Technology

Now is the best time to stargaze in the UK since 2011, according to the results of a new citizen science survey led by the countryside charity CPRE. Light pollution in the UK has dropped to its lowest levels since CPRE began its annual study more than a decade ago. Light pollution peaked in 2020 (before the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing) and then dipped last year as workplaces shuttered during the pandemic. Since then, CPRE says light pollution has continued to drop as more people continue to work from home and soaring energy prices in Europe push households to cut down on lighting costs. Each year, CPRE enlists the help of citizen scientists for a “Star Count.” This year, more than 2,500 participants counted the number of stars they saw in the night sky in their area between Februar...

Unlike many of the games we use to test gaming laptops here at The Verge, such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Red Dead Redemption 2, CS:GO doesn’t have a built-in benchmark. But not to worry — there are third-party benchmarks you can run to see what kind of frame rates your device puts up on this first-person shooter. The one we commonly use, the FPS Benchmark by Ulletical, is free and easy to install. Here’s how to run Ulletical’s FPS Benchmark for CS:GO: If you don’t see a Workshop option, click the dots on the far right. Search for FPS Benchmark. Hover over the option titled FPS Benchmark and click the green plus sign that appears to install the map. It should only take a few seconds to install the map. When that’s all sorted, you’re ready to start the game. Once CS:GO is up and runni...

Google announced a new initiative Tuesday aimed at securing the open-source software supply chain by curating and distributing a security-vetted collection of open-source packages to Google Cloud customers. The new service, branded Assured Open Source Software, was introduced in a blog post from the company. In the post, Andy Chang, group product manager for security and privacy at Google Cloud, pointed to some of the challenges of securing open-source software and stressed Google’s commitment to open source. “There has been an increasing awareness in the developer community, enterprises, and governments of software supply chain risks,” Chang wrote, citing last year’s major log4j vulnerability as an example. “Google continues to be one of the largest maintainers, contributors, and users of...

Everyone — and I do mean everyone — has an opinion about the Ösa electric two-wheeler from Swedish upstarts Cake. It invokes such a surge of emotion that dozens of strangers felt compelled to exclaim unsolicited critiques at me over the last few weeks. “What is that!?” shrieked a middle-aged man who bicycled across a busy street just to ask. “What a dumb design,” scolded a boorish woman waiting next to me on a ferry. Mostly, though, people just looked on in silence, scowling or excitedly tapping their friends to behold the unique-looking scooter that had just rolled into view. The Cake Ösa is rather unique. It not only transports all your gadgets and tools, it also transforms into an electric generator to power them once you arrive. Today’s office Cake calls Ösa a “multifaceted utility pla...

Five years after it was announced, Tesla has opened up reservations for its all-electric Semi truck, scheduled to go into production in 2023. On the company’s website, you can make a reservation by paying $5,000 upfront, then $15,000 within 10 days. (Spotted via InsideEVs.) A word of warning, though: the $5k is refundable, but it seems the $20k ain’t. Now, you’d be forgiven for having forgotten all about Tesla’s Semi, which was announced in 2017 with futuristic concept art and envious specs. The company says the truck will be powered by four independent motors on the rear axles, go 0-60mph in 20 seconds, and have a battery range of either 300 or 500 miles. Prices start at $150,000, and there have been a number of orders from businesses like Walmart and FedEx in the low-dozens range. Prices...

Google officially announced its upcoming Pixel 6A phone on May 11th, 2022, and will be shipping its new line of Pixel 7 phones this coming autumn. You may be planning to upgrade as soon as the new phones are ready, or you may be simply moving from your current Android phone to a more recent model. Either way, you’ll want to be able to move your data over with confidence. Google makes it pretty simple to move from one phone to another — as soon as you start up your new phone, you will get step-by-step directions on what to do. (Note: if you have a two-factor authentication or 2FA app such as Google Authenticator on your phone, your data won’t be automatically moved — you’ll have to take a few extra steps.) If your older phone is lost or broken, you can also install your apps and data to a n...

If you’re shopping for a graduation gift, Asus’ Chromebook Detachable CM3 is our favorite detachable Chromebook and one of the best cheap laptops on the market. It functions as both a great tablet and a Chromebook, making it an excellent present for a graduating senior who doesn’t need a lot performance-wise. It’s a good buy that won’t totally break the bank, either, now that it’s selling at its best price of the year. Typically $369.99, the 10.5-inch tablet is on sale at Amazon with a MediaTek 8183 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of eMMC storage for $299.99, which is only $30 shy of the all-time low. The Chromebook comes with a unique, dual-folding kickstand, meaning your giftee can either fold the CM3 so it stands up like a laptop or stand the tablet up horizontally. They won’t need to b...

NVIDIA‘s long-rumored RTX 4090 graphics card may be coming as early as July. According to industry leaker Kopite7Kimi — who most recently correctly predicted the RTX 3090’s specifications — the tech giant is gearing up to launch the first of its new tier GPUs this summer. The card is expected to draw 450W in power consumption alone, channeling that to its 16,128 cores. It’ll also reportedly come with 24GB of GDDR6X VRAM running at 21Gpbs. At those specifications, the RTX 4090 will boast 50% more cores than the current RTX 3090. To make it even faster, the upcoming graphics card will be built on NVIDIA’s brand new Ada Lovelace architecture that’s rumored to include other hardware that can double its performance over the current generation of products. Of course, the tech company has yet to ...

Elon Musk has reiterated his claim that fake and spam accounts could make up more than 20 percent of Twitter’s users, saying the deal to acquire the social media company “cannot move forward” until Twitter proves the accuracy of its much lower estimate of less than 5 percent. Musk is currently in the process of buying Twitter and its estimated 226 million monetizable daily active users for $44 billion. “20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher,” the Tesla CEO tweeted in response to a report from Teslarati. “My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate. Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does.” 20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much...