Technology

SpaceX’s Starship prototype during the test hop, recorded by LabPadre’s livestream | Image: Screenshot from LabPadre livestream Just two days after returning its first astronauts back to Earth, SpaceX successfully flew a prototype of its next-generation, deep-space rocket in south Texas, sending the vehicle up to 500 feet and then landing it back down on Earth. It’s the largest test version of the massive spaceship to see some air. The prototype is that of SpaceX’s Starship, a spacecraft the company wants to build to transport people to deep-space worlds like the Moon and Mars. The final version of the spaceship would stand at nearly 400 feet high and 30 feet wide, and be capable of sending more than 100 tons of cargo into low Earth orbit, according to SpaceX. Starship is designed to fly t...

Alto’s Adventure and Alto’s Odyssey, two mobile games we at The Verge love because of their beautiful art style and polished gameplay, are finally coming to PS4, Xbox One, and the Epic Games Store as The Alto Collection on August 13th. This will also be the first time Alto’s Odyssey comes to Windows. A Nintendo Switch port is “coming soon,” with no firm release date announced yet. Originally released on iOS in 2015 and both Android and Linux in 2016, Alto’s Adventure is an endless runner snowboarding game. You play as Alto or one of his friends as they traverse the snowy landscape while being chased by village elders; you control your character by tapping the screen, which lets you jump over obstacles and perform tricks. Alto’s Adventure… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make ...

Photo by Blake Nissen for The Boston Globe via Getty Images The pharmaceutical company Moderna started the last, longest step in the process of testing its COVID-19 vaccine candidate at the end of July — a Phase 3 clinical trial. It’s an enormous undertaking: their goal is to recruit 30,000 people, inject some of them with an experimental vaccine and then follow each and every one of them to see how many contract the coronavirus and how many do not. This will take months, even with the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed compressing the timeline whenever possible. Those months may seem endless when over a thousand people are dying from COVID-19 each day in the United States. The process is long and intensive for a reason, though. Just because a vaccine exists doesn’t mean it’s reason...

Photo by Matthew Horwood/Getty Images Virgin Atlantic Airways has filed for bankruptcy protection for its United States business, as it tries to nail down a £1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) rescue plan announced last month. It’s the second of Richard Branson’s airlines to do so during the COVID-19 pandemic, after Virgin Australia filed for “administration” — a form of bankruptcy in countries like Australia and England — earlier this year. Virgin Atlantic filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of New York on Tuesday. Chapter 15 is a way for foreign companies to let US bankruptcy courts recognize restructuring efforts happening abroad. The company is not yet going out of business or liquidating its operations, which is what Chapter 7 bankruptcy… Continue reading...

Photo: Film Frame / Marvel Studios Disney continues to face financial woes in just about every part of its business, but one year after Avengers: Endgame came out, it’s clear just how much the pandemic has affected its studios division. Disney didn’t release any major films last quarter, and the third quarter earnings report shows how much that impacted the company. Overall, revenue hit $11.78 billion, down from $20.2 billion the year before, but most of that came from streaming. Studio revenues decreased 55 percent in the quarter to $1.7 billion, the company announced. That means Disney made $1.7 billion this quarter, and $3.8 billion in the same time frame last year. What it shows is there’s a big Avengers: Endgame hole in the calendar, and it’s a perfect example of… Continue readi...

Image: Samsung Russia Samsung’s Unpacked event tomorrow will be the official showcase for the heavily rumored and much-leaked Galaxy Note 20. For those who wanted yet another look at the phone in full before it’s unveiling, an AT&T promotional video pretty much shows off every inch of the device and even details its most important specs and new features. The video, which popped up on Twitter courtesy of South American tech blogger Karlos Peru, appears to have been prepped as a piece of marketing material to promote the new phone and its larger Ultra variant. It doesn’t tell us anything groundbreaking that we didn’t already know or suspect about Samsung’s upcoming extra-large phones, but it is pretty staggering that a video with this much information and… Continue reading… ...

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It will finally be slightly easier to share files, images, links, and other content between Android devices. Google is launching a new Android feature called “Nearby Share” that enables direct sharing between any device running Android 6 and up. Nearby Share is already available on some Pixel and Samsung phones, and Google says it’ll arrive on other devices “over the next few weeks.” Nearby Share works very much like Apple’s AirDrop feature for the iPhone: you simply select the Nearby Share button on the share menu and then wait for a nearby phone to appear. Then whatever thing you’re sharing is sent directly over your transfer method of choice to the other phone. As with AirDrop, you can set your preferred visibility for Nearby Share… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make Mon...

Image: Motorola Motorola announced today that it’s bringing the previously international-only One Fusion Plus to the US, where the pop-up camera smartphone will cost $399 starting on August 5th. The US version of the One Fusion Plus is identical to the international model. It features a 6.5-inch FHD+ display with a pop-up 16-megapixel camera, along with four additional sensors on the back of the device: a main 64-megapixel sensor, a wide-angle 8-megapixel camera, a 5-megapixel macro camera, and a 2-megapixel depth camera. Internally, it’ll feature a Snapdragon 730 processor, 128GB of storage, 6GB of RAM, and a 5,000mAh battery that Motorola promises will provide over two days of battery life. It’ll also run Android 10 and offer a 3.5mm headphone jack,… Continue reading… You De...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Today, Google shared a detailed timeline for Google Play Music’s shutdown. Access will be revoked in September for users in New Zealand and South Africa and for users in all other regions in October. Come December, the service will shut down completely, after which you won’t be able to transfer your content. Additionally, starting later this month Google will no longer accept purchases for music within its Play Store. Google is making these big moves now that its YouTube Music service is in full swing as its replacement. Just a few months ago, it started allowing Google Play Music users to transfer practically every facet of their libraries to the new service, including playlists, artists, albums, songs, purchased content,… Continue reading… Yo...

Tapping the magnifying glass icon searches for the contents of the message. | Image: WhatsApp WhatsApp is piloting a new feature that lets users quickly search the contents of viral messages to fact-check misinformation, the company has announced. Starting today, a magnifying glass icon will start appearing next to messages that have been forwarded through a chain of five or more people. Tapping it searches for the message’s contents online, with the idea being that this should reveal any common conspiracy theories or misinformation the message contains. In a screenshot of the feature released by WhatsApp, it uses the example of a viral message which claims that “drinking fresh boiled garlic water will cure COVID-19.” A web search brings up three fact-checking websites, which flag this cla...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Hi everybody. I’m back to writing this newsletter after some time off and somehow, magically, still somewhat refreshed by my week off in the woods of northern California. If you’re a new subscriber, welcome! This is a newsletter about computers and consumer tech. I’m not going to try to catch you up on everything that happened last week, but the antitrust hearings were the main thing. We have a full story stream of the biggest news here, I suggest you check some of it out. Since I was only vaguely aware of last week’s goings-on, the things that jumped out to me were a couple funny bits: Amazon clocked Google’s Nest acquisition as having been a bit of a fiasco and Tim Cook forwards along long emails on Sunday evening with just a single… Continue readi...