Technology

Though Netflix hyped Stranger Things 4 Vol. 2 as being its own standalone season of the Duffer Brothers’ nostalgic sci-fi opus, its two extra-long episodes are truly just the final chapters of Vol. 1’s story about what’s really been hunting Eleven and her friends. Stranger Things 4 Vol. 2 puts a period on this season’s introduction of Vecna, and sets the stage for its psionic hero and villain to take on even larger roles in the series’ future. As a season finale focused on emotional payoff, Vol. 2’s manages to rise to the occasion and deliver, but it does so while also leaning into some of Stranger Things’ worst instincts that have plagued the series from the jump. While Stranger Things 4 Vol. 2 does actually sneak in a solid couple of jokes that succinctly summarize the important bits of ...

The TCL 30 XE has a bad screen, skimpy storage, lackluster camera, and runs a version of Android that’s nearly two years behind everyone else. It’s basically a slightly cheaper, slightly worse version of the Samsung Galaxy A13 5G that only works on T-Mobile. But it’s $200, and at that price, it’s about the best phone you can get. For a $200 phone, the 30 XE 5G’s day-to-day performance is snappier than I expected. That’s also a low price to pay for 5G service on T-Mobile’s very good network. These things make it easier to forgive the 30 XE’s weak points because it does what a good budget phone should: it just works. If you really want 5G, are paying full price, and need to keep costs down, it’s the best you’re going to get on T-Mobile. But if you’re eligible for one of your carrier’s “free”...

The Fourth of July weekend is here, and hopefully you get to enjoy some time together with friends and family (and lots of delicious food). The Verge Deals compiled the best deals happening in honor of America’s birthday, but today I aim to give you a smaller, fresher selection of deals that may not last through the holiday. Frequent visitors to the site might recognize one or two of them, but I’ve tried to toss in a few new deals for your perusal. Have a nice weekend. Sonos is hosting another one of its sale events on refurbished audio products (in like-new condition, and covered by a one-year warranty), running the gamut of its most affordable and pricey hardware. Starting at the low end, the Sonos Roam is selling for $139, down from the $169 price you’d pay for a new model. The only dow...

Twitch is testing a new way to discover new channels that reminds me of the good old days of channel surfing on my TV. The experiment, which it calls the Channel Switcher, lets you easily flip through previews of a bunch of different streams to help you find something to watch. And perhaps best of all, you won’t see ads while using it. You can get an idea of how it works in this tweet from Twitch: Right now on Twitch, if you don’t already know what you want to watch, it can be difficult to find something new that you might actually want to tune into. Personally, my rundown is to check the homepage, scan the sidebar of people I follow, click into an individual game or category to browse who is live, or navigate directly to a streamer’s account. But, if I want to move on from a stream I’m al...

The remnants of Sprint’s network have been put out to pasture. As of yesterday, Sprint’s LTE network has been retired by its new owner, T-Mobile. That’s along with Sprint’s 3G CDMA network, which was shut down earlier this year, and what remained of T-Mobile’s own 3G network, which enters retirement today. T-Mobile spokesperson Justin Paulsen confirmed to The Verge that the network shutdowns are now underway. It may come as a surprise that any part of Sprint’s network was still operational so recently. In April 2020, T-Mobile officially took ownership of the company, including all of its spectrum and network towers, which would ultimately be repurposed for 5G. Sprint’s 3G CDMA network was the first to go when T-Mobile started to shut down Sprint’s systems in March. It had originally planne...

You may not realize it, but we’re living in a golden age of gaming controllers. The gamepads on the market now are better quality, more versatile, and more customizable than anything from just a few console generations ago. That includes the plethora of third-party options from the likes of PowerA, Scuf, Nacon, and Turtle Beach, as well as first-party controllers from the console makers. The days of the cheap, “little sibling” controller that looked cool but barely worked are over. Now, you can choose from a variety of controllers, and if you’re playing across Xbox and Windows PC, the same option works for both. So, let’s say your console of choice is the Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S. What’s the best option for you? Well, we tested a whole slew of controllers to find the best Xbox contro...

Google says it’ll start automatically deleting visits to abortion clinics, domestic violence shelters, weight loss clinics, and other potentially sensitive locations from users’ location histories in the coming weeks. In a blog post on Friday, the company says that the deletion will happen “soon after” the visit, once its systems have identified that a trip was made to one of the locations. This change is happening in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the moves several states have immediately made to outlaw abortions. You can also turn off Google’s location logging altogether by following its instructions here. Google’s post, entitled “Protecting people’s privacy on health topics,” also mentions that there’s an update coming for Fitbit that will let you d...

For nearly two years, you’ve had to be incredibly lucky, skilled, or patient to get an Nvidia or AMD graphics card at MSRP. We’ve liveblogged and livetweeted that hell of trying to buy a GPU online, fighting against an army of bots to navigate the buggy websites of retailers who didn’t have enough reason to care. But, yesterday, I did the unthinkable. I saddled up to Best Buy’s website eight hours after the retailer’s weekly drop and bought an RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition for its $599 MSRP. I had a $499 RTX 3070 Founders Edition in my cart, too. And those finds weren’t a fluke: both of those GPUs were still available when we checked back this morning. The 3070 FE is still there as I type these words. So is the 3070 Ti. AMD.com currently has the Radeon RX 6750 XT, 6900 XT, and 6950 XT in st...

In a push to prioritize short-form video sharing on its platform, Instagram is experimenting with turning all video posts into Reels. According to a notice from the Meta-owned social media company shared by social media consultant Matt Navarra, Instagram will allow users to enhance all video content with music, effects and various editing tools before sharing clips as Reels. Within the update, videos posted to public accounts can be discovered by anyone on the app, and anyone can use original audio from public Reels to create their own content. Additionally, anyone can create a remix with a public account’s Reel and download it for inclusion in their remix. Users can disable remixes in settings or toggle off the option for individual videos. Instagram is now making EVERY video a Reel h/t @...

The end of Roe v. Wade is leaving web platforms struggling to handle moderation — and data safety — questions around newly instituted abortion bans. For years, web platforms have faced relatively little backlash for pledging to remove posts that violate US law, even if there’s debate over whether specific content meets that standard. Policies that “match the laws of the country” — Elon Musk’s initial description of his plans for Twitter — are typically code for very permissive moderation in the US, where the First Amendment has historically protected a huge swath of content. The 2018 FOSTA-SESTA carveout, a rare exception, targeted the marginalized community of sex workers and used the justification that it was fighting the rightfully loathed cause of coercive sex trafficking. But the pres...

The US government seems to be worked up about cryptocurrency scams. On Thursday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Justice all released news that they were taking some form of action against people accused of carrying out multimillion or billion-dollar schemes. One of the cases involves knock-off apes, one is the “largest fraudulent scheme involving Bitcoin charged in any CFTC case,” and one involves someone nicknamed “the Cryptoqueen.” The wave of enforcement is happening against a backdrop of plummeting crypto prices. Let’s start with the CFTC — the regulator has filed an action against a company called Mirror Trading International (MTI), which was run by a South African man named Cornelius Johannes Steynberg. The commissi...