Technology

If you’re reading The Verge and you’re a mechanical keyboard fan (and why wouldn’t you be both?), we’ve got an exclusive deal right up your alley. Drop is running a 20 percent discount on some of its popular mechanical keyboard keycap sets, just for you. Aside from typing feel and sound, the colorful stylings of keycaps are the thing that often draws people to mechanical keyboards and has helped fuel this recent resurgence in the scene. There’s just something so cool about a board with some exquisitely vivid colors that pop. While there are many, many styles out there — some of which are clones of popular designs — Drop collaborates with designers to offer a variety of quality keycaps. This sale includes options like the RedSuns GMK Samurai set in tenkeyless layout for $80 ($20 off), the l...

Unlike the Pokémon anime and games set in the present day, where humans and Pokémon live in harmony as friends and competitors, Pokémon: Hisuian Snow — a new limited series of digital shorts based on Pokémon Legends: Arceus — takes place in the distant past at a point when people did not yet fully understand pocketable monsters. Like Arceus, Hisuian Snow’s first episode, “Onto the Icy Blue” from writer Taku Kishimoto and director Ken Yamamoto, tells the story of a young person learning firsthand just how unforgiving the Hisui region can be. Rather than focusing on a time traveler who arrives in Hisui by way of a rift in the sky, Hisuian Snow details how its protagonist Alec (Lizzie Freeman) and his father (Steve Kramer) made lives for themselves by traveling to the remote region to harvest...

After a lengthy wait, Wear OS users can now use the YouTube Music app to stream their tunes over Wi-Fi and LTE. And, as a bonus, users can also add the app as a widget for quicker access to recently played playlists or YouTube Music’s browse page. In a user community post, Google says you’ll be able to access 80 million songs via the app. On top of ad-free streaming, the app supports Google’s Smart Downloads feature that automatically refreshes songs downloaded to your Wear OS watch whenever it’s connected to Wi-Fi. There are a few caveats. For instance, you have to be a YouTube Music Premium subscriber. Also, cellular streaming isn’t available for iOS Wear OS 2 users. The road to a Wear OS YouTube Music app had many twists and turns. In 2020, Google announced it would shutter Google Play ...

YouTube will now highlight the “most replayed” parts of videos in its web player and mobile apps. The feature was previously available as an experiment for YouTube Premium subscribers but is launching for all users today. You’ll be able to identify the most popular parts of a video from a graph that appears behind its progress bar. Says YouTube: “If the graph is high, then that part of the video has been replayed often. You can use the graph to quickly find and watch those moments.” “most-replayed” will be another signal for creators to steer content Pretty simple! But, it’s interesting to think how this might split the attention of viewers — or, indeed, steer the work of creators, giving them yet another signal to identify exactly what viewers want to see (an aspect of the platform that s...

Reply All co-hosts Alex Goldman and Emmanuel Dzotsi will be leaving the show next month, according to an internal memo obtained by The Verge. It is unclear whether or in what form the show will continue. Gimlet executives emailed staffers Wednesday morning saying “Alex and Emmanuel have both made the decision to explore opportunities outside of Gimlet, and we’ll have more info to share on the future of Reply All soon. … The decision to end this iteration of the show came from a desire of the host team to move on, and we hope that there is a future where a show about the internet that isn’t actually about the internet can be reborn in Gimlet’s library.” Goldman and Dzotsi’s announcement is the latest blow for the embattled eight-year-old show, which was once the jewel in Gimlet’s crown. Whe...

Automated “liveness tests” used by banks and other institutions to help verify users’ identity can be easily fooled by deepfakes, demonstrates a new report. Security firm Sensity, which specializes in spotting attacks using AI-generated faces, probed the vulnerability of identity tests provided by 10 top vendors. Sensity used deepfakes to copy a target face onto an ID card to be scanned and then copied that same face onto a video stream of a would-be attacker in order to pass vendors’ liveness tests. Liveness tests generally ask someone to look into a camera on their phone or laptop, sometimes turning their head or smiling, in order to prove both that they’re a real person and to compare their appearance to their ID using facial recognition. In the financial world, such checks are often kn...

Amazon is updating its small and inexpensive Fire 7 tablet for the first time in three years, and it’s bringing some crowd-pleasing features: the updated tablet will feature USB-C charging, better battery life, and faster performance. Amazon is, however, raising the starting price tag a tad — from $49.99 to $59.99. Amazon says that the tablet’s quad-core processor is “30 percent faster” and that it’ll have 2GB of RAM instead of 1GB. In theory, the extra memory should make it so you can load more web pages at a time, and you won’t have to wait around for apps to start back up as often when you’re switching between them. The company also says the tablet will last about 40 percent longer between charges, estimating you’ll be able to do about 10 hours of browsing or video watching. Of course, ...

Matter is picking up steam. Samsung has announced a Partner Early Access Program for its SmartThings smart home platform, allowing companies such as Eve Systems and Aqara to start testing their Matter-compatible devices. What’s notable here is this means there are Matter smart home devices, such as lights, locks, and sensors, out there being tested. While the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) — the organization behind Matter — has already said there are devices going through its testing, it hasn’t revealed what and by whom. Samsung SmartThings announced it’s working with Aeotec, Aqara, Eve Systems, Leedarson, Nanoleaf, Netatmo, Sengled, Wemo, WiZ, and Yale. Between them, these companies make lightbulbs, light switches, contact and motion sensors, and door locks, so we now have a cleare...

Vivo has announced its latest flagship phone, the X80 Pro, and its most prominent new hardware feature is a larger in-display fingerprint sensor. The active area is far bigger than the small sensors found on most Android phones these days, meaning it’s easier to unlock the phone without looking at the screen to align your thumb. The scanner has several advantages beyond just being physically larger. You can register each fingertip with a single press on the screen, instead of having to lift and press it several times as with conventional phones. It works very quickly, even if your hands or the screen is wet. The larger surface area also means you can set the phone up to require two simultaneous fingerprints for an extra layer of authentication. The “3D Ultrasonic Large Fingerprint Sensor” ...

Following its bespoke speakers for the Guggenheim, Oswald Mill Audio is back with another hi-fi masterpiece. Dubbed the Specia K, this amplifier was modeled after electronics of the 1930s, mainly cinema speaker electronics which saw handmade vertical racks. Following a similar configuration, the Special K features eight production KT88 tubes that produce nearly 50 watts per channel into eight ohms. It also sees custom-wound transformers, an amorphous core with silver OPTs and internal wiring, custom Hoyt meters, and nickel, tempered glass and lacquered wood construction. The entire setup also requires no preamplifier. Performance-wise, the Special K has bandwidth measurements of -2db points at 10hz and 85Khz. Head over toe OMA for a better look at this bespoke amp. In other tech news, NVID...