Technology news

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon can be held liable for defective products sold on its Marketplace in California, an appeals court ruled Thursday. The California Fourth District Court of Appeals reversed a 2019 trial court ruling and reinstated claims from a woman who says she suffered third-degree burns when a defective laptop battery she bought from a third-party seller on Amazon caught fire.
The decision could have dire repercussions for Amazon, which has argued for years that

Image: Google Election Day in the US — November 3rd — is almost here. Now, if you type “how to vote” or “how to register to vote” into Google’s search box, it will automatically detect which state you live in and give you voting dates, ways to register to vote online, and more.If you go to Google’s search engine or the Chrome web browser to search for specific voting information, you’ll now get some very specific results:Google search provid

Image: Epic Games Apple has banned Fortnite from the App Store for violating store policies, and Epic is rallying players against the iPhone maker in part by telling them they could miss the game’s upcoming season if Apple doesn’t change its rules.“Because Apple has BLOCKED your ability to update, when Fortnite Chapter 2 - Season 4 releases you will NOT be able to play the new Season on iOS,” Epic said in a blog post titled “#FreeFortnite.”
Fortnite Chapter 2

August 8 is International Female Orgasm Day, and we're celebrating with an entire week dedicated to exploring the business and pleasure of porn.When the GIF became the internet’s preferred visual language, it simultaneously became the preferred lust language for many consumers of adult entertainment.
Porn GIFs distill any variety of adult video into a looping image that can last from mere seconds to a full minute. But the short-form format isn’t all that’s unique about porn GIF

It's no secret that Uber is the most popular ride-hailing app. But Lyft is catching up ... at least in the U.S.
Uber is in 60 countries, while the smaller Lyft is only available in the U.S. and Canada. Uber's revenue, number of riders and drivers, and downloads always tower over little Lyft — but Uber's losses are also bigger: $837 million versus Lyft's $280 million. And now, Lyft's on the path to catch up to the ride-hailing giant in a major way: its number of daily active users in t

When it comes to the App Store, Apple is through playing nice. 
The tech giant confirmed Thursday that it had booted Epic Games' wildly popular Fortnite app from the App Store. At issue, at least according to Apple, is Epic Games' decision to add non-approved features to the app. 
Fortnite, for the unaware, is a multiplayer battle royale-style game. On Thursday, Epic Games launched a new way to purchase its in-game currency, V-bucks, at a discount. In order to get the discount on iOS,

Image: Epic Games Epic just premiered a new short mocking Apple shortly after the iPhone-maker kicked Fortnite from the App Store for violating its guidelines on Thursday. The short, titled “Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite,” directly mocks Apple’s iconic “1984” ad, taking famous imagery from the ad and giving it a cartoony Fortnite twist. A man with an apple for a face on a giant screen talks to a soulless audience, and eventually a woman throws a Fortnite pickaxe at the

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Microsoft has published a full 35-minute Surface Duo press briefing video that it held with journalists earlier this week. Microsoft typically holds in-person events for its Surface products, and this year’s press briefing was essentially a virtual version of a Surface event.
Panos Panay, Microsoft’s Windows and Devices chief, discusses everything from how the company built the Surface Duo to the tech inside and lots more. It’s proba

Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images Uber and Lyft are still obligated to classify drivers as employees after a California superior court judge denied the companies’ attempt to delay a preliminary injunction from going into effect. The two companies have threatened to leave the state if they are forced to change the status of their drivers from independent contractors to employees.Earlier this week, Uber and Lyft were ordered by California Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman to classi

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Game developer and publisher Epic Games has filed a lawsuit against Apple following the removal of the iOS version of its battle royale game Fortnite from the App Store earlier today. The legal complaint seeks to establish Apple’s App Store as a monopoly, and the civil suit is seeking injunctive relief to “allow fair competition” in mobile app distribution.“Epic brings this suit to end Apple’s unfair and anti-competitive actions th

Photo by Avery White for The Verge Wear OS will get its next substantial update this fall, and while it’s not as flashy as, say, the upcoming Android 11, it’s proof that Google hasn’t completely abandoned its wearable operating system yet. The new update promises to bring several new improvements to the platform, including speed improvements, easier pairing, and a new weather app.
The biggest change is a promise for CPU improvements, which Google says will offer up to 20 perce

Hot on the heels of Apple banning Fortnite from the App Store, Epic Games has announced that it’ll premiere a new short film within the game called Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite, in an obvious parody of Apple’s iconic 1984 commercial that introduced the original Macintosh computer.
The original advertisement, directed by Ridley Scott, portrayed Apple (and the Macintosh) as a rebellious upstart, willing to challenge the status quo with the tagline “you’ll see why 1984 won&rsquo

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple has removed Epic Games’ battle royale Fortnite from the App Store after the developer on Thursday implemented its own in-app payment system that bypassed Apple’s standard 30 percent fee. The decision marks a significant escalation in the feud between Epic and one of the most popular mobile app stores in the US, and it comes at an especially fraught time for Apple as the iPhone maker navigates antitrust concerns over its operation of its mobile

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, is paying over $2 billion to make its own diesel emissions cheating scandal go away in the United States.The company announced on Thursday that it has reached a $1.5 billion settlement with US authorities, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the California Air Resources Board, the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, the California Attorney General’s Offic

August 8 is International Female Orgasm Day, and we're celebrating with an entire week dedicated to exploring the business and pleasure of porn.Porn isn't personal. 
Not really. People absolutely have preferences, a soup of individual fantasies and desires. But while porn performers may seem like they're gazing into a viewer's eyes as they perform sexual acts, they aren't really. They're looking into a camera lens. Every tick of Pornhub's view counter is another viewer gazing into those sam

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Today, Facebook launched its long-promised voter information center, meant as an authoritative guide to help Americans cast their votes in the upcoming election.With the election more than two months away, the information in the center is currently focused on voter registration, but Facebook officials said that the focus would change as election day approaches, moving to the specifics of the voting process and, after election day itself, the accurate repo

Photo by Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images The US Department of Justice says it has dismantled three online fundraising campaigns involving terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas’ military wing). In doing so, the DOJ seized millions of dollars in cryptocurrency that was meant to fund the groups. It’s “the government’s largest-ever seizure of cryptocurrency in the terrorism context,” per the department.US offici

Musician Sufjan Stevens was so inspired by Jalaiah Harmon, the teen who created the popular Renegade dance that went viral on TikTok earlier this year, that he teamed up with the dancer for his new music video.Stevens’ new music video for “Video Game” is based on the idea that “your worth (invaluable) should never be based on other people’s approval (ephemeral),” he told Vulture in a statement. Harmon, he continued, “epitomizes all of this,” adding

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Microsoft is committing to support its new Surface Duo Android phone with updates for three years. “Surface Duo will be supported with OS and security updates for 3 years,” says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge.
This means if you buy Microsoft’s $1,399 Android phone, you’re guaranteed to get the latest Android versions for three years. Naturally, this will also include updates to Microsoft’s custom And

Vjeran Pavic / The Verge If you’ve been looking for a OnePlus 7 Pro, there’s a chance you’ve had a tough time finding one. It’s completely sold out on OnePlus’ site, but right now, Daily Steals is offering this phone for $450, which matches the lowest price that we’ve seen yet. To get this price, enter the code VERGEONEP in at the checkout page after you add one to your cart. This configuration of the 7 Pro, which features 8GB of RAM and 256GB of fast UFS 3.0

Mirantis,the company that recently bought Docker’s enterprise business, today announced that it has acquired Lens, a desktop application that the team describes as a Kubernetes-integrated development environment. Mirantis previously acquired the team behind the Finnish startup Kontena, the company that originally developed Lens.
Lens itself was most recently owned by Lakend Labs, though, which describes itself as “a collective of cloud native compute geeks and technologists” th

Image: Google Google may finally end the internet tradition of traffic-grabbing how-to-watch posts with a new search feature that will display local TV and streaming options for NBA and MLB games when you search phrases like “how to watch the Lakers games.”The new feature is rolling out in the US today, and it can incorporate your location data to help you figure out which specific local channel is airing the game you want to watch. The new TV options will also appear on Google&rsqu

Photo by Niko Tavernise / Netflix Netflix’s “dun dun” sound that plays before an original movie is pretty familiar, but in order to spice it up a little for films that receive theatrical releases, the streamer teamed up with composer Hans Zimmer.The sound, which can be heard in the video below, has little in common with the short “ta-dum” sound that I’ve become used to hearing. It’s, well, incredibly Hans Zimmer; orchestral, intense, loud. The “ta

Photo by Eric Espada / Getty Images Jake Paul finally commented on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s raid on his home last week, saying that the search was related to a “looting” incident at an Arizona mall in May. “There are rumors about it having to do with so many other things that have nothing to do with me or my character, and the shit that people are making up is absolutely absurd,” Paul said in a video that appears to have been deleted but was captured b

Photo by Yan Guolin/VCG via Getty Images Chinese tech company ByteDance censored media criticizing the Chinese government on news aggregation apps in Indonesia up until the middle of 2020, Reuters reported Thursday.
In 2018, ByteDance purchased the Indonesian news aggregation app Baca Berita (BaBe) after the country briefly banned the tech giant’s video-sharing platform TikTok. Shortly after ByteDance’s acquisition of BaBe, moderators for the app were instructed to take down content

Wind turbines located at the Mehrum coal-fired power station in the Peine district in Germany. In the energy turnaround, energy sources such as coal are to be replaced by more environmentally friendly energy sources from sun and wind. The phase-out of coal is planned by 2038 at the latest. | Photo by Julian Stratenschulte / picture alliance via Getty Images Solar and wind power as a share of global electricity has doubled since 2015, according to a new report by climate-focused think tank Ember

I don’t think there’s anyone who would call Game of Thrones — whether we’re talking about the books or the TV show — a relaxing experience. It’s tense and uncomfortable, with plenty of moments to make you wince. But the latest video game spinoff, an Apple Arcade exclusive called Tale of Crows, has a much different vibe. It gives you one of the most difficult jobs in all of Westeros, putting you in charge of the Night’s Watch, guarding a giant wall in a d

HP HP’s redesigned 15.6-inch Omen gaming laptop is $300 off at Best Buy when you’re signed in with a free account. This configuration is normally $1,450, but it’s $1,150 until August 23rd when you click the “Apply Offer” box under the sale price. This machine released just a few months ago, and for this low price, it offers probably the best bang for your buck that I’ve seen in a laptop recently. It has Intel’s Core i7-10750H six-core CPU, Nvidia’

This morning Cube announced that it has closed a Seed round worth just over $5 million. The software startup, focused on financial planning and analysis (FP&A) work, raised $3.8 million of the total recently, with remaining $1.25 million having come in an earlier Pre-Seed round.
Christina Ross, Cube’s CEO and founder, told TechCrunch that she started raising the most recent tranche of capital in March, winding up with a few term sheets within a few weeks. Eventually the startup picked

Snapchat Snap knows that people post videos with its augmented reality lenses to multiple platforms, and today, it’s launching lenses specifically to be used on TikTok. The company is partnering with four TikTok stars, including Jalaiah Harmon, who created the Renegade dance, to launch Snapchat lenses that track people’s bodies as they move and change in response. One lens, made in collaboration with Dixie D’Amelio, places rain around the subject along with cartoon lightning b