Technology news

Asa Mathat Andy Rubin used to be primarily known as the “father of Android,” but he’s also becoming known for leaving companies amid scandal — in this case Playground Global, the tech incubator he founded after leaving Google in 2014. Rubin confirmed to The Verge today that he’s no longer with the incubator, following a BuzzFeed report that he was “quietly shown the door.”
But that turn of phrase isn’t quite appropriate — because Rubin&rsquo

Image: Calibra Over the summer, Facebook unveiled its Libra cryptocurrency and the Calibra subsidiary that would help manage it. Facebook also unveiled a logo for Calibra and, well, it looks somewhat similar to the logo of Current, a startup bank. Apparently, Current agreed, so much so that it has filed a lawsuit against Facebook, alleging trademark infringement.
this is what happens when you only have 1 crayon left pic.twitter.com/2JY5JfesQD— Current (@current) June 19, 2019The suit name

Apple’s AirPower wireless charger was one of the company’s most high-profile failures ever, but in the wake of its cancellation, plenty of companies have been trying to swoop in to fill the gap that Apple left. The latest is Nomad, whose new Base Station Pro wireless charger promises to offer the kind of versatile charger that Apple couldn’t.
The big promise of AirPower was a wireless charger that didn’t need any exact placement — just drop up to three devices anywh

Extra Crunch offers members the opportunity to tune into conference calls led and moderated by the TechCrunch writers you read every day. This week, TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos hopped on the line with prominent investor, entrepreneur, thought leader, and Techstarsco-founder Brad Feldto chat about the latest edition of his book “Venture Deals,” his advice to founders and investors, and his take on hot-button issues of the day.
In their conversation, Brad and Connie discuss t

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Visa, Mastercard, eBay, Stripe, and Mercado Pago have all withdrawn from the Libra Association, dealing a major blow to Facebook’s plans for a distributed, global cryptocurrency. The withdrawals were first reported by the Financial Times and Bloomberg.
A Visa spokesperson told The Verge. “Visa has decided not to join the Libra Association at this time,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue to evaluate and our ultimate decision

Photo: Netflix There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services, and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.
What to watch
“The Entire History of You,” a season 1 episode of the s

Apple has found the first TV series it’s going to produce in-house for its upcoming TV Plus streaming service: a third entry in Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman’s Band of Brothers franchise.The miniseries is expected to run north of eight hours, and will reportedly cost more than $200 million to make, according to Deadline. The new series is based on Donald L. Miller’s book, Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought The Air War Against Nazi German

Amazon is rolling out Multilingual mode to Alexa, which lets users in the US speak Spanish to their Alexa devices. Alexa will be able to respond to requests in either English or Spanish, based on the language in which it was asked. The company announced the mode at its Echo event last month, and it’s now rolling out in three countries in pairs: English and Spanish in the US, Indian English and Hindi in India, and Canadian English and French in Canada.
Multilingual mode is meant to let user

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Friday, Riot Games said that League of Legends broadcasters should “refrain” from discussing “sensitive topics” on the air, following a controversial move from Blizzard to ban a Hearthstone player who voiced support for the Hong Kong protesters over the weekend.“As a general rule, we want to keep our broadcasts focused on the game, the sport, and the players,” John Needham, the global head of League of Legends e-spor

The Stratolaunch plane on its first flight | Image: Stratolaunch Stratolaunch Systems — the aerospace company created by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen — is changing ownership. The company announced today that it is no longer owned by its original holding company, Vulcan Inc., and has been sold to a now undisclosed owner.
The news comes four months after reports started surfacing that Stratolaunch was on the brink of closing up shop, following the death of Allen in October

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Apple’s macOS Catalina update has arrived. Our review went up this week, and it’s time to talk about it on The Vergecast!
On this week’s show, Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Paul Miller go deep into Apple’s updated operating systems: macOS Catalina, iPadOS, iOS 13, and a little bit of tvOS. Catalina seems pretty buggy, and some apps are broken. Is upgrading worth it? Listen to our experts who have used it extensively.Of course, there&rsquo

Photo: Paramount Pictures It isn’t enough for Ang Lee to just make movies. Not anymore. At this point in his career, he apparently feels he has to push the boundaries of everything the moving picture format can do and be. The Taiwanese director’s 2012 film Life of Pi heralded the arrival of a new era for him, a period of big-budget experimentation that’s yielded as many bafflements as wonders. His adaptation of the book club favorite went well enough, winning four Oscars for i

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The Google Pixel 3A is already a great value for $399, but it’s currently $50 less than usual at a bunch of retailers. Google’s Pixel lineup isn’t the easiest to suss out if you’re unfamiliar, and it’s about to get a little more complicated next week when the Pixel 4 is announced.The Pixel 3A is the more budget-friendly version of the flagship Pixel 3. The same goes for the Pixel 3A XL, but it has a bigger battery and screen. It, t

Mixer co-founders Matt Salsamendi and James J. Boehm both left the live-streaming company over the past two weeks, at a time when the service is undergoing some of its biggest changes to date.
Boehm announced his departure from Mixer on October 2nd, and Salsamendi announced that he was leaving on October 10th. The pair launched Mixer, initially known as Beam, in January 2016. Microsoft acquired the company in August 2016. It was renamed Mixer in 2017.
While Boehm didn’t announce what his n

Photo: David Moir / Lionsgate The new evil smartphone comedy Jexi is a desperate mock-up of recognizable human behavior, but one key element rings truer than most Hollywood productions: characters are constantly looking at their phones. It’s not just aspiring journalist Phil (Adam Devine), the film’s awkwardly isolated, phone-obsessed hero. Jexi briefly pathologizes Phil’s particular fixation through a couple of flashback scenes where, as a child, he’s repeatedly handed

You probably haven’t seen a genie like the ones in Concrete Genie, a heartwarming adventure game that just launched on the PS4. The creatures aren’t all-powerful beings that pop out of lamps, and they don’t grant any wishes. Instead, they’re decidedly more down to earth, with the look of a hand-scrawled monster ripped out of a child’s notebook. They aren’t just different, they’re also representative of the game as a whole: Concrete Genie is simple and ro

Porsche and Boeing are teaming up to build luxury, electric-powered vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for rich people to fly above traffic-choked cities. They are the latest companies to announce intentions to explore the risky and potentially dangerous urban air mobility market.Porsche and Boeing have signed a nonexclusive memorandum of understanding, which means they will look for ways to work together but they aren’t locked into a binding agreement. As part of the partnership, the c

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google makes “substantial” donations to climate-denying Washington think tanks, according to a new report from the Guardian on Friday. The revelation comes only a few weeks after Google announced its support political action to fix the climate crisis.Google contributes to conservative political organizations and lobbies in support regulatory efforts that benefit the company. Defending the donations to organizations like the Competitive Enterpr

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber is making moves into the highly competitive world of online grocery deliveries with the acquisition of a startup called Cornershop. The deal, for an undisclosed sum, will bolster the company’s efforts to expand into businesses outside its core ride-hailing service.Cornershop, founded in 2015, is currently active in Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Canada, and is headquartered in Santiago. In a statement, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said it would seek to

Nest has given its app a much needed update: it finally lets you change the Wi-Fi information for Nest Protect smoke detectors. The update was spotted by Android Police.
This feature doesn’t sound like a big deal — and by all means, it shouldn’t be — but it is a big deal because of just how dumb this process was until now. Previously, if you changed your Wi-Fi password, renamed your Wi-Fi network, or bought a new router and did both, there was no simple way to tell the Ne

Add smart TVs to the growing list of home appliances guilty of surveilling people’s movements. A new study from Princeton University shows internet-connected TVs, which allow people to stream Netflix and Hulu, are loaded with data-hungry trackers.
“If you use a device such as Roku and Amazon Fire TV, there are numerous companies that can build up a fairly comprehensive picture of what you’re watching,” Arvind Narayanan, associate professor of computer science at Princeton

Image: Google / @atn1988 Google’s annual fall hardware showcase is happening on Tuesday, October 15th, and we expect it to be a big one. The star of the show will almost certainly be the Pixel 4, with its second back camera packed into an iPhone 11-like camera square, face unlock tech that might rival Apple’s Face ID, and a motion-sensing radar that Google’s been quietly developing for years.
And that’s just what Google has already told us. The rumor mill suggests t