Technology

Sony has unveiled a new program for Windows 10 that makes it easier to use the company’s digital cameras as webcams. The software is called Imaging Edge Webcam and allows you to connect your Sony camera to your PC via USB without the need for additional hardware like a USB capture card. That means you can get a huge boost in image quality compared to most traditional webcams. Unfortunately, there’s no mention of a version for macOS. Sony says that a total of 35 of its cameras are compatible with the new software, including the newly announced Alpha 7S III. Other supported models include the Alpha 9 II, Alpha 9, Alpha 7R IV, Alpha 7R III, Alpha 7R II, Alpha 7S II, Alpha 7S, Alpha 7 III, Alpha 7 II, Alpha 6600, Alpha 6400, Alpha 6100, RX100 VII, RX100 VI, RX0 II, RX0, and vlog camera ZV-1. A...

Microsoft Flight Simulator produces some stunning realism most of the time, but there’s the odd occasion where things go hilariously wrong. PC players inside simulated airplanes have been scouring the globe this week and have discovered some rather amusing glitches. The biggest discovery is a giant mountain-high obelisk in Melbourne, Australia. The unusually tall building doesn’t exist in real life, but Bing Maps thinks a giant obelisk dominates the skies of northern Melbourne. Microsoft Flight Simulator utilizes Microsoft’s Bing Maps technology — streaming data directly from two petabytes of storage in the cloud — so it’s likely that this particular glitch is based on incorrect Bing Maps data. In Microsoft Flight Simulator a bizarrely eldritch, impossibly narrow skyscraper pierces the ski...

A couple of weeks before the first day of school, Amanda received a welcome kit from the Texas high school she’s set to teach theater at this year. The kit included a cloth mask and a face shield — the personal protective equipment (PPE) she’s expected to wear when she spends time on campus this semester. However, neither piece seemed particularly reliable. “It’s a three-layer cloth mask— it’s not a medical mask — and the face shield looks like it was made by a Booster Club,” Amanda tells The Verge. “But I mean, I’ll take it because I know some of my other teacher friends aren’t receiving PPE at all; they’re having to pay out of pocket to get masks for themselves.” Amanda officially started teaching classes this week, along with thousands of other teachers across the country. Amanda is not...

Western Digital has along since a mainstay for portable hard drives with its popular My Passport line, but its recently started to shift its focus to solid-state drives — and now the company is launching its second-generation My Passport SSD lineup, which brings even faster speeds than the original. The new My Passport SSDs borrow from the overall design language from the current hard drive models, but replace the angular corners and waves with a more rounded design to tell the two lines apart. The idea is that the hard drive lineup — with its larger capacities of up to 5TBs on a single device — will serve customers looking for sheer storage, while the new SSDs will offer better speed and durability. Speed is the name of the game here: the new drive supports the USB-C 3.2 Gen-2 standard, a...

Taiwan is planning to lock out video streaming services from Chinese tech giants Baidu and Tencent. While such services are ostensibly already illegal in the self-governing island republic, Baidu’s iQiyi and Tencent’s WeTV currently operate under a legal loophole that allowed them to partner with local companies. Now, Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs says that Taiwanese companies won’t be able to provide these services as of September 3rd. The move shows how Chinese tech companies are facing increasing difficulty in pushing into other markets as geopolitical tensions continue to rise. President Trump has moved to ban Tencent’s WeChat and ordered ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok’s US operations, while India blocked dozens more Chinese apps earlier this year. China claims Taiwan as ...

A number of Google services including Gmail, Drive, Docs, Meet, Groups, Chat, Keep and Voice are experiencing service disruptions, the company is reporting on its G Suite Status Dashboard. We’ve verified that file uploads are failing across Google’s services, including uploading attachments in Gmail to both personal and G Suite gmail accounts. In some cases trying to simply compose a new email or a reply fails. Google first said it was investigating issues with Gmail at 1:29AM ET. It later provided official confirmation of a range of issues: Gmail sending issues, Meet recording issues, Creating files issues in Drive, CSV user upload issues in Admin Console, Posting message issues in Google Chat As of 3:12AM ET Google says its investigation is ongoing, and that it intends to provide an upda...

While the world writhes in the clutches of a seemingly never-ending wave of chaos, one Twitch streamer’s heartwarming struggle to win a game of the new battle royale sensation Fall Guys is a story we can all happily rally around. Timothy “TimTheTatMan” Betar, a streamer best known for playing popular battle royale games and his tight friendships with other well-known names in the Fornite and adjacent communities, has been struggling to claim a crown since the release of UK developer Mediatonic’s Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout on August 4th. His countless failed attempts and increasingly comical frustration morphed into a meme, with the official Fall Guys Twitter account goading and trolling him for his failures and fellow streamers poking fun. But on Wednesday, Tim claimed victory — and did ...

Airbnb has filed documents to begin its initial public offering, the company said on Wednesday. Airbnb’s securities registration filing remains confidential, but it has been submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, beginning the process that will ultimately allow everyday investors to purchase shares in the company for the first time. The company has yet to determine the specifics of the public offering, including share price and the number of shares to be offered. Airbnb had previously discussed its intention to go public this month despite the ongoing financial fallout from the pandemic, which resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds and cancellations on Airbnb’s platform. In the wake of that economic damage, The Wall Street Journal valued the company at $18 bil...

Thundercats ho! Hulu has locked down the rights to stream Thundercats on its service starting tomorrow. This includes both the iconic original series from the 1980s, plus the 2011 reboot. The kid within me is screaming with pure joy. I was born in 1995, so, unfortunately, I did not have the pleasure of watching the original Thundercats cartoon when it aired between 1985 and 1989. Fortunately, in 2002, Cartoon Network’s programming block Toonami did air it, and I remember watching as a seven-year-old kid, stumbling upon the cartoon after viewing a promo and thinking to myself “wow, this show looks cool.” The next time it aired, I made sure to tune in. [embedded content] The intro grabbed me right away: it was catchy, colorful, and hearing Lion-O screaming, “Thunder! Thunder! Thunder! Thunde...

ZTE has already announced that it plans to launch the first mass-produced 5G-enabled smartphone with an under-display camera in China next month, and now the company has shared new images that give us a better understanding of what that phone’s screen might actually look like (via Dutch website Tweakers). In the render at the top of this post, you can see that the phone, which will be called the ZTE Axon 20 5G, has no visible camera up top — no hole punch, no notch. The render was shared by ZTE’s president of mobile devices Ni Fei on Chinese social media network Weibo. And in this next render, also shared by Fei on Weibo, you can get an idea of what that no-camera screen might look like while it’s powered on. It looks pretty clean, if you ask me, even with that hint of bottom bezel. (There...

Fortnite disappeared from the App Store last week as part of developer Epic Games’ big legal and regulatory showdown with Apple, but the battle royale hit is not gone entirely. If you’ve never downloaded the game before, you’re pretty much out of luck for now — and we recommend avoiding any of the eBay listings that appear to be popping up to hawk iPhones with the game installed for as much as $10,000. That sounds suspect. Those who have the game downloaded already can still play it of course and even install update files, at least until the next big patch launches, as Apple does not have the ability to forcibly remove software from your device. But for those who’ve downloaded Fortnite at least once in the past but perhaps offloaded it or removed it manually, there is still a way to reinst...

Yesterday, Facebook infuriated the VR world, announcing plans to require a Facebook login for future VR headsets. The decision broke an early promise from Oculus founder Palmer Luckey and was almost universally reviled online, with critics raising concerns about intrusive data collection, targeted advertising, and being forced to use a service they hated. On the Oculus subreddit, some users posted bitter memes about Farmville and data harvesting, while others swapped recommendations for other headsets. One posted a cartoon of Oculus as a sinking ship. The truth is probably a lot less dire. Facebook-related boycotts fizzle all the time — when it acquired Oculus in 2014, Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson furiously killed a deal to put his game on Oculus Rift, only to be “officially ov...