Technology news

We may be seeing the resurrection of an iconic franchise soon. A leak in German magazine Game Star may have just spilled the existence of Diablo IV, the latest entry in the dungeon crawler series. The telltale reveal was in an ad for a Diablo art book. It claims the book (which you can pre-order on Amazon) contains “over 500 artworks from Diablo, Diablo II, Diablo III and Diablo IV.” BlizzCon 2019 new Diablo 4 leaks in Germany. If this is true, information about previ

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google sort of botched wireless charging on the Pixel 3 last year. Only customers who bought the company’s own Pixel Stand accessory and a very small selection of third-party chargers were able to juice up the Pixel 3 at the fastest possible wireless charging speeds. Everyone else using their existing mats and charging stands were limited to a much slower 5-watt charge. But Google has righted this mistake with the Pixel 4.
According to Mishaal R

A team of researchers from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre have developed a method for creating a sort of ‘super mouse’ that’s slimmer, cancer resistant, and lives 25% longer than regular mice. Astonishingly, this feat’s been accomplished without gene therapy. Rather than cut and paste genes together to create a designer mouse, the researchers combined two zygotes to create a chimera with one, specific defining feature: hyper-long telomeres. Scientists have l

Photo by Christoph Dernbach/picture alliance via Getty Images Apple CEO Tim Cook has been appointed chairman of the advisory board for Tsinghua University’s economics school in Beijing, according to local news reports and a Chinese-language meeting summary noted by Apple Insider.
Cook will assume the role for three years
Cook will reportedly assume the role for the next three years, and recently acted as chairman for a meeting, as the South China Morning Post notes. Cook has been on the b

Image: Serato Music software company Serato has released new official versions of its DJ Pro and DJ Lite software that are fully supported in macOS Catalina. The updated software works with Apple’s new Music app, which replaced iTunes in Apple’s latest desktop OS refresh, and libraries in Music can automatically load in the updated Serato DJ Pro and DJ Lite.
Along with updating its DJ software, Serato has also released a new version of its beat-making software Serato Studio that&rsq

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Only 1 percent of Uber customers always tip, while nearly 60 percent never do, according to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). The average tip is 50 cents a ride, but for those who do tip, the average is more like $3. Men are more likely to tip than women, but female drivers get tipped more than male ones.Tipping has long been a source of fierce debate, especially as it relates to ride-hailing companies like Uber. For years, the

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Only 1 percent of Uber customers always tip, while nearly 60 percent never do, according to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). The average tip is 50 cents a ride, but for those who do tip, the average is more like $3. Men are more likely to tip than women, but female drivers get tipped more than male ones.Tipping has long been a source of fierce debate, especially as it relates to ride-hailing companies like Uber. For years, the

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Islamic State propagandists are reportedly trying to exploit social media app TikTok as a recruiting tool. The Wall Street Journal says social media monitoring agency Storyful recently identified around two dozen ISIS-related accounts, all of which have since been removed. The accounts posted videos aimed at recruiting followers and bolstering support for the terrorist group — featuring Islamic State anthems and footage of corpses and ISIS fighters.

Photo: Netflix Netflix is trying to be more transparent with its creatives about how it counts a view on an original series or movie, and a letter sent to the British government includes three new descriptors: starters, watchers, and completers.The three new categories are part of the most in-depth look yet at a reported method that helps Netflix decide whether a show should be canceled. According to a letter sent to a UK Parliament committee, Netflix tracks ratings with those three metrics wit

Image: NordVPN NordVPN says one of its servers was breached in March 2018, exposing some of the browsing habits of customers who were using the VPN service to keep their data private. NordVPN says the server, located in Finland, did not contain activity logs, usernames, or passwords. But the attacker would have been able to see what websites users were visiting during that time, a company advisor said, although the content of the websites likely would have been hidden due to encryption.
Over th

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In the latest swirl of T-Mobile-Sprint merger drama, Colorado is exiting a lawsuit challenging the deal after Dish Network agreed to house its new wireless headquarters in the state.The Colorado Attorney General’s Office announced its decision on Monday after Dish promised that the state would be one of the first in the nation to receive 5G services and become the home of its new wireless headquarters, creating thousands of jobs. The DOJ approved th

Twitch has begun testing a new feature called “Watch Parties,” which appears to allow streamers the ability to stream content from Amazon Prime to their viewers (who also have Amazon Prime), according to a tweet posted Friday evening. “Watch Parties brings Prime Video to Twitch,” the announcement said. “You can watch a selection of Prime Video movies and TV shows on your channel with any of your viewers who have Prime, including the new season of Tom Clancy’s

Facebook today released a new set of tools and policy changes intended to fight the spread of misinformation on the platform, moving to more clearly label false posts and content created by state media. Separately, the company removed four networks of accounts based in Iran and Russia that Facebook said misled users about their identities and posted inflammatory political news.
The moves come at a time when Facebook has been pilloried for a decision not to send political ads to fact-checkers. Th

Microsoft wants to make it as easy as possible to migrate to Microsoft365, and today the company announced it had purchased a Canadian startup called Mover to help. The companies did not reveal the acquisition price.
Microsoft 365 is the company’s bundle that includes Office 365, Microsoft Teams, security tools and workflow. The idea is to provide customers with a soup-to-nuts, cloud-based productivity package. Moverhelps customers get files from another service into the Microsoft 365 clou

Photo: Ursula Coyote / Netflix Daybreak’s Josh Wheeler (Colin Ford) has a killer origin story. But what separates him from Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen, or any of the dozens of teen protagonists who’ve struggled through their own apocalyptic YA stories is that he thinks of his life in terms like “killer origin story.” From its first Ferris Bueller-inspired moments onward, the new Netflix zombie comedy regularly smashes the fourth wall to deliver a self-aware series whe

Image: Valve Steam’s new Remote Play Together feature, which lets you play local multiplayer games over the internet, has launched in beta. The existence of the feature was first reported earlier this month, and it allows up to four online players (“or even more in ideal conditions” according to Valve) to participate in a local multiplayer game as though they were sitting in the same room.To get the feature you’ll need to participate in the Steam Client Beta. After you&r

The Australian scene industry has, in the last few years, started to generate a swathe of startups that have broken through internationally. Prior to this current era, Australia was scene has very much a local market in tech terms, with only occasional breakouts, like Atlassian . In fact, it’s now gaining a reputation as a serial producer of high-quality tech platforms, the hottest of which right now is Canva,which recently raised an additional $85 million to bring its valuation to $3.2 bi

James Bareham The Vergecast will return for a live recording in San Francisco, CA on Thursday, October 31st at 7:30 PM. This time we’re thrilled to host the show from The Glass Room: an innovative pop-up exhibition that aims to generate global conversation about technology, data, and privacy.Vergecast hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn will by joined by Isaac Reynolds, product manager of the Google Pixel camera; Robby Stein, director of product for Instagram; and Verge senior reporter Ashl

Chromebooks are pretty different from traditional laptops in a lot of ways — and not just because of their software.
The most obvious physical difference? Chromebooks feature keyboards with a variety of Chrome-OS-specific functions, which means they don’t have standard keys like F1 or even Caps Lock. Depending on your style of working, that could be a welcome change or a massive pain.
If you aren’t thrilled with that arrangement, though, don’t despair. You can actually re

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verg Google introduced a lot of cool new Pixel camera features at last week’s event. Some of them, like astrophotography mode, will be coming to older Pixel devices. But two will apparently remain exclusive to the brand-new Pixel 4 and 4 XL: dual exposure controls, which let you adjust highlights and shadows right from your viewfinder, and Live HDR+, which gives you a live preview of what your photo will look like with Google’s HDR processing applied.Goog

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Security researchers with SRLabs have disclosed a new vulnerability affecting both Google and Amazon smart speakers that could allow hackers to eavesdrop on or even phish unsuspecting users. By uploading a malicious piece of software disguised as an innocuous Alexa Skill or Google Action, the researchers showed how you can get the smart speakers to silently record users, or even ask them for the password to their Google account.
The vulnerability is a good remin

Image: HTC HTC has announced a new entry-level phone aimed at cryptocurrency users called the HTC Exodus 1S, a followup to the $699 Exodus 1 that was originally released last year. The Exodus 1S is a much cheaper device at €219 (around $244), and offers much less powerful hardware built around a Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 processor.
The Exodus 1S’s big new cryptocurrency feature is that it’s able to run a full bitcoin node, which HTC says is a first for a smartphone. It’s so

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge One of the headline features for the Google Pixel 4 is that it adds a new, secure face unlock feature in lieu of a fingerprint sensor. Only it turns out that “secure” is a relative term, as the phone will unlock even if your eyes are closed. Google has given us a statement promising that it will issue a software update that will fix that problem up, but unfortunately the timeline for it is longer than users might like. Google says that it has &ldquo