Technology news

After browsing for a new movie or TV show to watch on Netflix, people may throw something on before deciding 10 minutes in they’re just not that interested. Netflix’s new “remove from row” feature is designed to make it easier for people to remove those titles from their currently watching offerings.The goal is to give people more control over what appears on their Netflix homepage. The “continue watching” row is one of the most prominent, appearing at the top

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple is adding a new feature as part of its newly announced iOS 14 that will extend the lifespan of your AirPods.
Apple says the operating system will reduce how quickly your AirPods’ batteries age by learning when you typically charge them and predicting when to stop charging them automatically. Instead of charging to 100 percent right away, the AirPods will stop charging at 80 percent, then resume later, so they don’t sit at 100 percent

Photo by Noah Riffe/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Twitter has continued its policy of labeling — but not removing — rule-breaking tweets from President Donald Trump. The company restricted a Trump post promising “serious force” against a potential Washington, DC equivalent to Seattle’s Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone.
“We’ve placed a public interest notice on this Tweet for violating our policy against abusive behavior, specifically, the presence o

The fintechrevolution is just getting started.
At least that’s the impression we got after a conversation with Plaidco-founder Zach Perret. He appeared on Extra Crunch Live last week to talk about his company’s announced exit to Visa and the larger fintech landscape.
Perret and Plaid announced a deal to sell the company to Visa earlier this year for $5.3 billion, a transaction that highlighted the company’s central position in the fintech world. Plaid provides APIs that li

The PULSE algorithm takes pixelated faces and turns them into high-resolution images. | Image: Twitter / @Chicken3gg It’s a startling image that illustrates the deep-rooted biases of AI research. Input a low-resolution picture of Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, into an algorithm designed to generate depixelated faces, and the output is a white man.
It’s not just Obama, either. Get the same algorithm to generate high-resolution images of actress Lucy Liu

Bungie is providing a novel way for Destiny 2 players to show their support for Black Lives Matter inside the game. Today, the developer started preorders for what it calls a “be heard” enamel pin — it features a black fist gripping a lightning bolt, set above the Black Lives Matter slogan — which costs $15, with all proceeds going toward the Equal Justice Initiative.
The pin isn’t expected to start shipping until later this year, but those who purchase will also ge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The European Union plans to ban travel from the US when it reopens its borders on July 1st because of the Trump administration’s poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report from The New York Times. Under current plans, the US would join Brazil and Russia on the list of forbidden countries, as all three countries have had comparably poor responses to the virus since the worldwide outbreak at the beginning of the year. Travel from Ch

iOS 14 is here, and it brings a bunch of big new features to Apple’s operating system — including a few that should look pretty familiar to Android users who have had similar functionality for some time.
It’s the eternal cycle of software platforms: Google’s good ideas will almost always end up on iOS at some point, even as the next version of Android will, no doubt, crib some ideas from Apple.Home screen widgets
The big one: after years of keeping the iOS home screen sta

Mercedes-Benz is teaming up with Nvidia to develop a next-generation computing platform for vehicles that will support everything from over-the-air software updates to automated driving. The German automaker said it plans to begin rolling out the new technology across its fleet starting in 2024.The new platform will be based on Nvidia’s system-on-a-chip Orin technology and will also use the San Jose-based company’s full Drive AGX software stack. Nvidia first unveiled Orin at CES in D

Apple and Twitter have joined the ranks of tech companies decrying the abrupt halt on a range of guest worker visas proclaimed yesterday by President Trump. The new restrictions would fall particularly hard on H-1B visas, which are often used by tech companies to hire foreign workers without engaging a traditional immigration process.Capped at 80,000 visas nationally, the program is highly competitive, although it remains controversial for keeping workers’ immigration status tied to their

In a major policy shift for NASA, the space agency is making it possible for its own personnel — including astronauts — to fly on commercial suborbital spacecraft. These rockets are designed to fly to the edge of space and back, giving passengers brief experiences of weightlessness. The agency is hoping to expand flight options for its astronauts and researchers, while investing in the commercial space industry.
Today, NASA released a request for information on all the ways that NASA

For years, Apple has steadily revealed how the ARM-based chips in its mobile phones were catching up in performance to the beefier silicon you’d find inside a laptop or desktop — in 2018, the company claimed its new iPad Pro was faster than 92 percent of portable PCs. At some point, it seemed inevitable that Apple would turn the more efficient chips into the primary processors for its Mac computers, too.
Now, it’s official: Apple is migrating the Mac to its own homegrown silico

Microsoft is launching a preview version of its antivirus software for Android today. The software giant revealed that Windows Defender was making its way to both iOS and Android earlier this year, but didn’t fully detail what to expect. We’re now getting a good idea of exactly why Microsoft thinks Android needs antivirus protection.
The public preview for Android will include protection against phishing and go a step further than Google’s built-in malware protection to offer s

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Apple is bringing back the Mac’s iconic startup chime in macOS Big Sur. The company hinted it might return by playing the chime very prominently during yesterday’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, and people who have installed the first Big Sur developer beta have reported that it’s back. You can see a Mac on Big Sur play the chime while booting up in the video at the top of this post.
The startup chime was first removed from Macs in 20

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Oculus is ending sales of its budget Oculus Go virtual reality headset and opening its Quest headset to a wider range of software. The company will maintain Oculus Go firmware through 2022 and accept new apps through December 2020, but it will stop selling Go hardware after the current stock runs out. Meanwhile, it will add a new Quest app distribution channel without the current strict approval process, encouraging more developers to work with the he

WireImage Hamilton uses three instances of “fuck” in its original Broadway incantation, but the movie adaptation heading to Disney Plus next month will drop two uses of the word to appease the ratings board — and Disney.
Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda announced on Monday that in order to bring the movie to Disney Plus, he and his team had to come up with ways of eliminating the offending word. They ended up muting the “fuck” in “I get the fuck back up again&rdquo

Image: Signal In this week’s edition of our Vergecast interview series, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel and policy editor Russell Brandom talk with cybersecurity expert and founder of CryptoHarlemMatt Mitchell.Mitchell has worked with activists in the US to help them better understand the tools technology offers as well as the threats it can impose. On The Vergecast, he discusses not only why activists should be thinking about cybersecurity and data minimization, but how tech is at the

Photo by Taylor Hill / Getty Images Segway announced Tuesday that it is ending production of its signature self-balancing scooter, the Segway Personal Transporter (PT). Manufacturing at the company’s Bedford, New Hampshire, factory will end on July 15th, and 21 employees will be laid off. The news was first reported by Fast Company.Since the original Segway’s debut 20 years ago, the market has become saturated with electric-powered two-wheelers of many varieties. Moreover, Segway sa

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announces the co-founding of The Climate Pledge at the National Press Club on September 19, 2019 in Washington, DC. | Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Amazon Amazon launched a $2 billion fund today to advance technologies that will cut down greenhouse gases. The fund will help Amazon and other companies adhere to The Climate Pledge initiative it started in September 2019. That pledge committed the company, and others that sign onto it, to becoming carbon neutral by 20

Image:Wyze Wyze’s first outdoor camera — the appropriately titled Wyze Cam Outdoor — is a battery-powered, water-resistant, Wi-Fi security camera designed to be used outside. It costs $49.99 for a starter bundle, including the camera and a base station, or $39.99 for each additional camera. There’s also an offline travel mode that allows the Cam Outdoor to monitor your hotel room, for example. The camera is available in what Wyze is calling “early access” sta

Image: Crown Channel If you’re not sure what to watch on Twitch, the team behind Twitch Prime hopes you’ll try tuning in to their new channel. The Crown Channel is meant to look a little more like a traditional TV network: it’ll have regular programming and different styles of shows, from reality series to comedy shows to gaming tournaments. “If you are not a normal Twitch viewer, you will still find it highly entertaining,” Richard Hilleman, creative director of T

Several movie theater chains are preparing to open their doors to the public over the next few weeks, and Fandango is launching a new feature to make it easier for people to find proper health and safety information as they decide whether they’re ready to go back.
Both Fandango’s website and mobile apps will incorporate several resources, including socially distant seating maps, attendance policies provided by theater chains, and a new search filter to find reopened theaters. Within

Image: OnePlus OnePlus is working on a “more affordable smartphone product line,” CEO Pete Lau confirmed in a forum post today. Although Lau doesn’t specifically name the new range, his post links to a new Instagram page titled “OnePlusLiteZThing,” which is an apparent reference to the rumored names for the device. Lau said OnePlus plans to bring the devices to Europe and India first but that the company was looking to bring its affordable phones to North America i

Former OTF CEO Libby Liu. | Photo: Flickr / USC Public Diplomacy One of the US government’s strongest forces for internet freedom is in danger, and supporters are calling on the public for help. The Open Technology Fund (OTF), a small US agency devoted to protecting digital speech across the world, has helped support nearly all of the most prominent encryption projects at various points — including Signal, Tails, Qubes, and the Tor Project. But after the abrupt firing of the fund&rs

Acer Enduro N3 rugged laptop. | Photo: Acer Acer has released Enduro, a new line of laptops and tablets designed to be used outdoors. The company claims the products can survive drops, extreme temperatures, and water exposure, while remaining portable enough to cart around.The most interesting model in the line and the only one with a price and release date at this time is the Enduro N3. The N3 will be available in North America in August starting at $899. It will also be on sale in Europe, the

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft showed off the future of mobile home screens a decade ago with Windows Phone. The key to the vibrant interface was Live Tiles, animated widgets that felt alive. Nothing has lived up to it ever since.
I’ve always wanted Apple to bring these Live Tiles to the iPhone. Apple’s overhauled iOS 14 home screen finally does that, enabling lively widgets for apps that sit on the home screen. It’s the final addition to the iPhone that I’ve

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you’ve been looking for a high-capacity microSD card to give you a lot of storage space for game downloads on the Nintendo Switch or store countless 4K videos on your compatible tablet, laptop, phone, or action cam, today is a great day to invest in one. That’s because B&H Photo is offering some of the best deals we’ve seen yet on SanDisk’s Ultra 512GB microSD card as well as the 400GB model. Starting with the 512GB mode

The Dell G7 17 is available now. | Image: Dell Dell announced a number of new gaming PCs and peripherals today, including an RGB keyboard, a curved monitor, and even a desktop. But the highlight is the G7, Dell’s newest midrange gaming laptop. The G7 will come in two sizes: 15 inches and 17 inches.The laptop has received a stylish new redesign from previous G7 models. It’s noticeably slimmer, there’s a neatly colored LED on the front of the deck, and the bezels have shrunk (fr

Memoji can now be customized with face coverings.| Image: Apple The COVID-19 pandemic has affected nearly every facet of our lives, so it’s only natural that it would impact more than one of Apple’s product announcements at yesterday’s WWDC. Whether it’s the Apple Watch’s handwashing feature or the new face mask options for Memoji, the pandemic’s presence was repeatedly felt during Apple’s presentation. And let’s not forget, its entire prerecorded

The company’s new 27-inch curved gaming monitor costs $279.99. | Image: Dell Dell has announced a new 27-inch curved gaming monitor called the S2721HGF, which, at $279.99, is more affordable than the company’s other curved options. It supports 1080p resolution and has Nvidia G-Sync compatibility, so those who use a recent Nvidia GPU should be run games smoothly with no screen tearing. This new monitor has a 1500R curved VA panel in a 16:9 aspect ratio with a 144Hz refresh rate and 1

Image: Dark Sky Apple purchased popular weather application Dark Sky earlier this year, and with iOS 14, the company already seems to be integrating features from Dark Sky directly into its own native weather app, according to the company’s iOS 14 preview page.
One of the most telling new features is “a minute‑by‑minute chart that shows the intensity of rain or snow over the coming hour.” That sounds like it’s been directly lifted from Dark Sky, which has mad

President Donald Trump participates in a tree planting ceremony in recognition of Earth Day and Arbor Day on the South Lawn of the White House on April 22nd, 2020. | Photo by Drew Angerer / Getty Images Two-thirds of Americans think the government needs to do more to address climate change, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center. Some environmental policies garnered support across the board, reflecting a shift within the Republican Party toward addressing climate change with corpo

Acer debuted several new laptops, desktops, and monitors at its press conference today, but it took a break from those announcements to unveil something in an entirely new product category: energy drinks. As if it was destined to fulfill its own gamer stereotype, Acer now makes energy drinks.It’s called the Predator Shot, and given the name, it’s aimed at gamers who want some extra pep. Acer says that it’s full of vitamins and minerals, including vitamin B and lutein, and presu

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple unveiled iOS 14 at its annual WWDC keynote yesterday, and among the small but important new features is sound recognition. First spotted by a Reddit user, this new accessibility tool could significantly benefit people who are hard of hearing or deaf. The iPhone can be set to constantly listen for 14 different sounds, including a door knock, doorbell, sirens, smoke detector alarm, dog barking, a crying baby, and more. The feature can be found in

Two of FX’s most anticipated shows, Y: The Last Man and American Horror Stories, are forgoing traditional TV airing to become FX on Hulu exclusives.
Brian K. Vaughan’s popular comic book series being adapted by the network, Y: The Last Man, and Ryan Murphy’s spinoff of American Horror Story, American Horror Stories, will now premiere exclusively on Hulu, the company announced at its upfront presentation on Monday. The move signifies what many industry insiders speculated would

Jack “CouRage” Dunlop and Tyler “Ninja” Blevins at the Fortnite World Cup in 2019. | Photo by Eric Ananmalay/ESPAT Media/Getty Images Mixer, the soon-to-be-shuttered streaming platform from Microsoft, always had a tough road ahead of it. In a space already dominated by Twitch, and with YouTube using its unparalleled audience scale to carve out its own slice of the market, Microsoft’s offering was a hard sell.
But while Mixer was ultimately a failure, as evidenced b

Acer’s Predator Helios 700 is now configurable with the latest Intel and Nvidia components. | Image: Acer Acer has refreshed its lineup of Predator Helios and Triton gaming laptops with support for powerful, new components like Intel’s 10th Gen H-series processors and Nvidia’s RTX 2070 and 2080 Super Max-Q graphics chips. There are also some updates coming to the less expensive Nitro lineup, and a very impressive gaming monitor has been announced. The products may differ, but

A man holding a definitely real Swift 5 in a completely normal fashion | Photo: Acer Acer has a new version of its Swift 5 laptop, and it appears to be the first announced laptop powered by one of Intel’s upcoming 11th Gen processors, featuring the chipmaker’s new integrated Xe graphics.While Acer isn’t providing too much detail, the shift from the current Gen11 integrated graphics in Intel’s 10th Gen Ice Lake chips to Xe is expected to be a big one: at CES 2020, Intel p

Acer’s new line of ConceptD products. | Image: Acer Acer is expanding its line of creator-targeted ConceptD computers to now include desktop PCs, monitors, and more standard laptop designs. The ConceptD line first started a year ago with the unique ConceptD 9, which had a large easel design and powerful components repurposed from Acer’s gaming laptops. The company followed that up with the slightly smaller but similar-looking ConceptD 7 Ezel earlier this year.
Now, Acer is adding th

Acer has announced its newest Chromebook today, the Chromebook Spin 713, which is verified as part of Intel’s Project Athena program.
The Chromebook Spin 713 will contain 10th Gen Intel processors, up to 16GB of RAM (DDR4), and a 256GB SSD. Acer says you can expect 10 hours of use from the device’s fast-charging battery.The Chromebook also has a 13.5-inch display with a 3:2 aspect ratio — 2256 x 1504 resolution. The 3:2 aspect ratio provides more vertical screen space than more

Superhuman is one of the most in-demand startups right now, with the invite-only app considered one of the most exclusive services in the tech industry. That’s impressive, for an email app. It’s even more impressive for an email app that merely accesses your existing Gmail account and costs $30 per month to use. The buzz — both from the company’s marketing and around Silicon Valley — is off the charts. Superhuman bills itself as “not another email client,&rdqu

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge “Passwords are one of the worst things on the internet,” Mark Risher, Google’s senior director for account security, identity, and abuse told The Verge. Though they’re essential for security and to help people log in to many apps and websites, “they’re one of the primary, if not the primary, ways that people actually end up getting compromised.”
It’s a strange thing for a Google security executive to say bec

You can double or triple tap the back of your phone to activate certain commands.| Image via Federico Viticci / Twitter Yesterday at WWDC, Apple announced iOS 14, the latest version of its iPhone operating system. But, as is often the case with Apple, there were many features that didn’t get mentioned on stage. One of these is “Back Tap” — a new accessibility feature that lets you double tap or triple tap the back of your iPhone to perform a custom task.Back Tap opens up

The most famous Apple keynote slide in recent memory is one giant, single word with a period that slammed down with a little puff of dust in 2018: “No.” It was software and engineering SVP Craig Federighi’s answer to the question of whether or not the Mac and the iPad would merge. He used that slide as the introduction to a “multi-year project” that would eventually become known as Catalyst, a way to port iPad apps to the Mac.
Now, in 2020, Apple is taking an even b