Technology

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...

There’s just over a week left until Election Day and Snapchat is reviving one of its most beloved characters, the dancing hot dog, to encourage users to make a plan to vote. The hot dog first reappeared in Snapchat’s filter reel on Saturday for Vote Early Day, but it disappeared after the holiday finished. The character is set to return for Election Day on November 3rd, dressed in an Uncle Sam-style outfit twirling a sign calling on users to find their polling location. If a user clicks the sign, they’re linked to Snap’s Before You Vote tool that helps users find their polling locations and learn about the issues and candidates on their ballots. Snapchat’s dancing hot dog returns for Election Day. Snap is also reviving its “I Voted” sticker filter that also links out to the app’s voting pl...

YouTube is updating its mobile apps with a few new features that should make viewing and controlling videos a bit easier, with new gestures, updated player controls, and additional features. The biggest update is a new gesture to enable or disable full-screen video: instead of tapping the button (or rotating your phone), you’ll now be able to swipe up on the video window to enter full-screen and swipe down to return back to the standard player page. (Those gestures will only work when swiping on the playback window itself — so you don’t have to worry about getting it confused with the swipe gestures to exit applications on both iOS and Android.) The new autoplay toggle and closed captioning buttons on YouTube. There are also a few new buttons on the video player: there’s now a new closed-c...

New observations of the Moon reveal that lunar water may be more accessible than originally thought. The new data is particularly exciting for NASA, which hopes to leverage the Moon’s resources — notably water ice embedded in the soil — to help future astronauts live and work on the lunar surface. In one study, researchers detected water directly on the lunar surface, finding the molecule on areas of the Moon lit by the Sun. A second study speculates that water ice might be trapped in tiny pockets or small craters littered all over the Moon’s surface, making water potentially more abundant and more accessible than we could have imagined. The two studies were published today in the journal Nature. This isn’t the first time water has been detected on the Moon. But the only water we’ve been a...

LG’s new Tone Free FN7 wireless earbuds still have the same germ-killing capabilities of previous models, thanks to the charging case’s built-in UV light. But now, the company is adding active noise cancellation to the mix. Available as of today in South Korea and coming to other regions later this year (with pricing TBD), the FN7 look very similar to the FN6 earbuds; they’ve got silicone ear tips and a “twist-fit Vortex Ribs design” meant to maximize passive noise isolation. The Tone Free FN7 buds have three microphones “that monitor soundwaves coming from all directions” and eliminate background noise. “With ANC activated, environmental noises are now almost completely neutralized, making every note and voice sound clearer, more natural, without losing the details from turning up the vol...