Technology news

Around the world, marginalized ethnic groups have worse internet access than more dominant groups in the country, researchers say. This is probably because of decisions made by government-run telecom providers.Researchers mapped internet access and compared that to a list of ethnic settlement regions to show that less powerful ethnic groups have worse access, in a study published today in Science. It turns out that an excluded group usually receives about 60 percent of the average level of acces

The moment Poncho the chihuahua saw the apartment under the stairs, he knew this would be his bachelor pad. "You gotta see this place," he bragged to his friends. "It's prime real estate. Sure, it's a studio, but you know what they say when it comes to house hunting: location, location, location!" The housing market had been totally insane these past few years, so he knew he lucked out when he finally found a place he could afford on his modest dog salary of $0.
He became fast friends with

California Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation today to extend the state’s ambitious climate change law, the Associated Press reports. The new measures will increase California’s efforts to curb climate change and limit pollution.
The new legislation, which was signed by the Democratic governor in a Los Angeles park amid protests from oil companies and Republicans, will extend the state’s climate change law passed in 2006. That law aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions t

The Federal Communications Commission is making huge changes to its plan to overhaul cable boxes, scrapping much of the initial idea in favor of having cable companies make new apps.
The plan requires large cable providers to create apps that offer access to all of their programming, including live and on-demand content. Those apps would have to be available on "all widely deployed platforms," which includes iOS, Android, Windows, and Roku. Both native and web apps will be accepted. Continu

Picture this: a pair of headphones plugged into 3.5mm dongle, which is then plugged into a Lightning adapter, which is then plugged into your phone. That is the reality we live in now that Apple removed the headphone jack on the new iPhone 7. Because the new phone only has one Lightning port for all your peripheral needs, the company has tapped accessory maker Belkin to provide the adapter necessary to both charge the iPhone 7 and listen to music at the same time (so long as you're not using the

A company called Budnitz introduced what it says is the "world's lightest" electric bike. It's called the Budnitz Model E. It has a single speed, is made of titanium alloy, and can help riders reach up to 15mph for up to 100 miles. It's custom-made in Vermont and everything you'll need, like cables and a battery, are stuffed in the bike's rear hub.
Riders just have to have their phone mounted on the front of the bike to control its electric motor. There's also the option to include slope se

Yosemite National Park announced yesterday that it's growing by 400 acres, The New York Times reports. Though that's not a lot of land for a park that totals 1,169 square miles, the expansion is significant because it includes wetlands — key environmental areas that improve water quality, provide habitats for wildlife, and store water in times of droughts.
The new addition, the park’s largest expansion in 67 years, is called Ackerson Meadow. The area was donated to the park by The Tr

The untouched wilderness on this planet is disappearing — and disappearing fast. That's bad news, and not just because trees look nice: we depend on vast swathes of pristine nature to support diverse forms of life, to keep climate change at bay, and to ensure that local economies thrive. But for all their importance, we're doing a pretty bad job ensuring wild places stay wild, new research shows.
"The clock is ticking."
The problem with developing wild places is that ecosystems operate as

Twitter is currently rolling out read receipts in Direct Messaging, showing a blue check mark next to a message's timestamp when it has been read. That check mark can currently only be seen Twitter's mobile apps on Android and iOS, but will also be generated when messages are viewed from Twitter.com.
If you don't want other users to know when you've seen a message, you can disable receipts from Twitter's security page. Disabling receipts will also keep you from seeing the check mark on your own

Google parent company Alphabet is teaming up with fast casual chain Chipotle to test drone delivery for Virginia Tech students, according to a report from Bloomberg. The pilot program marks a turning point for Alphabet’s Project Wing division, giving the team ample room to experiment with airborne burrito deliveries in one of the first commercial programs of its kind to be greenlit by the US Federal Aviation Authority. The drones, which will be hybrid aircraft that can both fly and ho

True Blood and Magic Mike star Joe Manganiello has been cast to play the main supervillain Deathstroke in Warner Bros.’s upcoming solo Batman movie. According to The Wall Street Journal, DC Films head Geoff Johns confirmed the casting during an interview about his role in DC’s movie universe, though he wouldn’t say whether or not the character would appear in next year’s Justice League.
Ben Affleck, who’s helming the film, tweeted footage early last week s

As we barrel ahead toward a world without headphone jacks, Astell & Kern is providing a new way to take advantage of the wireless future we have been forced into enjoy. The AK XB10 is a wireless DAC (digital-to-analog converter) and amp that will let you use your wired headphones over Bluetooth with high-end sound.The AK XB10 uses a Bluetooth codec from Qualcomm to deliver up to 24-bit HD audio over the wireless connection, which should deliver the hi-fi audio quality you've grown accus

Late last month, news broke of the exoplanet Proxima Centauri b. Orbiting the closest star to our Solar System, there’s a lot to love about Proxima b since it shares a few key traits with our own home planet.
But before we start making intergalactic vacation plans, let’s pump the space-brakes: half the planet is locked in darkness, it’s pelted by radiation from close proximity to its sun, and the rock is 25 trillion miles away. Our current best option for sending a probe there

As you may have read on this site, Apple had an event yesterday and we attended. Walt and Nilay met up in San Francisco for this week's episode of Ctrl-Walt-Delete and they invited Vergecast regulars Lauren Goode and Dieter Bohn to the show where they discussed their first impressions about everything they saw.Apple Watch – 06:51
iPhone – 23:17
eero ad – 43:25
Headphone jack / AirPods – 45:32
Home button – 1:13:06
It's the mashup of two podcasts you've been wai

I’m a serial fidgeter. Put me in a meeting and I’ll bob my knees like a maniac, I’ll tear apart coffee cup holders into little shreds, and I’ll pick off the nail polish off my fingers. Now there’s a less destructive solution to all this fidgeting, and it’s all contained in one elegant little cube. Each of the six sides holds a fun little doodad to fidget with: clicker buttons; a joystick; a lightswitch flip; a flat, worry stone-like surface; gears and a rollin

BuzzFeed’s John Paczkowski has a big story diving into Apple’s decision to kill the headphone jack, which is definitely worth a read. Basically, the company’s decision boiled down to letting go of a single-use analog port to create more room inside the phone’s case for a larger battery, additional camera components, and the Taptic Engine haptic system that enables the new not-a-button home button. And it made it slightly easier to waterproof the phone. These are all good

If you take Apple’s word for it, removing the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 was a pure expression of its desire for technological progress. "Some people have asked why we would remove the analog headphone jack from the iPhone," Phil Schiller, Apple’s marketing chief, said yesterday. "It really comes down to one word: courage. The courage to move on to do something new that betters all of us."
Already Apple’s defenders have been echoing that sentiment. The headphone jack is c

Almost nothing at yesterday’s iPhone event was a major surprise, given that everything about the new iPhone leaked in advance. The most unexpected part of it actually happened within the first few minutes, with the announcement of the first Super Mario game for the iPhone.
Nintendo’s talismanic designer Shigeru Miyamoto, who created the iconic Donkey Kong, Super Mario, and Zelda series among many others, was even on hand to introduce the new game, called Super Mario Run. It’s l

The most basic thing you thought you knew about giraffes is wrong — in fact, there are four species of giraffe, not one, scientists announced today: the southern giraffe, the Masai giraffe, the reticulated giraffe, and the northern giraffe. Genetically, they’re as distinct as brown bears are from polar bears. Today’s division has important implications for conservation because some of these newly discovered species are in grave danger, with just a few thousand individuals remai

Google Maps users will now have even more ways to compare transportation options. The service announced it’s added Lyft and Gett to its roster of ride-hail partners. Now users who want to compare prices and travel time between different services can do so when they toggle over to the ride-share tab in the app.Google Maps says it now displays pick-up times and fare ranges for nine ride-hail services in 60 countries. Back in March, Google announced it was giving ride-sharing its own tab alon

If a new report from The Information is accurate, Amazon is planning to update the Alexa assistant found on its Echo speakers (and now Fire tablets) so that it will automatically speak aloud certain important notifications — without first being prompted by users. Right now, you must address Alexa directly before it responds to commands or speaks back to you about music playback, the weather, news, Uber arrivals, and so on. But The Information claims that Amazon will soon deliver

After nine months of rumors that the company would enter the market, Apple finally unveiled its first pair of truly wireless earbuds: the AirPods. They let you stream music, ping Siri, or talk on the phone with no wires required, and they’ll cost $159 when they hit shelves this fall. The price has already put a lot of people off, but when you compare it to just about every other pair of truly wireless earbuds (many of which come from startups you’ve probably never heard of), it&rsquo

Uber is a pretty simple app to use: press a button, hail a ride. But now things are getting a little funkier, thanks to an integration with Pandora and Spotify that allows you to seamlessly play your music during your next trip.Passengers will be notified when their driver has connected music, allowing them to pick the song or album they want to hear before even getting in the car. And if they want to keep listening to whatever is booming out of their home system, the Uber app will allow them to

In one of many shining, surreal moments in FX’s new series Atlanta, chronic underachiever Earnest "Earn" Marks (Donald Glover) is riding the bus home with his baby daughter. Weary and maybe less than awake, he encounters a man in a brown suit and bowtie. "Ya mind’s racing," the man says. "Tell me, young." Without questioning how this man could know his inner state (or if he’s even real), Earn gives in. "I just keep losing," he begins. The man, listening quietly, starts spreadin

Apple has decided to stop disclosing how many iPhones are sold during their initial preorder period and opening weekend. The change, it says, is because the iPhone 7 is going to sell out, making initial sales "no longer a representative metric" of demand and a poor gauge for investors.
That may be true, but you could also look at this as an admission that Apple is concerned about declining iPhone sales. Year after year, Apple has claimed record-breaking sales figures following each iPhone launch

Ford's F-Series is now the official truck of the NFL. This is a sentence that raises a few questions (like why does the NFL have an official truck?) but that is, at heart, simple to understand. There's a football league. Some of its fans like trucks. Money has changed hands for the league to say that this sort of truck is the truck it likes best in the hope that fans will approve and maybe buy said truck. Fine.
Unfortunately, when Ford decided to deliver this news to the world, instead of spelli

Oculus Story Studio has won an Emmy for its second film, a Pixar-esque animated short called Henry. Henry was named best outstanding original interactive program, part of an interactive media category that was added to the TV-focused awards in 2013. While it’s not the first virtual reality experience to win an Emmy, it’s the first time an original VR production — not one promoting an already-established franchise — has taken home a prize. It’s also a first for Oculu

Microsoft has been testing a variety of Surface all-in-one PCs, and the company is expected to unveil at least one model during a hardware event next month. ZDNet reports that Microsoft will unveil a Surface-branded device currently codenamed "Cardinal" at an event in New York City. Sources familiar with Microsoft's Surface plans tell The Verge that the company is currently targeting a late October hardware launch event.
Previous reports have suggested that Microsoft is working on thre

Nine months after Jaguar announced it was joining all-electric racing series Formula E, the company has unveiled its two drivers, the final livery for its cars, and announced a new title sponsor for its race team: Panasonic. Going forward, the team will be known as Panasonic Jaguar Racing. The team will make its debut at the first race of the third season of Formula E, which takes place October 9th in Hong Kong.Piloting the two Panasonic Jaguar Racing cars will be Adam Carroll, an Irish driver w

The silver bullet Airstream camper is an American icon. Seeing one always made me wonder where their owners were off to next: perhaps a trip to Yellowstone or a NASCAR race or to spend the summer near the grandkids. But I never imagined I'd want to own one for myself. They always seemed rather... old-fashioned.Not this one, though. The Airstream Basecamp is firmly aimed at the active youngster, folks without kids (because it's really rather small) who want to experience the great outdoors but wi

When Apple unveiled the seventh iteration of the iPhone yesterday, it made sure to play up the camera. After all, the company has a small army working on the iPhone's ability to take photos. The device's camera is also often touted as one of its most cherished features, keeping Apple's smartphone ahead of the competition. Yet in recent years, competition from Samsung and others has caught up to Apple’s imaging lead.
The newest Apple devices, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, a

Over the past few months developer Bethesda has been continually rolling out downloadable add-ons for its post-apocalyptic epic Fallout 4. Every time I think I’m done, a new location or character or box of toys appears, and I’m pulled back into the nearly year-old game. Whether it’s to build a killer robot or design an underground bunker or explore the massive and mysterious island of Far Harbor, each of these further forays into Fallout 4 has managed to build on the base game

Yesterday at the PlayStation Theater in New York City, Sony announced two new iterations of the PlayStation 4, both of which are due to launch this year. That makes three hardware launches for the company’s gaming division over the next three months: PlayStation VR on October 13th; the new slimmer PS4 on September 15th; followed by the more powerful, 4K-capable PlayStation Pro on November 10th. The holidays are about to get very busy for Sony.
Just after the event I had the chance to chat