Technology news

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Democrats have been tearing into Facebook and Twitter’s content and ads policies for days, focusing on rules that leave room for inaccurate or abusive language. But on Tuesday, Twitter put out a blog post in an attempt to clarify that world leaders, like President Donald Trump, are not above its rules — at least not “entirely.”
In Tuesday’s blog post, Twitter said that “Presently, direct interactions with fellow public

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram has added a new feature for users to control the data they’re sharing with third-party apps. In the tab of its ever-growing hamburger icon, you can navigate to Settings –> Security –> Apps and Websites to see which third-party services have access to your data. From there, users can look at active and expired authorized apps, which may have had access to data like profile information, your username, account type, captions

TikTok users are reporting an unusually high number of posts showing up in their feeds related to Donald Trump. While the network has long been considered a haven for Trump supporters, until now they appeared to languish in an echo chamber. Now, as Trump‘s been eagerly announcing the mysterious progress he’s making in negotiations with China, posts about the president are apparently showing up everywhere on the Chinese-owned social network. #TikTok is being flooded with pro Trump vi

After being dark for a day, Fortnite came back triumphant with a new map — effectively going from a black hole to a Big Bang as it introduces users to a new map and new gameplay. Fortnite‘s not the first game to radically alter its map, though it might be the first one that did so under the pretense of a universe-ending event such as the black hole, which lingered for over a day. The game‘s youthful audience and their parents were apparently so confused they were rin

Photo by Patrick Meinhardt / AFP / Getty Images Predicting where Ebola might strike next could become easier, thanks to a new computer model. The model tracks how changes in the environment and in human societies could affect the deadly virus’s spread. It predicts that Ebola outbreaks could become as much as 60 percent more likely by 2070 if the world continues on a path toward a warmer climate and a cooling economy.
Ebola, on average, kills half of all people who contract the virus. In p

Amazon’s upcoming Echo Studio, which will support 360 Reality Audio. | Dan Seifert / The Verge Sony has announced that its new 360 Reality Audio technology will launch in late fall with several partners. The format involves object-based spatial audio that places various elements of a music track around the listener in a virtual spherical environment. The experience is designed to replicate live music, with instruments and vocals coming from different directions.
At launch, there will be a

Gilbert Levin, a NASA engineer who worked on the Viking missions, says he’s “convinced we found evidence of life of Mars in the 1970s.” In a Scientific American article published today, Levin explains how two separate craft landed on the surface of the red planet and conducted a series of tests to determine if there were was life. One particular test, based on the same experiment Louis Pasteur conducted to prove the existence of microbes, came back positive. The results were c

You might not know it from glancing at a Chromebook, but Google’s Chrome OS is in a constant state of evolution.
The operating system receives minor updates every two to three weeks and major releases every six weeks. And at any given moment, Google’s staff is working on features and software enhancements that most people won’t see for a matter of weeks — or months.
Here’s a little secret, though: if you’re feeling adventurous, you can gain access to those unr

Google announced today that it will be rolling out a new version of its Nest Aware subscription service starting in 2020, with simplified pricing and new features.Since 2015, Google has offered Nest Aware as a premium subscription for its Nest security cameras for $5, $10, or $30 per month. The subscription gives you 24/7 continuous recording, access to video history, and more options for alerts, but if you wanted to use Nest Aware with multiple cameras, you had to pay a discounted monthly fee p

Google held its big Made by Google event today, officially revealing the Pixel 4 and a handful of other new products today. Since the company has been pretty bad (okay, awful) at keeping secrets, we already knew many of the devices and features announced, but the company still had a few surprises up its sleeve. Here’s what you need to know about the new devices: Pixel 4 Okay, so this might be the most leaked phone in history, but let’s recap for you. The phone has a few highlight fe

Warner Bros. For $74.99 a year (£59.99), Harry Potter fans can get a new video series, discounted merchandise, special events, and all seven books in the main series. The offering, from Warner Bros. and Pottermore, is a premium addition to the Wizarding World app that launched in August. It’s called Wizarding World Gold.
From a quick glance at Wizarding World Gold’s offerings, it’s likely that Warner Bros. and Pottermore, author J.K. Rowling’s company, want to mirr

The ILife A9 is a recent addition to the over-crowded robot vacuum market, but it manages to stand out from the pack in several ways. Right up front, it’s priced under $300. This puts it in the “entry-level” category of robot vacuums, but it brings more to the table than most of its unremarkable competitors. It has all the usual features including dual suction settings, multiple cleaning modes, drop and collision-detection sensors, automatic mapping and charging, and an app fo

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google has essentially abandoned its Daydream virtual reality platform. The company confirmed to The Verge that the new Pixel 4 phone won’t support Daydream, and Google told Variety and The Verge that it will also no longer sell the Daydream View mobile headset. It will continue to support the app — which only works on older phones — for existing users.
“There hasn’t been the broad consumer or developer adoption we had ho

The Pixel Buds that were included with the Pixel 3 are not included with the Pixel 4. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google’s latest phone, the Google Pixel 4, doesn’t include a pair of earphones in the box, nor does it come with one of the company’s USB-C to 3.5mm adapters. With its own true wireless Pixel Buds not due for release until next year, Google just offered every other headphone manufacturer a nice opportunity to capitalize on any new Pixel 4 owners w

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge A slew of new Google products is coming, with the new Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL phones heading the list. If you’ve already got a Pixel phone and are in the mood to upgrade or if you’ve finally decided that this is the year you’re going to take the plunge, we’ve got all the info you need.Where to buy the Pixel 4 and 4 XL
Available for preorder today and shipping on October 24th, the Pixel 4 and 4 XL are (for the first time) going to be avail

The Verge Alleged copyright troll Christopher Brady will no longer be able to issue false DMCA takedowns to other YouTubers, according to a lawsuit settlement filed today.Under the new agreement, Brady is banned from “submitting any notices of alleged copyright infringement to YouTube that misrepresent that material hosted on the YouTube service is infringing copyrights held or claimed to be held by Brady or anyone Brady claims to represent.” Brady is also prohibited from “mis

Google today revealed the official launch date of its Stadia streaming service — at least, the date when those who’ve paid the Chromecast Ultra toll will get it. No word yet for the rest of us. The mention of Stadia was cleverly slipped in at the beginning of the event, and then quickly eclipsed by bigger news (which you can read about it all here, if you like). All Rick Osterloh, Google’s head of hardware, said on the topic was that “Stadia” would launch on that d

Facebook sent the world into a frenzy when it announced its intention to enter the payments space with the launch of its controversial ‘cryptocurrency‘ Libra earlier this year. Initially, Facebook said it had garnered support from 28 companies, including some of the world’s top financial and technology giants. But, as soon as regulators and central banks caught wind of Facebook‘s plans they began to issue warnings and air concerns about Libra‘s potential&

Image: OpenAI Artificial intelligence research organization OpenAI has achieved a new milestone in its quest to build general purpose, self-learning robots. The group’s robotics division says Dactyl, its humanoid robotic hand first developed last year, has learned to solve a Rubik’s cube one-handed. OpenAI sees the feat as a leap forward both for the dexterity of robotic appendages and its own AI software, which allows Dactyl to learn new tasks using virtual simulations before it is

Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign announced on Tuesday that it will no longer take large donations from executives working at big tech companies like Facebook and Google.In a Medium post, Warren pledged to refuse any contributions totaling over $200 from executives of big tech companies, banks, private equity firms, and hedge funds. More specifically, her new contribution rules apply to Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Lyft, and Uber,

I just spent a few minutes with the new Google Pixel Buds hardware — the $179 truly wireless earbuds aren’t shipping until Spring 2020, and the units at Google’s fall hardware event aren’t actually turned on and working. So there’s no way to tell how they’ll actually sound, and how Google’s various software tricks work in practice.
What I can tell you is that Google has produced a set of small, minimally designed earbuds that look like nothing more than

Image: Google The Pixel 4 and 4 XL will launch without one of the original great reasons for owning a Pixel phone: free unlimited photo backups to Google Photos at full resolution. Google’s website for the new devices only notes that they’re eligible for the same storage option as any other phone, which is unlimited backups at “high quality.” This option compresses your images when they’re uploaded to the cloud, which is why Google is able to offer it so freely.
No

Yes, Google has now officially launched the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL. After months of leaks, the search giant has finally confirmed at today’s event what we’ve all known for some time now: the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL both have two rear cameras, a face unlocking feature, gesture controls, and a 90Hz display. The lack of the notch is one of the big evolutions of the Pixel 4. Last year’s phones (the surprisingly named Pixel 3 range) suffered with one of the worst notches I’ve

Google launched its new flagship the Pixel 4 today, but sadly the phone won’t be coming to India. The reason is the Soli Radar chip used in the new phones. The chip uses a 60 GHz ISM band which is not listed for commercial use in India as per National Frequency Allocation Plan (NFAP). The company said in a statement it decided to not launch the phone in India based on various factors: Google has a wide range of products that we make available in different regions around the world. We

French startup Strapi has raised a $4 million seed round led by Accel and Stride.vc. The company has been working on an open-source Node.js headless content management system.
That’s a lot of technical words in a row, but it’s not that hard to understand what Strapiis. Content management systems, or CMS, are web applications that let you publish and manage content on a website. It can be a blog, a corporate website with multiple pages, a portfolio, etc. The most popular CMSin the wor

Google is debuting a new voice recorder app on the Pixel 4, and it has some features that very much set it apart from traditional recorder apps. The app, simply called Recorder, also has the ability to transcribe your recordings. That alone is uncommon among voice recorder apps — let alone free ones — and Google pushes that even further, creating those transcriptions on device and in real time, without sending data to the internet.
For whatever reason, Google hasn’t made a voic

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verg Google has updated the Google Home Mini, creating a new version that looks identical but has a few new features and a new name: the Nest Mini. That’s part of Google’s larger plan of putting all of its smart home and smart speaker products under the Nest brand name. It still cost the same $49, though if the past is any indication, you will likely be able to find deals for it quite regularly.
The new Nest Mini is a minor update, so existing users reall

Google’s big 2019 hardware event is underway. The company has shared details on Pixel Buds, Stadia, Nest Wifi, Nest Mini, and Pixelbook Go. Based on rumors, we also expect it to announce the Pixel 4.
We’re live at the event, and if you want minute-to-minute updates of everything that’s happening, check out our live blog. But if you just want the headlines with the context that you need, we’re putting them all below.
Google breaks down what’s new with the Pixel 4 cam

Google just launched its new laptop called the PixelBook Go with a 13.3-inch touch screen and runs Chrome OS. The Pixelbook Go weighs less than 900 grams and it’s just 13.3mm thin, making it quite easy to carry it around the town. The company claims the laptop can last for 12 hours on a single charge, and you can get two hours of battery time with just 20 minutes of charging. Google said the device has a specially designed keyboard that’s meant to make the least amount of sound when

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has announced the second-generation version of its Google Assistant software, which promises new capabilities, a design overhaul, and a noticeable boost to speed. That last upgrade means the new Assistant can launch and return answers to queries much faster than before. The service is coming first to Pixel phones, and Google made the announcement onstage at its Pixel 4 reveal event in New York City on Tuesday.We already knew quite a bit about the n

Google has just shown off the Pixel 4’s “Motion Sense” features, demonstrating how you’ll be able to use it to skip tracks, silence calls, and even interact with the pokémon Pikachu, all without laying a finger on the phone. The functionality is powered by Project Soli, a radar-based technology developed by Google. Google advertises that the Pixel 4 is the “first smartphone with a radar sensor” and says that this allows it to offer what it claims is the

You’ve seen them, you’ve read plenty about them, and now Google’s latest smartphones are finally, really, officially here: the company just announced the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL at its hardware event in New York City.The Pixel 4 comes in three new colors: white, black, and a limited-edition orange option. It goes up for preorder today, and ships October 24th. The Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL will be sold by every major US carrier. The regular Pixel 4 starts at $799.Check out our in-de

You want working, reliable Wi-Fi in every room of your house. Maybe you’d like every room of your house to properly hear your Google Assistant voice commands, too?
Now, Google is about to offer a way to extend both your internet and the range of your voice at once — with the just-announced Nest Wifi mesh router system.
We’re learning about it right now live at Google’s Pixel 4 hardware event: the two-pack is now composed of a new, bulbous “Router” and a separa