How to watch the Facebook Connect livestream

Facebook Connect 2021 event site

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to deliver the opening keynote to the Facebook Reality Labs event, Facebook Connect, this Thursday, October 28th at 1PM ET / 10AM PT.

The annual VR / AR announcement and live demonstration event is in its eighth year and was formally called “Oculus Connect” due to its focus on virtual reality technologies. With word on a Facebook rebranding looming, the event is the perfect stage for the 17-year-old company to announce big changes along with the possible announcement of a new “pro” Oculus VR headset.

When and where can I watch the Facebook Connect event?

The keynote starts at 1PM ET / 10AM PT on Thursday, October 28th. The event will be streamed live from the Facebook Connect event page, which can be...

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Tesla owners can now remotely stream live footage from their car’s cameras

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Tesla’s Sentry mode, the feature that uses the car’s cameras as a surveillance system to catch would-be thieves and vandals, has been upgraded to let owners view a livestream, _Electrek_reports. The “Sentry Mode Live Camera Access” feature is rolling out with Tesla’s 2021.36.8 software update, but only appears to work with the manufacturer’s iOS app at present. An Android release is yet to be confirmed.

“You can now remotely view your car’s surroundings when parked to confirm the safety of your environment before returning to your car,” is how Tesla’s release notes describe the new feature. It’s a significant upgrade for the vehicle’s Sentry Mode feature, which originally launched in 2019. Although there have been workarounds, Sentry...

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Apple’s notch ‘fix’ brings fat bezels back to the MacBook Pro

Twitter user @Jatodaro demonstrates how to use the new ‘Scale to fit below built-in camera’ feature. | @Jatodaro via Twitter

A new support document released yesterday details a “Scale to fit below built-in camera” option in macOS that will forcibly scale apps to only use the display below the notch. It’s a temporary workaround for apps that don’t currently play nice with the notch on Apple’s new MacBook Pros.

The camera notch cutout on Apple’s latest laptops was meant to enable a more expansive edge-to-edge screen. But as we saw yesterday, owners of the new MacBook Pro models have seen both apps and the OS misbehave, whereby app menus and status bar items can get hidden under the camera cutout. The scale-to-fit workaround fixes this, but results in the type of large bezels the notch was meant to negate.

The scaling feature was demonstrated by artist @Jatodaro...

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Gizmodo’s photos from the massive iPhone 4 leak have disappeared

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

Photographs from a historic moment in tech news history, the day a Gizmodo reporter published hands-on pics of the then-not-yet-announced iPhone 4, are now missing. And they’re not alone — vast quantities of pictures from G/O Media sites like The Onion, Jalopnik, and Deadspin (as well as Gizmodo) have been removed, reportedly intentionally, according to Gawker.

A recent Gawkerreport highlights that Buzzfeed has also been wiping many older images from the web. Still, Buzzfeed’s reason for doing so is relatively apparent after management explained the copyright claims on old photos deemed some of them “high-risk.”

Both cases are examples of “link rot,” where content on the internet is drastically changed because it either disappears...

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Samsung’s revenue hits another record high as demand for chips increases

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

In 2020, Samsung weathered the pandemic by posting a record high for revenue in the third quarter of 66.96 trillion won. The company just revealed that it set another record for the same period in 2021, reaching 73.98 trillion won, or about $63 billion. While its revenue was up about 10 percent, Samsung says its profits grew by 26 percent from last year to hit 15.82 trillion won ($13 billion).

Despite a shortage of key chips worldwide, the memory chips and processors Samsung makes that go into everything from servers to mobile phones are in as much demand as ever. Shifts to hybrid work mean have companies buying more SSDs, CPUs, and RAM for servers

Samsung will “reorganize” to focus on quantum dot 4K TVs instead of LCDs

As the world’s...

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Alienware’s new Aurora R13 comes with Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake CPU

Photo by Alienware

Alienware’s new Aurora R13 gaming desktop comes with Intel’s newly released 12th Gen Alder Lake chip and a brand-new design. You can choose anything from the Core i5-12600KF up to an i9-1200KF, as well as a range of Nvidia graphics cards.

Photo by Alienware

The R13 also shows off Alienware’s redesigned Legend 2.0 chassis, which comes with an increased amount of internal space that’s supposed to promote better airflow. It also offers the option of a clear side panel that tacks on an extra $70 to your purchase. You can still open the case without any tools, making it easy to upgrade components or start customizing.

On the AMD side of things, Alienware introduced the Aurora Ryzen Edition R14 that ships with up to an AMD...

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How to use SharePlay to share your FaceTime screen

Image: Apple

One of the new features that iOS 15 has promised to offer is the ability to share your iPhone and iPad screen during FaceTime sessions so that you can enjoy films, music, and other media along with friends and family. While this new feature, called SharePlay, did not ship with the first version of iOS 15, it has been included in iOS 15.1 and can now be enjoyed — to a limited extent.

Currently, you can share content from Apple TV and Apple Music — assuming both of you are subscribers — and a few other apps. I had no problem sharing a YouTube video, for example; other apps that are supported include HBO Max, Hulu, and Disney Plus (but not Netflix). It can be presumed that the list of shareable apps will continue to expand.

It’s quite easy...

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Apple’s system to tell on creepy apps just arrived in beta

Image: Apple

Apple’s App Privacy Report, announced at WWDC 2021, has made its way onto iPhones with the first release of the iOS 15.2 beta, according to MacRumors. The new screen in Settings gives users an overview of what information their apps have access to and what they’re sharing.

According to Apple’s WWDC announcement, the feature will show you what permissions apps have and how often they accessed them over the past week (for example, it could show that your weather app accesses your location every hour). The report will also show you which other web domains the app contacted and let you compare that with the sites you visited directly in the app to give you a better idea of who could be seeing your data.

Apple’s Safari...

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A major Hollywood union could vote soon on a deal for better streaming pay

Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

A Hollywood union representing tens of thousands of production workers will soon decide whether to ratify agreements that will, among other labor protections, enforce better pay from streaming services.

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) announced Tuesday that it reached a tentative three-year “area standards” agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) that “delivers our members a fairer deal on streaming,” according to the union’s international president Matthew Loeb. AMPTP represents major Hollywood studios that include, among others, Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Disney, Paramount, and Warner Bros.

A spokesperson for the union told The Verge that lawyers are still working out...

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GameStop memes even harder with ‘Web3 Gaming’ and NFT job listings

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

After a rollercoaster of a year on the stock market fueled by WallStreetBets retail trading, GameStop is going full meme and looking to build a “Web3” platform, according to a flurry of job listings posted to its careers site on Monday. One of those ads, discovered by CoinDesk, is a LinkedIn listing for a “Head of Web3 Gaming” in which the company says it's looking for someone to “accelerate the future of gaming and commerce” based on blockchains.

If you’re lucky enough to have never heard the phrase “Web3,” it’s often used to describe a decentralized, crypto-based internet. That tracks with the other job listings, which indicate that GameStop is developing some sort of NFT platform, likely based on Ethereum. While sometimes job...

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The new Onewheel GT can travel 32 miles on a single charge

Images: Future Motion

California startup Future Motion has revealed two new versions of its funky self-balancing electric rideable it calls Onewheel, with more range, power, and better ergonomics.

The most capable of the two is the new $2,200 Onewheel GT, which Future Motion says was “completely redesigned from the ground up.” It employs a higher-voltage control system that pushes more power to the motor — Future Motion says the GT is the “first 3 horsepower Onewheel.” The GT is pulling that power from a battery pack made up of 21700 lithium-ion batteries (the same size cell that powers many of Tesla’s current vehicles), which give it a whopping 32 miles of range on a full charge.

Performance aside, Future Motion says the Onewheel GT now has concave...

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TCL’s new wireless soundbar gives Roku TVs better audio for $179.99

One less cable to run makes this look more achievable | Image: TCL

If you need to elevate the audio experience for your second guest bedroom’s Roku TV, TCL’s new soundbar may be the one for you. The Roku TV Wireless Soundbar (announced at CES 2021 as the Alto R1) is TCL’s vision of a simple and easy audio drop-in solution for $179.99 that only works with Roku TVs but not any other Roku streaming box.

As far as soundbars go, the unit is bare bones with no HDMI or audio ports. TCL is saying this is by design for a clutter-free entertainment center where the only cable you need to route is the power cable — all other functions are wireless using Wi-Fi 802.11ac. A part of the “Roku TV Ready” lineup of products the company is putting out, this soundbar uses the existing Roku TV remote and lets you pair the...

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EU opens formal investigation into Nvidia’s Arm acquisition

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The European Commission has opened a formal competition investigation into Nvidia’s acquisition of chip designer Arm. The deal, which would see Nvidia purchase the UK-based company from SoftBank for $40 billion, was announced in September 2020.

In a press release, the EU’s Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager said that Nvidia buying Arm could make it harder for other manufacturers to access Arm’s technology, hurting much of the semiconductor industry (which is already facing supply problems). At the heart of concerns is Arm’s neutrality. Arm licenses its chip designs to a broad range of companies including Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm, many of which compete with one another and Nvidia. There are fears that having Nvidia control...

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Google makes it easier for Android developers to build apps with its Material You design

Image: Google

Android 12 has launched along with Google’s new Pixel 6 lineup and brings with it a new look that Android VP of product management Sameer Samat called “the biggest design change in Android’s history.” That’s in reference to Material You, which applies a new set of principles for creating interfaces, in addition to changes that will help Android adjust to bigger screens. We’ve already gotten a hint of how the look affects usability across the updated OS and Google’s own apps, but now the focus is expanding to reach more of the apps made by others.

Today at Google’s Android Developer Summit, the company announced that Material You is available in Jetpack Compose, so app designers can more easily adopt the look in their own products.

...

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Android’s 12L feature drop aims to be a big improvement for folding phones

At this year’s Android Dev Summit, Google announced an upcoming update for devices with larger screens, which includes tablets, foldables, and devices that run ChromeOS. Google is calling the update 12L, and it’s supposed to make Android 12 run smoother on big screens. We first heard the possibility of a “12.1” update in late September, and it looks like many of the rumored features are true.

12L optimizes the layout of a device’s UI, adjusting the placement of the home screen, lock screen, notifications, Quick Settings, and more. Google notes that any screen 600 density-independent pixels (dp) and above will display a two-column layout that makes use of the entire screen. In the example Google shows, the Quick Settings menu is pushed...

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Adobe has built a deepfake tool, but it doesn’t know what to do with it

Deepfakes have made a huge impact on the world of image, audio, and video editing, so why isn’t Adobe, corporate behemoth of the content world, getting more involved? Well, the short answer is that it is — but slowly and carefully. At the company’s annual Max conference today, it unveiled a prototype tool named Project Morpheus that demonstrates both the potential and problems of integrating deepfake techniques into its products.

Project Morpheus is basically a video version of the company’s Neural Filters, introduced in Photoshop last year. These filters use machine learning to adjust a subject’s appearance, tweaking things like their age, hair color, and facial expression (to change a look of surprise into one of anger, for example)....

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Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake chips usher in a new generation of x86 processors

Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake chips have finally arrived, ushering in a new era of the company’s chips, lead by the flagship Core i9-12900K CPU, which Intel promises is the “world’s best gaming processor.”

The company has been teasing Alder Lake since CES 2021 in January, and it revealed a lot more details on the specifics of its hybrid architecture approach at its 2021 Architecture Day in July. But today’s announcement marks the culmination of those efforts in the form of actual hardware that you can buy and use.

Intel is kicking things off with three new chips, led by the Core i9-12900K model, which offers a total of 16 cores (split between eight performance forced “P-cores” and eight efficient “E-cores”) and 24 threads and is capable...

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Chinese students sue Apple for not including a charger with the iPhone 12

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Five Chinese students are suing Apple for not providing a charger with the iPhone 12, first reported by Vice. Apple stopped including EarPods and wall chargers with iPhones in 2020, opting only to include a USB-C to Lightning cable in its packaging. According to Apple, ditching the charger and EarPods is supposed to reduce carbon emissions and preserve raw materials.

There’s some skepticism as to whether Apple really did this to cut costs, rather than save the environment, as the transition to 5G could make iPhones more expensive to make. Skipping out on chargers and EarPods could be a way for Apple to save a buck, and forcing customers to purchase accessories separately may help increase profits.

The students’ argument in court, which...

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Timothée Chalamet used to mod Xbox 360 controllers

Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage

This morning, Vice published an extensive investigation examining the rumors that future worm-rider Timothée Chalamet had a previous life as an Xbox 360 controller modder. The investigation includes contributions from Aric Toller, a lead researcher and trainer at Bellingcat, a journalism outfit regularly known for investigating war crimes.

The collaboration between the two noted journalism outfits is extensive. Vice reporters Matthew Gault and Emanuel Maiberg worked with Toller to examine images of Chamalet’s hands, and specifically a scar on his left ring finger, and compare them to screenshots of the hands of anonymous Youtuber ModdedController 360. They also carefully examined images of a young Chamalet’s bedroom that the actor had p...

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This company is making digital humans to serve the metaverse

Meet Sam

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Apple Music officially launches on the PS5

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple Music is coming to a gaming console, and it’s the PlayStation 5. The new app lets Apple Music subscribers stream music from the service on Sony’s latest console, similar to what’s previously been possible with Spotify. Audio can be played in the background while gaming or just played on its own.

This is the PS5’s second major integration with an Apple service, after both it and Microsoft's Xbox launched with the Apple TV Plus app last year. Earlier this year, Sony extended the partnership to offer six months of free Apple TV Plus membership to PS5 owners. Having Apple Music on a console is a nice addition if you’re looking to simplify your TV setup and avoid having to switch too much between dedicated streaming boxes and built-in...

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Instagram’s link stickers are rolling out to everyone

The stickers appear in Stories posts, and can link out to external sites. | Image: Instagram

Instagram’s link stickers, which let you include hyperlinks in Stories in the form of stickers, will now be available to everyone on the platform, the Facebook-owned social media network has announced. Instagram started testing link stickers in June, but until now the feature has been limited to verified accounts or accounts with a large number of followers.

According to the social network, link stickers are useful for anyone from businesses linking out to their products to activists linking out to external resources. But Instagram concedes that anyone can benefit from link sharing to engage with their followers. It also says that accounts repeatedly sharing misinformation or hate speech will lose access.

The successor to the swipe up

T...

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Samsung’s Frame TV is $300 off at Best Buy and Amazon today

For a limited time, Samsung’s 55-inch, art-inspired QLED is down to $998, its best price to date. | Samsung

Nobody will deny the unique appeal of the Samsung Frame TV, which you can currently find at both Amazon and Best Buy for $300 off its original MSRP. While the price is a bit steep for a 55-inch 4K TV, you’re really paying for the aesthetics and the QLED panel. When removed from its stand, the Frame TV is virtually indistinguishable from a framed piece of artwork on the wall, even going so far as to include an ambient art mode that’s designed to transform the HDR TV into a piece of decor rather than a passive appliance. The 2021 model offers some impressive specs as well, including support for Amazon’s Alexa, four HDMI ports, a 120Hz refresh rate, and the Tizen smart platform, which enables access to most major streaming services without...

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The US Copyright Office just struck a blow for the right to repair

The US Copyright Office is expanding a legal shield for fixing digital devices, including cars and medical devices. This morning, the office submitted new exemptions to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bars breaking software copy protection. The resulting rules include a revamped section on device repair, reflecting renewed government pressure around “right to repair” issues.

The Register of Copyrights recommends Section 1201 “anti-circumvention” exemptions every three years, a process that has offered legal protections for everything from unlocking cellphones to ripping DVD clips for classroom use. In addition to renewing these and several other exemptions, this latest rulemaking adopts repair-related...

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Amazon’s new TVs will soon support Apple AirPlay 2 and HomeKit

Image: Amazon

Amazon is now making its own TVs, and today marks the release of the company’s Omni and 4-Series Fire TVs. As the 4K HDR sets start making their way to customers, Amazon is making one more last-minute announcement: it plans to add support for Apple’s AirPlay 2 and HomeKit features “soon.”

AirPlay 2 makes it easy to play content on the TV screen from an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. And HomeKit integration will allow the Omni and 4-Series TVs to be controlled by Siri or the Home app; it also makes it easy to include them in smart home routines.

Amazon has already rolled out AirPlay 2 and HomeKit to some of its “Fire TV Edition” TVs from Toshiba and Insignia. Curiously, these features have yet to come to the company’s standalone Fire TV...

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Hinge adds voice notes and voice prompts to dating profiles

Dating app Hinge is adding new audio features, letting users answer the “getting to know you” prompts on their profile using audio clips and exchange voice notes in chat.

The new features will roll out Wednesday globally and are the latest example of apps using voice to add a new dimension to digital dating. Rival services like Bumble and Happn have already added voice notes to their app, and one app, String, only lets users communicate with their voice. For many people, the sound of someone’s voice can be an important part of attraction, and exchanging voice notes is a more expressive way to communicate.

Image: Hinge

Users will be able to exchange voice notes in chat.

If users want to add a voice prompt to...

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Apple seems to have forgotten it built a notch in the MacBook Pro

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales

Apple’s new MacBook Pro notch is misbehaving. Early adopters have discovered inconsistencies in how Apple handles the notch across macOS and in individual apps, resulting in unexpected behavior where status bar items can get hidden under the notch. These inconsistencies make it feel like Apple has forgotten, in areas of macOS, that it has built a notch into the MacBook Pro.

Snazzy Labs owner Quinn Nelson has posted two videos on Twitter demonstrating some of the early notch issues. The main video demonstrates what appears to be a bug in macOS. Status bar items like Apple’s battery indicator can get hidden underneath the notch when status bar items are extended.

WHO DESIGNED THIS?! pic.twitter.com/ADVqmfdqV2

— Quinn Nelson (@SnazzyQ) O...

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Lightyear’s new trailer turns a cute toy into a sci-fi hero

PIXAR

Have you ever really wondered about Buzz Lightyear’s origin story? Not the action figure, which helped make Toy Story so beloved, but the actual space ranger? Well, Disney and Pixar sure are hoping so with the upcoming feature Lightyear. It’s described as “the definitive origin story of Buzz Lightyear” and the first trailer makes it look like a Star Wars-style sci-fi adventure, complete with cool spaceships and futuristic alien worlds. The movie even casts an action movie star, with Chris Evans handling Buzz’s voice. Angus MacLane, who co-directed Finding Dory, is serving as director.

Lightyear was actually first announced last year, but you’d be forgiven for forgetting about it: the reveal was part of a massive wave of more than 50...

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DJI announces compact, modular, and magnetic Action 2 camera

Image: DJI

DJI has announced a follow-up to its Osmo Action camera, and it’s got a completely new design — the Action 2 drops the Osmo name and focuses on modularity with a suite of additional parts and accessories that attach to the camera magnetically.

The camera module itself is small (it's 39mm square and 22mm deep) and includes a 12MP sensor capable of 4K recording, a lens that provides a 155-degree field of view, and a 1.76-inch OLED touchscreen covered by Gorilla Glass. Using magnets, you can attach another touchscreen (which also boosts the battery life and adds an array of microphones), an extra battery, or a variety of mounts that let you attach it to tripods or GoPro mounts, or even wear the camera as a necklace.

I...

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Microsoft ramps up plans to make its data centers less thirsty

Boiling liquid carries away heat generated by computer servers at a Microsoft datacenter. | Image: Gene Twedt for Microsoft

Microsoft ramped up its commitments today to conserve water and energy in its data centers, laying out new cooling tech and strategies that could push notoriously thirsty and energy hungry servers past their current limits. The company’s latest environmental pledge comes as it plans to dramatically expand the number of data centers it operates around the world, a move that could put more stress on drought-stricken communities unless the company finds ways to use less water.

Microsoft plans to slash the amount of water its data centers use by 95 percent by 2024, with the goal of “eventually” eliminating water use. That builds on a commitment it made last year to become “water positive” by the end of the decade, meaning it would replenish...

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