Technology news

Photo by Joshua Roberts/Getty Images The Trump administration is now ordering hospitals to send coronavirus patient data to a database in Washington, DC as part of a new initiative that may bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to a report from The New York Times published on Tuesday. As outlined in a document posted to the website of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), hospitals are being ordered to send data directly to the administration, effec

Every new streaming service is looking for standout features to differentiate themselves from the competition, and Peacock’s features try to combine three different types of experiences in one app: a traditional streaming interface, a curation of small, short-form newsy moments, and “live TV.” But after a few days with the Peacock app, what became very apparent to me is the app isn’t as robust as Comcast’s ambitions for it.
Depending on how people watch Peacock, the

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge WhatsApp went down for its 2 billion users earlier today. Service issues started at around 4PM ET and prevented WhatsApp users from sending or receiving messages on the service for nearly an hour. The WhatsApp application would still open, but a connecting loop was displayed while the service experienced issues.
Facebook-owned WhatsApp rarely experiences service outages, and this is the first major outage for more than a year. WhatsApp went down along

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks at the Chase Center on July 14th, 2020, in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden delivered remarks on his campaign’s ‘Build Back Better’ clean energy economic plan. | Photo by Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images On Wednesday, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden revealed a revamped climate and energy plan that raises spending, expands efforts to address racial disparities, and sets an earlier deadline for cutting greenhouse

Photo by Anik Rahman/NurPhoto via Getty Images The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have agreed to rescind a policy that would require international students to take in-person classes in order to remain in the US.The agencies have reached an agreement with Harvard and MIT, who filed a lawsuit on July 8th over the policy. The resolution came less than five minutes into a hearing for the case, federal Judge Allison D. Burroughs announced.
ICE

Image: Proterra Fifteen states and Washington, DC have announced that they will follow California’s lead in switching all heavy-duty trucks, vans, and buses over to running on electricity, in what could be one of the most significant efforts to reduce harmful diesel engine pollution in the United States. It could also be a big development in the fight for environmental justice because emissions from diesel-powered commercial vehicles disproportionately harm Black, Asian, and Latinx commun

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge This week on the Vergecast interview series, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel talks to Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, about the Facebook ad boycott and Facebook’s civil rights audit that was released to the public.Color of Change, an online racial justice organization, is one of the groups leading the ad boycott against Facebook and other social media companies in response to hate speech on those platforms.
In the interview, Robinso

With move theaters shuttered and folks still stuck at home due to the pandemic, remote viewing party services have shot up in popularity, letting friends and family members sync up movies and TV shows from their own homes. But nearly all of those services only work on computers — not exactly the most satisfying way to watch a movie. But a new app called Watch With Friends developed by Caavo (the company behind the high-end Caavo Control Center universal remote) promises to bring that same

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Sony’s WH-1000XM3 are a great investment if you’re looking for a comfortable set of wireless, over-ear headphones that feature noise cancellation. The thing is, they’re usually $350. Well, today Woot is offering a new set for $220, which is a 37 percent discount on that original price. This deal will last through today, though it will end earlier if it sells out of stock.
This headphone model originally released in late 2018, and rumors have

LEGO and Nintendo today confirmed they’re releasing a new set, this time a recreation of the classic Nintendo Entertainment System console. Far from a simple recreation, this brick set will apparently allow you to actually play a Mario game… well, sort of. Details about the set leaked earlier this week, and were confirmed when LEGO released a video on it today. It’s to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the console, and is almost a note-perfect recreation — t

It’s official: Samsung’s next big product launch is happening on August 5th at 10AM ET, and it’ll be a virtual event as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The main product reveal is almost certainly going to be the next phone in Samsung’s Galaxy Note series, its top-of-the-range smartphone lineup that pairs some of the most powerful phone hardware around with a big, beautiful screen and its signature S Pen stylus. Alongside it, however, there are rumors that we mi

Image by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is warning of a 17-year-old critical Windows DNS Server vulnerability that the company has classified as “wormable.” Such a flaw could allow attackers to create special malware that remotely executes code on Windows servers and creates malicious DNS queries that could even eventually lead to a company’s infrastructure being breached.
“Wormable vulnerabilities have the potential to spread via malware between vulnerable computers

Images: BMW BMW has finally revealed the iX3 SUV, the company’s first all-electric vehicle to top 200 miles of range, and the brand’s first since the i3 launched back in 2014. The iX3 will be built in China and sold both there and in Europe, but it won’t be coming to the United States. Deliveries will start at the end of this year, and it will sell for around €68,000 (about $77,500).
The iX3 is, in many ways, a BMW X3 SUV with an electric powertrain, making it the first n

Robots have got pretty good at picking up objects. But give them something shiny or clear, and the poor droids will likely lose their grip. Not ideal if you want a kitchen robot that can slice you a piece of pie. Their confusion often stems from their depth camera systems. These cameras shine infrared light on an object to detect its shape, which works pretty well on opaque items. But put them in front of a transparent object, and the light will go straight through and scatter off reflective su

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Google Play Pass, Google’s subscription service that gives you access to hundreds of Android games and apps with no ads or in-app purchases, is rolling out to nine new countries this week, the company announced today. The service has only been available in the US since it launched in September, but it will soon be available to Android users in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, and the UK.
Google is also rolling ou

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google Stadia is adding more than a dozen new games to its cloud service over the next few months, in addition to five exclusives announced this morning as part of its Stadia Connect live stream.Among the new additions are IO Interactive’s Hitman reboot series — including both the first game, its sequel, and the planned Hitman 3 in 2021 — and FromSoftware’s excellent samurai action game Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. The Hitman reb

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Google has signed on five new developers to make exclusive titles for its Stadia cloud gaming service. Two of those five already have fully realized projects, with one ready for release.Developer Splash Damage, which developed the recent Microsoft exclusive Gears Tactics, is now making an online multiplayer game called Outcasters, while popular strategy and tower defense studio Robot Entertainment has its third installment in its Orcs Must Die! series

Photo by Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images Massachusetts filed a lawsuit against Uber and Lyft on Tuesday claiming the app-based companies are misclassifying drivers as independent contractors rather than employees. The state is the latest to challenge the way the multibillion-dollar ride-hailing industry treats its workers.“For years Uber and Lyft have built their billion-dollar businesses on a model that exploits drivers,” Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey sa

Image: Hulu We’re all tired. Every day runs together, an endless tangle of hours and screens and occasional bursts of daylight to recharge. Old routines take on new wrinkles: meetings via webcam, masks to maintain and wear before outings, communal activities retrofitted to be done in isolation. Maybe we’re not in a literal time loop, but it sure feels like one; a long, endless stretch of days where little changes and we’re burned out all the time. Enter Palm Springs, a movie f

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has been testing deeper Gmail and Google Calendar integrations in Outlook on the web for months, and part of that is arriving for Outlook business users today. Outlook on the web users will be able to add their personal Outlook.com or Google Calendar accounts to an Outlook work account so that you see a better view of your availability when scheduling work appointments.
This new feature is rolling out now to all Microsoft 365 users with a work a

Spotify is rolling out a revamped podcast discovery experience. Starting today, users will be able to browse popular shows in two new charts — Top and Trending. The Top chart will feature the 200 most popular podcasts in a region, and will also let users discover new content by category — like tech, true crime, or health. For the time being, browsing by category will be available only in “certain markets,” including Brazil, Australia, Germany, Mexico, Sweden, the UK

Peacock is NBCUniversal’s new streaming service and the last major entrant in the colloquial streaming wars. But Gidon Katz, the company’s president of direct to consumer, believes Peacock can win by leaning into something most of its biggest competitors won’t: offering premium entertainment, mostly for free.
When Peacock launches tomorrow across the United States, people can choose between three different tiers: a completely free ad-supported version that gives people access t

Britain has announced it’s banning Huawei from the country’s 5G network, mere months after agreeing to keep the firm as a supplier. Telecom company will have to strip all Huawei gear from their networks by 2027, and will be barred from buying any more of its 5G tech from the start of next year. Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden said the move would cost up to $2.5bn and delay the UK‘s 5G rollout by two-to-three years. “This has not been an easy decision, but it is the

OnePlus has revealed a first look at the OnePlus Nord, giving a quick preview to Marques Brownlee during an interview about the phone’s design process. The Nord, which is supposed to be OnePlus’ return to midrange phones, is set to be formally announced next week — though, per usual, OnePlus has been teasing out details ahead of the launch.
In the latest MKBHD video, Brownlee displays a brief look at what the Nord will look like. It bears a strong resemblance to the OnePlus 8,

We’re digging into Q2 2020 venture capital results this week.
Today we are exploring U.S.-specific results after taking a broader perspective yesterday. As with every quarter, our goal is to understand how strong, or not, the domestic and global VC markets are so that we can better follow the pace of startup dealmaking.The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. You can read it every morning on Extra Crunch, and now you can receive it in your inbox. Sign up for The Exchange newslett

Razer Razer has announced its first 60 percent keyboard, the Huntsman Mini. It’s made for people who need just the bare minimum of dedicated keys. Gone are the number pad, arrow keys, and function keys — what’s left is a more simple, travel-ready option that’s great for those who want to maximize their desk space for a big mouse pad or just to have something that can more easily be tucked away.
Razer already makes different sizes of its Huntsman keyboard, including a ful

Razer hopes you’re reading to buy a bunch of gaming gear, as it has discounted several products on Amazon. Starting with one of the best deals: the Razer Blade Stealth 13 laptop usually costs $1,700, but you can get it today for $1,450. Inside, it’s full of capable components, including Intel’s Core i7-1065G7 quad-core processor, the Nvidia GTX GeForce 1650 Ti Max-Q graphics chip, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB PCIe-based SSD.
Unlike most other game-ready machines, this one features

Image: Netflix It’s been a strange summer for movies. Late April to July was supposed to be dominated by Marvel and DC superheroes, the over-the-top action of the Fast and the Furious franchise, and the inscrutable drama of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, but theater shutdowns due to the pandemic brought all of that to a screeching halt. But in the midst of this cinematic gridlock burst a breath of fresh air for anyone seeking a classic Hollywood summer blockbuster: The Old Guard. It&rsq

Almost a week after multiple Indian internet service providers blocked search engine DuckDuckGo for a few days, websites of three environmental organizations have become inaccessible. Websites of environmental advocacy organizations There is no Earth B, LetIndiaBreathe.in (LIB), and FridaysForFuture (FFF) have now been blocked for several days because of a government order that’s not come to the fore till now. However, there’s no clarity as to why the order was issued.&nbs

I was never a fan of the Call of Duty franchise, but its battle royale format, Warzone, has won me over. I love its pace, the fictitious city of Verdansk where battle takes place, and all the little details like custom loadouts and infinite respawns that make the gameplay so dynamic. I also appreciate the fact it’s free-to-play (even though you’ll probably end up buying the full game if you care about leveling up your weapons). But there’s one thing ab

It hasn’t even been a full month since The Last of Us Part 2 came out and set the console gaming community on fire with its controversial story – but Sony is already back with another first-party exclusive to cap off this console generation. Yes, it’s up to Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima to be the actual last big Sony-published PlayStation 4-exclusive, before we move on to the PlayStation 5 era later this year. And coming hot off the heels of TLOU2, that’s n

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. If you’re like me, you’re the person who’s selectively organized. When it comes to the important things in life like having a roof over your head and being well-fed, you’re organized. But when it comes to things like file management, you simply don’t give a heck. Your desktop might even look like this… Now for random files

Microsoft and Citrix have been working together closely for decades, but that partnership is going a step further today. Microsoft is partnering with Citrix to use the company’s Citrix Workspace portal as its “preferred digital workspace solution,” and Citrix is using Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud platform. It’s a deal designed to speed up Citrix customers to move to the cloud and virtual desktops.
Microsoft has been investing heavily in Windows Virtual Desktops

The Stretch robot is designed to spur research into home automation.| Image: Hello Robot It looks like a telescoping grabber tool attached to a hat stand, but it could be the future of home robotics. Meet Stretch, the first device from Hello Robot, a startup founded by former Google director of robotics Aaron Edsinger and Georgia Tech robotics professor Charlie Kemp, that came out of stealth today after three years in development.
The Stretch robot could be a blueprint for future home robots
St

Panasonic is updating its Lumix Tether application for Mac to make it easier to use some models of its mirrorless Lumix cameras as a webcam — but it’ll take a bit more effort than some other solutions, at least for now, via DPReview.
Like the Windows version, the current solution for macOS is pretty hacked together. Panasonic is simply taking its existing Lumix Tether software (used for tethered shooting from a computer) and offering an update that removes the GUI elements from the l

Spotify Spotify is revamping its podcast charts today to help listeners find new shows and keep up with what people are enjoying in their area. This brings a well-known, and controversial, feature in the podcasting industry to Spotify, making the app more on par with other popular players, like Apple Podcasts.
The two initial podcast charts will be called Trending and Top. Trending, which is based partially on the speed of growth in listener numbers, includes 50 rising shows, while Top will be

RealityEngines.AI, the machine learning startup co-founded by former AWS and Google exec Bindu Reddy, today announced that it is rebranding as Abacus.AI and launching its autonomous AI service into general availability.
In addition, the company also today disclosed that it has raised a $13 million Series A round led by Index Ventures’Mike Volpi,who will also join the company’s board. Seed investors Eric Schmidt, Jerry Yang and Ram Shriram also participated in this oversubscribed roun

Kano is releasing a second-generation model of its buildable Windows 10 PC, which keeps the $299.99 price point and DIY touchscreen form factor, but offers a faster new processor and a slightly updated design (including the addition of USB-C).
The overall form factor — a convertible 2-in-1 tablet with an attachable keyboard that also doubles as a protective case — is the same as last year’s model, but Kano has made big improvements to the internal hardware. The main difference

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. Get comfortable and let me spin you a yarn you’ll one day tell your children. Last week, I went out for lunch. It does get better. Anyway, the cafe I went to had taken COVID precautions and removed all physical menus. In their place was a QR code stuck on each table. The idea was you scan it and are directed to a PDF of the menu online. I huffed an

TLDR: Ashampoo 3D CAD 7 can redesign a room or create your perfect dream home in minute digital detail. Open floor plans. A spacious kitchen. Floor to ceiling windows. Walk-in closets.  Set someone down and ask them to start listing the features that make up their dream house and before you know it, you’ve got a veritable laundry list of ideas. The beauty is that no matter how long that list eventually runs, there’s actually a way to bring it all to life right in front of your

Image: Lego Lego and Nintendo are teaming up for a new Lego set that assembles into a blocky model of Nintendo’s 8-bit gaming console, the Nintendo Entertainment System, along with an interactive TV displaying Super Mario Bros. The two companies collaborated earlier this year to create interactive Super Mario-themed sets.
Designed for adult builders, this new set contains 2,646 pieces that combine to create Nintendo’s first home console as well as an NES controller, a game cartridge