‘No evidence’ voting in the US ‘was in any way compromised,’ says Department of Homeland Security

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...

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This leaked icon may show what Apple’s rumored over-ear headphones look like

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...

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Apple might appease antitrust concerns by suggesting third-party apps to new iPhone owners

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...

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Apple rejected sticker apps that promoted mask-wearing, but it’s reinstating them now

Two Apple developers have been given the green light to promote mask-wearing with their stickerpack apps for iOS, after previously receiving rejections from Apple that suggested they were making “inappropriate references to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Here’s how this story began:

Had similar rejection. Our stickers said ”wear a mask”, “wash your hands”. Got approved when we removed the text but kep the sticker. pic.twitter.com/cFZABwwY8A

— Mark Johnson (@markjnet) November 8, 2020

How could a friendly sticker wearing a mask be an inappropriate reference to COVID-19, particularly when Apple has its very own mask-wearing emoji? That was the question on my mind, so I reached out to Apple yesterday.

This morning, Apple replied that not only...

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Google’s Nest Audio may or may not have a home theater trick up its sleeves

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....

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Virgin Hyperloop hits an important milestone: the first human passenger test

For the first time, two people rode a hyperloop pod through a nearly airless tube at 100 mph

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The iPhone’s ultrawide camera could get a big boost in 2021, says Kuo

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The iPhone 12 has just barely launched, but we already have some idea what next year’s lineup could look like — according to TFI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple’s 2021 iPhones will keep the new form factor and screen sizes introduced with the iPhone 12 line, but offer an improved ultrawide camera on the high-end Pro and Pro Max models (via MacRumors).

Kuo predicted the iPhone 12 line and now seems set to reveal what to expect from the 2021 models nearly a year before they launch. This time, Kuo says the ultrawide camera of the Pro and Pro Max will be upgraded from the current f/2.4, five-element lens setup to an f/1.8, six-element lens with autofocus. The larger aperture should let in more light, potentially enhancing low-light...

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Watch the PS5 play PS4 games better than ever before

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...

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Facebook sees a rise in misinformation as reports warn of incitement

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Facebook is seeing an increase in worrying activity around the US election, according to reports from The New York Times and BuzzFeed News. According to BuzzFeed News, which viewed a post on Facebook’s internal message board, the company has been tracking a rise in “violence and incitement trends” associated with hashtags and keywords.

Facebook did not respond for comment about a potential rise in the organization of violent activity on its platform by the time of publication, but Facebook spokesperson Liz Bourgeois told BuzzFeed News that the company is “staying vigilant in detecting content that could incite violence during this time of heightened uncertainty.” In a statement given to The Verge and others, Facebook said that the...

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Apple will require apps to add privacy ‘nutrition labels’ starting December 8th

Image: Apple

Apple debuted a collection of privacy features when it announced iOS 14, but the company’s privacy “nutrition label” concept did not arrive with the launch of the new operating system in September. Today, Apple announced that developers will be required to provide the information for those “labels” starting December 8th.

Like a normal nutrition label that lists ingredients and caloric content, these privacy “labels” should give you a better idea of what’s going on inside an app before you download it from the iOS App Store or Mac App Store. The labels will list what information an app collects, and present that visually on the app page, much like looking at the backs of labels in a grocery store.

Image: Apple

A...

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TV networks cut away from Trump’s ‘most dishonest speech’ ever

President Trump spoke Thursday evening at the White House | Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Cable networks, broadcast networks and Twitter cut short their broadcasts of President Donald Trump’s speech from the White House briefing room Thursday; some outlets fact-checked the president’s unproven statements rather than carry them live.

Trump began his remarks by baselessly claiming that Democrats were committing “fraud” and trying to “steal” the election. “If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” the president said, even though the counting of legal votes is still happening. There are several key states, including Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona, which are still tallying votes. Neither the president nor the Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, has enough electoral college votes yet to win. Many of those...

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Tesla’s Tequila exists, pricily

Elon Musk has branched out from rockets and cars into booze — as Tesla has launched Tesla Tequila on its website today. If you have $250 burning a hole in your pocket, you can pick up your very own lightning-shaped bottle.

A screenshot of Tesla’s website.

The original branding was Teslaquila, but that must have been jettisoned somewhere along the way. (Well, the idea did start as an April Fools’ Day joke.) Orders are limited to two bottles, and only people in some states can receive them because of “industry regulations.”

Elon was found passed out against a Tesla Model 3, surrounded by "Teslaquilla" bottles, the tracks of dried tears still visible on his cheeks.

This is not a forward-looking statement, because,...

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DJI’s palm-sized Mini 2 drone flies further and shoots 4K for $449

Last year’s DJI Mavic Mini might have been the smallest and lightest full-featured drone on the market, but it was also a little compromised out of the gate. Today, the DJI Mini 2 — don’t call it a Mavic — is addressing some of its limitations.

While the new $449 drone might look identical to the original, even weighing the same 249 grams (which means you don’t need to register it with the FAA), it now comes with DJI’s OcuSync 2 wireless connectivity for up to 2.5 times the wireless range and more stable connectivity. The original was unusual among DJI’s drones for relying on relatively shaky Wi-Fi, which was definitely a dealbreaker for me.

It uses the same controller as the new Mavic Air 2, though of course you won’t get that drone’s...

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YouTube says video claiming Trump won does not violate its election misinformation policies

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...

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Playdate, the tiny handheld with a crank, is delayed to early 2021

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...

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In its latest confusing decision, Twitter reinstates The New York Post

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...

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Lil Yachty’s Quibi show is the first to find a life raft

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Remember Quibi, short-lived media company and purveyor of bizarre shows like Murder House Flip and a horror anthology featuring a golden arm? It’s only been a little over a week since the mobile-first, shortform streamer announced it was shuttering, but already the first of its unreleased shows has found a new home: Lil Yachty’s dramedy, Public Figures, is headed to HBO Max. It seems pieces of Quibi might live on — whether you watched it or not.

Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman’s efforts to sell Quibi outright to big companies like Apple and WarnerMedia was one of the first indications that things were about to go bottoms up at the young company. The attempts that followed to sell off Quibi’s unreleased content all but confirmed the...

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Google is bringing its own VPN to desktops and phones with $9.99 Google One subscription

There are any number of VPN services you can use to help protect your privacy and security with an encrypted internet connection, and now Google has its own. Well, technically, it already did, but only for Google Fi cellular subscribers on Android smartphones. Now, the company’s announcing it’ll throw in an Android-based VPN free of charge to any 2TB Google One cloud storage subscriber in the US — and will expand to iOS, Windows and Mac and other countries “in the coming months.”

As you can see in the image above, you’ll need to be on the 2TB Google One plan which costs $9.99 a month or $99 per year, so it’s not exactly a free VPN. But if you’re interested, this Google GIF shows you how to turn it on:

A new...

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Anker’s custom wireless charger for the unannounced second-gen Amazon Echo Buds leaks in full

A render of the unannounced Anker charging pad. | Image: GizmoChina

Just yesterday, we found FCC filings for a new Anker PowerWave wireless charging pad that mentioned an unannounced second generation of Echo Buds with wireless charging right in the name. That charger has since leaked in full in a Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) listing spotted by GizmoChina.

The now-pulled WPC listing included the render of the product at the top of this post that gives us a few hints about what the Echo Buds’ case might look like and some of the features of the pad. The charger appears to have an oblong indentation for the Echo Buds’ wireless charging case to rest in, indicating the case will have a much different shape than more rectangular one used with the original Echo Buds. (We observed a similar oblong shape in a...

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Microsoft Internet Explorer users may be surprised when they get redirected to Edge next month

Microsoft has been slowly weaning users off its legacy Internet Explorer browser for a very long time, recently going so far as to use a forced Windows update to install its new Chromium Edge browser on your Windows PC. But next month, Microsoft’s planning to force your computer to automatically launch some 1,156 websites in Edge, too — if you try to launch an “incompatible” site in IE.

That’s the report from ZDNet, which also recorded a video showing how it works:

There’s a lot of big-name sites on the automatically-launch-in-Edge list, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, a number of Google products, Microsoft Teams, and quite a few banks and other big brands.

According to a Microsoft FAQ, the change will roll out in...

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