Tech Talk

At Siggraph 2022 – a tech event where researchers can show off their latest projects – I had the opportunity to try out a prototype VR headset that Meta will never release to the public. This isn’t the first time Meta has showcased its prototype headsets . Back in June, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and members of Meta’s Reality Labs division revealed more than a dozen devices they will never launch.  One of these headsets is the Starburst – a bulky VR headset that can achieve a brightness of up to 20,000 nits, which makes it around 200 times brighter than the Oculus Quest 2 . This extra brightness isn’t intended to turn the headset into some kind of eye-burning torture device. Instead, it helps Meta experiment with HDR.  HDR (high dynamic range) is the tech used in displays to make colors pop in bright scenes, all the while ensuring that dark objects are detailed in shadowy scenes. TVs lacking HDR will show more muted colors, and scenes set in dark environments will be little more th

Right now there's a lot of focus on the new iPhones that Apple is due to unveil in September, but we're also expecting a new entry-level 10.2-inch iPad 2022 and two new iPad Pro 2022 models in the coming months – and we just got some more information on the upcoming slates. As per well-known tipster Mark Gurman at Bloomberg and sources speaking to 9to5Mac , Apple is planning an October event to launch its three new tablets, which may well appear alongside new and updated M2 versions of the Mac Mini, Mac Pro and MacBook Pro. The most affordable iPad in the range, the 10.2-inch model, is apparently getting some pretty major upgrades: the port will switch from Lightning to USB-C (to match the other Apple iPads), and the screen could get a boost in resolution as well as increasing in size to 10.5 inches or 10.9 inches. Internally, it should get upgraded to the A14 Bionic chip. For the professionals As for the two iPad Pro models – replacing the iPad Pro 11 and iPad Pro 12.

The Rehearsal , the docu-comedy TV show created by and starring Nathan Fielder, has been renewed for a second season, HBO has announced . The new came just ahead of the show’s sixth episode and season one finale on Friday night. “One more chance to get it right,” reads the Season 2 tagline, though a premiere date is missing from the announcement. Ostensibly, the basic premise of The Rehearsal is that it’s a comedic documentary series designed to help ordinary people tackle difficult moments in their life by giving them an opportunity to rehearse it beforehand. But the show approaches this simple premise with a budget and attention to detail that can make the scope of each rehearsal feel dizzying, and the show as a whole becomes increasingly self-aware as the series progresses. One more chance to get it right. #TheRehearsal has been renewed for Season 2. pic.twitter.com/Y8uECt4EfD — HBO (@HBO) August 19, 2022 “Nathan has sparked such a lively conversation with The Rehearsal ,”

The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra was in some ways a big upgrade on the S21 Ultra , offering a new design and an S Pen slot, among other changes, but by the sounds of things the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra could be more just a tiny tweak on the current model. That’s according to reputable leaker @UniverseIce , who on Twitter claimed that based on what they’ve heard so far, the S23 Ultra will be the “smallest appearance change in Samsung’s history.” More specifically, they claim that the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra will have dimensions of 163.4 × 78.1 × 8.9mm. For comparison, the Galaxy S22 Ultra is 163.3 x 77.9 x 8.9mm. So if this is right then the two phones will have the same thickness and be almost identical in their length and width. The size of the Galaxy S23 Ultra is almost unchanged from that of the S22 Ultra, with only an increase of 0.1~0.2mm, 5000mAh, 8.9mm thickness, and still a 6.8-inch 3088x1440 screen.As long as the Snapdragon 8Gen2 + One UI 5.1 is excellent, the appearance

The Last of Us | Image: HBO Along with the occasionally-glitchy premiere of House of the Dragon , HBO presented a teaser trailer of content its new owner hasn’t abruptly shelved that provided the first in-motion look of Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey playing Joel and Ellie, respectively, in its upcoming The Last of Us TV show. Neil Druckmann — the writer and creative director of both The Last of Us games — is an executive producer of the show, and tweeted , “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Other content in the preview came from The Idol, Love and Death, Succession, The White Lotus, And Just Like That, Hacks, The White House Plumbers, Our Flag Means Death , but the Naughty Dog-made PlayStation franchise’s live-action TV debut is the one we’re interested in the most. In the twenty seconds or so that it actually shows, you can get a peek at Neal Offerman’s character, and a scene that seemed to recall the opening sequence of the first game with Joel’s daughter. The preview conf

Besides unreleased and disappearing content, there have been plenty of complaints about the HBO Max streaming apps since they launched. Still, they’ve generally held up well under the stress of premieres for content like Tenet, Wonder Woman, The Matrix , or Westworld , but for HBO there may not be anything like a Game of Thrones premiere. Tonight’s debut of the show’s spinoff, House of the Dragon , is the first taste of a new GOT experience inside HBO Max, and while many people trying to stream the premiere episode are watching without a problem, others said the app crashed on them, or froze up once it got past the pre-show teaser trailer. Based on reports seen on Twitter, Reddit , and elsewhere, it appears that most of the people having problems are using an Amazon Fire TV platform, or a Fire Stick. It’s unclear why that app, in particular, would have problems, but if you’re using it and you can’t watch, you may want to try switching if you can’t wait to see all the Targarayens

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A concerned father says that after using his Android smartphone to take photos of an infection on his toddler’s groin, Google flagged the images as child sexual abuse material (CSAM), according to a report from The New York Times . The company closed his accounts and filed a report with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and spurred a police investigation, highlighting the complications of trying to tell the difference between potential abuse and an innocent photo once it becomes part of a user’s digital library, whether on their personal device or in cloud storage. Concerns about the consequences of blurring the lines for what should be considered private were aired last year when Apple announced its Child Safety plan . As part of the plan, Apple would locally scan images on Apple devices before they’re uploaded to iCloud and then match the images with the NCMEC’s hashed database of known CSAM. If enough matches w