Technology news

It’s been over a month since SpaceX launched its first batch of 60 internet-beaming satellites for the company’s massive Starlink initiative, and all but three of the satellites seem to be working as intended. Initially, SpaceX was able to communicate with all 60 spacecraft after launch, but eventually lost communication with three outliers. The uncommunicative trio will continue to orbit the Earth for a time, but will eventually get pulled down toward our planet by gravity, where th

A second U.S. city is banning its municipal government from ever using facial recognition technologies over fears it'll pave the way for mass surveillance.
On Thursday, the city council of Somerville, Massachusetts voted 11-0 to pass the anti-facial recognition ordinance, which calls out the technology for its potential to "chill" protected free speech.
"The broad application of face surveillance in public spaces is the functional equivalent of requiring every person to carry and display a perso

BMW executive and board member Klaus Fröhlich told reporters this week that the shift to cars powered by electricity is “overhyped,” and said that there is “no” consumer demand for them. Curiously, Fröhlich made these comments at an event where BMW proudly announced it will accelerate plans to release 25 cars that are partially or fully electric, moving the timeline up two years from 2025 to 2023.Fröhlich said all-electric vehicles “cost more in terms

Sometimes revenge is just a forehead away.
Twitter user Teddy (@Tgflx) has come up with a new way to tease his girlfriend, Adilene. His scheme is simple yet effective: Every time she gets on his nerves, he takes a photo of the two of them and edits her forehead to new heights. It might sound minor, but look at the picture. Sometimes when my girl makes me mad I upload pictures with her forehead edited to be slightly bigger pic.twitter.com/lRaZiTAZ1A
— Tgflx (@Tgflx1) June 27, 2019Teddy

New York’s attorney general has settled a complaint over gay, bisexual, and queer dating app Jack’d, whose parent company left users’ private photos exposed online for at least a year. The company, Online Buddies, will pay $240,000 and implement a “comprehensive security program” to prevent similar incidents in the future.
The Register and Ars Technica first reported on the Jack’d security flaw in February of 2019, noting that security researcher Oliver Hough

Sliding into the DM's with a GIF is so 2017. The next time you try to shoot your shot, send a "whatitdobaybeee" instead. 
A clip of NBA star Kahwi Leonard has become the meme for hitting up an ex, developing a new crush, and dealing with mental health issues sneaking up in the middle of the night.
"What it do, babyyyy?" the Toronto Raptor player drawls in the meme while glancing down at his phone. The snippet comes from a longer Snapchat video posted by teammate Serge Ibaka. Withi

YouTube's resident problem child is back at it again with yet another testosterone induced challenge. 
Logan Paul is betting $100,000 that he's faster than you. And everyone else, for that matter. He took to Twitter to make the bet, accruing over four thousand responses from people who think they can beat him. 
Well Paul doesn't just want to talk the talk. He's ready to walk the walk. Or, in this case, run the run. 
The 24-year-old vlogger just announced "The Challenger Games," wh

Apple’s HomePod is $199.99 at Target. This Siri-equipped smart speaker is usually $299, and this sale marks the lowest price that we’ve seen yet. You can get the white-colored speaker right now, though the charcoal color option is temporarily out of stock. If you want the darker shade of HomePod, you can sign up to be notified when it’s available.
The HomePod will gain a few new abilities once iOS 13 launches later this year. With the update, it will be able to identify who&rsq

One of the questions surrounding data-hungry streaming services like Project Stadia is how they’ll manage with things like data caps, which some home internet services place strict limits on (similar to cellular data). But in an interview with GameSpot, Phil Harrison, vice president and general manager of Google, doesn’t seem too concerned that it’ll be an issue.“The ISPs have a strong history of staying ahead of consumer trend and if you look at the history of data caps

Grubhub has been buying tens of thousands of domain names that resemble those of businesses they either work with or are pitching to get on the platform, reports New Food Economy. Those domains, of which Grubhub owns as many as 23,000, are used to resemble a landing page for the official business, complete with an online ordering form, despite the sites being completely unassociated with the restaurants themselves.Restaurant owners are calling the practice predatorial, noting that Grubhub is lea

Pose’s first season was revolutionary television for a number of reasons. Its cast and creative team had a record-setting number of queer and trans people of color, and its fantastically glittering portrayal of New York’s ballroom scene served as the backdrop for stories that rarely, if ever, get told with any level of authenticity on television. 
In its second season, Pose is back with the continued stories of Blanca, Angel, Pray Tell, Elektra, and more — and it’s s

Bumble’s figured out a new way to bring video to its app: in-app voice or video calling. The feature applies to all of Bumble’s use cases, including Bumble Bizz for making professional connections; Bumble BFF for making friends; and Bumble for dating. The option to start a call will surface only once a match has been made. Women can call from that initial match while men have to wait until a woman has made the first move. The overall appeal is that people don’t have to swap pho

Gaming company Valve pioneered VR as we know it today, creating a sophisticated tracking system and prototyping several headsets. It runs the popular SteamVR platform, and it’s partnered with HTC on the Vive system. But it hasn’t actually produced a VR headset. That’s changing with the Valve Index: a high-end, PC-tethered headset that starts shipping today.
The Valve Index is specialized and expensive even by VR’s standards. It costs $999, which is more than twice as much

Apple’s new Mac Pro will be built in China, unlike the previous model that has been assembled in a plant in Austin, Texas, since 2013, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The vast majority of Apple products are manufactured in China, so it’s not entirely surprising to see Apple shift its production overseas. But it comes at a fraught time, as the tech industry faces the prospect of 25 percent tariffs on imports from China, which could have political implications for a company that

EA Access will launch on the PlayStation 4 on July 24th, Electronic Arts announced today. The service — which has been available for Xbox One for nearly five years — gives players access to a massive library of Electronic Arts games.
The subscription service is $4.99 per month and includes games such as Mass Effect: Andromeda, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Battlefield V, and A Way Out. Subscribers also get access to prelaunch trials and a 10 percent discount on EA digital purchases.EA rev

At the risk of being reductive, there’s very little to say about Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night other than this: it is good. From the day this game hit Kickstarter more than four years ago, it’s always been clear what it was intended to achieve. If it managed that, it would be good. If not, it would be a failure.
So yes, Ritual of the Night is good, and that’s because its developers pulled off their one job: revive the “Igavania,” a specific style of Castlevania

The ongoing US-China trade war under the Trump administration is threatening the livelihood of the last remaining television manufacturing factory in America, reports Reuters. Element Electronics, a South Carolina-based factory that assembles TVs for Walmart, is at risk of closure after a new proposal would impose a 25 percent import tax for all Chinese goods.
Element opened its plant in 2012, supplying the majority of its TVs for Walmart’s Made in America initiative. The factory assembles

You can now try out a key new feature from Android Q by installing a new app. ActionDash, an app that more or less clones Google’s Digital Wellbeing features, has been updated to include a “focus mode” that works exactly like the focus mode that’s being built into the next version of Android.
When you activate Focus Mode, your phone will lock you out of apps that you’ve marked as distracting. So if you go to open Instagram or your email, a message will pop up saying

Tetris Royale, a 100-player battle royale game, is coming to mobile devices in a partnership between N3TWORK and The Tetris Company. It’ll essentially be a mobile version of the Nintendo Switch’s impossibly addicting Tetris 99.
The game is the first Tetris game to come out of N3TWORK and The Tetris Company’s exclusive multiyear partnership, which means we’ll be seeing more Tetris games for mobile in the future. Aside from the 100-player competitive mode, Tetris Royale wil

What a topical show we’ve got this week on The Vergecast. I’m going to be honest, there’s a little bit more editing than usual here.
Initially, we began the episode with some overviews of the public beta software for Apple’s iPadOS, iOS 13, and macOS Catalina. The Verge’s Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Paul Miller discussed what’s different with the updates and how the iPad feels now compared to using an iPhone. My favorite part is when Dieter questions what it