Technology news

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge You might have read headlines today about how the EU is looking to force Apple to ditch the Lightning cable. That’s not really true.
Since 2009, the European Commission has been trying to convince tech companies to adopt a single wall charger instead of opting for a proprietary method, one that can power any and all portable devices. And now, following a recent statement by the Commission at Parliament that calls for stricter enforcement on the matter &m

Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images Google added tiny favicon icons to its search results this week for some reason, creating more clutter in what used to be a clean interface, and seemingly without actually improving the results or the user experience. The company says it’s part of a plan to make clearer where information is coming from, but how?
To give you an idea of how minimal the change is, here’s what it looked like when Google made the same tweak last year to the browsing experien

For practically as long as the Nintendo Switch and its removable Joy-Con controllers has existed, fans have been mocking up and wishing for Joy-Con-style GameCube controllers to use with the portable console. But hardware mod YouTuber Shank did more than just dream: he spent months turning the idea into reality, combining Joy-Con internals with original GameCube hardware to build the ultimate Switch accessory.
For the best look at the entire modification process, you should check out the full vi

Valve Valve has put an end to rumors about Left 4 Dead 3 being in development, by stating that the studio hasn’t been working on it for years.
“We’ve seen rumors to this effect for the last couple of months,” Valve said in a statement to IGN. “We did briefly explore some Left 4 Dead next gen opportunities a few years ago. But we are absolutely not working on anything L4D related now, and haven’t for years.”
Earlier today, Alvin Wang Graylin, president o

Microsoft is unveiling its first TV commercial for Microsoft Teams this weekend. A 30-second ad will air during Sunday’s NFL playoffs, and will also be shown in the UK, France, and Germany next month. Dubbed “The Power of Teams,” the ad opens with boring business meetings, flip charts, ancient speaker phones, and slidedecks printed on paper before quickly moving on to Teams. Microsoft has been aligning its Teams software as the hub for the future of its Office suite, and this a

Image: Moog Moog has officially announced a new synth called Subsequent 25 at this year’s NAMM in Anaheim, California. Replacing the adored Sub Phatty synth, Moog’s made several tweaks with the Subsequent 25 that make it capable of delivering even more powerful bass and thicker leads than its predecessor.
The Subsequent 25 is Moog’s most compact keyboard synthesizer, which the company says makes it a fit for both stage and studio. Some will balk at the synth’s teeny size

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Netflix today signaled a significant new investment in France with the opening of its new Paris office and a content roadmap that will see the streaming service nearly double the number of French language originals it has produced so far. Since 2014, Netflix has produced 24 productions in French, including six films and nine television series. But the new plan is to add 20 new productions, and to grow its new corporate presence in Paris consisting of

Photo by Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images Next month, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles will release the latest batch of reports from companies testing self-driving vehicles in the state. But the reports offer, at best, a flawed glimpse into the slow and often opaque process of testing autonomous vehicles on public roads, says Kyle Vogt, co-founder and CTO of GM-based Cruise. In a Medium post, Vogt posits that maybe it’s time for a new metric for reporting sa

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Disney’s landmark purchase of 20th Century Fox last year is complete, and now the company is looking to phase out the “Fox” branding in its new assets: the 20th Century Fox film studio is being rebranded to just “20th Century Studios,” and Fox Searchlight Pictures is now “Searchlight Pictures,” according to a report from Variety.
The move away from the Fox brand isn’t entirely surprising, given that Fox Corp

Photo by Stefan Etienne / The Verge If you’ve been waiting on a deal for Nvidia’s RTX 2060 desktop graphics card, the entry-level model in its lineup of raytracing-capable GPUs, an official price drop has been issued for the company’s Founders’ Edition model (via PC Gamer). It’s now $299 from Nvidia’s store, which is a $50 discount from the original price.Admittedly, that’s not a huge price cut, and it’s not even the only RTX 2060 at this price po

The Vergecast is back in the studio after the holidays and CES. The Verge’s Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Paul Miller get together to talk about the big takeaways from the Consumer Electronics Show as well as a few announcements in tech this week.On Wednesday, we saw Microsoft release its new Chromium-based version of Edge across both Windows and macOS. The crew discusses whether this is the dawn of — you guessed it — a new round of the browser wars.Then on Thursday, NBC hosted

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge After a patent lawsuit against Google last week, Sonos is ready to go after Google (and potentially other tech giants) in front of Congress today. The audio company’s CEO is testifying at noon for the House Judiciary Committee, alongside executives from PopSockets, Tile, and Basecamp — all of which have complained about copying, unfair pressure, or even a “shakedown” at the hands of big Silicon Valley companies.
The hearing is part of a l

The Pokémon Company has released two ASMR videos to kick off your weekend: one featuring a Charmander peacefully snoozing beside a crackling fire, and one with a Chespin munching away on some macarons. “This is a ASMR video for those who need a gentle Pokémon touch in everything!” the description reads. Headphones are recommended for optimal effect, so you can take in the full sounds of the crunching and crackling.ASMR and pokémon are really a perfect match, beca

Co Star Today I am going to get to the bottom of things and take myself out to dinner because I have an Android phone and there is finally an Android version of the popular Co—Star astrology app. The FOMO can now come to an end for Android users who have not been able to get the often snarky, always meme-ready insights from one of the most popular iOS lifestyle apps. The app launched today after much anticipation, adding a huge new audience segment to its loyal following.
“There wer

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Friday that it is weighing whether to launch an investigation into “sudden unexpected acceleration” of 500,000 Tesla vehicles, according to Reuters.The petition covers Tesla Model S (2012-2019 model year), Model X (2016-2019), and Model 3 (2018-2019) vehicles, Reuters says. It also cites 127 consumer complaints, 123 unique vehicles, 110 crashes, and 52 injuries. A spokesperson for Tesla d

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Friday that it is weighing whether to launch an investigation into “sudden unexpected acceleration” of 500,000 Tesla vehicles, according to Reuters.The petition covers Tesla Model S (2012-2019 model year), Model X (2016-2019), and Model 3 (2018-2019) vehicles, Reuters says. It also cites 127 consumer complaints, 123 unique vehicles, 110 crashes, and 52 injuries. A spokesperson for Tesla d

Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images In an interview with The New York Times on Friday, former Vice President Joe Biden called for tech’s biggest liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, to be “revoked, immediately.”
“The idea that it’s a tech company is that Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms,” Biden said. “It should be revoked because it is not merely

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook is facing a federal lawsuit from mobile app developers that allege the company revoked access to data in an attempt to stifle competition.
The suit, which is seeking class-action status, argues that the company “identified and categorized potential market threats, then extinguished those threats” by cutting them off from access to data on its platform. Facebook, the suit alleges, “moved aggressively to shut out entirely direct c

The worst thing about Bad Boys for Life is that it is not heralded with a chart-topping rap collab between Nelly, P. Diddy, and Murphy Lee. The era of the St. Lunatics is firmly behind us. The era for Bad Boys seemed to be as well. But 17 years after Bad Boys II, Bad Boys for Life returns to Miami, where the boys remain bad even though they are both at the age where, as someone awkwardly says in the film, they’re trying to be “good… men.” And you know what? It works.Bad

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Chrome OS may one day be able to play games from Steam. In an interview with Android Police, a Chrome OS product leader said that Google is working to allow Chromebooks to run Valve’s game platform, seemingly with help from Valve. No timeline was given on when support might arrive.
It’s an intriguing but odd announcement. Google has been focused on expanding Chrome OS’s capabilities over the last few years by allowing it to run native ap

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge High school chemistry teacher Phil Cook (@chemteacherphil) didn’t know anything about TikTok until one Friday in August, when a student in his class suggested that he make one of the day’s in-class demonstration: an experiment he calls the “gummy bear” sacrifice, where adding sugar (a gummy bear) to a test tube of potassium chlorate creates a contained explosion.
“I said, here’s my phone, make the video and we can take

Tinymakesthings One of the most appealing benefits of mechanical keyboards is their customizability, and artisan keycap maker Tiny is on a mission to bring some joy to the keyboard. Her custom keycaps, made from polymer clay and resin, range from designs like waffles drenched in syrup, Baby Yoda, and Kirby, mid-inhale. Whether it’s a lone burger-shaped keycap in place of the escape key or cute characters lining the row of F-keys, her keycaps exude charm and personality. She’s even m

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge I was quite literally riding into the sunset when I began calculating just how fast my legs would have to move in order to abandon the electric skateboard under my feet. The winding road from the High Point Lookout of Red Rock Canyon in Nevada to the bottom of the basin sounded like the perfect place for my first ride on Dot’s new electric board — until I looked down at the small screen on my board’s remote.The speedometer read 27 mph. Since m

Leica M10 Monochrom | Image: Leica Three years after the release of the M10, Leica is finally introducing a Monochrom camera based on the M10’s design. The new M10 Monochrom has all of the design traits and features of the M10 (or more accurately, 2018’s M10-P), such as a slimmer body and wirelessconnectivity, but with a new 40-megapixel black-and-white sensor.
The Monochrom has been one of Leica’s most controversial digital cameras ever since the first version came out in 201

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge; Photo by YourStuffedMemories / Etsy Everyone loves Baba Yoda, but official merchandise of the character has been hard to find, since Disney didn’t want to spoil the surprise surrounding the little green alien by producing toys and t-shirts ahead of The Mandalorian’s premiere. In that vacuum, plenty of enterprising Etsy sellers have popped up to sell their own homemade Baby Yoda plushies and toys — at least, until Disney started iss

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge; Photo by YourStuffedMemories / Etsy Everyone loves Baba Yoda, but official merchandise of the character has been hard to find, since Disney didn’t want to spoil the surprise surrounding the little green alien by producing toys and t-shirts ahead of The Mandalorian’s premiere. In that vacuum, plenty of enterprising Etsy sellers have popped up to sell their own homemade Baby Yoda plushies and toys — at least, until Disney started iss

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Some AirPods Pro owners have been complaining about degraded noise cancellation in recent weeks, claiming that Apple’s latest earbuds suddenly got less effective at silencing ambient noise after receiving a firmware update. Rtings.com retested the AirPods Pro and found their noise canceling capabilities to be worse after firmware update 2C54. But affected customers say the trouble began even earlier with firmware version 2B588, which rolled out in November

Photo by: Nathan Congleton/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images The big news yesterday is that NBC finally made its streaming service, Peacock, official. It’s coming on July 15th with a handful of pricing tiers ranging from free (with limited content) to $9.99 a month for all the Parks & Rec you can inject into your eye sockets. Of course there will also be some exclusive shows at some point. We got a brief look at the app, big promises about engaging content, discussions about valuab

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Last summer, with misinformation swirling about the death of Jeffrey Epstein, I joined the chorus of voices calling for an end to Twitter’s trending topics. The feature is generated by algorithms with little editorial oversight, is easily gamed by bots and bad actors, and yet continues to drive the news cycle anyway. Get rid of it — or have humans run it — and Twitter would only be better for it.
Many of those arguments have been re-liti

BT is partnering with Google to launch broadband plans in the UK that come with access to the Stadia cloud gaming service. It’s a first for Europe, allowing BT to offer a free Google Stadia Premiere Edition with broadband deals direct to consumers. BT, the biggest ISP in the UK, is planning to offer the free kit to customers who opt for the company’s Superfast Broadband 2, Ultrafast Fibre 100, or Ultrafast Fibre 250 services. BT is also planning a marketing campaign to promote its St

iRobot If you’re tired of doing all of the vacuuming around the house, iRobot’s slick Roomba S9 and S9 Plus robot vacuums are up to $300 off for readers of The Verge. The high-end S9 Plus is $1,099 (down from $1,399) until supplies last at Wellbots with the offer code S9PLUSVERGE. This model comes with a base that the vacuum can automatically find, then deposit its waste bin into (up to 30 times before you’ll need to empty the base).
For those who don’t mind manually dum

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Facebook has permanently cut the price of its Oculus Go VR headset. “Oculus Go is now priced at $149, which is equal to a $50 price drop,” the company tells UploadVR. “We are applying comparable discounts across all countries where Go is sold. Updated pricing is rolling out to all channels.”
The Oculus Go is manufactured by Xiaomi and marked Facebook’s effort to produce a low-cost, entry-level headset that could handle 36

New renders from Evan “Evleaks” Blass give us what may well be our best look yet at Huawei’s next flagship phone. This is the P40 Pro, according to Blass, who says that the phone will make use of ceramic in its build. As with a previous leak, it looks like the front glass and back panel will curve on all four edges.
The most prominent design feature revealed in the images is the colossal camera bump that houses five lenses, one of which is a periscope-style telephoto camera. Th

A handy Redditor has made a really cool Arduino-powered toy R/C car that can dip, move, and drift almost exactly like a real car. (And it’s decked out with an awesome-looking 1963 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 Wagon shell, to boot.)
Seriously, watch this thing take a few turns. I’ve never seen an R/C car move like this — it realistically leans into turns and drifts, almost like a stunt car driven in a movie. Most R/C cars don’t move with quite the same illusion of weight.This nex

This morning, we introduced you to The Apple Archive, an unofficial collection of the Cupertino company’s official videos, print ads, marketing images, and even some eye-opening internal training videos — check out young Woz and his single earring at the beginning of this early video on the value of patents!But at the time, we were blissfully unaware that the archive also included this delightful monstrosity: a four-minute music video masquerading as an “Easy Pay training video

Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Champagne Collet Taika Waititi, the director behind Oscar nominated film Jojo Rabbit and Marvel hit Thor: Ragnarok, is in talks with Disney and Lucasfilm about overseeing a future Star Wars movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter.The talks are far from final it seems, and it’s not clear how any project Waititi may work on would fit into the larger scheme of Star Wars’ expanding TV and film universe. But Waititi, having helmed a hugely succe