Technology news

Photo: Intel Corporation Apple may be closing in on a deal to buy up Intel’s abandoned smartphone modem business for $1 billion, with The Wall Street Journal reporting today that a deal could be announced as early as next week.
Intel announced back in April it was exiting the 5G mobile modem business earlier this year after Apple reached a surprise settlement with Qualcomm that would see Apple once again return to using Qualcomm’s modems in its phones. Intel CEO Bob Swan went on to

Applemay have written a check and signed a deal with Qualcomm in order to ensure a 5G iPhone wasn’t late to market, but it’s clear the Cupertino hardware giant wasn’t interested in burying the hatchet too deep.
Apple is in “advanced talks” to buy Intel’ssmartphone modem business for “$1 billion or more” according the a new report in The Wall Street Journal. Last month, The Information detailed that Apple was in talks to buy part of Intel’s mo

While the U.S. Air Force has sternly warned against anyone actually storming the Area 51 base come September, we know of one base that you absolutely can, and should storm. Except it's not a base at all. And the only aliens are furry. And it's in Texas.  
Okay, the base is, in fact, the Longview Animal Care and Adoption Center in Longview, Texas. The animal shelter is using the latest meme to help beam their adorable "aliens" out to forever homes. While another animal shelter in Oklahoma se

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Tesla has dropped a lawsuit against a prominent short-seller and critic of the company, one it claimed struck an employee with his car, according to paperwork filed on Friday night with the Alameda County Superior Court. The company’s decision to drop the case comes two weeks after the judge asked Tesla to turn over evidence to back up its claims.Tesla says it has video and audio evidence that would do just that. But in a letter to the court on Frida

Thanks to a rash of YouTube videos of traffic stops, wild crashes and wacky antics, dashcams are becoming more and more popular with drivers. But does the world need one that shoots at 1080p and beams every minute of your drive back to a central storage device and can work as a Wi-Fi hotspot?
PureGear thinks so.
Their latest camera, the PureCam Connected Car Security System, shown at CES 2019, features front and back-facing cameras and is 4G LTE connected. In the unit we tested, it used T-Mobile

Uber is testing a service that includes car rides, food delivery, and scooter and bike access for a monthly subscription fee. 
In San Francisco and Chicago, you can now get discounts and price protection on certain routes, free delivery on Uber Eats, and free rides on Jump e-bikes and e-scooters for $24.99 a month. 
It's similar to the $24.99 Rider Pass already available in more than 20 cites, except that subscription doesn't include the Uber Eats perk. It does, however, make Jump bike

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Nintendo Switch owners have been experiencing problems with the console’s removable Joy-Con controllers for months, with users reporting weird joystick drifting problems that cause false inputs and have been steadily growing over time as original Switch machines grow older. A recent report by Kotaku shined a light on the Joy-Con drift issue, but if you’re looking for more information on the problem, here’s the current situation.
What is &ldqu

USPTO Apple has filed a patent for a complex mixed reality headset, potentially including sensors that track users’ facial features, eyes, and hands. Variety reported on the patent application earlier today; it was published last week and originally filed in March 2019. It’s part of a long string of Apple mixed (or augmented) reality patents, and, like its predecessors, it indicates that Apple is broadly examining how AR might translate from phones to glasses.
The “Display Sys

Amid ongoing concerns about security risks posed by the involvement of Chinese tech giant Huawei in 5G supply, the U.K. government has published a review of the telecoms supply chain, which concludes that policy and regulation in enforcing network security needs to be significantly strengthened to address concerns.
However, it continues to hold off on setting an official position on whether to allow or ban Huawei from supplying the country’s next-gen networks — as the U.S. has been p

Uber and Lyft aren’t designed to transport people who need a little help getting out of the house or need someone to help get them from the doctor’s waiting room back to their home. While Uber, for example, has launched Uber Health to help patients get to their appointments, the drivers are not vetted with patient assistance in mind. This is where Onwardcomes in.
Onward, with $1.5 million in seed funding from Royal Street Ventures,Matchstick Ventures and JPK Capital, launched a few m

Shane Dawson/YouTube YouTube can be home to sensational videos, feuds among creators, and a litany of more disturbing content, but creators like Shane Dawson are demonstrating what YouTube could be like if people used their platforms to act more responsibly.
His newest video is a one-hour documentary on fellow YouTuber Eugenia Cooney, a creator who left fans concerned when she announced in February that she was taking time away from the internet to work on her health. While Cooney never openly

Olivia Moore ContributorShare on Twitter Olivia Moore is a venture investor at CRV and co-founded Cardinal Ventures alongside her sister, Justine. Justine Moore ContributorShare on Twitter Justine Moore is a venture investor at CRV and co-founded Cardinal Ventures alongside her sister, Olivia.
This month marked the 10th annual VidCon, a digital content conference in Anaheim. VidConcaters to online creators, their fans and the brand marketers and entertainment companies that want to leverage the

Facebook's FTC headache will soon be over and it looks like Mark Zuckerberg will emerge unscathed.
The Federal Trade Commission will formally announce its record-setting $5 billion fine against Facebook this week, according The Wall Street Journal.
The fine, the result of the FTC's long-running investigation into the social network's privacy practices following Cambridge Analytica, will be the largest the agency has ever brought against a tech company. Still, many critics have already said the f

When Microsoftreported its FY19, Q4 earnings last week, the numbers were mostly positive, but as we pointed out, Azure earnings growth has stalled. Productivity and business, which includes Office 365, has also mostly flattened out. But slowing growth is not always as bad as it may seem. In fact, it’s an inevitability that once you start to reach Microsoft’s market maturity, it gets harder to maintain large growth numbers.
That said, AWS launched the first cloud infrastructure s

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple is today rolling out software updates across iOS, watchOS, and the HomePod as it prepares for much bigger releases with new features coming this fall. The iOS 12.4 release introduces a new “iPhone migration” option that “introduces the ability to wirelessly transfer data and migrate directly from an old iPhone to a new iPhone during setup,” according to the update release notes. Apple has already offered a wireless transfer option

congress We finally put Vox Media’s The Vergecast and The Weeds into one show — and, of course, it’s about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.Vox senior correspondent and host of The Weeds Matt Yglesias talks to Verge editor-in-chief and host of The Vergecast Nilay Patel to explain what Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act really means and how members of Congress may be misinterpreting it.Below is a lightly edited excerpt of Patel and Yglesias getting into

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1. Microsoft invests $1 billion in OpenAI in new multiyear partnership
OpenAIwas founded three years ago by Elon Musk, Sam Altman and others with the aim of performing research and development that steers artificial intelligence in a “friendlier” direction.
Its deal with Microsoftis a

Just because Prime Day week is officially over doesn't mean the deals are.
In fact, there are still sales and discounts aplenty — and to keep up with our weekly routine, we sifted through the best ones exclusively on laptops and tablets to save you your hard-earned cash and gain you a brand-new personal device. 
SEE ALSO: 6 of the best gaming laptops that cost less than $1,000
This week is a pretty diverse bunch — 2-in-1 laptops, iPads, Chromebooks, MacBook Airs, and refurbished

Getting behind the wheel of a Tesla rented through Getaround's car-sharing app is a breeze — perhaps too much so. 
On Sunday, a 22-year-old driver allegedly ran a red light in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, crashing a rented Tesla into another car before striking two pedestrians in a nearby crosswalk. The driver, who is reportedly not old enough to have rented the car via the app, killed one of the two pedestrians and left the other hospitalized in critical condition. 

Blizzard has revealed the 31st hero to join the ranks of Overwatch. Today, the company released a short animated trailer that showcases Sigma, a scientist who appears to have survived some sort of dramatic event that left him with the ability to control gravity in some fashion. “Gravity is a harness,” Sigma says in the trailer. “I have harnessed the harness.” Blizzard also describes him as “an eccentric astrophysicist who hopes to unlock the secrets of the universe,

GoogleCloud today announced Spinnaker for Google Cloud Platform, a new solution that makes it easier to install and run the Spinnaker continuous delivery (CD) service on Google’s cloud.
Spinnaker was created inside Netflixand is now jointly developed by Netflix and Google. Netflix open-sourced it back in 2015 and over the course of the last few years, it became the open-source CD platform of choice for many enterprises. Today, companies like Adobe, Box, Cisco, Daimler, Samsung and others u

Uberis actively testing a monthly subscription pass that combines rides, Eats, bikes and scooters. In this pilot phase, Uber is testing a few different iterations in San Francisco and Chicago, but each version includes a fixed discount on every ride, free Uber Eatsdelivery and free JUMP (bikes and scooters) rides. The pass costs $24.99 per month.
In other cities, Uber is testing lower-priced passes that offer discounted rides and free delivery on Eats orders above a certain amount.
“From m

While iOS 13 is right around the corner with a ton of new features, it isn’t quite ready just yet. Apple has just released iOS 12.4, a new stable update. There aren’t many radical changes, but this is the first version that theoretically supports the Apple Card — the feature isn’t enabled just yet.
Applehas been testing its credit card for a few weeks now. According to Bloomberg, Apple’s retail employees have been able to sign up to the Apple Card with beta versions

If you are, for some reason, an avid Walkie Talkie user on the AppleWatch, you will be pleased to learn that the functionality is back in the latest watchOS update today. The watchOS 5.3 release notes specify that the update “[p]rovides important security updates including a fix for the Walkie-Talkie app.”
The feature was notably disabled nearly two weeks ago after Apple discovered a vulnerability, one which was unspecified but was clearly serious enough for them to quickly pull one

TL;DR: Get lifetime access to a comprehensive Rosetta Stone language course for $199, normally priced at $299. There are lots of things you might be too old for — staying out all night, learning gymnastics, sleeping on a futon — but learning a second language is not one of them. 
Whether you're looking to travel somewhere new in the future, or just want to challenge your mind, let 2019 be the year you finally become multilingual.
While there are a ton of up-and-coming langu

Equifax, one of the largest credit bureaus in the United States, agreed to pay up to $700 million for a 2017 data breach that affected nearly 150 million customers.
The FTC announced details of the settlement on Monday. It would be the most ever paid by a company for a data breach, once it gets court approval. 
According to Equifax, the company will put up to $425 million towards a consumer restitution fund in order to “pay for three-bureau credit monitoring for consumers whose inform

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge KaiOS, the phone operating system used on feature phones like last year’s Nokia 8110 remake, finally has an official version of WhatsApp. The app can be downloaded from the KaiStore for KaiOS devices with 256MB or 512MB of RAM, and it will come preinstalled on select phones starting in the third quarter of this year. The KaiOS version of the app supports both calling and messaging, and it includes end-to-end encryption just like it does on Android and iOS.

Graphic design is not always Marvel's passion. 
Marvel Studios kicked off MCU Phase 4 during San Diego Comic Con this weekend, revealing new projects, movies, and series on the timeline that'll be released in the next few years. This included the announcements of releases for Disney's new streaming service, Disney+. 
Making our way through the Avengers roster we have titles for WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, and of course the god of mischief himself, Loki.Just

Comic-Con went down this past weekend and the MCU was very blessed. Marvel announced a crop of new movies and TV shows to usher in Phase 4 of the franchise, including confirmation of a Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and a new Thor movie.
If that's not the kicker you need to watch (or rewatch) all 22 movies to prep for the new stuff, we're not sure what is. How to experience it in the best way possible? A 4K TV. Movies as action-packed as these need the details that millions of pixels can provide

TL;DR: The powerful BatteryPro portable charger is $89 (a savings of 10%) for a limited time in the Mashable Shop.Batteries are the Achilles heel of electronic devices. If only battery technology can keep up with the advancement of gadgets, then we wouldn't have to scramble for power outlets multiple times a day. Until the tech gods come up with a way to make batteries last all day long (with streaming and all), we have no choice but to settle for chargers to keep us juiced up and connected on t

A selection of portraits produced by the AI Portrait Ars model. Bored of using AI to age yourself into a desiccated husk? Why not use it to turn your selfies into harrowing but artistic portraits instead? Head over to aiportraits.com, home of a fun little widget built by researchers at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, and upload a photo to try out an artistic transformation for yourself.
The site uses an algorithm trained on 45,000 classical portraits to render your face in faux oil, watercolor, or i

Microsoft announced a $1 billion investment in OpenAI, a lab co-founded by Elon Musk to develop "artificial general intelligence."
The investment is the start of a long-term partnership between the two organizations. OpenAI will ensure its services work on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, and the companies will collaborate on new supercomputers. OpenAI's stated mission is to develop "artificial general intelligence," or AGI. In layman's terms, AGI is AI that can think like a human (possibl

Mashable bites into a creamy, nutty, gooey, and sometimes stinky world during our first-ever Cheese Week.I like pretty much every type of cheese imaginable. Burrata? Gimme. Manchego? With honey, please. Brie? Pour me a glass of Pinot to pair. 
Most of my cheese takes are pretty uncontroversial, but I do have one opinion that I generally keep to myself. It's embarrassing, and not something you would know about me unless we've ever been roommates. But I don't see a reason to hide it anymore:

TL;DR: The cult-favorite Dyson Airwrap is back in stock — get it for $549.If you follow the beauty tech industry at all, you know that the Dyson Airwrap has been flying off of shelves since its launch in October 2018. It’s constantly out of stock. We saw it come back in May, and it quickly sold out again.
But guess who’s back, back again. The Dyson Airwrap is back, but maybe don’t tell your friends until you get your hands on it — who knows how long we have unt