Technology news

According to a new study by Pew Research Center, social media users are angrier than they’ve ever been — at least as best as we can tell using emoji. Since the inauguration of one Donald J. Trump, social media users are mashing the angry reaction more than ever. While “Like” remains the most common reaction, and “love” has been the most-used non-default reaction since it was released in late 2015, “angry” has since taken the crown, and by a wide m

Disney has fired writer-director James Gunn from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 after a right-wing media personality resurfaced a series of offensive tweets Gunn made, in many cases from 2009 and 2010. “The offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James’ Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio’s values,” Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, “and we have severed our business relationship

The Walking Dead is preparing for a life after Rick Grimes, as both actor Andrew Lincoln and comic creator Robert Kirkman confirmed this week at San Diego Comic-Con that the show’s season 9 will be Lincoln’s last. Now, at The Walking Dead’s official Comic-Con panel today, AMC has released the first trailer for season 9 and confirmed an October 7th, 2018 premiere date.Season 9 takes place after the “All Out War” saga of Kirkman’s comic, and it will be the firs

The best feature of Apple’s iPhone X isn’t its hardware or design; it’s the extremely fun, easy-to-use, and efficient gesture-based navigation system that replaces the old home button. Apple’s use of gestures in the iPhone X has spurred a renaissance in gesture UIs, and many companies are now developing their own takes on them. OnePlus has added a gesture-based control option to its popular enthusiast-focused phones, while Motorola and Huawei have developed systems that

Cargo, the company that sought to make ride-share vehicles a bit more like drive-by convenience stores replete with snacks and tech accessories for sale, has announced that it’s officially joining forces with Uber.
Cargo, which first launched in 2017, gives ride-share drivers boxes filled with free samples and purchasable snacks, along with tech gear like spare phone chargers and headphones. Drivers are promised that they can keep 25 percent of the sales, and $1 per item — even if t

People have always imagined the future, but starting in the 20th century, these visions involved more and more technology. So says science historian Peter Bowler, author of A History of the Future: Prophets of Progress from H.G. Wells to Isaac Asimov.
The Verge spoke to Bowler about the idea of progress and predictions of the past. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
You write that a lot of the novels and popular science writing during the early 20th century were concerned with

Senate Republicans have abandoned an effort to impose harsher restrictions on Chinese telecommunications company ZTE after the US officially lifted its trade ban on the company earlier this month, according to a report from The Washington Post. That means that President Donald Trump’s deal for the company to resume working with US companies will stand, despite significant bipartisan opposition amid worries the company could threaten US national security interests.Earlier this year, ZTE wa

Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google parent company Alphabet, has hit another milestone: 8 million miles driven on public roads. That translates into roughly 25,000 miles driven every day, which is light-years ahead of the company’s competitors and is the result of Google’s very early investment in self-driving technology.The news was delivered by the company’s CEO John Krafcik on Friday at the National Governors Association in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in an interview with Neva

With an increasing number of households buying into virtual assistants like Google Home and Amazon Alexa, it’s important to keep in mind that these devices are designed to listen. This includes recording and learning the tone of your voice and improving voice recognition and features for the virtual assistant. It’s supposed to be a feature and not a bug, but it’s landed Amazon’s Echo speakers in hot water after they spontaneously erupted in laughter.
Amazon claimed the a

Following a year of intense competition as US telecoms raced to one-up each other on new unlimited data plans, the promotional benefits are beginning to dry up. Cell carriers are now pulling back on deals to try to shore up revenue to offset the cost of large mergers and acquisitions and network upgrades. According to a consumer price index for wireless service put together by the US Labor Department, the cost of a cell plan rose by 0.3 percent in June 2018 from the same time a year ago, as rep

Roku sells more dedicated streaming devices than perhaps any other company in the world. It’s been estimated that there are more Rokus in US households than there are Fire TVs, Chromecasts, or Apple TVs. (Amazon strongly disagrees, but has never shared any sales numbers.) But here’s something that might surprise you: the money that Roku makes from its hardware lineup isn’t enough to sustain the company’s business.There’s just not a lot of profit margin to be had wh

In the wake of the European Union fining Google a record $5 billion for anti-competitive behavior with its Android products, rival search engine DuckDuckGo claims that the company’s antitrust issues don’t stop there.
The allegation came in a series of tweets from the DuckDuckGo Twitter account as a response to the fine. In them, the search engine claims that the company’s “anti-competitive search behavior isn’t limited to Android,” but it also exists in other

If you Google image search “idiot” right now, you’ll find images of President Donald Trump. Online activists, in protest of Trump’s policies regarding unauthorized immigrants and members of the LGBTQ community, among others, are pushing his portraits to the top by manipulating the search engine’s ranking algorithm, as first reported by The Guardian earlier this week.
The association between Trump and the word “idiot” was partly sparked by London protest

There was a lot of fierce debate about whether we should open the massive and ancient black sarcophagus that was unearthed in Alexandria, Egypt, a few weeks back. For many, including this reporter, the damn thing needed to remain closed, lest we all be subjected to some kind of horrifying, world-ending torment.
Nobody listened to reason, however, and yesterday, the sarcophagus was opened. What was revealed was not buried treasure or some massive curse (yet) but three average skeletons, possibly

At a party at San Diego Comic-Con yesterday, Neopets announced that it is developing a mobile game called Legends and Letters. The company also announced that a mobile site and app are on the way, which will allow users to play dozens of the excellent mini-games available on the browser site.
The new game is noteworthy for being one of the company’s first ventures into mobile territory, especially by a website that’s been around since 1999. CEO David Lord described Legends and Lette

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services, and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.
What to watch
“Purgatory,” the first episode of the horror / Western series Wynonna E

Immersive entertainment is a wide-ranging term that can encompass everything from virtual reality and theme parks to haunted houses and interactive theater. But no matter the flavor, one thing all immersive media share is that they’re in a constant state of exploration and evolution. Unlike film and TV, which both have a framework of generally accepted conventions and tropes, most immersive work is still trying to figure out what audiences respond to. Creators keep inching toward the main

WhatsApp is considering curbing the amount of times you can forward messages to multiple chats, citing privacy concerns. The Facebook-owned app will begin a test that places a limit on message forwarding, it announced today.
Beyond the reasons WhatsApp listed, there are safety concerns involved for the spread of misinformation on the platform. The test comes after a series of violent mob lynchings in India were instigated by false messages about child abductions that were sent through WhatsApp.

AT&T said it would roll out a real 5G network in a dozen cities in 2018, and now we know the next three cities on the carrier’s list: Charlotte, Raleigh, and Oklahoma City will get the 5G treatment.
The three cities join the previously announced rollout in Dallas, Atlanta, and Waco that AT&T began in February, and the new additions should help AT&T stay on track for its 12-city goal. AT&T explained that it’s rolling out in smaller cities because it feels that “

We’ve got a super stuffed episode of The Vergecast this week.First, the biggest news in tech right now is the European Commission’s ruling that Google has been unfairly using Android to push Google search on users, giving it an unfair advantage. Nilay, Dieter, and Paul sit down and discuss the implications.In the second half of the show, Dieter discusses some of the new MacBook Pro benchmarks that claim the processors may throttle performance due to cooling issues.Nilay got an exclu

Instagram knows all of our secrets, particularly the people we love to stalk. Some people think the company outs our habits to other users in their story. These users believe that the people who populate at the top of your story viewers are the ones who stalk you the most. Maybe your crush is always at the top or maybe it’s your nemesis. It doesn’t matter who.
We visited Instagram to speak with Julian Gutman, product lead for Instagram Home, which includes Stories and the Feed to fi