Technology news

Image: Canoo Electric vehicle startup Canoo and its CEO Stefan Krause have been accused of discrimination, harassment, breach of contract, and wrongful termination in a new lawsuit. The suit — which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday by Christina Krause, Canoo’s former head of communications and Stefan Krause’s wife — also claims the California startup’s primary investors are a German businessman with ties to Buckingham Palace, and a Chinese tycoon

Plug-ins that are quarantined returns a Photoshop error, “file was not found”. Adobe is recommending that Photoshop and Lightroom Classic users hold off on updating their computers to macOS Catalina, Apple’s latest desktop operating system software, until all the “known compatibility issues” have been resolved. Support documents published yesterday in conjunction with Catalina’s release highlight various issues related to broken plug-ins and incompatibility w

Photo credit should read LUIS ACOSTA/AFP/Getty Images The cocaine trade, and efforts to stop it, are causing $214.6 million in damage every year, new research released today shows. Drug-related deforestation is also driving people out of the region, and making climate change worse.
To move cocaine to its North American consumers, South American drug traffickers cut through Central America. To avoid law enforcement, the traffickers are using increasingly remote routes, including protected nation

Microsoft Microsoft announced that its latest preview build 18999 for Insiders (20H1) adds call support to the Your Phone app on Windows 10. Following its update in the summer that rolled out the app’s ability to mirror your phone’s text messages and notifications, this will let you leave your phone in your pocket while you’re on the PC. If you’re not an Insider, you’ll have to wait to try. But all you’ll need is an Android phone (with 7 Nougat or later insta

Photo courtesy Linksys Security cameras are all well and good, but what do you do if you really want privacy? Linksys may have come up with a solution with its new Linksys Aware service, which claims to use mesh Wi-Fi to sense motion without the use of cameras or other hardware. The company is offering a free 90-day trial, after which a subscription will cost $2.99 per month or $24.99 annually.The idea of using Wi-Fi to detect motion without the use of cameras or other sensors is not a new one.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Tuesday, Twitter announced that it “unintentionally” used phone numbers and email addresses for advertising purposes even though the information was provided by users for two-factor authentication.
According to Twitter, no personal data was shared with the company’s third-party partners, and the “issue that allowed this to occur” has been addressed. As of September 17th, phone numbers and email addresses are now only colle

Duo Inc. Peer into the annals of Indiegogo and Kickstarter, and you’ll find that it is filled with weird phone case ideas. There’s that iPhone case that was actually an entire Android phone, a case that could record all of your voice calls, the one that put an E Ink screen on the back of your iPhone, and a case that served as a lint roller, to name a few.Thankfully, wacky case ideas still live on in 2019, as is made clear by the pitch for the Duo charging case (for both iPhone and S

Photo by Michael Short/Getty Images Google already commands a lot of real estate, and earlier this year, it announced big plans to build even more offices and data centers across the United States. But it’s not done growing — both figuratively and literally. The company has just made another new real estate purchase, and it’s not for shiny new offices. Instead, Google has bought land where it plans to grow trees.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, Google bought 40 acres o

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple released iOS 13 on September 19th. Since then, there’s already been a slew of new updates: iOS 13.1 was released just five days later on September 24th, followed by iOS 13.1.1 on the 27th, and 13.1.2 on the 30th. It’s been just over a week since 13.1.2 launched, making this the longest-lasting version of iOS 13 yet.In my original review, I noted that iOS 13 felt buggy and unfinished, with missing features and glitchy software. Two an

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Logitech’s Harmony universal remotes were once a living room must-have. They brought order to TV setups everywhere by communicating with your cable box, game consoles, streaming devices, and everything else, and more recent Harmony remotes could control smart home devices as well.But as the world moves to streaming services, the number of TV devices you need to control is shrinking. Everything might already be built into your smart TV already, or you mig

Image: Logitech This week on The Vergecast interview series, The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel speaks to current CEO of Logitech Bracken Darrell.
Logitech has acquired a couple of companies over the past few years, notably Blue Microphones and Ultimate Ears. Recently, Logitech bought Streamlabs, a streaming software company used by almost half of all streamers on platforms like Twitch and YouTube.
Nilay and Bracken talk about how acquiring this software company makes sense for Logitech, its

Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images Tinder co-founder Sean Rad and the company’s former VP of communications Rosette Pambakian want the defamation suit filed against them last week to be dismissed. In a motion filed last night, Rad and Pambakian call former Tinder CEO Greg Blatt’s defamation suit “abusive” and a “public smear campaign against a sexual assault accuser under cover of a court proceeding.” Their legal team is seeking the case be dismissed under C

The stylish action sequences in the John Wick movies work so well because of their cold, clinical sequencing. Keanu Reeves’ titular character rarely misses his shot, dispatching enemies in the most efficient manner possible. Often he’ll incapacitate someone, take out someone else, and return to the first target for the final kill. It makes you wonder whether anyone could possibly be that elegant and mindful in a real-world firefight.
They couldn’t, of course, which is why John

Ever since Apple first announced that it would let developers port iPad apps to macOS, anticipation for popular apps debuting on the Mac has been high. But today, any hopes that Netflix would show up on the Mac as a native app were crushed, with Bloomberg reporting that the streaming service won’t be launching a Catalyst app for macOS.
Netflix is one of the most popular free iPad apps on the entire platform. And while it’s true that it’s already available on Mac computers throu

Image: Vizio Now that we’re well into October, Black Friday 2019 looms on the horizon. It’s likely that we’ll see some of the best deals on popular tech products happen in the next few weeks. And judging by a few of today’s deals, that’s already happening a little bit.
Vizio’s high-end 46-inch 5.1.4 home theater system is $200 off of its usual price at Amazon, Target, Walmart, and Best Buy. $799 might be more than what you were considering to spend on speaker

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The next phase of the unending console wars is starting to heat up, with Sony announcing that the successor to the PlayStation 4 will, predictably, be called the PlayStation 5.
But the news got us wondering: what will Microsoft call its next-generation Xbox console, which is currently using codename “Project Scarlett”? Unlike Sony, which tends to stick to strictly utilitarian names for its consoles — PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStati

Around the world, an estimated 2 billion people welcome insects into their regular diets. Insects can be an excellent food: many species are chock-full of fat, protein, vitamins, and fiber. Yet in places like the United States and Europe, consumers are historically resistant to the idea of entomophagy (insects as cuisine).But that may be changing. In 2013, the United Nations published a landmark report entitled “Edible Insects: future prospects for food and feed security.” Against th

Interactive fitness company Mirror, which makes a reflective LCD display for following workouts at home, today announced it’s launching one-on-one personal training. Through two-way audio and video, coaches will be able to lead users through sessions while giving feedback. Users can choose trainers based on workout activity preferences (yoga, strength training, barre, etc.), session length, trainer motivational style, and schedule. At $40 a session, that’s pricier than a SoulCycle cl

Because they tend to be inexpensive and fairly hardy, Chromebooks are often bought as laptops for families, to be shared between parents and kids, or passed around among friends. And because a Chromebook may have more than one user, it needs to have more than one login, so that each user has access to their own personal apps and content.
Adding a new user to a Chromebook is not difficult. Here’s how to do it:Click on the button in the lower right corner (the one that shows the time, batter

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Podcast startup Luminary roiled the podcasting industry when it debuted in April this year, and it has since maintained a low profile. The Verge confirmed today, however, that two months or so after its launch, co-founder Joe Purzycki stepped down as chief strategy officer. He remains close to CEO Matt Sacks, a Luminary spokesperson says, and still holds shares. The company replaced Purzycki with Jeff Saunders, a former VP of product and technology at

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sony has confirmed that its next-generation console will be called the PlayStation 5, and it’ll be out next year, launching in time for “Holiday 2020.”
The company also announced several changes that it’ll be making to the controller on the PS5. Chief among them is replacing the current rumble technology that Sony has been using since the original PlayStation for new haptic feedback technology that it promises will offer a “b

Image: Blizzard via InvenGlobal Blizzard has issued a year-long ban to a Hearthstone player who expressed support for the Hong Kong protestors during a competition live stream. The US-based game developer and publisher is also withholding any prize money he would have earned from competing in the tournament.
The incident occurred on Sunday, when Ng “Blitzchung” Wai Chung was being interviewed after a Grandmasters match. At the end of the interview, InvenGlobal reports that Blitzchun

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge We published reviews of iPadOS and macOS Catalina yesterday. Despite the fact that the first four paragraphs of my Catalina review were an argument that you should hold off on updating your Mac until you know for sure your apps will work, I still don’t feel I was strenuous enough.Some users missed the memo that 32-bit apps are finally getting left behind. Others didn’t realize that Apple transition from iTunes to Apple Music would burn off a critica

Despite the online excitement about Katmai National Park’s fat bears this year, the critters struggled harder than usual to plump up. The heat hit an important bear food source — salmon — hard, and that makes the bears’ future uncertain.
Last July was the hottest month ever in Alaska — bringing a longer-than-usual fire season and the state’s first “extreme” drought. To beat the heat, bears spent more time than usual lounging, which may have cut int

Image: Microsoft Microsoft’s Airband initiative is going international, with a newly formalized goal to get 40 million more people connected to the internet by July 2022. The program, which launched in 2017 with the goal of improving rural internet access across the US, is expanding to offer better internet access across Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa.
In America, Microsoft is relying on unused TV white space (TVWS) operating in the 600 MHz spectrum to offer broadband access to 3 mi

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The 2010 film The Social Network was almost entirely made up out of whole cloth, but one point made early in the film continues to ring true. Facebook has long had an obsessive focus with keeping the site up no matter what strain its servers were under, out of sheer competitive fear that users who couldn’t access the site would turn elsewhere and never return.That focus on keeping the site up helped Facebook to be competitive in its early years,

Image: Tile Tile, the company best known for its lineup of key- and bag-tracking Bluetooth fobs, has ambitions to track more of your belongings. The company’s new credit card-sized Tile Slim is designed to track your wallet, while the small, puck-shaped Tile Sticker is meant to be stuck onto laptops, TV remotes, skateboards, and bicycles. Tile is also updating its Mate and Pro key trackers with new models which offer improved range.
The $29.99 Tile Slim, in particular, is a great simple a

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Instagram has added a new feature to its app to help users work out if an email was sent by the Facebook company or if it’s an attempted phishing scam. Now, if you receive an email claiming to be from Instagram, you can check if it’s genuine by heading over to the “Emails from Instagram” option in the app’s Security settings, which lists every email the service has sent you over the last 14 days. The update is rolling out

Image: midiman Adobe is shutting down service for users in Venezuela in order to comply with a US executive order issued in August that prohibits trade with the country. The company sent out an email to customers in Venezuela today to let them know their accounts would be deactivated, and posted a support document further explaining the decision.In the document, Adobe explains: “The U.S. Government issued Executive Order 13884, the practical effect of which is to prohibit almost all trans

Screenshots by Nick Statt / The Verge Instagram has updated its iPhone app to take advantage of native dark mode support in iOS 13, and it makes scrolling through your feed and tapping through Stories much easier on the eyes if you’re not a fan of Instagram’s popping color palette and bright white borders.Unfortunately, for as nice as it looks, Instagram doesn’t let you toggle the dark mode option on or off within the app itself, as Twitter’s pre-iOS 13 addition of the f

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Apple released macOS Catalina today, and one of the update’s marquee features is Sidecar, which lets you use your iPad as a second display for your Mac laptop or desktop. The feature is designed to be a handy way to give yourself some extra screen real estate, especially if you regularly carry around both an iPad and an Apple laptop. The Verge’s Dieter Bohn called it his favorite new feature on Catalina in our review.But there’s a catch if you&