Technology news

A women-led protest that began in Ireland has gone global. After a rape trial ended last week in a controversial acquittal, women took to the streets in a protest that’s now going viral with the hashtag #ThisIsNotConsent, and images of women’s underwear. Trigger warning: please be advised the following article contains frank discussion of rape and has embedded media with imagery and terminology that discusses rape and consent. An Irish man was acquitted of rape charges las

Facebook‘s recently-fired PR firm allegedly floated a story to journalists that Apple News was biased against Republicans. The company, Definers Public Affairs, made headlines this week after a bombshell New York Times report revealed that it was employed by Facebook to dig up dirt on critics and competitors. One of these competitors, according to documents obtained by CNN, was Apple News. Apple’s News app is pre-installed on all iOS devices, and features human editors working with

Verily, previously Google Life Sciences, is putting a hold on its program to build a contact lens that can monitor glucose in tears. First announced in 2014, the glucose lens has been one of Verily’s highest-profile projects, even as experts suggested the entire project was a pipe dream.The lens — which was supposed to contain a tiny wireless chip and glucose monitor — was intended to help diabetic patients. People with diabetes need to carefully monitor their glucose levels,

The only sure things in this life, according to Ben Franklin, are death and taxes. And a new startup called Visor has just raised $9 million in financing to make one of them as painless as possible.
Unlike Nectome, Visor isn’t “100% fatal“*, but it may ring the death knell for the high-end tax advisors that most Americans can’t even access to get help filing and paying their taxes. It’s like having a personalized accountant for the cost of a high-end

In the wake of WarnerMedia’s decision to shutter FilmStruck, The Criterion Collection is planning to launch its own standalone streaming service in spring 2019.
The new service, “The Criterion Channel,” will allow subscribers to stream the company’s library of celebrated films, ranging from Hollywood classics to arthouse cult films and foreign pictures. A blog post on the company’s site confirms The Criterion Channel will also be available on “WarnerMedia&rsq

Sometimes, people can have really astounding weeks: they get engaged, promoted, and win their local karaoke competition all within a few days. Other times, they can have really terrible weeks: they go through a rough breakup, get fired, and are forced to listen to seven horrible rendition’s of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” at their local karaoke competition.Danny DeVito had a legendary week — on the internet, at least. DeVito, who has become best known in

When WarnerMedia announced last month that it would be shutting down its streaming service FilmStruck, the team at the Criterion Collection said it would be looking for a new digital home. Today, Criterion announced that it will be building that home itself — namely, launching a streaming service called The Criterion Channel.
The company remains best known for its beautifully restored and packaged DVDs and Blu-rays of classic art-house films, but it’s also moved into streaming, first

Teslais now taking orders for the Model 3 from customers in China, according to its website.
Reuters was the first to report that Tesla is taking orders in China.
Tesla won’t confirm or comment on the information published on its own China-focused website. Tesla CEO Elon Musk did say in a tweet Thursday that some deliveries to customers in China will probably begin in March, but “April is more certain.”
Probably some deliveries in March, but April is more certain
— Elon M

Yesterday at a small, business-focused GSMA event in New Jersey, Verizon’s SVP of consumer products, Aparna Khurjekar, announced that Verizon will launch support for RCS messaging in “early 2019.” The move is potentially significant as RCS is the new texting standard set to replace SMS just as soon as carriers around the world update their systems to support it.
More specifically, RCS Chat will replace SMS if carriers update their systems to support the “Universal Profil

Surely you remember the fateful week when Google’s big day was spoiled — when Russian bloggers revealed the Pixel 3 phone to the world in all its glorious detail? We still don’t know how, exactly, a batch of phones fell into their hands, but it may have just happened again: Russian tech blog Rozetked claims that you’re looking at the first images of the “Pixel 3 Lite.”
And unless our eyes deceive us, this phone comes with a bona fide headphone jack.According

Microsoft has launched a free Windows app that uses machine learning to guess the facial expression you’re making when imitating an emoji. Called Emoji8, the app gives you a score for how well you recreate the emoji, and it’s mostly meant to show off the capabilities of this brand of artificial intelligence in an accessible way.
The app serves up an emoji for you to mimic, analyzes the video feed from your computer’s webcam, then tells you your percentage of accuracy. Then, od

As Facebook reels from a bombshell New York Times report published this week, much of the focus has been on a controversial public relations firm hired by the company. Definers Public Affairs, a DC organization, pressed reporters with information favorable to Facebook, including by linking liberal billionaire George Soros to the funding of anti-Facebook activities.
Since the report was published, a fuller scope of the group’s activities has been established.The group also pitched reporter

There’s a moment about two-thirds of the way through Netflix’s creepy new tech thriller Cam where audiences will think they have a pretty good handle on where the movie is headed. Alice (Madeline Brewer), a cam girl who goes by the online name “Lola,” is trying to figure out what’s going on with her account. It’s been hijacked by a woman who appears to be her doppelgänger, someone regularly performing live broadcasts in her name. And none of the fans who

Today the internet is a quagmire of captial-c Content, made navigable by retweets, likes, and favorites; everything posted can be quantified by its corresponding reactions. Though in aggregate it may seem like noise, to people in the business of disinformation, there’s a valuable signal there to be picked apart and studied. Our activity on social platforms — those favorites and likes and retweets — are a form of metadata that can help manipulators and their bots appear human t

Welcome to TNW’s beginner’s guide to AI. This (currently) five part feature should provide you with a very basic understanding of what AI is, what it can do, and how it works. The guide contains articles on (in order published) neural networks, computer vision, natural language processing, algorithms, and artificial general intelligence.  There are few technologies that inspire the imagination like artificial intelligence. And, in the field of AI, the Holy Grail

Do you use the default Mail client on your PC, the one that comes with Windows 10, to read your email? How would you feel if Microsoft decided to throw in a few ads right at the top of your inbox?
These aren’t rhetorical questions — as Windows news site Aggiornamenti Lumia noticed today, Microsoft is already testing that exact idea in a number of countries around the world. According to Microsoft’s FAQ, what we’re seeing is a pilot program, an experiment, a test that&rsq

Russia’s state space corporation, Roscosmos, successfully launched a cargo capsule to the International Space Station this afternoon — using the same type of rocket that failed more than a month ago with two astronauts on board. It’s a sign that Roscosmos has potentially fixed the issue that led to the failure and that the rocket may be ready to carry people again. And that’s good news, since the vehicle’s next crewed launch is coming up on December 3rd.
The rocket

Mostly, the internet is worse now than it was 20 years ago — but at least it looks better. Now that “going online” is more often a job than a hobby, the internet looks appropriately sleek to match: by adults and for adults, by professionals and for professionals. Platforms have different personalities, from the cutesy quirk of Etsy to the clean, friendly usability of Slack. But, in general, if a website is popular, if it is large enough to be the primary income source for its c

Contrast’s Weather Atlas has rebranded its app to Weather Up, and the 2.0 update brings calendar-synced event forecasts, international support, and an increased subscription price. Previously $4.99 / year or $0.49 / month, the Weather Up Pro subscription, which removes ads and adds event forecasts and extra icons and widgets, is now $9.99 / year or $1.99 / month.Though pretty useful, syncing calendar events to weather apps isn’t a new idea. Other apps like Fresh Air (previously Weat

The Google Pixel 3 and 3 XL offered a pretty great call screening feature at launch, which used Google Assistant to answer suspected spam calls and transcribe the conversation in real time. Now, the feature is coming to the Pixel 2 and 2 XL as part of this week’s Google Phone update, as spotted by Droid Life.
Spam calls have been on the rise, and companies, including carriers like T-Mobile, have been taking matters into their own hands to prevent potential spam calls from reaching the cus

This week, Casey Newton joins The Vergecast to talk about Amazon’s HQ2 backlash and the backlash against Facebook’s... well, everything. But it’s not all dour: Paul and Dieter get into the joys of Night Sight on the Pixel, and Sean O’Kane hosts “This Week in Elon” from the roof of the Gigafactory.
If you like what Casey has to say even a little, I can’t recommend subscribing to his newsletter, The Interface, enough. It’s a daily look at the inters

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 first episode of Godless, a Western miniseries co-produced by Steven Soderbergh,

The internet’s favorite ogre may already be headed for another Hollywood-backed installment, but fans of the fantasy parody aren’t waiting around for its release. Instead, hundreds of artists have collaborated on their own scene-by-scene retelling of the first Shrek movie. Produced by Wisconsin comedy group 3GI, each artist brings their own style into the mix, meaning there’s everything from live-action bits to CGI and pixel art thrown into the same film. The project looks abs

Carrying multiple phones for personal and business uses might be over for Verizon Wireless users. The company announced today that it is introducing an app that allows users to add up to four additional numbers to one smartphone.
The app is called My Numbers, and it can be downloaded from the Google Play Store or Apple’s App Store. It’s an additional $15 a month per number, but that’s significantly cheaper than purchasing a second, third, or even fourth phone. The app sets up

Twitter has confirmed the series of cryptocurrency-related hackings on its platform originated from a third-party software provider – and not its own system. In an email to Hard Fork, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed attackers exploited a third-party marketing solution to blast fake Bitcoin giveaway links from a slew of verified accounts, including Google and Target. Twitter refrained from naming the app in question. The confirmation comes only days after a number of high-profile public f