Tech Talk

Photo by AMY OSBORNE / AFP via Getty Images Mark Zuckerberg believes that Apple and his company are in a “very deep, philosophical competition” to build the metaverse, suggesting the two tech giants are ready to butt heads in selling hardware for augmented and virtual reality. The Meta CEO told employees earlier this month that they were competing with Apple to determine “what direction the internet should go in,” according to a recording of his comments during an internal all-hands meeting obtained by The Verge . He said that Meta would position itself as the more open, cheaper alternative to Apple, which is expected to announce its first AR headset as soon as later this year. “This is a competition of philosophies and ideas, where they believe that by doing everything themselves and tightly integrating that they build a better consumer experience,” Zuckerberg said of the brooding rivalry. “And we believe that there is a lot to be done in specialization across different companies

The company’s profits are lower for another quarter. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Profits are down at Google parent company Alphabet for the second quarter in a row, even as it brings in more money. Alphabet brought in around $16 billion in profit during its second quarter of 2022, down from $18.5 billion during the same period last year, the company reported in its Q2 2022 earnings report this afternoon. As with last quarter, it seems like rising expenses have played a part; the company actually brought in more revenue than it did in Q2 2021. This quarter, its revenues were almost $69.7 billion, up from last year’s $61.9 billion. However, compared to this time in 2021, Google’s spending around $3 billion more on both research and development and sales and marketing. Google’s working towards a “sharper focus” As for how Google made its money, the breakdown is similar to last year. “Google Search & other” ads are still Google’s bread and butter, bringing in al

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Meta just made the surprising announcement that it will be raising the price of its Quest 2 virtual reality headsets by $100 next month. If you did a double take upon seeing that news, we commiserate — it’s weird for a two-year-old consumer tech product to suddenly go up in price. We’re conditioned to expect the price of tech products to go down over time thanks to the relentless advancement of technology and more efficient manufacturing processes. But here, the same product you could buy in September 2020 will cost 33 percent more in August 2022. The official reason Meta is upping prices is that “the costs to make and ship our products have been on the rise,” according to a company blog post credited only to the “Oculus Blog.” “By adjusting the price of Quest 2, we can continue to grow our investment in groundbreaking research and new product development that pushes the VR industry to new heights.” Typically, if a product costs more

Best Buy’s first digital-first location will open on Tuesday, July 26th, in Charlotte, North Carolina. | Image: Best Buy Best Buy is opening a digital-first, small-format store on Tuesday in Monroe, North Carolina, that takes a very different approach than most of its “big box” retail locations. The 5,000-square-foot location is only about 15 percent as big as the typical 35- to 40,000-square-foot Best Buy location and is even smaller than many smaller Apple Stores, which are typically between 6,000 to 8,500 square feet. Bloomberg reported last year that Best Buy was testing downsized locations of about 27,000 square feet to as small as 15,000 square feet, but this is much smaller, squeezing nearer to the now-closed Best Buy Mobile footprint. This test store is in the Charlotte area, where Best Buy also launched five other test stores last year , trying experiences ranging from a remodel to an outlet-style approach. Unlike Best Buy’s outlet stores and big locations that sport

Illustration by Carlo Cadenas / The Verge Unsurprisingly, it seems like the type of people who shun vaccinations are not great at preventative cybersecurity either. As reported by the Daily Dot , “Unjected” — a dating site specifically for people who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 — failed to take basic precautions to keep users’ data secure, leaving sensitive data exposed and allowing potentially anyone to become a site administrator. The “Unjected” site was set up to leave the administrator dashboard fully accessible to anyone who knew how to look for it. Through this dashboard, an administrator could access user information for any member of the site, including name, date of birth, email address, and (if provided) their home address. The configuration error was discovered by a security researcher known as GeopJr, who confirmed the vulnerability to the Daily Dot by editing live posts on the site. GeopJr apparently noticed that the site had been published live to the web w

Image: MiHoYo Genshin Impact’s impending Sumeru update is set to add some beautiful new areas to explore, and the game’s developers shared a look at some of the new zones in a new video . The new areas will be divided into two major zones: a rainforest and a desert, environment artist Jax Huang says in the video. The rainforest is filled with rolling hills, lush vegetation, and towering trees. The desert biome, on the other hand, is more sparse but also contains ruins with intricate architecture. Both look like natural additions to Genshin Impact’s rich and colorful environments. Two mysterious robots can be found Each biome has some more fantastical elements, too. The forest has a city built on a huge tree and zones with giant, glowy plants, while the desert has ruins that are floating upside down in the air. And the mysterious remains of a giant robot can be found in each biome — they make me think of the inert Guardians you can find in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wi

Image: Instagram If you’ve opened Instagram recently and noticed more Reels on your feed or less engagement on your posts and felt the platform was beginning to look a liiiittle too much like TikTok, you’re not alone. The app’s second most-followed person agrees. Kylie Jenner shared a screenshot of another user’s post on her Instagram Stories today, longing for the good old days of Instagram as a photo sharing app. “Make Instagram Instagram again,” the post says. “(Stop trying to be tiktok i just want to see cute photos of my friends). Sincerely, everyone.” Her sister Kim Kardashian also shared the same post, which has over 1.1 million likes. The associated Change.org petition has nearly 100,000 signatures. Image: Instagram Instagram’s steady creep into TikTok territory isn’t new — Meta, which owns Instagram, has been pushing Reels for months, which itself is a TikTok clone product. The company has incentivized creators making Reels by rewarding them with cash bonuses and