Technology news

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber won’t be reclassifying its drivers from independent contractors to employees in light of a new bill that passed in California, largely because the bill doesn’t specifically require them to do so, the company’s chief legal official argued Tuesday.“Contrary to some of the rhetoric we’ve heard, AB5 does not automatically reclassify any ride-share drivers from independent contractors to employees,” Tony West, chief leg

Photo by Michele Doying / The Verge Two college students are facing federal prison time for attempting to hack into President Trump’s tax returns, as reported by CyberScoop. Andrew Harris, 24, and Justin Hiemstra, 22, tried to import the president’s financial records through a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Both men have pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor accounts for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and face up to two years behind bars.
In 2016, when Tru

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple has slashed the price of its 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros with 1TB of storage by $200. The savings apply to both Wi-Fi and cellular models. So the 11-inch 1TB iPad Pro is now $1,349 for Wi-Fi only or $1,499 if you want LTE, while the larger 12.9-inch device is $1,549 or $1,699. MacRumors first reported the change.Retailers like Best Buy and B&H have periodically sold the 1TB iPad Pros at a similar discount, but this marks an official pric

PUBG. Fortnite. Battlefield. Call of Duty. Mario. Tetris. Flappy Bird. It’s practically a joke within the gaming world that if a game exists, it’ll eventually get a battle royale version or mode. But the latest entry might take the cake: Civilization VI, the popular turn-based strategy game, via Rock Paper Shotgun.You may be wondering how Civilization, a franchise in which players slowly and meticulously build their global societies up over time scales that span the whole of human hi

Fortnite fans perusing Twitch for their favorite streamers to watch have been running into an issue for the past couple of weeks: almost all of the biggest names in the community are playing a different game.It’s not a battle royale title or even a competitive multiplayer game; it’s a largely cooperative fantasy RPG that came out 15 years ago. Maybe you’ve heard the name before: World of Warcraft, the Blizzard-produced massively multiplayer online game that was released in its

Sex, despite being one of the most fundamental human experiences, is still one of those businesses that some advertisers reject, banks are hesitant to financially support and some investors don’t want to fund.
Given how sex is such a huge part of our lives, it’s no surprise founders are looking to capitalize on the space. But the idea of pleasure versus function, plus the stigma still associated with all-things sex, is at the root of the barriers some startup founders face.
Just last

The rumor mill was remarkably right. On Tuesday, Apple revealed practically everything we expected it to reveal at its “By Innovation Only” iPhone 11 event. You can watch our supercut (above), read our recap, or skim through our detailed live blog for all the highlights, but arguably the only true surprises were these:The two new “Pro” iPhones will have four-plus extra hours of battery life.
The new Apple Watch Series 5 has an always-on display.
Practically every Apple de

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Apple yesterday managed to sneak in a few updates to its HomePod speaker in between iPhone-related announcements, including the addition of a brand-new feature.Later this fall, the HomePod will be able to help you relax by playing “the soothing sounds of ocean waves, forest birds, rainstorms, and more,” or what Apple calls Ambient Sounds. Apple hasn’t provided any other details, but we’d assume you’ll just need to ask Siri to play

Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge Apple has announced the iPhone 11 lineup, including the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max. Each phone will release on September 20th, and preorders begin this Friday, September 13th, at 5:01AM PT / 8:01AM ET. That’s a few hours later than Apple usually kicks off preorders, so you’ll either get to sleep in a little more or wake up earlier than before (depending on where you live).
Unlike Samsung and most other phone makers, Apple doesn’t

Photo: Courtesy of TIFF Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival.
It isn’t impossible to make a comedy about Adolf Hitler. Mel Brooks got belly laughs out of satirizing the German dictator in his 1967 movie The Producers, and even during the war itself, Hollywood mocked Hitler with movies like the Three Stooges comedy You Nazty Spy! Roberto Benig

The track and field events at next year’s Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo will feature new augmented overlays to help viewers keep track of what’s going on during a race. In a new video, Intel previews footage that includes overlays that identify the top runners’ names and speeds. A color trail appears behind them, too, seemingly showing their speeds at different points along the track. You can see in the GIF above how the colors seem to phase in and out as their speeds change.
T

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images In a surprise meeting on Wednesday, President Donald Trump pushed to ban all non-tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes from the market. Trump discussed the proposal during a meeting at the White House after discussing the move with advisers like Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and acting Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Norman Sharpless, Bloomberg reported.
“Not only is it a problem overall, but really specifically with respect for children

Photo by Lyu Liang/VCG via Getty Images Acting to prevent clinics from misleading patients, Google announced on Friday that it will ban ads for “unproven or experimental” medical procedures.
For several years, the Food and Drug Administration has inched toward cracking down on clinics that offer unproven and unsafe “stem cell therapy.” Scientists have long condemned these clinics for attracting patients with promises not backed by science. The FDA wants these clinics to

Image: Rabbit TV (YouTube) The Pixel 4 leaks are starting to feel even more frequent than the avalanche of early videos and photos that preceded last year’s announcement of the Pixel 3 and 3 XL. In the most comprehensive look yet at Google’s new phone, today we’re seeing two extensive video tours of the Pixel 4 XL.The first comes from YouTube channel AnhEm TV, which has posted a six and a half minute clip featuring the white model. It has a matte back panel and matte black sid

Toya (left), a YouTuber who is changing the direction of her channel after YouTube’s changes.| YouTube/MyFroggyStuff YouTube creators are already making changes to their channels out of fear that they’ll be unable to make money once the platform begins enforcing new limits around kid-friendly content.
Some of these changes include fully renaming channels to make them feel less kid-oriented, cutting out popular series dedicated to toys or games, taking up vlogging, and specifically s

Photo credit should read NOAH BERGER/AFP/Getty Images Apple’s upcoming streaming service, Apple TV Plus, will launch in India for 99 rupees, or $1.40 a month, Bloomberg reports. The subscription fee is cheaper than the plans that services like Netflix and Amazon offer in India, which are also competing to capture the growing market. With over 500 million users on the internet, India has more of its population online than any other country except China.
Apple TV Plus, which costs $4.99 a m

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1. Here’s everything Apple announced today at the iPhone 11 event
The biggest announcement was a new lineup of iPhones, including the iPhone 11, with a new dual-camera system, as well as two iPhone Pro models with three cameras each. Cameras galore!
In addition, the company announced new iP

Annual Extra Crunch members get 100,000 Brex Rewards points upon credit card signup
We’re excited to announce an addition to the Extra Crunch community perks. Starting today, annual Extra Crunch members can get 100,000 Brex Rewards points after signing up for a Brexcorporate credit card. This offer is worth about $1,000 in credit card points.
Brex’s corporate credit card is designed for startups, and Extra Crunch was built for the startup ecosystem. We understand that startups are tr

Mehul Patel ContributorShare on Twitter Mehul Patel is the CEO of Hired , the marketplace that matches tech talent with the world's most innovative companies.Brexit has taken over discourse in the UK and beyond. In the UK alone, it is mentioned over 500 million times a day, in 92 million conversations — and for good reason. While the UK has yet to leave the EU, the impact of Brexit has already rippled through industries all over the world. The UK’s technology sector is no exception.

For a very long time, the venture industry was stubbornly resistant to change. The same people sat back in their chairs on Sand Hill Road while nervous founders made the rounds, hoping one of these firms would champion their cause.
No longer. Since roughly the advent of Y Combinator, the landscape has seemed to shift by the year, with more startups raising capital every year, more people becoming VCs, more Medium posts, more newsletters, more events, more great founders, more bad behavior, more

AirDrop, Apple’s proximity-based, built-in file sharing feature and home to teen meme exchanges, is getting an upgrade with the new iPhones. At Apple’s iPhone press event on Tuesday, the company introduced the iPhone 11 line of devices, which include a new Apple -designed U1 chip that uses Ultra Wideband technology for spatial awareness. This will offer a number of improvements to the iPhone’s capabilities, but Apple is starting with upgraded AirDrop functionality as a more pra

Here’s something the hermetically sealed iPhone can’t do: Score a perfect 10 for repairability.
Smartphone startup and social enterprise Fairphone’slatest repairable-by-design smartphone has done just that, getting 10/10 in an iFixit Teardown vs scores of just 6/10 for recent iPhone models.
The Fairphone 3, which was released in Europe last week with an RRP of €450, gets thumbs up across the board in iFixit’s hardware Teardown. It found all the internal modules to be

We’re inching closer to the long-awaited release of Final Fantasy VII Remake, but it also feels like we’ve seen very little of the game to date. Thankfully, at Tokyo Game Show, Square Enix revealed a new trailer that is full of scenes that will be familiar to longtime fans of the 1997 original. There’s the creepy Don Corneo (who appears to be played by Mark Hamill), hints at Cloud’s infamous cross-dressing scene, a revamped version of the gym mini-game, the tense train se

Taylor Swift’s lawyers threatened to sue Microsoft over the company’s Tay chatbot. The Guardian reports that a new book by Microsoft president Brad Smith reveals lawyers for Taylor Swift weren’t happy with the company using the name Tay for its chatbot. Microsoft’s chatbot was originally designed to hold conversations with teenagers over social media networks, but Twitter users turned it into a racist chatbot in less than a day.
Smith checked his emails during a vacation

Pewdiepie, YouTube Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg announced in a video on Tuesday that he would be donating $50,000 to the Anti-Defamation League in an attempt to make amends and “move on” after a shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand, said “Subscribe to PewDiePie” before carrying out his attack last spring.
“Making a donation to the ADL doesn’t make sense to everyone, especially since they’ve outright spoken against me,” Kjellberg said in

Google may soon release an updated version of its Home Mini smart speaker, and according to a Federal Communications Commission filing, it could bring a few improvements in tow. As reported by 9to5Google, the rough sketch of the next iteration — said to be renamed the Google Nest Mini — shows off a wall mount so you can easily hang it on your wall. The current version requires an accessory purchased separately to achieve this.Most notably, the Nest Mini looks like it might have an au

Apple’s new iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max are oddities in a way for the technology company: they’re bigger, heavier, and thicker than last year’s models, bucking the usual trend where Apple tries to release increasingly thinner and lighter phones. Not coincidentally, the new heftier iPhones also promise markedly better battery life than the iPhone XS and XS Max: four hours better on the smaller phone, and five hours better on the larger one.For years, people have asked why compa

Google’sfailed online shopping service Google Express is closing in a few weeks, as its features will be merged into a revamped version of Google Shopping, Google says in an email sent to its customers this week. The company had already announced its plans to shutter the Google Express brand, as part of a wider redesign of how it approached online shopping. This included new advertising options for brands and online sellers, as well as a universal shopping cart across its platform of servi

“I’m so tired of talking about Kubernetes . I want to talk about something else,” joked Kubernetes co-founder and VP of R&D at VMware Craig McLuckie during a keynote interview at this week’s Cloud Foundry Summit in The Hague. “I feel like that 80s band that had like one hit song — Cherry Pie.”
He doesn’t quite mean it that way, of course (though it makes for a good headline, see above), but the underlying theme of the conversation he had w

California Lawmakers Advance Bill To Redefine And Protect Gig Workershttps://www.npr.org/2019/09/11/759691730/california-lawmakers-advance-bill-to-redefine-and-protect-gig-workers?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=alltech&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20190911 …