Technology news

Google parent company Alphabet posted second quarter earnings for 2018 today, beating Wall Street estimates on revenue and income. Despite the historic $5 billion fine levied against it by the European Union last week, which impacted Google’s operating income, Alphabet stock is actually up around 3.5 percent in after-hours trading. That bolsters the likelihood that the EU fine may be nothing more than a pricey slap on the wrist in the long-run — so long as the fine, which Google is

YouTube’s experimenting with a new Explore feature that will help users easily find new channels and videos on the platform while browsing on mobile. The Explore feature will pop up as a “tab” at the bottom of the app’s home screen for a select 1 percent of iOS users, according to Tom Leung, YouTube’s director of product management and host of the platform’s Creator Insider channel.Explore will recommend videos based on what viewers are already watching, but

Today, Amazon announced a new equalizer (EQ) feature for the Echo that will allow you to adjust the way your music sounds when it’s played.
As part of the new feature, you will be able to adjust the bass, midrange, and treble individually, within a range of plus or minus 6dB. After it rolls out, you’ll be able to adjust the EQ via voice commands for Alexa or manually through the Alexa app or on-screen controls with the Echo Show or Echo Spot. There are a variety of ways you can ask

Googlewas already worth more than $800 billion and, while well short of Apple, is now jumping into that batch of companies that are on their way to being a $1 trillion company.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, substantially outperformed market expectations in its second quarter by bringing in $32.66 billion. That’s a 26 percent increase year-over-year, and, perhaps more significantly, it’s a faster rate of increase than it saw in the same quarter last year. The company’

Fitbit is unveiling a series of fashion-forward wristbands to go with their Versa smartwatch. The knitted wristbands in their PH5 collection, which were made in a partnership with the Council of Fashion Designers of America, “blend traditional knitwear with a futuristic aesthetic in three original styles,” according to the company. Each knit style, either striped, ribbed, or metallic, is available in two color choices for $39.95 each.
The product, as we’ve reported previously,

Any given year at San Diego Comic-Con, there is — to put it lightly — a lot going on. There were lots of new movie and TV trailers to see and very special experiences for our Verge writers. But there was also no shortage of news for the worlds of film, television, and actual comic books. Here are some of the biggest announcements you might have missed over the weekend.
James Gunn Got Fired from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3After a right-wing troll and conspiracy theorist with a his

Any given year at San Diego Comic-Con, there is — to put it lightly — a lot going on. There were lots of new movie and TV trailers to see and very special experiences for our Verge writers. But there was also no shortage of news for the worlds of film, television, and actual comic books. Here are some of the biggest announcements you might have missed over the weekend.
James Gunn Got Fired from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3After a right-wing troll and conspiracy theorist with a his

Eleven videos that appear to depict Apple’s internal processes for repairing iPhones and MacBooks have been uploaded onto YouTube. Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the videos’ authenticity — but they do appear to be the real deal, according to Motherboard.The videos have Apple’s copyright, and the videos depict Apple’s trademark disassembly and repair tools that are manufactured exclusively for the company.
If these are, in fact, g

Google is slowly but surely tying together its vast and somewhat complicated web of mobile communication apps with an integration between its Google Assistant software and its Duo video calling app. As reported by Android Police today, you can now ask Google Assistant to initiate a video call for you with someone in your contact list, and it will do so by automatically kicking you over to Duo. If you don’t have Duo installed, Android Police notes that Assistant will use Hangouts instead.T

It seems as if Samsung just leaked its next smartwatch, the Galaxy Watch, on its US retail website, as first reported by CNET’s Scott Stein. The model was a 42mm rose gold version, and it looks quite a lot like a Gear S3 Classic, which is not too much of a surprise. But it does match up with rumors last week that Samsung would be abandoning its numeric naming scheme in favor of the new Galaxy Watch brand.There was no pricing or release date information revealed on the listing, so we don&r

San Diego Comic-Con may have had a relatively light year this year since many of the con’s usual major presenters — including Disney / Marvel, Netflix, and HBO — scaled back their presence, but even a reduced schedule at the second-largest fan convention in the world is overflowing with news and events. While many of those moments were easy enough to catch up on — new trailers for Aquaman and Glass, the lowdown on DC’s new streaming platform DC Universe — the

Peak Design is expanding its lineup of premium bags with the new $299 Travel Backpack 45L, launching on Kickstarter today and shipping this fall. The Travel Backpack can hold more than the company’s Everyday Backpack, which comes in 20L and 30L sizes. The Everyday, as its name implies, is meant to serve as your essential carryall — and it does that job well if you can swallow the asking price. I see it fairly often on the streets of New York. Several of us at The Verge use the Every

Today, Google announced a partnership with the New York-based startup Digital Asset, which makes tools to build blockchain-based apps. The partnership adds to one Google already has with BlockApps, another startup that helps people make decentralized apps, which announced the collaboration last Wednesday on Twitter.
Google wrote in a blog post that its Cloud customers can “now explore ways they might use distributed ledger technology (DLT) frameworks” by using Digital Asset and Bloc

Being a celebrity in 2018 is all about access: people want influencers to constantly create new content, or they expect regular fan interaction. The golden YouTube standard is daily uploads, while Twitch streamers broadcast for hours on end. So when Twitch’s biggest Fortnite streamer, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins went offline for some of the day last week, fans wondered if something had happened to him. That’s when a troll stepped in to “explain” the situation.The a

Sonostoday took the next step in its initial public offering price, setting a range for the shares it intends to sell that will help calibrate the final amount of money – and valuation — that it will have when it begins its trading debut.
This isn’t the final, final step in the IPO process as this is usually done to test the waters and figure out the exact appetite for the company’s shares when it goes public. Sonos is offering 5,555,555 (a wonderful palindrome of a

American Airlines has announced that it is working with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to install a new bag-scanning machine at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. The machine uses the same technology as CT scanners, providing a 3D image of a bag’s contents, and is expected to be operational in late July.
The new scanner, which will be used at the airport’s Terminal 8 security checkpoint, will allow TSA to rotate a bag’s image 360 degrees

Synchronize your Apple watches and lock on to the fact that you have just three days — 72 hours — to save yourself up to $1,200 on passes to Disrupt San Francisco 2018. Our biggest, boldest Disrupt takes place at Moscone Center West on September 5-7, and you’re running short on time to get the best possible price. Our early-bird pricing detonates at midnight PST on July 25, so stop procrastinating and go buy your pass to the best tech startup show going. Get your tick

It’s one thing to run machine learning models in the cloud, where you have plenty of resources. On mobile devices, you’re dealing with very finite compute resources, so if you want to run your models directly on the devices, they have to be highly optimized. Add to that that Appleand Google are taking somewhat different approaches and use different frameworks and you can see why this is all a bit of a nightmare for mobile developers.
Boston-based Fritz, which is opening its service t

MyEtherWallet, the most popular crypto wallet service on the internet, is finally getting a mobile app as it bids to increase security for its users.
Today the company introduced MEW Connect, an iOS app that allows users to access their wallet through MyEtherWallet but without the need to type their private key. There are already solutions that allow them — such as hardware keys from Trezor and Ledger — but MEW Connect is offering the benefits for free.
The app is launching in the co

The second trailer for James Cameron’s Alita: Battle Angel has dropped, and while it features a lot of the same quotes as the first one — plus some reused footage, including the title character’s extremely anime leaps — this new sneak peek adds more action, more backstory about the robotic Alita (she’s not what she seems!), more of a sense of the world where it takes place, and a new December release date. The movie was supposed to premiere on July 20th, but Fox del

If you’re not interested in the upcoming Note 9 and instead want to purchase either the Samsung Galaxy S9 or S9 Plus, you’ll get $200 in savings on a new Chromebook if you buy from the company directly.Paying full price for either unlocked phone will knock a nice chunk of change off of any Chromebook. (That makes its Chromebook 3 essentially free.) If you’d rather have something that’s a little more feature-packed and powerful, like the Chromebook Plus or Chromebook Pro,

Why do I write about tech? For James Ball, it’s because I want to write “soap-bubble light coverage” and “glossy coverage” “to counterbalance the ‘serious’ news of the day.” Ball, a former editor at The Guardian and the author of “Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World,” has a few choice words to say to reporters, columnists and analysts like me who cover the tech industry.
In a piece entitled “We need a new model for

The latest robots out of MIT are small enough to float “indefinitely” in the air. Researchers accomplished the feat by attaching 2D electronics to colloids — tiny particles measuring around one-billionth to one-millionth of a meter. All told, the devices are roughly the size of a human egg cell.What’s more, the addition of photodiode semiconductors means the tiny individual systems are able to to be self-powered, without the need for a battery. The system converts light i

Amazonis today announcing the new batch of startups joining its Alexa Accelerator program, powered by Techstars. Members of last year’s Amazon’s Alexa Accelerator program, which backs companies developing new experiences using voice-based technologies, went on to raise over $10 million in venture capital following their participation in the program, says Amazon. The new group includes startups focused on business use cases, STEM education for kids, accessible technology, and more.
Th

“In the beginning, creators weren’t respected at all,” says YouTuber DeStorm Power. “We were actually looked at as weirdos. You put something on YouTube, and you’re a weirdo.” Today, Power is an Emmy-nominated creator who has more than 2 million subscribers on YouTube. He recently helped co-found a new video on demand platform specifically for influencer content called The Zeus Network that he and his co-founders hope will rival the likes of Netflix.Zeus was

Amazon is rolling out an update to its Echo Show smart display / speaker that enables “Tap to Alexa,” a new way of activating the digital assistant by using the touchscreen instead of voice commands. Tap to Alexa makes Alexa available to people who are unable to easily interact with Alexa by voice, such as users with speech impairments. But it might also prove to be a convenient option for anyone who’s just tired of talking to a gadget.Tap to Alexa can be enabled by going to t

In the year since scooter startup Lime launched, people have taken 6 million rides on its trademark dockless scooters and bikes, according to the company. For comparison, it took competitor Bird a full year and a half to reach 1 million rides.By the end of 2017, the number of US bikes from bike-share companies more than doubled to about 100,000, according to the National Association of Transportation Officials. Forty-four percent of these bikes, it said, were dockless, meaning they could be par

Lime, the bike and scooter-share company that recently raised $335 million from GV, Uber and others, has hit six million rides since launching last June. Lime, which first launched in Greensboro, N.C., has since expanded to 70 cities.
In comparison, Bird announced in April it hit 1 million rides since launching in November.Lime’s ridership in San Francisco is currently on hold as the city reviews permit applications from 12 companies to operate electric scooter services. But during th

Xage (pronounced Zage), a blockchain security startup based in Silicon Valley, announced a $12 million Series A investment today led by March Capital Partners. GE Ventures, City Light Capital and NexStar Partners also participated.
The company emerged from stealth in December with a novel idea to secure the myriad of devices in the industrial internet of things on the blockchain. Here’s how I described it in a December 2017 story:
Xage is building a security fabric for IoT, which takes blo

Samsung is no stranger to odd product names — just look at Milk Music, the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch, or Bixby (a dog that wears shoes and is also a butler). But despite the worthy competition, Samsung may have trademarked its oddest name yet: “Magbee.” The trademark application describes Magbee as “a magnetic beetle” and “a wireless speaker dial.”
There’s also a logo mark depicting what definitely looks like a beetle. What Magbee actually

Gideon Brothers, an ambitious startup out of Croatia that is building autonomous robots to put to work in warehouses and other industrial logistics, has quietly raised $765,000 in funding.
The round is led by TransferWise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus,who has become an increasingly active investor, recently backing fintech Cleo, legal tech startup Juro, and satellite company Open Cosmos. Ex-Wired U.K. editor David Rowan and a number of unnamed Croatian angels have also participated in Gideon Brothe

Amazon announced some new features this morning aimed at bringing more accessibility to the Echo line. At the top of the list is Tap to Alexa (not to be confused with the Amazon Tap, mind), which circumvents the need to use voice to interact with the Echo Show.
The new feature essentially turns the device into a touchscreen tablet, by clicking the feature on in settings. Once enabled, users can choose from a number of shortcuts to add to the home screen. The list includes news and weather, along

UK officials have pledged to meet a new goal to raise broadband speeds. By the year 2033, they promise to bring fiber broadband to every home in the UK. At the halfway point in 2025, fiber, which is faster than copper, will be available in 15 million households, the government claims.
Fiber connections are more consistent, faster, and more affordable than copper connections, but it’s also ineffective to have a hybrid mix of both fiber and copper. In order to attempt to accomplish this lof

Let’s be real — the latest batch of Samsung ads are more about the company’s perception of Apple than its own devices. But hey, that tact has worked for the company in the past, so who can blame ‘em? They do, however, offer at least one key bit of insight into the company’s on-going plans.
In a spot titled “Dongle” that takes aim at the easiest possible joke in the smartphone world, Samsung takes Apple to task for the iPhone for its lack of headphone jac

Betsie Larkin spent the first ten years of her professional career as an EDM artist. She released two solo albums, toured five continents and worked with the likes of Armin van Buuren and Ferry Corsten. But after being constantly frustrated by shapewear she wore under her stage outfits, she felt compelled to try her hand at a new industry.
That’s how HoneyLove was born.
HoneyLove, backed by Y Combinator,aims to disrupt the traditional shapewear market by making an affordable, high-quality

Prominent genomics researcher J. Craig Venter has been accused of stealing trade secrets by the Human Longevity Institute (HLI), a company he founded in 2013 and left this past May.
Venter is famous for his work in biotech, including sequencing the human genome. He founded the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in 2006 and the for-profit HLI. Though HLI is accusing Venter of sharing proprietary company information, the institute has sued the J. Craig Venter Institute, not the man himself.Venter i

The Surface Go was originally announced in two variants: a $399 budget model with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage and a $549 model that doubled those numbers to 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. But, as spotted by Neowin, it seems Costco is selling a previously unannounced midrange option: a $549 bundle that offers a Surface Go with 4GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD, and a Surface Type Cover (which normally costs $99).Although the configuration is odd, the pricing does seem logical. $549 for the listed bundle w

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The best VPN providers aren't necessarily the most expensive. In fact, some of the best VPNs are very affordable, which is great news for everyone.
If you want a premium VPN with extensive features, but do not fancy digging deep into your pockets, you have come to the right place, because we have lined up some great value options.
SEE ALSO: The best VPN for Netflix in 2019: Deals and how to watch American Netflix in the UK
We have reached out to partners in order to provide readers with market-l

Startup founders don’t usually pitch their ideas by admitting that they’re fixing something “boring,” but it seems to work for RevenueCat‘s Jacob Eiting.
In fact, Eiting alternately described his startup (which is part of the current class at accelerator Y Combinator)as handling “boring work” and solving a “boring problem.” RevenueCat helps developers manage their in-app subscriptions, which Eiting said “is just boring — developer

The development of Boeing’s new crew-carrying space capsule, the CST-100 Starliner, hit a roadblock last month. The company experienced an undisclosed “anomaly” in June when conducting a test of the Starliner’s launch abort engines — the key hardware that could help save the spacecraft in case of an emergency. Boeing says it has figured out what went wrong, but it’s unclear if this will delay the first milestone flights of the vehicle moving forward.
The Star

Apple Business Chat, Apple’snew platform for allowing companies and brands to communicate with customers over iMessage, is expanding. In addition to Dish becoming the first TV provider to support Business Chat, Apple says it has also added four other brands, Aramak, Four Seasons, Harry & David, and American Express, in addition to five new technology platforms businesses can integrate with.
The platforms that now support Apple Business Chat include Cisco, eGain, Kipsu, Lithium and Quiq

If you missed out on the popular Instant Pot deal during Amazon Prime Day, Walmart now offers a similar discount, giving you another chance to snag a useful kitchen tool for less than usual.
Starting today and going through July 25th, Walmart is knocking $30 off the price of the 6-quart Instant Pot LUX60 V3’s $79 price tag. This brings the price down to $49, which is even lower than Amazon’s offer during Prime Day — until it quickly sold out.
Instant Pots are generally highly

Netgear’s Arlo is continuing to expand its lineup of smart home security gear with the addition of a new smart doorbell kit that can integrate with existing Arlo cameras.At its most basic, the Arlo Audio Doorbell will automatically call your smartphone when someone rings your doorbell, allowing you to talk to the person at your door (or have them leave a message if you’re not available). The Audio Doorbell features both a speaker and a microphone, and if you have an Arlo camera, you