Technology news

Image: Verdict Impeachment podcasts are the hot new thing in podcasting, and now one of the actual impeachment jurors is getting in on the boom. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) launched a podcast today called Verdict with Ted Cruz, in which he sits across from a stupendously softball interviewer (“you are not only a senator, you are a constitutional lawyer, one of the brightest legal minds in the country”) and opines on the day’s impeachment proceedings.
It sounds as though Verdict wi

Photo by Getty Images Disease control officials in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak of the new and rapidly spreading virus began, announced that it’s shutting down transportation within the city and will close all airports and train stations. The city is home to over 11 million people.The virus is similar to SARS, which circulated around the world in 2002 and 2003. So far, the new virus has sickened over 500 people and killed 17. In addition to the transportation shutdown, compa

Photo by Steven Ryan/Getty Images King County, where Seattle is located, announced on Wednesday that it’s implementing smartphone voting for an upcoming board of supervisors election.King County’s 1.2 million residents can use their cellphones to vote in the election, which begins on January 22nd and continues until 8PM PT on February 11th.The program is a collaboration between King County Elections; the county’s conservation district; mobile-voting nonprofit Tusk Philanthropi

Robot vacuums can get pretty pricey, with some of the more advanced options running upwards of $1,000. If you don't need all the bells and whistles — like smart home mapping, mobile app integration, and self-emptying canisters — then you don't have to spend that much money. There are cheaper robot vacuums out there, and the best budget robot vacuums will get the job done well.
Inexpensive options typically don't have smartphone app integration and all of the controls are done with a

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Nintendo fans in Europe got some bad news this week. A new court ruling sided with Nintendo’s ongoing practice to not let users cancel digital preorders (via Nintendo Everything).According to Norwegian gaming site PressFire, the consumer authorities of Norway and Germany sued Nintendo for not letting users cancel digital preorders purchased from the eShop. The case went to court at the end of last year. This week, the court ruled in favor of Nintendo, me

Image: Netflix Netflix wants people to know The Witcher is just as big, if not bigger, than Disney’s Mandalorian around the world. Franchise plays like The Witcher and movies like 6 Underground are key to Netflix growing internationally, and they could represent a big part of Netflix’s future in a year where competition from major players will start to heat up.
In its Q4 earnings report, Netflix said that 76 million accounts watched The Witcher within its first four weeks. It also r

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Amazon Music often doesn’t get the same buzz as Spotify or Apple Music, but the service is still growing rapidly and is catching up to those competitors at a rate that might surprise you. Amazon says its music service has now surpassed 55 million customers.
There’s still a long way to go if Amazon wants to catch Spotify, which most recently reported 113 million paying customers (and 248 million monthly users overall) back in September. Apple last cit

Photo by Erin Schaff for The Verge One day after news broke that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia may have been personally involved in the hack of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ phone, a United States senator is asking for more information.“I encourage you to provide my office with information”
As first reported yesterday by The Guardian, a forensic analysis of Bezos’ phone determined that spyware was planted on the device after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent a seemingly

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Tesla has reached a deal with Michigan that will allow the company to sell its cars directly in the state, bringing a multiyear legal battle to an end. It’s a small but crucial victory for Tesla, and one that comes in the home state of the automotive industry.Thanks to a state law that forces automakers to work with dealers to sell their vehicles, would-be Tesla customers in Michigan have had to travel to neighboring states to buy one of the com

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Microsoft is starting to share more details on exactly how it imagines apps will run on dual-screen devices like the Surface Duo and Surface Neo. The software giant unveiled both devices back in October, with the smaller Surface Duo running Android and the larger Surface Neo powered by Windows 10X. Now, Microsoft is getting developers ready to test their apps to see how both devices will span them across both displays.
By default, an app will occupy a

Image: SmileDirectClub SmileDirectClub, a Warby Parker-style company that sells 3D-printed teeth aligners online that are typically cheaper than braces, has asked some customers dissatisfied with the product to sign extremely restrictive nondisclosure agreements that stifle them from saying anything negative about the company, according to a report from The New York Times published on Wednesday.An excerpt of a SmileDirectClub NDA included in the NYT’s story said that the person signing &l

Image: Netflix Following the success of Netflix’s live-action Witcher series, the streaming giant has ordered a new anime film from Korean animation house Studio Mir.Netflix hasn’t released too many details about the show yet, but a press release states that the anime will explore “a powerful new threat facing the Continent.” It also says that The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf will expand the world of Netflix’s live-action show, The Witcher. It’s unclear if

Microsoft is planning to use the Office 365 installer to forcibly switch Chrome users over to the company’s Bing search engine. Microsoft’s Office 365 ProPlus installer, used by businesses, will include a new Chrome extension next month that switches the default search engine to Bing. New installations of Office 365 ProPlus and updated installs will include the extension, as long as the default search engine in Chrome is not set to Bing.
Microsoft is clearly marketing this to IT admi

Photo: 100 Thieves The collision of e-sports, content creators, and streetwear now has a physical form with 100 Thieves’ newly unveiled headquarters. Today, the company officially opened its new Los Angeles home, one with an intimidating name: the 100 Thieves Cash App Compound. According to 100 Thieves, the 15,000-square-foot building is the largest such e-sports facility in the US. But more than that, it’s a big bet that the worlds of competitive gaming, social networks, and appare

Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images Scientists think the new virus spreading rapidly through Central China first became capable of infecting humans at the beginning of December. By December 31st, public health officials reported that they had patients with the then-unknown virus to the World Health Organization (WHO). Two weeks later, scientists had isolated and published the virus’s genetic sequence, determining that it was a type of virus called a coronavirus, which is part of the family

Coca-Cola stood by its single-use plastic bottle at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Speaking to the BBC, senior vice president Beatriz Perez shifted responsibility for the mountains of plastic they produce on consumers. Customers are thirsty for drinks bottled in resealable, lightweight plastic, she said, emphasizing that Coca-Cola has no plans to abandon plastic, single-use packaging.
“Business won’t be in business if we don’t accommodate consumers,” Pere

Image: Unity The Heretic, Unity’s cinematic tech demo which it first teased at GDC last year, is now available to watch in its entirety. It’s still only seven minutes long, so don’t go in expecting a feature length movie, but it’s just over double the length of the initial film that was released last year.Away from its cinematic ambitions, The Heretic is meant to show off what the Unity engine can do. The final version of the film was made using stock Unity 2019.3, the v

NASA has a big to-do list for 2020, as the agency continues to build its Artemis program with the goal of sending the first woman to the Moon by 2024. This year, NASA also hopes to start launching its astronauts from the US again, after nearly a decade of launching them to space on Russian vehicles. It’s still unclear if NASA will meet all the ambitious deadlines it has set for itself.
the agency has already started off 2020 strong
Yet, the agency has already started off this year strong.

Amazon Fire HD 10. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you’ve been waiting for a discount on Amazon’s Fire HD 10, your wait is over. The tablet has been discounted to $99, which is $50 off its original price of $149.99. We haven’t seen a lower price on this device, and at $149.99, it was already one of the least expensive tablets on the market.If you’re familiar with the 2017 version of the Fire HD 10, you may not notice a ton of differences. But as The Verg

It took over a month, but Netflix is finally releasing an official version of the breakout musical hit from its popular Witcher series. “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” is now available to stream on Spotify and Apple Music, and the full soundtrack from the series is set to release on January 24th.In addition to the meme-inducing earworm, Netflix is releasing a full, three-hour-plus score for the series from composers Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli for fans who want to listen to son

The new ‘connectome’ maps some 25,000 neurons in a fruit fly’s brain, a portion of which are shown here.| Image: Google / FlyEM Scientists from Google and the Janelia Research Campus in Virginia have published the largest high-resolution map of brain connectivity in any animal, sharing a 3D model that traces 20 million synapses connecting some 25,000 neurons in the brain of a fruit fly.The model is a milestone in the field of connectomics, which uses detailed imaging technique

Photo by Dani Deahl / The Verge Niantic Labs says its live events for augmented reality hit Pokémon Go contributed $247 million in tourism revenue last year across three cities. The announcement on Wednesday was paired with the new schedule for 2020 events across Pokémon Go, Ingress Prime, and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.“Over the last 7 years, live, real-world events have been central to Niantic’s goal in leveraging technology to create interactive experiences that fo

Dave Filoni’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars is one of the most beloved entries in the expansive Star Wars universe, and a new trailer for its final season hints that fans will get the closure they’ve always wanted. The Clone Wars will return for its seventh and final season on February 21st.The trailer brings back some of The Clone Wars’ most popular characters, including Darth Maul, Anakin Skywalker, Yoda, and, of course, Ahsoka Tano. Tano is best known as Anakin’s padawan w

Image: EA Tetris and Tetris Blitz, EA’s mobile versions of the classic puzzle game, are being discontinued. Android Police and MacRumors report that the apps will disappear from iOS and Android, respectively, on April 21st. After that date, you won’t be able to play them, even if they’re already downloaded on your device.Purists have long argued that touchscreen controls are one of the worst ways to play Tetris (and, look, they’re probably right), but EA made a valiant e

MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images A 2018 spyware attack on Jeff Bezos’ phone escalated into an international scandal on Wednesday, as United Nations human rights experts issued a stern statement criticizing the government of Saudi Arabia for allegedly conducting the hack.
“The information we have received suggests the possible involvement of the Crown Prince in surveillance of Mr. Bezos, in an effort to influence, if not silence, The Washington Post’s reporting on Saudi Arabia

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge After a slight delay last month, Motorola’s highly anticipated foldable Razr now has a release date: it’ll be out on February 6th for $1,499, with preorders starting on January 26th.The new preorder date is exactly a month after the originally planned December 26th date, which Motorola changed due to demand for the foldable device being higher than it had anticipated.Preorders will be available exclusively at Verizon, Walmart, and on Motorola’

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images The latest beta version of WhatsApp’s Android app has introduced a long-anticipated dark mode, WABetaInfo is reporting. “Dark Theme” is available to all beta users with version 2.20.13, and can be enabled in the “Chats” section of the app’s settings menu. You have the option of turning WhatsApp’s dark mode permanently on, permanently off, or else having it dictated by Android

The thing that convulsed the internet for much of yesterday was this Reuters report that Apple decided against throwing away its keys to users’ encrypted iCloud backups after the FBI complained about encryption.
The word “after” does a lot of work in that formulation — it reads as though it’s meant to be about cause but might just simply be about chronology. Reuters itself didn’t come out and say that Apple chose to retain the ability to unlock your iCloud bac

Jay Sullivan, product management director for privacy and integrity in Facebook Messenger, testifies during a hearing before Senate Judiciary Committee December 10th in Washington, DC | Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images Bay Area! I’ll be talking with Anna Wiener about Uncanny Valley, her brilliant new memoir of a life in tech, on February 4th at Manny’s in San Francisco. It’s our second-ever Interface Live event, and it would mean the world to me if you came to say hello and tal

Barstool Sports co-found David Portnoy posted anti-union tweets last August. | Photo by Tom Briglia/ Getty Images Barstool Sports has agreed to delete a pair of anti-union tweets and to notify its employees about their right to unionize, Bloomberg Law reports. One tweet, which was posted by the company’s co-founder David Portnoy, threatened to fire any employees who attempted to contact a union supporter “on the spot.” The informal settlement with the National Labor Relations

The German government is facing a bill of around $887,000 (800,000 euros) for failing to upgrade to Windows 10 ahead of the Windows 7 end of support date last week. German newspaper Handelsblatt reports that the German Federal Ministry is looking to secure at least 33,000 machines still running Windows 7, which involves paying Microsoft a fee per device for a year of extended security protection for Windows 7.
Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 last week, but millions of PCs still run the ope

Doug_DragoX (Twitter) The back panel of the Xbox Series X has been the subject of heightened speculation ever since AMD used a fake render of the upcoming console as part of its CES presentation. Now, alleged photos have appeared online of a prototype unit that may give some indication as to what Microsoft is preparing to ship.
First appearing on Twitter and corroborated as authentic by Thurrott’s Brad Sams, the images show the Series X’s vents, two USB-A ports on the back, one on t