Category: The Verge

See the original posting on The Verge

Remember this time last year, when everyday didn’t bring with it a new horror and people just wanted to talk about The Witcher? Well, now a new video from Netflix is trying to bring back some of that energy, piecing together lyrics from the show’s breakout song, “Toss a Coin to your Witcher,” all sung in different languages.

In the video, the song jumps between languages, starting with English before leading into Polish, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and more. It’s incredibly charming, with all the different Jaskiers coming together to remind various townspeople and locals to toss a coin to their Witcher. It’s the holiday season; not tipping at least 20 percent, especially in areas with heavy snowfall and grotesque monsters that…

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

All of the women tell the same story of how they were scammed. A company called The SkinGlo emailed them with a tempting deal: it was looking for content to fill its Instagram feed, and its team had chosen them to help. In exchange for five photos of them using The SkinGlo’s electric face scrubber — even photos taken just from their phones — they’d receive €450, or about $525 USD. They could even watermark the images and only send over a clean file once they got paid. It seemed like a good deal.

There was one small catch, though. The women would have to buy the company’s face scrubber themselves, with a 50 percent off discount code, bringing the total to €40, or about $48.

Although that stipulation was slightly odd, the company still…

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

Microsoft Flight Simulator has always been about making you feel like a pilot, but you’ve never been able to experience it in VR — until today. With today’s free update, Asobo Studio has added support for OpenXR-compatible headsets, which include Windows Mixed Reality headsets as well as the Valve Index, HTC Vive, and the Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest (if you use a Link cable).

Microsoft originally announced that the VR feature would be coming first to the HP Reverb G2. This latest update includes support for most Windows Mixed Reality headsets, Oculus, Valve, and HTC headsets.

Before, if you wanted to feel like you were really in an airplane while playing Flight Simulator, it would take a lot of computer monitors and some carpentry…

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

One of my favorite movies when I was growing up was Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. In it, the main protagonist, Wayne Szalinski, is a nerdy scientist-slash-home-gadget-inventor who develops a shrink ray in his attic that accidentally shrinks his kids and two neighbor kids down to the size of gnats.

But it was Wayne’s other inventions that always caught my eye — in particular, his Rube Goldberg-esque system for announcing when the mail has arrived. I’m no Wayne Szalinski and I’m certainly not an accomplished engineer, but building a system to let me know when the mail has arrived has been an ongoing smart home goal of mine.

I’ve tried using Zigbee contact sensors mounted inside my mailbox, and I’ve even tried using a motion detector shoved in…

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

Sony’s latest PlayStation 5 update seems to have fixed one of the biggest issues with cross-gen games on the console: making it clearer when players have the PlayStation 4 version of a game installed and notifying them when there’s a PS5 version available to download.

The feature, spotted by Twitter user Tidux, aims to clarify one of the more frustratingly complex parts of the PlayStation 5. Because the console offers backwards compatibility for all PS4 games — including ones that offer free next-gen PS5 updates, like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla or Destiny 2 — it’s pretty easy to accidentally install the older version of the game.

Microsoft has taken a simpler approach to the system, with its Smart Delivery program that will automatically…

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

The year 2020 was when most of us went from going out with loved ones to exchanging recommendations on what type of TV show or movie to stream next. One way to suit everyone’s taste — kids, adults, and sports fans — is to try the Disney Bundle, a streaming pack that consists of Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, and Hulu.

Each of these services offers a slew of streaming options, so for a $12.99-a-month price tag, you are getting a ton of bang for your buck. You can also opt just for Disney Plus at a cost of $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year.

Here are some of my favorites.

We’ve rounded up our favorite and most-used games, apps, and entertainment. Check out our app picks for iPhones, Android phones, PCs, and M1-equipped Macs; our favorite mobile…

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

The microwave is a cooking tool designed around precision. Punch in how long you need your food to heat up in a microwave, and that’s what it will do; no more, and no less.

But for all the exactitude that governs the microwave — and that the microwave tries to impose on our food and our cooking — the reality is that things can’t be so neatly stuffed into a convenient digital box. Life isn’t binary, so many microwaves feature an “add 30 seconds” button to give us humans the wiggle room we need within the otherwise unbendable numbers of the countdown clock.

It’s a button that stands in almost caveman-y opposition to the intended functionality. Instead of calculating the perfect amount of time to reheat or cook your food, it turns out that…

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

Marvel superhero Black Panther is now available in Fortnite. You can get him, Captain Marvel, and Taskmaster as part of the Marvel Royalty and Warriors Pack, which costs $24.99.

Epic had hinted toward Black Panther’s eventual arrival with the release of the Wakandan Salute emote Monday morning. The salute has become an iconic greeting — something that many of the cast members of the 2018 Black Panther movie have spoke publicly about in the months after its release. The film grossed $1.35 billion at the box office, including an astounding $700.4 million domestically.

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

Stardew Valley is an idyllic digital space to escape to after a long year — and thanks to its 1.5 update available today on PC, you can now bring friends and family along to your farm with local split-screen co-op. The multiplayer update from a couple of years back made it possible to play and share farms online, but this local co-op addition lets you do the same with the people you actually live with, even if they don’t have their own copy of the game.

You can add the ability for local co-op by having Robin the Carpenter build cabins on your farm, or if you’re starting from scratch, you can select to have the cabins already built when you make a new game. Once the cabins are built, you can start local co-op for up to three other people…

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Chromebook 2 has been revealed in a new leak, showing off the return of the company’s unique bright orange coloring in an otherwise similar-looking design, via Evan Blass.

There are some visible changes to the new model, including minor adjustments to the port layout and the extension of Samsung’s application of the orange color. The keyboard on the second-generation model has been made a more neutral black, even as the orange hue has extended to the sides of the laptop.

But any more substantial changes will likely be found in the internal specs, which presumably will see some sort of improvement from last year’s model — especially considering that there are new 11th Gen Intel laptop chips out. Combining the…

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

With its upcoming Galaxy Buds Pro, Samsung is planning to counter one of the differentiating features of Apple’s AirPods Pro (and now AirPods Max): spatial audio. Spatial audio crams an immersive, surround sound-like experience into a set of earbuds or headphones. And it accurately keeps the sound source anchored to your iPhone or iPad, so if you turn your head, you’ll notice that the audio stays in front of you. Wherever you move the device, that’s where it’ll sound like the audio track is coming from.

But Samsung seems to be readying its own take on spatial audio. As is becoming oddly common, the company’s mobile Galaxy Buds app has prematurely spilled some of Samsung’s latest earbud tricks. As noted by 9to5Google, an updated version…

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

It is shockingly hard to find a new movie that’s interested in an old-fashioned adventure. You know what I mean: the globe-trotting Indiana Jones kind, with riddles to solve and death traps to avoid, featuring a hint of romance and a strange treasure at stake. Thankfully, Lupin III: The First is exactly that. Written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki and streaming on-demand, the film is a gorgeously animated romp around the world starring an iconic manga character. Also, some Nazis get their asses handed to them.

Depending on how familiar you are with the manga, The First is either a triumphant return or modern introduction to Arsène Lupin III, one of manga and anime’s most storied characters. Created by artist and writer Monkey Punch…

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

The year 2020 likely kept many of us inside for most of it, and it looks like that situation may last at least into part of 2021. One of the few positives is that many great movies and TV shows were released on streaming services such as Netflix. The streaming service has made available a plethora of movies and TV shows, some original to Netflix.

Netflix currently offers three plans: Basic ($8.99 / month) lets you watch content on one screen at a time; Standard ($13.99 / month) brings it up to two screens and adds HD content; and Premium ($17.99) offers a total of four screens and Ultra HD content.

Whether you need a new show to binge-watch once The Office leaves Netflix or something for a movie night with your loved ones, here’s a list…

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

OnePlus has a new concept phone to show off, which is its way of teasing tech that maybe, just maybe, might make it into one of the company’s future phones. The OnePlus 8T Concept is a similar phone to the OnePlus 8T that was released a couple months ago, but it’s got a pretty unique rear design that changes color alongside a motion-tracking radar module.

According to OnePlus, this color-changing effect is achieved with a film that contains metal oxide, which sits underneath the phone’s glass back and changes color as different voltages are applied to it. At its most basic, it could change color to show off the phone’s notifications, like an incoming phone call, much like the notification light that it has included on its phones in the…

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

Adobe has released an Arm version of Premiere Pro for macOS, allowing owners of new Apple Silicon M1 Macs to run the video editing software natively. The program is still very much in beta for now, however, and the Adobe post announcing its availability lists a host of known bugs and missing features. News of its release was spotted by The 8-Bit, and MacRumors adds that Adobe’s Premiere Rush and Audition have also been updated to run on the new machines.

Adobe says it’s porting Premiere Pro’s features over in phases, starting with its core editing functions and workflows, as well as popular codecs like H.264, HEVC, and ProRes. Third-party integrations will need to be updated by their respective developers to work on Apple Silicon. Adobe…

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

ZTE’s Axon 20 5G is a better phone if you don’t care about selfies

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

I can barely go anywhere on the internet without seeing yet another wild, hilarious, or downright odd bug from Cyberpunk 2077. It’s a buggy game, and developer CD Projekt Red has already released two hotfixes to try and shore up some of the problems. One issue that’s starting to pop up, though, isn’t funny at all: some players are reporting that their Cyberpunk 2077 save files are becoming corrupted if they exceed a certain file size (via Eurogamer).

If your Cyberpunk 2077 save is corrupted, you’ll apparently see this prompt when you try and load up the game: “saved data is damaged and cannot be loaded.” Here’s what it looks like:

Image: GOG.com support document

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

Hi, I’m Jay! I’m subbing in for your usual trailers guide Kim Lyons while she takes a well-deserved holiday break. I’ve really been looking forward to writing this post. Trailers are fun! They’re like bite-sized movies.

Unfortunately, there weren’t a ton of trailers to choose from this week. I suppose studios don’t want to launch big trailers for upcoming blockbusters shortly before everyone takes off for the holidays. But there were still a few good ones to watch, including a trailer for a series launching on Netflix later this week. Enjoy.

Bridgerton

Bridgerton is Shona Rhimes’ upcoming British period drama for Netflix, the first series resulting from her mega-deal with Netflix. It looks like it should hit a lot of the expected high…

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

We didn’t go to the movies much this year, but the movies still came to us. While the convenience of home viewing can’t match the experience of watching a spectacle in the dark with others, the other joy of movies — talking about them — is easier than ever, thanks to our connected world. And 2020’s pandemic sidelined a lot of big blockbusters, leaving smaller, more interesting movies to take center stage. As silver linings go, this one isn’t that bad.

Here, in no particular order, are ten incredible movies from a year where movies still rallied to offer experiences that were provocative, compelling, and fun.

The Assistant

One of the best films made in response to the crimes of Harvey Weinstein and the subsequent #MeToo movement, The…

Continue reading…

See the original posting on The Verge

In the early days of despair, I looked at Spotify and decided that everything sounded bad. All songs were boring, and I was sick of everything. What that really meant was I was sick of myself. But by the summer, I’d found the solve: ambient music. The best music I heard this year was barely music at all.

The notion of “ambient music” is pretentious, sure, but the concept is simple. If most music is centered around some alchemy of melody and rhythm, ambient music eschews that for whatever else: tones, moods, atmosphere.

I’ve listened to Peel by Nairobi-based artist KMRU roughly once a day since I first heard it in July. Like most music in the genre, the album is concerned with timbre and texture — a lot of shapeless, ambiguous noise that…

Continue reading…