Technology news

Google has a simple, yet subtle, reason for its anticipated push into the midrange smartphone market: there’s too much competition in the high-end one.Next month, on the first day of its I/O developer conference, Google is expected to show off its new, cheaper Pixel 3a and 3a XL. And on an earnings call with reporters today, Ruth Porat, the chief financial officer of Google parent company Alphabet, said that industry-wide pressure on high-end phones led to fewer Pixel sales last quarter c

With news that the We Company (formerly known as WeWork) has officially filed to go public confidentially with the SEC today, there’s a big question on everyone’s mind: is this the next massive startup win or a house of cards waiting to be toppled by the glare of the public markets?
No company I follow has as much polarized opinion as the We Company. And while the company will have to reveal at least some of its hand in its official S-1, my guess is that the polarization around

Podcast startup RedCircle is officially launching today with a focus on helping small shows grow. Its first step is releasing a feature that assists podcasters in setting up cross-promotions with other podcasters, agreements in which two shows promote each other. It promises there’s more to come.
RedCircle raised $1.5 million in its seed round and offers free hosting, analytics access, distribution help, and other features designed for smaller creators. The company’s cross-promotion

Anki, the San Francisco-based robotics company that specialized in making smartphone-controlled toys, is shutting down this week, reports Recode. The sudden news, delivered to staff today by CEO Boris Sofman, means the company’s staff of nearly 200 people will lose their jobs by Wednesday, with only one week of severance. Anki raised more than $200 million in venture capital funding to date.According to Recode, Anki ran out of money and could no longer “support a hardware and softwa

Daimler will end US and Canada sales of its electric, pint-sized Smart Fortwo cars after the 2019 model year, the company confirmed today. “After much careful consideration, Smart will discontinue its battery-electric smart EQ Fortwo model in the U.S. and Canadian markets at the conclusion of MY2019,” Daimler said in a statement to The Verge. “A number of factors, including a declining micro-car market in the US and Canada, combined with high homologation costs for a low volum

Last April, T-Mobile and Sprint announced their plans to merge, yet one year later neither the US Federal Communications Commission nor the Justice Department have approved the deal — and the telecommunications companies just opted to extend the deadline an extra month.On Monday, T-Mobile and Sprint announced a deadline extension for the $26.5 billion merger in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The two companies will now have until July 29th to convince officials at bo

Uber and Lyft have stopped accepting new drivers on their respective platforms in New York City, Politico reports. The move comes after the city passed new rules that are designed to curb the explosive growth of ride-hail companies.On its website, Uber attributes the new policy to “new [Taxi and Limousine Commission] regulations.” (To find Lyft’s notice about not accepting new drivers, I had to go through the process of signing up as a new driver.) This is a reference to legis

Back in March, we heard that a New Jersey drama club was adapting Alien as a high school production. Now there’s a recording of the production making the rounds that shows the play straight through, including their take on the Space Jockey, the Chestburster, the Xenomorph, and a guy playing Harry Dean Stanton in an accurate Hawaiian T-shirt.Since the video could potentially get taken down for being an unauthorized adaptation of Alien (it already has several music-related copyright claims)

Spoiler alert: Spoilers ahead for Game of Thrones season 8, episode 3, “The Long Night.”
Game of Thrones’ most recent episode, “The Long Night,” was probably the final showcase of the Night King, the enigmatic progenitor of the White Walkers. But he went out in style, riding his undead dragon into one-on-two aerial combat, raising a whole new Army of the Dead to replace the army he lost, and shrugging off a blast of dragon fire to the face before Arya Stark finally

For many viewers tuning into Game of Thrones last night, what was supposed to be one of the show’s most remarkable and momentous scenes ever was marred by, well, darkness. The Battle of Winterfell, playing out in the season 8 episode “The Long Night,” took an arduous 55 nights to shoot, and was the largest-scale battle sequence in Thrones history. It was meant to be a final-season flex of epic proportions.
But Miguel Sapochnik’s close-up directing choices and the battle&

Spoiler alert: This essay includes no specific single plot points from Avengers: Endgame, but does mention some broad plot ideas that could be considered significant spoilers.At three hours long, Avengers: Endgame is a lot of movie, which means it has a lot of room for the things fans love about the Marvel Cinematic Universe — as well as the things some critics find frustrating about it. Sometimes, it’s both thrilling and frustrating at the same time — especially when it&rsquo

Spoiler alert: This essay includes no specific single plot points from Avengers: Endgame, but does mention some broad plot ideas that could be considered significant spoilers.At three hours long, Avengers: Endgame is a lot of movie, which means it has a lot of room for the things fans love about the Marvel Cinematic Universe — as well as the things some critics find frustrating about it. Sometimes, it’s both thrilling and frustrating at the same time — especially when it&rsquo

Just one day after Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg called for fans to end the “Subscribe to PewDiePie” meme, a plane sporting a banner with that exact message is flying around New York City.Kjellberg watched the plane zip around New York with more than 21,000 fans on DLive, a streaming site that he entered into a partnership with earlier this month. The promotion, which was put together by fans in celebration of Kjellberg’s ninth anniversary on YouTube today, happened

There are quite a few deals worth sharing from Best Buy’s latest flash sale, which will end later today. The first-generation Sonos One smart speaker is $149.99 at Best Buy. The newer version of the Sonos One has a faster processor and more memory, which should make it a more future-ready option. However, the sound performance on the original model shouldn’t differ at all, so this is a great deal if you want to save money on a Sonos speaker.
The Sony PlayStation 4 Pro console includ

The Picross series is for anyone who has ever asked themselves, “What if sudoku was slightly more pretentious? And available on my Nintendo Switch?”
If you’re looking for an unassuming, mildly addictive distraction for your favorite handheld, Picross S3 might be a good fit, especially if you like Nintendo’s habit of applying a little extra charm and polish. The series is based on a type of Japanese puzzle called nonograms — and then later, in horrifying instances,

There have been plenty of rumors about what type of connector Apple will equip its new iPhones with now that the iPad Pro and its MacBook line use USB-C. We’re finally starting to get a clearer picture of what that reality might look like come September. According to Japanese blog Mac Otakara, the new iPhone models, of which there are rumored to be three in line with last year’s release, may not contain USB-C ports, as we’ve been hearing. They might, however, ship with a faste

Burger King is rolling out the Impossible Whopper nationwide, after a successful trial run testing the meatless burger in St. Louis. The chain announced in a statement today that it plans to test in more markets before distributing the burger nationally by the end of this year.The Impossible Whopper is made with startup Impossible Foods’ plant-based patties, which are designed to look and taste like meat. The patties are also designed to “bleed,” just like the real thing, whic

One year after Nubia announced its original Red Magic gaming phone, and fewer than six months after the release of the Red Magic 2, the company is back with another gaming smartphone called the Red Magic 3. The big change for the third generation of Red Magic phones is the cooling, which pairs liquid cooling with an internal “turbo fan,” which Nubia claims is an industry first.Cooling has been a sore spot with gaming-focused smartphones in the past. The Razer Phone 2 had an annoying

Microsoft says “comments and opinions” from Minecraft creator Markus Persson, better known as Notch, have led the company to exclude him from an upcoming event celebrating the game’s 10th anniversary. Microsoft told Variety, “His comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of Minecraft.”
As Microsoft has worked to make Minecraft into a universal, family-friendly game, Persson has been something of a thorn in its side

Walmart is reportedly planning to bring at least six new original programs to its Vudu platform in the next year. A report from Bloomberg claims that the lineup will be comprised of family-friendly content, including a reboot of the 1983 film Mr. Mom that’s set for a June 2019 debut. It’s also reportedly chasing deals for a science fiction show and a procedural crime drama like CSI.
Unlike Hulu, Netflix, HBO, and Apple’s upcoming video streaming service, Walmart’s plans

On Monday, Facebook announced a new set of research projects that will look into social media’s impact on democracy. The projects will give more than 60 academics access to “privacy-protected Facebook data” to help conduct research into a range of topics, including the impact of IRA-trolling on Germany’s 2017 election and the spread of fake news during the Chilean elections in the same year.
Facebook will provide the researchers with data from the platform’s APIs f

Google employees are organizing a phone drive to press lawmakers to legally end forced arbitration.
In February, Google said it would end its use of forced arbitration clauses. The clauses, which are widely used in many industries, funnel employee complaints to a private legal system instead of the courts. Critics of the policies say they give employers an advantage over workers in disputes.But while Google dropped the policy, some employees are looking for national legislation to ban the pract

There was a ton of reader interest in the new Powerbeats Pro, which are the first true wireless earbuds coming from Apple’s Beats brand. Today, Apple announced that the Powerbeats Pro will go up for preorder on May 3rd at 7AM PT (10AM ET) and hit retail stores starting on May 10th. That’s only for black, however; the other three colors won’t be shipping until sometime this summer. The earbuds cost $249.95.The Powerbeats Pro resemble the company’s previous wireless Powerb

Press renders claiming to show the unannounced Motorola RAZR V4 have appeared online in a now-deleted post on Weibo. The images were later reuploaded to SlashLeaks. If real, the renders are our first look at the phone’s design outside of a patent, and they appear to confirm its notched folding screen design. GSMArena notes that the images show a wireless charging stand that’s included with the phone alongside a typical range of accessories, all housed within a neat triangular prism-

The latest addition to Samsung’s TV range is the Sero, a 43-inch TV that was designed with the millennial generation in mind and therefore pivots between horizontal and vertical orientations. It’s a much smarter idea than the phrase “vertical TV” would lead you to believe. Acknowledging that most mobile content is vertical, Samsung says the Sero is designed to encourage young people to project more of their smartphone stuff onto the TV by allowing it to go vertical. Thro

Edtech and recruitment continue to converge. London-based online degree platform, FutureLearn, is taking £50 million (~$64.6M) from Australian-based online job matching group, Seek, in exchange for a 50 per cent stake in the business — just days after the same group led a massive Series E in U.S. online learning giant Coursera.
U.K. distance learning veteran, the Open University— which had wholly owned the FutureLearn platform up til now — retains a 50 per cent stake in t

More than 100 million users worldwide now pay for Spotify Premium, the company has announced. Spotify reached the milestone by growing paid subscribers by 32-percent year-on-year. Including free subscribers, Spotify now has a total of 217 million monthly active users worldwide. That includes two million Indian users who joined after the company launched its service there in February.Globally, the numbers put Spotify well ahead of Apple Music, its closest competitor, who reportedly had 50 millio

Ecuador’s intelligence agency has access to a vast Chinese-made surveillance system which could be used to spy on its country’s citizens, a report from The New York Times has discovered. During an interview at an unmarked bunker in the country belonging to the National Intelligence Secretariat, or Senain, the paper says it inadvertently discovered Senain agents monitoring video feeds installed to help police fight crime. The discovery happened after a reporter adjusted what he thoug

HBO’s Game of Thrones is a dense series with a huge weight of history behind its story. So in practically every episode, something happens that could use a little explanation. Every week, The Verge will dive into a scene or event from the latest episode of the series and explain how we got here. Whether you’re basically a Game of Thrones maester or you need a little reminder about previous events, we’ll try to help you keep your history straight.
Oh boy. Game of Thrones’