Technology news

Just about everyone in the tech industry has taken a crack at VR or AR wearables except for Apple. The company has been content building out AR features for its iPhones, but not actually delivering a headset or other wearable to enhance the experience. That may change next year, according to reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (via 9to5Mac). Kuo expects Apple to team up with third parties to create the first batch of AR headsets. This comes as something of a surprise, considering Apple isn&rsqu

It used to be that tying someone’s shoes together was a nasty prank, but now it’s a performance-enhancing feat of bio-mechanical engineering. A team of researchers and engineers at Stanford University have developed a radical new method to increase the running efficiency of humans: they put a rubber band between a pair of shoes. This might not sound like a feat of modern technology, but the science behind it is actually quite interesting. According to the team’s research

Photo Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images A couple dozen Blizzard employees walked out of work Tuesday in protest of the company’s decision to ban a professional Hearthstone player who voiced support for the Hong Kong protesters over the weekend, according to The Daily Beast.The employees met at a giant statue depicting an Orc Warrior outside of the Activision Blizzard offices in California. According to the Beast, employees came and went as the day con

Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images American Airlines will resume flights with Boeing’s 737 Max jets in January 2020. In a statement posted online on October 9th, the airline says it expects software updates to result in the beleaguered jet’s recertification by federal aviation authorities “later this year.”
Boeing is expected to submit its final certification package to the FAA later this year. Anticipating this, American says it expects to “slowly phase in the MAX

Photo: Netflix Vincenzo Natali is the kind of director who makes the cult movie-steeped audiences at Austin’s annual Fantastic Fest swoon. He isn’t a household name, but his distinctive, creative low-budget genre movies have earned him a strong reputation among the kind of people who can list off a dozen Dario Argento movies without checking the internet. Natali’s 1997 indie movie Cube is a particular case in point: a low-budget Canadian science fiction film about a group of s

Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images On Wednesday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) requested that the US government conduct a formal investigation into whether the popular Chinese video app, TikTok, poses a national security risk by censoring content that upsets leaders in Beijing.“These Chinese-owned apps are increasingly being used to censor content and silence open discussion on topics deemed sensitive by the Chinese Government and Community Party,” Rubio claimed in a letter calling on the

Images: Volvo Volvo is one week away from unveiling the first EV under its own brand, an all-electric version of the company’s popular XC40 SUV. On Wednesday, the Swedish automaker said the car will mark another first, too: it will be the first Volvo car with an infotainment system built on Google’s new embedded Android Automotive software.That means the new electric XC40 will come with features and apps like Google Assistant and Google Maps built in, with no need for an Android sma

Virgin Orbit has big plans to send small spacecraft to Mars, as soon as 2022. The company — an offshoot of Richard Branson’s space tourism company Virgin Galactic — announced today that it is partnering with nearly a dozen Polish universities and a Polish satellite maker called SatRevolution to design up to three robotic missions to the Red Planet over the next decade.If successful, these missions could be the first purely commercial trips to Mars. Up until now, only four organ

Blizzard, perhaps ironically, has ignited a firestorm over the banning of an esports pro for his support of Hong Kong. While the initial response was flammable enough, the aftermath is swiftly growing beyond its original gaming context into a proper international incident. If you want the skinny on how this whole thing got started, you can read the details here. Long story short, a Hearthstone player called Blitzchung spoke out in support of the protesters in Hong Kong, his hometown.

The lighter your skin, the better AI-powered facial recognition systems work for you. The UK Home Office knows this, because the government‘s been briefed several times on the problem. And a recent report shows that it knew it was developing a passport program built on biased, racist AI. It just doesn’t care. The UK’s passport program went live in 2016. It uses an AI-powered facial recognition feature to determine whether user-uploaded photos meet the requirements and standard

Photo by Jens Schlueter/Getty Images A shooting outside a synagogue in Halle, Germany was live-streamed on Twitch — marking another use of online streaming sites to broadcast terror attacks. Twitch confirmed to CNBC and The Verge that the attacker had posted the video to the platform.
“We are shocked and saddened by the tragedy that took place in Germany today, and our deepest condolences go out to all those affected,” said a spokesperson. “Twitch has a zero-tolerance po

Brad Pitt in Ad Astra. | Photo by Francois Duhamel / 20th Century Fox In the recent science fiction film Ad Astra, Brad Pitt plays an astronaut, and the only surprising thing about it is that he hasn’t played one before. His Ocean’s Eleven ringleader George Clooney already went to space on film in Gravity and Solaris, and their co-star Matt Damon did in The Martian. Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Sandra Bullock, Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattison, Juliette Binoche, and Ry

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Apple has begun selling Microsoft’s Xbox Wireless Controller after adding support for the gamepad in the latest major software updates for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and the Mac. The Xbox controller is priced at $59.95 and is available from Apple’s website.I’m not seeing any local stores with stock just yet, but it’s not unreasonable to think that Apple might give it some shelf space to help promote Apple Arcade. Playing all of those title

Update October 9th, 2:55PM ET: NASA delayed the ICON launch due to bad weather at the rocket’s drop zone. The agency will try again Thursday, October 10th at 9:30PM ET. The weather forecast is much better, with a 70 percent chance of favorable conditions.
Original Story: NASA is slated to launch a long-awaited satellite from Florida on Wednesday night that’s designed to help scientists better predict how space weather events will behave high above Earth. But to get to space, the rock

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Lawmakers have begun actively pressuring members of the Libra Association, the international blockchain payments project led by Facebook, to reconsider their involvement with the group.
In a new letter sent to the CEOs of Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe, Sens. Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) warn of enormous risks inherent in the Libra project, including facilitating criminal and terrorist financing and destabilizing the global financial system

Photo: Niko Tavernise / Warner Bros. Todd Phillips’ Joker has been one of the most discussed films of the year, in part because it was controversial before it was even made. When the film was first announced, not long after the disastrous DC movie Suicide Squad revealed its own cinematic take on the Joker character, a vocal subsegment of the film world rebelled at the idea of rebooting the villain yet again, and protested DC’s interest in focusing on him at the expense of so many ot

Photo Illustration by Chesnot/Getty Images Microsoft-owned GitHub will renew a $200,000 contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, despite concerns about the Trump administration’s policies, according to a leaked email.GitHub CEO Nat Friedman said in an internal email leaked to tech activist organization Fight for the Future that ICE purchased a license for a GitHub enterprise server in 2016, and that the purchase recently came up for renewal. In the email, Friedman said the compa

Google appears to be working on a 5G version of the Pixel 4, and it’s possible the phone will be shown as early as next week, according to Nikkei. The standard versions of the Pixel 4, which will be announced at an event next Tuesday, will only support LTE. But Nikkei says that Google has begun “test production” on a model of the phone that includes 5G, too.
It’s not clear when the 5G model will be previewed or released, though. Nikkei says it could be shown next week, bu

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes that Apple is preparing to release the iPhone SE 2, a new iPad Pro with a 3D sensor for better AR support, a new MacBook equipped with a scissor-switch keyboard, and the long-rumored augmented reality headset all in the first half of 2020. The predictions were published in a new Chinese-language report that was reported in English by 9to5Mac.This isn’t the first time we’re hearing about these devices. Some,

Photo by Ian Forsyth / Getty Images Uber is experimenting with a new feature that aims to reduce cancellations as a result of customers bringing a pet along for the ride. Dubbed Uber Pet, the new feature will be available in select cities starting on October 16th.It used to be that bringing a dog or cat in an Uber was unpredictable. Uber recommended customers contact their drivers before bringing pets in the car, but it’s likely that many people didn’t follow this advice. Surprise p

One of the advantages that Chromebooks — well, most Chromebooks — offer is the ability to run many of your favorite Android apps alongside Chrome OS windows. In fact, a lot of the more popular Android apps have been optimized for Chrome OS, so they will look perfectly at home on your Chromebook.
Google has a long list of the Chromebooks that can run Android apps, but it’s not difficult to check to see if yours is one of them by doing the following:Go to Settings
Click on the &l

Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images Fortnite developer Epic Games said in a statement that it will not ban players or content creators for political speech. The message comes after Blizzard caught fire this week for banning a professional Hearthstone player for shouting a statement associated with Hong Kong protesters.
“Epic supports everyone’s right to express their views on politics and human rights. We wouldn’t ban or punish a Fortnite player or content creator for speaking on th

Sony dropped a few new details on the PlayStation 5 yesterday. The headline has the key details: Sony confirms PlayStation 5 name, holiday 2020 release date, but I’m curious to see what proper haptics feels like on a controller, instead of just rumbles. I feel like the “HD Rumble” Joy-Cons on the Nintendo Switch are headed in the right direction, but their haptics are too subtle.Mostly, though, I love that the triggers on the new Sony controllers are getting real, physical feed

Xbox One S | Photo by Tyler Pina / The Verge The Xbox One’s October 2019 update gives parents much more granular control over how long their kids can use different apps and games. The update allows parents to set time limits on a per-app basis, which will apply regardless of whether a child is using the app on an Xbox One console, Windows 10 PC, or Android phone using the Microsoft launcher. The update, which is rolling out now, also adds new notifications for when wish list items are on

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you see an ad on Facebook, should the contents of that ad be true? Historically, the answer has been yes. The company’s posted advertising guidelines prohibit “misinformation,” defined here as “ads that include claims debunked by third-party fact checkers or, in certain circumstances, claims debunked by organizations with particular expertise.”
As of this week, though, that policy comes with an asterisk. As Judd Legum

If you really, really want your iPad Pro to be a laptop, a new keyboard in crowdfunding called the Libra may be of interest. It’s a keyboard case with a laptop-style design, similar to the Brydge model I tested a while back, but there’s a big difference: this one has a trackpad.
In case you weren’t aware, iPadOS has rudimentary mouse support. It’s not very refined and it’s buried deep in accessibility settings, but it’s there. Until now, though, making using o

Image: Bolt A new teardown of Logitech’s latest mouse offers a fascinating look at the “Magspeed” scroll wheel used in the MX Master 3. The teardown, which was done by the venture capital firm Bolt, also explores the myriad ergonomic and design changes Logitech made to its flagship mouse as the company continues to refine and iterate after 30 years in the business.
The main focus of the teardown is the mouse’s scroll wheel, which Bolt describes as being a “magnetic

Call of Duty: Mobile has had a colossal launch week, racking up more downloads than any other mobile game in history, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower. The game has reportedly achieved over 100 million downloads since going live at the beginning of this month.
That easily beats out the launch-week figures that Sensor Tower recorded for games that will be Call of Duty’s biggest rivals. There are caveats, however. While PUBG Mobile, for example, got 28 million downloads in its first

Southeast Asian real estate portal 99.co has agreed to form a joint venture with iProperty. As part of the deal, iPropertyowner REA Group will invest $8 million of working capital into the venture, expected to be finalized by the second quarter of 2020.
99.coand REA Group, a real estate-focused digital advertising conglomerate that is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), say that the joint venture immediately makes 99.co the market leader in Indonesia and positions it to take the

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Federal Bureau of Investigation made tens of thousands of unauthorized searches related to US citizens between 2017 and 2018, a court ruled. The agency violated both the law that authorized the surveillance program they used and the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.The ruling was made in October 2018 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), a secret government court responsible for reviewing and authorizing searches of foreign ind