Technology news

Photo by PAWAN SHARMA/AFP via Getty Images According to The Wall Street Journal, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has reportedly just bought the most expensive property in Los Angeles from David Geffen, another unimaginably wealthy man, for $165 million. (It’s the Warner Estate, which spreads out over nine acres in Beverly Hills.) That’s a wild amount of money for anything — I mean, aside from a 747? — but especially for a place you might presumably live in. (Bezos spent around

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney is one of the biggest names in video games these days, thanks to the seemingly unstoppable success of Fortnite. And with the spotlight on him as the keynote speaker at the annual DICE Summit, (as recapped by The Hollywood Reporter, VentureBeat, and others) Sweeney gave his thoughts on the overall video game industry — including his view that gaming companies as platforms need to “divorce ourselves from politics.”
As

A lengthy piece from Steven Levy in Wired today revealed parts of a 2006 journal from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. You can read the Wired story here, and also our take on the most notable part of it, which is that Zuckerberg once considered something wild called “dark profiles.” But what struck me most was the fact that what we saw today in Wired may be the only glimpse we ever get at Zuckerberg’s intimate journal record — because he destroyed the rest of it.“The n

Commissioner Rohit Chopra called for tougher penalties on companies that disguise advertising on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok as authentic reviews in a statement sent out Wednesday. The statement came after the FTC voted 5-0 to approve a Federal Register notice that would seek public comment on whether Endorsement Guides for advertising (which haven’t been updated since 2009) need to be reviewed, according to TechCrunch.
For years, the Federal Trade Commission has required

Photo credit should read Andrew Cowie/AFP/GettyImages Prices for .com domain names could go up for the first time in eight years, with the group responsible for overseeing top-level internet domains, ICANN, close to granting final approval for a series of price hikes.
The price of .com registration has been frozen at $7.85 since 2012. Consumers didn’t necessarily see that price — you could have been charged more or less by a registrar — but that was the price domain registrars

In December, online coding bootcamp Lambda School quietly partnered with Edly, a digital marketplace that helps schools sell income-sharing agreements (ISAs) to accredited investors. The arrangement allows Lambda to receive money from the ISAs upfront, rather than waiting for students to find jobs. But it also flies in the face of the values Lambda typically espouses: namely, that ISAs align its incentives with the goals and aspirations of the students.Pleased to announce our latest offering - a

A 2006 journal from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had lots of ideas about potential concepts for the company, including one that would let users create profiles for people who weren’t actually on the social network yet.
Details about the journal come from Wired editor at large Steven Levy, who is publishing a book about the history of Facebook and published an excerpt of that book in Wired today. The full excerpt has all sorts of juicy details about Facebook and Zuckerberg.
Much of the exce

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In a blog post Wednesday, Facebook announced it had taken down dozens of Instagram and Facebook accounts that engaged in foreign interference, including separate campaigns from Russia, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Iran.
The Iranian campaign was apparently focused on winning over Trump-supporting evangelicals in the US. The posts shared by the fake accounts were “news” items about US elections, Christianity, US immigration policy, and US-Iran relation

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you’re a Mac user, then you have a copy of Safari on your computer — it’s the default browser for macOS. If you do use it, you’ll be happy to learn that, like other major browsers, Safari has been provided with a number of safeguards to enhance user privacy.
Tracking is a major threat to online privacy, and there are several different methods for tracking users, from first-party cookies (usually used to store your preferences) t

Undisclosed influencer marketing posts on social media should trigger financial penalties, according to a statement released today by the Federal Trade Commission’s Rohit Chopra. The FTC has just voted 5-0 to approve a Federal Register notice calling for public comments on questions related to whether The Endorsement Guides for advertising need to be updated.
“When companies launder advertising by paying an influencer to pretend that their endorsement or review is untainted by a fina

Last year, Microsoft launched a preview of Project xCloud, its ambitious game streaming service that aims to deliver games to any screen — console, PC, or mobile. However, the service until now has only been available to mobile users on Android. Today, that changes as Microsoft is bringing the Project xCloud preview to iOS devices by way of Apple’s TestFlight program.
Microsoft had already been testing xCloud on iOS internally, but had yet to open it up to the public.
Unfortunately,

A lawsuit filed by the Massachusetts attorney general includes new details about how the company intentionally marketed illegally to teens, including advertising on websites for Seventeen Magazine, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Nick Jr.
The suit from Attorney General Maura Healey makes good on the 2018 announcement from her office that she would investigate the company’s marketing and advertising campaign for illegally targeting children.
Filed in Suffolk Superior Court today, the lawsu

In-orbit manufacturing startup Made in Space has tapped Colorado’s Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT) to help support its Archinaut One demonstration mission contracted by NASA, which is currently set to take place in 2022. The mission will see Made in Space show off the assembly of two ten-meter solar arrays on orbit, which will then be used to power an ESPA-class satellite, providing up to five times more power than is available via power sources used for those satellites not assembled in or

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Essential did a truly impressive job delivering fast monthly patches and Android updates for its one and only smartphone, the Essential Phone. But today the company announced it’s closing up shop, which means that those software updates won’t be coming any longer. Customer support is also being phased out effective immediately.
The Newton Mail service that Essential also took over when it acquired CloudMagic is shutting down as of April 3rd.As part

The GSMA, the organization behind MWC, the world’s largest mobile trade show, has announced that it is officially canceling the show. MWC usually attracts over 100,000 attendees from 200 countries to Barcelona. This year’s show was supposed to take place on February 24-27.
Several publications received a statement about the cancellation. “The GSMA has cancelled MWC Barcelona 2020 because the global concern regarding the coronavirus outbreak, travel concern and other circumstanc

Essential was supposed to disrupt the smartphone industry. And when it was done with that, it was coming for the smart home. The company came out of stealth with a $330 million funding round and grandiose plans for a new brand of handset, led by none other than Android head, Andy Rubin.But bad timing, broader industry issues and a founder embroiled in some pretty troubling allegations of sexual misconduct contributed to a company that has struggled to make it far beyond the launch of its first h

Matteo Franceschetti,CEO of Eight Sleep,would prefer that you don’t call his startup a mattress company.
Eight Sleep does sell mattresses, albeit smart ones packed with sensors and temperature regulation controls. The company has raised north of $70 million from backers including Founders Fundand Khosla Ventures. A great deal of this funding surrounds the idea that there is more untapped potential in the sleep economy than existing players in the space have been able to imagine.
While Fran

Last February we launched Extra Crunch, and today we’re celebrating its one-year anniversary. As a token of appreciation to our readers, we’re offering a limited-time deal for annual Extra Crunch membership. From now until the end of February, new users signing up for Extra Crunch in the U.S. can get a full year of membership for only $99 plus tax (normally priced at $150/year). 
Get Extra Crunch membership for only $99 (plus tax) here.
Extra Crunch is our membership program and

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The world’s biggest phone show, Mobile World Congress, is no longer taking place this year. After coronavirus threatened to throw MWC into chaos, the GSM Association (GSMA), which organizes the show, has now canceled it. It comes after more than a week of exhibitors and companies pulling out of MWC.
Bloomberg reports that GSMA CEO John Hoffman said the coronavirus outbreak has made it “impossible” to hold the event. MWC was scheduled to take p

BP CEO Bernard Looney speaks during an event in London on February 12, 2020, where he declared the company’s intentions to achieve “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050.  | Photo by DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP via Getty Images Oil company BP says it will try to cancel out nearly all its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It’s still unclear how a company that sells the stuff that heats up the planet — it plans to continue pumping out fossil fuels despite this announcem

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Essential is shutting down less than three years after the startup unveiled its first smartphone. The company’s one and only product, the Essential Phone, sold poorly and received mixed reviews. A follow-up phone was canceled, and a number of other promised devices — like a smart home assistant and operating system — never materialized.
The startup was founded by Android creator Andy Rubin. While that initially drew hype and investment, it qui

Photo by Nick Statt / The Verge Microsoft is expanding its Project xCloud service to the iPhone today. The software giant is launching a beta of xCloud through Apple’s TestFlight service, allowing xCloud testers to try the service on an iPhone or iPad. It’s the first time we’ve seen a cloud game streaming service appear on iOS, with Google’s Stadia and Nvidia’s GeForce Now still not available on Apple’s devices.
“To comply with App Store policies, the p

Netflix is looking to get young adults hooked on its service by making its popular teenage rom-com, “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” available to stream for free to everyone in the U.S., including non-subscribers. This isn’t the first time Netflix has offered free streaming — it teased Brits last year by offering an episode of “The Crown” for free, and has run similar tests in markets like India and parts of South America. But this is one of the only

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is launching margin trading today. Margin trading lets you trade on leverage. But it works both ways — margin trading lets you multiply your gains and your losses.
Margin trading is going to be available on Coinbase Pro, the company’s exchange interface for educated investors. Both retail and institutional investors will be able to submit margin trading orders with up to 3x leverage. It’ll work with any pair of assets with USD as the base curren

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1. Samsung Galaxy Z Flip hands-on: This is more like it
When the Galaxy Fold was finally released to the public after numerous delays, the device came swaddled in warnings. It was a long list, and not exactly a vote of confidence for those who just dropped $2,000 on an unproven device.
Announced

Marketing startup Habu is emerging from stealth today and announcing that it has already raised $15 million in Series A funding.
The company comes out of super{set}, the startup studio created by Krux founders Tom Chavez and Vivek Vaidya. In fact, Chavez is Habu’s chairman, Vaidya serves as CTO and their former Krux colleague Matt Kilmartin (who eventually became chief customer officer for Salesforce’s consumer engagement platform after Salesforce acquired Krux) is the startup’

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If you search Twitter for “certain keywords associated with the Census,” instead of getting random tweets with census hoaxes, you’ll now get a search prompt that will provide links to the official census Twitter account and website, Twitter announced in a blog post. The move is an expansion of Twitter’s election integrity policy, which has existed since last April and prohibits users from sharing “false or misleading informat

Swiftmile,the startup that wants to become the gas station for micromobility vehicles, is getting into advertising. Swiftmile already supplies cities and private operators with docks equipped to park and charge both scooters and e-bikes. Now, the company is starting to integrate digital displays that attach to its charging stations to provide public transit info, traffic alerts and, of course, ads.
“It adds tremendous value because it’s a massive market,” Swiftmile CEO Colin Ro

There’s something supremely satisfying about the ritual of making coffee: the smell, the heat, the way all of the tiny details eventually become second nature. For some, the process can be as important and gratifying as the end product. And it turns out that can be true even when you’re brewing a virtual cup.
Coffee Talk is a game about, well, coffee and talking. It’s a sort of visual novel where you play the proprietor of a coffee shop in an alternate version of Seattle. It&rs