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Saturday, 31 October 2020
The Roomba i7+ robot vacuum returns to its all-time low price
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FBI, Homeland Security detail how Iranian hackers stole US voter data
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Intel's Iris Xe Max GPU brings graphics chops to thin-and-light laptops
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Apple ordered to pay VirnetX $502.8 million in patent trial
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
A jury in Texas has ruled that Apple has to pay VirnetX $502.8 million in royalties for VPN on Demand, a feature that lets iOS users access a VPN connection, Bloomberg reported. The two companies have been involved in a legal battle for ten years, with VirnetX— sometimes referred to as a patent troll — arguing that Apple’s VPN on Demand and FaceTime use its technology.
Apple said in a statement it plans to appeal the decision: “This case has been going on for over a decade, with patents that are unrelated to the core operations of our products and have been found to be invalid by the patent office. Cases like this only serve to stifle innovation and harm consumers.”
Earlier this year, a US appeals court rejected Apple’s request to...
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Hitting the Books: How one of our first 'smart' weapons helped stop the Nazis
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The Morning After: Apple starts a repair program for AirPods Pro ANC problems
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A Swiss cheese approach to pandemic safety
Photo credit should read CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images
Lately, I’ve been thinking about pandemic safety and Swiss cheese. It’s an uninspiring cheese, but it’s a good visual metaphor for a layered approach to infection control.
This ‘Swiss Cheese Model’ has been around since at least the 1990’s, when it was proposed as a way of thinking about how accidents happen. During the pandemic, it’s been pressed into a different kind of service, used to visualize disease prevention instead of accidents.
In a pandemic as widespread as this one, no single action can keep a person from getting sick. There will always be flaws (holes) in any approach. Washing your hands won’t keep you from breathing in the virus — and wearing a cloth mask won’t completely protect you if you’re stuck in a stuffy room with...
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Lower East Side Ecology Center is accepting e-waste at NYC pop-up sites through November
One of the countless impacts of the coronavirus pandemic is that it halted the NYC Department of Sanitation’s recycling program that picks up your e-waste by appointment. The program is still paused, and it isn’t set to resume its normal cadence of accepting e-waste at drop-off sites until at least June 2021.
Thankfully, you have a few short-term options if you need to get rid of some tech in the coming weeks.
Earlier in the pandemic, the Lower East Side (LES) Ecology Center drop-off site near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn permanently shut its doors. It was one of the few drop-off sites in New York City that accepted and recycled e-waste, diverting 1 million pounds of e-waste from landfills in 2018, according to Christine Datz-Romero,...
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Google Meet will now let you use custom backgrounds on video calls
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Google is introducing custom backgrounds for its Meet videoconferencing platform, the company announced in a blog post. If you use Meet in Google’s Chrome browser you should be able to access the feature in Chrome OS as well as on Windows and Mac laptops and desktops. The feature is “coming soon” to mobile, Google says.
There’s no browser extension needed to activate custom backgrounds; you should be able to add a background image from your own photo collection or from a library of images provided by Google that includes landscapes, abstract art and (for some reason) offices.
It may take up to a week before all Google Meet users can access the new custom background...
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DJI Pocket 2 review: Better than the original in so many ways
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Sean Connery, star of the James Bond films, dies at 90
Sean Connery, the Scottish actor who brought James Bond to the silver screen as part of a four-decade career, has died at 90, the BBC reported. Connery played Ian Fleming’s 007 spy in seven films, starting with Dr. No in 1962, a role he got without taking a screen test, according to Variety. He reprised the role in From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds are Forever, and Never Say Never Again.
Connery died in his sleep in the Bahamas, according to the BBC, and had been in poor health for some time.
Over the course of his prolific career, Connery won an Oscar— Best Supporting Actor for the 1987 film The Untouchables— and three Golden Globe awards. His filmography also includes star turns in The Man...
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League of Legends spinoff Ruined King will launch on consoles in ‘early 2021’
Ruined King: A League of Legends Story, the upcoming single-player League of Legends spinoff that will see the franchise debut on consoles for the first time, has released its first (albeit, vague) bits of information. It’ll launch sometime in “early 2021” on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Steam, and the Epic Games Store at launch, with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X / S versions set to follow shortly after. (PS4 and Xbox One players will be able to upgrade for free.)
Along with news of a release window, Riot Forge also announced some additional details on what Ruined King will actually be: a single-player, turn-based RPG set in the Bilgewater and Shadow Isles regions of Runeterra (the planet on which League of Legends is...
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Best Buy’s three-day sale on OLED TVs, headphones, and more ends Saturday
Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Saturday is your last chance to get in on Best Buy’s multi-day sale, but don’t worry if you miss out. Black Friday is a few weeks away, and this year, retailers are offering very good sale prices almost every day. Wherever those deals come from, we’ll be putting them in deal posts for you to check out. What follows are the best deals that have made the rounds on The Verge earlier this week, as well as some new inclusions we think you’ll enjoy.
Sony’s WH-1000XM4 wireless noise-canceling headphones come recommended if you want a comfy over-ear model with excellent sound quality and long-lasting battery life. Normally $350, they’re down to $278. This matches the lowest price yet.
There are some big discounts happening on LG and Vizio OLED...
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Woot is selling refurbished Pixelbook Go laptops that don’t have Google branding
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Woot is selling a batch of refurbished Pixelbook Go laptops starting at $530 for the base model with an Intel Core m3 processor, 64GB of storage and an FHD touchscreen display (usually $650 new), going up to $790 for the Core i7 model with 256GB of storage and 16GB of RAM. These have a 90-day warranty through Woot with the option available to extend coverage by a year with a SquareTrade protection plan. And despite not being retail units, the seller says they will receive software updates through Google through June 2026. Woot doesn’t make claims about their physical condition, which it usually does for refurbished products.
As far as discounts go, the prices are good, though that isn’t the most interesting thing about these Chromebooks....
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'League of Legends' RPG 'Ruined King' will launch in early 2021
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SSC NA promises a re-run of the Tuatara's top speed record attempt
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YouTube TV drops Boston regional sports network NESN
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Friday, 30 October 2020
It’s Halloween, so here are some mischievous skeletons
Animation: Andre Zimmermann
Everyone focuses on what’s blowing up on TikTok, but here’s something that’s been getting a bit of attention over on Byte: some playful little skeletons.
Over the past month, designer Andre Zimmermann has been posting short looping clips of meddlesome skeletons getting into low-stakes hijinks, like running off with food from a table or knocking a plant off a ledge. “They sort of became these jerks,” Zimmermann said. “Like a cat.”
They’re the furthest thing from spooky, but their mischievous antics feel a bit more comforting during what’s already a high-stress Halloween.
My favorite of Zimmermann’s not-quite-spooky animations shows a humanoid collection of skulls dancing to a looping disco track....
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Apple ordered to pay VirnetX $503 million for VPN patent lawsuit
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Playdate, the tiny handheld with a crank, is delayed to early 2021
You’ll have to wait a bit longer for Panic’s odd little handheld: In an update published today, the company announced that Playdate will slip from its original 2020 window and now ship in early 2021.
The device is the software developer’s first piece of physical hardware, a handheld with a unique crank alongside traditional buttons for controlling the device. Teenage Engineering co-designed the Playdate and it bears many of the company’s minimalistic touches in a bright, playful yellow.
Panic announced in March that its staff was moving to work from home and that the Malaysian factory producing the Playdate had temporarily shut down. The company says adapting to...
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In its latest confusing decision, Twitter reinstates The New York Post
Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid The New York Post is back on Twitter, after Twitter updated its policy on policy changes. This story is going to be confusing, but not as confusing as Twitter’s attempts at moderation.
To recap: On October 14th, The New York Post published a (contested and possibly part of a disinformation campaign, though this is absolutely not the point I am here to tell you about) story about Hunter Biden, the son of presidential candidate Joe Biden. Very little of the contents of the Post story are pertinent to the discussion we are about to have, except this: some of the materials in it, Twitter alleges, seem to be the result of hacking.
Twitter suspended The New York Post’s account...
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Apple program will replace AirPods Pro buds with crackling, ANC issues
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The best Netflix horror series to binge-watch on Halloween
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The Morning After: Netflix price hike takes HD streaming to $14 per month
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SmartThings Find app can track down lost Samsung Galaxy devices
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Your PC is either DirectX 12 Ultimate-ready, or you're not a real gamer
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Tesla raises price of ‘Full Self-Driving’ option to $10,000
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” option, which currently enables Autopilot features like changing lanes on highways and automatic car parking, now costs $10,000, or $2,000 more than before. The price rise only covers the US for now, where the company’s Full Self-Driving functionality has just launched in limited beta, allowing Autopilot’s advanced driver-assist features to be used on local roads as well.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced the price increase in a tweet last week in response to the launch of the Full Self-Driving beta to a select group of customers. At the time, he said similar price increases would come to other markets with the beta. Musk has said he expects Full Self-Driving to see a “wide release” before the end of the year.
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Samsung rolls out SmartThings Find globally for locating all your Galaxy gear
SmartThings Find uses maps and augmented reality features to help people track down their missing gear. | Image: Samsung
Samsung is rolling out a service to help Galaxy gadget owners find their gear when it goes missing. Called SmartThings Find, the feature extends the capabilities of Samsung’s Find My Mobile app by letting users locate not only their Samsung smartphones, but also any Galaxy brand tablets, smartwatches, and earbuds they also own.
SmartThings Find previously launched as a trial in the US, UK, and South Korea last month, but Samsung says the feature is now “ready for a global launch” (while also noting that access “may vary by market and carrier”).
Those uncertainties aside, we know SmartThings Find uses a combination Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and ultra-wideband (UWB) services to locate devices, and is available on hardware running...
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New 'Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge' trailer reveals its story
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Polk Audio MagniFi 2 soundbar review: Virtual 3D audio and built-in Chromecast, but iffy bass
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Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070: 3440x1440 ultrawide benchmarks
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More good news for Huawei as it regains access to crucial camera sensors
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Samsung debuts SmartThings Find to help you locate lost Galaxy devices
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Report: Xiaomi beats Apple to become world’s third biggest smartphone firm
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Here’s a sneak peek at the design of the OnePlus 8T Cyberpunk 2077 Edition
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Report: Here’s when you should expect LG’s rollable phone
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The Oculus Quest 2 was preordered five times as much as the original
The Oculus Quest 2 (right) next to the original model. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
The new Oculus Quest 2 VR headset was preordered more than five times as much as last year’s original model, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed on Facebook’s earnings call. Zuckerberg characterized the launch of the Quest 2 as the company taking “major steps forward in building the next computing platform.”
“I’ve been very impressed and excited by the progress that our teams have made on this,” Zuckerberg said on the call. “I think that the new Quest 2 product is extraordinary. I love using it. And I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done there.”
It’s not really surprising that there’d be pent-up demand for the Quest 2. The improved standalone headset is shipping with a starting price of $299 — that’s $100 less than the previous model, which...
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Report: Here’s when you should expect LG’s rollable phone
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Thursday, 29 October 2020
Oxygen OS Open Beta 19 rolls out to the OnePlus 7, OnePlus 7 Pro
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PlayStation CEO thinks VR's bright future is still years away
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Samsung regains top smartphone vendor spot as Xiaomi overtakes Apple
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Samsung is back on top as the world’s biggest smartphone vendor one quarter after losing its spot to Huawei, according to reports from IDC, Counterpoint, and Canalys. The news comes just as Samsung posted its highest quarterly revenue figures ever, which the company said was helped by a boost in demand for smartphones.
Huawei became the number one vendor for the first time three months ago, benefiting from strong sales in China while much of the rest of the world was operating under constrained retail conditions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But Huawei’s shipments fell 7 percent quarter-on-quarter and 24 percent year-on-year, according to Counterpoint, while Samsung’s shipments increased by 47 percent over the last quarter.
Xiaomi was...
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YouTube Music finally lets users filter out liked YouTube videos
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Instagram drops 'recent' posts from hashtag pages ahead of the election
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Lil Yachty’s Quibi show is the first to find a life raft
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Remember Quibi, short-lived media company and purveyor of bizarre shows like Murder House Flip and a horror anthology featuring a golden arm? It’s only been a little over a week since the mobile-first, shortform streamer announced it was shuttering, but already the first of its unreleased shows has found a new home: Lil Yachty’s dramedy, Public Figures, is headed to HBO Max. It seems pieces of Quibi might live on — whether you watched it or not.
Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s efforts to sell Quibi outright to big companies like Apple and WarnerMedia was one of the first indications that things were about to go bottoms up at the young company. The attempts that followed to sell off Quibi’s unreleased content all but confirmed the...
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Google is bringing its own VPN to desktops and phones with $9.99 Google One subscription
There are any number of VPN services you can use to help protect your privacy and security with an encrypted internet connection, and now Google has its own. Well, technically, it already did, but only for Google Fi cellular subscribers on Android smartphones. Now, the company’s announcing it’ll throw in an Android-based VPN free of charge to any 2TB Google One cloud storage subscriber in the US — and will expand to iOS, Windows and Mac and other countries “in the coming months.”
As you can see in the image above, you’ll need to be on the 2TB Google One plan which costs $9.99 a month or $99 per year, so it’s not exactly a free VPN. But if you’re interested, this Google GIF shows you how to turn it on:
A new...
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T-Mobile's new streaming TV bundle makes a lot of sense
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Enbrighten Outdoor Plug-in Wi-Fi Smart Switch review: Good price, poor performance
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Is Sony’s smartphone business finally turning a corner?
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