Technology

Apple products contained almost 20 percent recycled materials in 2021, the highest percentage the company has achieved to date. Apple shared new details on its recycling programs today, along with some new features it’s offering customers ahead of Earth Day on April 22nd. In a first for any Apple device, recycled gold was used in the plating of the main logic board in the iPhone 13 and iPhone13 Pro, as well as in wire in the device’s front camera and rear cameras. That “milestone,” Apple says, was the result of the company “pioneer[ing] industry-leading levels of traceability to build a gold supply chain of exclusively recycled content.” A first for any Apple device That builds on the company’s previous efforts to retrieve gold from its own discarded products. When Apple’s recycling robots...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially launched a new center that will forecast infectious disease outbreaks. The Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics is “the equivalent of the National Weather Service for infectious diseases,” the agency said in a statement Tuesday. Along with experts in data analytics and disease modeling, the center will also have communications specialists on staff to interpret the information for the public. Planning for the center began last August. It attempts to correct some of the major deficiencies the COVID-19 pandemic revealed in the United States’ public health infrastructure. The CDC has never had a dedicated infectious disease forecasting program, and it has spent the past two years struggling to compile and distribute infor...

Delta CEO Ed Bastian said the airline has tested out SpaceX’s Starlink technology, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. The report calls the tests “exploratory” and says there weren’t any further details, but it does seem like one of the major US airlines is at least interested in Elon Musk’s satellite internet service. In July last year, SpaceX said it was “in talks with several” airlines and that it was trying to “get that product finalized to be put on aircraft in the very near future.” A few months before that, the company sought FCC approval to provide service to moving vehicles such as planes, boats, and trucks. (CEO Elon Musk has said the equipment is currently too big to put on passenger cars, though that hasn’t stopped some people.) The WSJ reports that the regulator ...

Meta is updating its mixed reality hand tracking system with support for more types of motion, including gestures like clapping. A new version of its Presence Platform API is launching for everyone after a limited preview with a few developers, promising more sophisticated and reliable interactions on the Meta (formerly Oculus) Quest headset. The Presence Platform update is designed to improve Quest hand tracking — which uses cameras mounted in the headset to replace the default hardware controllers — across the board. In addition to general reliability updates, it focuses on recognizing movement when part of your hand is blocked from the camera’s view. It’s now supposed to catch clapping, high-fives, crossed hands, and other gestures that involve occlusion. The thumbs-up motion, as well a...

When Alaina Wood started posting to TikTok in 2020, her videos mostly had to do with strange things around her “historic” apartment, such as issues with leaks and doors. Eventually, Wood, a climate communicator and a sustainability scientist, began seeing videos from users expressing guilt and hopelessness about climate change. News surrounding climate change can be scary. Wood felt the heat and anxiety, too, but after seeing how rampant this feeling was on the platform, she wanted to let people know that solutions were out there — it isn’t too late. Wood, @thegarbagequeen, now has more than 300,000 subscribers on TikTok and posts videos ranging from debunking climate doom, highlighting new studies and reports, and even talking about her own experiences. She talked with The Verge about the...

OnePlus is bringing a new Nord device to the US: the N20 5G will arrive at T-Mobile starting April 28th for $282. It will be exclusively available through the carrier, at least at first. The N20 5G, like the N10 5G that preceded it, includes a Snapdragon 600-series chipset, 128GB of storage, 6GB of RAM, and — naturally — 5G connectivity. It’s a step up from the more basic N200 5G — also sold at T-Mobile — and it comes with a notable screen upgrade to an OLED rather than last year’s LCD panel. That 6.4-inch screen features 1080p resolution and a standard 60Hz refresh rate. That’s a slower rate than the N10 5G’s 90Hz panel, but that screen was an LCD — typically not as rich and contrast-y as an OLED. In that way, the N20 5G is an upgrade, and as PCMag concluded from its chat with OnePlus COO...

Wyze’s latest product is something of a departure for the smart home company. The Wyze Lock Bolt is a smart lock that ditches cloud connectivity in favor of local control over Bluetooth. A rectangular matte black keypad with a fingerprint reader, the Wyze Lock Bolt replaces your entire deadbolt and costs $69.99 (plus $10 shipping), in keeping with Wyze’s reputation for high-level tech at rock bottom prices. The lack of an internet connection may be a wise move for Wyze right now, considering the recent controversy around the company’s failure to disclose a security flaw with its original cloud-connected Wyze Cam. Available starting today, the Wyze Lock Bolt is a motorized deadbolt that can be unlocked with your fingerprint or with a code entered onto the integrated, backlit keypad. The loc...

A big part of imagining the future is picturing what we’ll bring with us from the present. Some things will stubbornly cling to us — like a produce sticker refusing to be composted. But other visions of the future will take a bit more work to manifest. During The Verge’s Conservation Week, we’re looking at the efforts of people who want to bring different worlds into being: whether that’s a forested future, thanks to tree-planting drones; a wildlife-filled future fueled by AI-backed research; or even a future where the world’s first MMO is still online. Along the way, meet a sustainability scientist using TikTok to fight climate doom, a group of fans fighting to preserve an early virtual world, and a community trying to maintain a more rural way of life as online shopping dumps warehouses ...