Technology

It’s certainly an arresting image: a four-legged robot trots across a grassy hillside, steering a herd of sheep without a human in sight. The apparently seamless fusion of the futuristic and the agrarian feels refreshing — even hopeful — at a time when so much progress relies upon the destruction of the natural world. But is it realistic? Could a robot actually take on the job of a sheepdog? The footage comes from New Zealand firm Rocos, which announced a partnership this week with Boston Dynamics, maker of the four-legged Spot robot that stars in the video (and many others). Rocos makes software to control robots remotely, and the video demonstrates one potential use-case: agriculture. “Equipped with payloads like heat, LIDAR, gas and high resolution camera sensors, Spot navigates rugged ...

The Verge is a place where you can consider the future. So are movies. In Yesterday’s Future, we revisit a movie about the future and consider the things it tells us about today, tomorrow, and yesterday. The movie: Wall-E (2008) The future: In Wall-E, waste is what does us in. The first third of Pixar’s ninth film is among the best 30-minute stretches of cinema the studio has ever produced: a mostly silent experience where Wall-E, a cute trash-compacting robot, introduces us to an abandoned Earth. As Wall-E wanders a derelict city, collecting trinkets of humanity we left behind, we slowly learn what went wrong. The excesses of humanity have led to too much garbage. Landfills quickly became inadequate, and for every skyscraper in the city, there’s a pile of compacted trash just as big. As t...

Disney released a surprise new series on its Disney Plus streaming service today: Zenimation, an ASMR-style series of short videos that take clips from classic animated Disney movies and replace the usual dialogue, songs, and score with the realistic ambient noise that they would have in real life. The first season of Zenimation features 10 episodes, centered on themes like “Water,” “Nature,” “Discovery,” and “Flight.” Each episode is about five to seven minutes long. The episodes are well-made, combining Disney’s excellent animation (both CGI and hand-drawn) with peaceful, relaxing soundscapes and effects. They offer an interesting spin on classic scenes like Aladdin and Jasmine’s magic carpet ride or Moana’s journey through the waves. But the key behind Zenimation is that it’s entirely a...

Microsoft’s Solitaire game is turning 30 years old today. Microsoft is celebrating the occasion with a world record attempt of the most games of Microsoft Solitaire completed in one day. 35 million people still play Solitaire monthly, according to Microsoft, with more than 100 million hands played daily around the world. Microsoft Solitaire was originally included as part of Windows 3.0 back in 1990, designed specifically to teach users how to use a mouse. Grabbing virtual cards and dropping them in place taught the basics of drag-and-drop in Windows, which we still use today in many parts of the operating system. Microsoft Solitaire, originally known as Windows Solitaire, is one of the most played games in the world as it shipped in every version of Windows for more than two decades. That...

The latest stable version of Microsoft’s Edge browser finally adds support for extension syncing, meaning you won’t have to manually re-install extensions individually with each new device. Microsoft teased the feature as part of its Build announcement earlier this week, but the update log for the browser’s latest version (83.0.478.37, to be exact) confirms that it’s rolling out now. Alongside support for extension sync, the latest version of Edge includes a host of other improvements. You can now exempt certain cookies from automatically clearing when the browser closes (useful if there’s a particular website that you want to stay logged into), and Edge’s Collections feature now supports drag and drop to make it easier to save web pages and clippings. The browser can also now prompt you t...

Christopher Nolan, one of Hollywood’s biggest proponents of the theatrical experience, is the latest director to see his movie get the Fortnite treatment. The latest trailer for his upcoming film Tenet debuted in Fortnite on Thursday. Although very little about the film is actually known, Tenet is described as a movie set within the world of international espionage, and the first trailer and marketing material for the movie has played up a concept in which time moves forward and backward — hence the palindrome title. The new trailer expands on John David Washington’s main character as he learns to warp time, with the stake of the world and its future in his hands. Prior to Nolan’s Tenet trailer premiering in Epic Games’ massive virtual universe, Disney and director J.J. Abrams teamed up wi...

Twitter made it easier to see quote tweets on iOS on May 12th, and that new functionality is now available on Twitter for Android and for the web, the company announced today. If you tap or click on the “Retweets” word on a tweet, you’ll be taken to a new page that lets you look at one of two columns: a column showing retweets with comments and a column showing all retweets without comments. You can see how it works in the video below: Now on Android and web –– see Retweets with comments by tapping the Retweet count when you tap into a Tweet! — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) May 21, 2020 The new feature the latest of many that Twitter has rolled out recently to make it easier to follow and track conversations on the platform. One that I’m a particular fan of is the new interface for thr...

Rare’s open-world pirate game, Sea of Thieves, is sailing to Steam on June 3rd, Microsoft announced today. For the past two years, Sea of Thieves was available on Xbox One and the Windows Store. The Steam version will cost $39.99 with cross-play support included between all versions of the game. If you own a copy on either Windows 10 or Xbox One, you will still need to purchase a Steam version to play it on Valve’s digital storefront. At launch, the Steam version will include all of the content previously released on the other platforms. This includes the Ships of Fortune update released last April that introduced a new emissary system, allowing players to become an emissary in the game. Sea of Thieves was a slow burn that has greatly improved over the last two years. As my colleague Tom W...

Avatar: The Last Airbender is back on Netflix after a seven-year absence, and if you never caught the show, now is a perfect time. Avatar isn’t just one of the best animated series around; it’s full-stop excellent television regardless of format. This might not be clear from episode 1, though. As premieres go, it’s charming but geared toward hooking children. Skepticism is okay! Just don’t pass it by without diving into one of its best episodes, “Zuko Alone” (season 2, episode 7). It’s a standalone tale that explains everything you need to know — a terrific martial arts Western with surprisingly rich characterization and a gut-punch ending — all in 20 minutes. In Avatar, there are four nations, each based on the mastery of a different element: Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. The Fire Nation d...

A group of Thomson Reuters shareholders says the company’s technology databases are being used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to “track and arrest immigrants on a massive scale,” potentially causing reputational damage to the company. “Companies are facing scrutiny for contracting with government agencies carrying out the Trump administration’s inhumane family separation and indefinite family detention policies at the US-Mexico border,” states the resolution from the BC Government and Service Employees’ Union (BCGEU) General Fund and its Defence Fund, both of which are in British Columbia, Canada (Thomson Reuters is based in Toronto). “The UN considers such separation and detention illegal under international law and has stated the practice constitutes ‘arbitrary and unlawful inter...

Facebook has long believed in the promise of virtual and augmented reality extending well beyond entertainment, and we’re now getting a clearer glimpse at what that future might look like now that the current pandemic is reshaping how companies everywhere think about remote work. According to Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, Facebook’s head of of AR and VR, the company is already investing in “supercharging remote work and productivity” using those technologies. He even shared a video of what that might look like, featuring real footage of an experimental test using prototype Facebook hardware and software. This is real footage using prototype headsets. We’re always experimenting with future concepts using different hardware configurations as part of our proof-of-experience process — Boz (@boz...

Some Apple AirPods Pro cases now say the headphones are assembled in Vietnam, according to a Twitter user, multiple reports on the MacRumors forums, and one Verge staffer who recently purchased a pair, indicating the company may be reducing its reliance on Chinese manufacturing (via MacRumors). Typically, AirPods Pro units contain a message on the back of the case that says the device was assembled in China. Here’s a photo of what the new message looks like: Photo by Kara Verlaney / The Verge Apple famously assembles a large majority of its products in China. But the company has shown interest in, and even made sizable foreign investments toward, diversifying its manufacturing. That’s partly due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the ongoing trade war between the US and Chi...