Technology

After an escalating series of viral stunts, internet collective MSCHF is taking on advertising itself. On Monday, the collective posted a series of jingles on TikTok aimed as a broadside against the primary source of funding for social networks. Some of the jingles call out the general concept, while others take on specific brands the group has decided to target: Amazon, Comcast, Facebook, Fashion Nova, the NFL, Palantir, Purdue, and even TikTok itself. “We had our team [do some] digging on them, and found nine that had some form of dirt we didn’t like and wanted to bring to light more,” Daniel Greenberg, MSCHF’s creative strategist, tells The Verge. “Attack TikTok for content suppression. Attack Fashion Nova for stealing designs and using sweatshops. Attack the NFL for disregarding player...

Panasonic has released an official Lumix webcam app, as first spotted by PetaPixel. The software, still in beta since its quiet release late last month, lets you plug your camera into your Mac or Windows machine and have it recognized as a video source in apps like Google Meet and Zoom. Panasonic’s official software replaces the workaround hack the company introduced back in June. Panasonic’s workaround was necessary because of the webcam shortage during early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it was far more cumbersome than a native app, requiring you use Panasonic’s hack to remove the tethering app’s overlaid interface and then direct the live feed from the camera through an intermediary like Open Broadcaster Software (OBS). Thankfully, that native app removes all that fuss and you ca...

In a rare licensing move, Netflix’s hit drama series Narcos will be available to stream for free on ViacomCBS’s Pluto TV beginning on October 20th. The deal marks the first time that Narcos will be widely available to US streaming viewers without a Netflix subscription and for free. (The show was previously licensed to Univision through a linear deal.) All five seasons of the show (Narcos and Narcos: Mexico) will be available to stream as part of Pluto TV’s Crime Drama and Narco Novelas channel lineup, as well as within its own dedicated channel for those who want to marathon the show. The show’s first season will stream weeknights at 10PM ET. Catch-up episodes will be made available the following day beginning at 8PM ET. The goal is to debut a new season of the series each month through F...

Facebook is donating £1 million ($1.3 million) to Bletchley Park, the UK center for Allied code-breaking during World War II that now operates as a museum. The Bletchley Park Trust, a registered charity, announced in August that the site was facing a revenue shortfall of £2 million because of falling visitor numbers caused by the coronavirus. Because of the drop in revenue (amounting to 95 percent of annual income), the park announced it was considering 35 redundancies, constituting a third of its workforce. Facebook’s donation will save some of these jobs, but it’s not clear how many. Bletchley Park was home to the world’s first programmable digital computer Facebook said it made the donation in recognition of Bletchley Park’s “ongoing legacy as a birthplace of modern computing.” The park...

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. Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10 is available for $550 from Microsoft’s eBay store, its lowest price yet. Normally the phone costs $950 and previously we have seen the price go down to as low as $600. The price is available for all three color options, black, white, or the iridescent Glow model. This is for an unlocked version of the phone that’s compatible with all of the major LTE networks in the US. It also comes with a full US warranty. Samsung originally released the Galaxy Note 10 last year alongside t...

On Monday, YouTube announced a number of updates for its YouTube Music TV app, including TVs running Android TV OS and the new Chromecast with Google TV. For all smart TVs, YouTube Music users can now access saved playlists and liked songs in their available libraries, the company said in a blog post. The options will appear in the YouTube Music tab within the YouTube TV app. The update also includes new visuals to show albums and and playlist artwork. “We’re working hard to bring even more features to YouTube Music,” the blog post reads. “In the coming months, YouTube Music Premium users will be able to continue playing music in the background after exiting the app.” The main change is that Android TV OS users will be able to access music uploads directly in your library. There’s also a n...

Alphabet’s X lab, the former Google division that launched the Waymo self-driving car unit and other ambitious projects, has officially announced its latest “moonshot”: a computational agriculture project the company is calling Mineral. The project is focused on sustainable food production and farming at large scales, with a focus on “developing and testing a range of software and hardware prototypes based on breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, simulation, sensors, robotics and more,” according to project lead Elliott Grant. A blog post outlining the project’s vision says Mineral, which now has an official name but may have launched in secret around 2017 according to Grant’s LinkedIn page, will try and aim technology toward solving issues around sustainability. Those include feeding ...

On Monday, the US Department of Justice signed on to a new international statement warning of the dangers of encryption and calling for an industry-wide effort to enable law enforcement agencies to access encrypted data once a warrant has been obtained. The US was joined in the effort by officials representing the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, and Japan. The statement begins by acknowledging the value of encryption in protecting free expression across the world, citing a 2017 report from the UN Human Rights Commission. But the statement quickly pivots to the ostensible problems posed by the technology. encryption under threat “Particular implementations of encryption technology, however, pose significant challenges to public safety,” the statement reads. “We urge the industry ...

The head of Russia’s space program said today that NASA’s plans to send people back to the Moon are “too US-centric” for Russia to participate. He has been critical of the program in the past and now says that Russia would only be open to participating if the Moon plans were more focused on international cooperation. “The most important thing here would be to base this program on the principles of international cooperation that we’ve all used” to fly the ISS, Dmitry Rogozin, the director-general of Roscosmos, said through a translator during a virtual press conference at the International Astronautical Congress. He added: “If we could get back to considering making these principles as the foundation of the program, then Roscosmos could also consider its participation.” Rogozin has made it ...

Earth is about to get a temporary mini-moon — and this one might be space junk. Researchers are tracking an object that looks like it will be captured by Earth’s gravity for just a few months this winter before safely heading back out into the Solar System. It might be a standard asteroid, but some astronomers say that the mystery object’s path indicates that it could be a part of a 1960s era rocket. “I’m pretty jazzed about this,” Paul Chodas, the manager of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies told The Associated Press. Chodas is one of the world’s leading experts on asteroids and has been on the lookout for returning space debris for decades, he told the AP. The object was first identified last month by researchers in Hawaii. They named it 2020 SO, and designated it as a near-ear...

Samsung has announced the Galaxy A42 5G, the latest in its lineup of more reasonably priced and lower-specced A-series phones. The A42 is now Samsung’s cheapest phone with 5G, selling for £349 (about $455 USD). That puts it £80 below the Galaxy A51 5G, which was previously the cheapest way to buy into Samsung’s 5G lineup at £429 (or priced at $500 USD in the US). The Galaxy A42 uses the Snapdragon 750G, a middle-of-the-pack processor that was just announced by Qualcomm last month. It’s supposed to be a step up from the Snapdragon 730G, seen in phones like the Pixel 4A, but it isn’t quite as powerful as the Snapdragon 765G, seen in the Pixel 4A 5G and OnePlus Nord. Images: Samsung The phone has a 6.6-inch OLED display with a teardrop cutout for a 20 megapixel camera at the top, 4GB to 8GB o...

Through the many twists and turns of Foxconn’s troubled Wisconsin project, one thing has long been clear: the company is not building the promised 20 million-square-foot Gen 10.5 LCD factory specified in its contract with the state. Even before President Trump broke ground on the supposed factory in June 2018, Foxconn said it would instead build a far smaller factory than it had proposed. The discrepancy between what Foxconn is doing and what it said it would do in its contract has only grown since then, and it has brought Wisconsin and the company to an impasse. Documents obtained by The Verge show that attempts to renegotiate that contract have so far failed, and today, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), which oversees the deal, rejected Foxconn’s application for tax ...