Technology

A major focus of any smartphone release is the camera. For a while, all eyes were on the camera’s hardware — megapixels, sensors, lenses, and so on. But since Google’s Pixel was introduced, there’s been a lot more interest in the camera’s software and how it takes advantage of the computer it’s attached to. Marc Levoy, former distinguished engineer at Google, led the team that developed computational photography technologies for the Pixel phones, including HDR+, Portrait Mode, and Night Sight, and he’s responsible for a lot of that newfound focus on camera processing. Levoy recently joined Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel for a conversation on The Vergecast after leaving Google and joining Adobe to work on a “universal camera app” for the company. In the interview, Levoy talks about his m...

Waitingto bethrown out Detained, dehumanized,deported.Inside the cruel bureaucracy of ICE’s immigrant detention centers. by Gaby Del Valle Sep 8, 2020, 10:00am EDTphoto illustrations by Alex Parkin Sep 4, 2020, 11:13am EDT Sep 4, 2020, 11:13am EDT waitingto bethrownout Detained, dehumanized,deported.Inside the cruel bureaucracy of ICE’s immigrant detention centers. by Gaby Del ValleSep 8, 2020, 10:00am EDTphoto illustrations by Alex Parkin Samuel’s journey to America took six months, and it wasn’t even where he wanted to go. After fleeing Cameroon for Ghana in January 2019, his plan was to stay put: go back to school, maybe get a job. More than anything else, Samuel wanted to regain the stability he had lost three years earlier, when Cameroon’s Francophone government began arre...

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, during the ambient dread of New York’s locked-down spring, I realized that I couldn’t put words in a coherent order. I built virtual spaces instead. That’s how I fell in love with the cockroaches from one of my favorite horror games. I’m talking about Amnesia: The Dark Descent, an adventure gaming masterpiece that turns 10 years old today. Frictional Games’ Amnesia is a Lovecraftian tale that puts players at the mercy of enemies they can’t fight in a world full of vivid, eerie grotesquerie. Its protagonist, Daniel, wakes up in a Prussian castle with no memory and a letter, written by himself, demanding he kill the estate’s master Alexander. He ventures deeper and deeper into the castle, pursued by howling flesh-monsters and troubled by emerging memories o...

Microsoft is reportedly preparing to launch a smaller Surface Laptop later this year. Windows Central reports that Microsoft is preparing a more lightweight version of the Surface Laptop with a smaller 12.5-inch display. This new model will reportedly include Intel’s 10th Gen Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. The smaller Surface Laptop is said to be targeted at students, and it will be running Windows 10 in S Mode. Microsoft is even rumored to be pricing this new Surface Laptop between $500 and $600, making it an affordable option for the Surface line. It appears to be positioned as the Surface Go equivalent to the Surface Pro, as a smaller and more budget-friendly clamshell laptop. As is always the case with Surface devices, Microsoft will likely offer RAM and storage up...

The next Legend of Zelda adventure is coming very soon. Today, Nintendo revealed a new title called Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, which will launch on the Switch this year. The game, which is being developed by Koei Tecmo, looks to be a successor of sorts to the original Hyrule Warriors from 2014. That game combined the massive battles of Dynasty Warriors with the lore and history of Zelda. The new game is set 100 years before Breath of the Wild, where players can experience the great calamity that influenced the events of BOTW. You can get a brief glimpse of the action in the video above. Age of Calamity will launch on November 20th. As for the long-awaited sequel to Breath of the Wild, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma says, “You’ll have to wait a bit longer.” The announcement comes a week ...

Hours after Microsoft’s Xbox Series S console widely leaked, the company has gone on the record to confirm its existence. In a tweet, Microsoft describes the Series S as offering “next-gen performance in the smallest Xbox ever” and lists the price as the previously leaked figure of $299. In the UK it’ll cost £249.99. The accompanying image gives a better look at the Series S than the first leaked picture, showing off how thin it is and confirming the lack of a disc drive. As with the leaked imagery, the Series S is pictured standing upright, but the orientation of the Xbox logo suggests it’s expected to be more commonly used in a traditional horizontal configuration. That’s about all for the announcement right now — Microsoft says it will share more information “soon.” Let’s make it offici...

Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox Series S console leaked earlier today, just before the company officially confirmed its $299 pricing. Now a new leak is providing more details on exactly what’s inside the smaller Xbox Series S. Twitter leaker WalkingCat has posted a promotional video for the Series S, confirming that the console is targeting 120fps gaming at up to 1440p resolution and offering 512GB of storage. The Xbox Series S will also include support for ray tracing, variable rate shading, and variable refresh rate. Microsoft is also including support for 4K media streaming, and even 4K upscaling for games. The video also reveals the Xbox Series S is the smallest Xbox ever, and it will be 60 percent smaller than the bigger Xbox Series X. The 512GB storage could be a challenge given modern gam...

Apple’s latest retail store has drawn comparisons to a floating lantern, with a unique design incorporating a glass dome that sits directly on the water of Singapore’s Marina Bay. We first saw a glimpse of the store, the company’s third in Singapore and 512th worldwide, a few weeks ago, and the iPhone-maker has now shared new pictures of the building’s interior, which opens to visitors on Thursday, September 10th. The store is called the Apple Marina Bay Sands, and is located in a luxury district of Singapore full of shops, restaurants, and the Marina Bay Sands hotel and casino. The sphere is constructed from 114 individual pieces of glass held in place by 10 vertical mullions (the architectural term for supporting bars between panes of glass in a window), and Apple says the dome is a firs...

This could be our first look at the Xbox Series S, Microsoft’s cut-down next-gen console that carries the codename Lockhart. An image posted by Thurrott allegedly shows the console’s design and reveals a price point of $299. It’s not immediately clear where the image came from, but leaker WalkingCat followed up with a short video showing off the same design in relation to the Series X. Analyst Daniel Ahmad also corroborated the image, though couldn’t confirm the price. If they’re legitimate, the leaks show a white console that looks somewhat similar to the Xbox One S, as the Series X does to the One X. It’s depicted in vertical orientation, though the rotation of the Xbox logo suggests that may not be the primary configuration. WalkingCat’s video shows that the Series S is much thinner tha...

Xiaomi’s Poco sub-brand has announced its latest phone, the Poco X3 NFC. As you might have guessed from the inclusion of “NFC” in the name of the phone itself, this is not a device targeting a typical flagship audience. But like other recent Poco phones, the X3 NFC looks to be a strong proposition from a price-performance standpoint. This is not a subtle phone, even before you get to the giant glossy “POCO” logo on the plastic back. It’s big and chunky at 9.4mm thick and 215g, with a large camera bump — but that’s just what you get when you make a phone with a massive screen, a huge battery, and a bunch of cameras. The display is a 6.67-inch 1080p panel with a refresh rate of 120Hz. It’s an LCD, which means it’s not quite as contrasty as the OLED screens common in even mid-range devices th...

Protests and calls for boycotts over Disney’s live-action adaptation of Mulan have sprung up again in wake of the film hitting Disney Plus. Hashtags like #BoycottMulan have trended on Twitter following Mulan’s release on September 4th, but protests are tied to an incident that occurred in summer 2019, Vulture reports. Mulan actress and star Liu Yifei made comments last summer showing her support for police forces in Hong Kong at a time when people in Hong Kong were protesting newly suggested policies that would allow citizens to be extradited to mainland China, the BBC reported. Liu shared a message on Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform, that read “I support Hong Kong’s police, you can beat me up now,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. Liu then added on Weibo in English, “Wh...

Minecraft is getting a free upgrade making the game playable in PlayStation VR later this month, developer Mojang Studios announced in a blog post today. Fans have been asking for PSVR Minecraft for a while now. Although the ever-popular game is already available to play on various virtual reality platforms (it launched on the Oculus Rift back in 2016, for example), Sony’s VR hardware has until now been overlooked. Mojang says the upgrade will come as a free download patch for all players some time later this month. “Everyone who has Minecraft on PlayStation 4 will get that patch automatically,” says the studio. “Download that patch and you’ll get access to the new Minecraft VR functionality. Of course, you’ll need a PS VR setup in order to use it.” Mojang also shared screenshots of what a...