Technology

Nintendo’s latest addition to the library of retro games that comes with its Switch Online subscription service includes a big hitter: Donkey Kong Country. Rare’s 1994 side-scrolling platformer was one of the more conspicuous absences from the service, and its addition presumably opens the door for its two sequels down the line. The other two games coming this month are a little more obscure. 1994’s Natsume Championship Wrestling is a US conversion of a SNES wrestling game with its Japanese licensing removed, while The Immortal is a 1990 NES conversion of a fantasy action RPG originally developed for the Apple IIGS and published by EA. All three games will be added to the service on July 15th. Nintendo Switch Online costs $19.99 a year and is required for online multiplayer in games like S...

The US Supreme Court has upheld a federal ban on robocalls to cellphones from 1991, and it struck down a provision that exempted government-debt collectors. “Americans passionately disagree about many things,” reads the majority opinion written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “But they are largely united in their disdain for robocalls.” The ruling concerns the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which prohibited “almost all robocalls to phones.” A 2015 amendment to the TCPA grants an exception to robocalls made solely to collect debt on behalf of the US government. “They are largely united in their disdain for robocalls.” The plaintiffs, a group of organizations that included the American Association of Political Consultants, argued that the ban violated the First Amendment by favor...

Audi has unveiled concept renderings of a new “Sportback” version of the Q4 E-Tron electric SUV that it debuted last year. Meant to serve as a smaller and more affordable option to the flagship E-Tron, the Q4s are expected to go on sale in 2021 and will start at around $45,000. The Q4 and the Q4 Sportback are “identical twins” from a technical perspective, according to Audi. As such, the Sportback version will also be powered by parent company Volkswagen’s modular “MEB” platform (an abbreviation of the German phrase for “modular electric drive matrix”) that is going to power a wide range of vehicles across multiple brands. This sets the Q4s apart from the original E-Tron and its variants, which are powered by an Audi-developed electric drivetrain. Spec-wise, this means the Q4 Sportback wil...

Samsung has announced that its next Galaxy Unpacked event will take place on Wednesday, August 5th, at 10AM ET. The company is expected to reveal its new lineup of Galaxy Note 20 devices, along with a successor to its first foldable, the Galaxy Fold. Samsung’s teaser is pretty cryptic, even by the standards of tech invitations, although the copper color splash does match the leaked images of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra — the rumored flagship of the lineup — that were accidentally posted on Samsung’s Russian website at the beginning of July. Image: Samsung Russia Rumors are uncharacteristically quiet for what to expect, despite the fact that an announcement is set to arrive in less than a month. Although at least one actual Note 20 Ultra device has made its way out into the world already. The ...

Apple’s upcoming iOS 14 update might let you pay for items by scanning QR codes that activate Apple Pay, giving you another way to use the company’s digital payment platform. 9to5Mac found references to the as-yet unannounced feature in the newest iOS 14 developer beta released earlier today. 9to5Mac said it wasn’t able to get the feature to work, though, but it did find an image that appears to be instructing the user about how to use the new feature. And 9to5Mac says it found the code for the feature in a public system API, which may indicate third-party apps could also let you scan QR codes to make purchases using Apple Pay. Image: 9to5Mac iOS 14 is still only available as a developer beta, and Apple regularly tweaks and changes features in its upcoming software right up until it’s rele...

This week on The Vergecast interview series, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel talks to founder and CEO of Luta Security Katie Moussouris. Moussouris has a long history in computer security, working at Microsoft and the Department of Defense creating their first bug bounty programs to incentivize catching and reporting security bugs and vulnerabilities in software systems. Nilay and Katie discuss the history of bug bounty programs, from the early iterations to the current state of affairs, from good to bad. Though Moussouris says the concept of hiring hackers to help make organizations more secure has numerous positives, the commercialization of the practice has created blindspots and other unintended incentives. Below is a lightly edited excerpt from that conversation. Nilay Patel: Where ...

A group of Formula One and Formula E drivers is starting a new racing series that will pit competitors against each other on ultra-fast custom-built electric scooters. The series — dubbed “Electric Scooter Championship,” or “eSkootr” — is set to launch in 2021, and the launch video shows riders whizzing through city streets on Tron-style vehicles and wearing matching neon-accented gear. There are, unfortunately, few other details about the series, like how it’s being funded or who the competitors will be. All the organizers say is that the “category’s affordability removes the high barrier to entry seen in most other motorsport series, and its versatility means the series can recruit from a truly diverse cross-section of competitors – including racing drivers, cyclists, skaters, snowboarde...

Over the past few weeks, dozens of people connected to the game industry have shared stories of abuse on Twitter. One company, in particular, Ubisoft, has had multiple allegations leveled against high-ranking employees, including executives Tommy François and Maxime Béland. In a story from Kotaku, Ethan Gach reports that employees of Ubisoft Toronto are speaking up to leadership “with grave concerns about ongoing reported harassment and an inability to feel safe or protected within our own studio” in a letter signed by more than 100 employees. The report includes several stories about behavior at Ubisoft, including a particularly disturbing incident in which Béland put his hands around a female employee’s neck. Sources describe a culture in which employees fear being branded as troublemake...

Public health experts around the globe are scrambling to understand, track, and contain a new virus that appeared in Wuhan, China, at the beginning of December 2019. The World Health Organization (WHO) named the disease caused by the virus COVID-19, which references the type of virus and the year it emerged. The WHO declared that the virus is a pandemic. The Verge is regularly updating this page with all of the latest news and analysis. You can see where and how many cases of the illness have been reported in this map. There are large outbreaks of the disease in multiple places, including Brazil, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which currently has the worst outbreak of any country in the world. As this important story continues to unfold, our hope is to answer all of your...

Amazon Prime Video is rolling out user profiles for family members and friends who share Prime accounts, the company announced today. Each account will allow for up to six user profiles. One profile will default as the primary account, with five additional profiles allowed. These can be regular accounts or kids accounts. The kids account will restrict what type of content is shown, similar to how other children’s accounts on streaming services like Netflix and HBO Max work. Amazon did not note how many profiles can stream at once, but The Verge has reached out for clarification. Profiles are linked through Amazon’s wallet sharing tool. The feature allows customers to share their payment methods with another Amazon account that has set up a household. (Here’s more info on how to do that.) A...

Samsung’s new Galaxy A71 5G UW is launching on July 16th. At $649, it will be the most affordable way to access Verizon’s 5G millimeter-wave network. Preorders for Verizon’s edition of the phone, which was announced last month, will begin on July 9th. The A71 5G UW has a 6.7-inch OLED display, 128GB of storage, 8GB of RAM, and a 4,500mAh battery. It’s powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 765G processor and features a quad-camera system — including a 64-megapixel main lens, 12-megapixel wide lens, 5-megapixel macro, and a 5-megapixel depth camera — as well as a 32-megapixel selfie shooter. Samsung’s Scene Optimizer, a feature of recent Galaxy phones, will try to detect what you’re photographing and automatically adjust settings (such as exposure and contrast) accordingly. Tests have found that ...

The US is considering a ban on Chinese social media apps like the popular video-sharing platform TikTok, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News on Monday. “We are taking this very seriously. We are certainly looking at it,” Pompeo said. “With respect to Chinese apps on peoples’ cellphones, the United States will get this one right too.” Over the last few years, US lawmakers have grown increasingly concerned over TikTok’s handling of user data and the relationship between its parent company — the Beijing-based ByteDance — and the Chinese government. Lawmakers allege that TikTok could be pressured into handing over data or other intelligence to the Chinese Communist Party. A TikTok spokesperson responded to Pompeo’s remarks Tuesday in a statement, writing “TikTok is led by an American ...