Technology news

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Qualcomm’s Q3 earnings report might indicate a delay for Apple’s upcoming 5G iPhones, with the company highlighting a “partial impact from the delay of a global 5G flagship phone launch” for its fourth quarter projections (which covers July, August, and September earnings.)
Looking at the calendar of upcoming phone releases, it’s hard to imagine that Qualcomm is talking about any device other than the upcoming 5G iPhones,

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Amazon has long been accused of undercutting its rivals with its Echo smart speakers, allegedly keeping competitors like Sonos from getting a foothold in the market — but Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says that at their full retail price, the company isn’t taking a loss on these products.
During the big antitrust hearing today where Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg are also facing down lawmaker questions, Rep. Ja

Photo: Riot Games Riot has come under fire after the League of Legends European Championship (LEC), one of the most popular esports leagues in the world, announced a sponsorship deal with the controversial Saudi Arabian megacity Neom. The developer announced today that the city would become one of the “main sponsors” for the league, joining the likes of Kit Kat and Kia.
The announcement was met with instant criticism, given the Saudi government’s long history of human rights a

Photo by MANDEL NGAN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images During Wednesday’s antitrust hearing, Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos came under fire by lawmakers over the company’s alleged use of third-party seller data in developing its own products.Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon employees have accessed sales data from independent sellers on its marketplace to help the company develop competing products for its private-label. Amazon has a policy barring the practice,

Photo by MANDEL NGAN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images During Wednesday’s antitrust hearing, Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos came under fire by lawmakers over the company’s alleged use of third-party seller data in developing its own products.Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon employees have accessed sales data from independent sellers on its marketplace to help the company develop competing products for its private-label. Amazon has a policy barring the practice,

Photo by Bijan Stephen / The Verge As The Verge’s resident live-streaming reporter, I do a lot of streaming on my own time, both because it’s fun and because I want to know a little about what it’s like for the people I cover. That’s meant I’ve gained a healthy appreciation for the various pieces of gear that make streaming possible — because streaming is the opposite of effortless. Things break constantly, and most of the time for no obvious reason. (There b

Photo by Mandel Ngan-Pool / Getty Images During Wednesday’s tech antitrust hearing, Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) tore into Google CEO Sundar Pichai over the company’s dominance in search and its use of data to monitor would-be competitors.“It is Google’s business model that is the problem,” Cicilline said, alleging a pattern of anti-competitive behavior that allowed Google to grow while smaller businesses were crushed. “Our documents show that Google evolved f

From Airbnb to Zapier, and Coinbase to Instacart, many of the tech world’s most valuable companies spent their earliest days in Y Combinator’saccelerator program.
Steering the ship at Y Combinator today is its president, Geoff Ralston . We’re excited to share that Ralston will be joining us on Extra Crunch Live tomorrow at noon pacific.
Extra Crunch Live is our virtual speaker series, with each session packed with insight and guidance from the top investors, leaders and founder

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Snap, the company behind Snapchat, released its first diversity report today after years of resisting pressure to make those statistics public. The report details the minimal growth the 3,195-person company has made in regards to hiring people of color and women. Black and African American people only represent 4.1 percent of the entire workforce, the report states, and Hispanic / Latinx people make up 6.8 percent. Both groups account for only 3.2 percent

Nitesh Dudhia ContributorShare on Twitter Nitesh Dudhia is co-founder and CBO of Aikon Labs Pvt Ltd. Nitesh has worked on market opportunity identification, business planning and strategy formulation and execution for digital transformation.As offices worldwide shift to remote work, our interactions with customers and colleagues have evolved in tandem. Professionals who once relied on face-to-face communication and firm handshakes must now close deals in a world where both are rare. Coworkers we

The video below contains the first glimpse at the upcoming electric GMC Hummer. The preview video is short, full of nonsense buzzwords, but still telling. It’s clear GM identified two main competitors against the upcoming Hummer: The Ford Bronco and Tesla Cybertruck.
The Hummer EV was announced pre-COVID 19 during the Super Bowl. At the time, GM promised it would feature a 1,000 HP from the electric powertrain. Since then, little has been released about the upcoming vehicle, though GM main

Image: MySmartPrice Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Z Fold 2 has just gotten its biggest leak yet, showing off the revamped design for the company’s flagship foldable successor, which it’s expected to announce at the upcoming Galaxy Unpacked event on August 5th alongside the Galaxy Note 20, via MySmartPrice.The new renders show off a vastly improved design, with a hole-punch camera replacing the large corner notch for the internal camera and a new, full-size display on the outside o

In his opening statements, the chairman of Wednesday’s historic tech hearing argued that regulating tech’s most dominant players is vital in the midst of the ongoing pandemic that has driven even more of American life online.
“Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, these corporations already stood out as titans in our economy,” House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Chair David Cicilline said. “In the wake of COVID-19, however, they are likely to emerge stronger and more p

In his opening statements, the chairman of Wednesday’s historic tech hearing argued that regulating tech’s most dominant players is vital in the midst of the ongoing pandemic that has driven even more of American life online.
“Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, these corporations already stood out as titans in our economy,” House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Chair David Cicilline said. “In the wake of COVID-19, however, they are likely to emerge stronger and more p

The fortunes of startups that leverage artificial intelligence have soared dramatically in recent years.
These AI-powered startups have seen quarterly investment totals rise from a few hundred rounds and a few billion dollars each quarter to 1,245 rounds and $17.3 billion in the second and third quarters of 2019, according to data from CB Insights. The rise in dollars chasing AI startups has been huge, demonstrating strong venture capital interest in the cohort.
But in recent quarters, the trend

Image: General Motors General Motors is now set to unveil the all-electric Hummer truck sometime in the fourth quarter of this year, after scratching the original May 20th reveal due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But in the meantime, the company (and the GMC brand, under which the resurrected Hummer will be sold) is teasing a side profile of the truck — along with a more traditional SUV version without a pickup bed.
The Hummer silhouettes appeared in a new ad that GMC released on Wednesday sh

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US has filed new and expanded charges against two former Twitter employees and a third individual for allegedly spying on behalf of the government of Saudi Arabia. The three men have now been charged with acting as agents of a foreign government, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and wire fraud. One individual, former Twitter employee Ahmad Abouammo, was also charged with three counts of money laundering and falsification of records to obstruct the inv

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The CEOs of Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon are testifying in Congress today — trying to convince the House Judiciary Committee that their business practices don’t amount to anti-competitive monopolies. It’s one of the biggest tech oversight moments in recent years, part of a long-running antitrust investigation that has mustered hundreds of hours of interviews and over a million documents from the companies in question.
Amazon&rsquo

Google One, Google’ssubscription program for buying additional storage and live support, is getting an update today that will bring free phone backups for Android and iOS devices to anybody who installs the app — even if they don’t have a paid membership. The catch: While the feature is free, the backups count against your free Google storage allowance of 15GB. If you need more you need — you guessed it — a Google One membership to buy more storage or delete data yo

When founders start fundraising is as important as how they make their pitch to investors.
Timing matters and it’s more complicated than founders might realize, but it’s not just about picking the right month or time of day. Finding the right time to fundraise requires a micro- and macro-level strategy, according to Jake Saperof Emergence Capital, who joined TechCrunch’s virtual Early Stage event last week.
“There are really two angles to think about,” Saper said. T

Walmartis expanding its use of voice technology. The company announced today its taking its employee assistance voice technology dubbed “Ask Sam” and making it available to associates at over 5,000 Walmart stores nationwide. The tool allows Walmart employees to look up prices, access store maps, find products, view sales information, check email and more. In recent months, Ask Sam has also been used to access COVID-19 information, including the latest guidelines, guidance and safety

Killjoy is the latest character coming to Riot’s team shooter Valorant, and she’s a German hacker with what sounds like some useful skills. She has access to a turret and a nanoswarm grenade that should shake up the game’s meta. The most important part, though, is that she has some adorable robot friends that join her in battle.
These include a cute alarmbot that hunts down enemies and explodes once it gets close enough, and the stealth drone, a rolling machine on wheels with a

Spotify One of Spotify’s biggest original podcast bets, The Michelle Obama Podcast, premieres today and with it comes the test of a new product feature: shareable quote cards. People in the test will be able to press play on the podcast, and colorful cards with quotes available to share will appear automatically. They can then tap the quote they want to share and select from the sharing options, which cover the main social networks, like Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter. Of cour

Mark Persaud ContributorShare on Twitter Mark Persaud is digital product manager and practice lead at Moonshot by Pactera, a digital innovation company that leads global clients through the next era of digital products with a heavy emphasis on artificial intelligence, data and continuous software delivery.2020 has been all but normal. For businesses and brands. For innovation. For people.
The trajectory of business growth strategies, travel plans and lives have been drastically altered due to th

Time to get your binge on at Disrupt 2020, startup fans. Tune in and engage September 14-18 — that’s five days of nonstop opportunity to expand your network, learn the latest tech and investment trends, exhibit your startup, pump up your portfolio and grow your business.
If you want to get the best bang for your buck, listen up. Early-bird pricing evaporates in just three days. Buy your pass before the deadline expires on July 31 at 11:59 p.m. PDT, and you can save up to $300.
Thousa

Image: Konami Konami, the Japanese company that’s best known in the West for developing the Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, and Castlevania franchises, has apparently gotten into the gaming PC business. Japanese outlet PC Watch reports that its lineup of Arespear gaming PCs is open for preorder now starting at 184,800 yen (around $1,760), and they are reportedly due to ship in September.I can’t say I’m a fan of the design of these PCs. Their bulbous cases look like someone set

If ever there were an animal that didn’t need to use weapons, it’d be the crab. They are walking battle tanks that wear built-in suits of armor and have giant weapons mounted on the front. And yet, here’s Fight Crab, a fighting game about crabs that stab each other with machetes and shoot each other with revolvers.Fight Crab is the work of Calappa Games, a Japanese indie developer with a fixation on the aquatic. Prior work includes Neo Aquarium and Ace of Seafood, the latter of

An artistic rendering of Ingenuity deployed on Mars. | Image: NASA When NASA’s latest Mars rover, Perseverance, launches this week, the robot will have a tiny stowaway on board: a small box-shaped helicopter. If the copter manages to successfully hover above the Martian terrain, it’ll be the first time that a human-made vehicle has ever flown on another world — and it could open up a whole new way of exploring the Solar System in the future.
The helicopter, named Ingenuity, is

The COVID-19 pandemic’s continued impact on Spotify’sbusiness was apparent in the results of the company’s Q2 2020 earnings today. On some fronts, Spotify had good news. As more users turned to streaming services to keep themselves entertained while social distancing, Spotify grew its active monthly users by 29% to reach 299 million in the quarter. Its paid subscriber growth also topped Wall Street expectations with 138 million paid users, versus estimates of 136.4 million. How

For some time now, Bixby hasn’t been much of a talking point for Samsung. It seems that the smart assistant has lost its luster even for the company that once touted it as the centerpiece of its massive hardware ecosystem. And now, according to a new report, Samsung is considering dropping the smart assistant from its mobile devices altogether.Word comes from Reuters this week, citing a “correspondence.” Details are vague, and Samsung is unsurprisingly pushing back on the sugge

Nik Milanovic ContributorShare on Twitter Nik Milanovic is a fintech and financial inclusion enthusiast, with a decade of work across mobile payments, online lending, credit and microfinance. The opinions expressed in his articles do not reflect those of his employer(s). More posts by this contributorNow more than ever we need fintechs to lead on consumer transparency Who will the winners be in the future of fintech?
Those of us who work in technology should always be asking ourselves, “Wh

No doubt about it, home fitness is hot. The category had already been gaining considerable traction in recent years and months, but the ongoing pandemic has undoubtedly accelerated interest by orders of magnitude. And understandably so. After all, while some businesses have begun reopening in some locations, gyms are still a big red flag, with one of the highest potential transmission risks of any communal space.This morning Tempo announced a healthy $60 million Series B, led by Norwest Ven

This morning Instrumental, a startup that uses vision-powered AI to detect manufacturing anomalies, announced that it has closed a $20 million Series B led by Canaan Partners. The company had previously raised $10.3 million across two rounds, including a $7.5 million Series A in mid-2017.
According to a release, the Series B was participated in by other venture groups, including Series A investors Root Ventures, Eclipse Ventures, and First Round Capital, which also led its Seed round. Stanford S

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge We recently ranked Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Plus wireless earbuds as the best overall option, thanks to their 11-hour continuous battery life, wireless charging support, improved microphones, and excellent sound quality. They normally cost $150, but you can grab them for just shy of $100 from a reputable seller at eBay. If you’re okay with getting them in white, which has a pearlescent look, they cost $99, though the black or blue options are $110.
The

Google’s Chromecast is the epitome of a software-first device. Nearly all of its capabilities are defined by software, and usually not even software that’s on the Chromecast itself.But the Chromecast, for all its hands-off simplicity, does have a single hardware button: an emergency reset button on the back. It’s a testament to the importance and reliability of physical inputs over software solutions.Odds are, most people will never use the Chromecast’s reset button. Whet

Financial services companies like banks and insurance tend to be heavily regulated. As such, they require a special level of security and auditability. Hearsay, which makes compliant communications tools for these types of companies, announced a new partnership with Salesforce today, enabling smooth integration with SalesforceCRM and marketing automation tools.
The company also announced that Salesforce would be taking a minority stake in Hearsay, although company co-founder and CEO Clara Shih,d

Sophie Alcorn ContributorShare on Twitter Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributorDear Sophie: How should I prepare for a green card interview? Dear Sophie: What are my F-1 and other immigration options after graduation?
Her

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok wants to be transparent. The company has announced that it’s taking new measures to give outsiders access to the algorithms it uses to sort and share users’ videos, and it will be letting experts “observe our moderation policies in real-time.”In a blog post published Wednesday, TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer said the changes put it “a step ahead of the industry” and challenged rivals to follow suit. “[W]e believe o

Since launching in 2013, Taipei-based TNL Media Group has grown from an independent news site to a media company with several online publishing verticals and a data analytics business. The company, formerly known as The News Lens, announced today that it has raised $8 million from New York-based investment firm Palm Drive Capital, as part of its Series D round.
TNL Media Group’s last funding announcement was a Series C round announced two years ago. Co-founder and chief executive officer J

Remittances — when people send money internationally to family and friends, or as a payment — has long been one of the most important levers for getting funds to people in developing economies.
However, the persistent spread of the coronavirus is having a tough impact on that, with the World Bank estimating that remittances to low and middle-income countries will fall 20% this year to $445 billion (down from a record $554 billion in 2019). That’s due in part to the economi