Technology news

Getty Images for WarnerMedia Two of WarnerMedia’s top executives, Bob Greenblatt and Kevin Reilly, are leaving the company as CEO Jason Kilar begins to plan the company’s future with a tighter focus on HBO Max.Greenblatt oversaw all of the company’s direct-to-consumer lines and oversaw WarnerMedia as a whole; Kevin Reilly was WarnerMedia’s content chief. He also served as president of TBS, TNT, and TruTV. As part of the shakeup, Andy Forssell (a former Hulu executive who

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge These days, we almost take it as a given that piss-poor security will inevitably expose some of your usernames and passwords to the world — that’s why 2FA is so important, and why you might want a password checkup tool like the ones now built into every modern browser (well, Safari is coming soon) so you can quickly replace the ones that were stolen.But nearly all of those password checkup tools owe something to Troy Hunt’s Have I Been P

Tesla's Model Y is currently the hot electric compact SUV. But Ford, Nissan, Mercedes, and other automotive giants are coming for the crossover crown. The latest challenger: Cadillac's first electric vehicle, the Lyriq.
The Tesla Model Y is unveiled at Tesla's design studio, in Hawthorne, Calif.
Image:Jae C Hong/AP/Shutterstock
The Model Y is basically the SUV version of Tesla's "budget" Model 3 and is already super popular. It's about $50,000, which is roughly the average price of a non-electri

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A new website tries to streamline the process of signing up to vote by mail.VoteByMail.io is a new service created by volunteers with work experience at several prominent companies, including Google, Intel, Dropbox, and Nike, that aims to help registered voters sign up for a mail-in ballot. The site is available in nine languages, and VoteByMail has partnered with multiple state and national organizations, including Vote.org, to support the launch.
The si

During an Unpacked event that featured the announcement of five key new devices, the Galaxy Tab S7 didn’t get a ton of love. Understandable, perhaps. It doesn’t quite have the star power of the Note line, nor does it have the novelty of a new foldable or Bluetooth earbuds. Tablets in general just aren’t exciting the way they once were.
But Samsung’s continued to plug away. The company makes a lot of tablets. That’s just kind of its thing. Why make one when you can m

Welcome back to Human Capital (formerly known as Tech at Work), which looks at all things labor in tech. This week presented Uber and Lyft with a fresh labor lawsuit as a judge heard arguments from Uber, Lyft and lawyers on behalf of the people of California in a separate suit brought forth by California’s attorney general. Meanwhile, Snap recently released its first-ever diversity and inclusion report — something the company had been holding off on doing for years. 
Below, we&r

Danielle Levitt/August Images Ava DuVernay is partnering with HBO Max and the team behind Twitter’s popular One Perfect Shot account to create a half-hour documentary series of the same name, the company announced today.One Perfect Shot will look at an iconic shot from different films, with the directors of those films walking viewers through a detailed breakdown of how it came to be. Each episode will feature a different director “walking through the scene in 360 moments that allow

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A number of subreddits were taken over and vandalized on Friday, possibly as part of a coordinated campaign. Hackers reportedly posted messages or changed a subreddit’s design in support of President Donald Trump.“An investigation is underway related to a series of vandalized communities,” a Reddit spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge. “It appears the source of the attacks were compromised moderator accounts. We are workin

I see far more research articles than I could possibly write up. This column collects the most interesting of those papers and advances, along with notes on why they may prove important in the world of tech and startups. This week: supercomputers take on COVID-19, beetle backpacks, artificial spiderwebs, the “overwhelming whiteness” of AI and more.
First off, if (like me) you missed this amazing experiment where scientists attached tiny cameras to the backs of beetles, I don’t

My hope for An American Pickle is that its bizarre blend of comedy and darkness becomes more palatable over time. I can't say it entirely worked for me after a first viewing, though.
The pieces are there! Seth Rogen's lovable stoner persona has always felt intensely relatable to my own life experience. Same for his distinctively "Jew-ish" mannerisms and quirks. What's more, half of his role in the HBO Max original seemingly involves channeling Zero Mostel's unforgettable Fiddler on the Roof perf

A federal judge has approved the Department of Justice’s efforts to end the Paramount Consent Decrees — 70-year-old court orders that prevented movie studios from engaging in a variety of anti-competitive behaviors, including ownership of movie theaters.
U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres cited the rise of streaming services like Netflixas one of the reasons for her decision:
Motion picture distributors that are not subject to the Decrees have entered the market since the 1940s

No, fans of the Great British Bake Off did not suddenly convert en masse to Donald Trump supporters. 
You'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise, however, as scores of popular subreddits were temporarily hijacked Friday to promote Donald Trump. According to Reddit, an unspecified number of subreddit moderators — the people who oversee the sub-communities within Reddit — likely had their accounts taken over in some way, allowing the as-of-yet undetermined hacker to promote the curr

Early-stage startup founders who are embarking on a Series A fundraising round should consider this: their relationship with the members of their board might last longer than the average American marriage.
In other words, who invests in a startup matters as much — or more — than the total capital they’re bringing with them.
It’s important for founders to get to know the people coming onto their board because they’ll likely be a part of the company for a long time, a

Sunny Dhillon ContributorShare on Twitter Sunny Dhillon is an early-stage investor at Signia Ventures in San Francisco where he invests in retail tech, e-commerce infrastructure and logistics, alongside consumer and enterprise software startups. More posts by this contributorFrom farm to phone: A paradigm shift in grocery An optimistic view of deepfakes
Even as e-grocery usage has skyrocketed in our coronavirus-catalyzed world, brick-and-mortar grocery stores have soldiered on. While strict in-s

One of the best-kept secrets in the world of capital is that the federal government has billions of dollars it’s dying to give away to early-stage founders and inventors — and all you have to do is ask. Well, there’s a bit more to it than that, so here’s a guide to getting in the door of the massive Small Business Innovation Research program.
First, as a bit of background: SBIR is a large network of programs, spread across a dozen federal agencies and the military, establ

OnePlus is facing criticism for pre-installing Facebook apps on its newest smartphones—and apparently the bloatware can’t be fully removed. 
The apps can be found on the new OnePlus 8, 8 Pro, and Nord models; all three come with the Facebook App Installer, Facebook App Manager, and Facebook Services as system apps, according to Android Police, which noticed the issue. 
The bloatware paves the way for the social media company to install the Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram

Clean.io, a startup that helps digital publishers protect themselves from malicious ads, recently announced that it has raised $5 million in Series A funding.
The Baltimore-based company isn’t the only organization promising to fight malvertising (such as ads that force visitors to redirect to another website). But as co-founder Seth Demsey told me last year, Clean.io provides “granular control over who gets to load JavaScript.”
CEO Matt Gillis told me via email this week that

A woman jolts awake and gasps for air in a nondescript living room. She can’t explain why, but she’s certain of one thing: she only has one more day to live. So she tells her friend, Jane, and something horrifying happens: Jane also becomes certain the next day will be her last. This strange conviction, it turns out, is contagious. And it’ll infect many more before tomorrow actually comes.Written and directed by Amy Seimetz, She Dies Tomorrow is a new film with a title and a pr

Imagine buying a dress online because a piece of code sold you on its ‘flattering, feminine flair’ — or convinced you ‘romantic floral details’ would outline your figure with ‘timeless style’. The very same day your friend buy the same dress from the same website but she’s sold on a description of ‘vibrant tones’, ‘fresh cotton feel’ and ‘statement sleeves’.
This is not a detail from a sci-fi short story but the

Illustration by Alex Castro Alphabet and Google employees are trained to avoid using certain words and phrases in internal communications and “assume every document will become public,” according to a new report from The Markup. But Google says the practice, which it describes as standard compliance training, has been in effect for years.
A document titled “Five Rules of Thumb for Written Communications” states that “Words matter. Especially in antitrust law,&rdquo

Becca Farsace / The Verge The Vergecast is back to a phone-heavy discussion with a guest-heavy show. This week on the podcast, hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn bring in The Verge crew who have used the newest gadgets that were announced the past week, including the Pixel 4A, the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, the Samsung Galaxy Buds Live, and an updated 27-inch iMac.Deputy editor Dan Seifert, news editor Chris Welch, and video director Becca Farsace (a Vergecast debut) join the show to give the

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Sony’s wireless, noise-canceling WF-1000XM3 earbuds are down to their most affordable price at Amazon and Best Buy. Normally $230 new, they cost $170. This beats the previous lowest price by around $10. Aside from having good sound quality, one of the main reasons to consider these is that they have fantastic sound isolation with the seal they make in your ear. With this fit, its noise cancellation feature cancels out more disturbances than most other trul

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Last night, the Trump administration issued a pair of stunning executive orders against Chinese technology companies, banning US transactions with the companies after a deadline of September 20th. Most of the immediate focus has been on TikTok, which was targeted through its parent company ByteDance — but the second order could have a far more unpredictable impact, targeting text app WeChat and its parent company Tencent.Tencent is one of the larges

My friend and colleague Natasha Mascarenhas has been reporting on the edtech beat quite a lot in 2020. So far reading her coverage, I’ve discovered that not only is edtech less dull than I anticipated, it’s actually somewhat interesting on a regular basis.
This week, for example, India’s Byju bought WhiteHat Jr., another Indian edtech company, for $300 million. So what, you’re thinking, that’s just another startup deal? Yes, but it was an all-cash transaction, and W

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
As ever, I was joined by TechCrunch managing editor Danny Crichton and our early-stage venture capital reporter Natasha Mascarenhas. We had Chris on the dials and a pile of news to get through, so we were pretty hyped heading into the show.
But before we could truly get started we had to discuss Cincinnati, and TikTok. Pleasantries and ex

Art: Microsoft It’s taken a while, especially considering the number of people who are looking for convenient ways to chat and videoconference these days, but Microsoft has finally created a version of its business Teams app for personal use. The app, which is considered to be in preview, is currently only available for mobile devices (iOS and Android). You get 10GB of file storage for your “team” and 2GB of personal file storage per person.
What follows is a quick how-to on u

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok has hit back at President Trump’s executive order to ban all transactions with its parent company Bytedance from September 20, saying it shows “no adherence to the law.” The Chinese firm says the executive order was issued “without any due process” after a year in which it claims it has tried to address the US government’s concerns over its app.TikTok suggests it intends to challenge the order in US courts. &ldqu