Technology news

A NASA spacecraft in orbit around the Moon spotted the crash site of India’s ill-fated lunar lander, Vikram, which slammed into the Moon’s surface during a landing attempt in September. Images taken by the spacecraft confirm that the lander met an explosive end, revealing the lander’s impact site and the surrounding debris created by the accident.
Part of India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission to the Moon, Vikram was supposed to be the first Indian spacecraft to touch down gently

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Match Group, the largest dating app conglomerate in the US, doesn’t perform background checks on any of its apps’ free users. A BuzzFeed News report today highlights a few incidents in which registered sex offenders went on dates with women who had no idea they were talking to a convicted criminal. These men then raped the women on their dates, leaving the women to report them to the police and to the apps’ moderators. These women expect

Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge League of Legends publisher Riot Games will pay at least $10 million under a legal settlement with current and former female employees, following accusations of gender-based discrimination and sexual harassment at the company.
The Los Angeles Times writes that Riot will compensate around 1,000 women who worked there between November 2014 and the present, with the dollar amount varying based on their time at the company. Riot will also need to appoint a c

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge There are plenty of great Cyber Monday deals across almost all categories of tech, but none more than gaming. Whether you’re interested in picking up some games, accessories like controllers or VR headsets, or full consoles, this year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales have been a total treat. Below, you’ll find an up-to-date list of the best gaming sales happening during Cyber Monday. Some of them will end later today, while others will c

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple has been rumored to be working on an iPad and MacBook featuring Mini-LED displays for months, and a new research note from noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has now put a date on when to expect them: late 2020, via 9to5Mac.Kuo had originally broke the rumor that Apple was working on laptops and tablets with the new screen technology earlier this year, but at that time, he put the date as either 2020 or 2021. The new research note pins that down, predicting that

Lil Bub, the internet celebrity cat who brought joy to millions of fans, has died. Her owner, Mike Bridavsky, announced her death on social media today in a post celebrating her life and influence on animal welfare and research for special needs pets. She passed peacefully in her sleep, at eight years old.
Born as the runt of her litter with a form of feline dwarfism, Lil Bub’s genetic mutations gave her the unique features of looking like a permanent kitten, and a toothless jaw that left

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Social video network TikTok apparently limited the reach of people with disabilities, including facial disfigurement and Down syndrome. According to Netzpolitik.org, which spoke with a source inside the company, the policy was supposed to protect users with a high risk of bullying. In practice, however, it apparently amounted to discrimination — and the problem was compounded by moderators who needed to make snap decisions about users’ physica

Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call Today former Secretary of State John Kerry and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared war on climate change. The two led an all-star cast of lawmakers and celebrities to launch an initiative called World War Zero, which aims to get individuals, businesses, and governments to drastically slash greenhouse gas emissions.
The initiative, for now, boasts a lot of glitzy names without many details on how it will achieve its goal. Its bipartisan fo

Vjeran Pavic / The Verge It’s Cyber Monday, which means everyone is sorting through deals for all kinds of electronics. The number of sales may be overwhelming, which is why we’ve picked the best deal on a tablet: the seventh-generation iPad.
Both versions of the latest iPad are up to $100 off today. This is an unusually large discount for such a new product, and the price will almost certainly go back up after Cyber Monday, so this is a really good chance to save on an iPad.The 32G

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Target’s Cyber Monday deals are here, so if you missed your chance to snag any deals last week, you’ve got a second shot today. As with Black Friday, a lot of these deals can be found elsewhere at places like Amazon and Best Buy, but if there’s a particular deal you’re chasing that’s already sold out elsewhere, Target can be worth checking out. These deals should be available through the end of the day.
The Nintendo Switch is avail

T-Mobile has flipped the switch on its 5G network, setting it live over areas of the US that it says covers 200 million people. While the network is supposedly live today, no one is going to be using it until later this week: the first two phones to support it go on sale this Friday.
The “nationwide” 5G deployment relies on a slower form of 5G, using T-Mobile’s 600MHz spectrum. This “low-band” 5G essentially takes airwaves like the ones used for LTE and bundles them

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Best Buy is offering a long list of deals for Cyber Monday 2019 both online and in stores. You can save on products in every category, from laptops to smart home devices. And remember that Best Buy offers in-store pickup, which should at least help you avoid waiting in the main cashier line if you want to do some of your Cyber Monday shopping in person. Curbside pickup is also available for some products.These deals are competitive with what you’ll find fr

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge If you were told to draw a video game controller, what would it look like? Odds are, you’d scribble a rectangle with two downward wings for your palms to grip, a D-pad, four face buttons, shoulder triggers, and a pair of thumbsticks. In other words, you’d draw a PlayStation controller. Sony didn’t invent the controller, but it did essentially invent modern controller design, shaping the look and ergonomics of how we’ve interacted with ga

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’re like us, Cyber Monday is a time of the year that you wish never came to an end. It’s when you can get the absolute best deals on tech like big 4K TVs, gaming consoles, phones, laptops, and more.You won’t have much time to act on these deals
Alas, it only lasts for a short while, so you want to make the best of it. That’s where we come in. We’ve been tracking all of the deals that you need to know about from leading

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images This holiday season, the popularity of online shopping collides with upheaval in cardboard recycling. China’s 2017 decision to turn away America’s trash has left the recycling industry reeling as it figures out what to do with all the packaging online shoppers leave behind.
Some municipal recycling programs have closed. Even the ones that haven’t still have headaches: specifically, filthy recyclables. All of that leads to more cardboard in

Apple’s new time-saving Express Transit feature is now live in London’s transport network. The feature allows Apple Pay users to simply hold their devices at transit terminals without having to authenticate via Touch ID or Face ID. It saves people fiddling around in front of you during busy rush hour times, and it makes it much quicker to use trains, buses, and the tube network in London.
Apple says the feature is now enabled in all zones of London’s transport network, and it w

Cyber Monday is Black Friday’s encore set, back with even more deals. Some are new, others are crowd favorites from a few days ago, all of them are worth checking out because they’ll soon be gone. And once they are, you’ll probably have to wait a while for prices to get this low again.
Below, you’ll find all of the best Cyber Monday deals on a range of products, including laptops, headphones, gaming tech, PC components, phones, smart speakers, and more. We’ll be kee

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook is releasing a new tool today that will allow its users to transfer photos directly to Google Photos. The tool is being released initially in Ireland, and will be available worldwide in the first half of 2020. “For almost a decade, we’ve enabled people to download their information from Facebook,” explains Steve Satterfield, director of privacy and public policy at Facebook. “The photo transfer tool we’re starting to

Disney entered the streaming market this year with the launch of its own streaming service, Disney+, home to Disney series and movies old and new. It’s proven to be a wildly popular competitor to Netflix and Hulu, with over 10 million people signing up on the day it launched.
If you haven’t subscribed to it yet (and the free year of Disney+ for Verizon customers doesn’t apply to you), this Black Friday deal will save you some money. For a limited time, you can get $10 off of a