Thursday, 31 December 2020

Tesla launches the world's largest Supercharger station in Shanghai

Tesla has launched the world’s largest Supercharger station in China, the company announced on Wiebo. The 72-stall facility in Shanghai easily bests the 56 stall station the company opened last month in Fresno county, California, as Electrek noted. U...

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2021 could be a great year for 'alternative' consoles

Despite the pandemic, it’s been a pretty great year for video game hardware. Microsoft launched the Xbox Series X, a powerful obelisk packing a 12-teraflop GPU, and the smaller Series S, which can run games natively at 1440p resolution. Sony, meanwhi...

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The Internet Archive now has better scans of Computerworld magazine

The Internet Archive announced that it has made Computerworld’s print issues from 1967-2014 available online in better quality than ever. The publication provides a historical record of sorts for computing, as it launched during a key period in the i...

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Apple removes more unlicensed games from the App Store in China

The App Store is reportedly looking a little different in China today. According to Reuters, Apple has removed roughly 39,000 games owned by developers and publishers that don’t have an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) from the Chinese gover...

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The Morning After: Intel, AMD and Apple made 2020 a big year for CPUs

Very, very soon, 2020 will be over. Did it take an eternity to get here, or did the year fly past for you? We’ve commissioned a run of end-of-year stories that touch on what happened in tech over the last 12 months, how we’re on the brink of a proces...

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Android Authority’s favorite non-phone tech that got us through 2020


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Xiaomi Mi A3 gets Android 11, but it’s bricking phones


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FCC orders phone companies to help trace illegal robocallers

The FCC has been adopting more and more measures to combat robocalls, and the latest set of rules (PDF) it’s implementing include limiting even non-telemarketing calls made to residential phones. Non-commercial, commercial and nonprofit organizations...

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Ticketmaster pays $10 million fine after hacking a startup rival

Ticketmaster has agreed to pay a $10 million criminal fine to avoid prosecution over charges that it illegally accessed a rival’s computer system, Reuters has reported. “Ticketmaster employees repeatedly — and illegally — accessed a competitor’s comp...

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This leaked render could be our first look at the Huawei P50 Pro


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Google's Pixel phones only use Adaptive Charging if there's an alarm to guide it

Adaptive Charging is one of the most useful features Google rolled out this month for Pixel phones. It makes sure the device’s battery gets filled slower than usual if you leave it plugged in overnight, which is something that can help maintain the b...

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We asked, you told us: You really think the Xiaomi Mi 11 is hot


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A new Galaxy awaits as Samsung reveals Galaxy S21 teaser


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Wednesday, 30 December 2020

Brave's privacy-focused browser rolls out a version for Apple's M1 Macs

If you have a new M1-powered Mac and you’re looking for a non-Apple, non-Google, non-Mozilla browser, then good news, Brave has updated the release channel of its privacy-focused browser with native Apple Silicon support. At the moment, the Microsoft...

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Xiaomi Redmi 9T revealed via unboxing: It’s an upgraded Poco M3


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The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip is now getting its Android 11 update (Updated)


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GM's CES keynote will reportedly show off an electric Chevrolet pickup

Last month, GM announced that it was ramping up its electrification efforts and aiming to have 30 EVs on the market by the end of 2025. Turns out we might see some of those vehicles very, very soon: according to Bloomberg, the automaker will give us...

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A new update makes it easier to move apps between the LG Wing's displays

If you’re the proud owner of an LG Wing, your quirky dual-screen phone is about to pick up new features. As spotted by Droid Life, Verizon (Engadget’s parent company) has released a new update that builds out the Wing’s unique functionality and shoul...

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LG Display's transparent OLED puts a screen between you and the sushi chef

As per its annual tradition, LG Display is preparing to show off some new display tech demos for CES 2021, with the latest focus set on showing where transparent OLED may fit in the pandemic age. The Korean company is setting up a few physical demos...

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LG wants to use transparent OLED displays for ‘invisible’ bedroom TVs


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This maker built a working Batman grappling gun in only a year

Gif of Built IRL using his grappling gun
Built IRL

If you’ve ever watched a Batman movie or played Just Cause, you’ve probably thought “wow, using a grappling hook would be so much fun.” YouTuber Built IRL, whose name is JT, thought so too — and he’s been working on making that happen for the past year. The end result is a grappling hook gun that functions pretty similarly to the ones we’ve seen in movies and games.

As you’ll see in the video above, this new grappling gun is more impressive than many previous attempts. For one thing, it’s self-contained — the entire unit fits on his arm, including the CO2-powered blasting mechanism that shoots the hook using standard cartridges, and a very powerful 10,000W motor that’s properly fast and can completely pull him up into the air. (He shows...

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'S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2' gameplay teaser previews the game's 2021 launch

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was announced in 2001 and didn’t ship until 2007, so news that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is preparing for a 2021 release more than ten years after it was originally announced is fitting. Presumably first-person shooter play...

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ESPN Plus is raising its annual subscription price to $59.99 in 2021

The cost for an annual subscription for ESPN Plus subscribers will increase from $49.99 to $59.99 in 2021, according to Variety. ESPN raised the monthly price of ESPN Plus earlier this year to $5.99, and now the annual subscription is getting the same treatment.

New subscribers will start paying $59.99 on January 8th, 2021, and the new price will reportedly trickle down to existing subscribers a few months later in March. Disney had already announced that Disney Plus and the company’s bundle of Hulu, Disney Plus, and ESPN Plus would each cost $1 more starting in March 2021, raising those prices to $8.99 and $13.99, respectively. Streaming price hikes have been a theme of 2020; YouTube TV raised its price, Fubo followed not long after,...

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Most of 2020’s best holiday deals could end later this week

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

When the calendar flips over to 2021 this Friday, January 1st, some of the best deals that we’ve been featuring for the past few months could come to an end. Assuredly, not every single one will end, but judging from previous years, the start of a new year means the holiday season is over and most companies will likely want to raise their prices. Here are a few mainstay deals that might not be around for much longer.

If you sign up for YouTube TV by December 31st, you’ll get a free Google Chromecast with Google TV (pictured above), the latest streaming device that supports 4K HDR playback and includes a remote.

Next up, this great Walmart-exclusive deal combines a Switch Pro controller with a download code for Super Mario Odyssey for...

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11 great sci-fi books from 2020 to check out on your new Kindle

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

It’s not easy to make it to a library right now, and with a long winter stuck at home looming ahead for many of us, there’s never been a better time to hunker down with a good book. If you’ve been lucky enough to receive a new Kindle (or a non-Amazon-branded e-reader or just a device with an e-book app on it), you might be looking for some new books to read.

To help, here are some of the best new science fiction books released in 2020 (along with some additional recommendations for other books in a series, where applicable), which should be the perfect pairing with your new e-reader.

We’ve rounded up our favorite and most-used games, apps, and entertainment. Check out our app picks for iPhones, Android phones, Windows PCs, and M...

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I tried to play 'Unsung Story' and fell for 'Mario Party' instead

Six years ago I bought into the hype and backed Unsung Story, then touted as a spiritual sequel to Final Fantasy Tactics. I loved the latter title for its gameplay, music and character designs — especially Agrias, as I have a thing for women in plate...

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2020 put us on the edge of a processor revolution

In this episode of our explainer show Upscaled, we took a look back at the year in CPUs. From one perspective 2020 feels like the new normal for CPUs. Intel put out another high-end chip, 10th-gen “Comet Lake”, which added a few cores but is still ba...

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Samsung’s One UI 3.0 update starts rolling out to Galaxy Note 10 devices

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Samsung’s One UI 3.0 update has started hitting older Samsung devices, starting with the Galaxy Note 10 and Galaxy Note 10 Plus, according to SamMobile. The update, which brings Android 11-specific feature changes and some small visual and interface tweaks to Samsung smartphones, is only arriving on last year’s Note 10 devices in Germany, Spain, and Switzerland for now, but a wider release is expected at some point early next year if not in just a few weeks.

Samsung first began beta testing One UI 3.0 this past fall following the release of Android 11, and it’s been at various stages of availability for different smartphones depending on your region. The Note 10 and Note 10 Plus versions have been available in beta since October, and in...

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10 great games to play on your new 2020 VR headset

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

If you received a virtual reality gaming headset this holiday season, congratulations! Whether you’ve got the newly released Oculus Quest 2, one of the last few units of the now discontinued Oculus Rift S, or another headset like the PlayStation VR, there are a ton of video games for you to explore with your new head mount display. Here are ten games I personally enjoy and think are worth your time and money.

We’ve rounded up our favorite and most-used games, apps, and entertainment. Check out our app picks for iPhones, Android phones, Windows PCs, and M1-equipped Macs; our favorite mobile games from Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass; and our top choices for gaming PCs, the PS5, Xbox One and Series X / S, Nintendo Switch, and VR. We’ve...

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Google experiments with surfacing TikTok and Instagram videos in search

It might soon be easier to track down a favorite social video without launching the relevant app. TechCrunch has confirmed reports from Brian Freiesleben, Search Engine Roundtable and others that Google is testing a search feature that highlights cli...

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Modeling the bizarre remnants of a supernova

When stars of a certain large size and energy run out of fuel, the result is a supernova explosion that can be spotted with the naked eye just once in a lifetime. Some leave behind a relatively spherical supernova remnant. However, others expand with...

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15 best Android games released in 2020


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The 15 best Android apps of 2020


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Apple pulled an app that promoted potentially COVID-unsafe parties

Apple has pulled an iOS app called Vybe Together that promoted private parties in New York City and elsewhere during the COVID-19 pandemic, The Verge has reported. The app quickly gained notoriety yesterday following critical tweets by New York Times...

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Poll: What do you want most from 2021’s phones?


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The Morning After: Boston Dynamics' dancing robots are back

Today, we’ve got stories on Apple’s “ultra” security measures, someone squeezing entire movies on floppy disks and a deep dive on the ways we might connect, without touch, in a post-pandemic world. But for this opening salvo, let’s home in on a famil...

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Apple suffers a loss in lawsuit against maker of iPhone emulators

Apple sued security start-up Corellium last year, accusing it of violating copyright law for offering researchers access to “virtual” iPhones that can help them find bugs in iOS products. Now, a federal judge in Florida has tossed Apple’s copyright c...

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New Samsung TVs with HDR10+ will adapt to ambient lighting

It’s unclear if Samsung’s existing TVs will be updated to support the feature. | Image: Samsung

HDR10+ Adaptive is a new feature coming to the high dynamic range standard that’ll optimize TV picture quality based on a room’s ambient brightness, Samsung announced today. HDR content is typically designed to look its best in dark rooms with as little ambient light as possible, but the new feature promises to use your TV’s light sensor to react to bright environments and adjust its picture quality accordingly. Samsung says the feature will launch globally with its “upcoming QLED TV products.”

HDR10+ isn’t the first HDR standard to have introduced such a feature. At last year’s CES, Dolby announced Dolby Vision IQ, a new feature for its own HDR standard that similarly promises to optimize HDR content for the room it’s being watched in....

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Stable One UI 3.0 rolls out to Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus users in Germany


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Tuesday, 29 December 2020

NASA approves two missions to better understand space weather

NASA will take part in two heliophysics missions that could give us the data needed to better understand solar winds and explosions, or space weather as a whole. The agency has officially announced its participation in the Extreme Ultraviolet High-Th...

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Leak: Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro in the works, could feature same screen as Mi 11


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Google is selling the Home Max smart speaker again, for now

Despite Google’s Home Max being officially retired and pulled from sale a couple of weeks ago, the Google Store is once again offering the speaker for sale. While flashing a message saying the device is sold out and prompting customers to try out a p...

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Samsung's HDR10+ Adaptive takes your room's lighting into account

Last year one of our Best of CES awards went to Dolby Vision IQ. It expanded on the display spec that already tweaked HDR output to look its best from scene-to-scene by taking into account the lighting conditions. That way content can look the way it...

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A modder has made a Nintendo 64 that’s smaller than the original’s controller

Photo: GmanModz

Taking an old console and making it as small as possible is a well-established tradition in the modding community, and there may be a new victor in the race to shrink the Nintendo 64 as far as possible (via Input). GmanModz has cut down an N64 to the point where it’s smaller than a GameCube controller — and only slightly bigger than the cartridges it takes.

Photo: GmanModz
The mod vs an N64 controller

Yes, cartridges. This isn’t an emulator, this is an actual Nintendo 64 that was cut, soldered, and otherwise modded to fit into a handheld package, complete with screen, battery, and controls (the joysticks are from a Nintendo Switch, chosen for their diminutive size).

At three and a half inches, the screen is...

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Tesla uses three free months of 'Full Self-Driving' to push year-end sales

The “Full Self-Driving” system that Tesla sells as a $10,000 option isn’t available in subscription form yet, but the car company is already using that idea to boost sales. Reported earlier by Electrek and confirmed in a tweet by Elon Musk, “All Tesl...

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An iPhone app promoting secret parties during the pandemic has been unceremoniously yanked

Promotional screen from Vybe’s now-defunct website.
Promotional screen from Vybe’s now-defunct website.

An iOS app called Vybe Together that promoted private parties during the COVID-19 pandemic has been removed from the Apple App Store, had its account on TikTok banned, and scrubbed most of its online presence. It’s unclear whether Apple or the app’s creators removed it from the App Store.

Vybe Together billed itself on TikTok and its website as a place to organize and attend underground parties, using the tagline “Get your rebel on. Get your party on.” Organizers would have to approve everyone who wanted to attend, and the ones that got approved would receive the address two hours before the event. Most of these gatherings would have been illegal under current US pandemic restrictions — which may explain why the app required you to...

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The best Android smartphone of the year 2020: Editor’s Choice (Update: Video!)


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Apple Watch prototype exposes the company's 'Ultra' security testing program

A video leak appears to show a Watch prototype and reveals how Apple gets such devices to developers while still keeping them under a veil of “ultra” security. Released by a leak site called Apple Demo and first discovered via The Verge, it shows a W...

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Vivo X60 series announced: The gimbal camera returns, now with Carl Zeiss


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The most underrated smartphones of 2020


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