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Friday, 28 August 2020

Elon Musk trots out pigs in demo of Neuralink brain implants

Elon Musk’s brain-machine interface company Neuralink showcased a pig outfitted with the company’s device, at an event livestreamed on YouTube. One pig, Gertrude, had a device recording signals from an area of the brain linked to her snout. She’d had the implant for two months at the time of the demonstration.

As Gertrude’s snout touched things, an array of dots and a series of noises indicated when more neurons were firing. Pigs have large parts of their brains that are devoted to the snout, a sensitive sensing instrument.

The design of the Neuralink device has changed since it was unveiled last year, rendering the device itself hard to see on Gertrude. It is now coin-shaped, and meant to sit flush with...

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The Beauty of “Beater” Gear: Cheap Stuff That Can Take a Hit

I’m the kind of guy who, on a hike, will trip over a cactus because I wasn’t paying attention. I run my earbuds through the washing machine, scratch up my sunglasses, and drop my phone while jogging. And as someone who hates even the smallest signs of wear and tear, my clumsiness is often at odds with my ability to…

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Save Up to 87% Sitewide in the JACHS NY Labor Day Sale

Featured Deal: Labor Day Sale | Up to 87% Off Everything

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Friday's Best Deals: LG 55" OLED TV, 960GB SSD, Project Cars 3, Entertainment Earth Enesco Figures, ModCloth BOGO Sale, Bug Zapper Rackets, Scott Pilgrim Paperback Set, and More

An LG 55" OLED 4K TV, an $86 PNY SSD with 960GB of storage, a release-day discount on Project Cars 3, a BOGO sale on Enesco figures at Entertainment Earth, a ModCloth BOGO dress sale, a bug zapper racket set, and a Scott Pilgrim paperback comic collection lead Friday’s best deals.

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Give Your Kid a Stress Ball to Squeeze During Virtual Class

Sometimes the best hacks are the tiniest ones; a thing so helpful and obvious in hindsight that you really should have thought of it yourself. And maybe you did (good for you!). But if you, like me, had not yet thought to hand your child a stress ball when they log into their classroom Zoom meetings, now is the time…

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Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines marched us all to our doom

Photo illustration by William Joel / The Verge

The Verge is a place where you can consider the future. So are movies. In Yesterday’s Future, we revisit a movie about the future and consider the things it tells us about today, tomorrow, and yesterday.

The movie: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, directed by Jonathan Mostow

The future: The Terminator movies are, with the exception of Terminator Salvation, more about fighting the future than living in it. What glimpses of it we get are usually bleak: human civilization is leveled, reduced to rubble by the rogue artificial intelligence Skynet, which seizes control of the world’s nuclear stockpile to use in a pre-emptive attack on its biggest threat: humanity.

A funny quirk of this film and the one preceding it is that while they are...

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EV startup Bollinger unveils electric delivery van

Michigan-based electric truck startup Bollinger Motors hasn’t started production on its rugged electric trucks, the Jeep-like B1 and the B2 pickup, but it’s already rolling out a new vehicle type. This week, the company unveiled the Deliver-E, its all-electric delivery van concept that is slated for production in 2022.

A lot of companies, from legacy automakers to tech startups, are developing their own electric delivery vans right now. But what sets Bollinger apart is the variability of its platform. The EV startup is promising a variety of battery pack sizes, including 70 kWh, 105 kWH, 140 kWh, 175 kWh, and 210 kWh. This will mean customers will have a variety of range-options, prices, and wheelbase sizes to chose from. The...

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How to Get the Most Out of a Virtual College Course

Colleges from the Ivy League to two-year schools have moved all or some of their instruction online this year. (Eh, you know why). This can feel extra unfair for students who’d been looking forward to, say, living in a dorm or asking for help from the cutie sitting next to them instead of, like, their dads.

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How to Virtually Take Part in the March on Washington Today

Fifty-seven years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to deliver his enduring “I Have a Dream” speech, closing out the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. This afternoon, another March on Washington will take place in the same spot—this time featuring members of some…

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Hear what we’ve said about the Surface Duo hardware so far

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

This week on The Verge’s Friday episode of The Vergecast, Wired senior writer and Verge alum Lauren Goode stops by to discuss her new podcast Get Wired and stays to talk tech and gadgets with her Verge colleagues Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn.

On this episode, we are one step closer to reviewing Microsoft’s long-awaited Surface Duo.

Around 29 minutes into the show, Dieter reveals he got his hands on Microsoft’s dual screen smartphone, but can only speak on the features of the device with the screen off — so hardware only — until the official release of the product.

Dieter discusses how the product feels in-hand, the durability and quality of the glass body, the advantages and...

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They were incarcerated firefighters, now they want to change how California fights fires

Amika Mota and a fellow firefighter battled blazes while incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility’s firehouse in Chowchilla.

Amika Mota and a fellow firefighter battled blazes while incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility’s firehouse in Chowchilla. | Courtesy of Amika Mota

‘I am still a firefighter’

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Asus’ LED-filled gaming laptop with a 144Hz refresh rate display costs just $880

Asus ROG Strix G15

asus

If you’re looking to do some PC gaming at respectable frame rates, Asus’ ROG Strix G15 gaming laptop seems like an affordable way to go about doing that. Usually $1,000, it’s $880 today. Despite its low price, it has some high-end features, like Intel’s 10th Gen Core i7-10750H six-core processor, a fast 512GB PCIe-based SSD, and an 144Hz refresh rate display that will provide a fluid-looking experience in and out of gameplay.

The rest of laptop isn’t quite as impressive, but it’s not bad for the price. There’s 8GB of RAM built-in (and you can add more yourself later on), and in terms of graphics, it has Nvidia’s GTX 1650 Ti graphics chip. You’ll likely be able to run most of your games at smooth frame rates on medium graphical quality,...

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PC and Laptop Prices Descend as Low as $449 in Lenovo's Labor Day Doorbuster Sale

Labor Day Doorbuster Sale | Lenovo

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Do You Need a Financial Therapist?

There’s a growing push for more financial literacy in schools, but one of the barriers to financial stability or growing wealth may have nothing to do with knowledge. In fact, some money problems may stem from past trauma or beliefs from childhood. These beliefs—which financial psychology pioneers Drs. Ted and Brad…

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Everything You Need to Know to Vote in 2020

There are only a few short weeks until the election, and I know we say this every time, but it really is more important than ever to cast your vote on November 3. Not only are we electing the president who will lead us for the next four years and have to deal with whatever comes next with the pandemic, but we’re also…

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Why Won't Windows Recognize My Android Phone?

You have an Android. Check. You have a computer. Check, check. You want to connect your Android to your computer to rip files off of it (or add files to it, like all those ringtones you spent hours designing). Check times three. You plug your phone in to your desktop or laptop’s USB port and...nothing happens.

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Facebook’s OASIS-style VR playground Horizon enters public beta

Did you forget that Facebook was building the OASIS? The company has been working on its multiplayer virtual reality social space, Horizon, for a while now, which is comparable in concept if not scope to the fantastical VR world of Ready Player One. This week the company announced it’s expanding access and making Horizon an invite-only public beta.

As it goes into public beta, Horizon has been kitted out with new games and environments. Facebook is also introducing new tools to combat abuse on the platform, including the option to step away from the VR world into a “Personal Safe Zone” where you can mute, block, and report the people and content around you You can join Horizon’s waitlist here.

The app (service? social network?...

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Prisoners at San Quentin are dying from COVID, and help isn’t coming

Prisoners at San Quentin are trapped with COVID. We talked to them

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Apple agrees to pay $9.75M settlement over alleged Powerbeats 2 ‘design defect’

The Powerbeats 2 were first released back in 2014. | Image: Beats

If you’re a US resident who bought a pair of wireless Powerbeats 2 earbuds before August 7th, then you could soon get a payout over the allegedly “defective” device, MacRumors reports. Apple has agreed to pay out $9.75 million, after it was accused of falsely advertising the so-called “shoddy” earbuds as “sweat & water resistant” and “built to endure.” However, the plaintiffs say that these claims weren’t true, and that the earbuds would stop holding their charge after “minimal use.”

Although Apple has agreed to settle, it hasn’t admitted to doing anything wrong. The legal filing notes that the company decided that settling was cheaper than the expense of going to trial. Although the original lawsuit filing claims that Apple’s 2016...

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How Japanese rock star Miyavi performs in a world without live music

“I think the key for the post-corona era is how real we can feel in a virtual world.”

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Why TikTok may not survive being sold

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

TikTok is in trouble. Over the course of less than a day, the company lost its CEO and gained a surprising new suitor. The breakout social app could be within days of making a deal to sell itself to an American company — but the turmoil surrounding the sale threatens to leave the company permanently damaged.

First, the CEO. In May, longtime Disney executive Kevin Mayer left the company to become chief operating officer at ByteDance and CEO of TikTok, its popular US subsidiary. “As one of the world’s most accomplished entertainment executives, Kevin is incredibly well placed to take ByteDance’s portfolio of products to the next level,” ByteDance founder and CEO Yiming Zhang said at the time.

Mayer was coming off the wildly successful...

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Xiaomi’s under-display camera tech will ship in smartphones next year

Xiaomi Mi TV LUX OLED Transparent Edition In Shanghai

Photo by Wang Gang/VCG via Getty Images

Xiaomi intends to start mass-producing smartphones equipped with its under-display camera technology next year, the company announced today. This is technically the third generation of the technology Xiaomi has developed, the company says, although the first and second versions it produced have yet to find their way into a mass-market consumer device.

According to Xiaomi, its latest version of the technology works by allowing the selfie camera to see through the gaps in the display’s sub-pixels, which are the red, green, and blue dots that combine to make each pixel. Xiaomi says that the area of the display above the camera has the same density of pixels as the rest of the screen, so it can “perfectly disguise” the selfie camera...

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OnePlus’ entry-level ‘Clover’ handset will reportedly launch later this year

OnePlus released the mid-range Nord (pictured) earlier this year. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

OnePlus is planning to release an entry-level handset codenamed Clover for around $200 later this year, according to a detailed but unconfirmed report from Android Central.

We’ve seen snippets of information about “Clover” floating about the web for a while now, including a purported GeekBench score for the device. But Android Central’s latest report, citing an anonymous “insider source,” includes a full spec-sheet and the suggestion that Clover will launch “imminently” in global markets, including the US.

According to Android Central, Clover will have a 6.52-inch 720p (1560 x 720) IPS LCD display, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage (expandable via MicroSD), a Snapdragon 460 SoC, 6000mAh battery with 18W fast charging, a rear fingerprint...

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Thursday, 27 August 2020

Apple blocks Facebook update that called out App Store ‘tax’

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple blocked Facebook from informing users that Apple would collect 30 percent of in-app purchases made through a planned new feature, Facebook tells Reuters. Apple said the update violated an App Store rule that doesn’t let developers show “irrelevant” information to users.

The feature lets Facebook users buy tickets for online events directly through the app. Apple’s rules say that purchases of digital content have to use the App Store’s payments system, giving Apple 30 percent of the total. Facebook says it asked Apple to waive this fee so that all of the revenue could go to event organizers, but Apple refused. The feature is now available, but without the message about Apple’s 30-percent cut.

Earlier this month, Facebook released an...

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Activision is giving away 10,000 beta keys for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War this weekend

Image: Activision

Activision has officially announced Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Like previous entries, there will be a beta, which will be open to the public, but you can receive early access if you pre-order specific versions of the game. However, there’s another way to get early access without spending any money: Activision is giving away 10,000 beta keys this weekend.

This weekend, the Call of Duty League will be holding its first championship. On Sunday, August 30th at 4PM ET, the publisher will give away early access beta keys to viewers watching the stream on the league’s official website.

If you want to be eligible for the giveaway, you’ll need to sign up or log into your Activision...

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Samsung’s own UK website is already selling the Galaxy Z Fold 2 for £1,799

Image: Samsung

Samsung announced the Galaxy Z Fold 2 on August 5th, but didn’t give a release date or price at the time, only promising to share more about the foldable on September 1st. But if you check Samsung’s UK retail website right now, it seems you can already pre-order the Z Fold 2 for £1,799, and it’s set to ship by September 17th (via Max Weinbach).

While that price might be eye-popping, it’s actually less expensive than the original Fold’s £1,900 starting price in the UK — a difference of £101. Assuming, of course, that the price listed there isn’t a mistake. Samsung didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

We don’t know yet if a lower price would carry over to the US. The first Fold launched at $1,980, so perhaps the Z Fold 2...

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Dim Tweets You've Already Seen With This Browser Extension

Twitter’s insistence on showing tweets out of order has been a long-running complaint. Sure, there’s a setting that claims to show your feed in chronological order, but it almost always resets back to the “top tweets” view if you don’t keep an eye on it.

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Amazon announces Halo, a fitness band and app that scans your body and voice

It makes a 3D model of your body and tracks the emotional tone in your voice

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Virtual power plants are coming to California apartment buildings

Local Woman Participates in Solar Installation Training Program

Naomi Hawk works on a job site installing solar panels on the roof of an apartment complex in SE Washington D.C. on August 27, 2019. | Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Three thousand Californian apartments will be linked up to solar panels and batteries — meaning they might never experience a power outage again, no matter what California’s utility companies do. The project, planned by German energy storage company Sonnen, will be spread across seven apartment complexes — the largest of its kind.

The connected set of solar panels and batteries form what’s called a “virtual power plant.” Besides making sure the whole community can run on backup solar power during blackouts, these VPPs also reduce strain on the grid — because VPPs store their energy on-site. What’s more, they can be tapped to provide energy during demand peaks.

“As I look...

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How to watch the Gamescom Opening Night Live show

Image: EA / Motive Studios

The opening keynote for Gamescom, the biggest gaming convention on Earth, is happening today, August 27th. But instead of passionate fans and media roaming through the event in person, it’s all happening online due to the coronavirus pandemic. If you want to tune into that, we’ve provided all the info below that you’ll need. The gaming news will continue to pour until the event ends on Sunday, August 30th.

There is always a lot of big news that comes out of Gamescom, so it’s worth paying attention if you want to hear about the latest games coming to PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5, and the Xbox Series X, as well as the PS4 and Xbox One. A small sampling of what to expect includes Star Wars: Squadron, Fall Guys, but of course there will be a...

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The reMarkable 2 is the latest attempt to turn your paper notepad digital

Swapping pen and paper for E Ink

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Tracking COVID-19 through symptom monitoring will be harder when flu season starts

An advertisement offering free flu shots is seen during the...

Photo by John Nacion/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

As flu season picks up over the next few months, it’s going to get harder for public health officials to rely on trends in the number of people with coughs and fevers to monitor the COVD-19 pandemic. Starting next month, people coming into the emergency room with flu-like symptoms could just have the flu.

“The symptoms overlap,” says Edward Belongia, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Marshfield Clinic Research Institute in Wisconsin. Experts will have to lean on other methods, like lab testing, to distinguish COVID-19 from influenza.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracks illnesses that look like the flu (referred to as influenza-like illness) through a network of thousands of healthcare providers around...

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Beyond Meat launches website to sell plant-based meat directly to people online

DOUNIAMAG-US-LIFESTYLE-FOOD

Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images

With consumers eating more meals at home and relying on grocery delivery services during the coronavirus pandemic, Beyond Meat is launching an e-commerce site today to sell its plant-based meat products directly to customers. The site will have some online-only items for sale and will serve as a test kitchen of sorts for future products, said chief growth officer Charles Muth.

“It will allow us to have direct conversations with our consumers and will be convenient for consumers who don’t live near a supermarket,” Muth said in an interview with The Verge.

Faux meat products were a hot seller at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, with sales of products like Tofurky and Beyond Meat increasing 264 percent. Sales of fresh meat...

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Netflix is making an original live-action Resident Evil TV series

Resident Evil 2

Netflix has announced a new live-action TV series based on the Capcom’s popular Resident Evil series of video games that will be produced by Constantin Film, the same company that made the previous six Resident Evil films starring Milla Jovovich.

The upcoming series will feature an original story set within the world of the Resident Evil, set across two timelines. The first will see sisters Jade and Billie Wesker (presumably of some relation to longtime series antagonist Albert Wesker) move to the corporate town of New Raccoon City at age 14, before realizing the destination and their father “may be concealing dark secrets.”

The second timeline will jump 16 years into the future, with the Earth devastated by Resident Evil’s signature...

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Microsoft Flight Simulator players are flying into Hurricane Laura

MajinBanu (YouTube)

Microsoft Flight Simulator players have turned into virtual stormchasers this week, hunting down Hurricane Laura as it approached the US Gulf Coast. While Texas and Louisiana brace for what is being described as an “unsurvivable storm surge,” the real-time weather inside Microsoft Flight Simulator is providing a surreal spectacle for players.

Virtual strormchasers have gathered in the skies above the Gulf of Mexico to fly directly into Hurricane Laura. The results demonstrate the incredible realism in Microsoft Flight Simulator, just as Hurricane Laura threatens catastrophic damage in the real world. Players have been flying directly through the eye of the storm, around the outer edges, and even so far up that planes have frozen over and...

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Amazon’s first Fresh grocery store opens with high-tech Dash shopping carts

Image: Amazon

Amazon will open its first Fresh grocery store for in-person shopping on an invite-only basis starting this week, and will open to the general public in the coming weeks, the company has announced. Located in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, the store will sell food like pizzas and sandwiches that are prepared on site, as well as a range of items from national and local brands. It’s intended as a cheaper alternative to Amazon’s Whole Foods stores, according to CBNC.

Amazon’s latest grocery store configuration is packed with technology but will not use its “Just Walk Out” cashierless tech. The Fresh store in LA is the first location where shoppers will be able to use Amazon’s Dash Carts, which you log into using the Amazon...

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Google makes the saved places tab in Maps more useful

The update makes it easier to find saved places in Google Maps. You can sort by “recently saved,” “nearby saved,” and places you’ve visited but not saved. | Image: Google

Google is rolling out some small but useful updates to Google Maps focusing on the app’s Saved tab. If you’ve not used it before, this lets you bookmark favorite locations, be they parks or pubs, and sort them by “favorites,” “want to go,” “starred places,” or custom lists.

The update makes it easier to sort locations if you happen to have saved a lot of them. You can now order places by how recently you saved them and by how close you are (if Google Maps has access to your location, that is, which it probably does).

If you’ve turned on your Location History in Google Maps, the app will also now make it easier to add places to the Saved tab by suggesting them based on where you’ve been. Locations you’ve visited will now be saved on the...

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Apple’s move to make advertising harder on iOS 14 is part of a trend

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple and Facebook are fighting again, and how you feel about it says something about who you trust to represent your interests in the strange tech landscape of 2020.

Start with a rather academic question that may make your eyes glaze over in spite of yourself: When does pro-privacy regulation overstep its bounds to become anticompetitive? It’s a question I found myself asking last year, when Apple canceled Facebook’s enterprise certificate temporarily following revelations that the company had been using those certificates to conduct market research. And it’s a question I’m thinking about today, as Apple intervenes to unilaterally reshape a market — in ways that once again put Facebook on the defensive.

The issue at stake is a...

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You can buy Fairphone’s new handset or just its cameras as an upgrade

The Fairphone 3 Plus isn’t the most exciting looking device, but that’s not really the point. | Image: Fairphone

Fairphone, the sustainable smartphone manufacturer that tries to make easily repairable devices using responsibly sourced materials, has announced its latest handset. The Fairphone 3 Plus is an upgraded version of last year’s Fairphone 3 with improved cameras and speakers. More interestingly, though, if you already bought last year’s phone and don’t want to upgrade to a whole new handset, then Fairphone’s modular design means you can purchase the new camera module on its own and install it into your existing phone.

The Fairphone 3 Plus will cost €469 (about $550) when it releases on September 14th, but buying the upgraded cameras on their own as a modular upgrade will cost €94.90 (about $111). (Fairphone is offering an introductory price...

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LG officially announces its battery-powered air purifier mask

Image: LG

LG has officially announced a portable air purifier that you wear on your face like a mask. The PuriCare Wearable Air Purifier uses a pair of replaceable filters similar to what you’d find in LG’s range of air purifiers for the home, pairing them with battery-powered fans to help you breathe. LG says the device has sensors to detect when you’re breathing in or out, and adjusts the fans’ speeds accordingly.

Today’s announcement ahead of IFA 2020 doesn’t explicitly mention the COVID-19 pandemic, but it heavily implies that the mask was developed in response to it. The company says the wearable air purifier is designed to replace the “inconsistent” homemade masks worn by some people, as well as the disposable masks that it says have been in...

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Fortnite on iOS already feels empty and dated

Today sees the launch of an exciting new season in Fortnite — but not for everyone. Because of the ongoing legal battle between developer Epic Games and Apple, the game’s latest season won’t be appearing on Apple hardware, including the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. This marks a huge change for Fortnite, a game that has long been at the forefront of crossplay. Now that’s changed. If you’re playing the game on an Apple device — which is still possible if you already have it installed — you’re experiencing a very different version of Fortnite. And it’s one that feels vastly inferior to what’s available on every other platform.

One of the best things about Fortnite is the way it works seamlessly across mobile, consoles, and PCs. Aside from some...

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Ikea and Lego built the storage boxes of your dreams

Ikea and Lego just announced the Bygglek collection of playful storage boxes fitted with Lego studs that let you build directly onto their surfaces. The range consists of four different products: one set of three small boxes, two sets of bigger boxes, and one set of Lego bricks to get the creative juices flowing. The Ikea x Lego collaboration was first announced back in 2019.

“Bygglek is more than boxes. It is storage and play intertwined,” said Lego designer Rasmus Buch Løgstrup. “Bygglek provides families with a product range that helps create space for more play in their everyday — fueling creativity, making it possible to have more fun together. It’s a possibility to play, display the cool creations and return to it to replay,...

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Wednesday, 26 August 2020

Fortnite’s new season pits Marvel’s biggest heroes against Galactus

The latest season of Fortnite is here, and in it some of the biggest Marvel heroes join forces to help save the battle royale island.

The new season — technically Chapter 2: Season 4 — is dubbed “Nexus War,” and it’s a comic book-style event where major characters team up to fight off the planet-destroying villain Galactus. Those who purchase Fortnite’s seasonal battle pass will be able to unlock the likes of Iron Man, Storm, Mystique, Doctor Doom, Groot, and She-Hulk, along with an amnesiac Thor. Developer Epic also says that a certain member of the X-Men will be available later in the season: “Be warned, Wolverine has been spotted on the island and he won’t come quietly.”

We’ve known that Fortnite’s new season would be Marvel-themed s...

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Kevin Mayer quits as TikTok CEO due to ongoing political turmoil

Disney+ Showcase Presentation At D23 Expo Friday, August 23

Jesse Grant / Getty Images for Disney

TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer has left the company amid ongoing disputes with the Trump administration and sale talks. The news was first reported by the Financial Times.

“We appreciate that the political dynamics of the last few months have significantly changed what the scope of Kevin’s role would be going forward, and fully respect his decision,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge. “We thank him for his time at the company and wish him well.”

Mayer announced his departure in an internal email viewed by the Financial Times. TikTok’s general manager Vanessa Pappas will take over the position in the interim, according to the newspaper.

“In recent weeks, as the political environment has sharply changed, I have done...

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Microsoft assigns Bungie veteran to help ship Halo Infinite

Image: 343 Industries

Joseph Staten, a veteran of the Halo series, has returned to the franchise and will work on the campaign for the upcoming Halo Infinite. The news was first reported by Bloomberg, and Staten confirmed the move on Twitter.

“I’m thrilled to join @Halo to help them ship Halo Infinite,” Staten says. “As the project lead for the Infinite Campaign, I will be supporting the team’s existing, great leaders and empowering them to do their best work.”

Halo Infinite was planned to launch alongside the Xbox Series X in November, but was delayed into next year following an underwhelming demonstration during Microsoft’s Xbox games showcase. “We have made the difficult decision to shift our release to 2021 to ensure the team has adequate time to deliver...

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FDA authorizes Abbott’s fast $5 COVID-19 test

The test returns results in 15 minutes. | Abbott Laboratories

A COVID-19 test that takes 15 minutes and can be run without lab equipment was just granted emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration. It will cost $5, and runs on a simple card that uses the same technology as a pregnancy test.

The test, called BinaxNOW, is produced by the health care company Abbott. The company is also launching an app that syncs up with the tests, and gives people who test negative for the virus a “digital health pass” that they can display on their phone. CEO Robert Ford said in a statement that the combination of the test and the app offer a “comprehensive testing solution.”

The company said in a press release that it plans to produce 50 million tests per month by October.

“Due to its simpler...

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Dota 2’s The International 10 prize pool has hit a record-breaking $34,396,000 (and counting)

Image: Valve

Dota 2’s The International, one of the biggest esports tournaments in the world, has broken its own record as the most lucrative esports event, with this year’s prize pool already totaling more than $34,396,000. The previous record was a prize pool of $34.3 million from last year’s event.

Dota 2 developer Valve was forced to indefinitely delay this year’s iteration, The International 10, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That delay was announced in April. Valve hasn’t yet announced a new date. It’s not clear if the tournament will even be taking place during 2020 at all.

Valve said that it “can’t yet commit” to a new date for The International 10 or the return of the Dota Pro Circuit, a series of events that determine who qualifies for The...

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Dark web drug haven Empire Market has mysteriously disappeared

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Empire Market, one of the biggest dark web marketplaces, has been offline for three days, Bloomberg reports. It’s unclear what has happened to the site’s administrators, whose identities remain unknown.

According to a cybersecurity expert interviewed by Bloomberg, there are typically two outcomes for marketplaces like Empire Market. Either the admins are arrested, or they steal users’ deposits.

Empire Market was popular for drug deals. It also offered fake documents, such as passports, and malware. After other sites, such as the Silk Road and AlphaBay, shut down, Empire Market was the most-trafficked dark web marketplace, Bloomberg reported.

The goods on Empire Market were exchanged for cryptocurrency. In order to operate on a market...

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Ask Mechanic Shop Femme: How Do I Rotate My Own Tires?

Tires are one of the more expensive maintenance items we can expect to spend money on a regular basis, so taking care of them is critical for both the car and our pocket. Before we get to the why of tire rotations, we first need to ask what a tire rotation is, to begin with. For an answer to this, I spoke with Joe…

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Keep Yourself Safe With 25% off FDA-Certified N95 Masks

25% off N95 Masks | MQDirect | Promo code KINJA25

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The Best Rewards Credit Cards for Back-to-School Shopping

As families prepare to send kids back to school, many worry about the high cost of supplies. Two in three parents are feeling stressed by the expense—which is up from 43% in 2019, according to CompareCards’ annual Back-to-School survey—and it’s easy to see why. The National Retail Federation says coronavirus may push…

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