Technology

Facebook will ban US-based political ads indefinitely after the presidential election, attempting to forestall confusion over its results. “While ads are an important way to express voice, we plan to temporarily stop running all social issue, electoral, or political ads in the US after the polls close on November 3rd, to reduce opportunities for confusion or abuse,” the company says. Facebook is responding to widespread concern that social media could muddle election results. The company is also taking steps to stop candidates from prematurely declaring victory. When the polls close, it will add an information box at the top of Facebook and Instagram’s apps, noting whether major media outlets like Reuters have declared a winner. It already labels some election-related posts with a link to ...

Instagram has rolled out an update to the Threads app, and it’s a pretty big change. While Threads previously only allowed you to message close friends (that is, accounts you’d added to your “Close Friends” list on Instagram), you can now use it to message any Instagram user. As planet Earth’s only user of Threads, I am sad. Okay, so I exaggerated. I’m not the only user of Threads — some 220,000 people were using Instagram’s Threads app as of last year. But that’s less than 0.1 percent of Instagram’s monthly active users, which number more than one billion. And it’s not hard to see why Threads isn’t that popular — it essentially takes some stuff you can already do with Instagram and asks you to do it on a different app. But I use Threads because it just feels intimate. It’s the only messag...

Ten years ago today, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger released Instagram into the world. Less than a year and a half later, Facebook acquired it, in what is widely regarded as one of the shrewdest acquisitions in the history of the tech industry. It is now one of the most popular apps in the world and has thrived during the pandemic. But regulators and competitors continue to nip at its heels — TikTok has reportedly now surpassed it as the second-most popular app for teens, after Snapchat — and there’s no telling what it might look like another decade from now. That’s one reason why the company is investing heavily in messaging features at the moment, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri told me last week: they make the app sticky. The company also brought back some of its classic app icons as a bir...

Google is announcing a few security-related updates today, including new cross-app alerts that will tell you when there’s a security issue with your Google account. The idea is that you’ll be notified when Google detects a potentially serious security issue with your account no matter what Google app you’re using at the time. Here’s a GIF provided by Google to give you an idea of what the new alert looks like: The alerts are rolling out on a limited basis in the coming weeks, but they’ll only be on iOS at first, Google tells The Verge. The company plans to expand them more broadly early next year, according to a blog post. The company is also adding a guest mode to Google Assistant, which won’t save any requests to your Google account while it’s on. Once it’s rolled out, you’ll be able to ...

This year has been a tumultuous one for the Overwatch League. It wasn’t supposed to be this way: the 2020 season was slated to be a breakout year, a chance to finally realize the ambition of having a truly global league with teams traveling all over the world to compete against one another. That dream was halted due to the ongoing pandemic and the inability for teams and players to travel. To make matters worse, viewership dropped after a shift from Twitch to YouTube, and the rapid rise of Riot’s team-shooter Valorant kicked off an exodus of big-name players, led by 2019 OWL MVP Jay “Sinatraa” Won. At one point, the second-best team in the league dropped its entire roster. But things have steadily been turning around. After shifting to online play, the league eventually adopted a tournamen...

To help shine the spotlight on independent game developers, Valve’s Steam Game Festival is back with an autumn edition. Now through October 13th at 1PM ET / 10AM PT, PC gamers will have the opportunity to access a slew of indie games coming out within the next six months, free of charge. Some notable titles included in the fall game festival are Alpaca Ball: Allstars, Cake Bash, Ghostrunner, Garden Story, and Smash Ball. Valve held a Spring Game Festival earlier this year to fill the void left following the cancellation of the Game Developers Conference. It was a chance for indie developers who lost the opportunity to demo their titles to get a feature on Valve’s digital storefront. In addition to hundreds of indie game demos, the Steam Game Festival: Autumn Edition also includes a week’s ...

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 just got a Nintendo Switch, or are still looking for ways to get your own, you should check out some of the deals happening on a few of the best games available for the system. Best Buy and Amazon are offering them, and this time, games that rarely see a price drop have been discounted. It’s worth noting that these sale prices are for the physical cartridge editions of each game, not digital downloads. Animal Crossing: New Horizons $45 $60 25% off Prices taken at time of publishing. The latest...

When the Critical Role show started in 2015, the simple but charming Dungeons & Dragons series didn’t seem to have much ambition beyond being an entertaining web show that tapped into a game millions of people around the world play. Critical Role soon found a group of dedicated, and growing, fans — more than 22,000 subscribers on Twitch and 1 million subscribers on YouTube — and decided to use their newfound platform to try charity streaming from time to time, beginning with an event for Doctors Without Borders. Now, Critical Role has launched the Critical Role Foundation, an entirely new arm of the business dedicated to ongoing charity fundraising that newly appointed president Ashley Johnson hopes will turn one-time events into a year-round campaign. Johnson, who joined the show’s ca...

Boom Supersonic, an aviation startup, unveiled today a full-scale demonstrator of a supersonic passenger jet that aims to be the next-generation Concorde. The XB-1 demonstrator won’t take flight until 2021, but Boom unveiled the prototype to a group of aviation and aerospace executives at Centennial Airport in Denver. At 71 feet long, the XB-1 is a scaled-down version of the full production model that Boom hopes to have ready for passengers by 2029. The prototype only has room for the pilot, while the commercial-ready version will eventually hold up to 44 passengers. Boom aims to start testing the XB-1 next year. The demonstrator is expected to reach speeds of Mach 1.3, thanks to its three J85-15 engines, which are manufactured by General Electric, primarily for military aircraft. Boom is ...

Cows with tummy troubles could be a big problem for the climate, a new study finds. That’s because cattle and other livestock with worms and other parasites produce more of the super potent greenhouse gas, methane, than healthy animals. Methane is 28 to 36 times more powerful than carbon dioxide when it comes to heating up the planet. The amount of methane coming from cattle and other livestock was estimated to grow 20 percent from 2017 to 2050 by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. But when parasitic worm infections are taken into consideration, the increase in methane could jump as high as 82 percent, according to a new paper published today in Trends in Ecology & Evolution. A dangerous feedback loop That’s a large discrepancy, especially given how much domesticated...

The company behind the $399 Nuraphone Bluetooth hearing-correcting headphones have made a new gaming microphone accessory that effectively makes the wireless headphones wired. The microphone costs $49.99 — on top of the somewhat steep cost for the Nuraphone. However, it allows the headphones to plug into anything that accepts a 3.5mm jack, so they can be used with PCs, Macs, mobile devices, the Nintendo Switch, and modern console controllers. The microphone attachment is as simple as it sounds. The flexible boom microphone attaches to a proprietary port on the bottom of the Nuraphone’s right earcup, which means you can’t use it with any other set of headphones. Part of the way down the long cord there’s an inline remote with volume controls and a mic mute switch. Once it’s plugged in (and ...

Samsung’s One UI 3.0 update, which incorporates Android 11’s new features alongside some Samsung-specific improvements, has started rolling out in public beta in the US, SamMobile reports. The software is reportedly available for the T-Mobile variants of Samsung’s Galaxy S20 lineup, including the standard S20, S20 Plus, and S20 Ultra, though the rollout should expand in the hours and days ahead. If you’ve got a supported device, you can enroll in the beta via the Samsung Members app. Thanks to the earlier developer beta release, we already have a pretty good idea of what to expect from One UI 3.0. There are minor UI tweaks like being able to touch and hold an app to quickly access its widgets, or double-tapping the home screen to turn off the phone’s display. A full list of these Samsung-s...