Technology news

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Jaguar is issuing a software update to its first electric car, the I-Pace, which will gift the SUV 12 extra miles of range. The British automaker says it was able to squeeze the extra range out of the electric SUV’s 90kWh battery pack in part because of lessons learned in the I-Pace racing series that kicked off its second season last month. Before the update, the I-Pace had an EPA-estimated range of 234 miles on a full battery. But after the update,

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Email chain hell on Gmail is getting an upgrade. The mailing system will soon allow its users to send emails as attachments without having to forward or download them first. Or as Google puts it, “You can now attach emails to other emails in Gmail.” Emailception, yo dawg we heard you like emails, et cetera.
Fervent emailers can attach as many emails, which will appear as an .eml file, as they like. Users who love to have multiple tabs open may

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Away has replaced CEO Steph Korey with former Lululemon executive Stuart Haselden, following an investigation from The Verge into the company’s toxic culture. Korey will continue on as executive chairman of the company.
The news comes after days of public backlash after leaked documents showed Korey routinely intimidated employees on public Slack channels. After The Verge’s initial story broke, new leaks showed Away was directing employees

Purrfect Apawcalypse | Itch.io Chooseco, which publishes the famous Choose Your Own Adventure series, is apparently trying to stop indie game developers from using the phrase “choose your own adventure.” It’s sending trademark infringement notices to the Itch.io gaming storefront, and so far, they’ve resulted in four game pages being suspended.
Itch.io founder Leaf Corcoran told developers about the takedowns this afternoon. “Warning to any devs using the phrase &l

Image: Epic Games Google has publicly rebuffed game developer Epic over its reported attempt to distribute its popular battle royale hit Fortnite through the Play Store without paying the company’s standard 30 percent fee.In a statement to The Verge, Google says the Android platform is dependent on the existing Play Store terms because that is how the company is able to reinvest in its platform to help it grow and to provide ample security measures.“Android enables multiple app stor

Nearly four decades ago, William Gibson published a short story called Burning Chrome in Omni magazine, and with it, he birthed cyberpunk. (It also coined the term “cyberspace” in its third sentence.) The story prefigured Neuromancer, Gibson’s first novel and most enduring achievement. Burning Chrome taught its readers how to think about the “colorless nonspace” between our screens. In this week’s issue of The New Yorker, Joshua Rothman — the ideas edito

Redbox is exiting the game rental business, the company confirmed to The Verge on Monday.The company’s trademark rental kiosks have been a handy way to rent physical copies of movies (if you still have a disc drive to use to play them, that is), and they have been one of the few remaining places to rent physical copies of video games. But if you relied on Redbox kiosks as your place to rent or even buy new PlayStation, Xbox, or Switch titles, you won’t be able to anymore. In a statem

The company behind the Coolest Cooler, widely known as one of the biggest Kickstarter failures, is officially going out of business. An update sent to backers from the company’s CEO Ryan Grepper this weekend says the company is ending operations, and tariffs are to blame. Grepper says a tariff increase on Chinese imports to 25 percent affected the “entire Coolest product line.”“It was devastating to our business, and I know it was felt by many of you in one way or another

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is under investigation by the US National Labor Relations Board, CNBC reported on Monday.The investigation follows the recent firings of four former Google employees named Laurence Berland, Paul Duke, Rebecca Rivers, and Sophie Waldman. All four former employees were involved in internal activism during their time at Google, and they encouraged their colleagues to join in protest over issues like the company’s plan to build a censored version

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Oculus is rolling out native hand tracking to the Quest, its standalone virtual reality headset, starting this week. Previously expected to arrive sometime in 2020, hand tracking will be available as an experimental feature in software version “v12” in the coming days. Once this update is installed, you can turn on hand tracking in the “Experimental Features” menu. Then, you can switch between Touch controllers and hand trackin

Amazon-owned smart home security company Ring makes a variety of smart lighting products. According to FCC documentation, the company is about to enter the replaceable bulb market dominated by companies like Philips Hue with a floodlight-style bulb, as spotted by tech writer Dave Zatz on Twitter.There are not a lot of details on the new Ring light bulb, but the FCC filing does indicate that it’s got Bluetooth (which would make sense, given the “smart” designation). It’s n

Photo by Monika Skolimowska / Picture Alliance via Getty Images A bioethics study published December 8th calls on crowdfunding platform GoFundMe to ditch campaigns for unproven and unsafe medical procedures.
People turn to GoFundMe for help paying for all sorts of medical interventions. These campaigns have brought in over $650 million since 2010. But a subset of the money raised is spent on unproven and even illegal operations. Unregulated “stem cell therapies,” for example, attrac

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google has announced that Incognito mode for Google Maps on iOS is rolling out today. Google first announced the feature at its I/O developer conference in May, and it’s already available for Google Maps on Android.Incognito mode works a lot like it does in the Chrome browser. When it’s on, you can search for a location or navigate somewhere, and Google won’t save that information to your Google account. You can turn Incognito mode o

Microsoft is planning to kill off its Wunderlist app on May 6th, 2020. The software giant originally acquired Wunderlist more than four years ago, and has spent the past two years building out its To Do app as a replacement. “We’ve been working tirelessly to ensure our new app, Microsoft To Do, feels like a new home for your lists,” explains Microsoft’s Wunderlist team in a blog post. “We’ve stopped releasing new features and big updates to Wunderlist, so as t

Image: Netflix Netflix is having a good year at the Golden Globes. Along with four Best Picture nominations, the streaming service also snagged 30 nominations in TV and film. In less than a decade, Netflix is dominating an industry that once scoffed at it.
No one comes close to Netflix. The streaming service earned 34 nominations, 17 in different film categories and 17 for different television shows. To be blunt, the Golden Globes don’t really matter. They act as a good predecessor of wha

A new self-driving taxi service is coming to San Jose, CA, from two of Germany’s biggest companies: Mercedes-Benz and Tier 1 auto supplier Bosch. Autonomous S-Class vehicles will ferry passengers between West San Jose and the city’s downtown area, the companies announced Monday.To be sure, this is not a dynamic car service like some other autonomous taxi pilots. The vehicles will operate on a fixed route along the San Carlos Street and Stevens Creek Boulevard thoroughfares, the compa

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Just a few weeks after Elon Musk unveiled his polarizing sci-fi Cybertruck, the Tesla CEO was seen driving the prototype vehicle in Malibu, California this weekend, all while knocking over a sign and possibly making an illegal turn in the process.It’s not the first time the Cybertruck has been spotted on public roads since its unveiling on November 21st. But it is the first time Musk was seen in the driver’s seat, which was enough to spark TMZ

Image: Google Google has been quietly working to improve its augmented reality platform, ARCore, since its official launch early last year. Now,the company says its ready to unveil some of the next-generation upgrades to depth detection and physics it’s achieved that promise to make AR experiences seem much more realistic in the future.The upgrades, part of an overhaul to ARCore’s Depth API, will soon allow developers to perform what’s known as occlusion, which is when an arti

Image: Google Google has been quietly working to improve its augmented reality platform, ARCore, since its official launch early last year. Now,the company says its ready to unveil some of the next-generation upgrades to depth detection and physics it’s achieved that promise to make AR experiences seem much more realistic in the future.The upgrades, part of ArCore’s all-new Depth API, will soon allow developers to perform what’s known as occlusion, which is when an artificial

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge We’re reluctant to legitimize “Green Monday” as a shopping holiday, but it’s nevertheless making a strong case for itself today with some stellar deals. Some are repeat hits from Black Friday and Cyber Monday, while others are totally new. What they have in common is that they’re for today only. Below, you’ll find sales on noise-canceling headphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and more. And you’ll find new deals added to

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In court documents released today, Amazon has formally outlined why it’s challenging the government’s decision to award a $10 billion Pentagon contract to rival Microsoft. The filings make clear that Amazon’s case will focus largely on one person: President Donald Trump.
103-page redacted complaint
Over the past year, the Pentagon has been accepting bids for its massive Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract. The winning

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verg Google plans to start regularly releasing “feature drops” for its Pixel phones, bringing a number of new features to its phones all at once. The first starts rolling out today with a number of updates, including robocall screening and new portrait mode features. There’s also a memory management update that might be a big deal for Pixel 3 owners who have long complained about how the phone handles multitasking.
Perhaps the standout update is an

Surveillance is booming globally. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales/The Verge One billion surveillance cameras will be deployed globally by 2021, according to data compiled by IHS Markit and first reported by The Wall Street Journal. China’s installed base is expected to rise to over 560 million cameras by 2021, representing the largest share of surveillance devices installed globally, with the US rising to around 85 million cameras. When taking populations into account, however, China wi

Hollowhead, a pumpkin-headed Fortnite skin. | Epic Games Fortnite creator Epic Games is trying to avoid yet another lawsuit over dance emotes. The company preemptively filed a complaint against Matt Geiler, also known as the “Dancing Pumpkin Man” from a 2006 viral video. Geiler reportedly told Epic to stop offering a Halloween-themed emote called “Pump It Up,” which copies his dance and briefly gives avatars a jack-o’-lantern for a head. Now, Epic is asking courts

Ghostbusters is returning to the big screen once more — this time with a true sequel to the original films. The first trailer for Ghostbusters: Afterlife sets the stage for a small town haunting as a single mom and her two kids try to start a new life.
While the family tries to settle down in their creepy old farmhouse, the town is plagued by strange earthquakes and unexplainable phenomena. Stranger Things-esque vibes aside, the trailer also teases a clear connection to the original Ghostb

The remote that comes bundled with the Apple TV is infamous for its difficult-to-use design and controversial touchpad for navigation. It’s so bad, in fact, that Swiss TV and internet provider Salt — which provides Apple TVs as the set-top boxes for its internet TV service — has developed a more traditional remote to replace Apple’s model, via MacRumors.
The optional remote (which costs 19.95 francs, or roughly $20.16) was reportedly developed in collaboration with Apple

Minecraft on the PlayStation 4 is finally getting updated to the unified Bedrock Edition on December 10th. The new update will enable cross-platform play between the Xbox One, Windows 10 PCs, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android, Gear VR, and now PS4. Minecraft players on the PS4 will also get access to all of their purchases and progress, and the update will be available free of charge.
Microsoft is starting to roll out the Bedrock Edition to PS4 just months after Sony brought its PS4 cross-play suppo

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Many popular headphone models, including Apple’s AirPods, Sony’s WH-1000XM3, and Beats Studio 3, were cheaper than usual during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The latest model of Bose’s flagship wireless noise-canceling headphones, the Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, were missing from the festivities, but you can now get them for $50 off through Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and Target.
The $50 off brings the total cost of the headphon

BioShock is coming back. Today, publisher 2K announced the formation of a new studio called Cloud Chamber, which is already working on “the next iteration” of BioShock. It’ll be the first new entry in the series since BioShock Infinite in 2013 — though it sounds like it’ll be a while before we see the new game. 2K says the title “will be in development for the next several years,” making it a prime candidate for next-generation consoles like the PlayStat

Just one day after Billy Crudup earned a Critics’ Choice nomination for his role in The Morning Show, Apple TV Plus’ flagship show is being honored with more nominations.The Morning Show received a nomination for Best Drama from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association on Monday morning. Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon both earned top acting nominations for Best Actress for their work in the show. Crudup did not receive a nomination.Although Apple has received award show nomina

Animation Assist. | Image: Savage Interactive Procreate 5, Savage Interactive’s newest update for the iOS painting and illustration app, is now available. The free update brings long-awaited features such as Photoshop (ABR) brush import, custom brush creation, CMYK mode, and more robust animation features.The app runs on a new Valkyrie graphics engine that works with Apple’s Metal API for faster performance on the iPad. With Valkyrie, Savage Interactive says the imported ABR brushes