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Acer Chromebook Spin 713 (2021) review: victory lap

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. Acer has made three significant upgrades to the best-in-class Chromebook Spin 713. The first is that the device now has Intel’s newest 11th Gen processors. The second is that the USB-C ports both support Thunderbolt 4. And… Read more

Stadia’s loss is Clubhouse’s gain: the social audio company has poached a longtime Google engineer

Clubhouse has hired Justin Uberti, creator of the WebRTC standard and the Google Duo video chat app. He leaves Google after nearly 15 years at the company, where he was most recently the engineering lead for Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service and led the team that made the Stadia iOS web app. “Justin is a… Read more

San Jose approves Google’s gigantic and controversial new downtown campus

After first proposing it in 2017, Google has received unanimous approval from the San Jose City Council to move forward with its Downtown West development plan, CNBC reports. The company and city have reached an agreement to develop around 80 acres of land in downtown San Jose, California that will also serve as a mixed-use… Read more

Joe Biden opens up California coast to offshore wind

Offshore wind is headed west. The Biden administration announced today that it will open up parts of the Pacific coast to commercial-scale offshore renewable energy development for the first time. The geography of the West Coast poses huge technical challenges for wind energy. But rising to meet those challenges is a big opportunity for both… Read more

Pansonic teases a GH6 and focuses on streaming with the GH5 Mark II

Panasonic has announced not one but two follow-up cameras to the Lumix GH5, a camera that’s been popular with videographers since it launched in 2017. There’s the GH6, which Panasonic says features a brand-new sensor and will launch by the end of the year for $2,500, and the GH5 Mark II, which is going up… Read more

Microsoft Teams opens up to new collaborative apps that plug into meetings

Microsoft first let developers build third-party apps into Teams last year, but the company is going a step further at Build 2021 today. In a push to get more app developers building for Teams, Microsoft is opening up its crucial APIs, Teams Store, and tools to what it calls collaborative apps. Developers will soon be… Read more

Elon Musk called lidar a ‘crutch,’ but now Tesla is reportedly testing Luminar’s laser sensors

A Tesla Model Y was photographed in Florida sporting rooftop lidar sensors made by buzzy sensor manufacturer Luminar. The sighting caused a bit of a stir among Tesla watchers, given Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s well-established disdain for the laser sensors commonly used by autonomous vehicle companies to create 3D maps of their environment. Even more… Read more

LG Tone Free HBS-FN7 true wireless review: Comfortable and clean

(Pocket-lint) – Make a list of things the world is crying out for. How far up your list does ‘another pair of true wireless in-ear headphones’ come? The answer may well be ‘not very’. However, at least LG’s Tone Free HBS-FN7 aren’t just another ‘me-too!’ by-the-numbers attempt to steal market share from the likes of… Read more

AMD patent details how FidelityFX Super Resolution may work

AMD’s latest patent gives yet another update on FidelityFX Super Resolution technology. The last official word about the release of this technology comes from AMD’s Scott Herkelman, who claimed it would come before year’s end. However, rumours are much more specific and optimistic, pointing to a release in June. The patent (via Beyond3D forum) is… Read more

What’s the best student laptop? We asked students

Shopping for a laptop can be stressful — doubly stressful if you or your children will be learning online for the first time. Kids of different ages have a range of different laptop use cases and different needs. And as the choices for best laptop and best Chromebook evolve, so do students’ needs. So I… Read more

The new Apple TV 4K lets you play any TV audio through a HomePod

Apple might have discontinued the original, full-size HomePod smart speaker, but the company is continuing to add new functionality to it. The latest one relies on you also buying the new, second-generation Apple TV 4K, however. If you own both products, there’s now built-in support for HDMI ARC and eARC, which lets the HomePod play… Read more

Citizen CEO offered to personally fund LA arson manhunt — for the wrong person

Photo by Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times via Getty Image ‘We make this sort of heinous crime impossible to escape from’ As wildfires raged through Southern California last weekend, an app called Citizen offered an unorthodox bounty over livestream and in push alerts to local residents: “hunt down” the alleged arsonist, and we’ll give… Read more

Apple TV Siri Remote review: pushing all the right buttons

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. It’s so, so, so much better. But the moment Apple showed off the second-generation Siri Remote, it was obvious that this would be a huge improvement over its detested predecessor. It’s easy to tell which way is… Read more

Iran Reveals Simorgh Supercomputer, Says Another Is Imminent

Home News (Image credit: Shutterstock) Iran announced this week that its new supercomputer, Simorgh, has debuted with a peak performance of 0.56 petaflops and plans to reach 1 petaflop in two months. Al Jazeera reported that Simorgh was “said to be wholly designed and built by a team of Iranian engineers, who developed the country’s… Read more

Acer Swift 3X review: not quite swift enough

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. Yep, this is a Swift. It has all the features that characterize Acer’s Swift line: a thin body, a lustrous Acer logo, a chassis so light it’s hard to believe you’re holding a laptop and not an… Read more