Technology news

Bon anniversaire, Let’s Encrypt!
The free-to-use nonprofit was founded in 2014 in part by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and is backed by Akamai, Google, Facebook, Mozilla and more. Three years ago Friday, it issued its first certificate.
Since then, the numbers have exploded. To date, more than 380 million certificates have been issued on 129 million unique domains. That also makes it the largest certificate issuer in the world, by far.
Now, 75 percent of all Firef

California plans to launch a satellite to monitor pollution in the state and contribute to climate science, Governor Jerry Brown announced today. The state is partnering with satellite imagery purveyor Planetto create a custom craft to “pinpoint – and stop – destructive emissions with unprecedented precision, on a scale that’s never been done before.”
Governor Brown made the announcement in the closing remarks of the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, ec

As more manufacturers misguidedly remove the headphone jack from their phones – looking at you, OnePlus – we’ve always had at least one consolation prize: a cheap dongle. But now Apple thinks its about time people move on. As noted by The Verge, Apple will no longer ship a Lightning-to-3.5mm dongle in the box – not even on the iPhone 8, which Apple will continue to sell. You’ll have to pay $9 bucks to get it. Never mind the fact that Bluetooth headphones

Disney has released a second featurette introducing some of the characters in its upcoming animated show, Star Wars Resistance: the Aces, a team of pilots who protect the base. The show will follow the inhabitants of Colossus, a massive floating base located on an ocean planet. Back in August, we got a featurette that introduced Team Fireball, a group of racing pilots, including Kaz, (voiced by Christopher Sean), who’s recruited into the Resistance as a spy.
This new featurette shows off

FCC Chairman Ajit Paihas provoked a biting senatorial response from California after calling the “nanny state’s” new net neutrality legislation “radical,” “anti-consumer,” “illegal” and “burdensome.” Senator Scott Wiener (D-CA), in response, said Pai has “abdicated his responsibility to ensure an open internet” and that the FCC lacks the authority to intervene.
The political flame war was kicked off this morning in Pai

Google is reportedly building a prototype system that would tie Chinese users’ Google searches to their personal phone numbers, as part of a new search service that would comply with the Chinese government’s censorship requirements. The Intercept writes that the “Dragonfly” Android app, a secret project revealed by a whistleblower last month, could be linked to a user’s phone number — making it simple to track individual users’ searches.
This tracking w

Tomorrow morning, a nearly 30-year-old rocket will take its final ride to space. The Delta II, a vehicle manufactured by the United Launch Alliance that first launched in 1989, will fly one last time, sending up an Earth-observing satellite into orbit for NASA. If tomorrow’s mission goes well, it will serve as the 100th successful flight of the Delta II in a row, while bringing an end to a rocket that has launched rovers to Mars and spacecraft to the asteroid belt.
On board this last flig

A decade ago, an artist named Giles Walker created a macabre puppet show out of disturbing and provocative automatons. At the center of his piece was a gyrating “sex bot” with a CCTV camera for a head that performed an erotic pole-dance. Walker says he created the work to explore voyeurism. Now he and it are in the sex industry. You can pay his art to talk dirty to you online while it gyrates, live and on-demand, for tips. Cardi-Bot, as its called, currently works in the employ of C

Twitchis today announcing changes to its security procedures for its TwitchCon event taking place in San Jose, California on October 26-28. The update follows news of the tragic shooting at an esports event in Jacksonville, Florida last month where three people died, including the shooter, and 11 were injured. Twitch said it would review its procedures as a result, and would soon have more information about what it’s doing to keep attendees safe.
Today, the company shared those plans.

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
The Monster Squad, a 1987 film that pays loving homage to the classic Universal Stu

The U.K. government says that access to satellites and space surveillance programs will suffer in the event of a “no deal” departure from the European Union .
Britain has less than six months to go before the country leaves the 28-member state bloc, after a little over half the country voted to withdraw membership from the European Union in a 2016 referendum. So far, the Brexit process has been a hot mess of political infighting and uncertainty, bureaucracy and backstabbing — a

The U.K. government says that access to satellites and space surveillance programs will suffer in the event of a “no deal” departure from the European Union .
Britain has less than six months to go before the country leaves the 28-member state bloc, after a little over half the country voted to withdraw membership from the European Union in a 2016 referendum. So far, the Brexit process has been a hot mess of political infighting and uncertainty, bureaucracy and backstabbing — a

Electric vehicles still make up just a fraction of the cars, trucks and SUVs on the road today. But that’s changing: The number of electric and plug-in hybrid cars on the world’s roads exceeded 3 million in 2017. By 2025, there are expected to be 20 million electric vehicles in just North America and Europe.
And that means the world is going to need a lot more chargers.
ChargePoint, theCalifornia startup that provides infrastructure for electric vehicles, said Friday it will exp

Usually, the Emmy Awards ceremony — the television industry’s equivalent of the Academy Awards — happens on Sunday night. But not this year. For 2018, the biggest night in television will begin on Monday night instead, so your viewing party probably shouldn’t be on the weekend per usual, unless you’re planning on hosting a sleepover.
The schedule may seem annoying, but there’s a good reason for the shift: broadcaster NBC wants to avoid conflicts with Sunday N

In the off-chance you haven’t already had your fill of phone news for the week, Google just offered up a few friendly reminders that it’s got its own handset coming out in the not so distant future.The company’s event isn’t happening until early next month, but Google’s started with the teasers. Here’s a site with a big number 3, while over here a “coming soon” placeholder shows off the rough outline of what one assumes is the new phone.
It’s

I only wanted one thing out of 2018’s iPhone event: a new iPhone SE. In failing to provide it Appleseems to have quietly put the model out to pasture — and for this I curse them eternally. Because it was the best phone the company ever made.
If you were one of the many who passed over the SE back in 2015, when it made its debut, that’s understandable. The iPhone 6S was the latest and greatest, and of course fixed a few of the problems Apple had kindly introduced with the entire

Drone operating system startup Airwaretoday suddenly informed employees it will cease operations immediately despite having raised $118 million from top investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Google’s GV, and Kleiner Perkins. The startup ran out of money after trying to manufacture its own hardware that couldn’t compete with drone giants like China’s DJI. The company at one point had as many as 140 employees, all of which are now out of a job.
A source sent TechCrunch screenshots

Drone operating system startup Airwaretoday suddenly informed employees it will cease operations immediately despite having raised $118 million from top investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Google’s GV, and Kleiner Perkins. The startup ran out of money after trying to manufacture its own hardware that couldn’t compete with drone giants like China’s DJI. The company at one point had as many as 140 employees, all of which are now out of a job.
A source sent TechCrunch screenshots

Nintendo had its delayed Direct last night, and revealed new details about its Online subscription. One of its more interesting announcements was a pair of add-on controllers for the Switch which look and feel exactly like the old Nintendo Entertainment System controllers — all the better to play the retro classics with. #NintendoSwitchOnline will feel even more authentic by using the new wireless NES style controllers with the classic #NES games, available for purchase exclusively for pa

Yesterday a mix of people who own Google Pixel phones and other devices running Android 9 Pie noticed that the software’s Battery Saver feature had been switched on — seemingly all by itself. And oddly, this was happening when the phones were near a full charge, not when the battery was low. As reported by Android Police, initially it was assumed that this was some kind of minor bug in the latest version of Android, which was only released a few weeks ago.Some users thought they mig

It’s been too long without any kind of outlandish news from any of Elon Musk’scompanies, but SpaceXhas filled the void with the announcement of a newly redesigned BFR spacecraft and the news that it will fly around the moon with a soon-to-be-named first passenger. Whenever they get around to actually engineering and building the thing, anyway.
In a tweet Thursday evening, SpaceX (though it was clearly Musk) announced that it has “signed the world’s first private passenger

US politicians are getting increasingly worried about deepfakes — a new type of AI-assisted video editing that creates realistic results with minimal effort. Yesterday, a trio of lawmakers sent a letter to the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, asking him to assess the threat posed to national security by this new form of fakery.
The letter says “hyper-realistic digital forgeries” showing “convincing depictions of individuals doing or saying things they never

We’re already well familiar with what the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL look like in terms of design, and now we know what colors Google’s next flagship smartphones will come in.Droid Life noticed this Google-hosted, confetti-filled “coming soon” teaser website that shows an outline of a Pixel phone with the company’s G logo at the bottom. Clicking on the logo rotates between three different colors: mint, white, and black. The green hue inside the white outline is almost

Chime, the no-fees mobile bank valued at $500 million as of its last round, has put some of its funds to use with its first acquisition. The deal is for Pinch, a startup that was focused on helping millennials and other young adults build better credit. It was best known for a service called PinchRent, which allowed users to increase their credit scores over time by reporting on-time rent payments to credit bureaus.
Millennials can sometimes struggle to improve their credit, or are uneducated ab

CBS All Access is now letting subscribers download shows on iOS and Android to watch offline later. The new feature is only available for users on CBS’s Commercial Free plan, not users on the ads-included plan, as spotted by TechCrunch. It’s first rolling out to the US, but CBS hasn’t announced plans to bring it to other countries yet.
Shows like Star Trek: Discovery, which is arguably the main draw of the streaming service, Twin Peaks, Hawaii Five-0, and NCIS: New Orleans wil

Welcome to Fav’d For Later, a Friday roundup of our favorite memes, trends, and all-around good internet content. This week, we highlight musical memes, dabbing dads, and authenticity on YouTube.
There’s nothing I love more than the return of a good meme.
Twitter user StrayRogue gifted us a GIF of a cartoon cat smacking its meaty little paws, but it was DitzyFlama who remixed the image into the original Bongo Cat with a pair of bongo drums and a tune from Super Mario World. That was

Apple has reportedly picked LG Display as its second maker of flexible OLED displays, according to Korean tech news site ETNews. Rumors of Apple using LG as a possible alternative OLED screen supplier sprung up in June, and today’s news cites unidentified sources that claim LG’s OLED panels had passed Apple’s quality tests recently.Until now, Samsung has been Apple’s sole OLED screen supplier since the iPhone X was introduced in 2017. Samsung, which agreed to provide aro

Apple’s latest iPhones, the XS and XR, have been announced, and, once again, Apple has made the incredibly frustrating choice of including a USB Type-A Lightning cable and low-power 5W brick in the box instead of a USB-C cable and charger.
Apple hasn’t given an explanation on why it insists on selling its latest, greatest, and, in most cases, $1,000-plus smartphones with the same legacy cable it’s been including since Lightning was introduced back in 2012. Maybe it’s a s