Technology

Microsoft’s Xbox Live service is experiencing issues today, marking the fourth time in recent weeks. Xbox One users are currently reporting problems with signing into Xbox Live, accessing friends, and joining parties. The issues started at around 3:15PM ET, and are also affecting some multiplayer games. “We are aware that some users may be experiencing issues when attempting to sign in on Xbox One & Windows 10,” explains Microsoft. “Our teams are aware & working on a fix. Please follow here & on our status page for updates.” Microsoft says it’s also investigating issues affecting “multiple Microsoft 365 services,” suggesting the outage issues go further than just Xbox Live. Microsoft has experienced multiple outages with Xbox Live recently, and this is the fourth outage in rece...

A new leak hints at what to expect from Sony’s WH-1000XM4, the upcoming successor to the WH-1000XM3, one of the best wireless headphones on the market. The details come from Twitter user justplayinghard, who tweeted out information they obtained from a recent teardown of Sony’s Headphones Connect app. The code hints that the M4 headphones may be able to simultaneously pair with two devices, a feature not present in its predecessor. On the current model, you have to reconnect if you want to use a different device. The M4 may also include a feature called “Smart Talking,” allowing the headphones to detect voices and adjust the ambient sound so you can hear conversations without taking off the headphones. Its predecessor has something similar called Ambient Sound Mode, which lets you hear amb...

A large-scale study suggests chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine don’t help treat COVID-19, and it may even be harmful. Today, peer-reviewed journal The Lancet published a paper analyzing data from thousands of patients who took the drugs. Their outcomes were no better than those of people who didn’t — in fact, they were more likely to die or develop an irregular heartbeat. The analysis covers a registry of roughly 15,000 patients across multiple continents, all of whom were given either hydroxychloroquine, chloroquine, or one of those drugs paired with a class of antibiotics called macrolides. It compares the group with roughly 81,000 patients who were not given the drugs. The results weren’t encouraging. People treated with either drug had a higher mortality rate, as well as an increased ...

Security researchers, hackers, and bloggers have had access to an early version of iOS 14 since “at least February,” according to Vice. There have already been many iOS 14 leaks over the past few months, and it seems possible the information came from this early version of the operating system. It’s common for small tidbits about Apple software updates to leak in the months and weeks before Apple officially unveils them. But it’s quite unusual for an entire pre-release build of iOS to hit the web months before its announcement — and this may be the first time it has ever happened this far in advance, according to a source referenced in Vice’s report. This might be the first time iOS has leaked so far ahead of its unveiling Current leaked features for iOS 14 include a new fitness app, a Pen...

Ali Wong and Tiffany Haddish are returning for a new season of Tuca & Bertie, set to air on Adult Swim two years after Netflix’s decision to cancel the series. The network announced on Twitter today that a new season of the animated series, created by former BoJack Horseman producer and artist Lisa Hanawalt, will air in 2021. Adult Swim has ordered 10 episodes, according to The Wrap. The show follows two best friends as they navigate their adult lives, dealing with anxiety, relationship woes, and career struggles. “I’ve been a fan of Adult Swim shows since my teens, so I’m thrilled to bring my beloved fowl to the party and be a new voice for a fresh decade of absurd, irreverent, yet heartwarming adult animation,” Hanawalt told The Wrap. Tuca & Bertie first premiered on Netflix in M...

In the last week, factory employees have returned to work across the United States to make cars for the country’s four main auto manufacturers: Ford, General Motors, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, and Tesla. And each of those companies has published a plan showing how it will try to keep those workers from contracting or spreading COVID-19. Those plans largely take the same shape. They’re presented in glossy PDF pamphlets, each starting with a letter to employees from the respective company’s highest-ranking executive overseeing workplace safety. Like any corporate document, they occasionally get bogged down with platitudes. But they all largely describe a lot of the same basic precautions, including supplying employees with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) like masks or enforcing physical ...

Microsoft is finally bringing cloud support to Outlook for Windows email signatures. It’s a feature that Outlook users have been requesting for more than a decade, and it has remained at the top of Microsoft’s most-requested feature list for Outlook for Windows for nearly three years. Microsoft originally acknowledged that it was planning some type of sync support for Outlook signatures back in September, and the company says it will now roll this out in a June update. Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscribers will get access to cloud signature support in Outlook for Windows, allowing users to have a consistent signature across devices. Many companies have had to turn to custom solutions to implement Outlook for Windows signatures that roam across devices, so official support from Microsoft...

It’s certainly an arresting image: a four-legged robot trots across a grassy hillside, steering a herd of sheep without a human in sight. The apparently seamless fusion of the futuristic and the agrarian feels refreshing — even hopeful — at a time when so much progress relies upon the destruction of the natural world. But is it realistic? Could a robot actually take on the job of a sheepdog? The footage comes from New Zealand firm Rocos, which announced a partnership this week with Boston Dynamics, maker of the four-legged Spot robot that stars in the video (and many others). Rocos makes software to control robots remotely, and the video demonstrates one potential use-case: agriculture. “Equipped with payloads like heat, LIDAR, gas and high resolution camera sensors, Spot navigates rugged ...

The Verge is a place where you can consider the future. So are movies. In Yesterday’s Future, we revisit a movie about the future and consider the things it tells us about today, tomorrow, and yesterday. The movie: Wall-E (2008) The future: In Wall-E, waste is what does us in. The first third of Pixar’s ninth film is among the best 30-minute stretches of cinema the studio has ever produced: a mostly silent experience where Wall-E, a cute trash-compacting robot, introduces us to an abandoned Earth. As Wall-E wanders a derelict city, collecting trinkets of humanity we left behind, we slowly learn what went wrong. The excesses of humanity have led to too much garbage. Landfills quickly became inadequate, and for every skyscraper in the city, there’s a pile of compacted trash just as big. As t...

Disney released a surprise new series on its Disney Plus streaming service today: Zenimation, an ASMR-style series of short videos that take clips from classic animated Disney movies and replace the usual dialogue, songs, and score with the realistic ambient noise that they would have in real life. The first season of Zenimation features 10 episodes, centered on themes like “Water,” “Nature,” “Discovery,” and “Flight.” Each episode is about five to seven minutes long. The episodes are well-made, combining Disney’s excellent animation (both CGI and hand-drawn) with peaceful, relaxing soundscapes and effects. They offer an interesting spin on classic scenes like Aladdin and Jasmine’s magic carpet ride or Moana’s journey through the waves. But the key behind Zenimation is that it’s entirely a...

Microsoft’s Solitaire game is turning 30 years old today. Microsoft is celebrating the occasion with a world record attempt of the most games of Microsoft Solitaire completed in one day. 35 million people still play Solitaire monthly, according to Microsoft, with more than 100 million hands played daily around the world. Microsoft Solitaire was originally included as part of Windows 3.0 back in 1990, designed specifically to teach users how to use a mouse. Grabbing virtual cards and dropping them in place taught the basics of drag-and-drop in Windows, which we still use today in many parts of the operating system. Microsoft Solitaire, originally known as Windows Solitaire, is one of the most played games in the world as it shipped in every version of Windows for more than two decades. That...

The latest stable version of Microsoft’s Edge browser finally adds support for extension syncing, meaning you won’t have to manually re-install extensions individually with each new device. Microsoft teased the feature as part of its Build announcement earlier this week, but the update log for the browser’s latest version (83.0.478.37, to be exact) confirms that it’s rolling out now. Alongside support for extension sync, the latest version of Edge includes a host of other improvements. You can now exempt certain cookies from automatically clearing when the browser closes (useful if there’s a particular website that you want to stay logged into), and Edge’s Collections feature now supports drag and drop to make it easier to save web pages and clippings. The browser can also now prompt you t...