Technology news

Photo by Takashi Aoyama/Getty Images Late last week, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted his support for protesters in Hong Kong: “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.” By this morning, however, he’d deleted the tweet and posted an apology — as Chinese companies pulled sponsorship over the message and Morey’s employers reportedly considered firing him.
This weekend’s controversy wasn’t unique — journalist Max Read listed compan

Photo by Stefan Etienne / The Verge New York Comic Con has come and gone, but it left behind plenty of great trailers for new content, including a new look at Star Trek: Picard and The Expanse’s upcoming fourth season, a first glimpse of the new Walking Dead spinoff, and another trailer for Apple TV Plus’ mysterious M. Night Shyamalan thriller, Servant.We’ve rounded up all the biggest and best trailers from this year’s show in one place for your viewing convenience. Chec

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple’s latest desktop operating system update, macOS Catalina, will mark the official end of iTunes after nearly two decades. But that transition is proving to be complicated for a certain subset of Mac users who’ve relied on the software to help manage their jobs: DJs.Apple tells The Verge that along with Catalina’s removal of iTunes, users are also losing XML file support as all native music playback on Macs moves over to the offi

Image: Hulu Offline downloads are now available from Hulu, letting subscribers save content for later viewing when they’re away from a Wi-Fi connection. The new feature means that Hulu is finally adding a convenience that both Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have offered for quite some time now. Downloads are launching on iOS and iPadOS today, with Android to follow “soon.”
But there are caveats.
The most important one is that, right now, offline downloads are available exclusi

Amazon’s been offering Kids Edition versions of its Fire tablets for years, and now it’s bringing a bundle to its Kindle e-readers with a new Kindle Kids Edition.The move makes a lot of sense, given that Amazon already pushes reading and education pretty heavily with its FreeTime service on the Fire tablets. It’s only logical that the company would expand that program to its Kindle e-readers, too.Like the Kids Edition tablets, this bundle includes four main parts: the device, (

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge It’s been a good day if you have an Apple TV — Spotify has released an Apple TV app, and now, Twitch has an Apple TV app as well (via Engadget). Before today, you had to rely on third-party apps like Twitchy if you wanted to watch Twitch on your Apple TV.Image: Apple
It looks a lot like browsing Twitch, but on a bigger screen. There’s a “Home” tab that shows games and channels you follow, as well as a “Browse”

Scott Galloway, a professor of marketing at NYU’s Stern school of business, just announced a list of companies he’s convinced are about to experience a severe downturn. Among them: We Work, Lyft, Robinhood, OYO, and Tesla. Overvalued unicorns:— Pinterest— Snap— Twitter— Peloton— Slack— DoorDash— Lime— Palantir— Uber— Compass Will lose 80% or disappear:— Tesla— WeWork— Robinhood— Lyft— OYO#

Humanoid robots have come a long, long way since Honda’s Asimo took a nasty tumble down the stairs. Heck, we’re seeing full gymnastics routines from the Boston Dynamics Atlas now.
But why should robots be limited by their legs, even if that’s their primary propulsion? That’s a question Caltech is toying with on its new LEONARDO robot, short for “LEgs ONboARD drOne,” and this is the first real video of it in action (via BoingBoing).
Simply put, it’s a rel

Image: Netflix Netflix’s plan to appease traditional Hollywood with its upcoming Martin Scorsese film The Irishman has not gone according to plan. The company now intends to screen the film, ahead of its debut on the streaming platform on November 27th, at a Broadway theater, after major movie theater chains balked at Netflix’s plan to stream it a mere three weeks after its theatrical debut, Deadline reports.The film will be shown at the Shubert Organization’s Belasco Theatre

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Los Angeles is about to get its first self-driving cars. Waymo, the self-driving division of Google parent Alphabet, announced Monday that it would begin testing its autonomous vehicles in the second most populous city in the US. But whether the company will share real-time location data with the city under its new tracking program remains unclear.To start out, Waymo will be bringing three vehicles (all Chrysler Pacifica minivans) to map LA, specifically downto

In Search of Darkness: The Definitive 80s Horror Documentary is being billed as a film, but it feels more like a miniseries. Over a run time of nearly four and a half hours, it crams in discussions of dozens of films and a jaw-dropping range of interviews with top flight-directors (John Carpenter, Joe Dante), iconic actors (Barbara Crampton, Doug Bradley), effects artists, composers, pop culture commenters, and more. The overstuffed kitchen sink approach nicely captures a decade of gruesome exce

Missing out on a month’s rent because you can’t find a tenant is a huge loss. Searching for someone to fill a home takes work, while property managers are incentivized to price your place too high, leading to costly vacancies.
But new startup Doorstead wants to take on the risk and the work for you. It acts as a property manager for single-family homes, but guarantees you rent at a specific rate starting in a certain number of days, even if it can’t fill the house or apartment.

Sony’s releasing its 7.00 update for the PS4 this week, which adds support for the console’s Remote Play feature to all Android devices, months after iOS got the same thing. Up to now, the only Android devices for which Remote Play was compatible were Sony’s own Xperias. Now, according to Sony’s announcement, it’ll work with all devices running Android 5.0 or higher — meaning you can finally use that tantalizing Remote Play app on the Play Store. Given the Xp

Image: Apple Apple will today release macOS 10.15 Catalina, the latest major update to the company’s Mac operating system. Catalina marks the end of iTunes as a fixture on Macs, with the app now broken into separate apps for Apple Music, Podcasts, and Apple TV. Everything iTunes did should be available across these new, streamlined apps. Device syncing for iPhones and iPads has been moved to the Finder.The new release also introduces support for iPad apps on macOS through what Apple calls

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Instagram’s Following tab, the activity feed that displays what posts your friends are liking, commenting on, and following, is going away this week. The company quietly removed the tab for some users starting in August, and Instagram confirmed to BuzzFeed News today that the feature will be phased out this week. Once the changes go into effect, the heart icon, which currently houses an activity feed for “You” and “Following,&r

The total transactional volume of blockchain apps (dapps) across the six major dapp-centric networks hit just $2.03 billion last quarter, down by nearly 40 percent. More troubling, just 148 dapps launched in Q3 of this year. That’s less than the monthly average of the first half of 2019 (when 164 new ones were deployed every month). Still, over half of those transactions were related to cryptocurrency gambling, reports dapp explorer Dapp.com with its latest quarterly analysis. T

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verg Since the Apple Watch first came out, Apple has positioned it as a health and fitness tracker. But one thing it still can’t do natively is track your sleep. Right now, if you want to track your sleep, you’ll have to download a third-party app. That might change soon, though, as an App Store listing for Apple’s Alarms app for Apple Watch references an unreleased Sleep app:
Based on the short description in the screenshot, it sounds as if you&rsq

Listen to this 50th anniversary remembrance by @PhilHarrellNPR for a reminder on how a Monty Python sketch helped name an online nuisance.https://www.npr.org/2019/10/04/767095471/celebrating-50-years-of-monty-pythons-flying-circus?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=202907 …

NASA astronauts Jessica Meir (L) and Christina Koch (R). | Image: NASA After postponing what would have been the first all-female spacewalk in March, NASA announced on Friday that it will finally make history this month by sending two women on an all-female excursion outside the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir, who both currently live on the ISS, are set to perform the spacewalk on October 21st, marking the first time that only women have donned spac

Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge California has passed a law meant to prevent altered “deepfake” videos from influencing elections, in a plan that has raised free speech concerns.Law sunsets in 2023
Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law AB 730, which makes it a crime to distribute audio or video that gives a false, damaging impression of a politician’s words or actions. The law applies to any candidate within 60 days of an election, but includes some exceptions

I have a real soft spot for the Apple TV. I’ve used the range for years, and it’s still got pride of place in my home — but I also think it’s one of Apple’s disappointing products. And that makes me sad. The recent tvOS 13 update has been a long-awaited push in the right direction for the hardware, yet for this current iteration of the device, I have a feeling it’s too little, too late. Oh no, you’re going to get all David Copperfield aren’t you?

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. If you, like me, have a questionable taste in music and die inside a little every time you’re asked about your favorite music, you probably don’t want anyone seeing what you’re listening to on Spotify. The streaming platform, which has over 200 million subscribers, allows you to set music playlists to public and show what you’re l

iFixit has posted a detailed teardown of Samsung’s revised Galaxy Fold almost six months after it was pressured into taking down its analysis of the original folding device. We already had a good idea of many of the things Samsung has done to reinforce the Fold, but iFixit’s analysis gives us a much better look at its internal changes.The teardown shows the extra metal layer in greater detail, which iFixit says is “like chainmail armor” that sits between the screen and it

Cybercriminals are targeting hospitals across the globe with ransomware. Some of the hospitals are giving in to the attackers’ demands and paying the requested ransom, likely in cryptocurrency. Over in the US, Alabama-based DCH Health System said it paid the hackers after the attack severely disrupted operations at three hospitals, the Tuscaloosa News reports. Specifically, computers at the DCH Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa, Fayette Medical Center, and Northport Medical

Revenge porn isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, but with advancements in AI, “deepfakes” — an AI-based technology used to digitally produce or alter realistic looking video content — are becoming increasingly harder to distinguish from real videos. This technology has also been used to doctor political videos, such as the clip that sounded, and looked like, Obama called President Trump a “dipshit.”  To combat this, the state of California passed two b

When Apple Arcade launched in September, there was one aspect, in particular, that was unique about the subscription service. We knew more than 100 games were coming to Arcade and that some of the biggest names in mobile gaming were developing titles, but many of those games were secret up until Apple Arcade actually debuted. Over the last few weeks, many players have found themselves completely absorbed in experiences like Assemble With Care, Card of Darkness, and Grindstone, all of which were

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Keyboard shortcuts have always been a favorite of writers, coders, and other fast-track computer users who want to get as much text on the screen as they can without having to lift their hands from their keyboards. But in the case of Chromebooks, shortcuts can also help new users cope with some of the differences between the design of the Chromebook and other systems, such as Macs and Windows PCs.
For example, instead of the usual Caps Lock key that most keybo

Global exchanges are begging the UK‘s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) not to ban the sale of cryptocurrency-based derivatives. The World Federation of Exchanges said today that there is a need to find a balance between innovation and keeping consumers protected, Reuters reports. But it doesn’t think banning cryptocurrency-based investment products is the right answer. “The WFE recognizes the volatility identified by the FCA in its consultation report and is supportive of ens

Deepfakes are one of the scariest phenomenons of recent technology trends. From demeaning women to costing monetary loss, these artificial videos are causing a lot of trouble for people. Now a new report from Deeptrace, a Netherland based cybersecurity company, has published a new report stating 96 percent of deepfake videos online are porn, and they received over 134 million views. What important to note is that all porn videos feature female subjects. Danielle Citron, Professor of Law, Boston

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Spotify has launched the ability to play music with Apple’s Siri voice assistant on the iPhone and iPad. The new feature, only recently made possible in iOS 13, puts Spotify on more equal footing with Apple Music. It showed up in the company’s beta app in late September, but it has now rolled out to all users. Another new addition will automatically put Spotify into Data Saver mode when you activate Low Data Mode on your device.You can ask Sir

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Amazon has marked down the Beats Powerbeats Pro true wireless headphones by $50 today. At $199.95, it matches the best price we’ve seen so far for this model, which ranks as our top choice if you’re looking for a set of wireless earphones.The Powerbeats Pro work especially well with Apple products, as they use the H1 wireless chip for hands-free “Hey Siri” functionality, they can switch between paired Apple devices, and they charge via Li

I shouldn’t have to tell you that Facebook‘s upcoming ‘cryptocurrency‘ Libra isn’t having a great time. With every passing day, and every new headline, it seems less likely that Libra will ever launch, let alone on time. Well, if you’re skeptical and think Libra is going to be delayed, you can take a shot at making some money at it by betting that it won’t launch – just like I told you to do already. While you could probably go down to a bookies a