Technology news

Torrent site The Pirate Bay has long been infamous for allowing people to download pirated movies and TV shows. But now, it looks like it’s giving users a new option: streaming. For certain titles, a green play button appears next to the download buttons, which gives the option to “Play now using Baystream”. BayStream, according to TorrentFreak, allows you to stream videos in your browser, although right now, it’s not clear who runs BayStream, and what their connection is

Image: Apple Apple’s newest top-of-the-line display, the Pro Display XDR, is out today. And it doesn’t come cheap, starting at $4,999, with a matte “nano texture” upgrade for a mere $1,000. If you buy that nano texture upgrade, though, and you ever allow a speck of dust to grace it, don’t you dare think about cleaning it with some water and a microfiber cloth. Instead, an Apple support document says you should only clean that nano-texture glass with a special &ldqu

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Chinese EV startup NIO has laid off another 141 employees at its North American headquarters in San Jose, according to a new filing with the Employment Development Department of California. It’s the third round of cuts NIO has made to its US workforce this year, which has been primarily focused on R&D and engineering. The startup laid off 70 employees and closed an office in San Francisco in May, and then eliminated another 62 jobs in September. NIO

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The US Department of Justice will reportedly review Google’s November acquisition of wearables company Fitbit, potentially probing concerns about the detailed user data that Fitbit would give Google.
The New York Post reports that the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission — either of which could have investigated the merger — both had concerns about the merger. But the Justice Department already opened a larger antitrust in

Apple’s new $4,999 Pro Display XDR has a lot of features and high-end specs, but one thing it doesn’t have is an integrated webcam for video calls. Fortunately, Logitech is here to fill in the gap on the spec sheet with its new 4K Pro Magnetic Webcam, a $199.99 accessory specifically designed to work with Apple’s new display.At $199.99, it’s by no means the cheapest webcam solution out there, but Apple’s Pro Display XDR is no stranger to pricey accessories — l

Photo by Roland Weihrauch/picture alliance via Getty Images The crime scene DNA sequencing company Verogen announced yesterday that they’ve acquired the genomics database and website GEDmatch. The acquisition makes the relationship between the company and law enforcement explicit, but raises uncomfortable questions for users and experts about data privacy and the future direction of the platform.
GEDmatch was primarily used by genealogists until 2018, when police, the FBI, and a forensic

Image: Yahoo In October, Yahoo announced that it would be deleting all content posted on Yahoo Groups on December 14th. But today, the company said that it’s extending that deadline another couple of weeks to give users more time to download their data.
If you want to get your Yahoo Groups data before it is deleted, Yahoo says that you now have until 11:59PM PST on January 31st, 2020, to request it. (If you want to download your data, here’s our guide on how to do it.)We will stop m

Photo: FaZe Clan/Twitter In this week’s interview on The Vergecast, editor-in-chief of The Verge Nilay Patel and Verge reporter Julia Alexander sit down with CEO / co-owner of Faze Clan, Lee Trink.
Founded by e-sports players, Faze is an all-in-one e-sports / merchandising / influencer marketing agency and cultural phenomenon. Lee speaks about how he runs a multifaceted company, from growing pains while working with talent to the dependence on platforms and selling apparel.Below is a ligh

Photo: Niko Tavernise / Netflix Netflix has finally revealed the first numbers for how many customers watched The Irishman, the streamer’s high-profile crime epic from director Martin Scorsese. According to the company, 26,404,081 accounts watched the film during its first seven days on Netflix, putting it roughly on par with last year’s Bird Box when it comes to overall views during the first week.*pours glass of wine**dips bread*My friends, I’ve got some news from the big gu

Just ahead of the holidays, Nintendo held a showcase event focused entirely on indie games coming to the Nintendo Switch. Most of the games on display are scheduled for next year, and that includes sequels to hits like Axiom Verge and Golf Story, but there are also a handful of titles that you can download today. Here are the highlights from the event.Axiom Verge is getting a sequel
The brilliant Metroid-like adventure Axiom Verge is getting a sequel. We don’t know much else besides the na

Adobe announced its December updates to its photography apps today, and among the most significant is the ability to direct import photos on Lightroom for iOS and iPadOS. iOS and iPadOS 13.2 now allows raw files to be directly imported into Lightroom from cameras and memory cards. Previously, importing photos to Lightroom required transferring photos to the iPad camera roll first, then Lightroom, and then deleting the photos from the camera roll after to save space. Now, users will be able to by

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Streamers DrLupo, TimTheTatman, and Lirik are some of Twitch’s biggest stars — and they have just officially signed exclusive deals with the platform. Ben “DrLupo” Lupo, Timothy “TimTheTatman” Betar, and Saqib “Lirik” Zahid have a combined 10.36 million followers on Twitch, and each regularly draws thousands of concurrent viewers. They’re also some of the top personalities on Twitch, and drive both con

Microsoft has been notifying Windows 7 users about January’s end of support throughout 2019. Now, the company is making its notification prompts even bigger, as full-screen pop-ups to warn about the end of life of Windows 7. The full-screen notification will warn that “your Windows 7 PC is out of support,” and it will start appearing on January 15th, the day after support ends.
Microsoft will warn Windows 7 users who haven’t upgraded that PCs are “more vulnerable to

Waze Winter sucks for a lot of reasons — it’s midnight at 4:30PM, it’s cold and wet outside and then uncomfortably warm in your office, the heating bills are a pain — but one of the worst things about it has to be trying to drive in its weather.Roads go unplowed and become impassable; snowfall demolishes traction; black ice forms on road surfaces, which can be deadly. Thankfully, the navigation app Waze is now letting drivers report wintry weather and road conditions, wh

Image: Apple When Apple first showed off its new Mac Pro, the company also revealed that you could configure it with optional wheels, which might be handy if you need to regularly move your workstation. At the time, Apple didn’t share how much the wheels would cost, but it did say that the base Mac Pro started at an eye-watering $5,999, so they didn’t seem likely to come cheap.
The Mac Pro is now available to order, and it turns out that you’ll need to drop a cool $400 to be a

Image: Yubico Apple is releasing its new iOS 13.3 update for all compatible devices today. The biggest addition is the ability to use FIDO2-compliant USB-C, NFC, and Lightning physical security devices with Apple’s Safari browser. These physical security keys offer greater account protection, and Yubico released the first Lightning security key back in August. Previously, iOS apps had to individually add support for a Lightning connector on the YubiKey 5Ci into their apps, but Apple&rsquo

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook executives told Attorney General William Barr that the company would not provide law enforcement with investigative access to its encrypted messaging products ahead of a senate hearing on encryption on Tuesday.
In a letter, WhatsApp and Messenger heads Will Cathcart and Stan Chudnovsky, respectively, said that any “backdoor” access into Facebook’s products created for law enforcement could be used by bad actors for nefarious pur

Apple’s new Mac Pro is available to order today: it starts at $5,999, but if you want the most powerful Mac money can buy, it’ll cost you $52,599, making it the single most expensive Mac ever made. That eye-watering price tag comes with some seriously impressive specs to match, though. Let’s break it all down:Base price: $5,999, the entry-level price of a Mac Pro before you start configuring a unit with custom specs. (For reference, the $5,999 Mac Pro comes with 32GB of RAM, an

Apple’s new Mac Pro is available to order today: it starts at $5,999, but if you want the most powerful Mac money can buy, it’ll cost you $50,847.98, making it the single most expensive Mac ever made. That eye-watering price tag comes with some seriously impressive specs to match, though. Let’s break it all down:Base price: $5,999, the entry-level price of a Mac Pro before you start configuring a unit with custom specs. (For reference, the $5,999 Mac Pro comes with 32GB of RAM,

Apple’s new Mac Pro is available to order today: it starts at $5,999, but if you want the most powerful Mac money can buy, it’ll cost you $52,599, making it the single most expensive Mac ever made. That eye-watering price tag comes with some seriously impressive specs to match, though. Let’s break it all down:Base price: $5,999, the entry-level price of a Mac Pro before you start configuring a unit with custom specs. (For reference, the $5,999 Mac Pro comes with 32GB of RAM, an

Image: Yacht Club Games Shovel Knight came out back in June 2014, and it’s a wonderful 8-bit-inspired 2D platformer that’s one of my favorite games from this decade. As part of the Kickstarter for Shovel Knight, developer Yacht Club Games promised an enormous amount of content in the months and years to come. This week, the studio finally released the third and final expansion, Shovel Knight: King of Cards, as well as an entirely new fighting game called Shovel Knight Showdown. For

Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge Apple’s new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR are now live on Apple’s online store.The Mac Pro starts at $5,999, which gets you an 8-core Intel Xeon CPU, an AMD Radeon Pro 580X GPU, 32GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. The Mac Pro is designed to be modular, so you can configure it with a better processor, graphics, memory, storage, or even $400 wheels, if you want. It tops out at over $50,000.The 32-inch 6K Pro Display XDR starts at $4,999 — though it doesn

Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge Apple’s new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR are now live on Apple’s online store.The Mac Pro starts at $5,999, which gets you an 8-core Intel Xeon CPU, an AMD Radeon Pro 580X GPU, 32GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. The Mac Pro is designed to be modular, so you can configure it with a better processor, graphics, memory, storage, or even wheels, if you want.
The 32-inch 6K Pro Display XDR starts at $4,999 — though it doesn’t come with a stand. If yo

Image: Google Google has an update that might make you hate your alarm a little bit less: a new feature lets it automatically change up what your alarm plays based on the time of day and the weather, theoretically playing something slightly more appropriate than the same awful song you hear day in and out. At least, it’ll be nice as long as you’re okay with waking up to AI-generated piano.
The feature is confined to a single device for now: Lenovo’s Smart Clock, a small smart

Today, Google is announcing that Android 10 is arriving on Android TV, and it’s about as bland of an update as they come. Primarily, it’s just the performance and security benefits of Android 10, without a single new user-facing feature. But at the bottom of Google’s blog post, the company hints at why: Google’s busy prepping for the “next-generation of Android TV,” starting with the miniature box above.
Google says this new ADT-3 dongle is a full-fledged Andr

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is rolling out Chrome version 79 today, and it includes a number of password protection improvements. The biggest addition is that Chrome will now warn you when your password has been stolen as part of a data breach. Google has been warning about reused passwords in a separate browser extension or in its password checkup tool, but the company is now baking this directly into Chrome to provide warnings as you log in to sites on the web.
You can cont

Microsoft is bringing its first Office app to Linux today. The software maker is releasing Microsoft Teams into a public preview, with the app available in native Linux packages in .deb and .rpm formats. “The Microsoft Teams client is the first Office app that is coming to Linux desktops, and will support all of Teams’ core capabilities,” explains Marissa Salazar, a product marketing manager at Microsoft.
The app looks identical to what is available on Windows and macOS, and it

The upcoming remake of Final Fantasy VII will only be a PlayStation 4 exclusive for the first year of its release. After March 3rd, 2021, it’s likely to move to platforms like the Xbox One and PC. The news was first spotted by Wario64 on Twitter, who posted the game’s cover image with the exclusivity noted in the bottom corner.
Final Fantasy VII Remake is being broken up into several episodes, with the first one focusing exclusively on Midgar (better known as the game’s opening

Nuro, the self-driving startup founded by two ex-Google engineers, is expanding its pilot robot delivery service in Houston, Texas, to include Walmart customers. The company has been making grocery deliveries in Houston with its fleet of autonomous Toyota Prius vehicles since March. Now the company plans to roll out its custom-built R2 prototype vehicle to help supplement its delivery duties.In the coming months, Houston residents who have opted into Nuro’s pilot service can get their groc

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Today, we’re seeing some noteworthy sales on a few unlocked flagship Android phones, specifically the Google Pixel 4 and Samsung Galaxy S10. On eBay, the Pixel 4 is down to $599.99 yet again, which was the sale price that we saw during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This is $200 off the usual price for the 64GB version, and the sale is hosted by a well-rated seller. It’s only available in black or white.Otherwise, your best bet to save mon

Magic Leap is pitching its headset to businesses with a new name. The Magic Leap One Creator Edition, which shipped last August, is being replaced with the Magic Leap 1, which sells for the same price of $2,295.
The Magic Leap 1 will replace the original Creator Edition, and Magic Leap’s chief product officer Omar Khan says it has “some minor updates.” But it appears visually indistinguishable from the old device, and there’s apparently no significant change in the indust

Platinum Games teased its upcoming hack ‘n’ slash game, Babylon’s Fall, during PlayStation’s State of Play event. Not much else is known about the game currently. It’s another collaboration between Platinum and Square Enix; they previously worked together on 2017’s Nier: Automata.
The trailer doesn’t offer much by way of explanation, though it does give viewers a first look at Babylon’s action-heavy gameplay — a fluid, quick combat system rem

Hot on the heels of the popular Resident Evil 2 remake that was released earlier this year, Capcom has announced that it’ll be remaking Resident Evil 3 for modern hardware, which was already revealed by a few leaks.Like Resident Evil 2’s remake, the new Resident Evil 3 will feature entirely overhauled graphics and gameplay with a similar over-the-shoulder camera perspective. Additionally, Capcom announced that the asymmetrical four-versus-one multiplayer game Resident Evil: Project R

House House The goose can’t be stopped. The breakout hit Untitled Goose Game, which was previously available on PC and the Nintendo Switch, is now on its way to the PlayStation 4. The somewhat-delayed port — caused, no doubt, by a troublesome goose — will be available on December 17th.
The game became a surprise hit back in September, thanks to its playful nature and unusual premise, in which you play a goose that spends its time messing around with villagers in a small town.

House House The goose can’t be stopped. The breakout hit Untitled Goose Game, which was previously available on PC and the Nintendo Switch, is now on its way to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The somewhat-delayed port — caused, no doubt, by a troublesome goose — will be available on December 17th. Meanwhile, the game will also be coming to Xbox Game Pass next week, according to Microsoft.
The game became a surprise hit back in September, thanks to its playful nature and unusu

Wheels, an electric bike-share startup with operations in half a dozen US cities, has redesigned its two-wheeled vehicle to include a special spot to hold a helmet. The helmet is locked to the rear rack of the bike and is free for riders to use.The helmet can only be unlocked via the Wheels app. And for those concerned about lice and germs, a peel-off biodegradable headliner is included in each helmet. Wheels says that magnetic Reed sensors in the bike “recognize when the helmet is being u

After a seven-month hiatus from spaceflight, private aerospace company Blue Origin is set to fly its New Shepard rocket to space and back again on the company’s 12th overall test flight. It’ll be the sixth time this particular New Shepard vehicle has seen space and then landed back on Earth. If all goes well, this rocket will hold the record for most trips to space out of any other New Shepard vehicle.
The New Shepard is Blue Origin’s passenger rocket, designed to take crews of

The ConnectSense Smart In-Wall Outlet. | Image: ConnectSense Most smart outlets are bricks that you plug into the outlet that’s already installed in your wall and then control that with your phone or a voice assistant. But there are some smart outlets that can replace your existing in-wall outlet if you’re willing to do some simple wiring. The new ConnectSense Smart In-Wall Outlet is one of these devices that installs directly into your wall and lets you turn on or off the devices t

Toward the end of Life is Strange 2 — the episodic series that wrapped up its five-episode series last week — teenage lead Sean Diaz is jolted awake. After driving all night, he pulled over to the side of a quiet desert road for a doze. But it turns out, he inadvertently parked on private property owned by a racist who isn’t a fan of a mysterious Hispanic kid sleeping on his land. The result is an incredibly tense confrontation. Through Life is Strange’s choice-based game

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge North, the company behind the augmented reality Focals glasses, is no longer selling its current glasses and is instead focusing on a second-generation set that’ll be available next year.The company wouldn’t provide details on the new glasses and instead would only say the device will be 40 percent lighter and sleeker. It’ll also incorporate a higher-resolution display. The team also released a teaser image of frames with a more main

Edison Mail (formerly known as EasilyDo Mail) is making the jump from mobile app to desktop email client with the release of a new Mac app.I’ve been using a beta version of Edison Mail for a few days, and it’s a similar experience to the mobile versions, with a clean UI and the same built-in filters for things like travel, packages, bills & receipts, and entertainment categories. Edison’s easy unsubscribe, sender blocking, and read receipt tracker blocking features are also