Technology news

When YouTube TV launched in 2017, it felt like the future of television. It provided the live playback nature of cable channels, with the convenience of also being able to watch later if you wanted. You could watch on any of your devices, and the automated, unlimited Cloud DVR was a godsend. But it worked because of the $35 price. Even if it was missing a few channels, the convenience and implementation made it worth it. Then, in 2018, the price went up to $40. Okay, five bucks isn’t too

NASA is pushing back the launch of it next Mars rover, called Perseverance, by a week, due to a problem with the rocket that’s supposed to send the spacecraft to the Red Planet. The rover is now slated to launch no earlier than July 30th out of Cape Canaveral, Florida.
That puts the launch of Perseverance perilously close to the end of its limited launch window, which originally spanned from July 17th to August 11th. NASA and other space agencies only have a small window of time every two

Last year, Apple expanded its security bounty program to include macOS after several years of offering the same for iPhone developers. But according to at least one researcher, the company isn’t acting quick enough on some exploits. Developer Jeff Johnson informed Apple about an exploit that allowed an attacker to steal private data with a malicious clone of Safari over six months ago. Once a user is tricked into downloading the malicious file, the Safari clone is given undue access by ma

Jamf, the Apple device management company, filed to go public today. Jamf might not be a household name, but the Minnesota company has been around since 2002 helping companies manage their Apple equipment.
In the early days, that was Applecomputers. Later it expanded to also manage iPhones and iPads. The company launched at a time when most IT pros had few choices for managing Macs in a business setting.
Jamfchanged that, and as Macs and other Apple devices grew in popularity inside organization

Photo by Anne Farrar/The Washington Post via Getty Images Employees at Cards Against Humanity (CAH) are unionizing. In a statement posted today on Twitter, workers said that they have sent a letter to CAH’s owners to voluntarily recognize their union under CMRJB Workers United. “The time has come for us to follow in the footsteps of our comrades at The Onion, Gawker, and Kickstarter,” a statement from CAH Workers United reads.
Cards Against Humanity employees have come forward

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Earlier this year, Apple reportedly canceled several contracts for games that were set to launch on Arcade, the company’s game subscription service known for its library of high-quality titles that don’t have ads or in-app purchases. It allegedly canceled each of them for the same reason: Apple wants new games that will keep players coming back to the service.
A report from Bloomberg notes that an Arcade executive told some developers who

For almost as long as we’ve known about the Xbox Series X – even back when it was called Project Scarlett — we’ve also heard rumors of a second next-gen console codenamed ‘Lockhart’. Those rumors seemed to die down when Microsoft unveiled the Series X, only to pick back up again the past few weeks as mounting evidence suggested the company does indeed have a cheaper alternative on the way. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the naming scheme for the comp

Netgear Orbi RBK752. | Image: Netgear Netgear is launching a second model of its Orbi mesh router with support for Wi-Fi 6, following up on a high-end model released last fall. This new version, eloquently named the RBK752, is more of a midrange model, offering slightly decreased performance at a slightly decreased price. This is still an Orbi router, though, so it’s still expensive: $450 for a router and satellite. The high-end model, the RBK852, offers the same bundle for $700.
While ch

ESPN Plus is getting a $1 price hike in August to $5.99 a month, making the baseline price for Disney’s sports streaming app the same as Hulu’s basic tier.The price hike is only being applied to ESPN Plus’ monthly fee, according to internal documents viewed by The Verge. The annual price of $49.99 will remain untouched. Existing monthly subscribers can keep the $4.99 subscription fee for a period of one year before being switched to the $5.99 price point, documents show. Disney

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook has removed a network of anti-government accounts associated with the fringe “boogaloo” movement after designating the group as a dangerous organization, the company said. The network, which represents a subset of the broader movement, actively planned violence, Facebook said, though it declined to share additional details, saying it did not want to interfere with ongoing law enforcement investigations.On Tuesday afternoon, the compan

Google is making it easy for people to conserve energy this summer by rolling out a free version of Seasonal Savings for all Nest thermostat owners. Previously, the feature was only available for customers of utilities with Seasonal Savings programs, according to a Google blog post.Seasonal Savings works as an “energy monitor,” making slight schedule changes to help people automatically conserve energy without noticing major temperature fluctuations. “By adjusting your schedule

Image: Amazon Game Studios Amazon-owned game studio Relentless is putting its free-to-play shooter Crucible back into a closed beta state after admitting it launched the game before it was ready. In a blog post published Tuesday, franchise lead Colin Johanson says the focus is now on ”providing the best possible experience for our players as we continue to make the game better,” and so the game will be sliding back to its current full release state to give the studio time to make ch

Chinese EV startup Byton is halting operations for at least six months due to financial problems that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has confirmed to The Verge, following reports from The Detroit Bureau and local media. This comes after employees in China have complained they are collectively owed millions of dollars while the company struggled to complete a $500 million funding round.Byton already furloughed hundreds of workers at its North American headquarters in

Dieter Bohn After months of rumors, Google has finally confirmed that its “Nearby Share” feature is on the way. Some Android users are already testing a beta version.
“We’re currently conducting a beta test of a new Nearby Share feature that we plan to share more information on in the future,” Google told Android Police. “Our goal is to launch the feature with support for Android 6+ devices as well as other platforms.”
The feature started showing up in

Lululemonis paying $500 million to acquire a home fitness startup, India bans TikTok and Amazon Prime Video is the latest streaming service to add a co-viewing experience.
Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 30, 2020.
1. Lululemon set to acquire home fitness startup Mirror for $500M
The deal comes at a time when home workout solutions are in high demand thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even when gyms begin to reopen in different locales, many will likely be wary of returning to a potentially

French game studio Dontnod loves the supernatural. The team’s breakout hit was the original Life is Strange, which starred a teenage girl who had the ability to rewind time. The sequel featured a young boy with telekinetic powers, and in 2018, the studio dabbled in roleplaying games with Vampyr, which put players in the role of a bloodthirsty denizen of the night. But around 2016, the team decided they wanted to create something a little more grounded.
They eventually landed on the idea fo

OnePlus has consistently made some of the best bang-for-your-buck phones since its inception. But while the company still manages to undercut most of its direct competition in performance per dollar, $900 is for the Pro model is still a lot of money. That’s a far cry from the $300 ‘flagship killer’ price the company flaunted back in 2014. Now OnePlus has confirmed it’s going back to its roots with the ‘OnePlus Nord.’ Presales will begin tomorrow and the price

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission officially designated telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE as threats to national security.
“With today’s Orders, and based on the overwhelming weight of evidence, the Bureau has designated Huawei and ZTE as national security risks to America’s communications networks — and to our 5G future,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement Tuesday. “Both companies have

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge YouTube TV has announced that it’ll be raising its monthly price from $50 per month to $64.99 as the company starts to offer eight of ViacomCBS’s channels, which are available today: BET, CMT, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Network, TV Land, and VH1.The new price takes effect today for any new subscribers, while existing customers should see it on their next billing cycle (either on or after July 30th.)
The $15 increase in pri

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Discord on Tuesday announced it’s making a number of changes to expand its service beyond the gaming community. The company says the change is one its users have requested as Discord has become more of a tool for “day-to-day communication.”
“Games are what brought many of you on the platform, and we’ll always be grateful for that,” reads a blog post by Discord CEO Jason Citron and CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy. “A

Coronavirus in Context is a weekly newsletter where we bring you facts that matter about the COVID-19 pandemic and the technology trying to stop its spread. You can subscribe here. Hola pandemic pals, The whole time this pandemic’s been going on, the world’s been looking to big tech for answers. Technology is always the answer, right? Sure, but it doesn’t have to be new technology. Our greatest tool in the fight against a disease that’s spread via droplets

Google’s Stadia controller. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge It has taken more than six months, but Google’s Stadia controller now finally works wirelessly with Android devices. Google originally launched its Stadia service back in November as a subscription to stream games to TVs, Android phones, and the web. Wireless controller support was strangely missing at launch for Android devices, which meant you had to awkwardly connect the Stadia controller using USB.
Google

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google has bought North, a company focused on building augmented reality glasses. The companies announced the news earlier today, saying that North’s “technical expertise” will help Google invest in its “hardware efforts and ambient computing future.”
The details of the deal, including how much Google paid, weren’t revealed. With the acquisition, North says it’ll wind down its Focals smart glasses functionalit

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix is pledging 2 percent of its cash holdings to provide “economic opportunity for Black communities.” The company plans to initially commit up to $100 million, but the quantity could grow alongside its cash holdings over time.
The streaming behemoth announced the first $35 million of that money would be allocated into two areas: $25 million will be used to establish the “Black Economic Development Initiative,” a fund that wil

All founders love “free” money, but with the pandemic going on, the necessity of free money has taken on a whole new meaning this year. First, there was the scramble to secure PPP loans a few weeks back for U.S.-based startups, and then the second wave of PPP loans when Congress offered a second tranche of funding. Two weeks ago, I covered a company called MainStreet, which is helping startups apply for local economic development credits that cities offer to businesses relocating to

All three of Shane Dawson’s popular YouTube channels will not be able to earn advertising revenue for an indefinite period of time, Tubefilter reports.
The move comes after a number of old videos on Dawson’s channels came under scrutiny for featuring racist, anti-Semitic, and other offensive content. One video, in particular, has Dawson making sexual comments about a then-11-year-old Willow Smith, which led to Jada Pinkett Smith and Jaden Smith publicly calling out Dawson on Twitter.

Société Générale is acquiring French startup Shine. Terms of the deal are undisclosed. According to a source, Shineis getting acquired for around €100 million in an all-cash deal (around $112.6 million).
The startup had previously raised €10.8 million ($12.2 million) in total from Daphni, Kima Ventures, XAnge and various business angels.
If you’re not familiar with Shine, the startup has been building a challenger bank for freelancers and small compani

‘Stay-at-home’ stocks like Netflix and Zoom thrived in the first half of 2020. But as Black Lives Matter protests swept across the US in June, a very different kind of company surged: guns and ammo stocks. Not only have US-listed guns and ammo stocks outperformed the world’s biggest tech companies this year, but they’ve even eclipsed companies that benefitted most from the world’s transition into remote work and education. [Read: No, THIS is how much $10K wort

Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge VanMoof, the Dutch electric bicycle brand, is officially too hot for (French) television.The company’s first TV advertisement was banned in France for its negative portrayal of car traffic and pollution. The commercial was rejected by France’s advertising regulatory authority, ARPP, because it “discredit[s] the automobile sector [...] while creating a climate of anxiety.”
The ad, which premiered on June 6th and is intended for both TV a

Fortnite’s iconic Battle Royale game mode took the world by storm, and today, Epic Games has announced that it’ll finally be removing the early access label from both the free-to-play shooter and the less popular original Save the World mode. Epic also announced that Save the World will continue to be a paid title separate from the free-to-play Battle Royale, and with the “official” launch, it’ll start slowing down the release of content for Save the World.The early

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok has gone viral — and then some. A spiritual successor to Vine and an actual successor to Musical.ly, the shortform video sharing app has swept the world in the past year. Like other social media apps, it’s frequently the source of viral memes, slang, challenges, and dances. You may have seen it on the news when teenagers used the app to spread the word about a plan to reserve tickets for a Trump rally (and then not show up), when lawmak

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Qualcomm is announcing two new Wear OS processors today, the Snapdragon Wear 4100 Plus and the Snapdragon Wear 4100, the first major updates to its smartwatch platform since 2018. Qualcomm claims the new chips will have vastly improved speed, with a “significantly faster new processor,” and big jumps in performance for the GPU, memory, camera, and overall battery life.They’re big promises, but put simply, Google’s Wear OS badly