Friday, June 24, 2022

The Verge - Tech Posts

The Verge - Tech Posts


Here’s Google’s letter saying employees can relocate to states with abortion rights

Posted: 24 Jun 2022 03:03 PM PDT

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision on Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade, Google has sent an email to its US employees in the wake of , which gave people legal access to abortions. The email, sent by Google's chief people officer Fiona Cicconi and obtained by The Verge, tells employees they can "apply for relocation without justification," and that people in charge of the relocation process "will be aware of the situation."

The Supreme Court's ruling does not make abortion illegal throughout the US — instead, it leaves the decision up to individual states. A number of states have immediately restricted abortion rights, including Louisiana, Missouri and Kentucky. Other states, including California, where Google is headquartered, have...

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T-Mobile is selling your app usage data to advertisers — here’s how to opt out

Posted: 24 Jun 2022 01:48 PM PDT

T-Mobile knows what apps you're using. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

T-Mobile's advertising business is offering a new way for marketers to pry into your app-using habits. Ad Exchanger reports that the un-carrier's new program is called App Insights, and it's now fully operational after spending a year in beta. The program allows third-party marketers to buy T-Mobile customer data and centers around a key piece of information that it has unique access to: what apps you use.

Customer data is anonymized, and it's pooled together with others of similar interests and behaviors, so companies can't buy a specific user's app history. Still, it's creepy. The company's advertising segment touts this offering loud and clear on its website, with the phrase "Apps speak louder than words" splashed across the top of...

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Samsung’s monstrous 55-inch Odyssey Ark monitor could go on sale in August

Posted: 24 Jun 2022 12:59 PM PDT

We're gonna need a bigger desk. | Image: Samsung

Samsung is getting ready to release its massive 55-inch curved Odyssey Ark monitor in August, according to a report from Korean outlet ETNews (via SamMobile). The monitor, which was announced in January at CES, has reportedly gone through a few certification programs that have to be done before it can go on sale.

Details about this monitor are still scant. The company has said that it'll have a 16:9 4K panel and that the stand will support pivot, tilt, and rotation. It also announced that it would come out in the second half of 2022 (which the reported August window falls squarely in). But let's be honest, when you show up with a monitor that promises to physically tower over you while you're using it, people will pay attention even if...

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Cyberpunk 2077 is getting a board game

Posted: 24 Jun 2022 11:41 AM PDT

Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City is a competitive game for up to four players

Cyberpunk 2077 is getting a board game courtesy of a Kickstarter campaign. Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City is a strange twist on the high-tech, low-life underbelly of the world brought to life by CD Projekt Red and Mike Pondsmith. The game is being published by CMON Games, which have put together board game adaptations of God of War and Bloodborne in addition to other existing IPs.

If the slang-ridden synopsis of the game provided on its Kickstarter page is any indicator, it's clear that its creators have some serious reverence for the source material: "Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City is a competitive game in which 1 to 4 players take on the role of ruthless gangs vying for control of the underground in the glittering hellhole...

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This site lets you listen to nature sounds from all over the world

Posted: 24 Jun 2022 11:36 AM PDT

homepage to the website earth dot fm featuring a map with locations for soundscapes and a play button to the right of the map
Earth.fm homepage

For people who love discovering new sounds, there's an intriguing new site that collects soundscapes from around the world.

The site, Earth.fm, bills itself as "Like Spotify, but for natural soundscapes." You can listen to bird species in Malaysia or India or forest sounds in Ghana. The sounds are gathered from numerous contributors who have experience recording the natural world in places including Brazil, Spain, Norway, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The website features sounds from locations like national parks and the everglades.

Users can create their own specialized playlists of sounds available on Earth.fm, zipping from Brazil to Egypt in a matter of minutes.

You can compile a list of different...

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Bitcoin’s energy use drops following price plunge

Posted: 24 Jun 2022 11:21 AM PDT

Bitcoin mining units in Fort Stockton, Texas, U.S., on Friday, April 29, 2022.
Bitcoin mining units in Fort Stockton, Texas, on Friday, April 29th, 2022. | Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg via Getty Images

After taking a nosedive in June, the price of Bitcoin has stayed so low that it's forcing the blockchain's massive electricity use to similarly dip. Over the past couple weeks, Bitcoin's energy consumption has dropped by more than a third, according to estimates of annualized electricity use by digital currency economist Alex de Vries on his website digiconomist.net.

Bitcoin's energy hunger, which has alarmed environmentalists and consumer advocates concerned about pollution and utility prices, comes from the process of mining new tokens. Bitcoin miners earn new tokens by validating transactions through an inherently energy-inefficient process, using specialized machines to solve complex puzzles. All that computing by all those machines...

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The best early Amazon Prime Day deals you can get right now

Posted: 24 Jun 2022 10:40 AM PDT

The actual start of Prime Day is July 12th, and it will continue through the 13th. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon Prime Day is inching ever closer, and there's already some momentum building with early deals. July 12th is slated as the start of the two-day sales event, but you can bet on some nice discounts popping up ahead of that date. We may see a slow crescendo of deals building up or the occasional deluge. It's also likely other retailers will be looking to get into the mix, so keep on the lookout for sales from the likes of Walmart and Target, the latter of which already has a "Deal Days" event planned for the same time period. While Amazon is obviously the star of its own show, it also bears mentioning that Prime Day deals are exclusive to Prime members while competing sales from other retailers are open to all.

In the meantime, we're...

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RIP Chris Evans’ iPhone 6S

Posted: 24 Jun 2022 10:37 AM PDT

Wait, but what did Evans take this picture with? | Image: Chris Evans

I think most of us here at The Verge can agree that if we were famous celebrities who acted in some of the highest-grossing films of all time, we would always be rocking the latest and greatest tech. That's apparently not how Chris Evans, star of Lightyear and The Avengers, rolls — on June 23rd, 2022, he posted a message on Twitter and Instagram that he's finally upgrading his phone: "RIP iPhone 6S," he said. "We had a good run."

In his posts, Evan says that he'll miss the 2015 device's home button — a photo he posted shows that he's upgrading what appears to be an iPhone 13 Pro — but not the fact that it was a "nightly battle" trying to get the 6S to charge. (In the comments of Evan's Instagram post, Hidden Figures and Onward actress...

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The best tech gifts for under $25

Posted: 24 Jun 2022 10:30 AM PDT

These sub-$25 items fall right in the "this is so handy!" bucket of gift-giving. | Image: Tile

Wanting to treat a friend or a loved one to some tech or a cool gadget while on a very lean budget can feel like an impossible task. Most of the everyday devices we use cost multiple hundreds of dollars, so what do you get when you just want a nice birthday or "just because" kind of gift but can't break the bank? Sure, you can default to something basic like socks or a scarf, but that gets boring quick.

Here, we've assembled a bunch of cool tech ideas on a budget of just $25 that are worth your money. At a price this low, you can get some tech essentials, like a dual headphone stand for $21.99 or a quality USB-C charging cable for under $12. That may not sound very exciting at first, but when that cable is 10 feet long and sustains 100...

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The Mars Express spacecraft is finally getting a Windows 98 upgrade

Posted: 24 Jun 2022 09:57 AM PDT

The Mars Express. | Image: European Space Agency

Engineers at the European Space Agency (ESA) are getting ready for a Windows 98 upgrade on an orbiter circling Mars. The Mars Express spacecraft has been operating for more than 19 years, and the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS) instrument onboard has been using software built using Windows 98. Thankfully for humanity and the Red Planet's sake, the ESA isn't upgrading its systems to Windows ME.

The MARSIS instrument on ESA's Mars Express was key to the discovery of a huge underground aquifer of liquid water on the Red Planet in 2018. This major new software upgrade "will allow it to see beneath the surfaces of Mars and its moon Phobos in more detail than ever before," according to the ESA. The agency...

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