Nilay Patel

Taylor Swift fans have been figuring out how to max out photo and video quality at the Eras Tour since it began — the only restriction is that you can’t bring a camera with a removable lens, so it’s like a little puzzle for photo nerds. There was a wave of point-and-shoot interest, then there was a period where renting Samsung phones just for the periscope zoom was in vogue — but here we have the current peak: Dominic says he took a Sony RX10 IV and set it to shoot jpgs in the fastest burst mode, which captures 24 still frames per second for about 10 seconds at a time. A little Premiere work later, and you have the highest-resolution Eras Tour video anyone’s shot yet.

The Information reports that Disney, seeking a “strategic partner” for ESPN, has had talks with Verizon. This is a bad idea: mobile carriers are historically terrible at distributing content and software, because their only distribution idea is installing bloatware on midrange Android phones. You will recall that the entire thesis of the AT&T / Time Warner merger was distributing bloatware on midrange Android phones, a “vision deal” which produced a grayscale 4:3 Snyder Cut before collapsing into the arms of David Zaslav.

TechCrunch’s Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai has more on Jae Bochs, the hacker at DefCon who was able to spoof the iOS password sharing prompt on iPhones. Turns out they used a $70 device to spoof Bluetooth Low Energy packets — and since the Control Center toggle for WiFi and Bluetooth doesn’t actually turn those radios off, the signals were able to get through.

I have had YouTube watch history off for years now, and the platform’s new attempt to get people to turn it back on by blanking out the homescreen is... well, it’s wonderful. Honestly more platforms should blank out recommendations on the homescreen and just let you search for things. Thanks, YouTube! (We have a how-to if you want to get this enabled for yourself, of course.)

Summer 2023: thousands of a people scream-sung a meme song at a Jonas Brothers show.

If you’ve been listening to the Vergecast you know the standard for trademark infringement is “likelihood of confusion,” and while it’s true the Hub is known for ⚫️🟠, something tells me the folks walking into Doner Haus aren’t confused about what’s on the menu. Full story in Chelsea News, a hyperlocal NYC news site, via Verge pal Alexandra Roberts.

Cory Tomczyk, a Republican state senator in my delightfully broken home state of Wisconsin, is spitefully suing a tiny four-person local newspaper for defamation after it reported that he used a homophobic slur at a county board meeting. The mounting legal costs could put the paper out of business.

The legendary Defcon infosec conference was this past weekend in Vegas, and visitors with iPhones noticed they were getting iOS popups to share their passwords with nearby “Apple TVs.” It’s Defcon, so of course that was a prank by a researcher who calls themselves Jae Bochs on Mastodon. TechCrunch’s Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai has the story:

The (messy, sad) Johnny Depp / Amber Heard trial continues to have strange knock-on effects: a legal YouTuber called “Nate the Lawyer” sued the CEO of Bot Sentinel for defamation over tweets that included questioning whether or not “Nate” was really a lawyer at all.

We’re as guilty as any other publication in citing app usage data from data shops like SensorTower and SimilarWeb — it’s useful to rely on some data from a neutral source when talking about app and platform usage — but John Gruber dives into how that data is actually collected. And... maybe it’s not great!