VidCon cancels its 2021 event, says next one will be in June 2022

Image: VidCon

VidCon announced that its US convention, scheduled in late October, has been canceled due to concerns over the increasing number of COVID cases. The organizers, however, say that VidCon 2022 is scheduled for June 22nd-25th and that non single-day tickets for the 2021 event will automatically transfer to the new event. VidCon has noted, though, that the event next year won’t necessarily have the same guests and activities planned for this year.

Last year, VidCon 2020 was canceled with hopes of holding the event in the fall, which then turned into hopes of holding the event in summer 2021. Those hopes finally became the scheduled event that’s now canceled. However, the company does have digital events that it’s been holding as part of what...

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How to stop a hate raid

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

Hate raids happen with little warning. A streamer will get a follow notification and instead of feeling joy that a new person has joined their community, dread sets in as their chat suddenly erupts into an uncontrollable geyser of hateful messages. Hate raids have infested Twitch over the last few weeks, primarily targeting marginalized streamers making life on the platform so miserable many are considering abandoning it altogether.

Twitch has promised new safety features are in the works, but streamers are upset and angry that more hasn’t been done to stop hate raids. Streamers are using the #twitchdobetter hashtag to agitate for change, and they are creating and sharing resources to protect themselves against the seemingly endless...

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The best smartphone you can buy for under $500

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

You can get a great smartphone at this price, whether you want an iPhone, a big screen, or a great camera

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Facebook hides friends lists on accounts in Afghanistan as a safety measure

Facebook has started hiding friends lists from accounts in Afghanistan | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Facebook’s head of security policy said the company is putting into place security measures for users in Afghanistan, including hiding “friends” lists and adding a tool to quickly lock down accounts. Nathaniel Gleicher said in a thread on Twitter that Facebook made the changes based on feedback from activists, journalists, and civil society groups.

As the Taliban have regained control of the country over the past week, the group has found ways to push its messages on social media, despite being banned by YouTube and Facebook. NBC News reported Friday that people in Afghanistan fearful of the Taliban were deleting from their social media accounts and phones any photos that could show a connection to Western countries, the former Afghan...

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Vergecast: reviews for the Pixel 5A, Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3, and Z Flip 3

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.

This week on The Vergecast, we’ve got a cast of Nilay, Dieter, _Verge_managing editor Alex Cranz, Verge reviewer Allison Johnson, and Verge deputy editor Dan Seifert. The crew discusses reviews for the Google Pixel 5A, Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3, and Z Fold 3, as well as some other news in the tech world like the T-Mobile data breach that exposed the personal info of more than 47 million people.

In the second half of the show, Alex, Dieter, and Nilay discuss the tech news you may have missed — like Intel’s new PC gaming GPUs, Facebook’s new...

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Don’t overthink it: Elon Musk’s Tesla Bot is a joke

After a dense presentation about the undeniably impressive work Tesla is doing with AI, the company’s self-anointed Technoking, Elon Musk, capped the evening by bringing out a dancer in a spandex suit. Behold, said Musk: my Tesla Bot.

The dancer in the suit, he said, was the model for a new humanoid robot Tesla will produce in the near future. After the dubstep and applause had faded, the vaguest of briefing slides promised that the Tesla Bot will stand five feet, eight inches (1.7m), weigh 125 pounds (56kg), have “human-level hands,” and eliminate “dangerous, repetitive, boring tasks.”

A robot is just a Tesla without wheels, says Musk

Musk said that building a human-replacement robot — something no company in the world is close to...

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Duolingo adds a family plan and new ways to learn non-Latin characters

Image: Duolingo

At Duolingo’s virtual conference, the company is announcing that it will add a family plan to its app, along with new games and puzzles to help people learn languages that use non-Latin alphabets, such as Japanese or Arabic. One of the main new features is a tab that will appear for some languages, which shows users a grid of letters in an alphabet, along with the sounds they make. (If you’re an Android user, the feature may sound familiar as it’s been available on that platform, but now it’s coming to iOS and the web.)

The family plan will give six people (the subscriber, who becomes the family manager, and five others) the benefits of Duolingo Plus, which includes no ads, unlimited hearts, mastery quizzes, and more. It costs $120 a...

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Stitch Fix stylists reportedly quit in droves as the company leans on algorithms to serve customers

Stitch Fix stylists — who choose outfits for its customers — quit in droves after the company ended its flexible scheduling policy, according to a new report from BuzzFeed News. And at least one worker told BuzzFeed that employees felt like they were “training the algorithm” which also helps choose customers’ clothing, suggesting the company may be heading toward relying more on computer-generated recommendations instead of human stylists.

During a call with investors after its June earnings announcement, new CEO Elizabeth Spaulding (who started the job August 1st) said Stitch Fix stylists “play a very active role in training our machine learning models with our data science team for outfits, which our ability to generate algorithmic...

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T-Mobile’s massive data breach leaked info for 5.3 million additional customers

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The news about T-Mobile’s latest data breach is only getting worse, as the company announced new details from its investigation. While someone in possession of the leaked data said they had obtained information for as many as 100 million customers, including driver’s license info, IMEI numbers, and more, T-Mobile’s first statement put the figure at 47 million or so and did not mention the IMEI / IMSI data.

Now, T-Mobile has confirmed that for the 7.8 million on-contract, or postpaid, customers it already counted in the breach, data stolen includes the information mentioned Thursday (first and last names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and driver’s license / ID numbers), as well as phone numbers and IMEI / IMSI information. IMEI...

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A four-pack of Tile Bluetooth trackers is $55 today

Tile Mate trackers feature replaceable batteries | Image: Tile

Whether you use iOS or Android, the Tile Mate (2020) is a great Bluetooth tracker that’s designed to help you keep watch over your personal stuff. This $15 discount on a four-pack from Amazon and Best Buy is a great value for people getting started with Bluetooth trackers or someone building an arsenal of them. Unlike Apple AirTags, they can remotely ping your phone and also have an innovative design, known as a hole, for easily attaching to things without additional accessories. Similar to AirTags, and to the benefit of humankind, they have user-replaceable batteries.

The Roku Streambar is an all-in-one solution for your TV’s streaming and audio needs, and is currently $30 off from several retailers, including Amazon, Best Buy, B&H,...

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What’s on your desk, Chaim Gartenberg?

Setting up a brand-new space

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WarioWare is more chaotic than ever on the Switch

The WarioWare series has always been about chaos. Its self-described micro-games are so fast and strange that by the time you understand what’s going on, the game has already moved on to something new. Switch owners will be able to get a taste of that with the upcoming WarioWare: Get It Together — and from what I’ve seen, it might be the most chaotic take on the series yet. Nintendo recently took me through a brief hands-off demo of the game, running through a couple of different modes. The one unifying factor between them all seemed to be a desire to take the micro-game concept to absurd new levels of mayhem.

The main change is that there is now a cast of characters you can play as, all plucked from the WarioWare universe. And each has...

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Epic wants Fortnite to be the last game standing — so it’s stealing ideas

Epic liberally borrowed ideas from_Among Us_for its_Impostors_mode. | Image: Epic Games

This week, Epic Games added a new mode called Impostors where players complete tasks on a ship while two impostors sneakily try to teleport as many agents off the ship as they can. If that sounds like a familiar gameplay loop to you, you’re not the only one who feels that way — fans immediately noticed that the mode borrows heavily from Among Us, a social deduction game that exploded in popularity in 2020 and was built by a tiny indie studio.

The team at Innersloth, the developers of Among Us, are justifiably upset with Epic’s blatant repurposing of its hit game. But despite the underhanded tactics by Epic, Impostors’ polish and surprising connections to the ever-expanding Fortnite story could be a preview of the future of Epic’s smash...

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US COVID-19 data has never been good enough

When American experts first started to worry that COVID-19 vaccines weren’t working quite as well against delta as they did against earlier coronavirus strains, they didn’t have much domestic data to go on. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was only collecting data on post-vaccination COVID-19 cases if they led to hospitalization or death — the agency wasn’t doing big-picture tracking of COVID-19 in vaccinated people. Only a few states and counties were collecting and publicizing that information.

The CDC was doing some analysis, but it wasn’t sharing the information quickly, frustrating experts who hoped for a more dynamic picture of how the delta variant was affecting vaccinated people. The agency finally released some...

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Google is shutting down its Android Auto mobile app in favor of Google Assistant

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google has confirmed it’s shutting down the standalone “Android Auto for Phone Screens” app with Android 12. Instead, anyone who wants a driving-friendly interface for their Android phone should use the Google Assistant driving mode, which is available within Google Maps, or the native Android Auto interface available in select cars.

“For those who use the on phone experience (Android Auto mobile app), they will be transitioned to Google Assistant driving mode,” Google said in a statement. “Starting with Android 12, Google Assistant driving mode will be the built-in mobile driving experience. We have no further details to share at this time.” Google says that the experience isn’t changing for anyone using Android Auto in compatible cars.

...

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Realme’s bulky magnetic wireless charger is almost as fast as promised

The MagDart charger has a hefty cooling fan.

Earlier this month Realme launched MagDart, its MagSafe-a-like ecosystem of magnetic wireless charging products. The headline device is a 50W brick that Realme professes to be the fastest magnetic wireless charger in the world — it’s supposed to be able to charge a 4,500mAh battery from 0 to 100 percent in 54 minutes.

Naturally I was interested in trying this for myself. Realme sent me a 50W MagDart charger, a 65W SuperDart wall charger to plug it into, and a Realme Flash “concept phone” with built-in MagDart compatibility. (The only other Realme phone to work with MagDart is the new GT flagship, and even that requires a specialized case.)

The Flash isn’t a commercial device, but it’s a very nice phone nonetheless. That’s mostly because...

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Google Calendar will let you record where you’re working to help organize office meetings

“Set your working location to make scheduling easier.” | Image: Google

Google is adding an option to its Calendar service to let you show where you’re working on any given day of the week, the company has announced. The feature will start rolling out from August 30th for users on select Google Workspace plans, and will be accessible via Calendar’s settings menu alongside its existing working hours options, as well as on the weekly calendar view below where it shows each day’s dates. Available work locations include “Office,” “Home,” “Unspecified,” or “Somewhere else.”

According to Google, the option is being added so it’s “easier to plan in-person collaboration or set expectations in a hybrid workplace.” It follows a surge in the popularity of home and hybrid working due to the pandemic. This has meant...

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Epomaker AK84S review: a great wireless keyboard, plus some quirks

Overloaded with features

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Apple delays mandatory return to office until January 2022, citing COVID-19 surge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple is delaying its mandatory return to offices until at least January 2022, citing a surge in COVID-19 cases. The company will give employees a month’s notice before they have to return to in-person work.

In an internal email sent this evening, Deirdre O’Brien, senior vice president of people and retail, encouraged employees to get vaccinated and noted that Apple retail stores remain open.

“I know there are feeling of frustration that the pandemic is not yet behind us,” she wrote. “For many colleagues around the world, this period has been a time of great tragedy, suffering, and heartbreak. Please know that we are all here to support one another and stand with one another during such challenging times.”

The company, which previously...

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Elon Musk says Tesla is working on humanoid robots

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says his company is working on a humanoid robot and that it will build a prototype “sometime next year.” The humanoid robot will leverage Tesla’s experience with automated machines in its factories, as well as some of the hardware and software that powers the company’s Autopilot driver assistance software.

Musk, who has spoken repeatedly about his fears of runaway artificial intelligence, said Tesla is “intended to be friendly,” but that Tesla is designing the robot at a “mechanical level” so that “you can run away from it, and most likely overpower it.” It will be five feet, eight inches tall, weigh 125 pounds, and have a screen for a face. The code name for the bot inside the company is “Optimus,” he said.

...

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OnlyFans’ inexplicable ban on porn might be explained by this BBC investigation

Photo Illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Earlier today, OnlyFans stunned the world by revealing it would ditch the thing it’s famous for: sexually explicit videos and photography. Yes, OnlyFans is banning porn, starting October 1st. But at least one publication wasn’t completely shocked by the decision — because it came in the middle of a BBC investigation into how the video sharing site was _knowingly_letting creators slide despite publishing illegal content on the internet.

Instead of banning an account or sounding the alarm, the company explicitly recommends in a “compliance manual” that moderators should first issue a series of three warnings about why each piece of content has been removed. Unless it’s a successful creator, of course, in which case “accounts with higher...

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Here’s how much it costs to fix a Z Fold 3 or Z Flip 3 with a broken screen

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Samsung’s new foldables are quite impressive, and the company has focused on making them as durable as possible — but sometimes, accidents happen. We asked Samsung how much it would cost to replace a Z Flip or Z Fold 3’s screen should something happen to it, and here’s what the company told us.

Samsung provides a one year warranty with the phones, so if your screen breaks in a way that’s covered, you shouldn’t have to pay for a repair. Out of warranty, fixing the interior folding screen of a Z Fold 3 costs $479. Doing the same for a Z Flip 3 costs $369. Thankfully, the external displays are much less expensive — fixing a broken outer screen will set you back $149 for the Fold and $99 for the Flip.

Out of warranty, the Fold’s folding...

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Adobe is acquiring collaborative video software maker Frame.io for $1.275 billion

Image: Frame.io

Adobe announced on Thursday that it’s acquiring the company behind popular collaborative video production software of the same name, Frame.io, for $1.275 billion. Adobe says it tried to create its own collaboration software on its own, but settled on buying Frame.io because some customers were already using it in their workflows, Bloomberg reports.

Frame.io takes the frequently time consuming process of reviewing edits and footage, and makes it asynchronous and on the web, Google Workspace-style. Editors, clients, and whoever else can use the company’s cloud-based software to store and view footage, and leave feedback on edits, just by sharing a link. Frame.io also offers integrations with popular video editing software like Adobe’s...

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Spawn Together campaign surpasses $1 million fundraising goal for AbleGamers charity

Steven Spohn at The Game Awards in 2017. | Image: Greg Doherty/Getty Images

Steven Spohn passed a goal this week that he’s been chasing for nearly a year. He raised over a million dollars for AbleGamers, a charity that seeks to improve accessibility in games and connects disabled people with peer support and adaptive tech for gaming. Spohn has been its COO for 15 years.

The charity’s mission, he says, is about giving people with disabilities access to “that sense of independence and that feeling of exploration or excitement or relaxation, whatever it is you’re going for, to help you mentally get through the tough times.”

Spohn has multiple progressive illnesses that impact his functioning. He started the fundraising campaign, Spawn Together, in September of last year to celebrate his 40th birthday. He says he...

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AT&T TV will officially become DirecTV Stream next week

Image: DirecTV

AT&T TV and its defunct AT&T TV Now sibling will officially become DirecTV Stream, a new unified service spun out of a deal between TPG Capital and AT&T for the telecommunication giant’s streaming properties.

DirecTV began updating AT&T TV and AT&T TV Now customers of the change on August 14th. On the welcome screens of both services’ mobile apps informing them that the change would officially take place on August 26th, a spokesperson confirmed to The Verge. DirectTV Stream rebrands AT&T’s services acquired in the TPG Capital deal, which did not include HBO Max. (WarnerMedia, home to HBO Max, is set to merge with Discovery in mid-2022.)

Image: DirecTV

According to a company news release, “AT&T satellite, streaming or...

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The Epic v. Google lawsuit finally makes sense

There was never any question what Epic Games wanted when it took Apple to court: the 48-second “Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite” made it clear App Store hypocrisy was the agenda. But the justification for a parallel case against Google wasn’t as clear-cut until today — it’s only now we’re learning about the most damning accusations against the Android giant.

On Thursday, Judge James Donato unsealed a fully unredacted version of Epic’s original complaint against Google (via Leah Nylen), and it alleges the company was so worried about Epic setting a precedent by abandoning the Play Store that it unleashed a broad effort to keep developers from following the company’s lead. That included straight-up paying top game developers, including Activision...

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SpaceX’s lunar lander contract on hold again pending Blue Origin’s lawsuit

Photo by Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images

SpaceX’s $3 billion contract to build a lunar lander for NASA was put on hold for a second time on Thursday after Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin sued over the award, according to court filings. NASA voluntarily agreed to temporarily suspend the contract until November 1st while the US Court of Federal Claims, where Blue Origin filed suit last week, adjudicates the case.

A status report jointly filed by Blue Origin, SpaceX and the government on Thursday said NASA’s “voluntary stay of performance shall expire” on November 1st. Oral arguments are set for October 14th, the judge said. SpaceX had intervened in the lawsuit earlier this week to “ensure that the court has a complete and accurate picture” of the protest, the company told the judge.

B...

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Skyrim is getting a next-gen upgrade exactly 10 years after its original release

Skyrim_was first released in 2011._ | Image: Bethesda

Nearly a decade after its original release, Bethesda Softworks is announcing new updates coming to its acclaimed hit Skyrim. On November 11th, exactly 10 years after its original launch date, the game is getting a free next-gen upgrade that will be available to all owners of Skyrim Special Edition. And that’s not all — Bethesda is going to add three free pieces of Creation Club content to the game for all Special Edition owners, including the ability to go fishing.

Bethesda is also releasing another edition of the game on November 11th, which is aptly named the _The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition._This version includes everything in Special Edition, the three free pieces of Creation Club content, and “over 500 pieces of...

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Twitter makes small changes to direct messages

Twitter is making some small updates to its direct messages | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter on Thursday said it’s introducing several new updates to its direct messages, which will roll out to some users in the next few weeks. The changes include the ability to send a direct message to multiple people in separate conversations because who among us has not accidentally started a group chat that way. Now, you can share a tweet in up to 20 separate DM conversations, if the goss is hot enough to share with that many individual tweeters at once.

The feature is coming to the iOS and web versions of Twitter first, and Android “soon.”

No more (awkward) accidental group chats when you DM a Tweet to multiple people. Now you can share the same Tweet in up to 20 different DM convos, separately.

Rolling out on iOS and web, and...

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Policy groups request Apple abandon plans to scan devices for child abuse imagery

Policy groups have asked Apple to abandon plans to scan iPhones for images of abuse | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

An international coalition of policy and civil rights groups published an open letter Thursday asking Apple to “abandon its recently announced plans to build surveillance capabilities into iPhones, iPads and other Apple products.” The groups include the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Access Now, Privacy International, and the Tor Project.

Earlier this month, Apple announced its plans to use new tech within iOS to detect potential child abuse imagery with the goal of limiting the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online. Apple also announced a new “communication safety” feature, which will use on-device machine learning to identify and blur sexually explicit images received by children in...

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