Technology news

Instagram just quietly added an in-app payments feature as a test appearing for some users, as first spotted by TechCrunch today. The feature lets users add a credit or debit card and a pin for additional security. After the initial setup, users can make purchases from within Instagram. Currently, some users are able to book appointments at spas and restaurants through a third-party integration with dinner reservation app Resy.Instagram confirmed to The Verge that users are able to book service

Twitter just revealed that it made a monumental security blunder by exposing the passwords of users in plain text. The company says there’s been no indication of a security breach tied to the log that contained those login credentials, but let’s not kid ourselves. It’s 2018. You need to change your password — on Twitter and with any other account where you might’ve repeated that password — and secure your Twitter account immediately. The full scope of what ha

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) visited Apple, PayPal, Twitter, Square, and Airbnb this past week to hold Silicon Valley accountable on the quest to become more racially diverse. Although the CBC has made the trip twice before, this time they sent the most members yet: Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-NC), Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA).
Lee, who serves on the diversity task force as a co-chair, said to The Verge in a phone interview th

The CW’s The 100 is a bit of a Trojan horse as far as television shows go. It invites viewers in with the promise of post-apocalyptic YA action-adventure, then sneaks in impossible moral conundrums, built around a simple thesis: “Who we are and who we need to be to survive are very different.” The show is set 97 years after a nuclear apocalypse, as the descendants of survivors living aboard a clutch of international orbital stations learn that their home is running out of oxyg

MTV’s annual Movie & TV Awards will air in June, and the network just released its final list of nominees in categories like Best Hero, Best Villain, Most Frightened Performance, and Best On-Screen Team.Black Panther racked up the most nominations, with seven total in categories like Best Movie and Best Hero. Netflix’s Stranger Things earned six nominations, including Best Show, Best Performance in a Show (Millie Bobby Brown) and Best Kiss (Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard).

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has booted convicted rapists Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski from its ranks. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Academy’s board of governors voted to expel both men at its May 1st meeting. “The Board continues to encourage ethical standards that require members to uphold the Academy’s values of respect for human dignity,” the organization said in a statement.The move is part of the Academy’s late-coming efforts to

Twitter is urging all of its more than 330 million users to immediately change their passwords after a bug exposed them in plain text. While Twitter’s investigation showed that there was no evidence that any breach or misuse of the unmasked passwords occurred, the company is recommending that users change their Twitter passwords out of an “abundance of caution,” both on the site itself and anywhere else they may have used that password, which includes third-party apps like Twi

Martin Winterkorn, the former CEO of Volkswagen, was charged with conspiracy to defraud the US related to the massive diesel emissions cheating scandal that has ensnared the German automaker for almost three years. According to Bloomberg, Winterkorn’s indictment was unsealed in federal court in Michigan on Thursday. The former CEO was also charged with violations of the Clean Air Act.Winterkorn is the latest former VW executive to face charges in the Dieselgate investigation, which has co

Google’s smartwatch platform, Wear OS, is getting several updates that should make interacting with Google Assistant more convenient with watches using the platform.
Smart suggestions will soon be integrated, so when you ask Google Assistant a question, it will automatically populate an array of follow-up questions that are contextual to the conversation. If you asked about the day’s weather, for example, Google Assistant will return that information, and then suggest other inquirie

AT&T said today it has no plans to sell LG’s new G7 ThinQ phone. Instead, the company says it’ll stock an exclusive LG device this summer. An AT&T spokesperson told The Verge: “We offer a strong lineup of devices from LG today. And we’re planning to launch a new LG device this summer only from AT&T.”
LG announced the G7 ThinQ at an event in New York City this week. The phone features the company’s AI Cam, which is also integrated into the V30S Thi

Microsoft is testing a new update to Windows 10 this week, which will include a new screenshot experience for the upcoming major update. While third-party apps like ShareX and Lightshot have been leading the way in taking screenshots on Windows 10, Microsoft has finally recognized that Windows 10 users want a better way to take screenshots and share them.
Screen Sketch, previously bundled with the Windows Ink feature of Windows 10, is now being made into a separate app that can take screenshots

Xiaomi has partnered with Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison to expand the availability of its smartphones within Europe through telecom subsidiary 3 Group, as reported by Engadget.
As part of the deal, Xiaomi products will initially be available at 3 Group stores in Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, and the UK, and it’s mentioned that other Xiaomi products will be sold at retail locations like Watson’s Fortress, Superdrug, and Kruidvat in Ireland, UK, and the Netherlands.

Pocket Casts, widely considered to be one of the best mobile apps for podcast listening, has been acquired by a collective group that includes NPR, WNYC Studios, WBEZ Chicago, and This American Life. “This unprecedented collaboration furthers public radio’s leading role as an innovator in audio discovery and distribution, while ensuring the continued support and growth of one of the most popular listening platforms on the market,” the companies said in a press release announci

Google started rolling out a new version of Chrome last month that further addresses autoplay videos. The latest update, version 66, includes autoplay video changes that stop Chrome from automatically playing videos if the sound is on by default. Google is gradually rolling these changes out in a personalized way, so that Chrome learns user preferences of which sites should and should not be blocked. This should prevent audio randomly blasting out of your speakers when visiting a new site, but

Google Pay — the combined payments system that Google launched earlier this year — has been available in Chrome and on Android since it came out. Now, Google is starting to roll it out to other browsers like Safari and Firefox, along with iOS.The expanded Google Pay will work on the new platforms just like it does on Chrome and Android devices now, automatically syncing your saved cards wherever your Google account is logged in for easy payments, making it faster to check out at onl

Hydrogen-powered semi truck startup Nikola Motor Company announced today that Anheuser-Busch, the maker of Budweiser beer, has placed an order for “up to” 800 of its zero-emission big rigs. Nikola says it will start delivering the trucks to the beer distributor in 2020, and that it will show off a final production version of the truck at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show. Other terms of the deal were not disclosed.Nikola, which just this week filed a patent lawsuit against Tesla, s

When Google launched its Advanced Protection Program in October, it came with a big caveat. The system was designed to prevent targeted account hacks — basically, any way a sophisticated hacker might try to steal the data in your Google Account — but locking down the account meant cutting off all third-party apps, including native iOS apps like Apple Mail, Contacts, and Calendar.
Six months later, Google has figured out a way to make it work. In a post today, Google’s Dario Sa

Microsoft is working to fix some device freezing and crashing issues with Google’s Chrome browser with the new Windows 10 April 2018 Update. The software maker was forced to delay rolling out its Windows 10 April 2018 Update due to Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) issues last month, and now it’s facing these fresh issues with Chrome and the “Hey Cortana” feature.
A number of Chrome users have reported issues after installing the latest update, and Microsoft says it’s aw

At this point in Andrew Niccol’s career, audiences should be pretty clear on when they’re watching one of his films, even if they miss the opening credits. Niccol specializes in high-concept stories about the ways technology affects society — sometimes radically, like in his science fiction films Gattaca, In Time, and S1m0ne, and sometimes more subtly, as in his drone-warfare drama Good Kill or his arms dealer story Lord of War. He’s a writer as well as a director. He sc

Russia has taken further steps to limit access to popular messaging app Telegram, blocking 50 internet anonymizers and VPN services, as reported by Meduza. However, Roskomnadzor, the country’s federal executive body responsible for censorship, won’t disclose which services have been blocked.
Last month, a Russian court ruled that Telegram must be blocked in the country, following months of back-and-forth between the company and Roskomnadzor. In order to enforce the ban, local ISPs r

Amazon offers over 25,000 Alexa skills from third-party developers, but nearly all of them have one thing in common: they’re free, leaving developers without a way to make money off them. That’s changing today: Amazon finally opening up the smart assistant to anyone to sell one-time in-skill purchases that can expand what a skill can do, along with the addition of Amazon’s own payment system for purchasing physical goods.The first addition is in-skill purchases, which work alm

Sonos just sent out press invites for a June 6th event in San Francisco. The invitation shows a coffee table littered with TV and other home theater remotes and has a simple tagline: “You’re better than this.” The company recently registered a new home theater smart speaker — very likely a successor to the Playbar or Playbase — with the FCC. Documents attached to that filing reveal that the product will include HDMI connectivity and microphones for voice control.Th

Toyota announced today that it will build a gigantic, 60-acre facility in Michigan to test “edge case” driving scenarios with its autonomous vehicles that are too dangerous to perform on public roads. The news comes more than a month after the Japanese auto giant halted its self-driving tests on public roads in the US in the wake of a deadly crash involving a self-driving Uber in Arizona.
Construction permits were filed this week to transform an approximately 60-acre site at Michiga

Google Assistant has had a good few months: Google’s smart assistant is now compatible with more than 5,000 devices, up from the 1,500 it worked with back in January.According to Google, it’s a list made up of a huge variety of products, including “cameras, dishwashers, doorbells, dryers, lights, plugs, thermostats, security systems, switches, vacuums, washers, fans, locks, sensors, heaters, AC units, air purifiers, refrigerators, and ovens.” It’s a big jump &mdash

Major spoilers for the ending of Avengers: Infinity War to follow.
At the end of Avengers: Infinity War, a gauntlet-wielding Thanos snaps his fingers and effectively dooms half of civilization to death. Captain America watches helplessly as his best bud Bucky dissolves into a pile of dust. Spider-Man sputters “I don’t feel so good,” and bites it in Tony Stark’s arms. Even Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury can’t escape death.In true internet fashion, fans are comm

On Saturday, NASA is launching its latest Mars explorer — a robot that will sit on the surface of the Red Planet and measure the world as it wobbles. This mission, InSight, is different from previous Mars vehicles, which studied the planet’s surface. Instead, InSight will be helping scientists to peer underneath the crust, to learn more about Mars’ insides, and that could tell us a whole lot about how this planet was born.
InSight is a lander, not a rover; once it touches down

It’s been six months since FCC chairman Ajit Pai officially began the rollback of the Title II net neutrality order — and progress has been slow. The new rules finally entered the federal register in February, and they’re already facing a number of legal challenges. While some net neutrality advocates dig in for a prolonged court battle, there’s a separate front opening up in Congress that could prove far more effective. On May 9th, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) will introduce a

Ever since it was announced, the biggest question surrounding Nintendo Labo is about durability: just how long will a bunch of cardboard accessories hold up, anyway? It was a question that only time could answer; a few minutes with a cardboard piano isn’t nearly enough time to determine how long it will survive the clutches of an aggressive toddler. I’ve had a slew of Labo accessories around my house for the past three weeks, and I have been playing with them along with my kids (a t

Cambridge Analytica was nothing if not consistent. After nearly two months of scandal, the Trump campaign’s onetime data analytics firm died as it lived: denying it ever did anything wrong and excoriating the journalists who reported about the ways in which it misused data. Its timely death on Wednesday — which arrived on the second day of the F8 developer conference — illustrated something Facebook knew all too well: data privacy matters to people, and acting recklessly with

The Nokia 6.1 arrives in the US this weekend, after launching in China back in January. The 6.1 is an update to last year’s Nokia 6, offering small but solid improvements in a number of ways. Perhaps most notably, this year’s version runs Android One, which means it has stock Android and guaranteed updates for two years.
Otherwise, the phone looks really similar to last year’s model. It still has a 5.5-inch 1080p display, and it’s still at a 16:9 aspect ratio, rather tha

Lego has launched a new interactive skill on Amazon Alexa called Lego Duplo Stories, an interactive experience that combines storytelling with the brick toys. The skill is available on devices that support Alexa, like the Amazon Echo or Echo Dot, and gives parents and kids a selection of stories with audio prompts that guide physical play.
Duplo Stories involve getting participants to build things with the brick pieces as they go through the story. There are multiple scenarios to choose from, i

Lego has launched a new interactive skill on Amazon Alexa called Lego Duplo Stories, an interactive experience that combines storytelling with the brick toys. The skill is available on devices that support Alexa, like the Amazon Echo or Echo Dot, and gives parents and kids a selection of stories with audio prompts that guide physical play.
Duplo Stories involve getting participants to build things with the brick pieces as they go through the story. There are multiple scenarios to choose from, i

To be frank, there have been so many leaks, semi-leaks, official teases, hints, and even one honest-to-god censored video about OnePlus’ next flagship smartphone, the OnePlus 6, that it’s difficult to sort the information wheat from the disinformation chaff. That being said, some new photos of the OnePlus 6 seem to have leaked online, and you might want to have a peek at them.
They look ... about right? And also quite good? There’s a display notch, which we knew was coming bec