Technology news

When Elizabeth Warren took on Mark Zuckerberg and Facebookearlier this week, it was a low moment for what New Yorker writer Andrew Marantz calls “techno-utopianism.”
That the progressive, populist Massachusetts Senator and leading Democratic Presidential candidate wants to #BreakUpBigTech is not surprising. But Warren’s choice to spotlight regulating and trust-busting Facebookwas nonetheless noteworthy, because of what it represents on a philosophical level. Warren, along with

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Bose is fully discontinuing its Sleepbuds, the $250 earbuds that were designed to be worn during sleep to help drown out disturbances and other unwanted noise. Returns of the product will be accepted until December 31st, and customers are being promised a full refund.Bose has posted a notice about the Sleepbuds on its website, where the company recounts their development, Indiegogo campaign, and commercial release. “We knew we were attempting to do somethi

Image: @leftoblique Google Reader has been dead for over six years, and the internet hasn’t been the same since. I still haven’t found a replacement that I enjoy quite as much as my memories of Reader, and I mourn its death every day. But now, we may finally have a place where we can pay respects to the beloved RSS app.
Dana Fried, a Google employee, posted this photo of a graveyard, with headstones for Reader and many other now-dead Google services, which is apparently set up in th

PayPalhas become the first company to walk away officially from Facebook’s Libra, a cryptocurrency and related association that it announced earlier this year with a chain of nearly 30 big names behind the effort to help build and operate services around it.
“PayPalhas made the decision to forgo further participation in the Libra Associationat this time and to continue to focus on advancing our existing mission and business priorities as we strive to democratize access to financ

Photo by Drew Angerer / Getty Images Apple CEO Tim Cook had some choice words when asked about Facebook’s controversial blockchain project Libra, with the chief executive openly characterizing the company’s plans to launch a cryptocurrency as a blatant power grab. Speaking with the French newspaper Les Echos, Cook shot down any notion that Apple might be considering launching a digital currency of its own, given its recent investments in digital wallets, mobile payments, and consume

We’re excited to announce a new partnership with Amazon Web Servicesfor annual members of Extra Crunch. Starting today, qualified annual members can receive $1,000 in AWS credits. You also must be a startup founder to claim this Extra Crunch community perk.
AWS is the premier service for your application hosting needs, and we want to make sure our community is well-resourced to build. We understand that hosting and infrastructure costs can be a major hurdle for tech startups, and we’

Square Enix’s Avengers game has been years in the making — but so far, all it’s had to show has been a canned demo of the game’s tutorial that has left many more skeptical than impressed. But at New York Comic Con, Square Enix gave a fresh look at Avengers that proves there’s more to it than just a very expensive tie-in to the popular Marvel films.First, the news. At its NYCC panel today, the company announced a sixth playable hero that will be available at launch:

At age 27, Jordan Fudge is quietly making a splash in the VC world.
Fudge is the managing partner of Sinai Ventures, a multi-stage VC fund that manages $100 million and has more than 80 portfolio companies including Ro, Drivetime, Kapwing, and Luminary. His 2017 investment in Pinterest — a secondary shares deal from his prior firm that was rolled into Sinai when he spun out — will have returned the value of Sinai’s Fund I by itself once the lockup on shares expires next week.
F

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge PayPal has decided to withdraw from the Libra Association, the 28-member nonprofit organization formed in June 2019 to oversee the cryptocurrency’s creation and eventual consumer rollout.The company doesn’t cite a specific reason, saying only in a statement to The Verge that it decided “to forgo further participation in the Libra Association at this time and to continue to focus on advancing our existing mission and business priorities

JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images Tyler “Ninja” Blevins’ surprising departure from Twitch came after months of feeling like the company didn’t respect his wishes and hindered his ability to grow outside of gaming.But Blevins’ manager and wife, Jessica Blevins, told Business Insider that Tyler’s decision to leave Twitch and move over to the Microsoft-owned streaming service Mixer in August wasn’t just a financial one. Twitch’s contract with Tyler as

Facebook’srelentless feature copy of Snapchat has been seen as one of the chief examples of the company’s competitive overreach, but SnapCEO Evan Spiegel isn’t sure whether antitrust activity from the government is going to change the company’s near-term prospects of competing with Instagram.
“I mean the history of antitrust would basically say that these investigations last like seven to 10 years or something like that and that basically nothing happens,” Spi

As concerns over the safety of vaping products for cannabis sweeps across the country, executives in the industry are passing the buck to regulators to come up with a solution.
The need for national regulation touches everything from how to bank cannabis businesses to how to manage the distribution of cannabis products, but the pain is most acute as vaping-related illnesses sweep the United States.
To date, the CDC has recorded roughly 1,080 lung injury cases associated with using e-cigarette, o

So you’ve had a data breach. Don’t worry, it’s not just you. These days it happens to everyone, no matter how large or small your company is. It’s almost inevitable, some might say, and not a case of if but when.
A lot is already out of your control. Whether a hacker broke in and stole customer data or someone on staff left a cloud server exposed without a password, the incident alone is bad enough. But then you’ll also face a stream of headlines, flack from your cu

Becoming a venture capitalist is notoriously difficult. One part timing, one part experience, another part network. Rarely can someone provide succinct instructions on how to break into the field of private market investing or how to create your own VC fund.
Onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, established VCs Theresia Gouw, the founder of a new firm called aCrew Capital, and Floodgate co-founder Ann Miura-Ko explained what they see as two distinct paths to the top of VC.
One path is lon

Image: ZenKey Last September, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon announced Project Verify, a way to log into apps without making a new account or password by instead relying on your smartphone to authenticate your identity. Think of it like the buttons you’ve likely seen that let you sign into apps and websites using your Facebook or Google account. Now, Project Verify has an official name — ZenKey — and it’s starting to roll out, albeit very slowly.
ZenKey’s

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1. Facebook is being leaned on by US, UK, Australia to ditch its end-to-end encryption expansion plan
U.S. Attorney General William Barr, acting U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel and Australia’s minister for home affairs, Peter Dutton, have co

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating a software update Tesla shipped earlier this year that was meant to address a few reports of battery fires. Some owners have said the update, released in May, noticeably decreased the ultimate range of their Teslas. A few have even sued the company for alleged fraud over the issue.The NHTSA received a “defect petition” in September from a lawyer who represents some

Applehas reportedly acquired U.K. special effects studio IKinema, a startup that may be useful in Apple’s quest to bolster its mobile devices with AR special effects and in its more far-flung attempts to enter the AR/VR headset market.
The company issued its standard confirmation for the deal to TechCrunch “Apple buys smaller companies from time to time, and we generally don’t discuss our purpose or plans.” The news was first reported by FT after rumors were floated by Ma

Project Include CEO Ellen Pao, who has been working to foster diversity, inclusion and ethics in the tech industry, called out Twitter’s “public square” model as flawed — and a decision that indicates a lack of ethical consideration, on Twitter’spart.
The topic of Twitter came up on a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2019 this morning, when Pao was asked her opinion as to whether Twitter should make exceptions to its platform rules for public figures — like Pres

Former TinderCEO Greg Blatt has filed a defamation lawsuit against Sean Rad and Rosette Pambakian, seeking at least $50 million in damages and accusing them of having “conspired to make false allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault against Blatt with the specific intent to damage Blatt’s good name, personal and professional reputation, and credibility.”
In response, Rad and Pambakian’s attorney Orin Snyder described the suit as part of a campaign “to ret

This week, news broke of Palmer Luckey’s new battering-ram drone system, and today, the company finally released footage of the drone in action. The new footage shows Anduril’s system taking down both a fixed wing drone and an opposing quadcopter, which looks to be a knock-off of the DJI Phantom.
(There’s a lot of early footage showing off the detection system, but the takedown gets going around the 1:15 mark.)
The drone (dubbed “Anvil”) is designed to take out enem

Photo: Netflix The raunchy Netflix animated comedy Big Mouth started as an absurd yet deeply personal show about the horrors of puberty, from inconveniently timed first periods to embarrassing uncontrolled erections. But just as the show’s theme, “Changes,” implies, creators Nick Kroll, Andrew Goldberg, Mark Levin, and Jennifer Flackett never intended this show to stay static. While it’s experienced some growing pains and still has some painfully awkward moments, it&rsqu

For years now, automakers have been stuffing their cars with loads of advanced technology on the promise that all these sensors and software will make for a less deadly driving experience. But new research suggests that new technology isn’t doing enough to keep pedestrians safe.The American Automobile Association (AAA) conducted a series of tests using vehicles with automatic emergency braking and pedestrian detection alerts on a closed course with dummy pedestrians. And what they found wa

Over the years Boston has been given some pretty grand nicknames. Back in the 19th century it was called ‘The Hub’ by Oliver Wendell Holmes; later, in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan referred to the capital of Massachusetts as ‘the shining city on a hill’. But while Wendell’s depiction of Boston as ‘the hub of the solar system’ may raise some eyebrows, the city has undoubtedly proven its value as a center of innovation. In fact, a 2019 survey by KPMG rank

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge For die-hard gadget lovers, Microsoft’s Surface event this week was something of a dream come true. The company resurrected its legendary dual-screen Courier concept as the Surface Neo, then it surprised the world by announcing a dual-screen Android phone. The company finally embraced the USB-C port on its new Surface Pro X, Surface Pro 7, and Surface Laptop 3, and it’s even making them slightly upgradable, too.
But if you came wondering a

We all saw it coming, and now it’s happening: Red Dead Redemption 2 is finally coming to PC in early November — but Steam users are going to have to wait an extra month. Yes, all the rumors and clues we heard about were for real. Our pick for the best story game of 2018 is officially doing what its predecessor could not and making the leap to PC. It’s a boon for my non-console-owning brothers and sisters, and now we know why Rockstar has its own PC launcher. RED DEAD

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Friday, Microsoft disclosed that it had found evidence that a group of hackers originating from Iran attempted to access email accounts belonging to a 2020 presidential candidate.In its blog post announcing the discovery, Microsoft declines to name the targeted presidential candidate, but it affirms that their account was not compromised by the threat group the company refers to as Phosphorous.The campaign was only one out of a group of accounts the Ir

Photo by Naomi Boak / Katmai National Park and Preserve It’s that time of the year when we can indulge in a live stream of bears stuffing their faces and then vote for our favorite glutton from the safety of our desks and couches. Fat Bear Week is here!This is the fifth anniversary of Katmai National Park’s popular March Madness-style competition. There are two brackets each day during the week that pit one big bear against another. The chunkiest champion will be crowned during the

Microsoft said it has found evidence that hackers associated with Iran have targeted a 2020 presidential candidate.
The tech giant’s security and trust chief confirmed the attack in a blog post, but the company would not say which candidate was the target.
The threat group, which Microsoft calls Phosphorous — also known as APT 35 — made more than 2,700 attempts to identify consumer email accounts belonging to specific Microsoft customers. These accounts, he said, are “ass

A hacker is holding computer systems belonging to the southern Spanish city of Jerez de la Frontera, demanding a Bitcoin ransom to unlock them, RFI reports. The ransomware attack, which reportedly began on Tuesday night, has already caused service outages for the city’s website. There’s currently no indication of the amount of Bitcoin the hacker is demanding. AFP notes that Spain‘s interior ministry has sent three computer experts to the city, the home of sherry, to help resol

Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Disney is reportedly banning advertising from Netflix across all of its entertainment TV networks, including ABC, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The decision to stop running Netflix ads comes after the company failed to see a mutually beneficial relationship, according to the Journal. Netflix doesn’t run ads on its platform, for example, so Disney couldn’t use Netflix to promote its films, TV shows, or upcoming streamin

Ethereum-focused software firm ConsenSys has fully acquired Infura, the company that’s previously been described as the network’s most centralized layer. The company announced the acquisition news via a blog post today. “…We’ve decided that a future inside ConsenSys is the best future for our team, our users and this rapidly emerging ecosystem,” the post reads. “As a result, we are pleased to announce that ConsenSys has formally acquired all of the rig