Technology

In the week leading up to Election Day, The Verge is running a series of editorials about what we’re voting for — not candidates but the ideas that move us to engage with the electoral process in the first place. On the night of March 11th, 2020, I sat in my Brooklyn apartment next to a stack of old magazines, some glue sticks, and scissors. I’d spent the week staring at coronavirus models and working myself into a knot of overwhelming anxiety, watching as the coronavirus pandemic picked up speed in the United States. My friend thought collaging would be a good distraction. Instead, that night, the world changed: Tom Hanks announced he had COVID-19, the National Basketball Association suspended its season after Rudy Gobert tested positive for the virus, and life in the US jolted to a state...

Sony’s gaming division is continuing to drive major profits for the company even as the PlayStation 4 era winds down. The company announced PlayStation-related revenue of 507 billion yen (~$4.9 billion) and an operating profit of 105 billion yen (~$1 billion) for its July-September quarter, respective improvements of 52 and 40 percent on the same period a year ago. With the PlayStation 5 set to launch in a couple of weeks, normally you’d expect a significant negative impact on Sony’s books for the previous quarter as the company ramps up manufacturing before it starts to bring in more revenue. Sony does say that its profits were hit by an increase in costs, while revenue was reduced by a predictable decrease in PS4 sales. Higher game software sales and PlayStation Plus subscriptions, howev...

Smart home gadget maker Wyze has a new version of its flagship product: the Wyze Cam v3, the company is calling it. The redesigned security camera will still cost just $20, in line with Wyze’s aggressively low-cost smart home strategy, and preorders start today with a ship date of mid-November. Beyond the new design, the Wyze Cam v3 has a few key differences from its predecessor. The new camera can be used as both an indoor and outdoor model, thanks to its IP65 weather resistance. It also has double the infrared LEDs for improved night vision and to support its use in the home and outside. The new model comes with a new color night vision option, thanks to a new lower-aperture sensor that allows it to take in 40 percent more light. Wyze says the option will be enabled on Wyze Cam v3 by def...

When scientists and pharmaceutical companies clear the hurdle of developing a safe, effective, COVID-19 vaccine, they won’t be able to rest on their laurels. Instead, they’ll face another enormous challenge — making millions of doses and keeping those doses extremely cold. They’ll get an assist, though, from temperature-monitoring tech that’s advanced dramatically in the past few years. Vaccines, like most pharmaceuticals, have to be stored within a certain temperature range in order to stay potent. During a future COVID-19 vaccine’s journey from factory to pharmacy, small temperature sensors will monitor the conditions that the vaccines will encounter en route and at their final destination. They’ll be embedded in packaging, freezers, and refrigerators at nearly every point of the vaccine...

Microsoft saw some big growth in Microsoft Teams at the beginning of the pandemic, and it has kept accelerating over the past six months. During an earnings call with investors today, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reveled Microsoft Teams now has 115 million daily active users. That’s a more than 50 percent rise from the 75 million that Microsoft reported almost six months ago. It’s difficult to compare Microsoft’s numbers to its rivals, though. Both Zoom and Google report daily active participants, which means a single user could be counted multiple times through different meetings during a day. Google revealed it has 100 million daily active participants earlier this year, and Zoom said it had 300 million daily active participants. Slack also saw some growth earlier this year. Microsoft has...

Record-setting wildfires in Colorado are wreaking havoc on forests that have already been devastated by outbreaks of another kind: infestations of beetles that burrow beneath tree bark and eventually kill their hosts. State officials last week mentioned that the East Troublesome Fire was burning through an abundance of “beetle-killed” pine trees, boosted by dangerous weather conditions. That fire grew to become the second largest fire in Colorado’s history and was only 20 percent contained as of Tuesday. Three of the largest wildfires on record in the state have burned this year, and they’ve preyed on forests hard-hit by beetle infestations. But researchers warn against blaming the beetles for the unprecedented fire season Colorado is having. There’s growing evidence that beetles play a ne...

Microsoft has been slowly weaning users off its legacy Internet Explorer browser for a very long time, recently going so far as to use a forced Windows update to install its new Chromium Edge browser on your Windows PC. But next month, Microsoft’s planning to force your computer to automatically launch some 1,156 websites in Edge, too — if you try to launch an “incompatible” site in IE. That’s the report from ZDNet, which also recorded a video showing how it works: There’s a lot of big-name sites on the automatically-launch-in-Edge list, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, a number of Google products, Microsoft Teams, and quite a few banks and other big brands. According to a Microsoft FAQ, the change will roll out in Microsoft Edge version 87, which is set to arrive the week ...

Just yesterday, we found FCC filings for a new Anker PowerWave wireless charging pad that mentioned an unannounced second generation of Echo Buds with wireless charging right in the name. That charger has since leaked in full in a Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) listing spotted by GizmoChina. The now-pulled WPC listing included the render of the product at the top of this post that gives us a few hints about what the Echo Buds’ case might look like and some of the features of the pad. The charger appears to have an oblong indentation for the Echo Buds’ wireless charging case to rest in, indicating the case will have a much different shape than more rectangular one used with the original Echo Buds. (We observed a similar oblong shape in a diagram of the pad included with the FCC filings.) T...

Audible is turning into more of a podcast app. The company announced today that its catalog now contains 100,000 free podcasts that are already available on other streaming platforms, including Pod Save America, This American Life, and Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. The shows are now available through the app and will soon show up on Audible’s podcast landing page. Listeners won’t need a subscription to access these shows. This move sets Audible up to compete more earnestly against Spotify and Apple Podcasts, the two biggest names in the space, as well as other, smaller competitors. Audible, which is owned by Amazon, launched a new subscription plan called Audible Plus in August, which gives listeners access to Audible’s original audio content at a cheaper monthly cost. The catch is that th...

Microsoft posted the first quarter of its 2021 financial results today, reporting revenue of $37.2 billion and a net income of $13.9 billion. Revenue is up 12 percent, and net income has increased by 30 percent. While the ongoing pandemic continues to force many to work remotely during an economic downturn, Microsoft is benefiting from the shift in the way people are now working, playing games more, and connecting to others through videoconferencing. Cloud services are the biggest boost to Microsoft’s revenues from the pandemic shift in behavior. Both Office commercial and consumer are up, with Office 365 Commercial revenue growth up by 21 percent. Server products and cloud services revenue has also increased 22 percent as more businesses rely on cloud services for remote working. Azure re...

Apple is bringing Jon Stewart back to TV. Stewart will host a new series for Apple TV Plus that will feature focused looks at his advocacy work and “topics that are currently part of the national conversation,” Apple said in a press release announcing the series. The show sounds a bit like John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight: each episode will run for an hour and focus on a single topic. Apple refers to it as a “current affairs series.” There’ll also be a companion podcast, though Apple declined to say who would be hosting the audio show. Apple also signed a first-look deal with Stewart’s production company Stewart’s new series doesn’t currently have a name or a release date. The Hollywood Reporter says the show is expected to start next year, and it says the episodes won’t come out on a night...

Mophie is one of the oldest names in the business when it comes to smartphone battery packs, but its latest release puts a new spin on the approach. Instead of a battery case that can only be used with a single phone, the new Juice Pack Connect uses a modular system to clip a battery pack onto the back of your phone, where it can wirelessly charge it. It’s a creative solution that solves a lot of problems of both bespoke battery cases and more modern Qi battery packs. The Juice Pack Connect works with basically any phone that supports wireless charging, not just a single device. And the clip mechanism allows for Qi charging to be used even when out on the go, without resorting to solutions like a weird suction cup array to keep the charger and phone together. [embedded content] Plus, Mophi...