Technology news

Another day, another Salesforceacquisition. Just days after closing the hefty $15.7 billion Tableau deal, the company opened its wallet again, this time announcing it has bought field service software company ClickSoftware for a tidy $1.35 billion.
This one could help beef up the company’s field service offering, which falls under the Service Cloud umbrella. In its June earnings report, the company reported that Service Cloud crossed the $1 billion revenue threshold for the first time. Thi

Big companies today may want to look and feel like startups, but when it comes to the way they approach buying new enterprise solutions, especially from new entrants, they still often act like traditional enterprise behemoths. But from the standpoint of a true startup, closing deals with just a few big customers is critical to success. At our much-anticipated inaugural TechCrunch Sessions: Enterprise event in San Francisco on September 5, Okta’s Monty Gray, SAP’s DJ Paoni, VMwar

Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images The Trump administration is drafting an executive order to ban “anti-conservative bias” on social media, according to Politico. The report quotes three anonymous sources, including one White House official, saying that the plan is still nebulous and in its early stages. It supposedly “deals with other topics besides tech bias,” though it’s not clear what those are. But it’s a sign that Trump wants concrete a

Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge Despite some hardware launch delays Samsung had been experiencing this year, the company is pushing forward with its annual Note upgrade. Today, the company announced the new Note 10 that now comes in a few variants: a regular Note 10 and a Note 10 Plus that includes a new S Pen with Bluetooth and a gyroscope. Most notably, it’s the first Note device without a headphone jack — something that had been previously hinted at when Samsung first spoke of

The Los Angeles Police Department has launched an investigation into YouTube creator Brooke Houts after a viral video captured Houts appearing to abuse her dog.“Our Animal Cruelty Task Force has received numerous complaints about the video you’re speaking of and we are currently looking into the matter,” an LAPD media representative told The Verge.The video shows Houts, who has more than 330,000 subscribers, recording a video, and seemingly smacking and spitting on her doginter

We were hoping for at least one surprise during today’s big event. At the end of Unpacked, Samsung debuted the Galaxy Book S, a thin and light system created in tandem with Microsoft and Qualcomm.
The laptop runs Windows 10 on a Qualcomm mobile chip. Among other things, the chip gives the device some crazy long battery life — 23 hours on a charge, according to the company’s office number. The Book S features a single USB-C port on either side, and the small chip means you can f

The new Note’s 3D scanning feature got what may well have been the loudest applause line of today’s big Samsung event. It’s an impressive feature for sure, but it’s the kind with little real-world value at the moment — and it’s only available on the pricier Note 10+. Understandable on the latter, at least.
After all, Samsung needs some ways to distinguish the more expensive unit. Aside from size and pricing, the 10+ also features a time of flight sensor missin

In its second quarterly earnings release as a public company, Lyft showed it still isn’t afraid to lose money as long as that means surging revenues.
Update: The company’s stock price jumped as high as 12% after-hours following the Q2 earnings release, but by 1:30pm PT the stock had sunk below the day’s close (following a 2.7% bump in its share price before the earnings dropped). The company moving up the lockup date release by more than a month may have spooked investors and c

Security is empty, meaningless theater — or, at least, that’s the lesson taught to most employees of most large companies. Security is your password expiring every few months, your inability to access crucial services if you’re new or a contractor, a salty message from a team you’ve never met explaining that your new initiative is not permitted, a transparently convenient excuse when someone doesn’t want to admit their real reason. Security is bullshit.
I can cite m

Eight years later, the Galaxy Note is undeniable. The original device, unveiled at IFA 2011, seemed unfathomably massive for a handset — all 5.3 inches of it. Nearly a decade and hundreds of millions of handsets later, the line has transformed the way we think about mobile devices.
Sure the stylus hasn’t become a mainstream element on handsets outside of Note devices, but much the rest of the industry has come around to Samsung’s way of thinking about big screens and productivi

The 5G iPhone isn’t expected until roughly this time next year. But when it comes to the next-gen cellular technology, Samsung has already been there and done that. Back in the February, the company announced an everything and the kitchen sink version of the Galaxy S10, sporting 5G — its first device to do so. The model was finally made available last month.
At this afternoon’s Unpacked event in Brooklyn, the Note got its own 5G version — though the device got a little le

Next month marks three years since Apple unceremoniously murdered the headphone jack. Courage. The company was roundly mocked for its own hype, and the intervening product cycles have been marked by several companies proudly showcasing their staunch refusal to cave.None were more vocal about clinging to the 3.5mm jack than Samsung. And the company certainly deserves kudos for turning the once ubiquitous port into a distinguishing feature. Like I said a couple of weeks ago, if nothing else, Samsu

The first Note was a spectacle. It wasn’t just the reintroduction of the stylus. In 2011, the idea of a 5.3-inch phone was laughable. Around the same time, Steve Jobs famously mocked a push toward 4-inch-plus phones, telling a press conference, “no one’s going to buy that.”
With the average phone size hovering about 5.5 inches these days, Samsung clearly won that round. Of course, the push has been helped considerably by an ever-improving screen-to-body ratio. Jobs’

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Just as it did with the Galaxy S10, Samsung is making a 5G version of the Galaxy Note 10. And just like the Galaxy S10 5G, the Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G will start off as a Verizon exclusive in the United States. (It’ll be available internationally, as well.) A 256GB model will cost $1,299.99 (or $54.16 per month over 24 months) and the 512GB Note 10 Plus 5G will run $1,399.99 ($58.33 / month). As with the standard Note 10 and Note 10 Plus, the 5G-compatible

Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge The writing’s on the wall. Heck, it’s been on the wall for eight months: Samsung is done including a headphone jack in its flagship smartphones, meaning they’re not going to work with your legacy audio devices unless you carry a USB-C dongle.The evidence: today’s just-announced Samsung Galaxy Note 10 doesn’t include the 3.5mm socket, even though it’s the phone that would have been most likely to keep it around. That’s

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Police responded to a possible threat at Twitch’s San Francisco headquarters on Wednesday morning. As Business Insider reported this morning, multiple employees said the threat was a possible shooter.“We were made aware of a threat against our San Francisco HQ on Tuesday, and have been working directly with law enforcement as they investigate,” Twitch said in a statement. “The safety and security of our employees is our top priorit

Tesla’sclaims about the safety of its Model 3 electric vehicle prompted U.S. regulators to send a cease-and-desist letter and escalate the matter by asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate, according to documents released by the nonprofit legal transparency website PlainSite.
The documents show correspondence between the lawyers at National Highway Traffic Safety Administrationand Tesla that began after the automaker’s October 7 blog post that said the Model 3 had achieved

Disrupt San Francisco 2019 takes place on October 2-4. More than 10,000 people — tech founders, investors, hackers, leaders, makers and shakers — will gather for three days focused on early-stage startups. And if you work for a government agency or a nonprofit, we have great news in the form of a deep discount on Innovator passes.
We want as many different voices at the Disrupt table as possible, so take advantage of this opportunity and let your voice be heard. Your price of admissi

The Trump administration has banned U.S. federal agencies from buying equipment and obtaining services from Huawei and two other companies as part of the government’s latest crackdown on Chinese technology amid national security fears.
Jacob Wood, a spokesperson for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, was quoted as saying that the administration will “fully comply” with the legislation passed by Congress as part of a defense spending bill passed last y

If you go back about a decade, Hadoopwas hot and getting hotter. It was a platform for processing big data, just as big data was emerging from the domain of a few web-scale companies to one where every company was suddenly concerned about processing huge amounts of data. The future was bright, an open source project with a bunch of startups emerging to fulfill that big data promise in the enterprise.
Three companies in particular emerged out of that early scrum — Cloudera,Hortonworksand Ma

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission voted Wednesday to extend its cap on the number of Uber and Lyft vehicles permitted to operate within the city. The commission also amended its rules aimed at limiting the amount of time drivers can cruise without passengers in Manhattan below 96th Street.Last year, the New York City Council voted to halt the issuance of new for-hire vehicle licenses for 12 months. Under the cap, Uber and Lyft could still be grant

Equinox Equinox has announced that it will soon be launching connected fitness equipment that offers streaming classes similar to the likes of Peloton. The unnamed device, as reported by Fast Company, will offer content from Equinox’s portfolio of brands — most notably, SoulCycle.
The platform, which will also come with an accompanying app, will recommend classes based on those you’ve taken and let you browse new content through its digital library. The app pairs with Equinox&

Image: Launch Center Pro Launch Center Pro can now be used to create custom iOS home screen icons, a feature that Apple hasn’t previously officially supported on its phones. The new functionality is coming with version 3.1 of Launch Center Pro, which includes a new Icon Composer that was originally designed to let you create your own “App Store quality” icons within the app. However, its developer quickly realized that it could use the Add to Home Screen feature in Apple Short

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google says that it is “just a few weeks away” from releasing the official version of Android Q. Which means that today is the day for it to release the final beta version, beta 6. There isn’t a ton that’s new in this version — except that Google has once again tweaked how the back gesture is going to work. It also is launching “the final API 29 SDK, and updated build tools for Android Studio” as a part of this release.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Since 2012, Apple has been running a program it calls Mastered for iTunes. The initiative allows engineers to preserve the highest-possible quality when encoding master recordings for digital distribution through iTunes (and now Apple Music). Apple’s tools and guidelines prevent clipping and other unwanted remnants of the loudness wars — when producers and mastering engineers keep turning up the volume knob on recorded music at the expense of

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge OnePlus’ forthcoming TVs have been spotted in a submission to the Bluetooth SIG, giving us the first real details about the upcoming TVs since the company announced it was getting into the market last year. The listing, which was first spotted by MySmartPrice, describes them as a “unique Android TV,” says they’ll use LED display technology, and suggests they’ll come in sizes ranging from 43 to 75 inches.From their model numbers, it

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Amazon is launching a new ability for it’s Alexa smart assistant today: the ability to choose how fast it talks. By saying “Alexa, speak slower” or “Alexa, speak faster,” you can, well, get Alexa to speak slower or faster. Amazon says there will be seven different speeds for Alexa, two slower than the default and four that are faster. You can also say “Alexa, speak at your default rate.”
Amazon is touting the feature as

Alex Castro / The Verge The three major video game console manufacturers — Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo —have committed to requiring all publishers of games on their respective platforms to disclose the odds of receiving types of in-game items from loot boxes in future titles on Wednesday.
The video game industry group, the Entertainment Software Association, announced the new initiative at a loot box workshop at the Federal Trade Commission. Along with the top console makers, a nu

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge SimpliSafe’s latest home security system can apparently be fooled by an affordable wireless emitter that mimics the frequency of its door and window contact sensors. The YouTube channel LockPickingLawyer posted a video demonstrating how it can be done, and, unfortunately, it looks very easy to do.
The host explains that SimpliSafe’s sensors communicate with the base on the 433.92MHz frequency, which is very popular among other consumer electronics, l

A new trailer for MGM’s upcoming animated Addams Family movie brings America’s favorite goth family to bright and sunny New Jersey.The movie, which is a reboot of the franchise, follows the Addams family as they attempt to be their unique selves in a place where everyone wants them to either assimilate (there’s a joke about this in the trailer) or leave. They’re perfectly happy continuing to live their best creepy lives in their house of actual horrors, but the residents

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft contractors are manually reviewing voice recordings gathered via Skype’s automated translation feature and the Cortana voice assistant, a new report from Motherboard has revealed. In audio recordings shared with the publication, users could be heard having intimate conversations and discussing relationship issues as well as other personal topics like weight loss. “The fact that I can even share some of this with you shows how lax thi

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has announced a plan to dramatically expand internet access in rural communities, aiming to give “every home in America” fiber broadband at an affordable price. Her proposal includes an $85 billion grant program for nonprofits and local governments to build fiber networks, as well as protections for cities that want to run their own broadband services. And it would overhaul a deeply flawed

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) sent Elon Musk a cease-and-desist letter last October over “misleading statements” Tesla made about the Model 3’s safety. The agency also asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether the statements “constitute[d] unfair or deceptive acts or practices.”The letter and the referral were made public in documents acquired via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) req

August is often considered the black hole of venture capital fundraising. Everyone is on vacation (well, everyone who’s not a founder anyway), while half of Silicon Valley is slogging down to Black Rock City for Burning Man. It understandably can just seem like an exercise in futility to try to raise any funding at all.
I’m here to tell you though that August is not the bleakest month of the year for fundraising (that actually would be December according to data from DocSend we&rsquo

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Three Republican senators want to hear more from Google after reports that the company was working on a Huawei-branded smart speaker. They are accusing the company of failing to take Americans’ privacy into account on the project.
The Information reported last month that the two companies were collaborating on a new product, but plans shuttered in May after the Trump administration imposed trade restrictions on Huawei. According to the report, t

Rookout, a startup that provides debugging across a variety of environments, including serverless and containers, announced an $8 million Series A investment today. It plans to use the money to expand beyond its debugging roots.
The round was led by Cisco Investmentsalong with existing investors TLV Partners and Emerge. Nat Friedman, CEO of GitHub; John Kodumal, CTO and co-founder of LaunchDarkly; and Raymond Colletti, VP of revenue at Codecov also participated.
“Rookoutfrom day one has be

Subway Subway is getting in on the meatless food trend. The company plans to test a new sub, called the Beyond Meatball Marinara, in 685 restaurants in the US and Canada. The test begins in September and is available for a limited time only, although Subway hasn’t said how long that period will be. It also hasn’t said how much the sandwich will cost or how the meatless option affects the nutritional information compared to its classic meatball marinara sandwich.
This move sets Subwa

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge I have sad news today: we’re publishing the season 4 finale of Why’d You Push That Button? The good news, though, is that it’s a really great episode! Today, Kaitlyn Tiffany and I are asking what verification on social media accounts really means. To some, it represents more than a badge of authenticity. We wonder why people want to be verified and what they’re willing to do to get the blue checkmark.I tell the story of my own

For the past decade, Brian Faux has been fighting on the front lines of housing finance. In between pursuing a career in mortgage lending and holding stints at Freddie Mac and Wells Fargo, Faux spent more than two years in the detritus of the 2008 financial crisis advising the Department of Housing and Urban Development on how to recover the housing markets through the creation of the Distressed Asset Stabilization Program.
Now Faux, along with co-founders Nora Apsel and Adam Rothblatt, is worki