Technology news

So it looks like Disney Plus has revived a Mouseketeers special from the 1970s (via Gizmodo) because Gen X deserves to wallow in nostalgia once in a while. But! Not only is the 60-minute promotional show The Mouseketeers at Walt Disney World available to stream, but all the commercials that aired during the original 1977 broadcast are in there as well.Credit to artist / director Rob Sheridan for the discovery, which he posted on Twitter. Shake ‘n Bake, man. We didn’t know how good we

Unity, the company founded in a Copenhagen apartment in 2004, is poised for an initial public offering with numbers that look pretty strong.
Even as its main competitor, Epic Games,is in the throes of a very public fight with Apple over the fees the computer giant charges developers who sell applications (including games) on its platform (which has seen Epic’s games get the boot from the App Store), Unity has plowed ahead, narrowing its losses and maintaining its hold on over half of the g

Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge In this week’s episode of “should the social network leave it up or take it down?” we have Facebook wading into another thorny moderation situation, this time in Thailand. According to a report from The Guardian, the company has removed a Facebook group with more than 1 million members after it was threatened by the Thai government for violating local laws around defaming the ruling monarch.
The group, called “Royalist Marketplac

One would assume that the postmaster general — the chief executive officer of the U.S. Postal Service — would be able to answer basic questions about the agency he oversees. But apparently that's not a requirement of the job.
On Monday, when Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testified before the House Oversight Committee about his recent management of the USPS and the future of mail-in ballots, his lack of knowledge regarding the most basic postage-related questions was made very appare

Snowflakefiled to go public today joining a bushel of companies making their S-1 documents public today. TechCrunch has a longer digest of all the IPO filings coming soon, but we could not wait to get into the Snowflake numbers, given the huge anticipation that the company has generated in recent quarters.
Why? Because the cloud data warehouse company has been on a fundraising tear in recent years, including a $450 million Series F in late 2018 and a $479 million Series G in February of this yea

A team of researchers from the University of British Columbia, Princeton University, the University of California, Berkeley and the Singapore-ETH Centre have created a bus stop-like pavilion that can cool you down without using a conventional air conditioner. The technology reduces the overall carbon footprint that traditional A/C’s emit, all while using half the energy.  Read more...More about Tech, Science, Mashable Video, Eco Friendly, and Future Blink

Unity, maker of the popular Unity Game Engine, has filed to go public at an incredible moment in time. Its chief rival, Epic Games, is currently busy arguing that Apple is holding the Unreal Engine hostage, and Epic will appear in court this very afternoon to demand a restraining order so Apple can’t cut off access to developers.
What’s more incredible, though: the numbers revealed in Unity’s new S-1 filing show the company is far more of a formidable rival to Epic than we thou

Photo by Roslan Rahman/AFP via Getty Images Apple’s worldwide retail network may be struggling during the coronavirus pandemic, but that hasn’t stopped the company from indulging in its penchant for pricey-looking, unique, and outlandish exterior design. The iPhone maker’s newest retail location, located in Singapore on the city-state’s waterfront and known officially as Apple Marina Bay Sands, can claim a world’s first title: it’s the only Apple retail shop

Photo by Brennan King / The Verg Samsung’s Find My Mobile feature is a handy tool to help you find a lost phone. With the latest app update, Find My Mobile will now work for Galaxy devices that aren’t connected to Wi-Fi or cellular. Max Weinbach of XDA Developers spotted the feature on Saturday.
The “Offline finding” function will leverage a network of nearby Galaxy devices — it looks similar to the “Community Find” feature that Tile trackers use when t

YouTube has banned the controversial creator Calvin Lee Vail, better known as LeafyIsHere, for repeatedly violating the company’s harassment policies. The ban follows big changes to YouTube’s harassment policy meant to deter behavior that in part helped creators in the commentary community like Leafy develop a following.
Although Vail has a history of making videos that include offensive comments about other creators on the site, including a now-deleted video from 2016 that mocked th

Photo by Travis Dove-Pool/Getty Images The Republican National Convention officially kicked off Monday at the Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s the third location of the event after it was moved twice due to restrictions resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. The convention is set to feature a mix of online and in-person events.
WHEN IS IT?
The convention is scheduled to last two hours each night, Monday through Thursday, starting at 8:30PM ET.
HOW DO I WATC

Are you the same person that you were back in January, or has the overwhelming, relentless chaos of 2020 changed you?
For many people, the first half of 2020 has been an emotionally taxing journey of self-discovery. And as summer comes to an end we're straight up tiredZoom fatigue, boredom, and doomscrolling are all very real trends that have emerged from quarantine, and they undeniably have the potential to change a person.
If you feel your personality has changed as a result of recent circumst

Amazon may be looking to bring the cashierless tech found at its Go convenience stores to Whole Foods supermarkets as early as next year, the New York Post reports.Amazon may start implementing the tech in Whole Foods sometime during the second quarter of 2021, according to the New York Post’s source. This technology, which is currently available in more than 20 Amazon Go convenience store locations, uses cameras, sensors, and computer vision to let customers walk out the store with grocer

Photo by Alain Pitton/NurPhoto via Getty Images With schools across the country beginning virtual classes this week, videoconferencing platform Zoom had an unexpected gift for all the schoolchildren in the form of a lengthy outage that affected the ability to conduct meetings and webinars. The outage affected North America and some parts of Europe.Holy Cow @zoom_us is Down on a Super Busy Monday / we had a full calendar / guess Schools now have #ZoomDays added to #SnowDays pic.twitter.com/FsC7t

Image: Google If you check in on Google’s cute frog mascot that accompanies search results for weather in the Google app on Android, you might see that the froggy is wearing a mask, as first observed by some Reddit users over the weekend (via 9to5Google).
The froggy is still doing things it did before wearing a mask, such as hanging up clothes, walking through a field, or riding a bike, but now it might also be wearing one of many different masks, as found by Verge staffers and seen in sc

Blizzard is releasing an original animated series based on World of Warcraft, the developer announced today. Afterlives will premiere this Thursday during Gamescom 2020’s online celebrations.It’s a move that feels inevitable; Blizzard has long hyped its games, from World of Warcraft to Hearthstone and Overwatch, with beautifully animated shorts. They’re a way to hype characters or stories — promotional material that rarely has a long tail. Afterlives is its first original

Workers board up windows in the French Quarter in anticipation of Hurricane Marco and Tropical storm Laura on August 23, 2020 in New Orleans, Louisiana.  | Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images The US Gulf Coast is bracing for back-to-back tropical cyclones forecast to batter the same communities. Tropical storms Marco and Laura are both on track to slam into Louisiana.
“These storms are not to be taken lightly, especially because there are two of them and they’re going to impact

Photo Illustration by Ajay Kumar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds may have been eclipsed on console and PC by the flashier battle royale games it inspired, but the mobile version of the seminal shooter continues to be one of the largest and most successful games on the planet. And now it’s getting a 1.0 update that promises huge boosts to performance and other benefits just in time for a planned $2 million esports tournament set to kick off in N

A big payday is on the way for Sequoia and its partners, assuming they beat the final boss.
Today after much anticipation, video game engine Unity filed its Form S-1 with the SEC as it prepares a roadshow to go public in the coming weeks. We discussed quite a bit about Unity’s business fundamentals, product design, origin story and more late last year on Extra Crunch, so definitely check out that deep dive article for more background on the game engine and simulation company.How Unity buil

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Videoconferencing giant Zoom experienced widespread outages this morning, with users in the US and UK reporting problems joining video calls, but service has now been restored.
DownDetector showed outages beginning in North America and some parts of Europe from around 9AM ET, with Zoom’s status page reporting problems with users joining meetings and webinars. At around 11AM ET, the company said it was “deploying a fix” and around 12.15PM

Foxconn is reportedly considering producing iPhones at the factory. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge A number of major Asian manufacturers such as Foxconn, Pegatron, and Luxshare are considering opening new factories in Mexico, Reuters reports, responding to the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing US-China trade war. Foxconn reportedly has plans to produce iPhones at the new factory, according to two Reuters sources, although Apple isn’t thought to be directly involved at this t

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Overall Twitch viewership shrank slightly in July, and streams of top games like League of Legends and Fortnite fell with it. But in other corners of Twitch, viewership is still growing: the platform’s “Just Chatting” category saw millions more hours watched, and there were increases in Twitch’s “Creative” and “Music & Performing Arts” categories, too.
Just Chatting grew to 176 million hours watched in J

Setting our dive into Palantir’s gross margins aside for another day, Sumo Logic filed to go public this morning. The Redwood City-based, former startup raised around $340 million while private, according to Crunchbase data.The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. You can read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.Sumo Logicparses information collected from its customers’ enterprise apps and integrations to help them pinpoint operat

Audible Audible, an Amazon company, is separating its exclusive audio content out into its own plan today with a cheaper subscription that doesn’t include audiobook access. Audible Plus, for $7.95 a month, is the company’s cheapest plan, giving subscribers access to Audible’s collection of exclusive audio content, like podcasts. Crucially, they won’t receive any credits to purchase audiobooks or content outside that catalog.In the coming weeks, Audible plans to launch mo

Google’s hidden Dinosaur runner game that pops up in Chrome when people are offline is a treasured Easter egg for Chrome users, but it was arguably in need of an update.
Enter a modded version of the game called Dino Swords, created by a partnership between Internet collective MSCHF and 100 Thieves that gives the adorable, granulated T-Rex an assortment of weapons to use. Weapons are bound to various keys that players can use, but there’s a catch. Some of the weapons will lead to sel

If you need a bunch of stickers of your cat to put on your laptop, Polaroid just came through in the clutch.
Polaroid announced the launch of its new Hi-Print mobile printer on Monday morning. To start, it's available on Polaroid's website for $99.99 with a 20-sheet printer cartridge costing $16.99 separately. You can also spend $129.99 for a starter set that comes with the printer and 40 sheets of paper. Other retailers, like Best Buy and Amazon, will have it on Sept. 10.SEE ALSO: For truly ama

Based on wallpaper by Michael Gillett (Wallpaper Hub) TikTok has sued President Donald Trump’s administration for banning transactions with parent company ByteDance. “The [Trump] administration ignored our extensive efforts to address its concerns, which we conducted fully and in good faith,” TikTok wrote in a press release. “We do not take suing the government lightly, however we feel we have no choice but to take action to protect our rights, and the rights of our comm

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here, and myself here, and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
What was on

Photo: Volvo Luminar, a Florida-based startup that makes LIDAR sensors and other components essential for autonomous driving technology, is the latest transportation company to go public via a “reverse merger” with a special acquisition company, or SPAC.The company announced Monday that it was merging with Gores Metropoulos, a so-called “blank check” company sponsored by an affiliate of The Gores Group, a global investment firm. As a result, Luminar will become a publicl

Image: NASA Headlines abound this week about an asteroid heading toward Earth at perhaps the most opportune time during a terrible year: November 2nd, the day before the presidential election. It sounds too good to be true — an asteroid to wipe us all out before what will surely be a very contentious election process — and that’s because it is.This so-called “dangerous” asteroid, dubbed 2018VP1, has a 0.41 percent chance of crossing paths with Earth on November 2nd

The first teaser trailer for the upcoming stealth adventure game The Lord of the Rings: Gollum gets right to the point in sending Gollum into the desolate land of Mordor.
From Daedalic Entertainment, a studio with a long list of smaller adventure, tactical, and puzzle games under its belt, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum puts the decrepit, ring-poisoned old hobbit in the center of the story. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz in 2019, Daedalic CEO Carsten Fichtelmann said that the game would f

Kellyanne Conway, one of the longest serving White House advisors, is officially stepping down from her duties to the first family to put her own family first.
On Sunday night, Kellyanne, the matriarch of one of Twitter's most frequently feuding families, announced that she'll leave the White House at the end of the month. In a longer statement, Conway called her four-year commitment to the Trump administration "heady" and "humbling" and claimed that she is leaving to devote more time to her fou

Like riding the world’s worst rollercoaster.| GIF: Brain Navi If you’ve been tested for COVID-19 then you’ve probably experienced the unpleasantness of a nasal swab. Someone takes a long-handled cotton swab and sticks it up your nose — way up your nose — until it reaches the back of the mucus-cave that is your nasal cavity. Upon arrival they give the swab a good twirl to collect your secretions and beat a merciful retreat. I can say from personal experience that it

The wildly popular game Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is coming to mobile, but only in China. Games analyst Daniel Ahmad tweeted that Chinese entertainment company Bilibili has secured the rights to publish a mobile version of the game, but in China only.On its website, Bilibili says it will be the “exclusive agent” for a genuine mobile game in mainland China that Google is translating to “Jelly Bean: Ultimate Knockout,” with “jelly bean” a likely reference to

If your house is already multitasking as a living space, office, and classroom, why not add a cycling studio or home gym to the mix? If you have the right equipment to work out from home, you’ll feel more motivated to actually sweat it out. 
So step into some spandex because we’ve got you covered with useful workout and recovery gear from Best Buy — make that best bod. 
Take spin class home
If you’re missing your spin classes or want an alternative to running, t

Did we really need this? Showtime seems to think so.
The first trailer for The Comey Rule makes its pitch. This is a dramatized account of the 2016 election's final days and the decisions made by former FBI director James Comey that first enabled and then threatened Donald Trump's presidency. It stars Jeff Daniels as Comey and Brendan Gleeson as Trump.
Can you think of a more unnecessary story to dramatize in 2020 than this take on Trump's ascent? Especially one that, as this trailer suggests, t

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Videoconferencing giant Zoom is experiencing widespread outages, with users in the US and UK reporting problems joining video calls.DownDetector shows outages in North American and some parts of Europe, while Zoom’s own status page reports problems with meetings and webinars only. Chat, phone, and other auxiliary services are apparently working fine, but that doesn’t mean much if you can’t use the app for its prime function.
It’s n

Welcome to 2000s Week! We're exploring the pop culture that shaped us at the turn of the millennium, and examining what the films, shows, and games from the era say about us then and now. It's a little #tbt to the days before #tbt was a thing.At the turn of the millennium, Sega’s Dreamcast emerged.
Like the sun cresting over the eastern horizon heralding a new day, the Dreamcast’s North American release in September of 1999 heralded a new era of gaming. It was the first console