Tholomyes

Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher in ‘The Crown’ | Netflix

I have only watched the new episode of The Mandalorian once (so far) but it is so great to have this fun, nerdy show back. I won’t spoil anything but it was A) nice to see The Baby aka Baby Yoda aka my green son, B) nice to see Timothy Olyphant and C) great to see the coolest show on streaming is still very, very cool. Check out the review of the first episode here, and look for weekly Friday recaps of new episodes on The Verge.

This week’s trailers include the new season of the other best show on streaming: The Crown. Look I have eclectic tastes, OK?

The Crown

The sight of Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher was most welcome for this erstwhile X-phile, but also: DIANA! The series will finally catch up to the Charles-Diana marriage this season and introduce Thatcher, aka the Iron Lady, who was the UK’s first woman prime minister (and side note, as someone who lived through the 1980s, it’s sort of wild to recall that these two larger-than-life women were contemporaries). Emma Corrin stars as Diana, and the rest of the excellent cast — Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth, Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret, and Josh O’Connor as Prince Charles— return in season four of The Crown. It hits Netflix November 15th.

Run

Sarah Paulson stars in this creepy film about a mother who goes to great lengths to “care” for her homeschooled daughter Chloe, who uses a wheelchair. You may be shocked to hear that all is not as it seems and Chloe begins to piece together clues that suggest her mother is up to no good. Kiera Allen, who uses a wheelchair in real life, stars as Chloe in Run, which debuts on Hulu November 20th.

Wayne

I heard the Boston accents as soon as I clicked “play” on this trailer and sure enough it’s based in Brockton, Mass., the story of a kid seeking to right wrongs and get back a car stolen from his late father. The series ran on YouTube Red (RIP) and despite positive fan response, ended after one season (although it may have more to do with the fact that YouTube Red doesn’t exist anymore and its successor, YouTube Premium, pulled back on original shows than with the show itself). Amazon Prime Video is reviving it; season one of Wayne will (re-) launch November 6th.

The Midnight Sky

George Clooney plays a scientist in the Arctic who has to prevent a spacecraft from returning to Earth because some bad apocalyptic shit has happened since they’ve been gone. Clooney (who grew quite the beard for this role, it seems) also directed this very beautiful- but cold-looking film, based on the novel “Good Morning, Midnight,” by Lily Brooks-Dalton. The all-star cast includes Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, and Kyle Chandler. The Midnight Sky hits Netflix December 23rd.

The Mighty Ones

Ending this week’s list on a lighter note because it can’t be all (literal) palace intrigue and post-apocalyptic Clooney. This animated series is the story of a backyard world of little creatures— Rocksy, Twig, Leaf, and Very Berry to give you a sense of what we’re dealing with here— whose days are full of adventures. The Mighty Ones comes to Hulu November 9th.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Countless iOS apps experienced problems launching Wednesday evening, according to multiple reports on Twitter and crowdsourced user reports on Downdetector. The issues seem to have started around 6:30PM ET, and Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Tinder, and more were affected, according to Downdetector. I personally experienced problems with Spotify and GrubHub, but they are both working for me now, so it seems apps are starting to starting work as normal again.

The issue was caused by an apparent problem with a Facebook software development kit (SDK) tool that’s used to power sign-in features for many of the apps. Many developers reported problems with the SDK in this thread on GitHub. You didn’t need to be logged into the apps via Facebook to be affected by the crashes — I wasn’t able to open a fresh install of Spotify from the App Store, for example.

“Earlier today, a new release of Facebook included a change that triggered crashes for some users in some apps using the Facebook iOS SDK,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge. “We identified the issue quickly and resolved it. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

A source with knowledge of the situation told The Verge that Facebook had disabled a server configuration update that triggered its SDK to cause apps using it to crash. In the GitHub thread, a user who appears to be a Facebook engineer said the company had reverted the server side change causing the issue and that the change may take time to propagate.

The below tweets from developer Guilherme Rambo summarize the situation, and Rambo also offers a suggestion about what Apple could do to prevent something similar from happening in the future.

Apple has not replied to a request for comment.

Update, May 6th, 11:42PM ET: Added statement from Facebook.

Microsoft is putting a compatibility hold on its Windows 10 May 2019 update for some of its Surface Book 2 laptops due to an issue where the discrete Nvidia GPU can vanish from the device manager on the OS, which in turn can cause apps or games that rely on that GPU to have issues, via ZDNet.

The problem affects a small subset of Surface Book 2 devices — only high-end models with discrete Nvidia GPUs — but it is all the more notable for occurring on Microsoft’s own in-house hardware. Until the company can resolve the issue, though, Surface Book 2 owners with Nvidia hardware won’t be able to download the May 2019 update.

It’s not the first issue that Microsoft has had with the May 2019 update, either: as ZDNet points out, the company had to issue a similar hold for devices with USB storage device or SD card attached due to “inappropriate drive reassignment during installation.” Fortunately, the fix in that case was simpler: just unplug your external storage while installing.

Grubhub has been buying tens of thousands of domain names that resemble those of businesses they either work with or are pitching to get on the platform, reports New Food Economy. Those domains, of which Grubhub owns as many as 23,000, are used to resemble a landing page for the official business, complete with an online ordering form, despite the sites being completely unassociated with the restaurants themselves.

Restaurant owners are calling the practice predatorial, noting that Grubhub is leading customers to believe they’re ordering directly from restaurants to help businesses avoid paying fees to Grubhub. The online ordering giant, the largest in the country, is the parent company of multiple food delivery services, including Eat24, MenuPages, and Seamless. However, its spot as the top of the delivery market is being threatened by competing services like DoorDash and Uber Eats.

Image via New Food Economy

The Grubhub-owned domains use a template that is consistent across all the shadow sites. They feature items from the restaurant’s actual menu, and sometimes the sites use photos taken from either the restaurant’s official webpage or from competing delivery services. I’m intimately familiar with the tactic because — and here’s the big disclosure — my parents own a restaurant in Queens, New York and they are currently listed on both Seamless / Grubhub and Caviar. They also have an official restaurant site.

However, an alternative website with a similar-sounding URL (.com versus .net) set up by Grubhub without their expressed permission uses the restaurant’s original logo and food photos taken by a photographer from Caviar. The site also includes multiple “Order Now” links that lead to the Seamless listing and a phone number unassociated with the restaurant’s official business number.

Grubhub charges anywhere from a 3 to 15 percent commission fee depending on whether a restaurant provides their own delivery fleet. However, if a customer orders from a restaurant using Grubhub’s “marketing” tactics, whether through an app search or these unassociated websites, Grubhub can bill for an additional 20 percent commission on a single order. These fees also extend to phone orders, which Grubhub was sued over after a lawsuit alleged the company was charging commission for bogus phone calls that did not directly result in an order.

Grubhub denies wrongdoing, noting that this practice is intended to help boost restaurant orders. "Grubhub has never cybersquatted, which is identified by ICANN as 'generally bad faith registration of another person’s trademark in a domain name,'" the company said in a statement. "As a service to our restaurants, we have created microsites for them as another source of orders and to increase their online brand presence. Additionally, we have registered domains on their behalf, consistent with our restaurant contracts. We no longer provide that service and it has always been our practice to transfer the domain to the restaurant as soon as they request it."

Update June 28, 2019 5:24 PM ET: This article has been updated with Grubhub's statement.

Tycho: I said before that one of the best ways to determine a person’s politics is what they don’t consider political.  Well, let me put it to you this way.  I don’t consider this comic political. Because of where I live and what I look like, it doesn’t require a lot of imagination to reverse engineer my position on what is often called “the issues.”  Generally speaking I don’t rub your face in it because I don’t know your life, and I don’t assume I’m smarter than everyone else.  I don’t claim a right to demagogue…

Hovertext: And I can turn sand into appletinis!

New comic!
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