Technology

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge 2020 has seen renewed interest in VR, and it’s not just because of the pandemic. There have been tentpole releases like Half-Life: Alyx, and the Oculus Quest continues to grow in popularity with a rumored new version on the horizon. July in particular had a lot of new games and releases. We can’t cover every new VR game as they comes out, but I thought it might be helpful to take a step back every now and then to give an update on what’s been going on. And please, do let me know if there’s anything in particular you’d like us to cover or focus on! FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S: HELP WANTED The VR version of Five Nights at Freddy’s, the hugely popular indie horror series, came to the Oculus Quest in July and immediately became… Continue reading&he...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In a blog post Sunday, Microsoft said it was “prepared to continue discussions to explore a purchase of TikTok in the United States,” following a conversation between its CEO Satya Nadella and President Trump. It’s the first time the company has confirmed reports it was in talks to acquire the video sharing platform. “Microsoft fully appreciates the importance of addressing the President’s concerns. It is committed to acquiring TikTok subject to a complete security review and providing proper economic benefits to the United States, including the United States Treasury,” the blog post reads. It adds that the company expects to move “quickly to pursue discussions with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, in a matter of weeks, and in any… Continue ...

Photo by Andre Borges/NurPhoto via Getty Images Facebook has blocked the accounts of a dozen allies of President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, BBC News reported. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered the 12 accounts blocked back in May, as they are under investigation for allegedly spreading false news about judges in the country. A Supreme Court judge said Friday that Facebook had not fully complied with that earlier order. A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge that the company had complied with the order, which it called “extreme” by “restricting the ability for the target Pages and Profiles to be seen from IP locations in Brazil.” The Supreme Court fined the company 1.92 million reais (about $368,000) for not blocking worldwide access to the accounts in question. It could…...

After SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday and before NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley were out of the capsule, dozens of boats circled the area, creating chaos as recovery crews tried to get to the spacecraft. One had a banner with a “Trump” logo on it. Quite the crowd in the vicinity of Crew Dragon as the main recovery ship approaches. #Demo2 pic.twitter.com/D0MwhT3GCn — Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) August 2, 2020 The spacecraft completed a two-month mission to the International Space Station, and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida at 2:48PM ET, where recovery boats were waiting nearby to receive the crew. Good splashdown of Dragon confirmed!… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make Money Even Wh...

Murder hornet. Dead. | Washington State Department of Agriculture Hello it is I, your intrepid murder hornet correspondent. What’s a murder hornet, you ask? I wish I did not know. But as I wrote back in May, the Asian giant hornet (its official name) can grow up to two inches long, rips the heads off of honeybees, and has a stinger that can jam right through standard beekeeping suits. Oh and they can fly up to 20 miles per hour and their stings can kill you. Nature is the best. Guess what, though: the heroes at the Washington State Department of Agriculture say they’ve trapped a murder hornet in the state for the first time (as opposed to finding one in the wild). The hornet was discovered in a trap near Birch Bay in Whatcom County (about 35 miles south of the Canadian border) on July 14th...

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley safely returned to Earth inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule this afternoon, bringing their historic two-month mission at the International Space Station to an end. The spacecraft carrying the two astronauts splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida at 2:48PM ET, where recovery boats were waiting nearby to receive the crew. With this landing, the Crew Dragon has now successfully completed its first-ever passenger flight to orbit. The mission began on May 30th, when Behnken and Hurley both launched inside the capsule from Cape Canaveral, Florida and then docked with the space station a day later. Called Demon-2 or DM-2, the mission was meant to prove out all of the… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make M...

The League of Legends World Championship 2020 will be held in Shanghai | Riot Games Even though many esports tournaments this year have been postponed or canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, Riot Games announced that it will hold the League of Legends World Championship 2020 in Shanghai from September 25th to October 31st. The finals will be held in Pudong Soccer Stadium. The company says by hosting the event at one site rather than several different sites, they’ll be able to more closely control the show environment. At present the plans call for early stages of the tournament to have no in-person audiences. The company says it will rely on “local guidelines” to decide whether to allow an in-person audience for the finals. If so, details about tickets and any safety measures that nee...

This afternoon, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are scheduled to start their journey back to Earth inside SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon, bringing an end to their historic flight to the International Space Station. If all goes to plan, the two will splash down in the Crew Dragon off the western coast of Florida on Sunday afternoon. Getting back to Earth from orbit is no easy task, and the two astronauts have a long trip ahead of them before they’re back on solid ground. Once Behnken and Hurley undock from the space station, they’ll spend the next 18 hours in orbit, slowly distancing themselves from the ISS, before making the dive into Earth’s atmosphere. That begins a harrowing trip down to the surface, as the Crew Dragon experiences extreme temperatures reaching up to 3,500 degrees ...

With a rumored $349 price, OLED screen, Google’s great camera, and a good-enough processor, the upcoming Pixel 4A sounds like it’ll be a tough deal to beat for those who don’t need a premium phone. And it looks like the phone will finally be launching on August 3rd. Google has officially confirmed that a new Pixel phone is coming this Monday, and while there’s a slight possibility it could be a different phone, Google itself had also leaked a picture of a phone last month that matches up with everything else we’d heard. Now, more renders of the phone have been leaked that appear to confirm a lot of the earlier rumors. Ishan Agarwal posted an image of the phone similar to ones we’ve seen previously and apparent confirmation of the phone’s specs. Full Google Pixel 4a Specifications in this t...

GeForce Now users can sync their Steam libraries to their accounts with Nvidia’s new Game Sync feature. Compatible games will appear in the My Library section of Game Sync, Nvidia announced. The “bring your own game” cloud service, which launched its paid tier earlier this year, allows users to play games purchased through other platforms— including Steam, the Epic Games STore, Battle.net, and Uplay— in the cloud. But searching for games in your Steam library that were compatible with GeForce Now was a bit of a slog. The new feature will identify games in a user’s Steam library supported by GeForce Now and will add them to the “My Library” list within the app automatically, Nvidia says. To sync your Steam account with your GeForce Now library, go to Game Sync in Settings whenever you purch...

The Genki Covert Dock doesn’t look like a dock. It looks more like a wall brick that replicates the functionality of Nintendo’s much larger Switch Dock, but it’s small enough to stick into a pocket. It’s a great Switch accessory to have if you travel a lot and want to connect your console to a TV wherever you go. That’s part of what makes it great. Another reason is that, unlike the slew of third-party dock alternatives sold on Amazon, the Covert Dock was made to use the same power spec that Nintendo’s dock uses. So you won’t run the risk of damaging your Switch over the long-term — or worse, bricking it. This one pulls the right amount of power from the outlet with its retractable prongs. It even comes with three international adapters, which is a nice bonus to have when you get the chanc...

Vaccine trials have had a weird week. First, there was the exhilarating kickoff of two massive clinical trials for vaccines created by Moderna and Pfizer. Each company is hoping to recruit 30,000 volunteers to test whether its vaccine is effective and safe. This is normal. What’s not normal is a bunch of researchers in Boston who have decided to test a DIY coronavirus vaccine on themselves. At least 20 people have mixed together the vaccine and sprayed it up their noses as part of what they’re calling the Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative (Radvac), according to a truly wild MIT Technology Review story from editor Antonio Regalado. Among the people testing the vaccine is Harvard University geneticist George Church. You may know him from other efforts, including recoding the human genom...