Technology news

Photo credit should read WANG ZHAO/AFP via Getty Images Tesla is working on a new motion-detection sensor that could detect a child left behind in a hot car. According to Reuters, the company is seeking approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to market the technology, which would use unlicensed millimeter-wave radar sensors designed to operate at higher power levels than allowed under existing rules.In its application, Tesla said the device could be used to “reduce the r

Photo by Andrew Matthews/PA Images via Getty Images A fertility app that helps women monitor their cycles when hoping to become pregnant was sharing user data with several Chinese companies, The Washington Post reported on Thursday. The International Digital Accountability Council (IDAC), a nonprofit consumer privacy watchdog, said its research found that the Android version of the app was sharing data with three Chinese analytics firms, including unique device identifiers which could help them

NASA and its Russian partner Roscosmos are going to try to hunt down the source of a very small leak on the International Space Station this weekend, one that has been causing air to release a little more rapidly from the ISS for the last year. The three crew members currently on board the station will stay in the Russian segment of the ISS over the weekend, while NASA tries to isolate the origin of the leak in other parts of the spacecraft.
NASA first noticed it might have a leak on the station

Photo by Mandel Ngan-Pool/Getty Images Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before the Federal Trade Commission this week as part of the regulator’s ongoing antitrust investigation into the company, according to a new report from Politico Thursday.
The FTC has been investigating Facebook for potential violations of US antitrust law for at least a year. Facebook announced in July 2019 that the agency had launched a probe into the company as part of its quarterly earnings disclosures. Acc

Microsoft’s xCloud game streaming abilities will be officially integrated into the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription starting on September 15th, with support for more than 100 games. However, you don’t need to wait to try out the cloud gaming service, and it’s possible that you might already have all the necessary components to make it happen.Here’s what you’ll need to try it yourself:A subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, the Microsoft service that costs $14

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber’s former security chief has been charged with obstruction of justice for trying to hide a data breach from the Federal Trade Commission and Uber management, according to a statement from the Department of Justice. Joseph Sullivan, who was Uber’s chief security officer from April 2015 to November 2017, allegedly concealed the hack that occurred in October 2016, which exposed confidential data of 57 million drivers and customers, including

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google is making a change in Android 11 that will force apps that want to take photos or video to use the phone’s built-in camera app — even if you’ve made a different camera app, like OpenCamera, your default choice for photos.“[W]e believe it’s the right trade-off to protect the privacy and security of our users,” the Android engineering team wrote on August 17th, adding that apps that call on the camera would need to expli

Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images A California state judge blocked an order requiring Uber and Lyft to classify drivers as employees, averting an expected shutdown of the ride-sharing services in California at the 11th hour, according to reporters from the Financial Times and The New York Times. The court granted Uber and Lyft a temporary stay while the appeals process play out.Lyft had already announced it was planning to temporarily cease operations in the state earlier today, and Uber

Image: Netflix Netflix on Thursday announced the launch of a unique Stranger Things immersive theater production it’s calling a “drive-into experience,” in which it’s transforming a series of buildings in downtown Los Angeles into what is effectively a cross between a theme park and a live theater show. The central hook: you can drive your car through the entire thing and never have to get out. It sounds like a savvy way to capitalize on the hunger for live events during

Photo by Cara Howe / Netflix If you want to watch a TV show that recaps the latest news with a healthy amount of jokes and comically bad photoshops, you have a lot of choices. There’s The Daily Show With Trevor Noah on Comedy Central, TBS’s Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. This week, however, there is one less option: Netflix has canceled Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, a show that superficially didn’t seem all that different f

Google has finally launched more colors for its second-generation Pixel Buds, nearly four months since the true wireless headphones launched. In addition to “clearly white,” you can now buy the Pixel Buds in “oh so orange,” “quite mint,” and “almost black.”
The second-generation Pixel Buds launched on April 27th, but they were only available in white at the time, despite Google also announcing the other three colors when the Pixel Buds were reveale

Photo Illustration by Mateusz Slodkowski / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images For the past two days, photographers have been posting in a panic across Twitter, Reddit, and the Photoshop feedback forums. They’d downloaded Adobe’s latest update for Lightroom’s iOS app, and suddenly, their photos and presets were gone. Adobe has now confirmed the issue, and it’s also said that the data are gone for good.“I’ve talked with customer service for 4+ hours ove

Photo Illustration by Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Airbnb is cracking down on house parties and events in properties listed on its platform to try to better follow local health departments’ social distancing requirements for large gatherings, the company said in a blog post Thursday. It’s imposing an occupancy cap of 16 people, and hosts or renters on the platform who try to evade the new rules risk being banned from the platform or even the possibility of l

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Lyft will suspend its ride-hailing operations in California at 11:59PM PT on August 20th, the company confirmed in a blog post. Along with Uber, the company was ordered by a state judge to employ its drivers rather than classify them as independent contractors. But Lyft is choosing to end its service in California rather than comply with that order — at least for now.“This is not something we wanted to do, as we know millions of Californians dep

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In June this year, Reddit began a huge campaign to remove hateful content from its site, blocking communities that engaged in hate speech and harassment. In an update on its progress today, the company says it’s banned nearly 7,000 subreddits (including repeat offenders) resulting in an 18 percent drop in users posting hateful content.
“While I would love that number to be 100 percent, I’m encouraged by the progress,” writes Reddit

Photo by Nicholas Kamm / AFP via Getty Images Vitagene, a company that makes mail-in, saliva-based COVID-19 tests, is switching its shipping from the United States Postal Service to FedEx, its CEO told The Verge.“We’ve had problems with USPS recently, in terms of tracking packages and the delivery of packages,” says CEO Mehdi Maghsoodnia.
Trump-appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who took the position at the head of USPS in June, has instituted cost-cutting changes (like

Photo by Alex Wong / Getty Images President Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon and three others were arrested and are charged with fraud over a crowdfunded wall along the US-Mexico border. The “We Build the Wall” campaign collected over $25 million to construct the border wall proposed by President Donald Trump. But prosecutors claim that Bannon, We Build the Wall founder Brian Kolfage, and their associates Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea funneled hundreds of thousand

Razer is best known for its all-black, LED-filled gaming accessories that are built to keep you gaming at your peak. But its latest lineup, consisting of a wireless mouse, a wireless mechanical keyboard, and a mousepad to match, is far simpler in function and design.
The $99.99 Pro Click is a large wireless mouse with a palm-filling design and a grippy, concave thumb rest. Razer teamed up with office ergonomics company Humanscale to develop it. The mouse was built to position your wrist a 30-deg

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Google is adding a number of new features to its Pixel Buds today. A new transcribe mode is designed to translate long speeches directly into your ears, which is ideal for if you’re listening to a lecture or speech where a single person is speaking in a language you don’t understand. The Pixel Buds have always supported a translation feature, but this transcribe mode is designed for one-way translation instead of conversations back and forth, and i

Vertical farming technology provider iFarm has bagged a $4 million seed round, led by Gagarin Capital, an earlier investor in the startup. Other investors in the round include Matrix Capital, Impulse VC, IMI.VC and several business angels.
The Finnish startup is focused on providing software that enables others to carry out vertical farming — targeting sales at food processing companies and FMCG giants, as well as farmers, university research centers and even large corporates with their ow

Today, 505 Games is attempting to clear the air with a blog post about why it won’t be offering owners of the original Control game a free next-gen upgrade when that version releases in 2021. It comes after last week’s announcement that Control: Ultimate Edition, the $39.99 release that bundles the base game with all of the downloadable content, will give players on PS4 or Xbox One a free upgrade to the next-gen version. 505 caused some backlash when it said it won’t offer any

SpaceX is still pressing ahead with its lawsuit against the Air Force over rocket development money the company didn’t receive two years ago — despite just winning a more than $300 million contract from the Air Force to launch military satellites during the 2020s. In a new court document, SpaceX is arguing that not getting the funds caused “substantial harm” that still remains.
On August 7th, the Air Force selected two companies — SpaceX and rival United Launch Alli

The Dell XPS 13 is one of the best laptops for high school and college students. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Shopping for a laptop can be stressful — doubly stressful if you or your children will be learning online for the first time. Kids of different ages have a range of different laptop use cases and different needs. And as technology evolves, so do students’ needs. So I spoke to some experts on the subject: students themselves.My recommendations here are meant

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge DoorDash is ramping up its on-demand delivery efforts with the launch of grocery delivery, starting with select chains in markets throughout California and parts of the Midwest. The move follows DoorDash’s push into convenience stores earlier this year and its recently announced DashMart virtual store for selling snacks and other food items and over-the-counter goods.For now, DoorDash is working only with Smart & Final, Meijer, Fresh Thyme, and

Sony is ready to start marketing its next-generation PlayStation 5 console with commercials, but the new minute-long spot doesn’t include any PS5 games or the all-important price tag. Instead, Sony has opted to focus on the 3D audio support and the PS5’s DualSense controller’s support for haptic feedback and adaptive triggers.
Sony is pitching the PS5 as a console that will allow players to “feel more,” with games that let people “see with sound.” It&rsq

Photo by Fabrice Coffrini / AFP via Getty Images Researchers have learned a lot about the new coronavirus in the 233 days since officials in China reported cases of a then-unknown disease to the World Health Organization. Much of what they’ve learned upended their early assumptions about the virus. The changes aren’t just hard to keep track of; they also make it hard to adjust to new recommendations.
Initially, researchers thought it spread almost entirely through droplets of mucus

Google’s new wildfire-mapping feature includes wildfire boundaries, top news stories, and official updates. | Image: Google Type in the name of an ongoing wildfire into Google search, and the site will now bring up a map featuring a near-real-time boundary of the fire. Google revealed the feature today, which was piloted in California last year and will now be available across the US.Google Maps will also update users with road closures and provide them with directions that help them avoi