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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge See that little “closed lock” icon in your web browser, right next to the URL? That means you’re browsing via HTTPS, encrypting your traffic so third parties can’t spy on most of the information you’re sending. But secure-looking HTTPS websites can still house insecure HTTP forms for you to fill in your passwords and other personal data — and Google is planning to do something about that in Chrome 86, coming this Octobe

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Chrome for Android will begin adding “fast page” labels to the context menus of pages it considers high-quality, Google announced Monday. The company says the labels will be based on signals from its Core Web Vitals metrics, which keep track of user experience, including page load time, responsiveness, and how stable content is while it loads.
Right now, there’s only one way to tell: if you long-press a link before visiting a page, you&r

Photo by Drew Angerer / Getty Images The Democratic National Convention kicks off Monday night online. The coronavirus pandemic forced the Democrats to can their initial plans of an in-person event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to formally nominate former Vice President Joe Biden as the party’s nominee for president. But they’re still planning to throw an event featuring prominent speakers, politicians, and musical guests for four nights this week.When is it?
The convention will run from

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple is yet again making changes to the window of time customers have to buy its AppleCare+ extended warranty for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and other products. According to Bloomberg, the company has stretched the eligibility for AppleCare+ to an entire year after the purchase of whatever device you’re covering. Retail staff and customer support staff were informed of the change on Monday, though Apple’s website still doesn’t reflect a

How many times will NBC create a TV show featuring an airplane that mysteriously disappears in an attempt to copy the success of Lost? If the trailer for the upcoming Peacock original series Departure is anything to go by, the answer is “at least three times in less than a decade.”
Departure, a six-episode miniseries set to be released on September 17th, tells the story of passenger plane Flight 716, which “shockingly” vanishes midflight, causing a team of investigators t

Photo Illustration by Alex Castro | Photography by Bobby Quillard Surely you know Dr Disrespect: the mustached, mullet-wearing streamer who also happens to be the “most famous, dominant gamer in the history of the world.” Perhaps you also want to know how he grew his sick mullet and stache? Well, soon you can: he’s writing a memoir.Image: Gallery BooksHere’s what the cover looks like for Dr Disrespect’s memoir.
Violence. Speed. Momentum. will arrive on March 30th,

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge If you’re a resident of Deschutes County, Oregon, you could host a slumber party in the world’s last remaining Blockbuster video store.The Blockbuster is located in Bend, Oregon, and households of up to four people can book it for one of three available nights: September 18th, 19th, or 20th. Booking opens today at 1PM PT / 4PM ET. According to the Airbnb listing, a stay will cost $4 per night.Spending a night in the last vestige of an obsolete fran

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout developer Mediatonic is forcing The Brands to fight in the name of charity. The game’s official account tweeted today that because “the thirst from brands has been unreal,” it will create a special costume to the highest bidder. All proceeds will go to Special Effect, a UK-based charity for gamers with physical disabilities.Since its release earlier this month, Fall Guys has become an instant hit. In the first 24 hours following its launch, the game

Samsung’s $500 Galaxy A51 5G will arrive on AT&T on August 21st, joining T-Mobile (which got the device on August 7th) and Verizon (which got a mmWave-equipped A51 5G UW variant on August 13th).As the name may imply, the A51 5G is the 5G version of the standard $399 A51, which was released back in May, but it improves on the regular model in a few ways, offering a more powerful Exynos 980 processor, 6GB of RAM and a larger 4,500mAh battery.
Carrier locks aside, the AT&T version of

Microsoft will end support for Internet Explorer 11 across its Microsoft 365 apps and services next year. In exactly a year, on August 17th, 2021, Internet Explorer 11 will no longer be supported for Microsoft’s online services like Office 365, OneDrive, Outlook, and more. Microsoft is also ending support for Internet Explorer 11 with the Microsoft Teams web app later this year, with support ending on November 30th.
While it’s still going to take some time to pry enterprise users of

Image by Epic Games Epic says that Apple has threatened to cut off its access to all iOS and Mac developer tools as retaliation for sneaking a new payment option into Fortnite last week — a stunt that ended in the app being banned from the App Store and Epic filing a blockbuster antitrust lawsuit against Apple, claiming it places illegal restrictions on the distribution of iOS apps.
Apple told Epic that its access to development tools would be cut off if the company did not “cure yo

Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images Facebook abandoned broken equipment and thousands of gallons of drilling fluid under the ocean floor just off the coast of Oregon in April. The company was constructing a landing site for an undersea telecommunications cable when it hit an unexpected snag. A drill bit broke and got stuck after hitting hard rock about 50 feet under the seafloor on April 28th, Oregon Live and the Tillamook Headlight-Herald first reported in early August.

Northrop Grumman’s MEV-2 satellite prior to launch. | Photo illustration by William Joel / The Verge, Photo by Northrop Grumman On Saturday, a Northrop Grumman spacecraft, designed to give a dying satellite a new lease on life, launched into space. Its objective is to latch onto an aging satellite that’s been in space for 16 years and prolong the old robot’s life in orbit by giving it a new set of engines and fuel.
The spacecraft is named MEV-2, for Mission Extension Vehicle 2

Robinhood announced this morning that it has raised $200 million more at a new, higher $11.2 billion valuation. The new capital came as a surprise.
Astute observers of all things fintech will recall that Robinhood,a popular stock trading service, has raised capital multiple times this year, including an initial $280 million round at an $8.3 billion valuation, and a later $320 million addition that brought its valuation to $8.6 billion.The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. You can re

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge If you want to purchase a phone with an under-display front camera right now, you’re out of luck. While several companies have tested the feature, none have yet to ship one to consumers. But that should change soon, as ZTE aims to become the first company to mass-produce and ship a phone with an under-display camera next month.The Axon 20 5G will launch in China on September 1st. ZTE notes in its press release that “all the major industry players&r

Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple TV Plus subscribers can now get a subscription to both CBS All Access and Showtime for $9.99 per month, making it the first video bundle available for subscribers to Apple’s premium streaming service (via 9to5Mac).
The deal could be a nice savings for people who already subscribe to all three services. Apple TV Plus costs $4.99 per month, though anyone who buys a new Apple device gets a free year of the service. And if you buy the other subsc

Photo by Ted Richardson for The Washington Post via Getty Images Only 2.5 percent of colleges are planning a fully in-person semester this upcoming year. Rather than spend a year staring at Zoom, some students are considering taking the semester off. Startups see this as an opportunity to recruit these students into virtual fall internships, Bloomberg reports.Some firms are organizing virtual career fairs, offering grants to teams of entrepreneurs, and compiling lists of potential employers. Ot

Photo by Lucy North / MI News / NurPhoto via Getty Images The UK has said that students in England and Wales will no longer receive exam results based on a controversial algorithm after accusations that the system was biased against students from poorer backgrounds, Reuters and BBC News report. The announcement followed a weekend of demonstrations at which protesters chanted “fuck the algorithm” outside the country’s Department for Education.
Instead, students will receive gra

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Independent Apple repair stores will now be able to fix more than just iPhones with authorized parts. Apple announced today that it’s expanding its independent repair program to cover Macs, meaning stores will receive training and real Apple parts to fix Macs. It isn’t clear what kind of repairs stores will be able to conduct on Macs or what parts they’ll be able to buy.
“When a device needs repairs, we want people to have access to a s

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge The US Secret Service (USSS) signed a contract to access Locate X, a service that lets law enforcement track phone users’ locations. Motherboard published apparent confirmation of the deal this morning, following a Protocol report in March. The contract indicates that the USSS paid Virginia company Babel Street around $36,000 to add Locate X to a $2 million social media monitoring package.
Protocol’s report describes Locate X as a powerful tracking

At Disrupt this year TechCrunch is digging into the $100 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) threshold. To help us explore the software revenue milestone, we’re bringing in a number of CEOs that have already reached it: Egnyte’s Vineet Jain, GitLab’s Sid Sijbrandij and Kaltura’s Michal Tsur.
Join us on the Extra Crunch stage to hear this session, along with several other sessions around how founders can navigate the choppy startup waters. You can snag a ticket here.
Th

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Panos Panay, the always-pumped Microsoft chief product officer and face of the Surface brand of hardware, has been appointed to Sonos’ board of directors. Sonos board chairman Mike Volpi said in a press release that “Panay’s comprehensive background in developing tightly-integrated hardware and software platforms, coupled with a track record of innovation in product design and development, makes him an exciting addition to the Sonos

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge The Trump administration is further tightening restrictions on Chinese phone manufacturer Huawei, making it more difficult for the company to get chips for its devices. And a temporary general license that offered a reprieve for Huawei customers has now expired and won’t be extended, making it harder for older Huawei devices to receive Android updates from Google.
The US Commerce Department said on Monday that it will permit “ongoing security

A new online multiplayer co-op mode is heading to Ghost of Tsushima, Sucker Punch Productions announced today. Legends, which follows four warriors of legendary renown, will be available for free this year. Its locations and enemies are inspired by Japanese mythology.“We designed Legends to be an exclusively cooperative gameplay experience,” Sucker Punch says. Players will be able to use matchmaking or play with friends in groups of up to four. In a full squad, players can try wave-b

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The partnership between Verizon and Disney seems to be working out well for both sides: today, the carrier announced that alongside the free 12 months of Disney Plus streaming it was already including with unlimited plans, it’ll now throw in Hulu and ESPN Plus, too. But the full bundle only goes to customers on either the Play More or Get More unlimited plans, which are Verizon’s most expensive options. Unlike before, where the free promo was

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Amazon’s Echo Studio smart speaker has never been cheaper than $170, where it’s at today at both Amazon and Best Buy. If you’re interested in an Alexa-powered speaker that sounds great with an interesting 3D audio feature and Dolby Atmos support, you should really check out the deal that Best Buy is offering. The $170 speaker includes a free Echo Show 5 smart display and a white Bluetooth-enabled Philips Hue smart bulb with the purchase (normal

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here, and myself here, and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
This mornin

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple and Epic Games have gone to war, with the two companies clashing over Apple’s App Store policies. Epic, in protest of Apple’s 30 percent fee for any digital transactions on its iOS platform, attempted to circumvent things with a direct payment option in Fortnite, leading Apple to ban the game entirely. But Apple’s Fortnite fight isn’t just over a particular policy for the App Store; it’s a battle that could decide the future

Unless you are a hardcore fan of flight simulators, you probably don’t have a flight stick at your desk. There was a time when flight sticks, or more generic “joysticks,” were an essential PC gaming accessory, but Windows’ support for Xbox-style gamepads grew as the demand for games that simulate aerial and space combats decreased. Now, they’re somewhat of a niche product.That may well change this year. Tomorrow sees the launch of Microsoft Flight Simulator, a gorge