Technology news

Lucasfilm Ltd. Two years ago, my former colleague Sarah Jeong laid out how Star Wars: Rogue One — and, indeed, much of the Star Wars mythology — is about internet freedom. A huge amount of the series involves people struggling to copy a sci-fi floppy disc or send the holographic equivalent of an email, exacerbating a lot of the galaxy’s problems, including its total lack of accountability for politicians.
But The Rise of Skywalker, which concludes the whole Skywalker saga, mak

Chris Welch As T-Mobile’s merger trial inches toward a verdict, it’s clear the company has spent years preparing for a merger with Sprint. But a new report made public in connection with the case reveals T-Mobile has also been preparing for a subsequent merger with a cable company, with Comcast seen as the most likely potential candidate.
Titled “Defining a winning position for the US business model,” the report was assembled at the request of T-Mobile board member Thors

Image: Instagram Several prominent models and Instagram influencers are facing backlash after attending and promoting Saudi Arabian music festival, MDL Beast. Commenters are “disappointed” and say they are “quietly ignoring the Saudi Arabian humanitarian crisis” by endorsing the country. The anger comes after Instagram account Diet Prada — a prominent Instagram account that calls out fashion copycats — pointed out that models and online personalities like Nad

So no one told you Friends was going to go away. [handclaps]
As of January 1st, 2020, Friends won’t be available to stream on Netflix, and won’t be available to stream on any of the major subscriber-based streaming services for another five months. Between January, when Friends leaves Netflix, and May, when it premieres on HBO Max, the only way to watch the series is through actually purchasing individual episodes, seasons, or the collection through digital retailers.Amazon, iTunes,

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Employees at North, the company behind the augmented reality Focals glasses, warned their CEO that the glasses weren’t ready to ship two months before the January 2019 launch. In an eight-page letter obtained by The Logic, employees portrayed the company as focused on rushing the glasses out the door while sacrificing functionality and general appeal.The letter says the glasses, which originally cost $999, would seem to most users to be worth on

Image: Rivian Michigan-based EV startup Rivian has announced a massive new $1.3 billion financing round led by T. Rowe Price — one that includes existing investors like Amazon and Ford. It’s the fourth time Rivian has raised money this year, following an Amazon-led $700 million raise in February, a $500 million investment from Ford in April, and $350 million from Cox Automotive in September — despite a market that is shying away from big investments in startups for a number of

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images New York City’s law to limit the amount of time Uber and Lyft drivers can spend cruising for passengers in busy parts of the city is “arbitrary and capricious,” a New York State Supreme Court judge ruled Monday.
Last summer, the city’s Taxi and Limousine passed rules requiring drivers reduce so-called deadheading — or the amount of time spent without passengers in the car — from 41 percent to 31 percent inManhattan below

Photo by Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been quietly assembling a squad of tech executives to run digital advertising for his presidential campaign, as uncovered in a new report by CNBC. The report centers on a firm called Hawkfish, a digital ad startup that’s currently embedded within the Bloomberg campaign.
According to the campaign, Hawkfish was founded earlier this year, hiring Facebook’s former chief marketing officer Gar

If I have one wish for 2020, it’s that we see an end to the stream of gadgets that convince customers to buy a product that requires even more products to make it functional. Instead of being the “Uber for X,” like every app startup used to want, now IoT and gadget makers are aspiring to an even less appealing standard: becoming the Keurig of their niche marketplace.The Keurig model was simple: buy the coffeemaker, and then buy its branded single-serving K-Cup pods of coffee se

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The cheap days of Sling TV are over. Dish’s internet TV service is raising the price of both of its subscription packages, Sling Blue and Sling Orange, to $30 each per month. Subscribing to both bundles of channels now costs $45, which is a few bucks shy of competitors like YouTube TV ($49.99 / mo).Sling TV notes that “this is the first time Sling Blue customers have seen a price increase; the price of Sling Orange has remained stable since June 2018

Lucasfilm It’s difficult not to look at Disney’s record-breaking year, securing eight of the top 10 highest-grossing films of 2019 domestically and its impressive entrance into streaming with Disney+, without whispering to yourself “maybe Martin Scorsese had a point.”Disney’s new record follows the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The film grossed $175.5 million domestically in its opening weekend, just skirting past Universal Pictures’ critically

Image: Stern Pinball Today, the pinball wizards at Stern Pinball announced a new machine based on Netflix’s hit series Stranger Things. That’s pretty meta, given the show’s reverence for 1980s nostalgia, but the machine seems to bring a lot of modern ideas to the table. Honestly, it looks pretty awesome.
The Stranger Things machine comes in three versions — Pro, Premium, and Limited Edition — and they all look to be packed with cool Stranger Things art and referenc

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg is leaving the company a little more than one year after the first of two fatal crashes involving the company’s 737 Max aircraft, the company announced Monday. Boeing says Muilenburg resigned in its press release, though it also says that the board of directors “decided that a change in leadership was necessary.” The New York Times reports that he was fired.
Muilenburg will be replaced by David L. Calhoun, who curren

Tyler Golden/Netflix Perhaps the most deliciously satisfying thing about You is that it began as a Lifetime show. It seemed to fit right in, too — based on the novel of the same name by Caroline Kepnes, the show followed bookseller Joe Goldberg as he began to stalk a woman named Beck, gradually inserting himself more and more into her life as he attempted to woo her and isolate her from all her friends. You know. Lifetime stuff.After a killer-but-little-watched first season, the show migr

No matter how useful today’s robot vacuums are, they’ll always be defeated by an element common to many households: stairs. That’s why this flying robovac, built by YouTuber and engineer Peter Sripol, is so impressive. By adding a trio of ducted fans to a cheap robot vacuum, Sripol has created a gadget nerd’s dream — and a nightmare for your pets.A flying Roomba isn’t necessarily a practical tool, though, as Sripol’s video demonstrates. The downdraft cre

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge One of the biggest barriers for 5G adoption is simply getting customers access to the new network. Carriers are racing to roll out 5G, and Verizon announced today that it’s reached its goal of launching the service in more than 30 US cities before the end of the year. In fact, 31 cities now have some access Verizon’s 5G network, along with 15 NFL stadiums.But that figure needs caveats. As we’ve noted before, while 5G

Supporters of Snopes’ campaign will get swag like tote bags and T-shirts.| Image: Snopes Fact-checking operation Snopes has launched a crowdfunding campaign ahead of 2020, likely to be a bumper year for online misinformation due to the US presidential election.Snopes launched in 1994 and has funded its work through advertising and the occasional partnership. But the company says demands on its services are greater than ever, and attempts to work with social media giants have failed. Earli

Rumored Galaxy S10 Lite. | @Onleaks Specs for Samsung’s Galaxy S10 Lite have coalesced ahead of its imminent European launch. WinFuture.de posted details based upon a data sheet they’ve seen that match up nicely with previous rumors and FCC filings.
Specs include a 6.7-inch Infinity-O hole-punch display with 2400 x 1080 pixels and 20:9 aspect ratio, a Snapdragon (not Exynos) 855 chipset, 8GB RAM, and 128GB of storage with microSD slot for expansion. There’s a 48 megapixel (f/2

Democratic presidential candidateand South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg. | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images As far as crimes of vanity go, editing your own Wikipedia page is an extremely relatable one. After all, who doesn’t want some control over their public image? But if you’re hoping to be president of the USA, what at first seems like a slight misdeed becomes something more revealing (even if it pales in comparison to the known activities of the current president).
I

Illustration by Ana Kova for The Verge A report from The New York Times has revealed that messaging app ToTok, popular in the United Arab Emirates, is in fact a government spy tool, created for the benefit of UAE intelligence officials and used to track citizens’ conversations and movements.
ToTok launched earlier this year and has been downloaded by millions in the UAE, a nation where Western messaging apps like WhatsApp and Skype are partially blocked. It promised “fast, free, and

Photo: Warner Bros. Theaters are receiving a new version of Cats with “some improved visual effects,” just days after it premiered to dismal reviews. The update to the CGI-heavy movie was available to download on Sunday night, with hard drives otherwise ready to ship by Tuesday, according to a memo reviewed by The Hollywood Reporter. The change was requested by the film’s director Tom Hooper (Les Misérables, The King’s Speech), according to THR.
Hooper admitted to