YouTube appears to be down worldwide

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

YouTube seems to be having issues loading videos right now. Several Verge staffers are having trouble watching videos, and YouTube has confirmed that something is going on:

If you’re having trouble watching videos on YouTube right now, you’re not alone – our team is aware of the issue and working on a fix. We’ll follow up here with any updates.

— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) November 12, 2020

The issue appears to affect other services that use the YouTube infrastructure too, including YouTube TV and the movies and TV shows you’d purchase through Google TV (formerly known as Google Play Movies & TV). We couldn’t load them.

In our testing so far, the YouTube website seems to load just fine, but videos themselves will continuously show...

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PSA: Epic will honor V-Bucks trapped on Apple platforms

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

With everything else going on, you may have momentarily forgotten Epic Games and Apple’s on-going legal battle over the Fortnite creator’s alternative payment system that got it booted off the App Store. The lawsuits are still playing out, but here’s a small positive: Epic announced last Friday that your V-Bucks stranded on the macOS and iOS versions of Fortnite will be honored and credited to your account so you can spend them on other platforms.

Epic says that players who purchased V-Bucks on iOS and macOS should receive their credit by today, November 9th. Those V-Bucks can be spent on any platform that can play Fortnite other than iOS or macOS.

Because Mac & iOS are blocked for Fortnite updates, we're beginning to grant a V-Bucks...

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Google’s Nest Audio may or may not have a home theater trick up its sleeves

Photo: Dan Seifert / The Verge

In our review of Google’s $99 Nest Audio speaker, we wrote that it’s “unfortunate that you can’t use two Nest Audio speakers paired with a Chromecast for home theater audio, like you can do with a couple of Amazon Echo speakers and a Fire TV.”

But it appears that Google originally intended to offer just such a feature — and we’re wondering if the company might still introduce it in the next few months.

As 9to5Google points out, Google seemingly forgot to remove a rather telling arrangement of words from the HTML source for its Nest Audio product page:

With Chromecast & Google TV Nest Audio becomes your home theater sound system.

The UK version of the page even had an alternate localization of the same sentence, which suggests intention....

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Xbox Series X orders are being delayed to December at last minute

The Xbox Series X releases tomorrow, November 10th… but some people won’t be getting theirs. Unfortunately, people (including some of us at GameZone) have begun getting delay emails from Amazon. As the new consoles, have begun shipping to others, people have been keeping a close eye on tracking updates.

Some have noticed that their Amazon orders haven’t shipped while others have. If yours hasn’t shipped, you should probably check your email. Amazon’s email notes that some orders won’t arrive until December 31st but could arrive before then.

“We expect to ship your console in the coming weeks as we recieve more inventory in November and December. At this time, we anticipate that you will receive your Xbox Series X by 12/31 or before. We are making every effort to get it to you as soon as possible and apologize for any inconvenience,” reads the email.

@Wario64 – got an Amazon email indicating that I may not receive my Series X for a while… pic.twitter.com/zM8wah8SnZ

— Dom Provenzano (@DomProvenzano) November 9, 2020

It sounds like since stock will be replenished in both November and December, it could come within the next few weeks. Amazon hasn’t publicly confirmed any sort of compensation but you can try your luck with Amazon’s customer service. Amazon previously said they may have delays with PlayStation 5s but have yet to solidify that.

GameStop will have a limited amount of Xbox Series X bundles in-store and online tomorrow. A limited amount of PlayStation 5 consoles will also go on sale this week, exclusively online.

Xbox Series X will release tomorrow and PS5 will release on November 12th.

The post Xbox Series X orders are being delayed to December at last minute appeared first on GameZone.

Apple puts major supplier Pegatron on probation for labor violations

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Apple has cut off major supplier Pegatron from new contracts following the reveal of student labor violations at some of the Taiwanese manufacturer’s China-based facilities. Bloomberg reports that Apple found Pegatron to be falsifying paperwork in order to cover up violations of Apple’s code of conduct for suppliers.

Pegatron is one of Apple’s biggest supply chain partners, manufacturing various products including some of the newest iPhone 12 models. The company is now reportedly on probation, however, and won’t be able to win any new business from Apple until the matter has been resolved.

Pegatron falsified paperwork

“We have a rigorous review and approval process for any student worker program, which ensures the intern’s work is...

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Virgin Hyperloop hits an important milestone: the first human passenger test

For the first time, two people rode a hyperloop pod through a nearly airless tube at 100 mph

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The iPhone’s ultrawide camera could get a big boost in 2021, says Kuo

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The iPhone 12 has just barely launched, but we already have some idea what next year’s lineup could look like — according to TFI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple’s 2021 iPhones will keep the new form factor and screen sizes introduced with the iPhone 12 line, but offer an improved ultrawide camera on the high-end Pro and Pro Max models (via MacRumors).

Kuo predicted the iPhone 12 line and now seems set to reveal what to expect from the 2021 models nearly a year before they launch. This time, Kuo says the ultrawide camera of the Pro and Pro Max will be upgraded from the current f/2.4, five-element lens setup to an f/1.8, six-element lens with autofocus. The larger aperture should let in more light, potentially enhancing low-light...

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