Technology news

Today, the Public Interest Registry (PIR), which maintains the .org top-level domain, announced that it will be acquired by Ethos Capital, a private equity firm (via Domain Name Wire). This move will make PIR, previously a non-profit domain registry, officially part of a for-profit company — which certainly seems at odds with what .org might represent to some. Originally, “.org” was an alternative to the “.com” that was earmarked for commercial entities, which lent

John Carmack (Credit: Quakecon_Flickr) The chief technology officer of Oculus, Facebook’s VR subsidiary, is stepping down this week, he posted on Facebook today. John Carmack, who was the lead programmer on Doom and who put the Oculus Rift on the map in 2012, says he plans to focus his time instead on artificial intelligence.Carmack will remain in a “consulting CTO” position at Oculus, where he will “still have a voice” in the development work at the company, he wr

SpaceX Today, SpaceX fired up the engines on its new passenger spacecraft, the Crew Dragon, during a ground test in Cape Canaveral, Florida — paving the way for the company to perform a crucial test flight of the vehicle in the months ahead. If that test flight goes well, SpaceX is then poised to fly humans on the Crew Dragon for the first time next year.
The engines that SpaceX ignited today are part of the Crew Dragon’s emergency abort system — a crucial part of the spacecra

A new SpongeBob Squarepants spinoff described as a “music-based project” centered around Spongebob’s iconic neighborhood octopus Squidward is heading to Netflix, according to The New York Times.The show is reportedly part of a new multi-year deal between Nickelodeon and Netflix that was confirmed earlier today, one estimated at a reported $200 million. The deal will see Nickelodeon produce a slate of original animated films and series based on both existing and new characters,

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge This month, some users of Facebook’s iOS app found that that, in at least two situations, the app appeared to be activating the camera in the background without a user’s knowledge. Facebook said yesterday that it was submitting fixes for the issues to Apple, and the company tells us that, as of this morning, the updated app is now available for download on the App Store.I’ve downloaded the update to my iPhone 11 Pro, and I can’t ge

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images WordPress, one of the internet’s leading purveyors of blog infrastructure and hosting, has taken a step toward making blogging more sustainable by allowing sites to easily accept recurring payments. Think: subscriptions. The tool will be available to anyone with a paid WordPress site and to sites that use the company’s Jetpack toolkit.
Blogging has been declining in popularity from its heyday in the aught

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge DJI is working on technology that would let anyone with a smartphone keep track of airborne drones that are nearby, according to Reuters. The news was announced amid a broader push for data transparency in the drone industry.The tracking technology will be made available to the public via a smartphone app, DJI said. Using only Wi-Fi, a person could use the app to identify a nearby drone’s identification number, as well as location, altitude, speed, and di

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Black Friday is almost here. The big shopping weekend actually starts on Thursday, November 28th, which is Thanksgiving in the US. If you’re in the market for a new phone, we’re cataloging the best offers you’ll be able to get from retailers.
Whether you’re looking for deals on unlocked phones, or carrier deals with big trade-in bonuses, you’ll find the latest deals on the iPhones, Google Pixels, Samsung Galaxy phones, an

Photo by Bernd Thissen/picture alliance via Getty Images A common complaint you hear about electric bikes is that they basically amount to cheating. Cycling, especially mountain biking, is supposed to be about exercise and promoting healthy living, but how healthy can you be when the bike’s motor and battery are doing most of the work for you? A new study out last month — the first to investigate the health effects of pedal-assist electric bikes — puts to rest many of these mi

Image: Apple Music Apple Music is introducing a fun new way to take a look at your listening history from over the past year. Called Apple Music Replay, the new feature will bundle up everything you’ve played in 2019, allowing you to see things like how many albums your music selections came from, or which top songs you had on repeat.
To use Apple Music Replay, head on over to replay.music.apple.com and click on “Get Your Replay Mix.” It will then generate a playlist with your

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As of Tuesday afternoon, YouTube is requiring creators to label any videos of theirs that may appeal to children. If they say a video is directed at kids, data collection will be blocked for all viewers, resulting in lower ad revenue and the loss of some of the platform’s most popular features, including comments and end screens. It’s a major change in how YouTube works, and has left some creators clueless as to whether they’re subject t

Microsoft is allowing Surface Pro X owners to get access to early native ARM copies of its Edge Chromium browser today. The software giant is making the ARM version of Edge available in the daily Canary channel, and it will mean that devices like the Surface Pro X will gain access to a more capable and more performant browser.
Microsoft released the Surface Pro X earlier this month with the older Edge browser preinstalled, but owners have so far had to use an x86 copy of Chrome or Edge Chromium

A few weeks after the launch of Fortnite’s second chapter, developer Epic made a seemingly minor change: the Fortnite installer for Android was updated to become the Epic Games App. What was once a tool for keeping Fortnite updated has now transformed into a way for the company to distribute its own mobile games. Today, Epic is launching its second game through the app, a cross-platform title called Battle Breakers, which is available on PC, iOS, and Android through both Samsung’s Ga

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook is including Instagram in its transparency report for the first time, releasing data on how the company moderates content related to child exploitation, self-harm, terrorist propaganda, and drug and firearm sales. Notably absent from the report is information on how fake accounts, hate speech, and violent content are regulated on the photo-sharing app.
The information is part of Facebook’s quarterly “community standards” transpa

Some of Disney’s older movies streaming on Disney+ will include disclaimers about the cultural context of certain scenes that are considered outright racist and prejudiced today. The disclaimer on certain titles is found within the description box, and reads, “This program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.”One popular example floating around Twitter is Disney’s 1941 animated feature film, Dumbo. An infamous scene at the end o

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple just announced a new 16-inch version of its MacBook Pro earlier this morning, with a revamped “Magic” keyboard, improved speakers, and other new features you can see in Dieter Bohn’s hands-on video above. Surprisingly, several configurations of this machine are already discounted by up to $350 off their usual prices. The total dollar amount that you’ll get off depends on the model you’re after, but this is a good de

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US office responsible for patents and trademarks is trying to figure out how AI might call for changes to copyright law, and it’s asking the public for opinions on the topic. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published a notice in the Federal Register last month saying it’s seeking comments, as spotted by TorrentFreak.
The office is gathering information about the impact of artificial intelligence on copyright, trademar

Rockstar Games is “sincerely apologizing” to players over a series of technical problems that have plagued Red Dead Redemption 2 since its launch on PC last week.
The studio tweeted out a four-part apology, explaining some of the problems that PC players may be encountering with their game. The studio acknowledges that a “small number of Red Dead Redemption 2 players are still experiencing some ongoing problems with the game stuttering.” This is likely caused by “un

Photo by LMPC via Getty Images 9. Tornado
By far the worst way to get around in The Wizard of Oz. First of all, it’s loud. Second of all, it has a tendency to destroy everything in its path. But the real reason it’s the worst way to get around is the high propensity for involuntary manslaughter when, for instance, the tornado abates and drops your house on an unsuspecting bystander. Unfortunately, this method of transportation is likely only to become more common as “global we

The Verge 2018 tech report cards | Artist: Alex Castro When NYU economist Thomas Philippon moved to the United States from France in the 1990s, he noticed everything from laptops to internet access was cheaper in America. But over time, as the access industry consolidated, prices slowly rose and now Americans pay more for data than almost every other country worldwide.
In his new book, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets, Philippon sets out to examine why that happened, and

Apple has a new laptop out today, the 16-inch MacBook Pro, and so Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller is out and about, talking trash about the competition.
In an interview with CNET, Schiller is asked about the growing popularity of Chromebooks for education, an important battleground for Apple where it’s been losing ground to Google’s machines. Schiller gives a particularly spicy answer, saying that while iPads are the “ultimate tool for a child to learn on,” ki

Apple has a new laptop out today, the 16-inch MacBook Pro, and so Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller is out and about, talking trash about the competition.
In an interview with CNET, Schiller is asked about the growing popularity of Chromebooks for education, an important battleground for Apple where it’s been losing ground to Google’s machines. Schiller gives a particularly spicy answer, saying that while iPads are the “ultimate tool for a child to learn on,” ki

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Adobe shared a preview of a direct photo import feature for Lightroom CC on iOS 13.2, which is slated to arrive in an update by the end of the year. Lightroom product manager Tom Hogarty demonstrated the feature in a video showing him transferring RAW files off of a USB card reader and seamlessly opening them up in a beta version of Lightroom.
Previously, importing photos to Lightroom was a multistep process that required users to import photos to the

Photo: Disney Disney+ surpassed 10 million subscribers in its first day, the company announced today.Disney’s announcement comes after Apptopia announced that the Disney+ has been downloaded more than 3.2 million times. That’s despite tech problems that affected the country throughout the day.Disney also confirmed that “there are no plans to release Disney+ subscriber data outside of The Walt Disney Company’s quarterly earnings calls.” The next time we’ll hea

Image: FCC / Motorola Images of Motorola’s unannounced foldable Razr phone have surfaced once again, this time via the device’s Federal Communications Commission certification. MySmartPrice was first to spot the listing, which shows photographs of the phone from every angle, giving us another look at its notched folding display as well as a second display on the exterior of the phone.
There’s not a whole lot of new information here, thanks to the deluge of images of the device

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google Maps is incredibly useful when you’re navigating a country you’ve never been to before. (I couldn’t have survived a recent trip to Japan without it.) But sometimes, you still need to ask a real person to point you in the right direction, and you might not know how to say the name of the place you’re trying to get to. Soon, though, Google Maps may be able to help with that by speaking the name or address of a location in

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Today marks the official launch of Brave 1.0, a free open-source browser. The beta version has already drawn 8 million monthly users, but now, the full stable release is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.Brave promises to prioritize security by blocking third-party ads, trackers, and autoplay videos automatically. So you don’t need to go into your settings to ensure greater privacy, though you can adjust those settings if you