How to ‘dislike’ TikTok videos

Based on wallpaper by Michael Gillett (Wallpaper Hub)

TikTok’s algorithms can be very perceptive when it comes to the types of videos you want to see in your For You feed. But when it doesn’t work, you may find yourself facing a steady stream of the type of video you really don’t want to deal with.

I’m not just talking about something egregious — like, for example, political or religious or social statements that you might feel are completely counter to your beliefs. I’m also referring to videos that you might simply find annoying, such as a type of music that you don’t like, or a type of humor that doesn’t suit. For example, for some reason I suddenly found myself swiping though a bunch of videos from so-called fortune tellers offering advice to their commenters. I really didn’t need to...

Continue reading…

The Verge Guide to TikTok

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Despite having to weather a variety of controversies having to do with its content and its ownership, TikTok persists as a popular video app — and no wonder. It allows you to quickly create videos, add a variety of effects, text captions, and audio backgrounds, and show to the world what you think is cute, funny, politically problematic, deadly serious, or in need of fixing. TikTok is full of cute animals, weird dances, snarky remarks, and imaginative dialogues between the same individual dressed up in two different ways.

In fact, it is hard to say who is having the most fun: those who are swiping through the wide variety of videos out there, discovering what other people are doing, dancing, and discussing, or those who are creating...

Continue reading…

HTC’s Vive Focus 3 is a great prototype for a true Oculus Quest rival

But it’s not for home VR

Continue reading…

Amazon to investigate allegations of harassment and discrimination in its AWS unit

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon will investigate allegations of discrimination and harassment within its Amazon Web Services (AWS) unit, following an employee petition that criticized AWS’s culture, The Washington Post reported. More than 550 Amazon workers signed the petition, which calls out AWS for its “underlying culture of systemic discrimination, harassment, bullying and bias against women and under-represented groups,” the Post reported. The petition further alleges that Amazon’s system to investigate claims of discrimination are “not fair, objective or transparent.”

The petition pointed to allegations from former AWS employees:

• In May, five women sued Amazon, alleging race and gender discrimination. One of the women, Cindy Warner, worked in the AWS...

Continue reading…

Apple Music’s spatial audio and lossless streaming are now available on Android

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple Music listeners on Android can now take advantage of the Dolby Atmos spatial audio and lossless-quality streaming features that debuted on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS over a month ago. The latest update of the app for Android adds support for both features.

Lossless should be available pretty universally on Android devices. Apple includes all the same warnings as on iOS about it consuming “significantly more data.” Like on Apple’s own platforms, Apple Music advises that external hardware like a DAC is required if you want to step up to hi-res lossless. (I’m curious whether this still applies on LG’s audiophile-friendly phones, which have an excellent built-in DAC, but haven’t had the chance to test yet.)

Spatial audio support on the...

Continue reading…

Sony’s last-gen WH-1000XM3 cost less than ever at Best Buy

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

It’s sometimes easy to dismiss the previous generation of a product in favor of the latest version. In most cases, that’s smart to do, unless a deal is just too good to pass up. Case in point, Sony’s WH-1000XM3 noise-canceling headphones that released in 2018 are down to their lowest price yet at Best Buy today and through Sunday. Originally $350 (but usually selling between $220-$270 most days), you can get them new in the black colorway for $170. Amazon was offering this price earlier today, but it appears to have sold out for the moment.

Compared to the 1000XM4 that released in 2020, the XM3s aren’t far behind. They are comparable in terms of sound quality, battery life, comfort, and with their noise cancellation effect. Though, the...

Continue reading…

Ted Lasso doesn’t need surprise to be good in season 2

Photo: Apple

TV’s nicest guy is back, as Ted Lasso and its eponymous, eternally optimistic American football coach-turned-English Premier League gaffer (played by a golden-hearted Jason Sudeikis) returns for a second season on Apple TV Plus.

Some spoilers forTed Lassoseason 1 and the first episode of season 2 ahead.

Photo: Apple

The good news: the second season is off to an excellent start, picking up a few months after the crushing loss and relegation of the fictional Richmond team down to the second-tier Championship. But unlike season 1, the new episodes don’t have the benefit of being a pleasant surprise — season 2 has been hyped up for months, including a spotlight slot at one of Apple’s tech events alongside a new iPhone...

Continue reading…

Google launches Intrinsic: a new company to build software for industrial robots

Google’s parent-company Alphabet has a birth to announce: a new company called Intrinsic which will focus on building software for industrial robots. The subsidiary will be one of Alphabet’s “other bets” — relatively speculative firms focusing on new technology like Waymo (self-driving cars), Wing (delivery drones), and Verily (healthcare and biotech).

Details on what exactly Intrinsic is building or who its customers will be are unclear. A blog post from the company’s new CEO, Wendy Tan White, discusses Intrinsic’s ambitions in broad terms, saying it will “unlock the creative and economic potential of industrial robotics for millions more businesses, entrepreneurs, and developers” by creating software that will make industrial robots...

Continue reading…

Evernote works to keep current users and tries for new ones

Evernote

It can take a lot of work for an app like Evernote, one of the first major note-taking apps to hit the market, to survive in an ever-changing and fickle marketplace. In an effort to keep its place at (or at least near) the top of its niche, Evernote has recently announced new price plans and features. Will these new features — and new fees — help it keep loyal users and encourage new ones? It’s hard to say.

First, some personal history: I’ve been an Evernote user — well, seemingly forever. Forever when it comes to the life span of apps, anyway; I’ve had an Evernote account since May 2008, when it was about to go into open beta; I used it to make notes for the review I was writing. I’ve had Evernote on my devices ever since — and...

Continue reading…

Google Drive will let you block other users to stop potential harassment

Users can be blocked by right clicking on a file they’ve sent you. | Image: Google

Google Drive is adding the ability for users to block other accounts from sharing files with them, in a move that’s designed to prevent potential harassment and spam on the platform. The feature, which is rolling out over the next two weeks, also stops accounts from accessing any files you’ve shared with them in the past, and removes any of their past files from your drive.

“Drive’s sharing capabilities fuel productivity and collaboration, but bad actors can abuse tools that are meant to facilitate helpful sharing,” Google’s announcement post says. “That’s why we are creating a way to block other users.” Blocking an account in Drive will also prevent them from interacting with you across other Google services like Hangouts and Chat.

...

Continue reading…

Communication around masks is still terrible

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced long-awaited guidelines in May for when vaccinated people could stop wearing masks, some experts cautioned that the changes were coming too soon. We were still learning more about the vaccine’s protection, and epidemiologists were worried about coronavirus variants. If mask rules were lifted and cases spiked again, reinstating them would be difficult.

Well, cases are now rising again across the country in a Delta variant-fueled surge, and that’s making mask recommendations just as difficult to handle as people feared. The surge is most devastating in places with low vaccination rates, but it’s also hitting states and counties where most adults are vaccinated. So not long...

Continue reading…

How to use the Green Screen effect on TikTok

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Green screens used to be reserved for those with access to, well, a green screen. This method has been around for a long time: allowing creators to superimpose a photo or video onto a background in a film or video. Traditionally, that means using a setup that has a large sheet of (usually) green material behind the subject. The solid color makes it easy to digitally remove that color in post-production and add whatever image or video should be there.

Now the idea of green screens has gone digital as a way to hide backgrounds in meetings or to create fun videos on social media. TikTok has taken this idea and run with it by creating an effect within the app that does basically the same thing. While not as polished as a traditional green...

Continue reading…

Fly a drone? The FAA’s new TRUST test is easy — and mandatory

Photo by Ryan Loughlin

Every single recreational pilot in the US needs to take it ASAP

Continue reading…

Apple MagSafe Battery Pack review: convenience over capacity

Perfectly designed for the iPhone, but not a lot of charge

Continue reading…

MagSafe Battery Pack teardown confirms dual-cell design

Screenshot: Charger Lab

A teardown of Apple’s new $99 MagSafe Battery Pack from Charger Lab has given us our best look yet inside the new accessory, and revealed more details about how it works. For starters, it confirms recent speculation that it uses a pair of battery cells wired in series like Apple’s previous Smart Battery cases, but it also gives us a look at the NFC circuitry and heat shielding within.

A dual-cell design is important, because it allows the voltage of the battery pack to be higher than a comparable single-cell design. While each individual cell is labelled as being 3.82 volts, the overall voltage of the battery pack is 7.62 with them wired in series. It means the pack should be capable of supplying more power than its 1,460mAh capacity...

Continue reading…

Arm’s cheap and flexible plastic microchip could create an ‘internet of everything’

Plastic chips would be flexible and cheap; meaning they could be printed pretty much anywhere. | Image: PragmatIC

If you think microchips are ubiquitous now, appearing in everything from washing machines to lampposts, just wait until circuits can be printed onto plastic, paper, and fabric for the price of pennies. That’s what chip designer Arm is promising, with the company this week unveiling a new prototype plastic-based microchip named PlasticARM.

This isn’t the first flexible chip we’ve seen, but it is the most complex. PlasticARM contains a 32-bit Cortex-M0 CPU (the cheapest and simplest processor core in Arm’s Cortex-M family), as well as 456 bytes of ROM and 128 bytes of RAM. It’s comprised of over 18,000 logic gates, which Arm says is at least 12 times more than the previous plastic-based chip.

The chip was designed in coordination with...

Continue reading…

MacBook Air with 13-inch Mini LED display reportedly on the way for 2022

The 2020 MacBook Air. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Apple plans to announce a redesigned MacBook Air with a 13.3-inch Mini LED display in the middle of 2022, according to a new investor note from reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo seen by 9to5Macand MacRumors. The prediction is in line with Kuo’s previous reports, but offers a more specific timeframe. It also suggests the new Air will have a slightly smaller display than the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros that are said to be on the way this year.

Mini LED is a relatively new display technology that’s designed to offer some of the benefits of OLED — such as better contrast levels and improved dynamic range — without the risks of burn-in. It made its Apple debut on this year’s 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Kuo has previously listed around half a...

Continue reading…

GM’s Super Cruise getting fully automatic, hands-free lane changes and more for 2022

General Motors’ Super Cruise, one of the best advanced driver assist systems on the market, is getting a big upgrade for 2022 and will be available on way more vehicles — including, for the first time, the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra half-ton pickup trucks.

To test out the new stuff, GMC had me out to GM’s Milford Proving Grounds to play with the new Super Cruise on the facility’s 4.5-mile banked circle track. Security at the facility is tight and our cameras were either confiscated or, in the case of my iPhone, covered in obnoxious red security tape.

I soon understood the need for security when I spotted what appeared to be the upcoming 2023 Z06 mid-engined Corvette being tested, a whole bunch of GMC Hummer EV pickups and,...

Continue reading…

19 days after REvil’s ransomware attack on Kaseya VSA systems, there’s a fix

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Just ahead of the July 4th holiday weekend, a ransomware attack targeted organizations using Kaseya VSA remote management software. The outfit behind the attack, REvil, initially requested a $70 million ransom and claimed to have locked down millions of devices. That was before REvil suddenly went offline on July 13th, disconnecting its servers, abandoning forums, and shutting down a page on the dark web used to communicate with victims.

Now, Kaseya says it has obtained a universal decryptor from a “third party” that can restore data encrypted during the attack. The company has not said how it came by this technology, telling Bleeping Computer that it could not confirm or deny any ransom payment had occurred.

On 7/21/2021, Kaseya...

Continue reading…

Nomad could not resist draping the Apple MagSafe Battery Pack in leather

Frankly, now that we’ve seen a leather case for your MagSafe charging puck, it’s all uphill from here. At least Apple’s new $99 MagSafe Battery Pack is something you’ll actually be carrying around and touching on a regular basis, where leather might make it nicer to hold. Perhaps you already have a matching leather case for your iPhone, too? It looks like a nice combo in photos. If you agree, Nomad is currently taking preorders for $30 each, shipping this November.

(I blame Apple for only releasing the battery in white.)

Just know it’s not clear from the company’s images and description whether this leather flap will actually have a hole for the battery’s charging port. And while microsuction tape is much better...

Continue reading…

Old Vidme embeds turn into a hub of porn after domain purchase

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Here’s (yet another) argument against using third-party embeds on your respectable website: Porn company 5 Star HD Porn bought the expired domain for video hosting site Vidme, which went out of business in 2017. This means that any websites with Vidme embeds now have porn on them. According to Motherboard, which reported the story first, the list of websites with unexpected porn embeds includes _New York Magazine,the_Washington Post, HuffPost, and others. And yes, we discovered one such embed on The Verge and have since disabled it.

Old Vidme embeds now redirect to a porn site

It’s a very extreme example of link rot, which is what happens when online content or images are deleted or otherwise broken, so the links...

Continue reading…

Intel teases plan to speed up chip advancements

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Intel has struggled recently with getting its more advanced chip architectures out the door, but that might be changing soon. CEO Pat Gelsinger announced today on Intel’s Q2 earnings call that “7nm is progressing well,” and the company is gearing up to announce news on how its “accelerating its annual cadence of innovation with new advancements in semiconductor process and packaging,” at a webcast on Monday, July 26th.

The announcement comes alongside Intel’s Q2 earnings, where the semiconductor company managed to beat expectations and bring in $18.2 billion in revenue, up 2 percent year-over-year. Intel is feeling pretty optimistic about the future, too. It raised its 2021 outlook by an additional $1 billion to $73.5 billion, and now...

Continue reading…

Motorola’s G100 midrange battery champ is now available in the US

The Moto G100 offers respectable midrange specs like 5G and a Snapdragon 870 processor. | Image: Motorola

Motorola is now selling the Moto G100 in the US, after introducing it earlier this year for Latin American and European markets. It comes with midrange specs like a big 5,000mAh battery, 5G, and a 90Hz screen for a $599 MSRP. From now until August 5th, Motorola is offering a $100 discount off the full retail price.

There are two important footnotes on the G100’s US carrier compatibility: it’s a GSM-only phone, so will work on AT&T and T-Mobile but not Verizon, and its 5G connectivity is only compatible with T-Mobile’s 5G network. Outside of that, it appears to be a respectable midrange device, if priced a little on the high end. It uses a Snapdragon 870 processor with 8GB of RAM, sub-6GHz 5G, and a 6.7-inch 1080p display with 90Hz...

Continue reading…

Corning’s new Gorilla Glass protects smartphone camera lenses and lets in more light

Image: Corning

Corning has announced a new set of glass composites to protect the ever-growing number of camera lenses on the back of smartphones and capture more ambient light in the process. The new composites, called Gorilla Glass with DX and Gorilla Glass with DX+, offer “advanced optical performance, superior scratch resistance, and durability” according to Corning.

Technically, this DX variety of composite isn’t entirely new, Corning offered a version of Gorilla Glass with DX / DX+ for smartwatches as early as 2018. But Corning says making the switch to smartphone camera lens covers added additional challenges because the glass needed to be more scratch-resistant and somehow let in more light, two qualities that can be at odds. Corning breaks...

Continue reading…

Snapchat is growing faster than it has in years

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Just a couple of years ago, there were concerns that Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, wouldn’t survive as a standalone company. Its stock price bottomed out around $5 after a disastrous redesign that slowed user growth and confused advertisers.

The situation is much different now. Snapchat is growing faster than it has since 2017, the year it went public. On Thursday, the camera-based messaging app said it added 13 million daily users during the second quarter, a 23 percent increase from the year-ago period. That means 293 million people use Snapchat every day around the world, up from 173 million this time four years ago. (Twitter reported 206 million daily users in the second quarter, by comparison.) Snap’s revenue also soared 116...

Continue reading…

How to stream the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony

Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images

The 2020 Summer Olympic Games are set to begin this week in Tokyo, with the opening ceremony kicking off Friday, July 23rd. While NBC and its streaming sibling Peacock will both carry coverage of the Games in the US, the Olympics will be streamable on other services as well.

Because it begins at 8PM in Japan, live coverage of the opening ceremony will start at 6:55AM ET / 3:55AM PT in the US. It will be broadcasted live on NBC as well as streamed live on the NBC Sports app and the NBC Olympics website. NBC’s website has a full schedule of additional broadcasts of the event. A spokesperson for Peacock told The Verge that the opening ceremony will not air on the streaming service, however it will carry the closing ceremony.

Taking place...

Continue reading…

Valve’s Steam Deck technically lets you swap the SSD, targets 30fps gameplay

Some important details have emerged about Valve’s Steam Deck handheld console-meets-PC — particularly about its target performance level and whether you can actually install your own NVMe SSD to upgrade storage.

In a video interview from IGN, Valve stated that the Steam Deck’s 800p display, capable of up to a 60Hz refresh rate, will be targeting 30Hz for gameplay. In other words, the Nintendo Switch comparisons might go a little deeper than the surface, as many games on that platform run well below 60 frames per second. Though, given that most PC games offer a trove of graphical settings to fine-tune, the Steam Deck should be able to achieve smoother gameplay at the cost of graphical quality if you’re willing to knock down a few...

Continue reading…

Verizon’s Smart Display is real and it’s just as pointless as we suspected

It doesn’t appear that Verizon’s Smart Assistant can do a whole lot. | Image: Amazon

We got our first look at Verizon’s Smart Display last month thanks to an FCC filing. Yesterday, Amazon confirmed the device’s existence as part of its Alexa Live presentation. It’s being introduced as part of the Alexa Custom Assistant program that allows third-party device manufacturers to add custom assistants built on top of Alexa technology to their products, and we regret to inform you that it looks just as useless as we first suspected.

Here’s what it offers: standard smart display stuff, like an eight-inch screen, 4GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi connectivity, and of course, Alexa. It also comes with LTE, a spec included in the FCC filing and confirmed to CNET following the announcement. But the purpose of 4G appears...

Continue reading…

How to change Alexa’s voice

The Amazon Echo Dot with clock (4th gen) | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Alexa’s pleasant, feminine voice has filled the homes of millions over the past few years, but now Amazon has finally released a masculine counterpart for it. Amazon is late to this — both Apple and Google have offered different voices, both feminine and masculine, in their virtual assistants for years. But late or not, it’s nice that Amazon is finally giving some choice for Alexa.

In addition to the two main Alexa voices, Amazon also has celebrity voices (right now you can choose between Samuel L. Jackson, Shaquille O’Neal, and Melissa McCarthy). These are programmed to work with certain phrases and answer select questions — mostly alarms and timers, jokes, or weather reports. They also cost $5 each. Any query to an Echo device that’s...

Continue reading…

Facebook content moderators call for company to put an end to overly restrictive NDAs

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Facebook content moderators in Europe and the US are calling on the company to put an end to overly restrictive nondisclosure agreements that discourage people from speaking out about working conditions. In a letter addressed to Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and the CEOs of Covalen and Accenture, moderators say these NDAs aren’t limited to user data and help perpetuate a culture of “excessive secrecy.”

“Despite the company’s best efforts to keep us quiet, we write to demand the company’s culture of fear and excessive secrecy ends today,” the moderators write. “No NDA can lawfully prevent us from speaking out about our working conditions.”

The news comes amid escalating tension between the company and its contract content moderators...

Continue reading…