In our community it’s certain that there will be many people with very strong views about patents. It’s fair to say that the patents system is at times not fit for purpose, with such phenomena as patent trolls, submarine patents, and patent war chests doing nothing but leading it into disrepute. So it’s interesting to
Read MoreSkype’s new design and colorful layouts. | Image: Microsoft Skype’s had more redesigns in the past five years than I’ve had hot dinners, but Microsoft is still ready to try and tweak things once again. The software maker is teasing plans for an “improved, faster, reliable, and super modern-looking Skype.” Microsoft says it has been
Read MoreIllustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook has announced a $50 million fund that it says will help it develop the metaverse more responsibly. It’s officially called the XR Programs and Research Fund, and the company says it’ll be invested into “programs and external research” over the course of two years. Facebook has previously
Read MoreThe podcast world is changing. Welcome to your front-row seat on the action. In case you haven’t heard, The Verge acquired Hot Pod this month, and former writer and editor Nicholas Quah joined Vulture, our sister publication at Vox Media, as a full-time podcast critic. He’s still publishing over there — you can subscribe to
Read MoreMitchell Clark / The Verge: Facebook defines the metaverse and announces a two-year $50M investment in programs and external research to “responsibly” build the “next computing platform” — It defines the metaverse and calls it the ‘next computing platform’ — Facebook has announced …
Read MoreCancillería del Ecuador / Flickr The Trump administration’s CIA actively developed plans to kidnap or assassinate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange during his seclusion in London’s Ecuadorian embassy, according to a detailed new report from Yahoo News. Scenarios included abducting Assange from the embassy, intercepting a Russian effort to extract him, or an outright assassination attempt.
Read MoreCredit: Cody Berg/Pexels.com (Photo: Cody Berg/Pexels.com) Speeding up a slow PC can be a challenge, particularly when dealing with older hardware that may be on the cusp of needing an upgrade or replacement anyway. Sometimes, a system simply needs a fresh OS install or driver update to perform significantly better. In other cases, upgrade or
Read MoreDiscord will let you have unique avatars across different servers | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Messaging app Discord announced today that its premium Nitro tier will now allow subscribers to use a different avatar on each of their servers. The option to “change nickname” in the app has been changed to “edit
Read MoreCredit: Google Google Illustrations is launching today, allowing users to choose from hundreds of small art pieces for their Google profile. The images also can be altered so they can show up in different color options. The feature launches today for Gmail for Android users and expands to other Google services in the coming months.
Read MoreIf you live in the right part of the world, you spend a lot of the year worried about hurricanes or — technically — tropical cyclones. These storms carry an amazing amount of power and can change your life. However, we are relatively spoiled these days compared to the past. It is hard to imagine,
Read MoreGillian Tan / Bloomberg: SoftBank Vision Fund’s sole senior managing partner, Deep Nishar, says he will leave by the end of 2021 after six years at the fund — – Nishar is Vision Fund’s sole senior managing partner — Previously an executive at LinkedIn before joining SoftBank
Read MoreIllustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook announced that it would be “pausing” work on its Instagram for kids app on Monday after weeks of growing pressure from lawmakers and advocacy groups to scrap the app. But many lawmakers aren’t satisfied with the pause, calling on Facebook to stop development entirely. In a statement
Read MoreGoogle will roll out third-party controller support for its Stadia cloud gaming service on big-screen TVs on September 27. The new feature supports Android TV-based televisions, along with the Chromecast Ultra and Chromecast with Google TV. You can even take your Android or iOS mobile device and turn it into a touch screen controller for
Read MoreJoin us on Wednesday, September 29 at noon Pacific for the Robot Dogs Hack Chat with Afreez Gan! Thanks to the efforts of a couple of large companies, many devoted hobbyists, and some dystopian science fiction, robot dogs have firmly entered the zeitgeist of our “living in the future” world. The quadrupedal platform, with its
Read MoreWhat you need to know Exor, Ferrari, and LoveFrom have announced a new creative partnership. Jony Ive co-founded LoveFrom when he left Apple in 2019. The new deal is reported as a “long term, multi-year” one. There’s no telling what Ive will be working on, though. Former Apple design chief Jony Ive will be working
Read MoreImage: Roblox Virtual world-building platform Roblox has settled a lawsuit with the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and is negotiating potential deals with individual music publishers. Roblox announced the news this morning, saying it was “committed to partnering with the music industry.” The NMPA sued Roblox in June for letting users upload copyrighted songs into
Read MoreTikTok has passed 1 billion users | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok said Monday it has passed 1 billion monthly users. It’s a remarkable number for a platform launched in August 2018 that has been scrutinized by governments — including the US — that are worried about the data collection practices of
Read MoreKyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: Astera Labs, a fabless semiconductor startup, raises $50M Series C led by Fidelity at a $950M valuation, bringing its total raised to $85M — The Transform Technology Summits start October 13th with Low-Code/No Code: Enabling Enterprise Agility. Register now!
Read MoreI’m just as impatient for Metroid Prime 4 as you are, but it’s Metroid Dread that’ll determine the series’ future. Nintendo has a fantastic roster of original characters — best evidenced by Smash Ultimate’s bloated roster — but it has essentially abandoned several of its iconic franchises like kittens in boxes. F-Zero has been gone
Read MoreCredit: Microsoft Microsoft launched the Surface Duo 2 last week boasting several improvements over its predecessor. Microsoft has seemingly addressed all the concerns raised by its first attempt, from the displays to the chipset, camera hardware, and battery capacity. But is the Microsoft Surface Duo 2 hot? We posed this question to our readers in
Read MorePhoto by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Ford is recalling the Mustang Mach-E out of concern that the windshield and panoramic roof could leak or, worse, come flying off during a crash or while driving. Nearly 18,000 of the electric SUVs sold to date are at risk of the former, though Ford says only around
Read MoreGMT259_21_34_For ESA_Thomas Pesquet_1019_DEXTRE – night pictures NASA is moving forward with its vision of an “orderly transition” for US human space flight, from the current regime of heavy reliance on NASA sponsorship into one “where NASA is one of many customers of a low-Earth orbit (LEO) commercial human space flight enterprise.” Opening the ISS for
Read MoreLamps are interesting pieces of homeware. They can be purely functional, but often they become expressions of the true vibrancy of industrial design. The “DuoLux” from [seabirdhh] may not yet have graced the cover of prestigious European design journals, but this folding lamp does have some great style for a 3D-printed design. The lenses themselves
Read MoreCredit: Jimmy Westenberg / Android Authority The new YouTube Music app is now available on select Wear OS 2 watches. Users are able to download music to their devices and enjoy offline listening. Eligible devices include Gen 6 models from Fossil Group and more. YouTube Music brings good news to Wear OS users who haven’t made
Read MoreInstagram is pausing work on a version for children younger than 13, called “Instagram Kids”, the Facebook-owned photo sharing app said on Monday. Instagram Kids was touted to require parental permission to join, and provide ad-free, age-appropriate content, but US lawmakers and advocacy groups alike have urged the social media giant to drop its launch
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