Technology

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge One of Ubisoft’s most influential executives has been fired after an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment made against him, reports Business Insider. Ubisoft confirmed to The Verge that the executive, Tommy François, departed the company, but declined to comment on the nature of his departure. François was formerly Ubisoft’s vice president of editorial and creative services, a role that gave him oversight over the development of many of the studio’s largest franchises. A separate Business Insider report detailed some of François actions, which included commenting on how his female colleagues looked, massaging people without asking, and, on one occasion, telling his colleagues he had spent the previous evening… Continue reading&he...

Photo by Gary He/Getty Images The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has released a “preliminary summary” of its 18-month review of the Boeing 737 Max program, and with it, has detailed the remaining steps the company will likely need to take in order to allow the plane back into the air. Among the changes the agency is asking for is new software for the plane’s flight control computer and displays, a revised manual and enhanced training for flight crew, and new maintenance procedures. A few key issues remain unfinished, though, like finalizing a new pilot training process. The FAA laid out the changes both in the 96-page summary and in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking published on Monday. The public will have 45 days to comment on the latter before the agency… Continue reading&hel...

Illustration by Alex Castro In Dragon Ball Z, the popular anime series of the late ‘80s / early ‘90s, they have this thing called — hand to God — the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. Go into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber and you’ll experience a whole year’s time in a single day. On the show, friendly but aggressively jacked warriors essentially used it to cram for exams, squeezing in a few years’ worth of training into a weekend. That used to be a sweet idea to me: if I had one of those, I would hop in, not to get shredded but to watch TV. Four months into pandemic-induced isolation, that’s not as appealing anymore. I finally have all this time to watch TV, and I never know how to spend it. This is patently absurd. There has never been more TV to watch. At any given time,… Continue reading&hel...

Square Enix’s Avengers game will arrive this fall, and it’ll bring back console-exclusive content in a big way: the company announced that PlayStation players will get exclusive access to a playable Spider-Man character sometime in 2021. Frankly, that sucks. It’s not clear whether Sony paid Square Enix extra for the exclusive character or if this is simply an extension of the movie rights that Sony has long since held to the character. But the fact is that PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 owners will be able to get access to a major piece of content for the upcoming game that players on Xbox, PC, or Stadia won’t. Platform-exclusive content in third-party releases has been a frustrating aspect of the games industry for years, with both… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make Mone...

Based on wallpaper by Michael Gillett (Wallpaper Hub) President Donald Trump claims that TikTok will “be out of business in the United States” on September 15th if its Chinese parent company ByteDance doesn’t sell it and provide the US Treasury Department with “a lot of money,” backing off an earlier claim that he planned to “ban” the app over the weekend. This follows reports that Microsoft negotiated a 45-day window to acquire the company, something it confirmed yesterday in a blog post. Trump announced the news at the White House today and elaborated on how he believes Microsoft or another “big,” “secure,” and “very American” company should buy TikTok. He argued that it should buy the entirety of the company from ByteDance — not just its operations in the US, Canada, Australia, and New&...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Android’s real-time captions feature, Live Caption, is gaining the ability to work with voice and video calls, Google announced on Monday. Previously, Live Caption only worked with media that played on your phone, like a YouTube video, but this new functionality means you’ll soon be able to have a phone call with someone and get captions of what they’re saying as they say it. If you want to see Live Caption with calls in action, check out my colleague Dieter Bohn’s video he posted to Twitter using the feature on the newly announced Pixel 4A. Google says the feature will be rolling out to the Pixel 2, 3, 3A, and 4 as well. Here is my bad pandemic hair and also a demo of Google’s Live Caption feature working with a phone call on the new… Co...

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Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple’s second-generation AirPods that come with a wireless charging case are down to their cheapest price ever at Amazon. Normally $199, they’re just $140 right now. The previous best price was holding steady at $169, so this is a great time to invest. Interestingly, these are the same price as the model that doesn’t include a charging case that supports Qi chargers. Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge If you’re in the market for tech that will help to extend and strengthen your home Wi-Fi connection, Google’s Nest Wifi mesh Wi-Fi system is among the best. Today at Target, you can save $70 on a bundle containing a Nest Wifi router along with a Point (what Google calls its mesh Wi-Fi extender that doubles as a Google… Continue reading…...

Dish has acquired Ting Mobile, a small cell service provider, in its latest step toward becoming a major nationwide carrier. Ting launched in 2012 and had 286,000 subscribers as of July 2018, making it downright tiny. Since Ting relied on other carriers’ wireless networks, the acquisition really only gives Dish the branding and customers. The bigger piece of this deal is something that most people won’t see: Ting’s parent company, the internet services company Tucows, will provide backend mobile services for the nationwide network Dish is building out. That includes core functions like customer billing, phone activation, and network provisioning — services that Dish needs in place before it can launch a truly independent wireless… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make Money Ev...

Google has announced the Pixel 4A, its new midrange Android phone that packs in features similar to the Pixel 4, like an excellent camera and astrophotography mode, but at a much more affordable price. It will be available starting on August 20th for $349. Check out Dieter Bohn’s video review, embedded above, for everything you need to know or read his full review right here. Preorders are up at a few places, including Google’s own store, Amazon, and Best Buy. Compared to shopping for most other phones, it’s simple here. There’s just one size, one storage configuration, and one color. So really, your only decision is where you want to buy it and whether you want a case included with your purchase. Starting with Amazon, Google is selling… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make M...

If you were writing a book and needed to find out how red clothes dye is traditionally made, you’d probably start with a simple Google search. At least, that’s what John Boyne, the author behind The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas says he “must have” done when it emerged that several fantasy ingredients from The Legend of Zelda have appeared in his most recent book, A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom. The problem, as journalist Dana Schwartz notes, is that rather than listing a real-world recipe, the current top search result for “ingredients red dye clothes” links to a guide from Polygon on how to dye clothes in the video game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It’s not an uncommon mistake for Google’s algorithms to make, but in this… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make Mon...

Illustration by Alex Castro On Friday Graham Ivan Clark was charged along with two others for the most serious hack in Twitter’s history, where numerous high-profile accounts including those of Elon Musk, Barack Obama, and Bill Gates were taken over to promote a bitcoin scam. In a new investigation, The New York Times has delved into Clark’s history, which reportedly escalated from small Minecraft scams into a hack so big that some have dubbed it a global security crisis. Here’s how it all began, as described by the NYT: Millions of teenagers play the same video games and interact in the same online forums as Mr. Clark. But what emerges in interviews with more than a dozen people who know him, along with legal documents, online forensic work and social media… Continue reading…...