Technology news

Photo by Luke Sharrett/Getty Images No one’s being drafted for World War III — yet. And if you received a text saying that you were drafted, the United States Army wants you to know that the message is fake.On Tuesday, the Army put out a news bulletin alerting the public of fraudulent text messages from people claiming to be recruiters. Some texts tell the person receiving them to head to their local recruiting office for “immediate departure to Iran.” Others expand on t

Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner after landing in the New Mexico desert on December 22nd. | Photo by Bill Ingalls / NASA Boeing plans to work with NASA to figure out why the company’s newest passenger spacecraft, the CST-100 Starliner, suffered a mishap during its first uncrewed launch to space at the end of December. The two organizations will form a joint “independent investigation team,” according to a NASA blog post, which will spend about two months figuring out the root

It’s not the worst press conference mistake we’ve seen at CES this year, but Samsung revisited a classic during its keynote last night: copying Apple’s work, continuing a seemingly endless pattern of Samsung (and other companies) cloning Apple, intentionally or otherwise.
In this case, Samsung presented an icon for facial recognition that is almost indistinguishable from Apple’s Face ID icon. As iMore indicates, they’re not exactly the same — the lines all see

Photo by Christoph Dernbach/picture alliance via Getty Images When it comes to self-driving cars, the general axiom for sensors is “the more the merrier.” The safest systems are the ones that use a multiplicity of sensors, such as cameras, radar, ultrasonic, and LIDAR. Having these redundant sensors is the whole point: if one fails, the remaining sensor suite can help navigate the car to safety.Mobileye, a company that specializes in chips for vision-based autonomous vehicles, belie

Samsung’s Odyssey G9 gaming monitor is an incredible thing to behold in person. It’s on the show floor at CES 2020, and pretty much everyone who sat in front of the 49-inch 1440p display was dazzled.You’re going to have an impossible challenge trying to find a rig that can push the latest PC games at 240Hz. But if you’re a competitive e-sports player who specializes in older titles, this display could be a dream. Those not running it at 240Hz can still take advantage of i

Photo by Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images The Communication Workers of America (CWA), one of the largest unions in the US formed initially by telecom workers, has launched a new campaign to help unionize the game and technology industries. Called The Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE), the initiative is working with grassroots organizing efforts around the US and in Canada to improve working conditions among video game developers and tech workers. The news was first

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge For months, Facebook has struggled with deceptively altered videos, but late Monday evening, the company cracked, announcing that it would ban deepfakes as part of a new policy on manipulated media. But while Facebook’s new policy bans many of the most egregious examples of manipulation, the new push has been bogged down by concerns over the new rules’ limitations and some unusual confusion about exactly what the policy covers.Most ominously,

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you’re excited about all of the new gaming laptops and PCs announced this week but you don’t want to drop a ton of money or you can’t wait for them to launch, here are some gaming deals to hold you over in the meantime.
Best Buy is offering deals on several gaming laptops and desktops. The Asus ROG Gaming Laptop (15 inches, Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650) is currently on sale for $849.99, which is $150

Image: Cooler Master Earlier today, Intel announced its new initiative for tiny modular gaming PCs that let you swap out modular CPU cartridges (what Intel calls a “NUC Element”), and some PC component makers are already throwing their support behind the initiative. Razer today announced its new Tomahawk enclosure, and Cooler Master has announced its take, called the NC100.
The NC100 enclosure comes with the baseboard that’s designed to let you plug in an Intel NUC Element, an

Facebook executive Andrew “Boz” Bosworth published a memo that looks ahead to the 2020 election. In it, he discussed how Facebook’s marketing tools were used by the Trump campaign to win the 2016 election and how Facebook shouldn’t take action to prevent Trump from using the same strategy to win again, via The New York Times.As part of his argument, Boz makes the comparison by citing none other than J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings to explain his decision. Fac

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In a memo obtained by The New York Times and publicly posted, a Facebook executive says the company’s platform was responsible for electing Donald Trump president in 2016, but he warned employees against using the company’s power to stop Trump’s reelection in 2020.A memo on “thoughts for 2020”
In the memo, Andrew Bosworth, one of the most prominent voices at the company, shared some “thoughts for 2020” with employ

The Vergecast live at CES 2020 | Christian Purdie The first Vergecast of 2020 is here. The Verge is back in Las Vegas for CES 2020, and we’ve already seen enough new tech to fill an entire episode.Recorded in front of a live audience at Encore at Wynn Las Vegas, The Verge’s Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Ashley Carman discuss the biggest announcements from the start of the week, including Samsung’s rotating TV, Vizio’s rotating soundbars, and Segway’s rotating... eg

Photo by Thierry Monasse / Getty Images Boeing said it would recommend simulator training for pilots of its 737 Max jets after previously stating that such training was unnecessary.In a statement released on January 7th, the aerospace company said it was basing its decision on its “unstinting commitment to the safe return of service as well as changes to the airplane and test results.” The reversal comes after Boeing said it would temporarily suspend production of the 737 Max &mdash

Image: Roland MIDI 2.0 is close to being finalized, and Roland has announced its first keyboard controller to support the new protocol, as spotted by MusicRadar. Roland’s A-88MKII MIDI keyboard controller is an upscale product with wood components and hammer action keys that mimic an acoustic piano. The 88-note keyboard comes with a bunch of onboard creative tools, like customizable trigger pads and advanced arpeggiator controls. There’s also a control app for iOS and Windows to ass

TiVo’s latest TV product isn’t much of a TiVo at all — at least, not a TiVo like customers are used to, with a focus on DVR recordings of live TV that allows users to skip commercials. Instead, the new $69.99 TiVo Stream 4K is an HDMI dongle designed to compete with products like the Fire TV, Chromecast, or Roku Streaming Stick.There’s no traditional DVR or access to cable or over-the-air television in the TiVo Stream 4K. Instead, TiVo is relying on a partnership with Sli

Most people will recognize a self-driving car based on the whirling sensor perched on the roof. LIDAR, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, uses laser pulses to build a 3D model of the environment around the car. Essentially, they help autonomous vehicles “see” other objects, like cars, pedestrians, and cyclists. Chris Urmson, the former head of Google’s self-driving car project, once famously described LIDAR as “spinning Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets.”The

Image: Battlestate Games We’re in a brand-new decade, but that hasn’t stopped some video game developers from falling back on inexcusable explanations for why you can’t play as female characters in certain games. This time, it’s courtesy of Escape from Tarkov creator Battlestate Games, which offered two convenient excuses for why — despite the requests of many players — it will not let you play as a female character in its ultra-realistic military survival si

Fiction isn’t real life. It’s not meant to be, really, because the form is a reflection. Narratives lie because they make sense out of the nonsense of everyday life; they’re always retroactive. (As Nell Zink wryly observes in her latest piece about translation: real people don’t work backward. “They wish they could live as purposefully as fictional characters constructed around all-consuming psychological motivations, but not enough to change their lives.”) Th

It seems bitcoin has come out swinging against fiat currency — as one of the world’s largest fiat currency exchanges is offline due to a software virus. UK currency exchange site Travelex may be subject to ransom demands to get back online and protect its customers’ data; the attackers are demanding a six-figure ransom to be paid in bitcoin, according to Computer Weekly.Travelex took its sites offline after a hack apparently compromised some of its services, according to a stat

For the past few years, Google and Amazon have tussled to get the most attention for their respective digital assistants at CES. But while Amazon mainly focuses on partner announcements, Google aims for consumer attention with new Google Assistant features (plus a gigantic, ostentatious building outside the convention center).
This year is no different, and today Google has announced all of the capabilities it’s adding to the Assistant. It’s a grab bag of things — ranging from

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is “previewing” a new feature here at CES for the Google Assistant on Android phones that turns it into a supercharged screen reader. When you say “Hey Google, read this,” it will find the main text on whatever webpage or article you’re looking at and read it out loud to you.Screen readers aren’t new on phones, but Google says it has improved the Assistant’s ability to parse sentences and therefore speak th

Photo by Mark Brown/Getty Images Former Super Bowl champion Jay Ajayi is moving into a very different kind of football. Today, MLS team Philadelphia Union announced that it signed Ajayi to represent the club as a professional FIFA player.
“Philadelphia will always hold a special place in my heart,” Ajayi said in a statement. “I am blessed to be able to represent the city through e-sports and to be one of the first pro athletes to become a professional gamer. Representing the P

Samsung’s CES 2020 press conference on Monday featured robots, exoskeletons, AI, augmented reality, smart cities, and basically every other technology category you could think of.The star of the show was Ballie, a robotic sphere with a passing resemblance to a volleyball. It’s fused with Samsung’s artificial intelligence tech, meaning it can identify people, stream live video, and operate various smart home gadgets like lighting, smart TVs, and even a Roomba. It’s somewhe

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Deals at this point in the year can be slow, but right now, that isn’t the case. There are some unusually good deals today, with Apple’s AirPods returning to the prices they were during Black Friday, and a TCL smart TV that’s even cheaper than it was over Black Friday.Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
The AirPods are on sale for Black Friday prices at different retailers (via BGR). The AirPods, which come with a wired charg

Image: Delta Airlines Delta Air Lines has announced a new set of features and technologies to its inflight entertainment experience at CES 2020, including a “binge button” and the ability to watch Delta-sourced content from the moment you check into your flight. And it’s adding wireless seatback screens to its airplanes with new capabilities, like the ability to use Bluetooth headphones.Some airlines have scaled back their inflight entertainment technology in favor of having p

One day soon, you may walk into an airport, stand shoulder to shoulder with your fellow passengers, and gaze up with them at the same single screen to receive your personal trip information. In fact, if you fly through Detroit later this year, you could actually try this technology because Delta just announced at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show that it plans to test a beta version of the idea at the city’s Metropolitan Airport.
Unlike older multiview technologies, which only allow a cou

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Audio company Sonos has sued Google for allegedly copying its patented speaker technology while undercutting it at market. The New York Times reports that it filed two lawsuits covering five patents on its wireless speaker design. In addition to financial damages, it’s asking for a sales ban on Google’s laptops, phones, and speakers in the US.
Sonos claims that Google stole its multiroom speaker technology after getting access to it through a 2013 pa

Skagen Falster 3. | Image: Skagen Skagen has just announced the latest iteration of its Wear OS-powered smartwatch, the Falster 3. The Falster 3’s big new features include the Qualcomm Snapdragon 3100 processor, a speaker for taking calls and getting audible alerts, and a limited edition design from a collaboration with Norwegian DJ Kygo. The standard Falster 3 costs $295 and is available starting today, January 7th; the Kygo style will be available later this spring.
The Falster 3 shares

Philips Hue Appear wall light | Photo: Signify At CES this week, three new outdoor lights are being unveiled for Philips Hue: a path light, a spotlight, and a wall-mounted fixture with lights that shine up and down.
Outdoor Hue light fixtures started appearing in 2018, and there are already eight or so options, ranging from a floodlight to different styles of wall lights. These new models offer more style options more than they expand the lineup into new areas.
The new options include:
Econic p

Image: Cardboard Computer Kentucky Route Zero’s long-awaited final act is releasing on January 28th, almost four years after the release of Act IV in 2016. That same day, the game’s console version, aka Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition, is releasing on PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. A countdown timer discovered earlier this week had led some to speculate that the game would actually be releasing today, but it seems the timer was just meant to count down to this announcement.
Act

Ao Air Ao Air’s Atmos Faceware is positioning itself as a tech-driven solution to increasing levels of air pollution in a world that’s literally and figuratively burning. But the $350 gadget, which just debuted at CES, may be beyond the price range of people who are most vulnerable to the very problem its seeking to address.Breathing in pollutant-filled air is dangerous: it can exacerbate asthma and other respiratory conditions, and can increase risk for stroke, heart disease, and s

Ao Air Ao Air’s Atmos Faceware is positioning itself as a tech-driven solution to increasing levels of air pollution in a world that’s literally and figuratively burning. But the $350 gadget, which just debuted at CES, may be beyond the price range of people who are most vulnerable to the very problem its seeking to address.Breathing in pollutant-filled air is dangerous: it can exacerbate asthma and other respiratory conditions, and can increase risk for stroke, heart disease, and s

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The FBI has asked for Apple’s help in unlocking two iPhones linked to a shooting at a Pensacola naval base in December, according to a report by NBC News. In a letter sent to Apple on Monday, FBI general counsel Dana Boente said the bureau has obtained court approval to search the device, but was unable to unlock the device using available tools.
“Investigators are actively engaging in efforts to ‘guess’ the relevant passcodes but

Nearly three years after the Switch’s launch, Nintendo is finally selling an official stylus for the console. The catch? It still isn’t widely available. As spotted by Eurogamer, it goes on sale February 3rd for £6.99 (about $9 USD) via the UK store. The stylus is compatible with games like Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training for Nintendo Switch and Super Mario Maker 2, though it won’t work with the console when docked.Past Nintendo systems, like the Nintendo 3DS and Wii

At a press event at CES, we got a chance to play around with a concept phone from OnePlus, appropriately called the OnePlus Concept One. It is a true concept device in that it may never be released, but it exists to demonstrate a single feature. That feature was announced earlier this week: the glass can become opaque to hide the cameras on the back of the phone.
It works. As you can see in the video above and the image slider below, the camera lenses are completely occluded under a bare strip o

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge OnePlus has announced a new feature called Optimized Charging, which aims to make your phone’s battery last longer by changing the way it charges. The feature, which was first spotted in beta in December, will stop your phone from charging to above 80 percent until 100 minutes before you’re expected to unplug it. Only then will it let your device fully charge. The limitation is meant to minimize the amount of time your phone spends charging at 100 p

Sometimes you read about all the new gadgets at CES and have FOMO because you’re not there, and other times you read about an AI cat litter box.LuluPet says that it has the world’s first litter box with “built-in stool and urine image recognition” to analyze cats’... deposits. The goal of the Taiwan-based company’s gadget is to help monitor a cat’s health, “to help your cat to live a healthier life.” If you have multiple cats, LuluPet’s

Electric scooter company Unagi has a powerful new model to show off. The California-based startup has upgraded its flagship scooter with dual motors, enabling better torque and higher speed without sacrificing portability. And for the first time, customers can choose to customize their scooter with almost any combination of colors or patterns they can imagine.Unagi’s new E500 Dual Motor Scooter has two 250W motors, one in the front and one in the back, for a total of (you guessed it) 500W.

Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images While experts worry about AI technologies like intrusive surveillance and autonomous weaponry, the US government is advocating a hands-off approach to AI’s regulation.
The White House today unveiled 10 principles that federal agencies should consider when devising laws and rules for the use of artificial intelligence in the private sector, but stressed that a key concern was limiting regulatory “overreach.”
Agencies should enco

Back in 2018, Razer jumped into the router market with Sila, a gaming router designed to offer high-speed and reliable Wi-Fi performance for gaming. And now, at CES 2020, the company is showing off a concept for a 5G version of that router, the Sila 5G, which would rely on a wireless 5G connection as the source of your internet rather than conventional cable.
Interestingly, unlike many other home routers, the Sila 5G also features a rechargeable battery, allowing it to double as a mobile hotspot

Razer sells plenty of gaming mice, keyboards, headsets, and an edgy gaming laptop called the Blade, but it’s never sold its own gaming desktop PC — unless you count a few collaborations with Lenovo and Maingear. But that’s changing this summer with an impressive-looking box that will be known as the Razer Tomahawk, a fully upgradable gaming desktop that takes up just 10 liters of volume.
While it might look like just an external GPU box at first glance — maybe a better-lo

Image: Razer In October, Razer announced Junglecat, a mobile gamepad with two Nintendo Switch Joy-Con-like controllers that attached to either side of your phone, but it only worked with four Android phones and required that you put your phones in a special case when you used it. Today at CES, just a few months after launching the Junglecat, Razer is announcing the Razer Kishi, another Switch-like mobile gamepad, but this one looks like it could address a lot of the criticisms of the Junglecat

Image: PopSockets People seemingly love sticking PopSockets to their phones for the extra grip, but doing so introduces a new issue: the inability to wirelessly charge a phone when a PopSockets Grip is attached. Today, the company is solving the problem by announcing its own Qi-enabled wireless charging pad called the PopPower Home. The pad supplies a device with 15W of power and supports fast charging. The team partnered with a company called NuCurrent to launch the device. It’s availabl

Image: PopSockets People seemingly love sticking PopSockets to their phones for the extra grip, but doing so introduces a new issue: the inability to wirelessly charge a phone when a PopSockets Grip is attached. Today, the company is solving the problem by announcing its own Qi-enabled wireless charging pad called the PopPower Home. The pad supplies a device with 15W of power and supports fast charging. The team partnered with a company called NuCurrent to launch the device. It’s availabl

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge This is the Insta360 One R. Like Insta360’s prior cameras, it’s capable of shooting 360 degrees of footage. But it’s also a standard 4K action camera. For someone on the fence about taking a full leap into buying a 360 camera, this is the perfect in-between device.
The One R is made up of three components: the lens; the core, which houses the screen, power and record buttons, USB-C port, and microSD card slot; and the battery base. There are