Technology

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...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Ubiquitous facial recognition is a serious threat to privacy. The idea that the photos we share are being collected by companies to train algorithms that are sold commercially is worrying. Anyone can buy these tools, snap a photo of a stranger, and find out who they are in seconds. But researchers have come up with a clever way to help combat this problem. The solution is a tool named Fawkes, and was created by scientists at the University of Chicago’s Sand Lab. Named after the Guy Fawkes masks donned by revolutionaries in the V for Vendetta comic book and film, Fawkes uses artificial intelligence to subtly and almost imperceptibly alter your photos in order to trick facial recognition systems. running Fawkes on your photos is like… Continue re...

Screenshot: Garmin Fitness brand Garmin paid millions of dollars in ransom after an attack took many of its products and services offline last month, Sky News reports. The payment was reportedly made through a ransomware negotiation company called Arete IR, in order for Garmin to recover data held hostage as a result of the attack. BleepingComputer reported last week that Garmin had received a decryption key to access data encrypted by the virus, and that the initial ransom demand was for $10 million. The attack itself began on July 23rd, and put Garmin’s wearables, apps, website, and even its call centers offline for several days. Garmin confirmed that it had been the victim of a cyberattack on July 27th, as many of its services were starting to come… Continue reading… You De...

Microsoft plans to stop generating trash from its operations by 2030, the company announced today. It also pledged to stop using single-use plastics in its packaging by 2025. As part of its zero waste goal, the company will set up what it’s calling “Circular Centers” to allow the company to reuse or recycle 90 percent of its waste on site, instead of sending it to third-party recyclers. One of the big-ticket items that will be recycled in-house are the servers used in Microsoft’s data centers. The company also pledged to eliminate waste from its own manufacturing process, although its suppliers won’t be expected to stick to the same zero waste goal as Microsoft. People tossed out a record 53.6 million metric tons of e-waste globally in… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make Mo...

The PlayStation 4 era may be winding down, but people are playing their consoles more than ever at home. Sony just announced as part of its first-quarter earnings that despite a 22 percent decrease in sales of hardware and packaged games, digital software sales are up 83 percent year-on-year, bringing in revenue of 395 trillion yen ($3.72 billion). At 599 trillion yen ($5.65 billion), total PlayStation revenue was 36 percent higher than the same period last year and was the highest for any April-June quarter in PlayStation history. More than 112 million PS4 consoles have now been shipped worldwide, and Sony has nearly 45 million PlayStation Plus subscribers. Sony cites sales of The Last of Us Part II and also calls out Ghost of Tsushima… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make M...