Technology news

Photo: Epic Games Epic Games announced today that it won’t be hosting any Fortnite tournaments with cash prizes until it addresses performance issues affecting both players and the game’s servers. “Our goal is to improve performance before kicking off any cash prized competition,” the company said in a statement.
For Chapter 2 - Season 2, we're working to address performance issues impacting both clients and servers.Our goal is to improve performance before kicking off a

Waymo just announced a significant milestone: its first external fundraising round. The self-driving division of Alphabet raked in $2.25 billion in a funding round led by Silver Lake, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Mubadala Investment Company, the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi. Additional investors include Magna International, Andreessen Horowitz, and AutoNation, as well as Alphabet.To date, Waymo has been an outlier in the world of self-driving cars, relying almost exclusively o

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge One of the best deals from last year’s Black Friday shopping holiday was on the Google Pixel Slate tablet. That deal is back, and it’s a little better than before. Not only is it hundreds off of its usual $999 price, it’s an extra $50 cheaper than the previous best price, totaling $599 instead of $649 for the midrange configuration with an Intel Core i5 CPU.Plus, Google is throwing in a free Pixel Slate pen and keyboard at no extra cost, which

Apple Inc. has agreed to pay a settlement of up to $500 million, following a lawsuit accusing the company of intentionally slowing down the performance of older phones to encourage customers to buy newer models or fresh batteries.
The preliminary proposed class action lawsuit was disclosed Friday night and would see Applepay consumers $25 per phone, as reported by Reuters.
Any settlement needs to be approved by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, who oversaw the case brought in San Jose, Calif.
F

Waymo,the former Googleself-driving car project that is now a business under Alphabet, said Monday it raised $2.25 billion in a fundraising round led by Silver Lake, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Mubadala Investment Company.
This is the company’s first external investment, which also included Magna, Andreessen Horowitzand AutoNation and its parent company Alphabet.
“We’ve always approached our mission as a team sport, collaborating with our OEM and supplier partners,

So much for that correction!
After a desolate week, the United States saw its major indices rally on Monday, pushing the value of domestic and domestically listed securities higher. The gains came despite a rising number of infections in the country of the novel coronavirus, now known as COVID-19.
Last week, rising concern about an international slowdown caused by the infection led to sharp declines in the value of equities both at home and abroad. News continued to spill over the weekend, pushi

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images Uber and Lyft are telling their contracted drivers how best to prevent potential spread of the coronavirus, as more than 90,000 infections have been confirmed worldwide in the two months since the outbreak began.
Uber, like a number of other tech firms and large companies, is also restricting employee travel to China, northern Italy, Iran, and South Korea out of caution.
On Friday, Uber sent drivers around the world a link to a short set of guidelines via push n

Throughout this series on the rise of multiverse virtual worlds, I have outlined the collision of gaming and social media into a new multiverse era of social media within virtual worlds due to technological and cultural changes. The result will be a healthier ecosystem of social media than what currently exists and the economic development of these virtual worlds such that many people turn to them as sources of income.
The critical question that remains in this final part of the series: Who will

Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images Three new deaths caused by the new coronavirus were reported in King County, Washington where an outbreak is occurring among patients at a nursing facility. There are now 14 cases in King County, including five deaths — two of which were previously reported. A sixth patient, whose case originated in Snohomish County, also died.
The deaths were in a man in his 70s, a woman in her 70s, and a woman in her 80s. Two of the three were patients at Life Care Cent

Cyan Banisteris leaving Founders Fund to become a member of a new early-stage investment and operations-focused firm called Long Journey Ventures.
The move, first reported by Axios, brings Banister back to her early-stage roots as an investor after years at the multi-strategy and multi-stage investment fund founded by Peter Thiel. Banister’s departure comes weeks after Founders Fund announced the close of two new funds which will invest $3 billion in early and growth-stage companies.
In a

Photo by Taylor Hill/FilmMagic The business of business is rarely a pleasure, but sometimes it gets very juicy. Last year, the story of WeWork — its improbable rise and totally predictable downfall — was the juiciest: it had everything from a cult-leader, grifter chief exec to a laundry list of downright wild business practices (like leasing property directly from said grifter CEO). And what timing!The document that sunk ‘em was WeWork’s bonkers S-1 filing, which precede

Photo by Keyur Khamar/PGA TOUR via Getty Images The biggest moments in any given golf tournament broadcast can be captured by just a few cameras across a multi-acre course. But the upcoming broadcast of the Players Championship golf tournament on March 12th will let you see all of the moments. If you subscribe to PGA Tour Live through NBC Sports Gold, you’ll be able to peer through one of 120 cameras installed around the TPC Sawgrass course and switch through the live stream to view any o

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The world’s biggest social network is restricting social visits to its physical offices, as Facebook tries to protect its employees from coronavirus exposure, Business Insider reports.A Facebook spokesperson tells The Verge that the company, which has offices in 35 countries, is “taking steps to reduce the risk to our employees from the emerging COVID-19 situation, including temporarily halting social visitors to all of our offices.” Fac

Valve’s much-anticipated virtual reality game Half-Life: Alyx debuts on March 23rd, and it just offered a little more detail on what we’ll be playing. It released three short videos today showing off combat and puzzles in Alyx, as well as the game’s overall vibe.
The videos showcase some things we already knew about Alyx. First, much of the game is about semi-realistic gunfights, including manually reloading while being mobbed by enemies. Second, there are a lot of hand-based i

TC Sessions: Mobility is back in San Jose on May 14, and we’re excited to give the first peek of what and who is coming to the main stage. We’re not revealing everything just yet, but already this agenda highlights some of the best and brightest minds in autonomous vehicles, electrification and shared mobility.
We’ve selected the most innovative startups and top leaders from established tech companies working in mobility. This past year saw huge leaps forward, and we’re t

The exterior of CDC headquarters | Photo by Jessica McGowan/Getty Images A tally of the number of people tested for the novel coronavirus disappeared from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website on Monday. The change was first reported by journalist Judd Legum on Twitter. The disappearance of the numbers comes less than a week after the first cases of the virus with unknown origins were reported in the US. In the past few days, six deaths due to COVID-19, the disease caused by th

It’s a good idea to have a few questions in mind whenever you order a burger. Nothing too wild. Simple stuff, like: Does this burger have cheese? (It should.) Other toppings? (Knock yourself out.) How about fries on the side? (Anything worth doing is worth doing right.) And then the most important question: Is this burger involved in a massive, years-long fraud scheme? Because, as HBO’s McMillions would like to remind us, if you got a McDonald’s burger in the ’90s in the

Photo by Avery White for The Verge Google is reportedly adding a useful new feature in Android 11, which will let you know when your phone isn’t properly aligned on a wireless charging pad. The feature is the latest new trick discovered in Android 11 after Google released the first developer preview last month. Other new features have already been found ahead of Android 11’s full release later this year. The charging notification was first spotted by Reddit user jotafett and was rep

FX content is coming to Hulu . The company announced today the launch of a new FX hub on the streaming service that includes over 40 FX Networks TV shows, new original linear series and other FX originals that will now be exclusive to Hulu.
The addition is made possible thanks to Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox and its subsequent deal with NBCU that gave it full operational control of Hulu. Since then, Disney has made a number of changes to the streaming service, including a massi

Tech’s darling is out. On Sunday, the 38-year-old Democratic presidential contender stepped out of the race, clearing a path for moderates to coalesce around another candidate on the eve of Super Tuesday’s broad contest for delegates.
Buttigieg, a previous political unknown, ran a surprisingly successful long-shot presidential campaign, making history as the first gay candidate to make a real run at the presidency and vaulting his political profile well above his mayorship of South B

Xinhua/Li Muzi via Getty Images Everyone agrees, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), that if you want to avoid the transmission of disease, including the novel coronavirus, the best way to do that is to wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water, and avoid touching your face. But if you’re traveling, or otherwise don’t have access to soap and water, the next best thing is a hand sanitizer.
Can’t find one? You’re not alone. With increasing

Japanese retailer Bauhutte sells a great deal of furniture aimed at “gamers,” but few can top its one-stop shop for sleep and gaming. Like Voltron, but made for people who refuse to use major muscle groups, the Bauhutte “ultimate gaming bed” combines an elevated headboard, desk, snack shelves, tablet holder, and a bed to ensure you will only have to get up to use the bathroom, hopefully.
The full setup, which turns eight different products into a cocoon, costs roughly &ye

Welcome to Equity on Extra Crunch, a semi-regular series of interviews between the Equity team, venture capitalists, and operating executives at the neatest startups. The goal of this irregular medium is to dig into topics that don’t fit inside of the standard Equity format, but are still critical to understanding what’s happening in the private markets.
To kick things off, we invited two of our favorite early-stage investors over to TechCrunch’s offices in San Francisco for a

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Near the end of last year, Google outlined a new strategy of bundling together new software tricks for its Pixel phones into “feature drops” instead of trickling those features out individually. Today, the company is announcing its second feature drop, with much of the new stuff available for the Pixel 2 and newer — but some Pixel 4 exclusives in there.It introduces a new Motion Sense gesture for the Pixel 4 and 4 XL: just “tap” ab

Photo by Stefan Etienne / The Verge Nvidia has announced it has shifted its GPU Technology Conference (GTC) to be online-only due to concerns from the coronavirus outbreak. People who had registered for the event, which was originally set to be held in San Jose, California, from March 22nd to March 26th, will get a full refund.
“This decision to move the event online instead of at the San Jose Convention Center reflects our top priority: the health and safety of our employees, our partner

Image: Nvidia Nvidia’s GeForce Now took yet another hit this weekend with a new publisher pulling its software from the cloud gaming service. That’s because GeForce Now, unlike competing services like Google Stadia, lets anyone who purchases a digital game on Valve’s Steam marketplace reinstall it on a virtual machine and play it using its cloud platform.That doesn’t sit well with some game publishers and developers, including Raphael van Lierop, the game director and wr

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook announced today that it’s starting to roll out a “faster, smaller, and simpler” version of Messenger on iOS. Facebook says the new version of the app will load twice as fast and be one-fourth the size. The rollout is supposed to happen “over the next few weeks.”
In a Facebook post, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that once you have the new version, Messenger should “feel much faster and more responsive compared to oth

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A free Wi-Fi service at rail stations in the UK exposed the personal information of about 10,000 people, and the provider did not notify authorities because it considered the situation “low-risk,” the BBC reports. Email addresses, dates of birth and travel information were among the details visible in an unprotected database from provider C3UK, which was discovered by security researcher Jeremiah Fowler. Affected stations included Harlow Mill,

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A free Wi-Fi service at rail stations in the UK exposed the personal information of about 10,000 people, and the provider did not notify authorities because it considered the situation “low-risk,” the BBC reports. Email addresses, dates of birth and travel information were among the details visible in an unprotected database from provider C3UK, which was discovered by security researcher Jeremiah Fowler. Affected stations included Harlow Mill,

If you've read any of Mashable's laptop reviews, you know that some of the more jacked-up notebooks from the Lenovo ThinkPad, Apple MacBook, and Huawei MateBook series can do almost everything a desktop computer can do without sacrificing portability.
But spending upwards of $1,000 on a laptop? In this economy?
(Couldn't be us — at least, not until our tax refunds hit.)
We'll let you in on a little secret: You can easily save a ton of money on a laptop by forgoing "brand new" in favor of "

AT&T has entered the streaming service game, and it comes with a box. Officially launched nationwide on Mar. 2, AT&T TV is giving DirecTV some competition as the go-to streaming service that still resembles cable.
However, early reviews of the service are showing a lackluster content selection, really pricey live TV packages when Sling TV is much cheaper, and a wonky Google Assistant remote that just isn't as responsive as Alexa.
If you've been in the market for a new 4K TV, you're proba

Image: 505 Games Death Stranding, Hideo Kojima’s latest game, was released on PlayStation 4 last year, and is now coming to PC on June 2nd, published by 505 Games. The PC version of the game gets some new features, including a photo mode, support for high frame rate and ultrawide monitors, and some really cool Half-Life-themed cosmetics.The Half-Life cosmetics look great. There’s Alyx Vance’s gloves from the upcoming Half-Life: Alyx, Gordon Freeman’s glasses, the aforeme

Apple has tentatively agreed to a $500 million settlement after admitting to slowing down older phones. The deal would provide small payouts for many iPhone owners in the US, plus greater compensation for named class members and attorneys. It covers people who bought any product in the iPhone 6 and 7 lineup — which Apple secretly throttled to conserve battery life.
As Bloomberg Law notes, the settlement was filed in a California court last Friday and is awaiting final court approval. The d

Art-loving Marvel fans will want to sit up and take note here: Mondo's got a bunch of cool Fantastic Four stuff coming your way.
Starting on Thursday, March 5, you'll be able to head over to MondoShop.com and choose from a selection of items inspired by Marvel's First Family – so named for being the first superhero team to spring from the minds of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. 
The new collection begins with a pair of limited edition posters, each of which will also have an even more limit

NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using modified Copernicus Sentinel 5P data processed by the European Space Agency.  There’s been a dramatic drop in pollution across China as the country tries to contain COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. New maps using data collected from NASA and European Space Agency satellites show how nitrogen dioxide, a dangerous gas released by burning fuel, has dissipated since the outbreak.Maps depicting nit