Technology news

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is being sued after allegedly violating child privacy laws and collecting the data of young users through the video app, which was formerly called Musical.ly.ByteDance acquired Musical.ly in 2017, which it later rebranded as the enormously popular social video app TikTok. According to the December 3rd complaint, ByteDance has collected data from Musical.ly users under the age of 13 without their parents’ exp

The full clip of “Into the Unknown,” the big musical number from Frozen 2 performed by Idina Menzel and Aurora, is now available to watch on YouTube in full. That should be great news for kids who can’t get enough of the sequel’s version of “Let It Go,” and terrifying news for parents, who will surely have to endure the song on loop for the rest of their lives.
It’s only been about two weeks since Frozen 2 was released in theaters, but Disney is hoping v

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge; Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin / Getty Images Rian Johnson’s new film Knives Out is a devoted love letter to the whodunit genre — from its Poirot-esque detective Benoit Blanc, played by Daniel Craig with an over-the-top Southern drawl, to its apparent murder victim Harlan Thrombey, an aging mystery author who “practically lives in a Clue board.” But it’s also a sharply contemporary project, not an Agatha Christie period

Image: Qualcomm Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 865 might be the big news out of the company’s annual Snapdragon Tech Summit, but the company also announced details about its other new chip, the midrange Snapdragon 765. The 765 might actually be the more interesting of the two, thanks to its integrated 5G modem and its likely future of powering cheaper, midrange devices.
Right now, there’s not a lot of 5G devices out there, and the ones that are around tend to be very expensive

Harman BMW has backtracked on its controversial decision to charge an annual fee for the use of Apple’s CarPlay in its vehicles, according to 9to5Mac. Since 2016, the German automaker has required owners to pay extra to use CarPlay — first as a one-time $300 option and then later as an $80-a-year fee. Now it appears that BMW has seen the error of its ways.It was a questionable decision from the start, considering no other automaker makes its customers pay for the use of CarPlay. A B

Qualcomm officially announced its latest flagship processor, the Snapdragon 865, yesterday at its Snapdragon Tech Summit. But at the day two keynote, the company dove deep into all the details about the new chip and what it’ll offer for the next wave of top tier Android devices next year.Qualcomm says that the new Snapdragon 865 will offer a wide variety of improvements over its existing chips, specifically when it comes to performance, AI processing, photography, and gaming.Connectivity a

In August of last year, NASA sent a spacecraft hurtling toward the inner Solar System, with the aim of getting some answers about the mysterious star at the center of our cosmic neighborhood. Now more than a year later, that tiny robot has started to decode some of the mysteries surrounding our Sun’s behavior, after venturing closer to our parent star than any human-made object has before.
That spacecraft is NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, a car-sized vehicle designed to withstand tempera

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Black Friday was a bright spot for Nintendo this year. Today, the company announced that the Thanksgiving holiday week was its biggest sales week ever for the Nintendo Switch in the US. According to Nintendo, between November 24th and 30th, the company sold 830,000 units combined of both the original Switch and the recently launched Switch Lite. Sales were bolstered not only by the new hardware and games like Pokémon Sword and Shield (which have sold 3

A year ago, The Expanse was canceled. News of its doom arrived while its third season was airing on SyFy, the reported rationale being that the rights agreement between its production company and its host network was not terribly profitable for the latter. In about two weeks, the show was saved by Amazon, an announcement made by Jeff Bezos himself. If pure entertainment is your concern, this was good news: The Expanse is one of the most dense and rewarding science fiction shows in recent memory,

Countdown TED announced a new climate change initiative called Countdown with the help of YouTube and a coalition of global leaders and nonprofit environmental organizations today at an event in New York City. The effort plans to gather new ideas to combat the climate crisis, and is focused on five broad topics: renewable energy, infrastructure, transportation, food, and restoring ecosystems.Anyone, anywhere can propose an idea. YouTube creators will help spread the word, and the best proposals

Countdown TED and YouTube announced a new climate change initiative called Countdown alongside a coalition of global leaders and nonprofit environmental organizations today at an event in New York City. The effort plans to gather new ideas to combat the climate crisis, and is focused on five broad topics: renewable energy, infrastructure, transportation, food, and restoring ecosystems.Anyone, anywhere can propose an idea. YouTube creators will help spread the word, and the best proposals could

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Microsoft is currently planning to launch two next-generation Xbox consoles for holiday 2020. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that Microsoft is planning a second, cheaper and less powerful Xbox console, codenamed “Lockhart.” While Microsoft has revealed its Xbox Project Scarlett high-end plans, the company did not mention its two-console strategy at E3 earlier this year. Windows Central originally reported Lockhart&rsqu

Halo: Reach launched on Steam yesterday, and it immediately raced into the top of Valve’s charts of most-played games. After originally debuting on the Xbox 360 nearly 10 years ago, Microsoft has brought back the classic on PC with an impressive port that includes unlocked frame rates, a field-of-view slider, and even ultra-wide monitor support.
At its launch day peak, 161,000 people were playing Halo: Reach, catapulting it into the fourth spot on Steam’s most-played titles. While it

Instagram Instagram will start requiring all new users to provide their birthdays when making an account. The new requirement starts today and is seemingly geared toward creating “age-appropriate experiences.” A user’s age might produce different recommended privacy settings or generate in-app information about staying safe online, the company says in a blog post. Birthdays will be hidden from other users, and existing users won’t have to add their birthdays for now. Use

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Cyber Monday is over, but good deals keep popping up online. You can now get the Google Home Max and Home Mini smart speakers together for $188 at Walmart. If you buy them separately, the Home Max is currently $199 (originally $399, but seen for as low as $249 during Black Friday) and the Mini is $19 (originally $49, usually around $30). That means the bundle saves you $30 off the sale prices and $260 off the original prices, which is more than half off (via 9to

Image: Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services debuted a keyboard called DeepComposer this week, claiming it’s “the world’s first musical keyboard powered by generative AI.” It has 32 keys, costs $99, and connects to a software interface that uses the cloud to generate music based on what you play.
It’s been unclear who this is for, and many have latched on to the fact that the music it creates just sounds bad. It looks like a consumer product, and Amazon used an o

In an effort to appeal to more users, Peloton today reduced the price of its digital subscription and released two new apps, one for the Apple Watch and another for the Fire TV. The Apple Watch app allows users to track their heart rate during workouts and monitor their running pace and distance. It also uses Peloton’s UI of tracking heart rate “zones,” which instructors often use to guide users on how heavily they should be exerting themselves to maximize caloric or fat burn.

In an effort to appeal to more users, Peloton today reduced the price of its digital-only subscription and released two new apps, one for the Apple Watch and another for the Fire TV. The Apple Watch app allows users to track their heart rate during workouts and monitor their running pace and distance. It also uses Peloton’s UI of tracking heart rate “zones,” which instructors often use to guide users on how heavily they should be exerting themselves to maximize caloric or fat b

If you needed proof that the surveillance society is truly ubiquitous, look no further than Ebo — a robot that live-streams HD video of your pet straight to your phone and can even track your furry friend’s daily step count.Launched on Kickstarter, Ebo doesn’t exactly represent a new concept in pet tech, but it does manage to combine features from a number of products we’ve seen before.Ebo is mobile, autonomous, and can live-stream video to your phone
It’s mobile, w

Image: Analogue For its 15th anniversary, London-based electronic music label Hyperdub has teamed up with Analogue, a video game hardware company, to release a limited edition album on a Sega Genesis cartridge. The album will be bundled with a custom version of Analogue’s Mega Sg, an aftermarket take on the original Sega Genesis that can play Sega Genesis, Mega Drive, and Master System cartridges. Last year, the company did a similar collaboration with Ghostly International and the Super

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge As noted by MacRumors, Apple has acknowledged an issue with some entry-level 2019 13-inch MacBook Pro machines in which the laptop “keeps shutting down.” This concerns the model with a Touch Bar and two Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C ports that Apple released in the summer. Other models shouldn’t be affected.According to Apple, some customers have found that this MacBook Pro “randomly turns off when it still has a charge.” MacRumo

Focus mode, one of Google’s many features aimed at keeping you from distracting yourself on your phone, is out of beta in Android 10. It actually debuted as a beta within the existing Digital Wellbeing feature when Android 10 launched earlier this year, so no additional downloads are necessary to try it out. Additionally, Focus mode is now available for people with phones running Android 9 Pie.
If you’ve been using the feature in beta, you might not notice that anything has changed w

Legislators in Washington, DC are taking a closer look at racial bias in health care algorithms after an October analysis found racial bias in a commonly used health tool. Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) released letters on Tuesday calling for federal agencies and major health companies to describe how they’re monitoring the medical algorithms they use every day for signs of racial bias.“Unfortunately, both the people who design these complex systems, and the massive se

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge As the PlayStation 3 came to market in 2006, prices of HDTVs were falling. More consumers were looking to upgrade the big screen in their living rooms. And so the entertainment industry was eager to move on from DVD and rerelease films in hopes that people would “double dip” and repurchase their favorites in high-definition quality (and at a higher price). But instead of a straightforward transition to a next-generation disc format, the home media b

Oops, you did it again. You waited until the last minute to get a gift. You love your parents, boyfriend/girlfriend, friends, and other family members, but sometimes they're hard to shop for and time just gets away from you.
We get it and we're not here to judge. Rather, we are here to help. Finding a last-minute gift that's actually meaningful is hard, but it's not impossible. There are still ways to get personalised or sentimental gifts even in a time crunch.
SEE ALSO: Best gifts for teenage g

Image: Plex Plex has officially launched its ad-supported streaming service, which offers free access to movies, TV shows, and documentaries from both major studios and smaller indie producers. “Starting today, Plex will deliver more content to more countries than any other free streaming service to date,” the company wrote in a blog post — a clear jab at similar offerings like The Roku Channel.The streaming service works across all devices that support Plex and appears in the

This afternoon, SpaceX is set to launch its Dragon cargo capsule, filled with nearly 5,700 pounds of cargo and supplies for the crew of the International Space Station. It’s SpaceX’s last resupply mission to the station for 2019. Following the flight, SpaceX will attempt one of its signature rocket landings, targeting a drone ship floating in the Atlantic Ocean.
It’s atypical for SpaceX to do an ocean landing after a flight to the ISS. Normally, the company tries to land its Fa

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge As we mark 25 years of PlayStation this week, Sony’s grip on the home console market has rarely been stronger. The PS4 recently outsold the original PlayStation to become the second bestselling version yet behind the PS2, which will likely never be matched. It augurs well for the upcoming launch of the PS5. One part of the PlayStation story that is often overlooked, however, is Sony’s efforts with handhelds. You probably know the broad strokes: the

James Bond may have disappeared at the end of Sam Mendes’ Spectre in 2015, but Daniel Craig’s British secret agent is back to take on a new enemy (played by Mr. Robot’s Rami Malek) in No Time to Die.The first trailer for No Time to Die focuses on the changes that have happened both at MI6 and around the world since Bond’s decision to leave active service. It’s only when his pal Felix Leiter reaches out to ask Bond for a favor in locating a missing scientist that 007

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge I still remember the very first time I laid eyes on a Final Fantasy game and, by extension, the original PlayStation console. It was the year 2000, and I was spending a weekend afternoon as I usually did: sitting in the carpeted basement of my friend Alex’s house and watching him play a video game I had never seen before.This time around, it was a borrowed copy of a title with a name we’d only ever seen written on the cover of magazines. Alex had go

Image: Motorola Motorola has been experimenting the last few years with its One line of phones, which look to blur the line between midrange and high-end smartphones. The latest attempt is the Motorola One Hyper, which is essentially a budget version of a OnePlus 7 Pro.
Like the 7 Pro, Motorola is using a pop-up selfie camera to give the front of the device a completely screen-filled look with no notches (although there is still a bit of a bezel chin on the bottom). The net result is a 6.5-inch