Technology

This week on The Verge’s flagship podcast, The Vergecast, Dieter Bohn, Becca Farsace, and Dan Seifert log into a Zoom meeting to discuss their reviews of the next line of Samsung hardware on the market: the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, the Galaxy Buds Live, and the Galaxy Watch 3. The Note 20 Ultra is a really big phone, but are we cool with that now? Dieter explains why a bigger phone suits the stay-at-home lifestyle of 2020 and how delightful Samsung’s updated note-taking app is to use on the device. Now, we know the Galaxy Buds Live are not named the “Galaxy Beans,” but we call them that anyway. Becca points out that while those beans have active noise cancellation, in practice, it just doesn’t do the job. Dan’s review details how the Galaxy Watch 3 compares to Samsung’s other watches — the ma...

Apple has responded to Epic Games’ antitrust lawsuit over its iOS App Store policies. The filing asks a court not to temporarily reverse an App Store ban while the suit is ongoing. And it accuses Epic of disingenuously creating an “emergency” by accepting direct payments through Fortnite in violation of Apple’s rules. In a declaration to the court, Apple executive Phil Schiller wrote that Epic CEO Tim Sweeney asked for a “special deal with only Epic” that would “fundamentally change the way in which Epic offers apps on Apple’s iOS platform.” When Apple declined, Epic changed its policies to cut Apple out of in-app purchases. Now, the company argues that Epic’s ban is its own responsibility. “Developers who work to deceive Apple, as Epic has done here, are terminated.” “In the wake of its o...

When Hasbro brought back three classic Super Soakers this spring, I was pretty pumped — but now, two of them are being recalled. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has announced that the Super Soaker XP20 and XP30 used too much lead in the ink when the manufacturer printed their labels, and should be immediately be returned to Hasbro for a full refund. They were exclusively sold at Target between March and July of this year, and the CPSC says that Hasbro managed to ship some 52,900 of them so far. If you’re one of those nearly 53,000 buyers, you can email SuperSoakerRecall@Hasbro.com or click here for an online form. (If you’re not sure which Super Soakers we’re talking about, take a look at the pictures above and below.) Image: Hasbro You also might be wondering: did these n...

Google pushed out a significant firmware update to its Pixel Buds this week, adding several new features to the true wireless earbuds including a “bass boost” setting, sharing detection (so you can individually set volume for each earbud when sharing one of them with someone), attention alerts, and more. The updated firmware was also supposed to address the connectivity and audio dropout problems that some early Pixel Buds buyers have been complaining about. After some time listening to the Pixel Buds today, I’d say Google succeeded at the first bit; bass boost makes for a very real improvement to sound quality if you were disappointed by low-end performance before. But the Pixel Buds’ wireless signal is still weaker than it should be, and the frustrating music disruptions remain. After ap...

It’s been just over a week since Fortnite developer Epic Games initiated an unprecedented antitrust legal fight with Apple over its App Store rules, and the lawsuit is shedding new light on how the companies came into conflict. Today, Apple entered into evidence a series of emails from Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, in which he asked top Apple executives to exempt Fortnite from its standard 30 percent cut and to allow Epic to offer its own mobile app store. New emails made public as part of Epic’s lawsuit Beginning in June, the emails show extensive discussions between Sweeney and Apple before Epic took action to incorporate an alternate payment mechanism into the Fortnite app, which resulted in it being ejected from the App Store last week. The emails show Sweeney lobbying Apple for the power to i...

WordPress, the iOS app, lets you build and manage a website right from your iPhone or iPad. Separately, WordPress.com also happens to sell domain names. Now, WordPress founding developer Matt Mullenweg is accusing Apple of cutting off the ability to update that app — until or unless he adds in-app purchases so the most valuable company in the world can extract its 30 percent cut of the money. Heads up on why @WordPressiOS updates have been absent… we were locked by App Store. To be able to ship updates and bug fixes again we had to commit to support in-app purchases for .com plans. I know why this is problematic, open to suggestions. Allow others IAP? New name? — Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) August 21, 2020 Here’s the thing: the WordPress app on iOS doesn’t sell anything. I just check...

Palantir, the controversial analytics and data mining firm, still relies heavily on its US government contracts for revenue despite its public statements that it was branching out into more corporate clients, according to screenshots of the company’s S-1 filing acquired by TechCrunch. The financials, which the New York Times also has viewed, show Palantir has not once turned a profit since its founding in 2003. Add to that the news it’s moving out of Silicon Valley because of “increasing intolerance and monoculture,” and you end up with a picture of a company that doesn’t have a lot of growth potential. It’s now clear Palantir is dependent on the current administration in Washington to maintain its existing revenue streams. Palantir confidentially filed for an IPO last month, but has yet t...

Run The Jewels has teamed up with Sketchfab, an online platform to share and sell 3D artwork, for a remix challenge of the duo’s iconic pistol and fist logo. The logo has always inspired reinterpretation by fans — but now, the group is looking to reward those fans directly. Fans can download the 3D model used in the production of their latest album cover, RTJ4, and put it into their own creations. To enter, artists have to upload their project to Sketchfab with the tag #RTJ4D. The prizes don’t look too bad either: XP-Pen tablets, a year subscription to Substance by Adobe, and, of course, RTJ 4 merch. While this 3D model was used in the production of the Run The Jewels 4 album art, the final image on the cover was of a physical item based on those mock-ups. You can learn more about that pro...

A blistering 130-degree Fahrenheit (54.4 degrees Celsius) temperature reading in Death Valley, California, on August 16th quickly made headlines, but it could take months or even years before the number can officially break world records. If the temperature is verified, it will become the third hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth and the hottest temperature recorded on the planet since 1931. Verifying that number, however, is a complex process that can come with a lot of controversy. In the past, it’s involved shipping instruments across the globe, assembling teams of experts, and, in one case, fleeing gunfire during an ongoing revolution. It also involves intense scrutiny from weather experts around the world — all with their own interpretations of which temperatures should actuall...

Fortnite’s next season, which kicks off on August 27th, could be a full-season collaboration with Marvel, as suggested by a teaser released by Epic Games on Friday. But due to Epic’s public dispute with Apple over the iPhone maker’s App Store policies, Epic currently isn’t able to update Fortnite on iOS. That means iPhone and iPad players will miss out on the new season unless something changes between Epic and Apple before Thursday. Apple yanked Fortnite from the App Store on August 13th after Epic added a direct payment system into the game, which goes against App Store rules. Epic then sued Apple, released an in-game short parodying one of Apple’s most famous commercials, and began telling iOS players that they wouldn’t be able to play the upcoming season because Apple pulled Fortnite f...

When a trailer for Crysis Remastered leaked online in July, fans criticized the game’s graphics for looking far too much like the original’s from over 10 years ago. But today, Crytek released a new trailer that shows drastic improvements to the game’s visuals, and it announced the remaster will be coming to multiple platforms next month. Crysis Remastered will now launch on the PS4, Xbox One, and Epic Games Store on September 18th for $30. In July, following backlash from fans, Crytek announced that it would delay these versions of the game by several weeks. Crytek acknowledged the leaked trailer in its delay announcement and promised to use the extra time “to get Crysis Remastered up to the PC- and console-breaking standard you’ve come to expect from a Crysis game.” ‘Crysis Remastered’ la...

Brydge, the maker of keyboard accessories for iPads and other tablets, has a line of new accessories for Windows 10 devices that includes two new keyboards for the Surface Pro and Surface Go: the $149.99 Brydge 12.3 Pro Plus and $139.99 Brydge 10.5 Go Plus. Both keyboards are designed to do the same thing: turn your Surface device into a traditional clamshell laptop. And after testing both models for a couple of weeks with a Surface Pro 5 and a Surface Go 2, I can confirm they do exactly that. The keyboards function similarly to the models that Brydge has for Apple’s iPad: they connect to your device via Bluetooth and have hinge clamps the tablet slides into. The hinges are stiff, so the tablet doesn’t move when you touch it or are using it on an unstable platform such as your lap, and the...