Technology news

FaceApp — the photo editing app that uses neural networks to create dramatic photo edits — is skyrocketing to social media popularity again, thanks to a new aging filter, but the Democratic National Committee isn’t on board with the fun. The organization instead repoortedly sent out an alert warning 2020 Democratic presidential campaigns from using the app due to concerns about the app’s Russian developers, according to a report from CNN.“This app allows users to pe

Ore Huiying/Getty Images for Netflix Netflix didn’t add nearly as many subscribers as the company projected it would in the second quarter of 2019, and saw a loss in US subscribers for the first time since 2011, when the company separated its DVD mail-order system and streaming platform.
The company lost approximately 130,000 subscribers in the United States in Q2, and only gained 2.7 million global subscribers, after projecting it would add 5 million. CEO Reed Hastings blamed the stagnan

Instagram Instagram is giving more users the option to publicly hide the like count on their posts. The company announced today that it’s expanding its hidden like count test, which it first announced in May, to six more countries: Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand. The test started in Canada, where people who were included in the test had their likes hidden by default. They had to opt out to show the likes publicly, although they can always see that like count on

Appearing right on time during the week of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, here’s the first trailer for Snoopy in Space, an educational Peanuts show made exclusively for the upcoming Apple TV+ streaming service. According to Deadline, Snoopy in Space “follows Snoopy as his dreams of being an astronaut become a reality when he and Woodstock tag along with the Peanuts gang on a field trip to NASA and are chosen for an elite mission into space. As Snoopy and Woodstoc

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge After giving it a test run in a few countries earlier this year, Netflix has confirmed it will officially introduce a new plan that only lets customers stream content on a mobile device. The plan, set to launch in India during the third quarter, will be priced lower than the company’s existing subscriptions.In a letter to investors released this afternoon, Netflix said the mobile-only plan “will be an effective way to introduce a larger nu

Leaks are common in the tech industry, but for the past six years, Apple has been doing everything in its power to prevent them from getting out into the world.Following a big leak that spoiled the announcement of the iPhone 5C, The Information reports that Apple created its own manufacturing security division, dubbed the New Product Security Team (NPS), to closely monitor its suppliers and assembly partners in China. The team was also tasked with sealing up methods used by some factory workers

The second fireball | Image: LabPadre in cooperation with BocaChicaMaria1 A prototype version of SpaceX’s next-generation rocket caught fire last night following an engine test in Boca Chica, Texas. About four minutes after SpaceX briefly ignited the vehicle’s engine, a second small explosion engulfed the rocket in flames for a few seconds — seemingly by accident. The fire was quickly extinguished, but the incident may postpone the first big flight of the vehicle.
The hardware

Image: Ford Ford revealed today that it was behind a successful campaign to get a pickup truck emoji shortlisted for next year’s wave of new characters. It’s a reasonable addition to the long list of emoji currently available to us — pickups represent a growing portion of US auto sales — but its development comes with an important caveat: Ford didn’t disclose that it was behind the proposal to make the new emoji, according to The Atlantic.
The pickup truck emoji st

Microsoft has created a hologram that will transform someone into a digital speaker of another language. The software giant unveiled the technology during a keynote at the Microsoft Inspire partner conference this morning in Las Vegas. Microsoft recently scanned Julia White, a company executive for Azure, at a Mixed Reality capture studio to transform her into an exact hologram replica.
The digital version appeared onstage to translate the keynote into Japanese. Microsoft has used its Azure AI t

The latest update for the Spotify app on the iPad brings long-awaited support for multitasking features, including Split View (which Apple debuted in 2015) and Slide Over modes. You no longer have to open up a full-screen instance of Spotify to find new music, or switch songs via the limited pull-down menu.To use the Slide Over feature, add Spotify to your iPad dock, then open it while you’re still using a different app. Spotify will launch as a Slide Over view that sits on top of the app

Filmmaker Lulu Wang says she knew years ago that she wanted to turn a specific personal experience of hers into a film: when her grandmother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, the family decided it was better not to tell her, out of a cultural belief that fear of death is more dangerous to ailing people than their actual symptoms. The problem was that when Wang talked to producers, they wanted to rewrite her personal story to be more pat and predictable. “‘We love that idea, but can

Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge The Oakland city council voted last night to pass an ordinance banning city agencies from using facial recognition technology. The move sets up Oakland to become the third city in the United States to pass similar legislation.Ordinance passed unanimously
Under the ordinance, which passed unanimously, municipal agencies, including city police, will be banned from obtaining or using the controversial technology. The city joins neighboring San Francisco, a

FaceApp FaceApp, a Russia-based app that applies filters to photos, is having another moment in the spotlight this week. The app first went viral in 2017, but this time it’s catching on because of a filter that makes users look older or younger. As with the last viral moment, however, users have been surprised to learn that the app’s creators are harvesting metadata from their photos.Christ, I don’t wanna get old pic.twitter.com/uf1oDguvd8— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) July 1

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Everything is too complicated. Asurion CEO Tony Detter joins Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel to discuss simplifying our experience with tech products, the problems with closed ecosystems, and why an insurance company like Asurion got involved with tech support.
Below is a lightly edited excerpt where Detter and Patel discuss what we can do about the “everything is too complicated” problem. You can hear this and more in the latest episode of

Battle royale games aren’t especially known for their stories, but it looks like PUBG is trying to change that. In the lead-up to the game’s fourth season, developer PUBG Corp released a cinematic trailer which provides the first real official lore for the game — and it’s incredibly dark.
The trailer starts off with a young child on Erangel, PUBG’s first map, who is the sole survivor of a horrible battle on the island. It then skips ahead pretty far in the future, w

Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call On Wednesday, Facebook cryptocurrency chief David Marcus faced Congress for a second round of questioning, this time from the House Financial Services committee. As in Tuesday’s Senate hearing, Marcus faced deep concerns over Facebook’s previous privacy issues, but there was also new skepticism over the nature of the Libra project itself.
“I don’t think you should launch Libra at all,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) told Marcus in one

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Amazon Prime Day 2019, the two-day shopping holiday, is wrapping up, and almost everything that was discounted earlier in the week is either sold out or back to its original price. However, not all of the deals are done just yet. We’ve sorted through the remains of Prime Day to see if any deals were left over. There are only a few deals left compared to the hundreds that we originally picked out, but we’ve laid out the best deals below.You

Since 1912, Ilford Photo has been making film rolls for photography enthusiasts from across the globe, giving recreational and professional photographers a way to see world in black and white. Earlier this month, Ilford released a fascinating documentary that offers an insider look into the film-making process – and the skills it takes to produce high-quality black and white rolls. The docu is an intimate tour of Ilford’s factory in the village of Mobberley, England, just 20 ki

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The House Energy and Commerce Committee is sending a bill to help end the onslaught of unwanted robocalls to the floor, an issue that both chambers of Congress have made a priority this session.
The bipartisan Stopping Bad Robocalls Act would outlaw a slate of methods fraudsters use to scam consumers over the phone and through text. If approved, the bill would make it easier for the government to go after the fraudsters and issue tougher penalties. The Federal C

Source Image: Boston Dynamics | Graphic: Alex Castro / The Verge Not many robotics companies can boast legions of fans online, but not many robotics companies make robots quite like Boston Dynamics.Each time the firm shares new footage of its machines, they cause a sensation. Whether it’s a pack of robot dogs towing a truck or a human-like bot leaping nimbly up a set of boxes, Boston Dynamics’ bots are uniquely thrilling.They’re also something of a Rorschach test for our feeli

Two years have passed since cybersecurity wild-man John McAfee first told the world he would eat his own dick if his Bitcoin price prediction didn’t come true — and things still aren’t looking good. if not, I will eat my dick on national television. — John McAfee (@officialmcafee) July 17, 2017 When I predicted Bitcoin at $500,000 by the end of 2020, it used a model that predicted $5,000 at the end of 2017. BTC has accelerated much faster than my model assumptions.

On the same day as it announced its updated Switch console, Nintendo has also revealed a pair of new Joy-Con color options. One sports a combination of blue and neon yellow, and the other is neon purple and neon orange, giving it exactly the same color scheme as Waluigi, the single biggest scumbag in Nintendo’s character lineup.If you think Waluigi’s color scheme is just purple, then I implore you to look closer at his feet, where you’ll see that he’s wearing what appears

We’ve previously seen developers harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to turn pitch black pics into bright colorful photos, flat images into complex 3D scenes, and selfies into moving avatars. Now, there’s an AI-powered software that effortlessly removes moving objects from videos. All you need to do to wipe an object from footage is draw a box around it, and the software takes care of the rest for you. Here are a couple examples of the AI in action: As you will no

Five years ago, global funding for the femtech sector had barely reached $100 million total. But now the femtech industry is set to see a huge increase with more than $400 million funneling in — the largest amount of funding the industry has ever received. This is long overdue. historically, femtech hasn’t received much venture capital funding . This shouldn’t come as a surprise since a staggering 92 percent of partners at the biggest VC firms in America are men

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge It’s incredible that Kaitlyn Tiffany and I haven’t yet asked why people slide into other people’s direct messages, but that ends today. On this week’s episode of Why’d You Push That Button?, we want to hear love stories and stories of failed courtship attempts. We ask why people slide into DMs, and then we process how the direct message’s connotation has changed over time.We chat with our friend Blake who has slid i

Facebook‘s digital currency, Libra, has been causing a bit of a ruckus lately. Since its plans became public a few weeks ago, headlines have largely been awash with why it’s probably a bad idea. Nations all over the globe started to wake up to the reality of a currency controlled by the data hoarding Goliath that is Facebook. A number of countries including India and the US already told the social media giant to hold its horses before plowing on with its plans for global domination

As tech writers, we get to play with a lot of phones. But, it’s not often that we get to peek behind the curtain to see how engineers are working on the product. That’s why I was pretty excited when OnePlus invited us to visit its camera lab in Taiwan. This testing lab, which is the center of OnePlus’ camera development, was established in 2014 under Simon Liu, who heads the company‘s imaging team now. Carl Pei, OnePlus’ co-founder, told a bunch of reporters at a b