Author: Irene Hawkins

ESPN Plus says it will issue partial refunds to customers who paid for a UFC pay-per-view event Saturday only to run into technical problems. Conor McGregor vs Dustin Poirier was the headline match of the UFC 257 main card, which was set to get underway at about 10PM ET Saturday. To watch, ESPN Plus subscribers, who pay $59.99 per year for the streaming service, also paid $69.99 for Saturday’s event. But users in the US began reporting a blackout on the ESPN Plus app Saturday evening that lasted through some of the earlier fights on the main card. A spokesperson…

Italy’s data privacy authority has ordered video sharing app TikTok to temporarily block the accounts of any users whose ages can’t be confirmed, Reuters reported. The order comes after the death of a 10-year-old girl in Palermo, whose parents told authorities their daughter was participating in a “blackout challenge” she saw on the app. The child died of asphyxiation, and authorities are investigating whether anyone invited her to try the challenge. The Italian Data Protection Authority ordered TikTok to block unverified users in Italy until at least February 15th. The company told The Guardian it had not found content on…

Cyberpunk 2077’s first big update is available now, and it’s packed with bug fixes for the notoriously buggy game. In a tweet, developer CD Projekt Red also said that the update “lays the groundwork” for future patches. The 1.1 patch arrives more than a month after Cyberpunk 2077’s rocky launch. The game has been plagued with bugs and issues, particularly on older consoles, though CD Projekt Red has released three hotfixes to try to shore up some of the problems. Sony yanked the game from the PlayStation Store and began offering full refunds on December 17th, but the game still…

Hollywood has decided tonight’s the night to shove back their slate of films — including James Bond’s latest outing No Time To Die, the Uncharted movie, and Ghostbusters: Afterlife. No Time to Die now has a release date of October 8th, Ghostbusters will be pushed back five months to November 11th, and Uncharted now won’t arrive until 2022, Exhibitor Relations reports. Bond was the big film whose third delay was enough to force theater chains Regal and Cineworld to close all their US and UK locations. It was originally slated for April 2020, then got pushed back to November 2020…

Tim Apple, as Trump once called him, didn’t just give Donald Trump the opportunity to lie about bringing an Apple factory to the United States. He also gave him a $5,999 Mac Pro, according to Donald Trump’s final financial disclosure report today (via the NY Times’ David Enrich). The computer is described as the very first Mac Pro produced at the Flex Factory in Austin, Texas. That’s also a lie: that factory has actually been producing Mac Pros since 2013. Check out the gifts that people –– including the CEOs of @Boeing, @Ford and @Apple –– gave Trump. (from his…

Minecraft Dungeons’ dedicated launcher on PC is being retired in favor of a new “Unified Launcher” that lets you launch Dungeons and Minecraft: Java Edition from the same place, reducing the number of places where you can play Minecraft on PC by one (via Windows Central). Minecraft Dungeons is the hack-and-slash loot collecting cousin of Minecraft that, until this change, had its own launcher unless it was purchased from the Microsoft Store. As of January 18th, the non-Microsoft Store version of Dungeons on PC can only be launched from the new Unified Launcher (which itself is an update to the…

This story is part of a group of stories called Only the best deals on Verge-approved gadgets get the Verge Deals stamp of approval, so if you’re looking for a deal on your next gadget or gift from major retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and more, this is the place to be. If you’ve already nabbed a next-gen PlayStation or Xbox — or are willing to give developer CD Projekt the benefit of the doubt that it’ll eventually work on your current-gen machine — you can now pick up the standard disc edition of Cyberpunk 2077 for half-price…

Update January 17th 5:34PM ET: Virgin Orbit’s rocket reached orbit and the satellites were released, meaning Sunday’s mission was a success. The headline has been updated to reflect this. The original story is below. Virgin Orbit — the sister company of billionaire Richard Branson’s space tourism outfit Virgin Galactic — will try a second test of its small satellite-launching rocket later today, months after it failed to reach orbit during a first attempt. It will also be the first time that the company tries to launch working satellites into space on behalf of NASA. Sometime after 1PM ET, Virgin Orbit’s…

Facebook has updated its Inauguration Day preparations to include a temporary ban on ads that promote weapon accessories and protective equipment at least through January 22nd “out of an abundance of caution,” the company said in a new blog post Saturday. “We already prohibit ads for weapons, ammunition and weapon enhancements like silencers. But we will now also prohibit ads for accessories such as gun safes, vests and gun holsters in the US,” the statement reads. The ban comes after Facebook was criticized for allowing posts across its platforms that promoted and organized the deadly January 6th attack on the…

Facebook won’t let people create events that take place “in close proximity” to the White House, the US Capitol building, or any state capitol buildings through Inauguration Day, the company announced on Friday. The move builds upon Facebook’s previously announced Inauguration Day preparations aiming to prevent the platform from being used to organize a violent event like the January 6th attack on the US Capitol. Facebook is also doing a “secondary review” of all inauguration-related events and will remove those that violate the platform’s rules. The company is also continuing a policy that blocks pages and accounts based outside the…