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Google is actively removing negative reviews of the Robinhood app from the Google Play Store, the company confirmed to The Verge. After some disgruntled Robinhood users organized campaigns to give the app a one-star review on Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store — and succeeded in review-bombing it all the way down to a one-star rating — the company has now deleted enough reviews to bring it back up to nearly four stars.
Robinhood came under intense scrutiny on Thursday, after the stock trading app announced it would block purchases of GameStop, AMC, and other stocks made popular by the r/WallStreetBets subreddit, and some users have already replaced their deleted one-star reviews with new ones to make their anger heard.
Here’s a...
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Ground meat can be awfully grim without a little help. Baking soda is fantastic for spiffing up a quick sauté, but if you’re cooking ground meat for much longer, you should marinate it in heavy cream first.
Apple has released watchOS 7.3, which you’ll need to install if you want to play around with its brand-new “Unity” watch face that the company released in celebration of Black History Month. It’s actually one of three special launches Apple is making as part of its Black Unity Collection: a watch face, a special Apple…

Microsoft released its annual sustainability report today, and Minecraft developer Mojang decided to turn it into something interactive. Called simply “Sustainable City,” the new Minecraft map is available as a free download in the Minecraft marketplace, and it’s also been added to the game’s educational offshoot.
The map features six included lessons, which Mojang says are “designed to give students a sense of stewardship for the planet.” The lessons cover topics like sustainable food production, water outflow and treatment, and responsible forestry. One lesson tasks players with exploring a home built entirely from sustainable materials; another has them venture to a landfill to learn what happens to non-recyclable materials.
The...

Robinhood has added new limits to its app to restrict users from buying or trading any of the popular Reddit r/WallStreetBets stocks, including GameStop ($GME), AMC ($AMC), BlackBerry ($BB), Bed Bath & Beyond ($BBBY), Nokia ($NOK), and more. Users will still be allowed to close out existing positions but won’t be able to buy more of the stocks. The company is citing “recent volatility” in the market as the reasoning behind the change.
We continuously monitor the markets and make changes where necessary. In light of recent volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only, including $AMC, $BB, $BBBY, $EXPR, $GME, $KOSS, $NAKD and $NOK. We also raised margin requirements for certain securities.
The...
An online casino

There are plenty of great 2D action games about exploring dark, mysterious worlds. Think Hollow Knight, Dead Cells, or anything inspired by Castlevania. Aside from similar themes, these games have something else in common: they’re almost always incredibly hard. Olija goes in a different direction. It still takes place in a world full of terrors to fight and secrets to uncover, and it features fast-paced action with lots of interesting weapons. But it’s also much more approachable. I wouldn’t call it easy, but it’s satisfying without being frustrating. You get the same haunting vibe without all of the stress.
In Olija, you play as a man named Faraday whose ship crashes in an incredibly cursed part of the world called Terraphage. He has...
NBC Universal’s Peacock streaming service hit 33 million signups in the fourth quarter, parent company Comcast reported Thursday, an addition of 11 million signups from the third quarter. While the company’s overall revenues beat Wall Street’s expectations, Comcast continued to see the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on its filmed entertainment and theme park divisions.
It’s still early to tell whether having The Office on Peacock will deliver a surge of new subscribers, since it only became exclusive as of January 1st. Peacock launched in July and is already on par with other, newer streamers like HBO Max, which had almost 40 million subscribers as of the most recent quarter and launched around the same time as Peacock. Disney Plus,...
Until very recently, I lived in a small apartment with a European-made, European-sized fridge. I tried to like it. I wanted to be the type of person who embraced the tiny fridge lifestyle, but my job (and maximalist personality) made that a little challenging. I have since moved into a house with a normal-sized…
Faraday Future is going to become a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq stock exchange and is raising around $1 billion in the process.
The troubled EV startup announced Thursday that it is indeed merging with special purpose acquisition corporation (or SPAC) Property Solutions, as first reported by Bloomberg earlier this month.
About $230 million will come from the money that Property Solutions raised in its SPAC. The other $775 million will come from a new funding round happening concurrently with the merger. Geely, China’s biggest privately owned automaker, is contributing “less than 10 percent” of that new investment, and $175 million is coming from an unnamed “Tier 1 Chinese City,” meaning that the Chinese government is involved...
A new web standard is playing off of California’s powerful privacy law
Cyberpunk 2077’s big new 1.1 patch introduced a game-breaking bug earlier this week, and now Developer CD Projekt Red is fixing it. A new 1.11 hotfix is available across PC, Stadia, and Xbox / PlayStation consoles today. While it also restores item randomization to a previous state, the primary purpose is to fix the game-breaking part of the “Down on the Street” quest.
The quest includes a holocall that’s supposed to trigger progress through the main part of Cyberpunk 2077’s storyline, but some players found the call was silent and blocked progress of the game. CD Projekt Red published a workaround after a few hours, and has now followed up with a hotfix after the problem was spotted earlier this week.
Hotfix 1.11 is available on PC,...
Telegram has added the ability to import your chat history from WhatsApp, meaning you won’t loose past conversations if you want to switch messaging services. On iOS the feature arrived with version 7.4, released yesterday and spotted by 9to5Mac, but the update doesn’t appear to be live yet on Android. Alongside WhatsApp, chat histories from Line and KakaoTalk can also be imported, according to Telegram’s changelog. We’ve verified that you can import chats from WhatsApp into the latest version (7.4.1) of Telegram and continue the conversation, so long as each WhatsApp user has a Telegram account.
The addition of the feature comes as Telegram is reporting huge increases in user numbers, with the service now boasting over 500 million...

Pac-Man celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, and to commemorate the occasion, Cook and Becker is releasing a history book later this year — and it looks incredible. While there’s a standard hardcover version of the book for $39, which is called Pac-Man: Birth of an Icon, you can also buy a $99 special edition that comes with an ingenious Pac-Man-shaped slipcase. There’s even a vinyl pressing of the single “Pac-Man Fever” included.
The book is described as “the first-ever official history book” for the iconic video games series, and it’s written by Arjan Terpstra and Tim Lapetino. Here’s the official description:
This new non-fiction narrative volume will journey from creator Toru Iwatani’s “pizza slice” inspiration to the game’s...
Thanks to its latest update, the Google Camera app now lets you permanently turn off its Auto Night Sight feature on devices that automatically enable the low-light photography mode, 9to5Google reports. The feature is available with version 8.1.200 of the app, which started rolling out on Monday. Additionally, the update lets you disable the mode from the app’s flash settings.
When Google released the Pixel 4A 5G and Pixel 5 last year, it tweaked their camera apps to enable Night Sight mode automatically in low-light conditions. But using the feature means photos take longer to capture, so there’ll inevitably be occasions when you don’t want it to automatically come on. Annoyingly, as 9to5Google notes, the toggle to turn this feature...
Vivaldi is releasing version 3.6 of the Vivaldi browser with a great and terrible power today: you can now create two-level tab stacks, so that grouped tabs can become pseudo-workspaces for whatever you get up to in your browser. Vivaldi first introduced the feature as an experiment in December 2020, but now you can officially indulge in two levels of too many tabs.
Creating two-level stacked tabs is as easy as holding down the Command or Windows key, selecting whatever tabs you want to be in the stack, and then right-clicking and selecting “New Tab stack” from the drop down menu. You can also achieve the same effect by dragging and holding one tab over another. Clicking on the newly formed tab stack (signified with a white outline)...

Linking your WhatsApp account to your computer’s web browser or desktop app is getting a little more secure. Soon, if you’ve got biometric authentication enabled on your phone, you’ll have to unlock the app before you can link your account.
The company says the new system is intended to ensure that should someone else gain access to your phone, they won’t be able to link your account to their web browser (which, in turn, would allow them to see any messages you send or receive).
The new system will be enabled by default on any iPhone devices running iOS 14 with either Touch ID or Face ID, and any Android devices that have...
Samsung Electronics has reported its fourth-quarter earnings, confirming that the company made more money in 2020 than the year before despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Operating profit was up to 35.99 trillion won ($32.1 billion) off 236.81 trillion won ($211.5 billion) in revenue, increases of 29.6 percent and 2.78 percent respectively.
Samsung says its fourth-quarter results were helped by its “company-wide efforts to ensure a stable supply of products and services globally” in the pandemic environment. Quarterly profit was up 26.4 percent year-on-year, largely driven by the display and memory businesses, though the latter was down quarter to quarter.
Samsung’s display business had its highest ever quarterly earnings,...
Apple’s new privacy feature requiring developers ask for permission to track iOS users for ad targeting is at last going live in the next iOS 14 beta with a planned full release some time this spring for non-beta users, the company tells The Verge.
The announcement coincides with Data Privacy Day, as well as a speech on privacy from Apple CEO Tim Cook later today at the Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference in Brussels. Apple initially planned for the feature to go live with the launch of iOS 14 last fall, but it delayed its implementation to 2021 in September of last year to give developers more time to comply. Today’s announcement narrows the launch window to this spring, but Apple is not commenting further on when...

Garmin has released a new smartwatch called the Lily, and its main selling point is that Garmin claims it’s designed by women, for women. The Sport Edition, which is made of aluminum and has a silicone band, costs $199, while the stainless steel Classic Edition is $250 and comes with a leather band.
Garmin claims it’s “the smartwatch women have been waiting for,” which seems based on its size and design, which is very fashion-forward. However, as reviewer Lily Katz from Android Authority points out in her review of the Lily, the watch may have given up a few important features to achieve those looks.
One of the Lily’s main selling...
The story of r/WallStreetBets
The WallStreetBets subreddit, which has seen a significant increase in attention in recent days following the meteoric rise in GameStop’s stock driven in part by traders on the forum, has been made private. Reddit confirmed to The Verge that the subreddit’s moderators were the ones to make it private.
If you try to access the subreddit as of 7:06PM ET, you’ll see a page with this message:
We are experiencing technical difficulties based on unprecedented scale as a result of the newfound interest in WSB. We are unable to ensure Reddit’s content policy and the WSB rules are enforceable without a technology platform that can support automation of this enforcement. WSB will be back.
However, it’s not just people who weren’t...
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In the United States, many are beholden to an “always on” work standard, where emails, texts, calls, Slack messages and even meetings follow you home well after the workday should have ended. Some jobs even require workers to answer emails and messages when they’re otherwise busy with doctors appointments or tending…
Amazon’s digital assistant can now control some of your smart devices for you—without any prompting needed. But before you start dreaming about a day when Alexa will have your coffee ready for you in the morning and your car already warming up in the garage for your commute, know that her powers have been slightly…
Reddit traders who have successfully profited off GameStop (GME) stock are now turning their attention to struggling movie theater chain AMC. Reddit board r/wallstreetbets has helped push GameStop stock to record levels in recent days, with the stock closing up 92 percent yesterday alone. It’s part of a chaotic, meme-fueled effort to create an organized short squeeze, and force traditional hedge funds into losing millions of dollars on their bets against struggling companies.
AMC appears to be next on the list. Overnight, online traders at r/wallstreetbets’ Discord server spent hours creating memes and spamming AMC emoji in an effort to convince thousands of people to buy AMC stock. Hundreds swarmed rapper Soulja Boy’s live Twitch stream...

With Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury for the Switch, Nintendo is once again giving a great Wii U game a second chance on a more successful platform. But it’s also more than just a straight port. In addition to the main game, this rerelease also includes a separate experience — the titular Bowser’s Fury. It’s essentially a built-in expansion pack with a strong heavy metal vibe to remix the classic gameplay.
For starters, you don’t actually have to play 3D World to access Bowser’s Fury. Both titles are accessible right from the main menu, and you can swap between them at will. Progress in one doesn’t appear to impact the other. Fundamentally, the two games are the same: Bowser’s Fury still plays and controls just like 3D World, which...

It can be clunky, but a chilling, gruesome atmosphere makes it work

General Motors, which only a few months ago was forced to ditch its plans to acquire an equity stake in troubled hydrogen truck startup Nikola, is ready to move on. Today, the automaker announced it was teaming up with Illinois-based trucking firm Navistar and OneH2, a North Carolina-based hydrogen fuel cell company, to put more hydrogen-powered long-haul trucks on the road.
The three companies, along with JB Hunt Transport Services, are planning to roll out “a complete solution” for a fleet of heavy-duty, zero-emission, hydrogen fuel cell trucks. The move is further evidence that automakers are continuing to place huge bets on hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, despite major fueling limitations.

Fujifilm has announced the X-E4, which it describes as the most compact interchangeable-lens camera in its X-series lineup. At 121.3mm x 72.9mm x 32.7mm, it’s more than a centimeter thinner than its predecessor, the X-E3 from 2017.
The X-E series slots into Fujifilm’s lineup as an option for enthusiast photographers who prefer a rangefinder-style design to DSLR-like cameras like the X-T4 but don’t need the optical viewfinder of the X-Pro3. Alternatively, it could be viewed as an interchangeable-lens, EVF-only version of the X100V.
Like the X100V, there’s a 26.1-megapixel X-Trans sensor, dedicated dials for shutter speed and exposure compensation, and a new tilting screen that sits flush against the body. The shutter dial now also has a...

As buttons go, there are few as well-known as Staples’ “Easy Button” — a bright, Staples-red button that was featured in a series of ad campaigns beginning in 2005. The ads were so popular that Staples ended up actually selling real replica versions of the Easy Button shortly after they debuted — and it’s since sold millions of the desk toys.
The fictitious Easy Buttons featured in the commercials possess magical qualities that allow the user to sorcerously solve their (usually office supply-related) issues with the press of a button. The sad irony, of course, is that the real-life version of the product is significantly more disappointing. Pressing it doesn’t summon a rain of printer ink or raise the Great Wall to defend against an...

Fujifilm has announced a new medium format camera, the GFX 100S. This new model is essentially a smaller, more accessible version of the GFX 100, which was released in 2019 for $9,999.95.
Like the GFX 100, the 100S has a 102-megapixel 43.8 x 32.9mm medium format sensor with 100-percent phase-detection AF coverage. It’s a full 500g lighter, however, and has a few features missing or tweaked: the EVF is no longer interchangeable, for example, and there’s no option for a vertical battery grip.
The in-body OIS system is smaller and lighter, but Fujifilm actually says it should slightly outperform the GFX 100’s with up to six stops of stabilization for most lenses. This is all thanks to an upgraded gyro sensor and improved algorithms,...
The latest James Bond movie’s pandemic-related delays are reportedly causing problems for its marketing deals, with advertisers concerned that the film may end up featuring outdated product placements, The Sun is reporting. The 25th Bond film, No Time To Die, is currently due to release in cinemas on October 8th, over a year after it was originally meant to release.
“Some of those things were the very latest models back when they started filming” a source told The Sun, “but by the time the movie comes out now it will look like Daniel Craig and all of the other cast members are carrying something that has been out for ages. That isn’t really the point of these deals.”
Although the film will reportedly feature Omega watches, Bollinger...
Disney World has released a doughnut grilled cheese sandwich unto the world and, for some reason, not everyone is delighted. Even though this is tame as far as stunt foods go, some accounts (and some people) are play-acting at being shocked over a fairly mundane sandwich.
The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) is calling on the European Commission to investigate Nintendo Joy-Con drift complaints. The BEUC group represents more than 40 consumer organizations across the European Union, and the umbrella organization says it has received nearly 25,000 complaints from consumers across Europe about faulty Joy-Con controllers.
“According to consumer testimonies, in 88 percent of cases, the game controllers broke within the first two years of use,” says the BEUC (via Eurogamer). The group has now submitted a complaint to the European Commission claiming Nintendo is involved in premature obsolescence and “misleading omissions of key consumer information.”
Nintendo Switch owners have been reporting issues with...
The bike arrives at a time when many people want to work out at home
Samsung’s latest flagship, the Galaxy S21 Ultra, is its first phone to feature Samsung Display’s new power-efficient OLED panels. In a press release, Samsung says the new display consumes 16 percent less power thanks to a “just-developed organic material” that means “electrons flow faster and more easily across the display’s organic layer.”
“In other words,” Samsung explains, the technology means its “OLED panels can create brighter light while consuming less power, which improves the battery lifetime.” A smartphone’s display is typically one of its most power-hungry components, so efficiency gains here can have a big impact on the overall battery life of the device. In our review, we remarked that the S21 Ultra has excellent battery...

Lime is adding a new member to its family of shared electric vehicles: mopeds. The mopeds are being offered as part of a pilot program to test whether Lime’s customers prefer vehicles that are faster, heavier, and arguably riskier to ride than your average kick scooter.
The mopeds can be rented via Lime’s smartphone app, just like the company’s e-scooters. Lime is still finalizing the price per mile for the mopeds, but it intends for it to be competitive with other shared mobility services.
Other scooter companies have flirted with expanding their product lineups to include mopeds, but Lime insists its pilot will presage a larger rollout in the spring. To start, Lime...
A group of 75 activist groups and nonprofits have urged against sweeping changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, warning that it could silence marginalized communities while making online moderation harder.
“Section 230 is a foundational law for free expression and human rights when it comes to digital speech,” the letter says. The law protects websites and apps from being sued over user-generated content — making it safer to operate social networks, comment sections, or hosting services. “Overly broad changes to Section 230 could disproportionately harm and silence marginalized people, whose voices have been historically ignored by mainstream press outlets.”
The letter is signed by a variety of groups supporting racial...
Carl Pei, the OnePlus co-founder who parted ways with the company last year, has announced the name of his next venture: Nothing. It describes itself as a “London based consumer technology company” and counts the likes of iPod inventor Tony Fadell, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, and YouTuber Casey Neistat as investors. It plans to release its first “smart devices” in the first half of this year.
“Nothing’s mission is to remove barriers between people and technology to create a seamless digital future,” says Pei, Nothing’s founder and CEO, in a press release. “We believe that the best technology is beautiful, yet natural and intuitive to use. When sufficiently advanced, it should fade into the background and feel...
Samsung is expanding its Health Monitor app to 31 new countries, including 28 European countries, and people in those countries will be able to use the app with a Galaxy Watch 3 or Galaxy Active 2 smartwatch to take electrocardiogram (EKG) and blood pressure readings.
Samsung says the app was granted a CE marking in December, which means that it complies with applicable regulations in Europe and can be offered in the European Economic Area.
Here is the full list of countries in Europe that will soon be able to get the app: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania,...
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DJI is now offering flyaway coverage for its Mini 2 and Mavic Air 2 drones, should they develop a mind of their own and take off. The cost of replacing the escaped drone is $225 for the Mini, and $399 for the Mavic, which is on top of the price of DJI’s Care Refresh extended warranty. For that, you’ll pay $50 for the Mini, and $80 for the Mavic. If you already own one of these drones and the extended warranty, you’re eligible for flyway replacements going forward.
The extended warranty also lets you replace your drone if you damage it, twice per year, for $50 each. For flyaway coverage, there’s a one-time limit — if your replacement also goes AWOL, you’ll be on the hook to replace it, though there is a two-year version of the warranty...
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Super Bowl Sunday is less than two weeks away! Sure, the game itself won’t be streaming in 4K resolution, but that doesn’t mean you can’t spoil yourself with a new UHD television for your bedroom or living room.
Over at Best Buy and B&H Photo, you can pick up Vizio’s 65-inch M-series (M65Q7-H1 model) 4K television for only $600. It’s not the lowest price we have seen it go for ($580), yet this is still a great deal given the TV’s specs and size. Vizio’s M65Q7-H1 stands out (especially at this price point) because of its QLED panel, allowing for a more accurate contrast and colors, unlike televisions with standard LED.
Don’t have room for a 65-inch television? Not a problem. Hisense’s 55-inch Class H8 4K TV (model 55H8G) is a good...

The next in-game event for Animal Crossing: New Horizons will bring a little more color to your island. Today, Nintendo revealed its next big update, the highlight of which is Festivale, a carnival-like event that will take place on February 15th. Here’s how Nintendo describes it:
Dancer Pavé will arrive to your island’s plaza to usher in some confetti and carnival spirit. On the day of the event you can capture colorful feathers floating on your island with your net and trade them to Pavé to receive a passionate dance number in return. Rainbow feathers seem to be an especially rare sight, so be sure to catch them and trade them with Pavé.
The event will also introduce new clothing options and reactions. It’s all part of New Horizons’...