Technology

Amazon is throwing its hat into the ring of companies trying to solve one of streaming TV’s biggest issues: endless amounts of content can make it really difficult to pick something to watch. Its approach uses an IMDb-branded app that’s exclusively available to Fire TV owners, which will let you play a series of games designed to help you pick a movie. Amazon’s press release mentions three games in the new app: one will “shuffle through movie and series options” and give you three options to choose from. In theory, the limited choice could help cut down on analysis paralysis since you could end up with something like three times fewer options than you would if you opened up Netflix. However, Amazon does note that there’s a “deal cards” button to get new picks, so it’s always possible...

Back in June of 2020, when this article was first written, people were taking to the streets to organize for justice and protest against systemic racism and police brutality. Now, nearly two years later, people are again taking to the streets, this time to protest the possibility that the Supreme Court may overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that guaranteed people the right to terminate their pregnancies. There were protests across the country on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022, when the news hit; there are bound to be more in the coming weeks. As a result, we thought it would be a good idea to revisit this examination of how you can protect your phone data when attending a protest. Here goes: Be aware If you’re attending or even just watching the protests, then be aware: not only is your phone...

Lyft Shared rides, the ride-hail company’s carpooling service, is returning to more US cities this month. The return of carpooling comes as the company struggles to rein in its spending in response to an ongoing driver shortage and high gas prices. Lyft suspended carpooling in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to help curb the spread of the virus. About 16 months later, shared rides slowly returned to a small number of markets. And now, it’s returning to even more cities. (Uber started bringing its Uber Pool service back to cities last fall.) In May, Lyft Shared rides will return to five US cities: San Francisco, San Jose, Denver, Las Vegas, and Atlanta. The company has been operating its carpooling service in Philadelphia and Miami since last summer. San Francisco, San Jose,...

Elon Musk has secured $7.1 billion in new financing for his takeover of Twitter — which CNBC reports will include assuming the role of “temporary CEO” — with this round of funding coming from a group of sometimes high-profile outside investors. At the top of the list is Larry Ellison, with the co-founder and current CTO of Oracle committing $1 billion to the purchase. Ellison has said that he is “very close friends” with Musk, and he was added to Tesla’s board in 2018. As one of the richest people alive — a superlative he shares with Musk — and an estimated net worth of over $100 billion, the investment is relatively small change for him. Back in 2012, Ellison bought nearly the entire Hawaiian island of Lanai for around $500 million. Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, and Saudi Prince Alwaleed...

Ever since Epic Games started its battle with Apple and Google over their app store fees, playing Fortnite on your mobile device has been more difficult, if not impossible. You could try it on iPhone via Nvidia’s GeForce Now but only if you got into a closed beta. But now, Epic Games has decided to partner with the company it spurned — Microsoft — and is putting Fortnite on pretty much anything with a screen for free via the Xbox Cloud Gaming service. Fortnite is the first free-to-play title to join Xbox Cloud Gaming, and Microsoft says that all you’ll need to play (in the 26 countries where it’s available) is a Microsoft account and internet access for your iOS, iPadOS, Android, or Windows device. It works through your web browser (click here to start playing now), with touch controls as ...

Summer Game Fest will kick off this year on June 9th at 2PM ET / 11AM PT, with a live show hosted by, as my college Ash Parrish described him, “consummate video game hype-man Geoff Keighley.” According to a press release, the show will be streamed on basically every platform, including YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, and Facebook. After the big premiere show will be Day of the Devs, where indie game developers can show off what they’re working on. As GameSpot notes, developers submit their games for consideration to be included in the show. Like last year, that show is being presented by Iam8bit and Double Fine, the studio behind games like Psychonauts, Grim Fandango, and Broken Age. The SGF website says to “stay tuned” for its announcement of other partners that will be part of the show. Who ne...

Believe it or not, there was no such thing as an AMD Chromebook until 2019. Also, the first ones were sluggish, and whi;e AMD’s second stab at Chromebooks was quite a bit better, they still contained rebranded CPUs whose Zen cores were years out of date. Today, AMD is putting a better foot forward — with the new Ryzen 5000 C-Series chips, including the “first 8-core high-performance x86 processor for Chromebooks.” I mean, AMD’s still not putting its best foot forward, because these APUs will still sport last-gen AMD Vega graphics rather than the newest RDNA 2 stuff you’ll find in the company’s Ryzen 6000 chips (not to mention the PS5, Xbox Series X, and Steam Deck). And the new Ryzen 7 5825C, Ryzen 5 5625C, and Ryzen 3 5425C aren’t exactly trying to hide that they’re largely rebrands of th...

On May 5th — World Password Day — we might have come one step closer to passwords being a thing of the past. In a joint effort, tech giants Apple, Google, and Microsoft announced Thursday morning that they have committed to building support for passwordless sign-in across all of the mobile, desktop, and browser platforms that they control in the coming year. Effectively, this means that passwordless authentication will come to all major device platforms in the not too distant future: Android and iOS mobile operating systems; Chrome, Edge, and Safari browsers; and the Windows and macOS desktop environments. “Just as we design our products to be intuitive and capable, we also design them to be private and secure,” said Kurt Knight, senior director of platform product marketing at Apple. “Wor...

The smart home is about to change. Soon, you won’t have to choose a smart light bulb or door lock just because it works with your smart speaker. Instead, you’ll be able to buy a smart device, bring it home, and it will work with any voice assistant or app you choose. At least, that’s the promise behind Matter, a new standard created by Samsung, Google, Apple, and Amazon. Most importantly, you won’t be locked into the platform you chose. If you decide you want to switch to SmartThings from Google Home, or go with Amazon Alexa over Apple HomeKit, any Matter-enabled devices can come with you. This shift in the smart home means the major platforms that help us run our connected devices are changing, too. The Verge sat down with Mark Benson, the newly appointed Head of SmartThings US, Sam...

After The Verge yesterday revealed the name of Sonos’ latest soundbar and a retailer accidentally posted images of the device, the leak floodgates have now seemingly opened. Twitter user SnoopyTech has shared a number of marketing shots of the Sonos Ray, offering a closer look at the upcoming product’s size and design. The images showcase the Ray in both black and white and offer a higher-quality peek at the soundbar’s design. Similar to the Arc and Beam, the Ray has a ton of perforated holes cut into the plastic front grill. The Sonos Ray shares design traits with the more expensive Arc and Beam.Image: SnoopyTech (Twitter) Around back is the connect button, power, optical, and ethernet — confirming The Verge’s previous reporting that the Ray does not include HDMI eARC support. It will plu...