Technology news

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Snap continues to grow its user base with the release of innovative product features, but those features have come with a steep monetary cost. In its latest earnings call, Snap disclosed that it lost $241 million this past quarter on $561 million in revenue, compared to only $192 million in Q4 of 2018 on $390 million in revenue. It did manage to grow its daily active user base by 8 million this quarter, to reach 218 million. However, it’s asking for

Tim Murtaugh, the director of communications for President Donald Trump's re-election campaign, tried to throw shade at Democrats with a photo of Team Trump donning "Keep Iowa Great" hats as they left the state on Tuesday. It didn't exactly go as planned. 
"So much winning," he tweeted, alongside the photo of the Trump allies on a plane. "Didn’t have time to pay attention, so how’d it go for the Democrats? Everything go off without a hitch?"
This was, of course, a reference to t

We're less than a week away from Samsung's big Unpacked event, and the leaks will not stop coming.
The big draw at Unpacked this year is the Samsung Galaxy S20 line of flagship phones. Just in case you still thought we were wrong about that, Samsung went ahead and leaked the phone on one of its European websites for a brief moment on Tuesday before taking it down, according to WinFuture, who also captured screenshots of the product page.
While we're still waiting on confirmation for plenty of ma

Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images The first patient in the United States with a confirmed case of the new coronavirus was given an infusion of an experimental drug as a part of his treatment at a hospital in Washington State. One day after taking the drug, the patient started to get better. Four days later, his fever was gone.A single case study isn’t enough to prove anything. It’s not clear if the medication, called remdesivir, actually helped the patient, or if his improvement was

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Disney+ might be Disney’s streaming priority right now, but rolling out Hulu to international markets is still a primary goal, with the company aiming for a 2021 date.CEO Bob Iger said the international rollout on Hulu took a backseat to Disney+’s launch, but the company is still working on the deals and license agreements to bring Hulu to international markets. Iger said it’s likely that 2021 will

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google Fiber announced today that it will be dropping its TV package option to focus solely on providing high-speed internet service. It will still provide the service to existing customers who pay for it, but the company says “customers today just don’t need traditional TV” anymore when so many options are available online through over-the-top TV services and streaming platforms.“As of today, Google Fiber will no longer offer a li

Rockstar Games Dan Houser, co-founder of Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar Games, will leave the company in March. The news comes from an SEC document registered by publisher Take-Two Interactive (via @Nibellion on Twitter). This move comes after an “extended break” taken by Houser that started in the spring of 2019. Rockstar Games was founded in 1998, and Dan Houser contributed prominently to the company’s successful franchises, including Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, Red De

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge LG Electronics, the division of LG Corporation responsible for mobile phones and other consumer tech, says it will be withdrawing from the upcoming Mobile World Congress expo in Barcelona, Spain due to the coronavirus outbreak. LG’s decision follows ZTE’s cancellation of its MWC press conference earlier today.“With the safety of its employees and general public foremost in mind, LG has decided to withdraw from exhibiting and particip

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Plus will improve upon the company’s original true wireless earbuds on multiple fronts, according to a specs page tweeted by Evan Blass. Battery life is perhaps the most significant one, with the Buds Plus lasting for 11 hours on a single charge (up from six hours on the previous Galaxy Buds). Combined with the juice in the charging case, Samsung says the new set can last up to 22 hours versus the 13-hour max runtime

Disney+ has hit 26.5 million subscribers since its Nov. 12 launch, according to Disney's latest earnings report.
That's a big number for a new streamer — one with not nearly the global reach of Netflix, but it's coming — but given Disney's expansive library, aggressive marketing, near-limitless resources, and a certain adorable Child, we're not surprised.
Verizon's unlimited customers gained access to a free year of Disney+, accounting for a significant chunk of the subscription numb

Marvel Studios’ big Disney+ series finally have release dates, with the first series hitting in August. More specific dates are expected to be announced in the coming months.CEO Bob Iger confirmed that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will debut in August, with WandaVision premiering in December. Iger did not give a release date for Loki, but the show is expected to premiere in 2021. Teasers for both shows were shown off during a Super Bowl spot on Sunday.
The company previously announced

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tinder’s making a lot of money off the single people of the world. In its final earnings release for 2019, Match Group disclosed that Tinder brought in $1.2 billion in revenue last year, further cementing its place as the dating app company’s most valuable asset.
Match as a whole earned $2.1 billion in revenue last year, meaning Tinder represents half of its income. The company, which also owns Hinge, OkCupid, and Match.com, also said Tinder a

Image: WinFuture Samsung appears to have accidentally revealed the Galaxy S20 in a set of leaked marketing images posted to its own website, as spotted by WinFuture.
The images confirm a few things that were already rumored about the phone, including the Galaxy S20 name (instead of the S11, which would technically be next by current Galaxy naming standards), a hole-punch selfie camera, and a tall camera bump. The screenshots also revealed a new gray case with LEDs, which is similar to the LED c

Disney+ amassed 28.6 million Disney+ subscribers in the first three months since it launched, far exceeding the 20 million estimate that analysts suggested Disney would make by the end of 2020. The company’s earnings report stated there were 26.5 million subscribers by the end of December, but CEO Bob Iger announced on the call that Disney+ hit 28.6 million as of Monday.“We had a strong first quarter, highlighted by the launch of Disney+, which has exceeded even our greatest expectat

Disney+ amassed 26.5 million Disney+ subscribers in the first three months since it launched, far exceeding the 20 million estimate that analysts suggested Disney would make by the end of 2020.
“We had a strong first quarter, highlighted by the launch of Disney+, which has exceeded even our greatest expectations,” CEO Bob Iger said in the release.
The subscriber growth helped Disney beat its overall earnings, coming in at $28.6 billion in revenue, above the projected. Disney’s

A wildlife camera filmed the profoundly rare sight of a coyote leading its badger companion through a tunnel beneath a Northern California highway.
The now-viral clip shows the two species using the culvert to access land on the other side of the road in November 2019. They may have been going to hunt prey together — like the species do in places like Colorado.
The two animals crossing together is a unique glimpse into the little-known, fascinating relationships between wildlife living ami

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Twitter will ban faked pictures, video, and other media that are “deceptively shared” and pose a serious safety risk. The company just announced a new policy on synthetic and manipulated media — a category that encompasses sophisticated deepfake videos but also low-tech deceptively edited content. In addition to banning egregious offenders, Twitter will label some tweets as “manipulated media” and link to a Twitter Moment

As election season heats up, Twitter revealed its plan for fighting deepfakes and other deceptive video.
The company said that, beginning March 5, it will start to add warning labels to tweets that contain videos with "synthetic and manipulated media," and that it will remove them entirely when they are likely to "cause serious harm." The update comes nearly three months after the platform asked users to weigh in on what such a policy should look like. 
Notably, Twitter's policy isn't limit

Homie has made an impression among younger, first-time home buyers in the Utah and Arizona markets for cutting out the traditional closing costs, 6% real estate commissions and arduous paperwork associated with traditional home sales. It now plans to explore opening up in three new markets and will begin a Vegas launch in March with a fresh infusion of $23 million in Series B equity financing.
While most real estate outfits now cater to customers online, Homietakes a different approach, employin

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram isn’t the biggest moneymaker for Facebook, but it certainly plays a major role in generating revenue for the social media company. Bloomberg reports today that the app brought in $20 billion in advertising revenue last year, which accounts for more than a quarter of Facebook’s overall 2019 revenue.
Ads show up on Instagram in between Stories, within the feed, and on the Explore tab. The Instagram team has increasingly figured out how

Image: Genius Genius’ popular “Verified” video series is coming to Apple Music starting today. The show has artists explain the meaning behind the lyrics of their hit songs, featuring musicians like Billie Eilish and J Balvin.
Going forward, Apple Music will co-produce “Verified.” Episodes will now premiere on Apple’s streaming platform and can be found on the artist’s page. Then, they’ll be available on Genius’ website and YouTube channel a

Valentine's Day is rapidly approaching, and you might be spending your days swiping or "liking" in order to muster up some kind of date for the occasion. (Or at least a hookup to fill the void of human connection for a few hours, even if that void grows bigger afterwards...just me?)
We live in a time where broader tech companies are getting into the dating game, so why shouldn't Amazon add another tentacle to its octopus business model and have a dating site, too? Facebook shouldn't be allowed t

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The mobile software developed to tally votes in the Iowa Democratic caucus yesterday has taken center stage in an ongoing controversy over who exactly created it and why it was deployed in such a sloppy state. Now, thanks to Motherboard, we know what the app looks like, and the error screens that specific precinct leaders encountered as they attempted to call in vote totals last night.The app was created by a company called Shadow Inc., a for-profit softwa

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The mobile software developed to tally votes in the Iowa Democratic caucus yesterday has taken center stage in an ongoing controversy over who exactly created it and why it was deployed in such a sloppy state. Now, thanks to Motherboard, we know what the app looks like, and the error screens that specific precinct leaders encountered as they attempted to call in vote totals last night.The app was created by a company called Shadow Inc., a for-profit softwa

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Alphabet’s Jigsaw subsidiary has revealed a new tool that’s intended to help journalists more easily spot deepfakes and manipulated images. The tool, called Assembler, uses “detectors” to analyze an image or deepfake; determine if it’s authentic; and if it’s not, inform the user where the image may have been manipulated.Assembler’s detectors can see things like an image pasted over another or changes to image brig

As Google's game streaming service Stadia has stalled out of the gate with tepid reviews and a disquieting response to the public wondering when we can expect more, Nvidia's GeForce Now is setting itself up to take the lead in the race to become the premier game streaming service.
GeForce Now launched Tuesday, offering subscribers the ability to play the video games they own from a variety of different devices without needing a beefy PC. With GeForce Now, the computer part company will run playe

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain is the world’s biggest mobile trade show, but the coronavirus will be making it a little smaller this year — Chinese phone manufacturer and telecom giant ZTE just confirmed that it’s canceling its press conference at MWC 2020, citing secondary effects of the virus outbreak.
It’s partly due to practical issues like travel and visa delays, a spokesperson tells The Verge. Some people weren

Photo by Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images On Tuesday, President Trump will deliver his third State of the Union address to Congress. The annual address by the president to legislators is included in the Constitution, which states that the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”
The president is giving the address at an unusually t

Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Yahoo famously suffered numerous data breaches from 2012 to 2016 (including one in 2013 that affected all 3 billion of its users), and the company is informing users that they can now submit claims for either credit monitoring or cash compensation as part of a proposed class action lawsuit settlement. Yahoo says if you had a Yahoo account anytime between 2012 and 2016 and are a resident of the US or Israel, the class

Facebook announced on Tuesday it intends to roll out a number of additional parental controls for its Messenger Kids app aimed at children under the age of 13.
Facebook product manager Morgan Brown explains how the new tools and features are meant to help parents "manage their child's experience in Messenger Kids." There's actually five new features being made available in the Parent Dashboard, which parents can access from the Facebook iOS and Android apps.
The first covers recent contacts and

The Federal Trade Commission plans to block the sale of on-demand razor company Harry’s to competitor Edgewell Personal Care (the parent company of Schick) because it says the acquisition “would eliminate one of the most important competitive forces in the shaving industry.” That’s a new take on the direct-to-consumer razor market, essentially making the argument that one brand is critical to prevent big companies from dominating — or rather, continuing to dominate

Netflix Netflix’s newest original series Next In Fashion isn’t taking chances when it comes to viewers skipping episodes or quitting the show entirely. Hosts Tan France and Alexa Chung directly command viewers to click through to the next episode at the end of the one preceding it, taking a cue from YouTubers who often push people to subscribe to their channels or click through to another video. The decision also highlights the new, cutthroat nature of Netflix Originals and the poss