Technology news

Qualcomm has announced a second-generation version of its ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor, the 3D Sonic Max, that promises to fix the issues with the original 3D Sonic Sensor by offering a sensor that’s 17 times bigger. The 3D Sonic Max is so big, in fact, that it can read two fingerprints at once for extra authentication, via Engadget.The company’s first-generation ultrasonic fingerprint reader, the 3D Sonic Sensor, promised improved reliability and security over existing o

Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge Motorola hasn’t produced an Android smartphone with flagship, top-tier specs over the last couple years. But during today’s introduction of Qualcomm’s latest processors, the company said that’s going to change in 2020. Motorola has already revealed the modernized Razr with a folding screen, but it features a midrange processor compared to 2019’s best and fastest phones. Still, the Razr is definitely a step up in design and overall co

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who have mostly stayed out of the spotlight since restructuring their company four years ago, are relinquishing control of parent company Alphabet to current Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the duo announced today in a joint letter published to Google’s public blog. The two men will remain employees of Alphabet and retain their seats on the board, but they will no longer oversee the company’s sprawling, almos

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who have mostly stayed out of the spotlight since restructuring their company four years ago, are relinquishing control of parent company Alphabet to current Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the duo announced today in a joint press release. The two men will remain employees of Alphabet and retain their seats on the board, but they will no longer oversee the company’s sprawling, almost trillion-dollar empire th

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Amazon-owned home surveillance company Ring gave law enforcement a heat map that let police see all devices installed in an area, allowing them to view users down to the street level, according to a new report from CNET.Feature was removed in July
While the feature was removed in July, law enforcement could reportedly use the function to search for the concentration of cameras in a neighborhood, and even see circles drawn around individual user locations. The do

Hot off the success of Baby Yoda, Disney has ordered a new Star Wars show for its Disney+ streaming service, but this one seemingly shares more in common with American Ninja Warrior than The Mandalorian.Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge is described by Disney as a test of “strength, knowledge, and bravery” as contestants face off in a series of different obstacles “in an attempt to achieve the rank of Jedi Knight.” Hosted by Ahmed Best, best known for playing Jar Jar Binks

Qualcomm has officially announced its next-generation flagship processor for phones — the Snapdragon 865 — but it’ll still need a separate (and optional) modem for enabling 5G instead of an integrated 5G modem built right into the chipset.Announced alongside the 865 is Qualcomm’s other new processor, the Snapdragon 765, which will feature integrated 5G. However, it’ll be part of a less powerful processor than the 865, which will likely power the next wave of Android

Image: Wyze Smart home accessory maker Wyze has debuted a smart lock that works with customers’ existing cylinder deadbolts. The Wyze Lock will cost $89, and it will be available for general sale in February. Users in the Early Access program can order it now through the Wyze mobile app.The lock works with four AA batteries, which need to be replaced three times a year. It requires the Wyze Lock Gateway, the Wi-Fi bridge, to be plugged into an outlet near the door (within 50 feet) for use

Image: Sean Hollister / The Verge The Steam Autumn Sale is now over, but it included one deal that stood out from the pack — a $5 farewell to Valve’s weirdly wonderful Steam Controller gamepad.For several days, you could buy the Steam Controller for just $5 plus shipping ($13 total for me), and Valve confirmed to The Verge that it was the last batch of these gamepads that will ever be made.They’re now completely out of stock. The last piece of Valve’s failed Steam Machin

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Lyrics website Genius is suing Google, saying the company continues to knowingly copy its song lyrics and use them in search results. Genius also alleges that Google’s practices are anticompetitive, and it’s asking for more than $400 million in damages from Google and a partner.Google displays song lyrics that are provided by partners in response to certain search queries. Genius alleged earlier this year that, in some instances, those lyrics

Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call Should private citizens be able to sue companies like Facebook or Twitter for misusing their data? That’s the question Republicans and Democrats have been ensnared in for months, as they work to craft a new data privacy law. But talks have stalled in recent weeks, and rather than putting out a bipartisan bill, both parties have now opted to introduce their ownmeasures to stake out their positions.
Last week, Democrats, led by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), pu

Sean Gallup/Getty Images After making changes to its recommendation algorithm in an effort to reduce the spread of “borderline” content — videos that toe the line between what’s acceptable and what violates YouTube’s terms of service — YouTube has seen a 70 percent decrease in watch time on those types of videos by non-subscribers.More than 30 changes have been made to the way videos are recommended since January 2019, according to a new blog post from YouTub

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google is finally acknowledging that photos nowadays are as much about communication as they are form of memory collection. For years, the only way to share photos through the company’s otherwise fantastic Google Photos service has been to create a cumbersome shared album. But starting today, Google is launching a revamped share option that’s effectively a private messaging feature built into the Google Photos iOS and Android mobile and website.Now,

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge It’s always nice when Black Friday and Cyber Monday come to an end. The surge of emails quiets down (at least a little bit), and you can survey the damage to your bank account. Hopefully, you got the things you needed or wanted.If, for whatever reason, you missed out on the sale festivities, there are still a few more deals (some of them are brand-new for today) that you can check out below. The barrage of deals has definitely slowed down, but you still ha

Image: The Verge/Alex Castro As the number of satellites and space junk in orbit continues to increase, so do the chances of these human-made objects colliding with one another, potentially creating more debris that could threaten other healthy spacecraft. Now, a new tool shows just how crowded Earth orbit is by tracking space objects through their close calls every couple of seconds.
Called the “Conjunction Streaming Service Demo,” the graph tool illustrates in real time the sheer

Photo: iFixit The original PlayStation is turning 25 years old, and to celebrate, iFixit is turning its screwdrivers and plastic pry bars to the retro console in one of its signature teardowns. There aren’t too many surprises hiding inside the 25-year-old device, but the teardown is still neat for a couple of reasons.
First off, it’s wild to see just how much more advanced our current consoles are compared to these earlier models. As iFixit points out, the standard, non-Pro PlayStat

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge, Photography by Richard Parry On December 3rd, 1994, Sony entered the video game industry — and it hasn’t been the same since.
Twenty-five years ago, the original PlayStation ushered in the era of 3D gaming on a home console. Over that period, the company has consistently changed things up with new advancements, whether that’s the DVD storage of the PS2 or the influential twin-stick design of the DualShock controller. It’s hard to

Whether people are shopping at Forever 21 or perusing a street fair in their cool neighborhood, chances are, there’s one symbol attached to a hoodie lying around both places: the PlayStation logo.Released in Japan in 1994, Sony’s PlayStation revolutionized gaming. But the brand also had an outsized impact on culture at large. Its logo, designed by Japanese graphic artist Manabu Sakamoto (who also designed Sony VAIO’s logo), helped usher in an iconic piece of signage that street

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
How to fight lies, tricks,and chaosonline
By Adi Robertson
@thedextriarchy
Dec 3, 2019, 9:04am EST
Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge
A few months ago, I got angry about something on Twitter. Somebody had tweeted a photo of a paper sign in an apartment building, informing tenants that using the elevator would soon cost $35 a month. It was surprising, but on a gut level, exactly the kind of behavior I’d expect from a greedy landlord — the

Russia has passed new legislation that will require manufacturers of smartphones, computers, and smart TVs to pre-install Russian-made software on their devices. The bill was approved earlier this year by the lower house of the Russian parliament, and officially signed into law on Monday by President Vladimir Putin, reports Reuters.Legislators claim that the law, which will come into effect on July 1 2020, will help Russian tech companies be more competitive with their western counterparts, and

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
How to fight lies, tricks,and chaosonlineBy Adi Robertson
@thedextriarchy
Dec 3, 2019, 9:04am EST
Illustrations by Alex Castro / The Verge
A few months ago, I got angry about something on Twitter. Somebody had tweeted a photo of a paper sign in an apartment building, informing tenants that using the elevator would soon cost $35 a month. It was surprising, but on a gut level, exactly the kind of behavior I’d expect from a greedy landlord — the

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Dozens of PlayStation 3s sit in a refrigerated shipping container on the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s campus, sucking up energy and investigating astrophysics. It’s a popular stop for tours trying to sell the school to prospective first-year students and their parents, and it’s one of the few living legacies of a weird science chapter in PlayStation’s history.Those squat boxes, hulking on entertainment systems or dust-covered

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A group of four former Google employees who were recently fired plan to file labor charges against the company, accusing the search giant of retaliating against legally protected organizing activity.The four former employees — Laurence Berland, Paul Duke, Rebecca Rivers, and Sophie Waldman — were all involved in internal activism at the company, and worked to rally other workers to protest issues within the company, like Google’s plan to

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The original PlayStation was Sony’s first home console, but it came out swinging with countless classic games released during its lifespan. From well-known titles like Final Fantasy VII, Resident Evil, Crash Bandicoot, and Metal Gear Solid to slightly more obscure cult hits like Parasite Eve and Legend of Dragoon, the PS1 was where you went for a vast, eclectic library of games that you couldn’t find anywhere else.To celebrate the device’s 25t

The national flag flying on the roof of the Parliament House in Singapore | Photo credit should read ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP via Getty Images On Sunday evening, 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl sat down with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki to voice a now-familiar critique: YouTube allows too many dangerous and disturbing videos to remain on the site. She brings up a distorted video of Rep. Nancy Pelosi that falsely describes her as drunk; altered copies of the Christchurch shooting video, quack scien

The Avengers’ main storyline may have come to an end in Avengers: Endgame this past April, but the first trailer for Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow is a reminder that Marvel Studios isn’t done with its original crew.Black Widow is the highly anticipated stand-alone movie focusing on Natasha Romanoff’s blood-stained past. The movie takes place in the two year gap between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. That also explains how Marvel can do a Black W

When the extent of the Trump administration’s sanctions targeting Huawei became clear, we wondered whether the Chinese telecoms giant would be able to make a smartphone without American components. The answer, according to a new report by The Wall Street Journal, is apparently yes.
The analysis by UBS and Fomalhaut Techno Solutions says that Huawei’s Mate 30 contains no US parts at all. Huawei appears to have found non-American suppliers for several critical components. For example,

Despite launching relatively late in the year, Mario Kart Tour was the biggest game on the iPhone in 2019. Today, Apple revealed its top charts for the year, and the free-to-play version of Mario Kart, which debuted in September, topped the free game charts. Nintendo’s offering beat out strong competition from Call of Duty: Mobile and Fortnite. Apple didn’t reveal any specific download numbers (though we already know that Call of Duty was downloaded an estimated 100 million times dur

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook’s public image is in such a disastrous state that the company’s public relations team built an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot to help its employees deflect criticism from family members over the holidays, reports The New York Times. The tool, called “Liam Bot” for reasons the company has not disclosed, helps walk employees through tough conversations about Facebook’s various controversies.The tool was rolled

Robin L Marshall/Getty Images A new YouTube policy taking effect today, December 2nd, will allow creators with a focus on gaming to upload videos that contain simulated violence without worrying about being automatically hit by age-restriction gates.The company’s new policy for gaming is already how YouTube treats other scripted entertainment formats, like television and movies. It will allow future gaming videos that include scripted or simulated violence to possibly be approved directly