Custom Zoom backgrounds prevent you from having to show off the same boring wall, messy apartment or kid-caused chaos in every meeting. And if you grew up on BBC shows like “Doctor Who,” “EastEnders,” and “BlackAdder,” you can now bring nostalgia to your conference calls with backgrounds from your favorite TV sets.
Andy Serkis, perhaps best known for his CGI-enhanced performance as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings movies, is reading The Hobbit live on YouTube as a benefit for UK charities providing COVID-19 relief. He started his Hobbitathon at around 5AM ET today and already has raised £203,699 (about $253,000).
“So many of us are struggling in isolation during the lockdown,” Serkis wrote on the GoFundMe page for the fundraiser. “While times are tough, I want to take you on one of the greatest fantasy adventures ever written, a 12 hour armchair marathon across Middle Earth whilst raising money for two amazing charities which are doing extraordinary work right now to help those most in need in the UK: Best Beginnings and NHS Charities Together.”
B...
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Deals on the Apple Watch Series 5 have mostly dried up for the time being, but if that model was still a little out of reach price-wise, Walmart and Best Buy each have the Apple Watch Series 3 (38mm, GPS) for $179. This price isn’t necessarily the lowest ever, though this deal is notable because stock, in general, for this model has been scarce since Black Friday. Both retailers currently have a few color options to choose between.
If you want to load up on used video games without paying a lot, GameStop is hosting a one-day sale where you can get up to 50 percent off when you buy five preowned games that cost $19.99 or less. The percentage you’ll save increases when you add more games to your cart. (Two...
A GameStop flash sale, a massively discounted Xbox One X w/ Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, three months of Game Pass Ultimate, up to 70% off bed and bath items at Wayfair, and a pair of Wicked Audio wireless headphones headline Friday’s best deals.
If you’ve ever made a meringue, custard, or super-fluffy sour, you have experienced the predicament of excess egg. Whether it be a white or yolk, throwing away the unused portion of an egg feels bad and wasteful, and I am not interested in feeling either of those feelings.
There were a lot of announcements in the consumer tech world this week, with new hardware from both Microsoft and Apple, plus some promising early gameplay videos for the Xbox Series X console.
This week on The Vergecast, co-hosts Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Paul Miller walk through those announcements: the Microsoft Surface Go 2, Surface Book 3, and a new 13-inch MacBook Pro from Apple. The crew also discusses how the Xbox Series X will have games optimized for the console with faster load times, ray tracing, and 4K video.
This episode is also Paul’s last regular appearance on The Vergecast. We say goodbye to him with a montage of his last 100 segments on the show, and he delivers one last addition to his segment “So long, and...
If you’ve ever tried to upload a panorama picture to Instagram—or if we’re being honest, any interesting horizontal picture—then you’ve likely run into issues.
Taylor Walker worked hard during her time at Salem State University. She was her class’s homecoming queen, she sang in the university’s Grammy award-winning choir, and she completed a double degree in communication and speech. Graduation was her chance to reflect on all those accomplishments. To celebrate, she planned to host a party with her family, who she hasn’t seen much because she’s been so busy.
“I wanted to have this time to celebrate not just me, but my family,” she says. “This whole college journey for me has been really a team effort for who I call ‘my village,’ my family unit.”
Then the pandemic happened. On March 16th, her school postponed her graduation ceremony indefinitely, and on April 29th, she received her cap and...
From ultraportables to high-powered editing machines, here are the best laptops to get right now
Millions of high school seniors will be finishing up their final classes, submitting the last of their assignments and taking their end-of-school-year exams this month. Their long journey toward graduation is about to conclude, and they probably won’t get to walk across the stage, shake a bunch of hands or toss their…
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (Three Months) | $21 | CDKeys
Samsung’s $399 smartphone gives you what you pay for
At a time when simply sharing space with a fellow human being can be a dangerous activity, many governments, airports, and hospitals are discovering the non-contagious delights of robots, which can be deployed to clean surfaces and deliver goods without fear.
Their latest deployment comes from Singapore, where municipal authorities are using Boston Dynamics’ four-legged Spot robot to remind park visitors to keep a safe distance from one another. Starting today, a Spot unit will patrol the city’s Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park as part of a two-week trial, broadcasting prerecorded messages “to remind park visitors to observe safe distancing measures.”
The robot is fitted...
There’s a lot you can’t do in a pandemic—at least, if you’re smart. You shouldn’t be going to the mall (even if it’s open), nor should you even consider just lollygagging around the Apple store and taking stupid pictures on their demo devices.
Image: NASA
‘Recommit to the things that you know keep you healthy and sane’
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Microsoft is planning to update Office for iPad with support for Apple’s latest iPadOS trackpad and mouse support. The software maker has always been quick to update its range of iOS apps with Apple’s latest software features, and work is already underway to update Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more.
Apple surprised everyone with cursor support in iPadOS back in March, and developers are now racing to update their iPad apps. TechCrunch reported earlier this week that Microsoft is working on cursor support for Office for iPad, that’s “expected to ship in Office for iPad this fall.” We understand that Microsoft is planning to include cursor support by the fall, so it could come to some Office apps a lot sooner. Microsoft is not sharing...
Tesla Fremont factory in 2018. | Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge
Tesla plans to resume “limited operations” at its Fremont car plant on Friday, bringing back about 30 percent of its workforce, according to emails sent to employees Thursday night. Fremont is located in Alameda County, however, which said in a statement that it’s still under lockdown. Bloomberg was first to report on the emails sent from CEO Elon Musk and Tesla HR Boss Valerie Capers Workman.
Although California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Thursday that manufacturing industries can start to reopen in the state, his guidance does not override county-level restrictions, according to CNBC.
That didn’t stop Tesla’s Musk from jumping on the opportunity:
“In light of Governor Newsom’s statement earlier today approving manufacturing in...
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Last month, after Apple and Google announced some changes to their forthcoming attempt to track the spread of COVID-19, I noted the surprising degree to which tech giants are setting the terms of the pandemic response. They own the hardware, they own the software, and national governments who would use it to find new cases of COVID-19 have to do it on the companies’ terms.
This week, that process began to accelerate. But first, a bit of background.
The Apple-Google collaboration will ask you to opt in to a system that causes your phone to emit Bluetooth signals to other phones around you. When you are in close proximity to another person for an extended period of time — more than five minutes, typically — both of your phones record the...
The organizers of Tokyo Game Show have announced that this year’s event has been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. TGS 2020 was due to take place from September 24th to 27th at the Makuhari Messe convention center just outside Tokyo, but there are now plans to hold an online event instead.
This is the first time that TGS has ever been canceled since it started in 1996, but the news won’t come as a surprise to anyone. Virtually every in-person gaming event this year has been scratched from the calendar, including E3 and Gamescom, the biggest shows in the US and Europe respectively.
TGS 2020 would likely have gained more attention than in the average year because of its status as the last major trade show before the launch of the...
KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP via Getty Images
A National Treasure TV series for Disney Plus is now in development, producer Jerry Bruckheimer told Collider in an interview today. Bruckheimer also reiterated that a new National Treasure film was in the works, though that was first reported in January.
Bruckheimer was light on details for the Disney Plus show, but he did say that “it’s the same concept but a young cast.” It’s unclear if Nicolas Cage will be reprising his role as Benjamin Franklin Gates in the Disney Plus series in some capacity. The new theatrical movie would have the same cast as the first two movies, Bruckheimer said.
Both the National Treasure Disney Plus show and the third film also seem to be in early...
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Controversial facial recognition provider Clearview AI says it will no longer sell its app to private companies and non-law enforcement entities, according to a legal filing first reported on Thursday by BuzzFeed News. It will also be terminating all contracts, regardless of whether the contracts are for law enforcement purposes or not, in the state of Illinois.
The document, filed in Illinois court as part of lawsuit over the company’s potential violations of a state privacy law, lays out Clearview’s decision as a voluntary action, and the company will now “avoid transacting with non-governmental customers anywhere.” Earlier this year, BuzzFeed reported on a leaked client list that indicates Clearview’s technology has been used by...
Image: Yahoo
Much of the cast of Community will reunite for a virtual table read to support COVID-19 relief, according to Variety. The table read and a fan Q&A will be live streamed on the Community YouTube channel on May 18th at 5PM ET.
Actors Donald Glover, Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Yvette Nicole Brown, Alison Brie, Jim Rash, and Ken Jeong, as well as Community creator Dan Harmon, will all participate in the table read, reports Variety. They will be doing a read of the episode “Cooperative Polygraphy” from the show’s fifth season. The live stream will raise money for José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen and Frontline Foods.
It’s the latest special to help raise money for COVID-19 relief. NBC aired a half-hour scripted special of Parks...
Streaming is one of ViacomCBS’s fastest-growing divisions, and to meet that demand, the company is accelerating significant changes to CBS All Access.
Major changes are coming to the company’s core paid streaming service, ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish said during the company’s earnings call this morning. Those changes will tie directly into the current CBS All Access platform; the company isn’t building a new version from scratch, but it will increase the amount of content available and make major technology changes.
“We’re accelerating our plans for an expanded subscription service, building off CBS All Access, with major changes coming this summer, as we track towards the rebrand and relaunch of a transformed product,” Bakish said.
The...
Recently, my son turned one year old, and with this milestone, he was due for his 12-month wellness visit. Or—wait—was he? I thought navigating appropriate finger foods for my son was tricky, then the world threw me a pandemic curveball. I wondered if the stay-at-home order in my state of Indiana, and the necessary…
After a mid-season hiatus, Rick and Morty returned on May 3rd with the first of five episodes to close out its fourth season. The series is as good as it’s always been — shockingly crass but also sharp, easily one of the funniest and most inventive shows on television. As a cultural object, however, there have been problems around its fans. You know, they’re terrible.
It’s been a meme for years now, fueled by a comment that went viral on Reddit. “You have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty,” the post begins, claiming that much of its humor would go over the average viewer’s head. “People who dislike Rick & Morty truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn’t appreciate, for instance, the humour in Rick’s existential...
Photo by Bryan Thomas / Getty Images
COVID-19 may be the push to make them a reality
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Zoom has acquired Keybase, an encryption and security service meant to serve as a secure home for your online identities. The acquisition is meant to quickly add a team of security-focused developers to Zoom, which has been widely criticized in recent weeks for lapses in security inside its increasingly popular videoconferencing software. Keybase co-founder Max Krohn will now lead Zoom’s security engineering team.
The Keybase team is supposed to help Zoom build end-to-end encryption for its videoconferences “that can reach current Zoom scalability.” Zoom has been working on building true end-to-end encryption for videoconferences since coming under criticism over the last month for making its calls incorrectly appear to be fully...
Whether you love or hate Amazon doesn’t matter. Right now, two facts are clear: It’s probably taking you a bit longer to receive non-essential items from the retail giant, depending on what you’re ordering and when you’re ordering it, and there are a ton of small businesses going out of business right now because of…
Image: AMD
AMD has announced its Ryzen Pro 4000 series of mobile business processors. The chips sport new security features and improvements to battery life and performance, according to the company, and are a direct challenge to Intel’s vPro. AMD says the new series aims to create a “new standard for modern business PCs.”
The Pro 4000 series includes three chips: the Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U (eight cores, 16 threads, 1.7GHz base speeds with boost up to 4.1GHz), the Ryzen 5 Pro 4650U (six cores, 12 threads, 2.1GHz base speeds with boost up to 4.0GHz), and the Ryzen 3 Pro 4450U (four cores, eight threads, 2.5GHZ base speeds with boost up to 3.7GHz). The chips are the first business processors based on the company’s 7nm Zen 2...
Image: Lenovo
In case you were worried that there weren’t enough ThinkPads out there, Lenovo has announced two more. Say hello to the ThinkPad E14 and ThinkPad E15; you can buy both in June for $639.
The biggest news is that the ThinkPads will feature AMD’s Ryzen 7 4700U chip. This isn’t a huge surprise, as Lenovo announced in February that a number of other upcoming ThinkPads, including the T14s, T14, X13, L14, and L15 will be available with Ryzen processors (the Ryzen Pro 4000 series) as well. We have release dates for those now, too — they’re also coming in June.
The Ryzen 7 4700U is a processor designed for ultra-thin laptops and has proven itself to be...
Image: Sony
Sony is introducing its latest set of truly wireless earbuds today. The WF-SP800N earbuds cost $199.99 and are now available to order. They slot into the lineup as the middle option between the $230 WF-1000XM3 earbuds at the high end and Sony’s relatively new WF-XB700 earbuds ($130), which lack noise cancellation.
The SP800Ns are designed for your workouts and runs: they offer IP55 water and sweat resistance and up to nine hours of continuous battery life with noise cancellation enabled (18 total with the case) or 13 hours (26 with case) if you turn off the NC. The case doesn’t include wireless charging, unfortunately, but 10 minutes of quick charging will get you an hour of playback in a pinch. Soft stabilizer arcs are part of each...
TiVo’s Stream 4K is an HDMI dongle that plugs into the back of your TV. | Image: TiVo
TiVo’s Stream 4K, the company’s new attempt to compete with Roku and Amazon’s streaming devices, is now available. The small dongle looks a lot like a rectangular Chromecast, runs on Android TV, and supports Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos. It costs $70 normally, but until May 27th, TiVo is selling it for $50.
Announced back at CES 2020, the Stream 4K is a little different from TiVo’s traditional DVR players. Instead of receiving a live TV feed over cable or an antenna, it’s designed to stream TV over the internet via a partnership with Sling TV. That means there are no TiVo service fees to worry about here. Instead, you’ll need a Sling TV subscription, which costs between $30 and $45 a month.
The TiVo Stream...
Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge
The 10th Gen Intel processor is a noticeable upgrade
There’s still a lot we don’t know about COVID-19
Image: Microsoft
Microsoft is hosting an event today where it will show off the first gameplay footage from several games launching on its upcoming Xbox Series X console. One of those games will be Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which was recently announced for the console (with Smart Delivery support, no less, like Cyberpunk 2077). And just to keep expectations at bay, we already know that Microsoft is waiting until July to show off Halo Infinite and other titles from its internal Xbox Game Studios. Still, that leaves a lot of open space for new and returning franchises to make their next-gen debut.
We’ve posted the YouTube stream above, but it’s being hosted at a bunch of other places around the web. Take...
A few days ago Marques Brownlee declared 2020 “the year of the ultraminor Apple update.” He’s got good evidence for doing so: the iPad Pro, iPhone SE, and even the new 13-inch MacBook Pros are all fairly minor on paper. I think I can both narrow and expand that declaration, though. I hold out hope we’ll see something more substantial this fall in a few products (looking at you, Pixel and iPhone), so let’s narrow it to this spring.
But let’s also expand it beyond Apple: yesterday’s pile of new hardware announcements from both Microsoft and Sonos are the very definition of iterative updates. Microsoft put out new versions of the Surface Book, Surface Go, Surface headphones, and Surface Dock that amount to spec bumps.
But the thing about...
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When Viacom and CBS closed their merger in December 2019, the latter company gained access to a plethora of networks — networks the newly merged company, ViacomCBS, is now bringing to distribution partner Google in a new deal with YouTube TV.
Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, BET, CMT, Paramount Network, TV Land, and VH1 will all launch on YouTube TV this summer, the company announced today. The multi-year deal also includes prior CBS channels that were available to YouTube TV subscribers, including CBS broadcast stations, CBS Sports Network, Pop TV, Smithsonian Channel, and The CW. YouTube TV will also continue to carry ViacomCBS’ premium cable brand, Showtime, as part of the extended distribution agreement. Financial terms of the...
The Alby are the cheaper of the two sets of earbuds at just $69. | Image: UrbanEars
Swedish audio brand UrbanEars has announced its first pairs of true wireless earbuds, the Luma and the Alby. They’re modestly specced, but that’s understandable considering they’re priced at just $99 and $69 respectively.
The UrbanEars Alby are the cheaper of the two at $69, and for that price you’re getting three hours of battery life from the earbuds themselves, plus an extra 12 hours from the USB-C charging case. They’ve got an IPX4 resistance to water splashing, and there’s a single microphone on each earbud for making calls. Stepping up to the $99 Luma gets you more battery life with 5 hours per charge, a wireless charging (or USB-C) case that provides 20 hours more, and an extra microphone on each earbud to reduce background noise...
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
For many internet users, the EU’s cookie consent policies are an aggravating and unavoidable experience when browsing the web. Introduced in 2018 as part of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), these notices ask users to agree to being tracked when visiting a site for the first time, but are often misleadingly worded or impossible to refuse. In an effort to make cookie consent more consensual, the EU has published updated guidelines this week banning some of the worst interpretations of these policies.
The biggest change is an end to “cookie walls” which make viewing content contingent on consenting to be tracked. The whole point of the cookie consent policy is to give people a free choice in whether or not their data is...
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Today let’s talk about Facebook’s independent Oversight Board, which just announced its co-chairs and initial membership. The board will allow Facebook and Instagram users to appeal when they believe that their posts have been removed in error, and upon request will issue advisory opinions to the company on emerging policy questions.
The scope of the work is expected to expand over time — within months of launching, for example, the board is expected to rule on which posts should come down as well as which ones stay up. (To lots of people, myself included, the latter feels like a more urgent problem.) Facebook handpicked the inaugural members, who will serve three-year terms, but over time the board will pick its own members. The...
Image: LG
The LG Velvet has finally officially launched in South Korea, following weeks of teases and announcements. As expected, the phone features a “raindrop” triple rear camera array, is powered by a Snapdragon 765, and has a 6.8-inch OLED display with a small central notch. Details about its global launch are expected to come later this month.
LG has taken such a gradual approach with the reveal that we knew practically everything about the Velvet already. The South Korean electronics giant showed off its name and design in sketch form back in April, then announced its processor along with additional details the following week.
We also knew the specs of its cameras, display, and battery thanks to a blog post published late last month. The...
Nintendo Switch sales were up 34 percent year-on-year last quarter as the company moved 3.29 million units, despite acknowledging that production has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a big sales driver, with 11.77 million units sold as of the end of March 31st. That’s enough to make it the seventh-best-selling Switch title yet even with only ten days worth of sales data accounted for.
Japanese sales figures had already revealed that New Horizons was a big hit. The game sold more in its first three days than any other Animal Crossing or Nintendo Switch title to date, also pushing Switch console sales to their highest level yet.
Overall Nintendo shipped...
Image: Wink
Smart home platform Wink will require customers to pay a $4.99 per month subscription fee starting May 13th, the company announced today. That gives Wink users just seven days to decide if they want to pay a monthly fee for a service that was previously offered for free as part of owning a Wink product.
If you opt not to sign up for Wink’s subscription, “you will no longer be able to access your Wink devices from the app, with voice control or through the API, and your automations will be disabled on May 13,” according to Wink’s announcement blog. That seems to mean that you’ll lose the ability to use non-Wink-made smart home products connected to a Wink-managed setup. Though if you decide to subscribe later, your device connections,...
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Countless iOS apps experienced problems launching Wednesday evening, according to multiple reports on Twitter and crowdsourced user reports on Downdetector. The issues seem to have started around 6:30PM ET, and Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Tinder, and more were affected, according to Downdetector. I personally experienced problems with Spotify and GrubHub, but they are both working for me now, so it seems apps are starting to starting work as normal again.
The issue was caused by an apparent problem with a Facebook software development kit (SDK) tool that’s used to power sign-in features for many of the apps. Many developers have reported problems with the SDK in this thread on GitHub. You didn’t need to be logging into the apps via...
Secretly, you’ve always wanted to buy the label maker. But you never bought the label maker. Maybe you figured you didn’t really need it, it would be one of those purchases — like that homebrew kit and macrame loom, remember those? — that you made with so much hope for an imagined future that you never actually used,…
A quirk of Mozilla’s Firefox browser is that it lets you join a Zoom call via the web, no separate app downloaded needed, but you can’t say anything on the call. Or at least, you couldn’t before the latest update.
Volvo says Luminar’s LIDAR will be “seamlessly integrated” into its vehicles. | Photo: Volvo
Most new cars sold today include a bevy of sensors such as cameras and radar to help power modern conveniences like automatic emergency braking and lane keeping assist. Very few automakers, however, sell cars with the high-powered laser sensor known as LIDAR, and for good reason: most LIDAR are ridiculously expensive, with the leading suppliers pricing theirs at around $75,000. But now, Volvo says it has found a LIDAR maker that can produce the sensors cheap enough to justify installing them on its consumer vehicles — which it says will allow these cars to drive themselves.
In 2018, Volvo made a “strategic investment” in a little-known Florida-based LIDAR company called Luminar to use the startup’s high-resolution long-range sensor to...
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Google will announce the first public beta for Android 11 in a live stream at 11AM ET on June 3rd, according to a promotional video spotted by Android Police. The search giant typically debuts Android’s latest public beta in May each year, but the difference in 2020 is that its developer conference, Google I/O, had to be canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Google is promising that the live stream will have “news, updates, and announcements” on “connectivity, controls, safety, security, productivity, accessibility” and more. From the early developer previews, it appears as though Google is working on improving app permissions in its new version of Android as well as finally adding a screen recording feature.
In addition to its...
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Uber will lay off 3,700 full-time employees, or around 14 percent of its global workforce, the company said in filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will forgo his salary for the rest of the year as the company continues to struggle in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The layoffs are expected to hit the company’s customer support and recruiting divisions. Uber says it will incur approximately $20 million in severance and other termination-related expenses. Last week, The Information reported that Uber’s top executives were considering laying off as many as 20 percent of the company’s workforce.
Uber’s ride-hailing business has dried up as a result of widespread shutdown orders...
Ring’s $99.99 Video Doorbell with new $49 solar charger. | Image: Ring
Ring is relaunching its original Video Doorbell, first introduced in 2014, with features found in its more expensive doorbells without raising the price. That includes 1080p video, improved night vision, and motion zones for $99.99. It’s also introducing a new $49 solar charger that frames and powers the doorbell.
The new Video Doorbell can run off rechargeable battery or hardwired connection and supports two-way talk with noise cancellation. It also features privacy and motion zones to help fine-tune alerts and recordings. So basically, it’s the $199 Video Doorbell 2 (now discontinued) for half the price. The Video Doorbell 3 offers better Wi-Fi performance and motion tracking for $199.99.
Image: Microsoft
Microsoft has announced the Surface Go 2, an upgrade to 2018’s Surface Go, and this new version packs a lot of new features, including a larger 10.5-inch display, a camera app for the rear-facing camera, and improved battery life. The Surface Go 2 also starts at $399.99, making it affordable enough for people who may just want a cheap Windows computing machine without the more expensive bells and whistles of a Surface Pro or Surface Pro X.
The Surface Go has a lot of competition, however, and its rivals have similar screen sizes and lower prices. Apple’s $329 entry-level iPad was updated last year with a 10.2-inch screen size and a connector that lets you attach a Smart Keyboard to it. Amazon refreshed the Amazon Fire HD 10 tablet in...
