Technology news

The New Mutants is apparently still on track to hit theaters on August 28th, even as Tenet and Mulan face indefinite delays.
Details on the film’s theatrical plans come from The New Mutants’ panel at ComicCon@Home, the digital version of the annual San Diego festival, where the cast gathered to talk about the film. They also brought the movie’s opening scene, which can be seen above. The opening scene kicks in at 24:10, with a panel discussion about the movie playing beforehand

The Department of Homeland Security says US authorities have banned drones from flying near federal buildings in Portland because they believe drones are surveilling federal officers at protests there, Reuters reports. The order comes a few weeks after federal agencies were discovered using surveillance drones themselves, over peaceful protests in Minneapolis and other US cities.The agency said unidentified drones have flown over crowds of people protesting near federal buildings in Portland on

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge In 2020, everything is cake — including Android 11. Android VP of engineering Dave Burke revealed the internal codename “Red Velvet Cake” in an interview with All About Android, via Droid Life.Google’s alphabetical dessert naming scheme was an Android tradition for years, dating back to Android 1.5 Cupcake in 2009. But last year, instead of naming Android Q after an obscure pastry tart or candy, Google made the choice to desert de

Image: Disney In a widely anticipated move, Disney has once again delayed its live-action adaptation of Mulan, this time indefinitely.“Over the last few months, it’s become clear that nothing can be set in stone when it comes to how we release films during this global health crisis, and today that means pausing our release plans for Mulan as we assess how we can most effectively bring this film to audiences around the world,” a Disney spokesperson told Variety.
This marks the

Tom Conrad/Twitter One of the biggest complaints Quibi received upon its initial launch was subscribers being unable to screenshot what they were watching and share it with the world. For a mobile-first streaming service, it seemed like a bit of an oversight. Now, Quibi has introduced screenshot capabilities, but it’s not as easy as holding down the right buttons on your iPhone.Quibi built its own screenshot tool inside the app that subscribers must use to get the image they want instead

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Google is adding a number of new features to its Messages app for Android, including the ability to reply to messages with emoji reactions, something that’s long been available in other messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and iOS’s built-in Messages app. The feature was first spotted in testing in May, but Google has now officially rolled it out as part of the latest version of its Messages app.
To use an emoji reaction, just tap and hold the

As film studio executives struggle to determine what movies should be held for a theatrical release and what titles can become streaming exclusives, AT&T CEO John Stankey reaffirmed that Tenet will absolutely go to theaters.Stankey was asked about the growing industry trend of taking certain movies originally scheduled for a theatrical release and making them streaming-only titles. Warner Bros., which is owned by AT&T, moved its animated Scooby Doo movie to an on-demand rental title befo

The state of New York voted this week to pause any implementation of facial recognition technology in schools for two years. The moratorium, approved by the New York Assembly and Senate Wednesday, comes after an upstate school district adopted the technology earlier this year, prompting a lawsuit in June from the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of parents. If New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signs the legislation into law, the moratorium would freeze the use of any facial recognition scho

A team of researchers recently published a study on bisexual men that, surprisingly, indicates they exist. This comes as a shock because the lead researcher, Professor J. Michael Bailey of Northwestern University, previously determined that bisexual men were, more-or-less, just confused gays or straights. I’m paraphrasing, what that paper, published in 2005, really said was: Male bisexuality appears primarily to represent a style of interpreting or reporting sexual arousal rather than a d

HBOMax, the AT&T-owned streaming service that combines HBO with WarnerMedia content, now has 4.1 million subscribers who have activated their Max accounts, since its launch on May 27. Combined, HBO and HBO Max reached a total of 36.3 million U.S. subscribers by the end of the second quarter, according to statements made by AT&T CEO John Stankey on today’s earnings call. That figure has grown 5% from the 34.6 million subscribers the properties together had at the end of last year.
T

Quantum computing is at an interesting point. It’s at the cusp of being mature enough to solve real problems. But like in the early days of personal computers, there are lots of different companies trying different approaches to solving the fundamental physics problems that underly the technology, all while another set of startups is looking ahead and thinking about how to integrate these machines with classical computers — and how to write software for them.
At Disrupt 2020 on Septe

Did Microsoft convince you that you wouldn’t need to next-gen hardware to play Xbox Series X games? Think again: fully half of the next-gen games that Microsoft showcased at its Xbox Series X showcase today, including Forza, probably aren’t coming to Xbox One.Which suggests either some of those games aren’t actually coming out for a long time — or Microsoft has already broken a big promise it made just last week.For years now, Microsoft has been working toward a future wh

Did Microsoft convince you that you wouldn’t need to upgrade to next-gen hardware to play Xbox Series X games? Think again: fully half of the new titles that Microsoft showcased at its Xbox Series X showcase today, including Forza, aren’t currently coming to Xbox One.Which means either some of those games aren’t actually coming out for a long time — or Microsoft has already broken a big promise it made just last week.For years now, Microsoft has been working towards a fut

Kolton Andrus ContributorShare on Twitter Kolton is co-founder and CEO of Gremlin, the chaos engineering company helping the world build a more reliable internet. More posts by this contributorA former chaos engineer offers 5 tips for handling online disasters remotely
The outages at RBS, TSB and Visa left millions of people unable to deposit their paychecks, pay their bills, acquire new loans and more. As a result, the House of Commons’ Treasury Select Committee (TSC) began an invest

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A Facebook engineer said in a farewell video that the company was “failing” to mitigate harm and has “enshrined that failure in our policies,” BuzzFeed News reported on Thursday. Max Wang, a Boston-based former engineer who claimed in the recording obtained by BuzzFeed that he joined Facebook in 2011, said he didn’t think CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other company leaders were acting in malice.
“But that does not mean their

The market value of FANTAMAN — the amalgam of prominent tech stocks led by Apple and Microsoft — has swelled by a gut-punching $1.87 trillion this year, representing 36% growth in just seven months. FANTAMAN may seem merely a catchy iteration of Wall Street insider acronyms like FANG. However, it’s no joke. FANTAMAN represents the most powerful tech companies in the US: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Tesla, Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple, and NVIDIA. Collectively, those

The U.S. Space Command has released details about an alleged anti-satellite weapons test it suspects Russian of conducting using an existing probe already on orbit, The Verge reports. The Russian satellite in question is the same one that made headlines back at the beginning of 2020 when it seemed to be tailing an existing orbital U.S. spy satellite. That same spacecraft appears to have deployed some kind of projectile according to Space Command, which monitors objects currently in orbit around

When it comes to choosing a tech stack, the decisions you make today could have a cascading impact for years. On one hand you want to be cool and modern, but on the other, you want to build with technology you know — and sometimes getting to market is more important than riding the latest technology wave.
The problem is that your decisions can have consequences that result in technical debt, the concept that as you make one decision, you have to pay a debt of sorts to fix underlying struct

Teslafiled a lawsuit against electric vehicle automaker Rivian and four former employers, on allegations of poaching talent and stealing trade secrets.
Bloomberg was the first to report the lawsuit filed in California Superior Court in Santa Clara.
Tesla alleges in the lawsuit that Rivianrecruits Tesla employees and encourages them to take proprietary information as they leave. Tesla claims in the lawsuit that it has discovered an “alarming pattern” among employees who have recently

The last few years haven’t proven too friendly to hardware companies in the augmented reality world. Enterprise-centric efforts like ODG, Daqri and Meta flared out, Magic Leap raised massive amounts of cash only to scale back its dreams this year in the face of looming disaster and just about every other hardware player has suffered some form of an identity crisis. As someone who covers the space closely, this has led me to keep an eye on companies I’ve covered that seem to have been

Image: Rivian Tesla says it has discovered a “disturbing pattern” of former employees who took confidential information and trade secrets on their way to new jobs at EV startup Rivian, according to a new lawsuit first reported by Bloomberg. Tesla even claims Rivian is “knowingly encouraging” this behavior, and it is seeking unspecified punitive damages for what it alleges is “despicable, wanton, oppressive, willful, malicious, [and] duplicitous” conduct. Rivi

Image: Microsoft Microsoft showed off a lot of games coming to the Xbox Series X, including exclusives and brand-new titles, at its July showcase event. We now have a much better idea of what’s in store for Microsoft’s upcoming console.
If you weren’t able to watch the event live, we’ve collected some of the biggest trailers from the show right here, and you can catch a replay of the whole event on YouTube.Halo Infinite
Microsoft shared the first look at Halo Infinite&rs

Image: The Verge/Alex Castro The Department of Defense believes that Russia may have tested out a new technology in space that could be used to destroy other satellites already in orbit. This particular test didn’t destroy anything, but military officials are worried it could be used to target US satellites in the future.
On July 15th, a Russian satellite called Kosmos 2543 released an unknown object into orbit, according to US Space Command, which is responsible for tracking all the obje

Jerry C. Jones ContributorShare on Twitter Jerry C. Jones is the EVP, Chief Ethics and Legal Officer of LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP), where he leads the legal and data ethics teams and assists in the strategy and execution of the company’s strategic initiatives.My college economics professor, Dr. Charles Britton, often said, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” The common principle known as TINSTAFL implies that even if something appears to be free, there is always a cost to

Around five years ago, Remedy Entertainment — the Finnish developer best-known for supernatural thrillers like Alan Wake and Control — decided it wanted to become the kind of studio that worked on multiple projects at once. Meanwhile, many on the team were interested in expanding into first-person shooters and finding a way to tell Remedy-style shooters in the pervasive genre.
So when Smilegate, the Korean developer behind the massively popular FPS Crossfire, reached out, it made a l

A new Fable game is heading to the Xbox Series X and Windows 10. Playground Games is developing the upcoming title, which will be a “new beginning” for the longtime franchise.Microsoft announced the game today as part of its July showcase. Fable was originally released in 2004 for Xbox; the last game in the main series, Fable III, launched in 2010. The series is a choice-driven roleplaying game in which the player’s actions will impact their reputation and role in the game&rsqu

As an early-stage investor, Floodgate’sAnn Miura-Kolooks for two breakthroughs in order to invest in a startup: The first happens in the value-seeking stage of a startup’s journey and the second occurs in its growth-seeking phase.
“There are really two stages to building a company,” Miura-Ko said at the TechCrunch Early Stage virtual event earlier this week. “One is what we call value-seeking mode, and this is where you’re really trying to figure out what the

Microsoft isn’t just announcing new games for the upcoming Xbox Series X; the company also announced that several recent Xbox One games will be getting upgraded for the next-gen console with new features and better graphics.
Forza Horizon 4, Gears 5, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Sea of Thieves, and Gears Tactics are the five games that Microsoft has announced will be getting the “Optimized for Xbox Series X” badge this holiday season, with a variety of upgrades coming to each

Image: Enhance Games The excellent Tetris Effect, a mesmerizing audio-visual spin on the classic puzzle game, is getting a full multiplayer expansion this fall called Tetris Effect: Connected, which is releasing as a timed exclusive on PC (on the Microsoft Store) and Xbox platforms. The original game was a PlayStation 4 exclusive released in fall 2018 before it came to PC the following year via the Epic Game Store and Oculus’ VR platform back in May.The expansion, developed by the same Ja

After reporting Q2 earnings that showed a marked dip in ad revenue, Twitter has said its exploring alternatives — dangling the possibility of a subscription option.
Earlier today the social media giant reported ad revenues of $562M, down almost a quarter (23%) on a year ago — saying that the pandemic and “civil unrest” leading many advertisers to pause campaigns had both contributed to the decline. While the US, its biggest market, saw a drop of 25% in ad spend.
TwitterCE

Fallout: New Vegas and The Outer Worlds studio Obsidian Entertainment has announced a new fantasy roleplaying game called Avowed for Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and PC. Avowed takes place in Eora, the setting of Obsidian’s 2015 game Pillars of Eternity and its 2018 sequel. But it’s swapping Pillars of Eternity’s old-school isometric perspective for first-person gameplay, apparently including swordplay and spellcasting. A trailer doesn’t give away much detail, but it offers a

Microsoft and Bungie are partnering to bring Destiny 2 to Xbox Game Pass. The original Halo developer will launch Destiny 2 at no additional cost to Xbox Game Pass subscribers in September, and it will include access to previous expansions and the upcoming Destiny 2: Beyond Light DLC.
The standard editions of Destiny 2 DLCs will all be available, with Destiny 2’s season pass sold separately. Bungie recently delayed its Beyond Light expansion to November 10th, after it was originally schedu

Photo by Daniel Garzon Herazo/NurPhoto via Getty Images Steve Wozniak is suing YouTube for allowing scammers to use his name and likeness in phony bitcoin giveaways.According to the lawsuit, filed in the Superior Court of the State of California, crooks have been posting videos on the platform claiming that Wozniak is hosting a bitcoin promotion. They convince users that if they send bitcoin to a provided address, “Wozniak” will return double the amount.“YouTube has featured a

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitch viewership has been way up since the pandemic started. Viewership grew to 5 billion hours watched between April and June, which is a huge increase no matter how you look at it: it’s up more than 50 percent from the first quarter of 2020, and it’s up more than 60 percent over the same three months in 2019. The metrics come from the latest streaming industry report by StreamElements and Arsenal.gg.
Last quarter’s report hinted that

Last month Sony showcased gameplay from a slew of upcoming PlayStation 5 titles, including Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Stray and NBA 2K21. Today it was Microsoft’s turn. The company announced 13 titles for the Xbox Series X back in May, but today it gave gamers the best look at what the next-gen console will have to offer when it arrives at the end of the year.Microsoft showcases 13 new titles for the Xbox Series XLike Sony, the company promised to offer some actual gameplay from the upcomi

Image: Evan Blass Samsung’s virtual Unpacked event is scheduled for August 5th, and we expect to see the Galaxy Note 20 announced, along with a few other devices. If you’re sold on the Note 20 after seeing rumors, the extremely brief official teaser above, and seeing the phone’s design leak extensively on Samsung’s Russian site, you can place a reservation for “the next Galaxy” over at Samsung’s site. Doing this won’t cost anything — it&rsqu

Dontnod’s latest narrative-driven game, Tell Me Why, will launch on August 27th. Microsoft announced the news today during its July showcase, alongside several game premieres and updates.
Dontnod announced Tell Me Why last November for the Xbox One and PC. The game, set in Alaska, follows a set of twins working through memories of their childhood. The two share a “supernatural bond” that grants them the power to interact with their past memories. As with Life is Strange, a play

Two of the original creators of Sonic the Hedgehog — lead programmer Yuji Naka and character designer Naoto Ohshima — are reuniting to create a new “theatrical” action platformer called Balan Wonderworld, set to release on the Xbox Series X and Xbox One in spring 2021.
Balan Wonderworld marks the first time that the duo have worked together on a project since they created Sonic over two years ago. Yuji Naka will be directing the upcoming title, while Naoto Ohshima —