Grayson Blackmon | The Verge

Becca’s ‘buds’ beat out other words

2022-01-12T10:05:35-05:00

After working on a data piece analyzing everything The Verge has ever written, I thought it might be fun to look at some other Verge data to see what I could find.

Becca Farsace is one of the best sports we have on our team here, and she also has some of the most distinctive speech patterns — and catchphrases — so I asked her if she would let me dive into the data of her words.

Her Slack response: “Wowee… I’m terrified, but go for it!”

We all have a tendency to use the same vocabulary and phrases from day to day — it’s a part of what makes us who we are, of course. So I pulled the transcripts of every video Becca has hosted on our YouTube channel (over 30!) to get an impression of her speech patterns. A few videos didn’t have transcripts, and I didn’t include videos where she was only a guest for ease of analysis.

After collecting the raw transcripts and analyzing them, I took out some common words, such as “a,” “the,” “and,” “I,” and so on, and came away with some interesting findings.

You can view the original version here.

In the chart above, you can see Becca’s top words across all videos she’s ever hosted. No surprise: “buds” is the top word with nearly 300 uses, followed by “really” and “camera.” “Buds” is a common term of endearment from Becca, referring to us the viewer, but it also reinforces what we already know: that Becca covers a ton of earbuds.

You can view the original version here.

By looking at Becca’s top words per video, we can see how her language shifts from video to video — generally to highlight the topic being discussed. Again, “buds” (highlighted in pink) takes the top spot here.

The use of “buds” is increasing over time, too. Is this due to an ever-growing number of “buds” named products she reviews or a deeper personal connection with her audience?

Mostly, it seems to align with what she’s covering. They can be broken down into five buckets: action cameras, cameras, earbuds, phones, and an assorted bucket of everything else.

Action Cameras, with six videos, didn’t have any particular word or phrase stand out.
Cameras had “camera” as the top word three videos out of a total of five.
Earbuds had “buds” as the top word in nine out of 10 videos.
Phones, with three videos, had “Pixel” or “Pixel / iPhone” in two videos as the top word.
In the Other category, the top word seemed to match the topic of the video, with an even spread over five videos of “AI,” “fiber,” “video,” “board,” and “bike.”

The data suggests that Becca’s speech most closely mirrors the topic she’s covering in each video, rather than being skewed by a favored catchphrase. Though it still goes without saying: Becca says buds a lot.

“In my defense, ‘buds’ is a product category I cover, but it is also a part of my everyday language,” Becca told me. “Is it time that changes? Maybe I’ll let the buds decide.”

Live blog: Microsoft’s 2021 Surface event

2021-09-22T10:40:29-04:00

Microsoft is set to announce a whole bunch of new Surface computers today. At an event starting at 11AM ET / 8AM PT, we are expecting to see a new Surface Pro 8, Surface Book, Surface Go, Surface Pro X, and even the Android-based Surface Duo. That’s a lot of devices for one livestream, so we’ll be live blogging with real-time analysis right here.

Details of the Surface Pro 8 have already leaked, so we are confident we’ll see a new slate with an Intel 11th Gen processor, 120Hz display, and a switch to Thunderbolt ports — finally. The Surface Duo has also been spotted with a big camera bump, so Microsoft may be addressing one of the biggest problems of the original — and may support some form of wireless charging, though it’s possible that’s simply to charge a Surface Pen.

And finally, the Surface Book may ditch the ability to detach its screen like a tablet, in favor of a new kind of hinge. Leaked renders that our Microsoft reporter Tom Warren called “surprisingly close to the real thing” suggest an easel-style hinge that can tilt up to a variety of different angles, a bit like the design that Acer’s been trying to popularize for years.

Whether those rumors turn out to be true or not, we’ll cover the whole thing from start to finish. It promises to be a big kickoff for a season of computers designed to run Windows 11. Tune in below!

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Watch Microsoft’s stream of the event here:

Ten years of breaches in one image

2021-06-08T09:30:00-04:00

This is a map of the internet’s biggest sources of breached data, from June 2011 to today.

The data is drawn from Troy Hunt’s Have I Been Pwned project (with minor adjustments), so you can click through to the site to see if you’re included. Each bubble represents a single breach, and as you scroll down, you’ll see them getting bigger and coming faster, until the sheer volume is overwhelming.

Crucially, they build on each other: if your favorite password didn’t leak out in the Dropbox breach, hackers could have gotten it from LinkedIn, Yahoo, or hundreds of others. (This, as you probably know, is why you need a unique password for each service.)

This isn’t a comprehensive list of every breach in history — it’s a safe bet we don’t know about some yet — but it’s a good survey of the login credentials available on the internet today. We’ve included a cumulative scale marker to give a sense of the full scope. We were a little surprised to find that the database contains more usernames than there are human beings alive on Earth. Of course, with more than 500 separate breaches, there’s ample opportunity for human beings to double up on leaked accounts but the scale of compromised information is still staggering.

We usually talk about breaches as isolated incidents, like a single point of failure with a specific cause and effect. But seen from this vantage, the story is less about any single company, and more about the all-consuming entropy of information online. Something is always breaking, some secret is always slipping out. The real work of cybersecurity is managing that entropy — building a raft of stability in a system where all credentials may eventually be breached and all protections may eventually break down.

You can view the full interactive version here.

Netflix has a not very ‘secret’ site showcasing the Mank soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

2020-10-21T16:23:04-04:00

David Fincher’s new movie Mank comes out in just over a month, but if you want a sneak peek at the film, Netflix has a put out a (not so) ”secret” website showcasing its soundtrack and behind-the-scenes stills.

The soundtrack comes from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who have created a score with an old-school Hollywood vibe — a big leap from the haunting digital style they’re best known for. From the teaser, you can already hear how Reznor and Ross find ways to impart themes and motifs we know them for into a genre of music that is anything but their usual fare.

Alongside a nearly 11-minute sampling of the score, which plays in the background on the site, you can see over 200 photos, stills, and clips from the movie and on-set production, which are gorgeous in their own right.

The website’s user interface is simple and unobtrusive but very functional. It has a few flares that really elevate the experience, like switching between a full black and full white background depending on the photo, as well as adding extra flourishes like flashes over old-school cameras you see in pictures.

Mank will debut on Netflix and in some theaters on December 4th. For now, you can look, listen, and relax at the teaser site called “The White Wine Came Up With The Fish.”

Adobe’s new 3D transform tools for After Effects look great

2020-09-15T06:00:00-04:00

Adobe is updating both Premiere Pro and After Effects today with some pretty nice quality-of-life features, but the most exciting are the new 3D transform tools for After Effects.

The new feature will combine position, scale, and rotation into one easy-to-use tool, mimicking what other professional 3D applications like Cinema 4D, Maya, and Blender have been providing users for years. Users can also focus on one type of property for greater precision.

As someone who has worked in After Effects for over a decade now, these updated 3D tools (aka gizmos) are long overdue and appreciated. Having all three tools directly accessible in the viewport is fantastic. Besides being easier to use and more precise, matching the UI philosophy of other applications will make switching between programs easier. In the past, navigating After Effects’ 3D space has been somewhat tedious and unintuitive, so I welcome the change.

In addition to the improved 3D interface, After Effects is also getting improved camera tools that are meant to make it easier to navigate 3D space. Premiere Pro is getting some updates, too, with scene edit detection able to automatically chop up already-edited clips, an HDR update for broadcasters, and a new quick export option right in the header bar. Most of the tools are launching first in the public beta versions of After Effects and Premiere Pro, so you’ll need to install those versions to try them out right away.

Behind the scenes of our Microsoft Surface Duo intro shot

2020-09-11T14:22:05-04:00

Here we are again: it’s that time of year when every company starts announcing and releasing their amaze-o flagship phones, and we like to go just as big when we review them. For our iPhone 11 Pro review last September, we made one of our most ambitious and artistic opening shots ever. So unfortunately, that means we have a brand-new baseline of production quality. Tough for us, good for you!

Our Microsoft Surface Duo review came out yesterday, and for obvious reasons, we didn’t have access to our usual set of cool toys, so we had to get creative. The end result was this shot: a composition of a 3D re-creation and practical footage, created in tandem on both sides of America in the space of just a few days.

While our iPhone 11 Pro opening shot was all practical, this time, we decided to blend a practical shot with 3D. Without extremely expensive equipment, some movements are just impossible to film — and an unfolding, floating, spinning phone is one of them.

Let me pull back the curtain to show you how it was done.

The first thing I like to do when planning a shot like this is pre-vis, or visualizing what the shot will look like. Planning the shot in Cinema 4D before filming makes having a conversation with team members about what we need to accomplish a whole lot easier. It lets us plan our shot lists and make sure we get everything needed for the final composite. It also gets me comfortable working with whatever model and texturing we’re using if it’s going to be a composite 3D / practical shot. Another nice bonus is we can actually plan out these shots before we even get the device in hand.

Next is practical shooting. Vjeran Pavic, our fantastic senior video director, shot this on a skeleton set in San Francisco — basically just a wooden desktop, lights, and some reflectors.

I had a list of things he needed to get for me to be able to seamlessly blend a 3D render of the Surface Duo into a real practical shot, including the camera ISO, lens, focal length, and f-stop. There’s an entire industry of talented professionals whose job it is to build assets for others to create with, so we were able to purchase a model from an online marketplace rather than re-creating the Duo from scratch.

Along with a ton of reference photos, one of the most important things I needed was a (mostly) 360-degree photo of the set that I could use to re-create the lighting and reflections of the scene.

The key to planning out these shots is to work backward: know where you want to end up, and getting there is easy. So we shot the Duo in its landing position so that Vjeran could flip it closed and pick it up. After matching the starting position of the model to the first practical frame in C4D, all I had to do was map the original shot’s textures directly onto the model so the two would be indistinguishable when laid on top of each other, and we’d almost be there.

The last 5 percent of any project tends to be the most difficult — and also when you may have the most self-doubt. “Will this work?” “People are going to obviously see the transition.” “It’ll never work.” One of the most difficult aspects is re-creating the imperfections of reality: camera movement, drifting focus, etc. But after some perseverance and painstaking After Effects magic to match the color, film grain, blur, and motion, you finally get there — and it feels great.

Microsoft Flight Simulator’s re-creations of macOS wallpapers look just as good

2020-08-31T16:06:52-04:00

Left: Matt Birchler’s recreation. Right: Apple’s original wallpaper. | Matt Birchler, Apple

Many of us are finding cool things to work on while stuck at home, and I think Matt Birchler takes the cake this week. He, like much of the internet, has been taking off in Microsoft Flight Simulator, and he used the absolutely unreal detail in the game to re-create some of the more iconic wallpapers from recent releases of macOS.

To re-create these images, Matt flew to each location, then used Flight Simulator to position the camera, set the focal length, and adjust the time of day with in-game controls. Then, with a little post-processing magic in Adobe Lightroom, he created the images below.

“Flight Simulator is a ‘make your own fun’ game and I was looking for interesting things to do while flying around,” Birchler told The Verge. He pointed to this video as inspiration, where a group of photographers scouted and re-created the photos themselves in person. “They basically did the same thing, but in real life.”

In lieu of a multiday hiking trip, I think this is a pretty great substitute. It’s a good reminder that we can all take the tools available to us and use them in unexpected, creative ways.

Check out the side-by-side re-creations below or see them all directly on Birchler’s blog.

Big Sur

Left: Matt Birchler. Right: Apple

Catalina

Left: Matt Birchler. Right: Apple

Yosemite

Left: Matt Birchler. Right: Apple

Magic: The Gathering embraces punk aesthetics for its latest limited time drop

2020-08-18T13:21:34-04:00

Magic: The Gathering has been around a long time and has experimented with a ton of art styles in the past — some serious, some silly, some realistic, some cartoon-y. But yesterday’s Secret Lair surprise drop, “Prime Slime,” takes the cake in my opinion with its extremely punk aesthetic and lighthearted chaos. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such unabashedly fun art in the game.

Just check out these images of the five cards included. They’re incredibly gnarly:

Prime Slime includes five cards from Magic’s History: Acidic Slime, The Mimeoplasm, Necrotic Ooze, Scavenging Ooze, and Voidslime. | Image: Wizards of The Coast / Wizard of Barge" data-portal-copyright="Image: Wizards of The Coast / Wizard of Barge" />

The artist, Wizard of Barge, aka Dakota Cates, has brought a silly / punk / high school vibe to the art that really stands out against the rest of Magic’s art. The game leans on a much more traditional epic fantasy painting style for most cards and sets, tailoring it to whatever setting they may be in.

These cards are most likely to find homes in Commander Decks, which is a more casual format of the game. Commander lends itself to personalization, customization, and flair, so having such unique art built around a slime theme is a knockout success in my opinion. Voidslime is likely to be the most valuable card of the set because of its limited number of reprints so far, but the real value of these is in the totally weird, funky, beautifully executed art.

The cards are being released as part of Magic’s Secret Lair series, which are limited print products with five cards with alternate art you won’t get anywhere else. Secret Lair drops only have an extremely short window where they’re available, so if you want to pick up a set of these cards, you only have until tomorrow morning, August 19th, to do it.

A guide to the COVID-19 pandemic

2020-03-12T10:32:02-04:00

In December 2019, a new coronavirus appeared in Wuhan, China. It has since infected thousands across the globe, and the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic, which refers to how far it’s spread.

The new coronavirus causes a disease called COVID-19, with symptoms such as fever, cough, and difficulty breathing. It can be deadly, particularly in people over the age of 60 or with underlying health conditions.

In response, US tech companies have canceled events and ramped up efforts to avoid spreading misinformation. Scientists have tried to figure out exactly how the virus works, in the hopes that we can eventually develop medicine. And many people are staying at home to try to slow down the pace at which the disease goes through the population.

We’ve rounded up our reporting on the virus, the illness it causes, things you can do to protect yourself, and the way the tech sector has been affected here.

Virus Basics

Virus Response

How Tos

Virus Science

What the tech sector is doing

The Verge guide to the 2020 election

2020-03-03T09:20:18-05:00

The 2020 presidential election is going to kick off a firestorm of change for our country and the networks that connect us all. The internet and information economy is at an inflection point: the disruptors are no longer upstarts, but they have become the new giants in every sense of the word. Those giants often operate in fields where there is little regulation to protect consumers, like data and advertising, or bump up against the authority of the government in uncomfortable ways, like law enforcement and encryption.

At The Verge, we’ve always paid attention to how seemingly simple things like broadband access are deeply connected to complicated tech policy debates, and we’ve been closely watching the collision between social networks and democracy. (Casey Newton has been writing a daily newsletter called The Interface tracking that subject since 2017.)

So for the 2020 election cycle, we want to give you a central place to learn about the main tech policy issues we’re following, see the latest news, and feel like you have a guide through it all. We’ll be focused on a few main areas: speech and moderation on internet platforms; data and privacy; broadband access; antitrust and corporate behavior; and climate change.