Technology

Evo, the shorthand name for the prestigious Evolution Championship Series fighting game tournament, will be an in-person event again for the first time since 2019. Evo was just one of many events that had to do things differently because of COVID-19, and even though the upcoming Evo will be at a convention center once again, general manager Rick Thiher tells The Verge that things are just different now. “The market is not the same as it was when we went on hiatus in respect to COVID,” Thiher said. “Having COVID not really fully passed at this time, that hiatus has created new concerns, new needs, and has really restructured expectations both for the workforce and even the endemic tournament organizers that we work with to help put Evo together.” There are a lot of challenges to work throug...

The first time I saw Fossil’s hybrid analog smartwatches was in a backroom at IFA 2019. I’d just seen a small army of smartwatches from Fossil — and every other designer brand under its umbrella. I remember feeling weary. Most of those watches were basically different flavors of the same smartwatch. But when a spokesperson showed me the Fossil Hybrid HR, I perked up. A hybrid smartwatch with an E Ink display? That was a rare sight after Pebble’s untimely end, and I was intrigued to see what it could do. Three years later, I’ve got the $229 Fossil Gen 6 Hybrid ($249 as tested), and while it’s kept the same DNA as the original, I can’t help but feel that Fossil’s gotten ahead of itself. The Gen 6 Hybrid keeps the E Ink screen, customizable watchfaces, and basic fitness tracking. Its analog h...

TikTok’s global chief security officer (CSO), Roland Cloutier, is stepping down as the company transitions to using Oracle’s US-based servers to store Americans’ data (via The Wall Street Journal). The company shared an internal memo about the shift in a post on its newsroom, which states Cloutier will assume an advisory role, with TikTok’s head of security risk, vendor, and client assurance, Kim Albarella, taking over temporarily. “With our recent announcement about data management changes in the US, it’s time for me to transition from my role as Global Chief Security Officer into a strategic advisory role focusing on the business impact of security and trust programs, working directly with Shou, Dingkun and other senior leaders,” Cloutier writes in the memo. Cloutier, who has been with T...

Just like the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 3s I recently reviewed, Beyerdynamic’s new Free Byrd earbuds are squarely aimed at those who prioritize sound quality over almost everything else. When you consider that these are the company’s first-ever set of true wireless earbuds, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how well they also stand out in other respects: the $249 Free Byrds deliver marathon battery life, good active noise cancellation, and have a design that breaks from the standard, unmemorable formula. Great sound quality is just the starting point of an impressive first effort. And I can’t ignore the name, which is clearly a nod to the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic — and a very cliche concert request. But no set of earbuds is perfect, and the Free Byrds are brought down somewhat by uni...

On Friday, Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to two federal regulators, urging them to take action on the explosion of Bitcoin mining in the US. Sent to the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy, the letter was spurred by preliminary investigation from lawmakers, which found that just a handful of cryptominers use an enormous amount of energy. In response, the lawmakers ask the agencies to require that crypto-mining companies share data on their energy use and emissions. Seven of the biggest crypto-mining companies in the US have the collective capacity to use over 1 gigawatt of electricity, according to the letter. That’s the equivalent of two standard coal plants or, as the letter puts it, almost enough to power all th...

Your Apple ID is your key to using the integrated services of Apple’s ecosystem, including the App Store, iCloud, iMessage, FaceTime, and Apple Music. You also need one to set up any new Apple device. As with any password, if you think it may have been compromised, you should change it immediately. It’s also a good idea to change it every few months to help keep it extra secure. When you do choose a new password, you’ll need to think of one that’s at least eight characters long and uses at least one number, one uppercase letter, and one lowercase letter. You also can’t reuse a password from the last year. Here are the steps you’ll need to take to change your Apple ID password. Bear in mind that these will only work if you know your current password. If you’ve forgotten it entirely, you wil...

Back in March, South Korean tech giant Samsung announced a price hike of up to 20% for its microchips, and now Intel has followed in its footsteps. According to a new report from Nikkei, the American semiconductor producer has begun informing its customers that the price of its chips will soon be going up by 10% to 20%. The company mainly attributes the hike to rising costs of production and says that while not the entirety of its offerings will see a price hike, it will be affecting the majority of its products. Intel and Samsung aside, Taiwanese microchip giant TSMC also announced previously that it’d be raising prices, albeit by a single-digit percentage. The company mainly produces processors for AMD, and given AMD, Intel, and Samsung’s market shares in the industry, there’ll be l...

Now that images from the new Webb Space Telescope have been unveiled, many are asking just how advanced the $13 billion USD telescope really is. Created as the successor to the 32-year-old Hubble telescope, the Webb’s mirror is roughly three times larger than Hubble’s and is able to capture infrared light. Peering out into the universe, these telescopes are able to see galaxies as they were billions of years ago, but what sort of details were not able to be captured by the Hubble? Thanks to Webb Compare, those curious can now take a look at the level of detail provided by the Webb Space Telescope, as it is able to look through the dusty regions of space. There are currently images that compare the Southern Ring Nebula, Carina Nebula, the Deep Field SMACS 0723 Cluster, and Stephan’s Quintet...

In yet another reminder of just how flexible Valve’s Steam Deck handheld gaming PC can be, an enterprising Redditor has gotten the Playdate Simulator running on their Steam Deck, as shared on Twitter by Valve designer Lawrence Yang. The Playdate, if you’re not familiar, is Panic’s tiny yellow handheld with a crank, but similar to the long reservation queue for the Steam Deck, Playdate preorders are backed up for months. If you place a Playdate preorder right now, it isn’t expected to ship until 2023. If you already have a Steam Deck and want to mess around with the Playdate’s old-school vibes, though, it looks like it’s possible to do that by installing the free Playdate Simulator. You can see a video of the simulator running on Steam Deck in u/ncarson9’s Reddit post. They launch the simul...

Amazon’s Prime Air delivery drones will begin testing in Texas soon. The drone delivery tests are happening in College Station, Texas, along with a test area announced last month located in Lockeford, California. The current MK27-2 design (shown above) has a hexagonal shape that Amazon says increases stability as well as propellers that the company claims will minimize high-frequency soundwaves. [embedded content] The company originally announced plans to create a 30-minute drone delivery service in 2013 and showed off this now-dated video (embedded above) as a demonstration of what the future might be like. Amazon showed off redesigned drones with hybrid VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) capabilities in 2019 and received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration that let its dro...

Previously, a number of reviewers have reported that Apple’s entry-level M2 MacBook Pro’s SSD is significantly slower than that of the M1 MacBook Pro due to the configuration of the storage models in the computer. Apple confirmed to The Verge that the base M2 MacBook Air has the same storage configuration as the Pro, so, naturally, we’ve been wondering if it would suffer from the same issue. Well, we’ve finally gotten our hands on a base model (including 256GB of storage and 8GB of memory) and the answer is: yes, it does. Going by the results we’re seeing in Blackmagic’s Disk Speed Test app, the base model of the M2 MacBook Air has write speeds that are generally 15 to 30 percent slower than those of the 512GB model Apple sent The Verge to review — and read speeds that can be 40 to 50 perc...