America used fewer fossil fuels in 2020 than it has in three decades

NEW JERSEY, USA - APRIL 21: Phillips 66 oil refinery is seen in New Jersey, United States on April 21, 2020. Brent crude oil dived below the threshold of $20 per barrel as the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic ramped up oil oversupply amid low global consumption. | Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Americans gobbled up fewer fossil fuels in 2020 than they have in three decades, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). Consumption of petroleum, natural gas, and coal dropped by 9 percent last year compared to 2019, the biggest annual decrease since the EIA started keeping track in 1949.

The COVID-19 pandemic was responsible for much of the fall as people stayed home to curb the spread of the virus and used less gas. In April 2020, oil prices nosedived below zero because there was so little demand. The US transportation sector alone used up 15 percent less energy in 2020 compared to the year before. Higher temperatures last winter also helped to cut energy demand for heating, according to the EIA. As a result,...

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Pentagon cancels Microsoft JEDI contract, will ask for new cloud computing bids

Photo By Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

The US Defense Department has canceled the $10 billion JEDI cloud computing project it awarded to Microsoft in 2019, saying the controversial program’s design “no longer meets its needs.” The department will replace JEDI with another cloud infrastructure contract and plans to solicit bids from Microsoft as well as Amazon — which sued over losing the original contract.

CNBC reported the news earlier today. “Due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the JEDI Cloud contract no longer meets its needs,” reads a Defense Department press release sent to The Verge. “JEDI was developed at a time when the department’s needs were different and both the CSPs technology and our cloud conversancy was less...

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Nintendo’s OLED Switch: all of the news about the console upgrade

The OLED Nintendo Switch. | Image: Nintendo

It has a bigger OLED screen, but not much else has changed

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Nintendo never needed to fix the Switch; it’s not broken

Image: Nintendo

Nintendo finally did it! There’s a new Nintendo Switch coming in October! Over a year of rumors have amounted to the Nintendo Switch OLED model, featuring a slightly larger OLED display, “improved audio,” a built-in ethernet port, and a better kickstand. All of that hype has brought us a device that’s a mere step or two above the product launched back in March 2017. It sort of reminds me of that half-decade where Apple seemed to be stuck with the same generation of Intel CPUs in its laptops. The incremental improvements are nice, but we were all kind of hoping for more (like an end to Joy-Con drift?). Only Nintendo has never needed to give us more.

I’ve spent the last year and a half using a Nintendo Switch Lite and rereading rumors...

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Roblox signs music partnership with Sony

Image: Roblox

Virtual world-building platform Roblox has signed a deal with Sony Music Entertainment. The deal extends an existing collaboration that included a 2020 Lil Nas X concert inside Roblox as well as a 2021 virtual dance party with Swedish artist Zara Larsson.

A press release says the agreement will include “innovative music experiences for the Roblox community that offer a range of new commercial opportunities for Sony Music artists to reach new audiences and generate new revenue streams around virtual entertainment,” although a Roblox spokesperson told The Verge that the company was not announcing any specific events or experiences at this time. A spokesperson says Roblox is in talks with other record labels as well.

Roblox has grown...

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Nintendo confirms no new CPU or increased RAM in the OLED Switch

Nintendo just announced a new model of the Switch that has an OLED screen, but it won’t bring major changes to the CPU or RAM currently used in other iterations of the console, Nintendo confirmed to The Verge.

“Nintendo Switch (OLED model) does not have a new CPU, or more RAM, from previous Nintendo Switch models,” Nintendo said to The Verge.

The company didn’t mention anything about improvements to those in its announcement video, on its marketing page dedicated to the new console, or in its page listing the technical specs for the device, so it’s not surprising that this is the case.

Nintendo also confirmed to The Verge that all Switch docks are interchangeable, meaning the non-OLED Switch can sit in the dock included with the OLED...

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Nintendo finally improved the Switch’s kickstand with new OLED model

Nintendo

Nintendo’s new Switch with an OLED screen seems promising for people who’ve wanted a bigger, more vibrant display to play games. That’s worth getting excited about (despite the apparent lack of spec improvements inside), but I’m just as pleased that Nintendo revised the truly horrible kickstand present in the original Switch. Instead of the flimsy, fragile stand that’s prone to wobbling (or breaking if you’re unlucky), the new one takes a page from Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablets — and seems a lot better for it.

Looking at the new Switch console’s backside, the kickstand is much wider, extending across the entire bottom part of the tablet to better support its weight. Nintendo’s announcement video shows the improved kickstand supporting...

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Must-play Nintendo Switch games are almost half off

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Nintendo finally announced the Switch with an OLED screen that comes out in October, but right now, GameStop is hosting a big one-day discount on two must-have Switch games: Super Mario Odyssey and Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Each game is going for $35 (usually $60) for the physical or digital versions, and if you have the means, I suggest getting both. Super Mario Odyssey is the latest (delightful) installment in the long-running _Mario_3D platforming franchise, while Fire Emblem: Three Houses has strategic, turn-based battles interspersed with team- and friend-building elements you’d usually find in a _Persona_game.

If you’re looking for more Switch games, Best Buy has a selection of discounted titles (physical, not digital) that cost...

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Nintendo Switch OLED model will go on sale October 8th for $350

Nintendo is announcing a new Switch model today with a larger 7-inch 720p OLED display. While rumors had suggested this new Switch would ship with a new Nvidia chip inside, it doesn’t look like that’s the case. Nintendo lists this Switch OLED model as only supporting 1080p via TV mode, and rumors had suggested 4K support, thanks to a rumored Nvidia chip upgrade. The Switch OLED model will go on sale for $350 starting on October 8th.

Other than the new screen, this revised model includes an adjustable stand for tabletop play, 64GB of built-in storage (up from 32GB), a new dock with a wired ethernet port built in, and improved audio for handheld or tabletop play. Nintendo only mentions “up to 1080p via HDMI in TV mode” for the TV dock, so...

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Rep. Ken Buck is the new face of Republican antitrust

Congressman Ken Buck, R-Colo., at his office in the Rayburn Office Building in Washington, D.C., on June 30, 2021. | Photo by Lexey Swall for The Verge

Meet the Republican behind the House’s bipartisan antitrust deal

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Kensington’s StudioCaddy is a home for all your Apple devices

The StudioCaddy has USB-A and USB-C charging ports on the side.

Following the recent release of the StudioDock, an opulent stand that turns the iPad Pro into a mini desktop computer, Kensington is expanding its Apple-focused offerings today with the $179.99 StudioCaddy. It’s an unusual product with a simple goal: it’s meant to be the place where all your Apple devices can live.

The StudioCaddy is comprised of two halves that attach magnetically. The first half is a basic metal stand that you can slot a closed MacBook into, and there’s also a rubberized shelf out front designed to hold an iPad. The second half attaches onto the front and includes two Qi wireless chargers, one vertical for an iPhone and one horizontal with a recess that you can put an AirPods case into.

You could, of course, use the...

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Nothing’s debut earbuds will cost $99 and feature noise cancellation

A teaser image for the design of the earbuds. | Image: Nothing

Nothing’s debut earbuds, the Nothing Ear (1), will cost $99 / €99 / £99 and will feature active noise cancellation (ANC), the company’s founder Carl Pei has told TechCrunch. Each earbud will be equipped with three mics to enable ANC, the company says, and will be released initially in the UK, India, Europe, and North America following their announcement on July 27th.

Pei, who previously co-founded OnePlus, is using the Ear (1)’s noise cancellation to position the earbuds as a competitor to Apple’s $249 AirPods Pro. However noise cancellation is increasingly common on mid-range true wireless earbuds. The Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro cost $130, for example, while Amazon’s second-generation Echo Buds include ANC and start at $120. However,...

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Amazon’s new Echo Show 8 is a little faster and has a better camera

Still the best Alexa smart display

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Twitter has lost legal immunity for users’ posts in India, government argues

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter is now legally liable for content posted by its users in India after failing to comply with the country’s new IT rules, the government said in a legal filing. As reported by both Reuters and TechCrunch_,_India’s IT ministry argues in a filing with New Delhi’s High Court that the social media firm has lost its legal immunity after failing to comply with new requirements imposed in May. These include appointing a chief compliance officer, a grievance officer, and a contact person to respond to requests from law enforcement 24 hours a day.

Reuters reports that the court filing came in response to allegations from a Twitter user that they had been defamed by tweets posted on the platform, and that Twitter has not appointed the new...

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The Verge updated their profile.

Today I learned about Karateka’s 37-year-old easter egg

Image: Geek With Social Skills

Karateka, an early martial arts side-scroller published in the US by Broderbund in 1984, was a little before my time. It was created by Jordan Mechner before he went on to make Prince of Persia— a game I do remember thanks to the horror of sending that character to a bloody, pixelated death on a bed of spikes. Karateka however was an early hit, with later iterations making it to NES and Game Boy. And the original Apple II version included a delightful little easter egg from the early days of PC gaming — putting in the floppy disk upside down would boot up the game upside down.

This isn’t new exactly — people have been trying this trick for more than 35 years — but it was new to me, and I got a quick refresher today thanks to the magic...

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Hong Kong’s new anti-doxxing proposal could put tech companies at risk, says new letter

Supporters of democracy in Hong Kong protest outside the Chinese embassy in London on July 1st | Photo credit should read Wiktor Szymanowicz/Barcroft Media via Getty Images

A new letter from a tech industry group is driving home the risks of Hong Kong’s proposed anti-doxxing rules.

Sent to Hong Kong’s privacy commissioner for personal data by the Asia Internet Coalition (which counts Google, Apple and Facebook as members), the letter argues that the new measures will have an extreme impact on due process in Hong Kong, and could result in major US tech companies ceasing operations there. The letter was first obtained by The Wall Street Journal.

“The only way to avoid these sanctions for technology companies would be to refrain from... offering their services in Hong Kong.”

The letter comes in response to series of amendments to Hong Kong’s Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (PDPO), proposed by the privacy...

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Kaseya ransomware attackers demand $70 million, claim they infected over a million devices

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Three days after ransomware attackers started the holiday weekend by compromising Kaseya VSA, we have a clearer idea of how widespread the impact has been. In a new ransom demand, the attackers claim to have compromised more than 1 million computers, and demand $70 million to decrypt the affected devices.

Kaseya’s software is used by Managed Service Providers to perform IT tasks remotely, but on July 2nd, the Russia-linked REvil ransomware group deployed a malicious software update exposing providers who use the platform, and their clients.

The Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure (DIVD) revealed that it appears the exploit used for the breach was same one they discovered and were in the process of addressing when the attackers...

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The OnePlus 9 is on sale — and it’s an even better deal at $649

The OnePlus 9 misses some of the high-end features on the more expensive Pro model, but it’s a better overall buy for most people. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

The OnePlus’ latest flagship phones are marked down at several retailers, as spotted by Android Police, bringing the normally $729 OnePlus 9 down to $649 and the OnePlus 9 Pro (usually $1069) to $969. We think that the more basic 9 is already the better buy than the 9 Pro for most people, and the extra $80 off the retail price makes it an even sweeter deal.

The OnePlus 9 gives up surprisingly few features compared to its more expensive sibling — you still get a Snapdragon 888 processor, display with 120Hz refresh rate, and an excellent 50-megapixel ultrawide camera. You’ll have to make do with an unstabilized main camera, plastic rather than aluminum frame, and slower wireless charging. Considering that you save more than $300 off the...

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Rimac takes over Bugatti from VW in powerhouse electric supercar deal

Croatian electric supercar startup Rimac announced that it was taking over Bugatti from Volkswagen to form a new company called Bugatti Rimac. The news was first reported by the Financial Times.

Bugatti Rimac will be led by Mate Rimac, who founded the company in 2009 in a garage as a one-man operation. Over that period, Rimac has become a highly desirable brand, with many legacy automakers calling upon the startup to help build their own electric supercars.

It’s not much of a question why that is. Earlier this year, Rimac released the Nevera, a quad-motor, 1,914 horsepower demonstration of electric absurdity, with a top speed of 258mph and an ability to leap to zero to 60mph in less than 2 seconds. The Nevera is expected to be the...

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Airbnb has blocked tens of thousands of bookings in party crackdown

Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Airbnb has blocked over 50,000 suspicious bookings across 15 US cities as part of a crackdown on parties in its properties during the pandemic. These include 7,000 in Dallas, 6,000 in San Diego, 5,100 in Charlotte, 3,500 in St. Louis, 3,000 in Columbus, and 2,700 in New Orleans, The company’s head of trust and safety communication Ben Breit tells The Verge.

The Denver Post reports that it’s blocked 5,000 bookings in Phoenix, 4,500 in Las Vegas, 4,500 in Seattle, 2,600 in Denver, 2,600 in Portland, 1,800 in Salt Lake City, and 1,500 in Albuquerque. WLWT5 reports that 2,000 bookings were blocked in Cincinnati, while 3,800 were blocked in Austin, according to KXAN.

The numbers show the scale of Airbnb’s enforcement action, and follows a...

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Elon Musk just now realizing that self-driving cars are a ‘hard problem’

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is finally admitting that he underestimated how difficult it is to develop a safe and reliable self-driving car. To which the entire engineering community rose up as one to say, “No duh.”

Or at least that’s it should have happened in a just world. Instead, all the Tesla sycophants and ass-kissers on Twitter told Musk to keep up the good work, that they believed in him, and encouraged him to hurry up and roll out the latest version of his “Full Self-Driving” software that, it’s worth pointing out, does not enable a Tesla vehicle to drive itself without input from the driver.

Musk has a long history of over promising and under delivering

Musk has a long history of over promising and under delivering when it comes to...

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Why roads in the Pacific Northwest buckled under extreme heat

A road that buckled in the recent heat. | Washington State Department of Transportation North via Twitter

During last weekend’s deadly heat wave, some roads in the Pacific Northwest buckled. Workers ventured out in blistering conditions to put cracked concrete and asphalt byways back together. Steel drawbridges were doused with water to make sure they wouldn’t swell shut under the oppressive heat.

The heat dome that sat over the region provided a brutal stress test of its roadways, some of which couldn’t withstand multiple days of record-breaking temperatures. It’s something that’s happened before, in Washington, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and anywhere else experiencing extreme heatwaves.

Here's an example of how heat is causing some road pavement to buckle. Our crews are hard at work this morning fixing SR 544 in Whatcom County, trying to...

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Andy Jassy officially takes over as Amazon CEO from Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos, who has served as the CEO of Amazon since founding the company exactly 27 years ago on July 5th, 1994, has officially stepped down from the role. Andy Jassy is now listed as the company’s CEO on its investor relations website, after previously having run Amazon Web Services since 2003, while Bezos is listed as Executive Chair. The July 5th handover date was previously announced in a shareholder meeting in May.

It’s an important moment for Amazon, which has had the same CEO for the entirety of its existence. Under Bezos’ leadership, the company survived the dot-com bubble bursting in the late 90s to become one of the world’s most prominent technology companies. Amazon currently dominates online commerce in the US and parts of...

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The Windows 11 app store is already more useful after just a week

The new Microsoft Store on Windows 11.

Microsoft’s dysfunctional app store for Windows, the Microsoft Store, is finally improving under Windows 11. While there’s a UI overhaul and some speed improvements, the key change is allowing more apps into the store. In just the past week alone, some popular apps have started to appear in the Microsoft Store on Windows 11, making it more useful than before.

OBS Studio, Zoom, Canva, WinZip, and Adobe Acrobat Reader have all made their way to the Microsoft Store in the past week, alongside Microsoft Edge browser extensions. These early additions, during a beta period for Windows 11, are a promising start.

The Microsoft Store is changing on Windows 11, and eventually Windows 10, to include any traditional desktop apps. Microsoft...

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Lynk & Co will make you rethink outdated ideas of car ownership

A new day is coming. | Photo by Nguyen Tran

A car that gets cheaper every time you share it

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Xiaomi’s Mi 11 Ultra is getting an ultra-limited release in India

Xiaomi’s Mi 11 Ultra is finally going on sale in India in limited quantities. The company had announced its latest flagship smartphone all the way back in March, but it’s been near-impossible to buy one outside of China ever since. The phone sold out instantly in the UK in May, suggesting very limited stock, and last month Xiaomi said the Indian launch would be delayed “due to circumstances beyond our control.”

Now, Xiaomi has announced details of how people in India will actually be able to buy one, as long as they’re willing to jump through a few hoops. Customers will need to buy an “ultra gift card” for Rs. 1,999 (~$27) on the Mi.com website, which can later be redeemed against the price of the Mi 11 Ultra and includes some bonuses...

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New Trailers: The Many Saints of Newark, Foundation, Beckett, and more

Michael Gandolfini stars as Tony Soprano in The Many Saints of Newark | HBO Max

The Good Fight returned to its very weird and funny roots this week and introduced Mandy Patinkin as a — let’s say “unconventional” judge, and it’s as if my favorite character from Homeland got a new job. I know everyone is probably maxed out on how many streaming channels they can/want to subscribe to, but The Good Fight is reason enough to at least check out Paramount Plus. And I have no idea what’s going to happen on the next episode of Loki but (mild spoiler ahead!) I can’t imagine the two characters who got pruned will stay pruned.

This week we finally get a first look at the prequel to The Sopranos_and a new look at the new_Masters of the Universe show.

The Many Saints of Newark

In this prequel to The Sopranos, Michael...

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‘Apex Legends’ hackers interrupt games with messages about ‘Titanfall’ hacking

‘Apex Legends’ | Respawn

Respawn Entertainment’s battle royale shooter Apex Legends has proven to be a hit, with over 100 million unique players, and counted over 300,000 people playing on Steam at one time in May. But an issue bubbling over from its earlier Titanfall games is now having an impact on Apex, as reports across social media show players running into messages from people hacking the game with a “Save Titanfall” message. Respawn acknowledged the issues on Twitter, saying “We are aware of and actively investigating issues impacting @PlayApex playlists that are preventing players from getting into matches.”

The issue has been going on for hours, and when players are affected, they can’t queue for new games at the same time that _Apex_is hosting a special...

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Researcher finds certain network names can disable Wi-Fi on iPhones

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

A security researcher has found that certain Wi-Fi networks with the percent symbol (%) in their names can disable Wi-Fi on iPhones and other iOS devices. Carl Schou tweeted that if an iPhone comes within range of a network named %secretclub%power, the device won’t be able to use Wi-Fi or any related features, and even after resetting network settings, the bug may continue to render Wi-Fi on the device unusable.

You can permanently disable any iOS device's WiFI by hosting a public WiFi named %secretclub%power
Resetting network settings is not guaranteed to restore functionality.#infosec#0day

— Carl Schou (@vm_call) July 4, 2021

A few weeks ago, Schou and his not-for-profit group, Secret Club, which reverse-engineers software for...

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