dominate your living room. But the biggest differences between the next Xbox and PlayStation have little to do with specs; they’re much more philosophical. For the Series X, Microsoft has focused on creating a unified experienc...

Three days after Election Day, President Trump is still tangling with moderators in an effort to spread false claims about supposed election fraud. The president tweeted eight times on Thursday night and saw fully half of the tweets restricted by Twitter, blocking retweets and replies as it has done with previous infractions. The tweets came after a lull of several hours, during which a number of the president’s surrogates sent out tweet-length statements through other channels. “Twitter is out of control,” the president said in one of the unlabeled tweets, “made possible through the government gift of Section 230!” The tweets include the allegation that election observers were prevented from entering counting stations in Philadelphia and Detroit, a claim contradicted by direct testimony f...

Xiaomi has announced the Mi Box 4S Pro, a streaming box capable of 8K video playback. The product was revealed on Weibo and is already available to order in China for 399 yuan, or about $60. The box has 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and supports HDMI 2.1. It comes with a Bluetooth remote that offers voice control. It’s not clear exactly which services will have 8K content available, or whether there are other ways to view your own 8K files on the device. The Mi Box 4S Pro runs Xiaomi’s own MIUI for TV software. A company representative tells Android Authority that there are currently no plans to share for a global release, although Google’s own new Chromecast is an excellent option in the US at $49.99. (But no 8K support, of course.) Xiaomi briefly made the only Android TV streaming player ...

Panasonic is working with one of Japan’s biggest railway companies to solve a new problem that has sprung up in recent years: a rise in people dropping wireless earbuds onto train tracks. JR East, the part of Japan’s formerly private railway group that covers the Tokyo and Tohoku regions of the country, says that there were 950 incidents of dropped earbuds across 78 Tokyo train stations in the July-September quarter, Jiji Press reports. The figure apparently accounts for a quarter of all dropped items. According to JR East, station staff normally use a grabber-style “magic hand” tool to pick up larger items that fall onto tracks, like hats or smartphones. But the gravel between the rails makes smaller objects — like, say, a left AirPod Pro — more difficult to retrieve, meaning staff someti...

For people who stumbled their way onto One American News Network (OANN)’s YouTube channel over the last few days, it might be easy to think President Trump won the 2020 election. Videos titled “Trump won. Dems try to pull a fast one” and “Trump Won. MSM hopes you don’t believe your eyes,” started appearing on OANN’s YouTube channel on November 4th — one day after people cast their votes in the federal election. The videos are full of lies predicated on people’s fears that would trigger moderation on another network, including: “It appears that Trump won by such a large margin, now they’re actually pumping out illegal ballots into the battleground states to actually beat him.” “They think that they can add 100,000 votes that no one gets to see or review, and all 100,000 votes are for Joe Bi...