Louis Vuitton’s $2,890 light-up speaker looks like something Thanos would steal

Louis Vuitton has revealed its next foray into tech products: the $2,890 Horizon Light Up Speaker, which looks less like either a gadget or a piece of high fashion, and more like an artifact of untold cosmic power from the next Marvel movie.

According to Louis Vuitton, the idea is that the Horizon speaker will serve as an artistic centerpiece of your living room or outfit, a unique blend of fashion and technology that aims to challenge what a portable speaker should look like, a goal in which it undoubtably has succeeded.

But between the glass, stainless steel, and leather construction, 35 LEDs, and the brand’s traditional symbols and logos plastered on virtually every surface of the speaker, the overall effect is less...

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The Olympics are approaching a danger zone of extreme heat

A man cools off at a mist station installed at Shiokaze Park during the beach volleyball test event for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo on July 25, 2019. - Tokyo 2020 Olympics organisers tested everything from misting sprays to air-conditioned tents on July 25 as they trialed heat mitigation measures a year before the Games gets under way. | Photo by Behrouz Mehri / AFP via Getty Images

Olympic athletes are grappling with another public health threat on top of the pandemic: extreme heat. This year’s summerOlympics areforecast to be the hottest in decades. Temperatures expected to rise above 30 degrees Celsius (close to 90 degrees Fahrenheit) this week could put even the strongest athletes in danger of heat stroke or illness. They’ll also have to contend with oppressive humidity, which interferes with the body’s ability to regulate its temperature by sweating, on top of the scorching heat.

The training is brutal, and the conditions that the athletes are training for are dangerous

Athletes have tried to acclimate themselves to the weather in advance of the games. Team USA, for example, even took inspiration from how...

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Dish cuts a 10-year, $5 billion deal to make AT&T the primary service provider for its MVNO

Dish is on a mission to become the US’ fourth wireless carrier. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Dish Network has a new network operator partner for its MVNO brands: AT&T. The companies have signed a network services agreement (NSA) that will see Dish pay AT&T at least $5 billion over the course of the next ten years to use its 4G and 5G networks as Dish brings its own 5G network online.

The deal takes effect immediately and comes at a time when relations between Dish and T-Mobile — currently a major network partner — are particularly strained. It’s a nonexclusive agreement, and Dish says that some of its customers will likely continue to connect to T-Mobile’s network. The arrangement also gives AT&T the right to request access to use some of Dish’s wireless spectrum.

Dish owns Boost Mobile, Ting, and Republic Wireless MVNOs,...

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Snap buys another company to make AR shopping a reality

Snap and Gucci recently partnered to let users virtually try on a limited edition pair of shoes. | Snap

Snap is making a big bet on AR shopping.

The parent company of Snapchat has bought Vertebrae, a company that lets brands create and manage 3D versions of their goods. Vertebrae’s 50-person team will keep developing the platform for existing and new clients, according to a Snap spokesperson. The idea is that a company can easily upload visuals and other information about an item into Vertebrae and have a 3D version made for shoppers to access, and potentially buy directly, within Snapchat.

While Snap first used its augmented reality tech for silly effects like puking rainbows and dancing hotdogs, the company increasingly sees AR as a way to shop. Early tests of AR shopping experiences, such as a recent collaboration with Gucci to let...

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Watch Jeff Bezos get launched into space

Image: Blue Origin

Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, is flying to space Tuesday morning on his company’s suborbital rocket. He’s riding with a motley crew of three other passengers: his brother Mark, 82-year-old aviation icon Wally Funk, and 18-year-old Dutch high school grad Oliver Daemen.

The mission, called NS-16, will mark the first time Blue Origin sends humans to space. Bezos will become the second billionaire to fly a rocket he helped fund, after Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson launched on his company’s rocket-plane to space on July 11th. Daemen will be the youngest person to fly to space and Funk, a lively firebrand aviator who trained as an astronaut in the ‘60s but never made it to space, will be the oldest.

“The launch crew is...

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The best free apps for video calling

Photo by Stefano Guidi/Getty Images

Things are starting to open up, but for now, the COVID-19 pandemic is still with us and many are still relying on video calls to keep in touch with work colleagues, family, and friends. And for most of us — especially those who are facing financial difficulties — free is best. Zoom continues to top the list of videoconferencing apps, but there are a bunch of applications out there that will allow you to meet others online for free.

We’ve listed a few of the best known videoconferencing apps, along with a couple of popular text chat apps that include video calling features. While most of these already have free versions, some are offering access to additional features for those who are currently working from home or who want to check up...

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Snapchat will let you pose your Bitmoji on your profile in 3D

Some Bitmoji in 3D. | Image: Snap

Snap is introducing the ability to pose your Bitmoji avatar on your Snapchat profile in 3D, the company announced on Monday. For your 3D Bitmoji, you’ll be able to pick from more than 1,200 combinations of body poses, facial expressions, gestures, and backgrounds, according to Snap.

You can get a look at some of the options available in the image at the top of this post and in the one below. It looks like there will be a lot of fun ways to pose your Bitmoji to represent you.

Snap says the feature is rolling out on Monday, but I haven’t been able to access it on Snapchat myself just yet.

Bitmoji avatars are very popular — Snap says that more than 200 million people use them daily — and this isn’t actually the first time...

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Apple releases iOS 14.7 just as MagSafe Battery Pack appears on shelves

Image: Apple

Apple has released iOS 14.7, an update which lets iPhone 12 owners fully utilize the MagSafe Battery Pack, HomePod users manage timers from their phone, and more (via 9to5Mac).

Arguably the update’s most exciting feature is one that adds support for new hardware: Apple’s recently announced MagSafe battery pack, which should soon be arriving at stores and doorsteps. At least one of the charging devices has already made its way to a customer’s hands, so Apple seems to be releasing the update in the nick of time.

The update also brings improvements to the HomePod timer experience, letting you manage timers from the Home app, rather than having to solely rely on your voice. Apple has also added a new Apple Card feature, which it announced in...

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Google is making it easier to find Wear OS apps on the Play Store

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

As we approach the release of Google and Samsung’s joint smartwatch operating system later this year, Google today outlined some new Play Store improvements that will make it easier for customers to find and download apps to their Wear OS devices.

The company is making it faster to search for smartwatch apps on your Android phone and instantly install them. There are new filters that are activated when you include “watch” or “watch face” in your Play Store search query. Based on this post, it sounds like Google will also be making an effort to better highlight the best and most useful wrist apps with more curated collections in the designated Wear OS and watchfaces sections of the Play Store.

Image: Google

Google...

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The first real photos of Apple’s MagSafe Battery Pack are here

Photo by Steven Russell

Apple’s first official MagSafe Battery Pack is beginning to arrive on shelves, and one iPhone owner has now snapped what appear to be the first actual photos of the gadget. And yes, it’s a chonk.

Photo by Steven Russell

Photo by Steven Russell

Photo by Steven Russell

Apple’s been going the big-bulge route for years, possibly for legal reasons, so it’s not _too_much of a surprise — but boy was Apple strategic about which angles it revealed when it first announced this new accessory! Compare to Apple’s original render:

Image: Apple

Now, here’s Steven Russell, the owner of the new pack, with a slightly different angle.

Photo by Steven...

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Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XD review: powerful, pricey, and flawed

Plenty of power, with plenty of tradeoffs

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Nvidia RTX 30-series graphics cards will be available in-store at Best Buy on July 20th

Nvidia’s elusive RTX 30-series graphics cards are almost never in stock (for their MSRP cost, at least), but they’ll be available to purchase fair-and-square tomorrow, Tuesday, July 20th, at some Best Buy locations around the US (per Polygon). Employees at these locations will begin giving out tickets to a select amount of people waiting in line at 7:30AM local time Tuesday morning, and getting one of these tickets will guarantee you the opportunity to purchase a GPU when each store opens up at 8:00AM local time.

Best Buy hasn’t shared which Nvidia RTX models will be available during this drop. Given that it shows the RTX 3080 Ti in its blog post, that could be an indication that you may have the opportunity to drop $1,199 on one of...

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Joe Biden says Facebook isn’t ‘killing people,’ but misinformation causes harm

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

On Monday, President Joe Biden said that vaccine misinformation on Facebook harms people, while partially walking back a statement he made last week in which he told reporters that platforms like Facebook were “killing people” by allowing misinformation to spread.

“Facebook isn’t killing people, these 12 people are out there giving misinformation,” the president said, citing an administration report last week on online coronavirus vaccine misinformation. “That’s what I meant.”

“Facebook isn’t killing people, these 12 people are out there giving misinformation”

“My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally … that they would do something about the misinformation, the outrageous misinformation about the vaccine,” Biden...

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Fortnite champ Bugha is getting his own in-game skin

Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images

Two years ago, Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf became the first — and so far, only — Fortnite World Cup champion. Now he’s being immortalized in the game itself.

As part of its “icon series,” which most recently included LeBron James, Epic is adding a Bugha skin to Fortnite on July 20th. The skin comes with a handful of different outfits, including what Bugha was wearing when he lifted the World Cup trophy. Most importantly, that trophy — modeled after the iconic Fortnite battle bus — is available as back bling, complete with Bugha’s adorable pug poking its head out.

Bugha joins a growing list of real-world humans to be featured in the virtual battle royale, including Neymar, Travis Scott, and Tyler “Ninja” Blevins.

Due to the pandemic, that...

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Amazon Web Services bans accounts linked with Pegasus spyware

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has banned NSO Group, the company behind the Pegasus spyware program. Vice reported the ban this morning, the day after a sweeping report alleged Pegasus was used to target the phones of human rights activists and journalists.

An Amnesty International investigation into Pegasus says the tool compromised targets’ phones and routed data through commercial services like AWS and Amazon CloudFront, a move that it said “protects NSO Group from some internet scanning techniques.” (Vice notes that a 2020 report previously described NSO using Amazon services.) Amnesty International wrote that it had contacted Amazon about NSO and Amazon had responded by banning NSO-related accounts. “When we learned of this activity, we...

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WhatsApp will let you join group calls after they start

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

WhatsApp is rolling out a new joinable calls feature which will let you hop onto group calls after they’ve started, the Facebook-owned company announced Monday. The new feature means you’ll be able to join a call with your friends and family when you’re ready, kind of like what you can do with a group Zoom or Google Meet call right now. Given the massive popularity of WhatsApp, this could be a useful feature for many people who communicate over the messaging service.

You can get an idea of how the interface for hopping onto calls works in the image below — it looks like you’ll just need to tap a join button.

Image: WhatsApp

WhatsApp’s interface for joinable calls.

There’s also a new call info screen so that you...

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Android TV is swiping some of Google TV’s best features

Android TV is finally getting a watchlist. | Image: Google

Android TV is swiping some of the best content discovery tools from the Google TV platform, including a watchlist and more finely tuned recommendations.

Beginning this week, Android TV users will be able to add titles to a watchlist that will populate as a row in the Discover tab. To add movies and series to this section, users can either select “watchlist” from a title’s details page or long-press on a title from the Discover tab and select “add to watchlist.” Additionally, users will be able to add shows to this section from their other gadgets with Google search or by using the Google TV mobile app.

Google TV also features the ability to refine the kinds of titles that a user is recommended with a card-swiping tool. This feature is...

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Lidar maker Velodyne loses its CEO amid internal chaos

Velodyne, a leading manufacturer of lidar laser sensors, announced that CEO Anand Gopalan would be stepping down. The news comes as the sensor company has been embroiled in a bitter war between its founder, David Hall, and the company’s board of directors.

Gopalan, who previously served as Velodyne’s chief technology officer before taking the reins from Hall in January 2020, is stepping down as both CEO and a member of the board effective July 30th, the company said.

But rather than name a replacement, Velodyne is setting up something called “Office of the Chief Executive” comprised of several members of the company’s leadership team, including chief operating officer Jim Barnhart, chief financial officer Drew Hamer, head of human...

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Warby Parker can renew glasses and contact lens prescriptions with its updated app

Image: Warby Parker

Warby Parker is updating its Prescription Check iOS app on Monday with a new name and the ability to renew glasses and contact lens prescriptions on the iPhone 6S and up (the company currently doesn’t offer an Android app). Like its predecessor, the new Warby Parker Virtual Vision Test isn’t a substitute for an actual optometrist visit, but being able to snag a new prescription for $15 without having to schedule an appointment should be very handy.

With Virtual Vision Test downloaded, you’ll be taken through some intake questions, not unlike what you might fill out in a normal optometrist visit (“Do you regularly get headaches?” etc.). Warby Parker requires you to meet some basic criteria as well, like being 18 years of age or older, not...

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GDC will return to an in-person event in 2022

Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images

An all-virtual version of the annual Game Developers Conference kicks off on July 19th, but the organizers say that next year the event will be in person once again. GDC 2022 “will return as a physical conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco,” the organizers say, with the conference taking place from March 21st to the 25th.

While not a major public-facing event, GDC has long been an important week for the games industry, with professionals from all over the world gathering together in one spot. (Sometimes platforms like Stadia are even announced there.) The 2020 edition was one of the first large-scale gaming events to be put on hiatus due to the pandemic, and while this year’s GDC was expected to have an in-person element, it...

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Zoom buys Five9 for $14.7 billion to ‘deliver even more happiness’

Zoom buys Five9 for $14.7 billion to ‘deliver even more happiness’

Videoconferencing platform Zoom is acquiring cloud contact center software company Five9 for $14.7 billion, the company announced.

“We are continuously looking for ways to enhance our platform, and the addition of Five9 is a natural fit that will deliver even more happiness and value to our customers,” Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in the announcement. He added that the deal will add more business clients to Zoom’s customer base, and that Five9 is “complementary” to its Zoom Phone cloud system.

Under the terms of the deal, Five9 will become an operating unit of Zoom, and CEO Rowan Trollope will become a president at the company reporting to Yuan. In 2020, Five9’s full-year revenue was up 33 percent year over year to $435 million.

Five9 is...

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Uber expands grocery delivery to 400 cities, including NYC and San Francisco

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

Uber has more than doubled the number of cities where it delivers groceries, marking the first major expansion of the new service since its launch last year. The company’s on-demand and scheduled grocery delivery is now available in 400 cities, including key markets like New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.

Uber’s grocery delivery service got turbo-charged by a partnership with Albertsons Companies, the publicly traded owner of major grocery brands like Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s, Acme, Tom Thumb, Randalls, United Supermarkets, Pavilions, Star Market, Haggen, Carrs, Kings Food Markets, and Balducci’s Food Lover’s Market.

The ride-hailing company (which is quickly becoming more of a delivery company) expects to be...

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Anker batteries, cables, and chargers are discounted on Amazon

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Whether you’re gearing up for the back-to-school season or just looking for some extra charging kits to make your vacation go a little smoother, Anker’s latest discounts at Amazon might have what you’re looking for. There are a handful of products on sale, including a three-pack of iPhone cables (USB-A-to-Lightning) for $19.49 instead of $30, and a clever power strip with two outlets and three USB ports (two USB-A ports and one USB-C 18W PD port) for $26 instead of $36. There’s also a 15W Qi wireless charging pad available for $20 instead of $30, but it doesn’t include a power adapter.

The niftiest device that’s discounted today is Anker’s Powercore Fusion wall charger-meets-battery pack. The black-colored GaN charger with a 10,000mAh...

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CNN plans to launch CNN Plus streaming service, but won’t say how much it will cost

Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images

Cable news behemoth CNN said Monday it is joining the ever-crowded streaming marketplace, adding its CNN Plus service sometime in the first quarter, according to a press release. The new service “complements the core CNN linear networks and digital platforms to serve CNN superfans, news junkies and fans of quality non-fiction programming.”

Conspicuously missing from the press release was any mention of how much the service will cost, and a spokeswoman declined to provide further details. According to Variety, the company is still determining the price for CNN Plus, but there will be no ad-supported version of the service at launch. It will launch in the US only, and CNN expects to hire 450 people over the next six to nine months, Variety...

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Nvidia paves the way for RTX GPU Chromebooks with new Arm demo

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Nvidia is working on expanding its RTX GPU support in a big way, with a new demo at GDC 2021 showcasing high-end gaming technologies like DLSS and ray-traced lighting running on Arm hardware for the first time.

Specifically, the demo shows off Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Nvidia’s “The Bistro”demo running on an RTX 3060 GPU paired with a MediaTek Kompanio 1200 Arm processor (MediaTek’s flagship-level processor planned for a new wave of more powerful Chromebooks). Obviously, an RTX 3060 can run those demos on its own — but it’s the groundwork here that Nvidia is building that’s important because it’s offering the drivers and support necessary for them to run on Arm hardware specifically.

In total, Nvidia says that its ported five RTX...

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Peloton plans to launch an in-app video game where you pedal to control a rolling wheel

Peloton

Peloton is entering the video game business. Today the company announced its latest idea to get people to exercise: an in-app video game tentatively called Lanebreak. The game, which will only be available for Peloton bike owners and subscribers, involves riders changing their cadence and resistance to meet various goals and control an on-screen rolling wheel. Players can choose a difficulty level, the type of music they want to hear, and the duration of the track before starting. The game isn’t available yet, but a members-only beta will open later this year. Peloton hasn’t share details around how people will be able to sign up.

The game’s vibe and interface reminds me of the Rainbow Road in Mario Kart, with a track trailing off into...

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How Boosted went bust

An inside look at how the beloved electric skateboard startup fell apart

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US and allies accuse Chinese government of masterminding Microsoft Exchange cyberattack

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The United States and key allies have accused the Chinese government for the first time of hiring gangs of hackers to carry out cyberattacks in the West. Attacks attributed to China include the recent Microsoft Exchange hack, a significant and widespread breach that gave attackers access to the email servers of an estimated 30,000 organizations in the US alone.

The Microsoft Exchange attack was initially blamed on Hafnium, a hacking group sponsored by the Chinese state. A senior official in the White House told reporters in a briefing at the weekend that the US government had “high confidence” that the Exchange hackers were being paid by the Chinese government.

China is accused of hiring gangs of hackers to carry out cyberattacks

“...

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Successor to Bose’s wildly popular QC35 headphones leaks early

Images show a very similar pair of headphones to Bose’s existing QC35s. | Image: FCC

Bose appears to be on the cusp of releasing a successor to its much loved QuietComfort 35 noise-cancelling wireless headphones, judging by the appearance of an FCC filing for a QuietComfort 45 model, WinFuture reports.

It’ll be a significant release for Bose, which launched the QC35s five years ago in 2016, and since then have only released a minor update with the addition of a Google Assistant button the following year. It’s been so long that the QC35s still ship with a micro USB port rather than USB-C, which _WinFuture_notes looks set to change with the new headphones. In the intervening years, Bose has released the more expensive Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, but it’s kept the QC35s around as a more affordable alternative.

O...

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Huawei’s P50 flagship will launch on July 29th

Huawei has previously teased the design of the flagship’s rear cameras. | Image: Huawei

Huawei’s next flagship phone, the P50, is set for launch on July 29th, the company has announced. Writing on his own Weibo page, Huawei consumer group CEO Richard Yu said (via Google translate) that the phone would mark the beginning of “a new era of mobile imaging,” suggesting that Huawei may once again make cameras the focus of its upcoming flagship.

The launch comes a little over a year since Huawei announced its P40 series, but the launch of the P50 has been far from certain. US sanctions placed on the company over national security concerns have seriously impacted Huawei’s ability to produce its own Kirin chipsets, creating doubts about its ability to release new flagship devices. “For reasons you are all aware of, a launch date...

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