Technology

A group of Senate Republicans introduced a new bill Tuesday aimed at chipping away some of the protections provided to social media companies through Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The Online Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Act, introduced by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Roger Wicker (R-MS), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), would strip away the liability protection provided by Section 230 if a platform restricted access to content without providing specific rules that it violated. The bill would require platforms to have an “objectively reasonable belief” that content violated a specific policy in order for it to be removed, or they could be held liable for their moderation actions. The bill would also amend language in the original law, changing vague terms like “objectionable...

Taboola and Outbrain, best known as the rival chumbox providers who fill space on your favorite websites with garbage like “You Won’t Believe What [NAME] Looks Like Today!” and the ever-popular “1 Weird Trick,” will apparently not be merging into the ultimate source of low-quality web filler we’d feared ever since the Department of Justice saw fit to put its stamp of approval on the deal. CNBC, The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch are all reporting that the merger, first announced in October 2019, is being called off, after an attempt to renegotiate changing conditions due to the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t result in a new agreement. What a shame! If you’re curious what a chumbox looks like, you won’t have to look far. (Vox Media is not immune to the allure of money, after all.) You can fin...

Amy Johnston is carefully perched against the hip of her co-worker for the day, an animator by the name of Marianne Hayden. It’s a strange scene, to say the least: two grown women in a mismatched embrace, one of them decked out in a Tron-like suit fitted with bright orange and green panels. Johnston slowly wags her legs and rests her head on Hayden’s shoulder. “I loved it so much,” Johnston says. “It was very relaxing. It’s nice to be a baby.” Johnston, an experienced stuntwoman, was helping animators for The Last of Us Part II capture movement for an in-game baby. Rather than suit up a real baby (just imagine the complications there), Hayden had asked Johnston to sub in. A little bit of quiet head bobbing, some long and curious stares — Johnston did it all. Her best advice: move slowly. V...

The Samsung Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra are both $200 off at Amazon, B&H Photo, and Best Buy. This brings the price for the smaller device down to $800, and $1,100 for the Note 20 Ultra. The Note 20 series released less than a month ago, and this price cut is far more appealing than Samsung’s preorder incentives that granted up to $150 in e-gift card credit. Both phones are a match when it comes to having the Snapdragon 865 processor, support for 5G, IP68 resistance against water and dust, and other specs you can scope out here if you’re curious. However, the Note 20 Ultra is the one you’ll want if you need even more power, an amazing display, and superior battery life. The Note 20 Ultra’s 6.9-inch, 1440p OLED screen supports up to a 120Hz refresh rate, which outpaces the Note 20’...

The Federal Trade Commission is actively investigating Intuit, maker of the popular TurboTax tax preparation software, according to a new report by ProPublica. The case was revealed in a public court filing, in which Intuit sought to limit the scope of the investigation. The investigation centers on TurboTax’s “Free File” product, offered free of charge to most Americans in exchange for the assurance that the IRS would not develop a competing product. But a string of ProPublica investigations found that Intuit had made Free File difficult to find, in one case adding code to prevent it from being indexed by search engines. As a result, many users who were eligible for the free TurboTax filing may have been diverted to paid products. Now, the FTC is investigating whether Intuit’s handling of...

A major focus of any smartphone release is the camera. For a while, all eyes were on the camera’s hardware — megapixels, sensors, lenses, and so on. But since Google’s Pixel was introduced, there’s been a lot more interest in the camera’s software and how it takes advantage of the computer it’s attached to. Marc Levoy, former distinguished engineer at Google, led the team that developed computational photography technologies for the Pixel phones, including HDR+, Portrait Mode, and Night Sight, and he’s responsible for a lot of that newfound focus on camera processing. Levoy recently joined Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel for a conversation on The Vergecast after leaving Google and joining Adobe to work on a “universal camera app” for the company. In the interview, Levoy talks about his m...

Waitingto bethrown out Detained, dehumanized,deported.Inside the cruel bureaucracy of ICE’s immigrant detention centers. by Gaby Del Valle Sep 8, 2020, 10:00am EDTphoto illustrations by Alex Parkin Sep 4, 2020, 11:13am EDT Sep 4, 2020, 11:13am EDT waitingto bethrownout Detained, dehumanized,deported.Inside the cruel bureaucracy of ICE’s immigrant detention centers. by Gaby Del ValleSep 8, 2020, 10:00am EDTphoto illustrations by Alex Parkin Samuel’s journey to America took six months, and it wasn’t even where he wanted to go. After fleeing Cameroon for Ghana in January 2019, his plan was to stay put: go back to school, maybe get a job. More than anything else, Samuel wanted to regain the stability he had lost three years earlier, when Cameroon’s Francophone government began arre...

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, during the ambient dread of New York’s locked-down spring, I realized that I couldn’t put words in a coherent order. I built virtual spaces instead. That’s how I fell in love with the cockroaches from one of my favorite horror games. I’m talking about Amnesia: The Dark Descent, an adventure gaming masterpiece that turns 10 years old today. Frictional Games’ Amnesia is a Lovecraftian tale that puts players at the mercy of enemies they can’t fight in a world full of vivid, eerie grotesquerie. Its protagonist, Daniel, wakes up in a Prussian castle with no memory and a letter, written by himself, demanding he kill the estate’s master Alexander. He ventures deeper and deeper into the castle, pursued by howling flesh-monsters and troubled by emerging memories o...

Microsoft is reportedly preparing to launch a smaller Surface Laptop later this year. Windows Central reports that Microsoft is preparing a more lightweight version of the Surface Laptop with a smaller 12.5-inch display. This new model will reportedly include Intel’s 10th Gen Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. The smaller Surface Laptop is said to be targeted at students, and it will be running Windows 10 in S Mode. Microsoft is even rumored to be pricing this new Surface Laptop between $500 and $600, making it an affordable option for the Surface line. It appears to be positioned as the Surface Go equivalent to the Surface Pro, as a smaller and more budget-friendly clamshell laptop. As is always the case with Surface devices, Microsoft will likely offer RAM and storage up...

The next Legend of Zelda adventure is coming very soon. Today, Nintendo revealed a new title called Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, which will launch on the Switch this year. The game, which is being developed by Koei Tecmo, looks to be a successor of sorts to the original Hyrule Warriors from 2014. That game combined the massive battles of Dynasty Warriors with the lore and history of Zelda. The new game is set 100 years before Breath of the Wild, where players can experience the great calamity that influenced the events of BOTW. You can get a brief glimpse of the action in the video above. Age of Calamity will launch on November 20th. As for the long-awaited sequel to Breath of the Wild, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma says, “You’ll have to wait a bit longer.” The announcement comes a week ...

Hours after Microsoft’s Xbox Series S console widely leaked, the company has gone on the record to confirm its existence. In a tweet, Microsoft describes the Series S as offering “next-gen performance in the smallest Xbox ever” and lists the price as the previously leaked figure of $299. In the UK it’ll cost £249.99. The accompanying image gives a better look at the Series S than the first leaked picture, showing off how thin it is and confirming the lack of a disc drive. As with the leaked imagery, the Series S is pictured standing upright, but the orientation of the Xbox logo suggests it’s expected to be more commonly used in a traditional horizontal configuration. That’s about all for the announcement right now — Microsoft says it will share more information “soon.” Let’s make it offici...

Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox Series S console leaked earlier today, just before the company officially confirmed its $299 pricing. Now a new leak is providing more details on exactly what’s inside the smaller Xbox Series S. Twitter leaker WalkingCat has posted a promotional video for the Series S, confirming that the console is targeting 120fps gaming at up to 1440p resolution and offering 512GB of storage. The Xbox Series S will also include support for ray tracing, variable rate shading, and variable refresh rate. Microsoft is also including support for 4K media streaming, and even 4K upscaling for games. The video also reveals the Xbox Series S is the smallest Xbox ever, and it will be 60 percent smaller than the bigger Xbox Series X. The 512GB storage could be a challenge given modern gam...