Technology news

The ThinkPad mouse nub — i.e., the TrackPoint — is a controversial piece of technology. People tend to either despise the red dot-shaped substitute for a real mouse, or adore it as the single best mouse solution around. For those in the second camp is Lenovo’s new $99 ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II, an updated version of its old wireless keyboard that lets you use that good TrackPoint nub UI with your desktop computer.The TrackPoint II — which was announced at CES, but g

Photo by Michele Doying / The Verge Facebook’s business is booming, thanks to shelter in place and quarantine orders worldwide due to the COVID-19 pandemic that have everyone using social networks and staring at screens far more than average.The company, which reported first quarter earnings for 2020 on Wednesday, says “a record number of people” are using its services, primarily its Messenger and WhatsApp chat apps as well as Instagram. Last month, as the pandemic intensified

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok is seemingly thriving during the global pandemic, and today, analytics platform Sensor Tower reported that the social media platform has been downloaded more than 2 billion times globally. It was downloaded 315 million times this quarter alone in the App Store and Google Play combined. Notably, these app download figures don’t account for third-party app stores that are popular in China. Sensor Tower says India, China, and the US are the coun

Ubisoft has officially announced the next game in its long-running Assassin’s Creed series: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which adds vikings to the world’s preeminent historical murder simulator.There are not a lot of details for Valhalla just yet — Ubisoft has only released an initial teaser image (created in a live stream by artist Kode Abdo, also known as Bosslogic). But the promotional art shows off the Norse-inspired setting for the upcoming game, including a breaded, g

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Tesla turned a surprise profit in the first quarter of 2020 of $16 million despite factory shutdowns in China and the US, the company announced on Wednesday, and said it may still hit its goal of delivering 500,000 vehicles worldwide this year even in the face of the pandemic.There are, of course, caveats to both of those statements. Tesla sold $354 million worth of regulatory credits in the quarter, a record for the company. And while Tesla said it has th

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft posted the third quarter of its 2020 financial results today, and all eyes are on the early impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The company is reporting revenue of $35 billion and net income of $10.8 billion. Revenue is up 15 percent, and net income jumped 22 percent, and Microsoft says “COVID-19 had minimal net impact on the total company revenue.”
Microsoft does note that in the final weeks of the quarter, ended March 31st,

On my TV screen, Logan Marshall-Green is listening intently. I know of Marshall-Green, the actor, but I have no idea who Marshall-Green, this unnamed character, is just yet. He shifts in his seat and chimes in occasionally with comments to a conversation I’m not fully part of. This continues until the clip ends. He mentioned a name I’ve never heard. I type it into a database and wait to see what results come back.
Telling Lies, Sam Barlow’s spiritual successor to Her Story, lau

Photo by Abbie Parr/Getty Images Top tennis players including Serena and Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova, and (known Overwatch fan) Naomi Osaka will compete in a live-streamed Mario Tennis Aces doubles tournament this weekend. The players will be paired with other celebrities and athletes, including Karlie Kloss, Steve Aoki, and Gigi Hadid, in a tournament that’s meant to offer a fun alternative to the pro sports that have gone missing due to the pandemic. The tournament is being called t

In the era of social-distancing, words have become one of our best replacements for physical intimacy. That's especially true when it comes to dirty talk, whether it's done over the phone, sexting, or video chat.
"If I'm dirty talking with someone who's sheltering in place in Italy or just down the street, I can't touch them, can't taste them, can't smell them," says Tina Horn, a sex educator who hosts the Why Are People Into That podcast and wrote the SFSX comic book. "But I can use language to

Why are these AI-generated memes better than any a human being could make?
Internet users have used the Imgflip meme generator to create their own memes for the better part of a decade. Now, the site is generating its own  memes, using the help of artificial intelligence. 
Harkening back to AI-generated feet pictures and AI-generated faces, the site This Meme Does Not Exist matches captions with a selection of popular meme formats. 
Here's an extremely topical example. 
Image

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Today, Twitch is getting an esports directory because esports are bigger than ever. As the world is largely stuck inside and traditional sports have been canceled, esports have burst onto the proverbial main stage as traditional sports purveyors struggle to figure out what to program. (The most fun example: professional drivers have been racing from their homes in iRacing, the racing simulator, and the races have been broadcast live on NBC and Fox.)But th

John Nacion/NurPhoto via Getty Images Regal Cinemas owner Cineworld has joined AMC Theaters in declaring that it will not show Universal movies — or films from any other studios that “fail to respect” the theatrical window.The decision comes after Universal touted the success of Trolls World Tour’s straight-to-digital release. Yesterday, AMC Theaters decided to bar Universal movies because of comments made by NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell, arguing that Universal didn&rsquo

John Nacion/NurPhoto via Getty Images Regal Cinemas owner Cineworld has joined AMC Theaters in declaring that it will not show films that “fail to respect” the theatrical window after NBCUniversal decided to move Trolls World Tour from a theatrical release to a digital exclusive.The decision comes after Universal touted the success of Trolls World Tour’s straight-to-digital release. Yesterday, AMC Theaters decided to bar Universal movies because of comments made by NBCUniversa

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple’s latest beta version of iOS 13 comes with a much-needed improvement to lock screen authentication for those who now spend a majority of their time at work or outside wearing a face mask.Now, instead of constantly attempting to identify your face using Face ID, a process that will not work while wearing a cloth or respiratory face mask to protect against COVID-19, iOS will now pull up the manual passcode option after one swipe up from the

Cruise vehicles, the self-driving electric Chevy Bolts usually spotted around San Francisco neighborhoods, are back on the road after a brief pause during the coronavirus outbreak. And now that the fleet is considered an essential service, it's driving with even more of a purpose.
The General Motors-backed autonomous car company repurposed a portion of its testing fleet in mid-April to deliver food throughout San Francisco. This shift, however, didn't require much of a change to how Cruise was o

It’s time to party in Fortnite. Epic just launched a new, violence-free mode for the game, dubbed “party royale,” which removes two of the biggest elements from the experience: weapons and buildings. The mode introduces a new, smaller map, and Epic describes it as an “experimental and evolving space.”
The mode is playable right now, and the new island is already pretty full of things to do. At the center is a small city-esque space full of fast food joints, with oth

Microsoft is planning to bring music controls to its Your Phone app that will allow Android owners to see and control what songs are playing on their phones. The software maker has started testing this new feature in preview versions of Windows 10 today, and it’s expected to appear for everyone later this year. Audio tracks playing on a phone will be synced to the Your Phone PC app, and there’s even a mini player much like the built-in Windows 10 music controls.
Song titles and album

Microsoft is planning to bring music controls to its Your Phone app that will allow Android owners to see and control what songs are playing on their phones. The software maker has started testing this new feature in preview versions of Windows 10 today, and it’s expected to appear for everyone in the coming weeks. Audio tracks playing on a phone will be synced to the Your Phone PC app, and there’s even a mini player much like the built-in Windows 10 music controls.
Song titles and a

Apple and Google’s joint effort to help public health authorities track the spread of COVID-19 will begin testing today, the companies said. The companies will deliver an initial version of their exposure notification API to a small number of developers working on apps for public health organizations and test it over the next several weeks. The API is expected to be released more broadly in mid-May.
The companies announced their rare collaboration earlier this month. The project, which use

I’ve spent a good chunk of my workday so far creating memes thanks to this amazing website from Imgflip that automatically generates captions for memes using a neural network. I’m addicted because the site A) takes the pressure off trying to be clever by auto-filling the captions; B) actually, somehow, regularly generates clever captions; and C) sometimes creates captions that make no sense, which are hilarious anyway.You can pick from 48 classic meme templates, including distracted

Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images For months, Elon Musk has been spreading doubt, confusion, and outright misinformation about the deadliest pandemic of our time.
Since the outbreak began, he’s promoted studies that suggest doctors are inflating case numbers for financial reasons, or that the vast majority of fatalities in Italy are due to other causes. He promoted a widely discredited paper on the benefits of chloroquine, which was debunked so quickly that both Twitte

Image: Focus on Sport / Getty Images Amazon has carried NFL Thursday Night Football games on its Prime Video and Twitch platforms for the last few years, but an extension of that deal will give the company its first exclusive Saturday game this upcoming season.One upcoming NFL game, set to be played on a Saturday in the second half of the regular NFL season, will stream exclusively on Amazon for a global audience over the next three years, with televised rights remaining in both teams’ lo

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Interested in improving the video quality of your own Zoom frame tenfold? If you’ve got a recent Canon mirrorless, DSLR, or PowerShot camera, you can now use it as a webcam and put everyone else on your video call to shame. As noted by DPReview, the company has released a beta of “EOS Webcam Utility” for Windows 10 that lets you plug in any of the below supported cameras over USB and have it serve as your PC’s webcam. Image: Ca

Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has ruled that artificial intelligence systems cannot be credited as an inventor in a patent, the agency announced earlier this week. The decision came in response to two patents — one for a food container and the other for a flashing light — that were created by an AI system called DABUS.Among the USPTO’s arguments is the fact that US patent law repeatedly refers to inventors using humanlike

Cruise, the self-driving subsidiary of General Motors, has brought some of its autonomous vehicles out of their coronavirus-imposed dormancy to make deliveries for a pair of food banks in San Francisco, the company announced today.Starting April 16th, the company has helped deliver 3,700 meals for the SF-Marin Food Bank and SF New Deal, two food banks serving low-income families in the San Francisco Bay Area.Cruise’s deliveries have only taken place over eight days, though the company says

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Lyft said it will lay off nearly 1,000 employees, or about 17 percent of its workforce, as the novel coronavirus pandemic continues to decimate the already cash-strapped ride-hailing industry. The layoffs, which the company announced in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, come as the company’s larger rival, Uber, is reportedly also contemplating steep cuts of its own.Lyft says it will terminate 982 employees, which it

May 4th is the annual Star Wars-themed holiday, and several sales have already begun to celebrate the franchise. One of the most notable so far is the PC version of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Respawn’s excellent (and surprisingly challenging) third-person adventure. The digital code (redeemable on Origin) costs $30 instead of $60 at Amazon.The console versions have seen big price drops like this one for the past few weeks, but this is the first time we’ve seen the PC version drop

Image: GMC General Motors is delaying the upcoming reveal of the new all-electric Hummer truck, which was originally scheduled for May 20th because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The automaker isn’t yet offering a replacement date for the launch of the new electric vehicle, but it says that the production schedule isn’t currently affected. The new Hummer is due out in late 2021.GM announced back in January that it was resurrecting the Hummer as a 1,000-horsepower electric truck under its