Technology news

The Trump administration announced Friday it would halt immigration from Nigeria — Africa’s most populous nation with the continent’s largest economy and leading tech sector.
The restrictions would stop short of placing a full travel ban on the country of 200 million, but will suspend U.S. immigrant visas for Nigeria, along with Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar.
That applies to citizens from those countries looking to live permanently in the U.S. The latest restrictions are said

NASAhas awarded Maxar an estimated $142 million contract to demonstrate in-orbit spacecraft refueling and assembly of new components using a custom robotic platform in space.
The space infrastructure dexterous robot, or SPIDER, program will be part of NASA’s Restore-L mission to demonstrate automation of proposed orbital tasks like reconfiguring or repairing a satellite or manufacturing new components from scratch.
The first thing the Restore-L spacecraft will do is show that it can synchr

The Fast and the Furious franchise is one full of improbability, a place where the laws of physics, science, and logic are thrown aside in favor of the inexorable powers of things like muscle cars, nitrous, and “family.” But the newly released trailer for F9 (the official name for the ninth Fast and Furious movie) may have just revealed the most fantastical thing of all: it appears to take place in a world where the failed RED Hydrogen One phone is a hit, with multiple characters app

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge App developer Marco Arment has a new update out today for his popular mobile podcast player Overcast. In a detailed blog post, Arment says the new version of Overcast now comes with a totally overhauled volume normalization feature, called Voice Boost 2, that relies on “dramatically more sophisticated methods, leading to more consistent results and much better sound quality.”
“Voice Boost 2 is a mastering-quality audio-processing pip

Kyle Lomeli ContributorShare on Twitter Kyle Lomeli is the CTO and a founding engineer at CarGurus.com.Online commerceaccounted for nearly $518 billion in revenue in the United States alone last year. The growing number of online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay will command 40% of the global retail market in 2020. As the number of digital offerings — not only marketplaces but also online storefronts and company websites — available to consumers continues to grow, the primary challe

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A Russian satellite has positioned itself uncomfortably close to an American spy satellite in orbit around Earth, leading space trackers to speculate that the foreign vehicle is doing some spying of its own.The Russian spacecraft is meant to inspect other satellites, and experts in the space community believe it may now be keeping a watchful eye on the secretive US vehicle. But the motivation behind this in-space stalking is still unknown.
All January, am

Considering how large the Fast and Furious universe has become, it’s fitting that the first trailer for F9, the ninth installment in the mainstream series, debuted on Super Bowl weekend after an hourslong music festival dedicated to the movie.
It was worth the wait, though. F9’s first trailer brings back some familiar faces including Dominic Toretto’s (Vin Diesel) sister, Mia and friend Han. Introduced in the first movie, Mia became a main character in the franchise as it devel

Legacy, a male fertility startup, has just raised a fresh, $3.5 million in funding from Bill Maris’s San Diego-based venture firm, Section 32, along with Y Combinator and Bain Capital Ventures, which led a $1.5 million seed round for the Boston startup last year.
We talked earlier today with Legacy’sfounder and CEO Khaled Kteily about his now two-year-old, five-person startup and its big ambitions to become the world’s preeminent male fertility center. Our biggest question was

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images FCC chairman Ajit Pai has sent a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, stating that the commission’s Enforcement Bureau has found that US carriers “apparently” broke the law by selling the location data of their unknowing customers. “I am committed to ensuring that all entities subject to our jurisdiction comply with the Communications Act and the FCC’s rules, including those that protect consumers’ sensitive inf

AbleGamers The Xbox Adaptive Controller already expands the usability of Xbox for gamers with disabilities, and today, a third-party add-on takes that controller to the next level, allowing gamers to turn their power wheelchairs into game controllers. Called the Freedom Wing Adapter, the box connects the Xbox Adaptive Controller to a wheelchair through its 9-pin port. This means a joystick that controls a wheelchair every day can be turned into a controller, which is particularly useful for peo

Photo by Luke Dray/Getty Images Any foreign national who has traveled within China in the last 14 days will not be allowed to enter the United States, according to a proclamation from President Trump. The action is to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, said US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar announced today.Any US citizen who has traveled in China will undergo health screening on entry into the country and be asked to self quarantine for 14 days. US citizens who have tr

Ann Miura-Ko ContributorShare on Twitter Ann Miura-Ko is a co-founding partner at Floodgate, a seed-stage VC firm. A repeat member of the Forbes Midas List and the New York Times Top 20 Venture Capitalists Worldwide, she earned a PhD in math modeling of cybersecurity at Stanford University. More posts by this contributorYou need a minimum viable company, not a minimum viable product
Hi, I’m Ann.
I was one of the first investors in Lyft, Refinery29 and Xamarin. I’ve been on the Midas

Ann Miura-Ko ContributorShare on Twitter Ann Miura-Ko is a co-founding partner at Floodgate, a seed-stage VC firm. A repeat member of the Forbes Midas List and the New York Times Top 20 Venture Capitalists Worldwide, she earned a PhD in math modeling of cybersecurity at Stanford University. More posts by this contributorYou need a minimum viable company, not a minimum viable product
Hi, I’m Ann.
I was one of the first investors in Lyft, Refinery29 and Xamarin. I’ve been on the Midas

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Amazon’s Kindle products are some of the most popular e-readers around, but there’s a price to pay for the convenience of Amazon’s huge library and convenient syncing features: the company appears to be tracking, recording, and storing data on every single tap you make on the device. The extent of the tracking was brought to light in a tweet by Adrianne Jeffries, an investigative reporter for The Markup (and friend of The Verge) earl

Vine reboot Byte has shared initial details of its partner program, which will give creators monetization options among other benefits like direct contact with the company, access to experimental features, meet and greets, and Byte apparel.The short-form video app created by Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann launched last week on iOS and Android, and it saw more than 780,000 downloads in its first weekend, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower. By comparison, Byte competitor TikTok has 1.5 billion

Photo by Elif Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images The FBI is investigating the alleged hack into Jeff Bezos’ phone by Saudi Arabia, The Guardian reports. The Amazon CEO was interviewed by federal investigators last April as part of a larger probe into Israeli technology firm NSO Group, according to Reuters.Bezos’ personal cellphone was hacked via WhatsApp in May 2018, allegedly by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, although Saudi Arabia has denied any involvem

More than a year and a half after wireless carriers were caught red-handed selling the real-time location data of their customers to anyone willing to pay for it, the FCChas determined that they committed a crime. An official documentation of exactly how these companies violated the law is forthcoming.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai shared his finding in a letter to Congressman Frank Pallone (D-NJ), who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee that oversees the agency, and others in the House. Rep. Pallo

Photo by MATT HARTMAN/AFP via Getty Images The 195 United States citizens who were evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the new coronavirus outbreak, will be placed under quarantine. This is the first time since the 1960s that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has exercised its legal right to place people into quarantine.
The evacuated people will be quarantined at a military base in California for 14 days. Right now, 14 days is the longest estimate for how long it takes t

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge For the first time, Roku has found itself in a heated carriage dispute that’s very familiar to cable providers, but less often associated with tech companies. Yesterday, the conflict between Roku and Fox spilled out into the open, with Roku emailing customers to announce that all of Fox’s standalone channels would abruptly be going away on January 31st.With virtually no notice, Roku has kicked Fox Now, Fox News, and Fox Sports (among others) off its

Ball Corporation Fifty thousand aluminum cups will replace plastic containers for beer and liquor at the Super Bowl this Sunday as the Hard Rock Stadium tries to go green. (PepsiCo will also serve its drinks in aluminum.) It’s not clear how much better the switch is for the environment, though — and the best option is probably to ditch these single-use cups altogether.The Welford Road Stadium in the UK, home of the Leicester Tigers, started using reusable cups in 2019 to cut down it

Nintendo definitively crushed my dreams this week, when it insisted, once and for all, that it is not releasing a new Switch model in 2020. This more or less debunks the longstanding rumor that a Switch Pro is on its way, and I’m fine, not salty about it at all. In case you haven’t been party to the madness, there have been persistent rumors that Nintendo is working on a third Switch model. This hypothetical sibling to the Switch Classic and the Switch Lite was thought to

ERIC BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images San Francisco-based medical records startup Practice Fusion allegedly developed software for pharmaceutical companies to help increase the number of prescriptions doctors wrote for pain medications, according to a settlement with the US Department of Justice, Bloomberg reports. The company, which supplied its software to tens of thousands of doctors offices nationwide, admitted doing so as part of a $145 million federal settlement this week to resolve civil and

There’s a reason why Data Privacy Day pisses me off.
January 28 was the annual “Hallmark holiday” for cybersecurity, ostensibly a day devoted to promoting data privacy awareness and staying safe online. This year, as in recent years, it has become a launching pad for marketing fluff and promoting privacy practices that don’t hold up.
Privacy has become a major component of our wider views on security, and it’s in sharper focus than ever as we see multiple examples o

Shares of One Medical are worth $19.50 this morning after the venture-backed unicorn priced its IPO at $14 per share last night. The company opened at $18 before rising further, according to Yahoo Finance data. At its current price, One Medical is worth about 40% more than its IPO price, a strong debut for the company.
The result is a boon for One Medical, which raised $532.1 million during its time as a private company. At $14 per share, the company was worth $1.71 billion. At 19.50, One Medica

Deadspin is sort of back, baby — emphasis on the “sort of.” The writers of the beloved sports blog have teamed up for Super Bowl weekend in an abbreviated, un-Deadspin-branded form: Unnamed Temporary Sports Blog Dot Com, courtesy of the password manager Dashlane. Call it an offering to the Big Game.
The Unnamed Temporary Sports Blog will run for one long weekend: three days of blogs. The writers are familiar: Tom Ley is editing, and there are already posts from Drew Magary, Alb

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. Arvind Krishna will replace Ginni Rometty as IBM CEO in April
Krishna, IBM’ssenior vice president for cloud and cognitive software, will take over on April 6 after a couple months of transition. Rometty will remain with the company as chairman of the board.
Krishna reportedly drove the m

Photo by Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images American and Delta airlines announced they would temporarily suspend all flights to and from China amid growing concerns about the coronavirus outbreak. The news comes after the US State Department issued its highest travel warning last night against all non-essential travel to the country.American Airlines said it would suspend all flights to and from the Chinese mainland through March 27th, though acknowledged that “adjustments”

Today’s your last day to score early-bird pricing on tickets to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020, which takes place on March 3. If you want to keep $150 in your wallet, beat the deadline and buy your ticket here before the clock strikes 11:59 p.m. (PT) tonight!
Our one-day conference dedicated to robotics and AI — the good, the bad and the challenging — features interviews, panel discussions, Q&As, workshops and demos. Join roughly 1,500 experts, visionaries, creators, found

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A new bill would reduce legal protections for apps and websites, potentially jeopardizing online encryption. The draft bill would form a “National Commission on Online Child Exploitation Prevention” to establish rules for finding and removing child exploitation content. If companies don’t follow these rules, they could lose some protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which largely shields companies from liability