Technology news

It seems self-defeating for the former head of Oculus Stories Studios and current founder and executive producer of VR startup Fable to declare AI, not virtual reality, the next big art form. Especially considering that, aside from him, nobody knows what that means. TNW talked to Fable founderEdward Saatchi about his company’s pivot away from focusing on just making stories in VR. He told us that the future of entertainment was “virtual beings,” non-living characters powered b

I came to the NAMM show for the music, and boy, did I ever get it. Outside the Anaheim Convention Center where NAMM is taking place, a genial gent calling himself Lordblobbie and wearing heart-shaped sunglasses is playing a thrillingly unique instrument called the Soma Pipe. The Pipe works with a contact microphone to let its user generate a bewildering array of sounds just with his mouth, breath, and a few modulation dials. I’m not kidding. In the video above, Lordblobbie goes through th

As usual, hardware and software company Native Instruments has announced a slew of new products for this year’s NAMM show. Last year, the Berlin-based company focused on launching sample platform sounds.com and showing off pricier flagship products, but this year Native Instruments put the focus on affordable versions of its tech. That includes, among other things, the new Komplete Kontrol M32 keyboard controller.
The Komplete Kontrol M32 carries many of the same visual hallmarks found in

Tesla has been fined $29,365 for violating California labor laws in the parking lot tent where Model 3s are assembled. California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal-OSHA) recorded six violations between June 2018 (when the tent was erected) and December 2018, according to Business Insider.
Tesla failed to obtain a permit before building the tent, and failed to inspect it for potential safety hazards, according to Cal-OSHA. The company also failed to cover a hole in the floo

A preview of an Apple News subscription service was found in a developer build of iOS 12.2 by 9to5Mac today, and the service would offer access to newspapers and magazines for a monthly fee. The images line up with The New York Times report from last October that reported Apple is close to launching its own subscription service inside the News app, and it builds on Apple’s acquisition of a digital magazine subscription service called Texture, which was billed as the “Netflix of maga

Cadillac is bringing back the fledgling car subscription service that it put on hold in November of last year, executives told Automotive News earlier this week. This time around, though, Cadillac dealers will be way more involved in the process than they were before.It’s not yet clear how much the new version of the subscription service (dubbed “Book 2.0”) will resemble the original (“Book by Cadillac”). In the original version, customers payed an upfront fee of $

LG G8 ThinQ renders are popping up in multiple places on the internet, complete with a splashy indigo wallpaper. It looks similar to the G7 but with one significant difference: the earpiece is missing.
Like the G7, there’s a notch, a headphone jack, and a slight chin at the bottom. Unlike the G7, the G8 appears to have horizontally aligned dual rear cameras rather than vertically aligned ones. Instead of the earpiece, LG’s G8 uses the extra space for another selfie camera (rather th

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.
Alex Gibney’s documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley starts with a compelling, startling hook: an opening tease about a private tech startup launched by a 19-year-old, once valued at $9 billion, and now worth absolutely nothing. Theranos was a health-care company built around a device called t

RavPower’s thin USB-C wall charger is discounted again for readers of The Verge. Compared to most off-the-shelf chargers, this model is thinner, and capable of quickly charging most devices. In other words, this one charger eliminates the need to bring along two or more different chargers to keep all of your devices topped off. Usually going for $54.99, RavPower is marking down a limited amount of stock (white color only) for $43.99 at Amazon with the offer code VERGEKP4.
At first, this m

Tinder last week settled a class action lawsuit for $17.3 million over charging users 30 and older double the standard fee for one of its subscription services. The premium tier, called Tinder Plus and introduced in 2015, gave users perks like the ability to rewind swipes, more Super Likes, and the option to swipe for people located in other countries.Tinder was criticized when it service launched for its age tiers, which charged a $9.99 monthly fee for users under 29 and $19.99 for users 30 an

The longest government shutdown in history will likely be coming to a close soon. President Trump said today that he would endorse a short-term resolution to reopen the government for the next three weeks.
Thousands of federal employees from agencies like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) were furloughed at the end of December after lawmakers were unable to pass a series of bills to fund the government

Google has spent the last few years working (somewhat quietly) on an Android-based operating system for cars that doesn’t require the use of a smartphone. Built on Android P, it’s meant to be far more advanced than the existing version of Android Auto, which simply projects a phone interface onto a car’s infotainment screen. It’s also supposed to be a more robust solution than some past infotainment systems that were built on forked (and very old) versions of Android wit

T-Mobile is gearing up to launch a free mobile TV streaming service — but it’s going to be far tinier than the original report at Cheddar let on. In fact, it’s not for T-Mobile subscribers at all.
A T-Mobile spokesperson pointed The Verge to this tweet, which clarifies that the supposed service will actually just be a “snackable content app,” only for T-Mobile’s Metro brand (you probably know them as MetroPCS), and only available on two phones to start.
Not q

Google’s next I/O developer conference will be taking place at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA starting May 7th. The details were sussed out by a crafty Twitter user by the name of Till Kottmann who used a shortcut accidentally hidden in a puzzle Google tweeted out this morning to find the relevant information hidden in a snippet of JSON code.
Typically, the I/O puzzle takes a little longer to solve. This year, Google tweeted out an enigmatic, 12-line block of tweet with a

People are getting injured riding electric scooters — and most riders aren’t wearing helmets, new research says. The findings highlight the safety risks when infrastructure and regulation fail to keep up with a controversial and popular new transportation trend.Over the course of a year, at least 249 people visited two Southern California emergency rooms with broken bones, bumps, bruises, and head injuries — including brain bleeds — from scooter accidents, according to a

Space tourism venture Virgin Galactic laid off around 40 employees earlier this month, as the company prepares to transition from its test program to commercial flights with paying customers. The layoffs, first reported by NMPolitics.net, amount to less than 5 percent of the company, and include employees at both Virgin Galactic and partner The SpaceShip Company, which builds the vehicles that Virgin flies.
“Recently we separated a small number of our team in order to position our organiz

What’s in your bag? is a recurring feature where we ask people to tell us a bit more about their everyday gadgets by opening their bags and hearts to us. This week, we’re featuring synthpop band HONNE.
In Japanese, HONNE (本音) means “true feelings.” It’s a perfect phrase to describe the British future retro synthpop group, who have been delivering smooth romantic vibes since their debut in 2014. Since then, James Hatcher (producer) and Andy Clutterbuck

Today, T-Mobile announced the launch of the Coolpad Surf, a 600MHz mobile hot spot that’s aiming to bring service to rural areas. It’s the first mobile hot spot to support Band 71, or 600MHz LTE, which T-Mobile recently won the spectrum license for from the Federal Communications Commission Broadcast Incentive auction last April. A number of phones have been released with Band 71 support since then, including the iPhone XS and XR, Samsung Galaxy S9, and the OnePlus 6T. T-Mobile says

Venture capitalists (VCs) are a key part of the technology ecosystem. They’re the ones with the money that helps a small company to grow into a larger one. This is why it’s such a massive problem that the industry is so overwhelmingly male and white. When this demographic makeup exists, you generally get individuals at VC firms investing in companies that cater towards white males. Marketing towards this demographic isn’t a bad thing in itself, it only becomes that when every

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has begun testing a new free-to-play version of the game called PUBG Lite in Thailand, which is designed to offer the popular battle royale shooter that can run on less powerful hardware than the full, paid PUBG experience.PUBG Lite is a chance for PUBG to better compete with its biggest competitor, Fortnite. Despite coming to the battle royale genre later than PUBG’s pioneering efforts, Fortnite has become an international cultural sensation due to its

Brexit is infinitely complicated, but it starts to make sense when you think about it as someone reinstalling a computer’s operating system from scratch. All the existing programs and files (or in the case of Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, trade deals and international agreements) are gone. In 2016, 52 percent of British voters chose to reinstall Windows. Tabula rasa. A casualty of this is the UK’s membership in the EU Digital Single Market, which permits fee-fr

So you’ve spent a few hundred dollars on some high-end earbuds from the likes of Shure or Westone, and now you’re looking at the true wireless wave that’s sweeping the world you’re and feeling a bit left out. Fostex has you covered. The Japanese company, better known for its over-ear headphone models with meticulously handcrafted wooden cups, has come to the NAMM show this year with a clever marriage of existing premium in-ear headphones and cutting-edge wireless perform

Netflix’s subscription prices are going up, and Hulu’s main plan (with ads) is getting more affordable. So with new costs to consider, it’s worth revisiting the strengths of each service and contrasting the two. I know there are plenty of people out there with both Hulu and Netflix factored into their recurring monthly subscriptions, but maybe you’re trying to cut down and consider if either is really worth it if you’re already paying for Amazon Prime or HBO or som

HMD’s reborn Nokia phones will soon be sold directly through carriers in North America. Today, the company announced partnerships with Verizon and Cricket Wireless in the US along with Rogers in Canada to start directly offering Nokia phones.The first wave is pretty small: Verizon and Rodgers will get their own carrier-exclusive versions of the Nokia 2.1 (the Verizon model will be rebranded as the Nokia 2 V), while Cricket will get the Nokia 3.1 Plus.HMD is laying the groundwork for US an

A staffing shortage caused by the partial government shutdown has resulted in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) halting some flights that were due to arrive at LaGuardia Airport in New York City along with other major East Coast airports.
The FAA said that a lack of staff at two air traffic control facilities in New York and Florida has caused it to make adjustments to flight scheduling and routes, resulting in widespread 60-90 minute delays at airports like LaGuardia, Newark, and Phila