Technology news

Verizon may launch a new Palm device in the second half of this year, an anonymous source told Android Police. The rumor backs up what a TCL executive said last August, when he confirmed to Dutch publication Android Planet that the company would launch a Palm phone this year. TCL did not respond to comments when we reached out at the time, despite previous reports that the company had no plans for the Palm.
There are little details beyond a supposed release date for this new device. According t

Michigansaw a historic amount of snowfall in 2018. And it’s not done. It’s snowing as I write this and it snowed nearly every day since I took delivery of this burgundy 2018 Lincoln Navigator. Excuse the dirty car shown in the photos. That’s life in the Midwest: half the year it’s impossible to keep cars clean of salt and grime and, to me, that’s the best time to review a vehicle. I’m happy to report the new Navigator is a comfortable refuge from the snowy win

Facebook paused its app review process last week to “implement new changes,” the company quietly announced yesterday. Facebook’s move to momentarily prevent new apps and chatbots onto its platform comes after the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal that’s unfolded over the last two weeks. The ongoing situation has embroiled the company in an existential crisis of unprecedented magnitude after up to 50 million Facebook users profiles’ were compromised by a thir

Lior Ron,Uber’shead of freight operations, has left the company, a source familiar with the situation told TechCrunch.
“We remain fully invested in and excited about the future of Uber Freight,” an Uber spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch. “Since launching in Texas, we have introduced Freight to all states in the continental U.S. We believe it will continue to grow as we use our network and technology to transform the trucking industry.”
Ron is the c

A co-founder of Otto, the self-driving trucking company acquired by Uber in 2016, has left the company according to CNBC. Lior Ron co-founded Otto (née Ottomotto) with Anthony Levandowski in 2016 shortly before it was acquired by Uber, a move that was at the center of the recent Waymo v. Uber trial. Ron has served as the head of Uber Freight, the company’s trucking arm, since the acquisition. A source familiar with the situation confirmed Ron’s departure to The Verge.
Uber de

DocuSignhas unveiled its IPO filing, confirming our scoop from last week. 
The company had previously filed confidentially and the timing of the filing revelation implies that DocuSign is hoping to go public in late April.
Founded in 2003, the San Francisco-based e-signature company has been an anticipated IPO for a while. It’s raised over $500 million over the past 15 years and has been valued as high as $3 billion. 
The filing gives us a first glimpse at the company’

Netflixhas added a board member with some big political connections: Susan Rice, who worked in the Obama administration as national security advisor and ambassador to the UN.
“For decades, she has tackled difficult, complex global issues with intelligence, integrity and insight and we look forward to benefiting from her experience and wisdom,” said founder and CEO Reed Hastings in a statement.
Rice directed the National Security Council staff between 2013 and 2017 and also provi

Airbnb and other platforms for short-term rental listings are exacerbating the housing crisis in New Orleans, says a new report from the Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative (JPNSI). The analysis in the report falls in line with similar findings in other cities — a substantial chunk of short-term rentals are controlled by operators with multiple properties, suggesting that landlords are choosing to put units on Airbnb and other sites, eschewing long-term tenants.The rosiest p

Users of Grindr,the popular dating app for gay men, may have been broadcasting their location despite having disabled that particular feature. Two security flaws allowed for discovery of location data against a user’s will, though they take a bit of doing.
The first of the flaws, which were discovered by Trever Faden and reported first by NBC News, allowed users to see a variety of data not available normally: who had blocked them, deleted photos, locations of people who had chosen not to

General Motors’ self-driving car unit, Cruise Automation, is parting ways with CTO A.G. Gangadhar, Bloomberg first reported. This comes after public complaints pertaining to his role in fostering an alleged unsafe work environment for women.
“After serious consideration, Cruise and AG have elected to part ways,” a Cruise spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement. “We wish him the best in all future endeavors.”
Before Cruise, Gangadhar had most recently worked at U

The new Subaru Forester, one of the brand’s best-sellers in the US, made its debut at the New York International Auto Show today. With it comes EyeSight, Subaru’s driver-assist technology, and an interesting new safety feature that is totally new to the automaker’s lineup: facial recognition.Dubbed DriverFocus, Subaru describes it as a “driver monitoring system that uses facial recognition software to identify signs of driver fatigue or driver distraction.” The fea

Public places may soon be filled with secret pieces of art unlocked by looking through the lens of AR, if Artopia’s cheerily creative app catches on. It essentially lets you geocache your 3D scribbles so anyone else can find, appreciate and share them.
Artopia, currently in beta for Android and iOS, is a straightforward combination of AR painting and real-world discovery. You make your art by selecting brushes, colors and so on and moving your phone as you would the brush. Grab objects and

Scotty Labs, a tele-operations company that is working on technology to enable people to remotely control self-driving cars, has raised a $6 million seed round from Gradient Ventures with participation from Horizon Ventures and Hemi Ventures. Gradient Venturesis an early-stage venture fund housed within Google.
“Usman and I founded Scotty on the belief that human intelligence is critical to solving the autonomous driving problem,” Scotty co-founder and CEO Tobenna Arodiogbu wrote in

In 2016, the British government released a new charter for the BBC, which established new fee rates, governance, and a new focus on its programming content. Today, the broadcaster released its second annual report, outlining its “creative plan” for the year, its budget, and how it’s working to compete against companies such as Amazon and Netflix.BBC chairman Sir David Clementi is frank in his assessment of the media landscape, saying “the media industry has continued to

The Android fan community is having something of an emotional meltdown right now as it witnesses new phone after new phone embracing the notched screen design. Popularized by the iPhone X and Essential Phone last year, the notch at the top of the screen has been widely ridiculed as a dire offense against the principles of good design and x-axis symmetry. In short, people don’t like it. But there’s a certain inevitability to this notch-heavy future of ours, and I want to bring a caut

A report by CSOOnline presented the possibility that Microsoftwould be able to ban “offensive language” from Skype, Xbox, and, inexplicably, Office. The post, which cites Microsoft’s new terms of use, said that the company would not allow users to “publicly display or use the Services to share inappropriate content or material (involving, for example, nudity, bestiality, pornography, offensive language, graphic violence, or criminal activity)” and that you could los

Nintendo is advising owners of its Switch console to stick with the company’s own docking station for the gaming device and beware of third-party alternatives. Since the Switch’s launch a year ago, a number of companies have produced docks that plug into televisions and let you play on a big screen. Some are smaller and sleeker than Nintendo’s own, which makes them more appealing if you’re traveling. They’re often far less expensive than the $70 dock and $90 dock s

Last week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, hundreds of game developers lined up to listen to a man wearing a creepy moon mask. As 28,000 creators descended upon the city to discuss their trade, one of the longest lines was for a talk about Nier: Automata, the sequel to a largely unheralded role-playing game. Last year, Automata became a surprise critical and commercial success, selling more than two million copies and earning a fervent cult following. Along the way, director

Pandora has announced it is testing personalized playlists with select Pandora Premium users that are automatically generated based on a person’s individual listening habits, as reported by TechCrunch. The playlists will appear over time and auto-populate in up to 60 different categories, like “Your Party Soundtrack” or “Your Chill Soundtrack.”
Pandora is leveraging its Music Genome Project to power these playlists. The Music Genome Project uses over 450 attributes

Consumer genetic tests may bring up a lot of false positives, according to a new study that compared results from direct-to-consumer tests to results from clinical laboratories.In this case, 40 percent of the results from the consumer tests were false positives. But it’s important to note that the findings, published online this week in the journal Genetics in Medicine, cover a very small sample size and don’t show that consumer tests always have a 40 percent false positive rate. Th

In the world of immersive entertainment, high-end activations like HBO’s sprawling, real-world re-creation of Westworld or Disney’s upcoming Star Wars expansion lands get most of the attention. But at this year’s South by Southwest, one of the most exciting and forward-thinking pieces of immersive work wasn’t there to promote a movie or TV show. It was an interactive story experience called OpenMind, which played out in hotel rooms, office buildings, and public locations

Google’s Home, Home Mini, and Home Max speakers can now play music and other audio on the other Bluetooth speakers you might have around the house. This is particularly useful for people who own the Home Mini. The company’s affordable, compact speaker is perfect for querying Google Assistant, but lacks oomph and depth when it comes to playing music. Amazon already offers this option for its Alexa speakers.“We brought this feature to life after hearing how much you wanted to am

One of the most frustrating problems in medicine is that up to half of patients don’t take their medication properly. Researchers are now studying whether requiring patients to upload videos of them taking pills can fix this issue. And while some results are promising, the initiative is the latest attempt at a technological solution fraught with concerns about privacy, accessibility, and interactions with doctors.
Today, The Associated Press reported on so-called selfie medicine, phone ap

For publishers and authors, book discovery is a continual challenge. Sites like Amazon, Goodreads, and Smashwords contain hundreds of millions of books, which makes the task of connecting a reader to the right read difficult amid the clutter. This week, Barnes and Noble released a new app called Browsery that seeks to solve that problem by creating a community that offers recommendations to one another.It’s not a new concept; for example, Goodreads lets you track your progress in your cur

As we wait for the first report from the National Traffic Safety Board on the fatal Uber crash in Tempe, Arizona, new details about the ride-hailing company’s self-driving program continue to trickle out. And as you would expect, it’s more bad news.Most notably, Uber reduced the number of LIDAR sensors on its vehicles when it shifted from its prototype Ford Fusion sedans to the Volvo XC90 SUVs, Reuters reports. And new emails obtained by The Guardian highlight the chummy relationshi

I’m sure you’ve always wanted a lamp with Amazon’s Alexa assistant built in, and Amazon wants to make sure companies can sell you one. Today, the Alexa maker announced the first reference design for a smart lamp that includes a microphone, speaker, and support for Alexa. Amazon approves and tests third-party white-box solutions, so hardware sellers know the design is reliable.
This particular lamp design comes from an ODM called Adition. It features two microphones, Bluetooth

Millions of light-years from Earth, there’s a galaxy that is completely devoid of dark matter — the mysterious, unseen material that is thought to permeate the Universe. Instead, the galaxy seems to be made up of just regular ol’ matter, the kind that comprises stars, planets, and dust. That makes this galaxy a rare find, and its discovery opens up new possibilities for how dark matter is distributed throughout the cosmos.
No one knows what dark matter is. True to its name, th

Apple chief executive Tim Cook spoke out on privacy during an MSNBC interview hosted by Chris Hayes and Recode’s Kara Swisher earlier today, saying that services that “[traffic] in your personal lives” are invading peoples’ privacy and emphasizing that Apple sees privacy as a “human right” and a “civil liberty.” He also said that he finds it “creepy” when “all of a sudden something is chasing me around the web,” referring t

The BBC has released a trailer for its adaptation of China Miéville’s 2008 novel The City and The City. The four-episode series will begin airing in the UK on Friday, April 6th.
The BBC and Mammoth Screen studios (which is also working on a new BBC adaptation of H.G. Wells’ Victorian-set novel The War of the Worlds), picked up the adaptation in 2015, with screenwriter Tony Grisoni (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams) attached to write. The

The 2018 New York Auto Show may have been overshadowed by the Geneva Motor Show earlier this month, but a number of the cars from that show have now landed in NYC, in case you couldn’t make it all the way to Switzerland.
The Verge is at the Javits Center covering the show as well as premieres of cars that haven’t been shown at all yet. It’s as if automakers robbed this year’s Detroit Auto Show of some excitement to save it for New York. Here’s what’s happenin

Coming off its dizzy vision of the future in Geneva, Volkswagen brought things back to reality at the New York International Auto Show with new SUV and pickup truck concepts. But just because these are the kind of cars that Americans have been known to buy doesn’t make them any less flamboyant. Both the Atlas Tanoak truck and its SUV cousin the Cross Sport have LED badges, headlights, and running lights that flow across the grille crossbars. The effect is like something out of Blade Runne

Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale is leaving behind the existing narrative of the novel it’s based on and moving into uncharted territory. The finale of the first season saw Offred (Elisabeth Moss) find freedom — or perhaps not — as she left behind the home where she once served as a Handmaid. “There probably is no out,” Offred intones in the latest trailer. “Gilead is within you.”
It’s hard to say where the show will go now, as

Snap is reportedly working on a new feature that will let users control which third-party apps will have access to their Snapchat accounts, according to Mashable. The publication reports that the latest beta version of Snapchat features a new tab in the settings screen called “Connected Apps.” The screen simply has text that reads: “These apps are connected to your Snapchat account. Choose an app to control what it has access to.”
The timing is particularly bad, given th

The long wait for Dragon Quest XI is almost over: today, Square Enix announced that the role-playing game will be available in North America and Europe on September 4th. The game originally debuted in Japan last July, but previously, the developer had been quiet on a Western release.
Unfortunately, not all versions of Dragon Quest XI will be launching outside of Japan. The September 4th release date is for the PS4 and Steam versions, while Square Enix tells IGN that the Nintendo Switch version

Logitech G announced a new wired gaming headset today: the Logitech G Pro Gaming Headset. It’s being marketed as a comfortable headset with a quality microphone and sound-isolating ear pads. Logitech says its leatherette ear pads should offer 50 percent more sound isolation than prior headsets. The removable microphone features a pop filter and noise cancellation, so users can communicate more clearly.
It’s tough to evaluate a headset without using it, but Logitech bolsters its anno