Tech Boys

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The November 3rd election was the “most secure in American history” and “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The statement follows numerous claims of supposed election fraud by President Donald Trump and his allies. “While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too,” the statement continues. The statement also follows a report from Reuters that Christopher Krebs, the official in charge of election cybersecurity and the director of CISA, expects to be fired by the White House. Krebs has been using Twitter to actively combat misinformation about the elec...

Image: 9to5Mac Apple has been rumored to be working on new over-ear headphones for years, and we might have just gotten a vague idea of what they look like, thanks to an icon found in the first developer beta for iOS 14.3 by 9to5Mac . You can see the icon at the top of this post. And here’s another look at the icon, apparently from a video in the Find My app in the beta found by MacRumors contributing writer Steve Moser . New Pairing video in the Find My app in iOS 14.3 beta 1 with the codename Hawkeye hints at Apple Tags support and new Apple over ear headphones. pic.twitter.com/oVdCLQcaWc — Steve Moser (@SteveMoser) November 12, 2020 The video shows a magnifying glass hovering over the icon of the headphones. Interestingly, the magnifying glass also passes over a backpack and a suitcase, which would be ideal places to store Apple’s rumored Tile-like trackers . And the fact that the video is reportedly found in the Find My app suggests it might be able to help you find both ...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple has been staring down the barrel of numerous antitrust investigations this past year, after app developers like Spotify and Rakuten accused the company of unfairly advantaging Apple’s own apps ahead of theirs. But Apple is apparently working on a new feature that might address at least one of the common concerns, by proactively suggesting third-party apps (apps that Apple doesn’t make) to iPhone and iPad users when they first set up their devices. Will Apple suggest Spotify alongside Apple Music? That could be on the table. 9to5Mac spotted the feature in the new iOS 14.3 beta, and it seems pretty clear from the accompanying text that the feature is designed to satisfy countries who take a dim view of Apple’s current stance. “In compliance with regional legal requirements, continue to view available apps to download,” reads part of the code, suggesting that it’ll only be rolled out in regions where Apple feels compelled to do so....

Image: 9to5Mac Apple has been rumored to be working on new over-ear headphones for years, and we might have just gotten a vague idea of what they look like, thanks to an icon found in the first developer beta for iOS 14.3 by 9to5Mac . You can see the icon at the top of this post. And here’s another look at the icon, apparently from a video in the Find My app in the beta found by MacRumors contributing writer Steve Moser . New Pairing video in the Find My app in iOS 14.3 beta 1 with the codename Hawkeye hints at Apple Tags support and new Apple over ear headphones. pic.twitter.com/oVdCLQcaWc — Steve Moser (@SteveMoser) November 12, 2020 The video shows a magnifying glass hovering over the icon of the headphones. Interestingly, the magnifying glass also passes over a backpack and a suitcase, which would be ideal places to store Apple’s rumored Tile-like trackers . And the fact that the video is reportedly found in the Find My app suggests it might be able to help you find both ...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple has been staring down the barrel of numerous antitrust investigations this past year, after app developers like Spotify and Rakuten accused the company of unfairly advantaging Apple’s own apps ahead of theirs. But Apple is apparently working on a new feature that might address at least one of the common concerns, by proactively suggesting third-party apps (apps that Apple doesn’t make) to iPhone and iPad users when they first set up their devices. Will Apple suggest Spotify alongside Apple Music? That could be on the table. 9to5Mac spotted the feature in the new iOS 14.3 beta, and it seems pretty clear from the accompanying text that the feature is designed to satisfy countries who take a dim view of Apple’s current stance. “In compliance with regional legal requirements, continue to view available apps to download,” reads part of the code, suggesting that it’ll only be rolled out in regions where Apple feels compelled to do so....

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Many Mac users reported that their computers have been running slower than usual on Thursday — including a number of Verge staffers — with apps launching slowly or not at all, alongside other Apple service issues. It appears that the problem is due to many people rushing to download macOS Big Sur, which was officially released today , which in turn seems to have crashed Apple’s OCSP (online certificate status protocol) service — which is used for several key aspects of macOS, including validating digital certificates for both Apple and third-party software on the Mac, as Ars Technica reports . Hey Apple users: If you're now experiencing hangs launching apps on the Mac, I figured out the problem using Little Snitch. It's trustd connecting to https://t.co/FzIGwbGRan Denying that connection fixes it, because OCSP is a soft failure. (Disconnect internet also fixes.) pic.twitter.com/w9YciFltrb — Jeff Johnson (@lapcatsoftwa...

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge It’s been a good two years for the Nintendo Switch. According to Nintendo, the gaming tablet has been the bestselling console in the US for 23 straight months. And according to data from the NPD Group, it just had its best October ever, moving 735,926 units of both the Switch and Switch Lite in the US. The company says that represents a 136 percent increase compared to last year. To date, the Switch has sold 22.5 million units in the US, and last week Nintendo revealed that more than 68 million units have been sold globally . “We’re excited about our momentum,” says Nick Chavez, Nintendo of America’s SVP of sales and marketing. Chavez puts the company’s big October down to two main factors. One is a better supply of stock; this year in particular, it’s often been hard to find a Switch on store shelves. This has only been exacerbated by increased demand due to a combination of the pandemic and the breakout success of Animal Crossing: New Horizons . ...

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge YouTube seems to be having issues loading videos right now. Several Verge staffers are having trouble watching videos, and YouTube has confirmed that something is going on: If you’re having trouble watching videos on YouTube right now, you’re not alone – our team is aware of the issue and working on a fix. We’ll follow up here with any updates. — TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) November 12, 2020 The issue appears to affect other services that use the YouTube infrastructure too, including YouTube TV and the movies and TV shows you’d purchase through Google TV (formerly known as Google Play Movies & TV). We couldn’t load them. In our testing so far, the YouTube website seems to load just fine, but videos themselves will continuously show the loading wheel. One Verge staffer got a video to load after about a minute. DownDetector is also showing a truly tremendous number of user reports of problems with YouTube, indicating the problem is...

Photo: Dan Seifert / The Verge In our review of Google’s $99 Nest Audio speaker , we wrote that it’s “unfortunate that you can’t use two Nest Audio speakers paired with a Chromecast for home theater audio, like you can do with a couple of Amazon Echo speakers and a Fire TV.” But it appears that Google originally intended to offer just such a feature — and we’re wondering if the company might still introduce it in the next few months. As 9to5Google points out , Google seemingly forgot to remove a rather telling arrangement of words from the HTML source for its Nest Audio product page: With Chromecast & Google TV Nest Audio becomes your home theater sound system. The UK version of the page even had an alternate localization of the same sentence, which suggests intention. With Chromecast and Google TV, Nest Audio becomes your home cinema sound system. There’s not a whole lot of ways to interpret that phrase. Here are a few that spring to mind: Google was working on the ...

Photo: Dan Seifert / The Verge In our review of Google’s $99 Nest Audio speaker , we wrote that it’s “unfortunate that you can’t use two Nest Audio speakers paired with a Chromecast for home theater audio, like you can do with a couple of Amazon Echo speakers and a Fire TV.” But it appears that Google originally intended to offer just such a feature — and we’re wondering if the company might still introduce it in the next few months. As 9to5Google points out , Google seemingly forgot to remove a rather telling arrangement of words from the HTML source for its Nest Audio product page: With Chromecast & Google TV Nest Audio becomes your home theater sound system. The UK version of the page even had an alternate localization of the same sentence, which suggests intention. With Chromecast and Google TV, Nest Audio becomes your home cinema sound system. There’s not a whole lot of ways to interpret that phrase. Here are a few that spring to mind: Google was working on the ...

For the first time, two people rode a hyperloop pod through a nearly airless tube at 100 mph Virgin Hyperloop announced that for the first time it has conducted a test of its ultra-fast transportation system with human passengers. The test took place on Sunday afternoon at the company’s DevLoop test track in the desert outside Las Vegas, Nevada. The first two passengers were Virgin Hyperloop’s chief technology officer and co-founder, Josh Giegel, and head of passenger experience, Sara Luchian. After strapping into their seats in the company’s gleaming white and red hyperloop pod, dubbed Pegasus, they were transferred into an airlock as the air inside the enclosed vacuum tube was removed. The pod then accelerated to a brisk 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) down the length of the track, before slowing down to a stop. It’s an important achievement for Virgin Hyperloop, which was founded in 2014 on the premise of making Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s vision of a futuristic transportatio...

For the first time, two people rode a hyperloop pod through a nearly airless tube at 100 mph Virgin Hyperloop announced that for the first time it has conducted a test of its ultra-fast transportation system with human passengers. The test took place on Sunday afternoon at the company’s DevLoop test track in the desert outside Las Vegas, Nevada. The first two passengers were Virgin Hyperloop’s chief technology officer and co-founder, Josh Giegel, and head of passenger experience, Sara Luchian. After strapping into their seats in the company’s gleaming white and red hyperloop pod, dubbed Pegasus, they were transferred into an airlock as the air inside the enclosed vacuum tube was removed. The pod then accelerated to a brisk 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) down the length of the track, before slowing down to a stop. It’s an important achievement for Virgin Hyperloop, which was founded in 2014 on the premise of making Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s vision of a futuristic transportatio...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge A new video from Digital Foundry makes it immediately clear that the PS5 brings notable performance improvements to many PS4 games. The 30-minute video shows off a lot of big PS4 titles on running PS5, including Crysis Remastered, Dark Souls 3, Days Gone (with its PS5-exclusive 60fps framerate ), Ghost of Tsushima (with its PS5-exclusive 60fps framerate ), Hitman, Just Cause 3, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. I highly recommend that you watch it to see the games in action : In the leadup to the PS5’s launch, Sony promised that the “ overwhelming majority ” of the more 4,000 PS4 games would work on the new console, and we’ve seen some developers announce PS5-exclusive optimizations (like Ghost of Tsushima’s boost to 60fps), but we just didn’t know how well PS4 games would actually play on the PS5. Based on Digital Foundry’s video (and an accompanying article ), it appears that most PS4 games will play just fine on t...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge A new video from Digital Foundry makes it immediately clear that the PS5 brings notable performance improvements to many PS4 games. The 30-minute video shows off a lot of big PS4 titles on running PS5, including Crysis Remastered, Dark Souls 3, Days Gone (with its PS5-exclusive 60fps framerate ), Ghost of Tsushima (with its PS5-exclusive 60fps framerate ), Hitman, Just Cause 3, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. I highly recommend that you watch it to see the games in action : In the leadup to the PS5’s launch, Sony promised that the “ overwhelming majority ” of the more 4,000 PS4 games would work on the new console, and we’ve seen some developers announce PS5-exclusive optimizations (like Ghost of Tsushima’s boost to 60fps), but we just didn’t know how well PS4 games would actually play on the PS5. Based on Digital Foundry’s video (and an accompanying article ), it appears that most PS4 games will play just fine on t...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube says a video claiming President Donald Trump won the election does not violate any of its policies and has allowed it to stay on the platform, despite the election not being called by major news outlets for either candidate yet. The decision stands in contrast to Twitter and Facebook’s more aggressive attempts to clamp down on misleading claims and misinformation over election results. The video, titled “Trump Won. MSM hopes you don’t believe your eyes,” was published by pro-Trump network One American News Network (OANN) on Wednesday. YouTube says the video violates its advertising guidelines but not its content policies, so it can stay online but will run without ads, the company confirmed to The Verge. The story was first reported by CNBC . In the video, an OANN anchor says Trump won another term, baselessly claims that Trump would win a number of swing states if it weren’t for voter fraud, and then equates counting outstanding mai...

Image: Valve Gabe Newell, president of Valve, the video game company behind the Half-Life series and game marketplace Steam, is thanking the country of New Zealand for its hospitality by launching a gnome into space with aerospace company Rocket Lab in mid-November. Newell decided to stay in New Zealand at the start of the pandemic and is donating a dollar to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at Starship Children’s Hospital for every viewer who watches the satellite launch livestream or the online recording within 24 hours of launch. This soon-to-be astronaut gnome is actually a 150mm tall model of “Garden Gnome” or “Gnome Chompski,” an item that first appeared in Half-Life 2: Episode Two but achieved meme status following the speedruns and travelogues (like this charmingly detailed one written by former games journalist Tom Francis) that popped up around it. The gnome was likely a reference to an older prank involving photographing stolen garden gnomes “traveling” around the...

You’ll have to wait a bit longer for Panic’s odd little handheld: In an update published today , the company announced that Playdate will slip from its original 2020 window and now ship in early 2021. The device is the software developer’s first piece of physical hardware, a handheld with a unique crank alongside traditional buttons for controlling the device. Teenage Engineering co-designed the Playdate and it bears many of the company’s minimalistic touches in a bright, playful yellow. Image: Panic Playdate with final packaging. Panic announced in March that its staff was moving to work from home and that the Malaysian factory producing the Playdate had temporarily shut down. The company says adapting to these issues ultimately led to the decision to push back the launch to 2021. There’s good news alongside the delay, though. The hardware for the Playdate is finalized and approved by the FCC, meaning it can head into production next month. Additionally, the planned first s...

Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid The New York Post is back on Twitter, after Twitter updated its policy on policy changes. This story is going to be confusing, but not as confusing as Twitter’s attempts at moderation. To recap: On October 14th, The New York Post published a ( contested and possibly part of a disinformation campaign , though this is absolutely not the point I am here to tell you about) story about Hunter Biden , the son of presidential candidate Joe Biden. Very little of the contents of the Post story are pertinent to the discussion we are about to have, except this: some of the materials in it, Twitter alleges, seem to be the result of hacking. Got all that so far? Great, there’s more Twitter suspended The New York Post’s account for six tweets that linked to the story and blocked links to the story in question, citing its hacked materials policy, as well as a policy about private information . This caused, perhaps predictably, a massive uproar. On October 15th , ...

Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid The New York Post is back on Twitter, after Twitter updated its policy on policy changes. This story is going to be confusing, but not as confusing as Twitter’s attempts at moderation. To recap: On October 14th, The New York Post published a ( contested and possibly part of a disinformation campaign , though this is absolutely not the point I am here to tell you about) story about Hunter Biden , the son of presidential candidate Joe Biden. Very little of the contents of the Post story are pertinent to the discussion we are about to have, except this: some of the materials in it, Twitter alleges, seem to be the result of hacking. Got all that so far? Great, there’s more Twitter suspended The New York Post’s account for six tweets that linked to the story and blocked links to the story in question, citing its hacked materials policy, as well as a policy about private information . This caused, perhaps predictably, a massive uproar. On October 15th , ...