Technology news

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon is spending nearly $1.9 billion to catch up on 5G spectrum, as the biggest carriers race to roll out higher-speed connections nationwide. This morning, the Federal Communications Commission revealed the winners of an auction for licenses to valuable spectrum that’s especially useful for 5G. Verizon was the biggest spender by far. Dish came in second, spending $912 million. Charter, Comcast, and Cox all spent hundreds of millions on spectrum

For Disney Plus subscribers who don’t want to pay an extra $30 to watch Mulan when it drops on September 4th, the company has announced it will be free to all customers on December 4th.
A new description on Mulan’s Disney Plus page notes that it will be available to all subscribers on December 4th, 2020. An FAQ page for Mulan on Disney Plus also states that “Premier Access offer will be available until November 2, 2020,” but it’s unclear exactly what that means for

Photo by S3studio/Getty Images Two-factor authentication (2FA) is one of the best and easiest ways to keep your online accounts secure. They work by issuing an authentication code on your phone when somebody tries to access the account; if that person doesn’t have the code, they (or you) don’t get in. By using a 2FA app, such as Google Authenticator or Authy, you can prevent somebody from accessing your data by getting your password. (You can have a code texted to you, but that is c

Western Digital There’s a good deal happening on Western Digital’s WD_Black SN750 NVMe M.2 drive with 500GB of storage. It usually floats around $80, but it’s $63 right now at Amazon, B&H Photo, and even at Western Digital’s online store. 500GB is admittedly not a lot of storage, but if you’re in a pinch for something fast and don’t require a bunch of extra space, this is worth checking out.It’s an M.2 2280 form factor drive, so make sure your PC&rs

Process automation startup Hypatos has raised a €10 million (~$11.8 million) seed round of funding from investors including Blackfin Tech, Grazia Equity, UVC Partners and Plug & Play Ventures.
The Germany and Poland-based company was spun out of AI for accounting startup Smacc at the back end of 2018 to apply deep learning tech to power a wider range of back-office automation, with a focus on industries with heavy financial document processing needs, such as the financial and insurance

Twitch’s Watch Parties function is rolling out to everyone today, giving streamers and their subscribers around the world the ability to watch Amazon’s library of movies and TV shows together. It’s not just for families; as long as everyone has an Amazon Prime account, a streamer can now host a “public” movie viewing with all of their fans.
Watch parties have taken off in general over the last few months as people stuck at home figure out ways to make watching TV sh

Image: Samsung Samsung has a new fitness tracker on the way called the Galaxy Fit 2. It’s an updated version of the original Galaxy Fit band that offers a larger display and more battery life — much more battery life, in fact.Samsung is promising that the new model can last for at least 15 days on a single charge and up to three weeks depending on your settings. That’s a big jump over the original model, which Samsung promised would get barely a week of usage off a single char

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok’s high-profile search for a US buyer is hitting a roadblock after weeks of public negotiations and months of national security debates. A string of reports from Reuters, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal describes a growing stalemate over the algorithm behind TikTok’s For You page, arguably the most important piece of software the company has. That algorithm has become a sticking point between the US and China, and what happens to

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In August 2019, after the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his jail cell, conspiracy theories about what had happened ran rampant on social networks. The theories did not necessarily originate there, but the networks did their part to amplify them, and the confusion that followed was dubbed “the disinformation World Cup.”At the center of the maelstrom was Twitter, where various baseless theories about Epstein’s death

Image: Amazon Blink, that other smart home camera company that Amazon scooped up, today announced a pair of new cameras that move its business deeper into a subscription model. And they can also last for a long time — up to four years of “normal use” — on a single set of batteries if that’s what you need.The new Blink Outdoor ($99.99) and Indoor ($79.99) cameras include a free trial to Blink’s cloud storage plan that’s good through the end of this year.

Parcast Union Parcast, the podcast production company Spotify acquired last year, is unionizing. The Writers Guild of America, East announced the news today, along with a letter about why Parcast, which specializes in true crime and mystery shows, decided to organize.The production company says it wants to see Spotify commit to diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as maintain a reasonable workload and overtime compensation. Parcast is also seeking clear job descriptions, equitable pay, tra

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge The investigation of the unprecedented Twitter hack earlier this summer has produced a new suspect: a 16-year-old from Massachusetts, according to a new report from The New York Times. This new suspect would be the youngest of the group of conspirators spanning the US and the UK, a group now totaling four individuals who together planned and then pulled off account takeovers of dozens of high-profile Twitter users to promote a bitcoin scam.
It’

Dynabook’s new Portégé X30W-J convertible laptop. | Image: Dynabook Dynabook, the company that took control of Toshiba’s laptop operation before it axed that business earlier this month, is releasing two new laptops built with Intel’s new 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors. Both laptops, the Portégé X30W-J convertible and the Portégé X30L-J standard clamshell, are less than 1kg (about 2.2 pounds) and have 13.3-inch screens. The company wil

Samsung It’s a big day for Intel. The company launched its 11th Gen Tiger Lake mobile processors. It also announced its newest badge of honor for laptops: the Intel Evo brand, building on last year’s Project Athena program. And in tandem with Samsung, it unveiled the first 5G-enabled system to meet the Evo requirements: the Galaxy Book Flex 5G.The Flex 5G is Samsung’s first 5G laptop, and it certainly looks nice. It weighs 2.7 pounds (1.26kg) and comes in a light “royal

The ZenBook 14 with the optional ScreenPad built into the trackpad. | Asus Asus announced its next wave of Zenbook laptops for release later this fall that will run on Intel’s 11th Gen processors — only days after it announced similar versions that run on Intel’s 10th Gen processors. In addition, most of the upcoming laptops will feature Thunderbolt 4 ports rather than Thunderbolt 3 ports. It didn’t share pricing for any of the models.ZenBook S
The flagship ZenBook S is

This is the Swift 3 SF313-53 (the one with the 13.5-inch screen). | Acer Acer has announced new Swift 3 and Swift 5 laptops, which include Intel’s 11th Gen “Tiger Lake” processors. Both models will launch in November. The Swift 5 starts at $999.99 and the Swift 3 starts at $699.99.The Swift 5 is one of the first batch of laptops to be verified through Intel’s new Evo platform. Systems that earn this badge are supposed to deliver nine or more hours of “real-world&rd

Intel has just announced its new 11th Gen processors, and alongside the new launch, the company is also rolling out a minimalist new logo — the third logo that the company has ever used. The new design replaces the previous branding with the Intel wordmark enclosed in a circle that has been used by the company in various forms since 2006.The new logo will also accompany a brand-wide refresh for Intel across all of its products, with a more minimalist design for everything from Intel’

Intel has officially announced its first 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors for laptops, which will feature the company’s new integrated Xe graphics, Thunderbolt 4 support, Wi-Fi 6, and a big leap in performance and battery life over the previous Ice Lake chips. The company claims that the new 11th Gen lineup offers the “best processor for thin-&-light” laptops.The company had already previewed the new chips at its Architecture Day 2020 event earlier this year. The new 11th Gen

Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images Earlier this week, a coalition of veteran and progressive groups demanded that the Joe Biden campaign commit that no Facebook executives or registered lobbyists would be appointed to the Biden transition team or future administration if elected.Groups like Defend American Democracy, the Open Markets Institute, and Demand Progress penned their letter, addressed to transition team leaders former Sen. Ted Kaufman and Yohannes Abraham, citing Facebook&

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile on Wednesday announced a much wider rollout of its 2.5GHz midband 5G coverage, adding 81 new cities and towns to a total list of 90 markets throughout the US.Midband 5G is much faster and more appropriately fitting of the 5G moniker than the type of low-band 5G we’ve seen from AT&T and T-Mobile and more reliable than high-band mmWave 5G, which is used primarily by Verizon, although AT&T and T-Mobile also have limited support. (mmWav

This is Asus’ PG259QN 360Hz refresh rate gaming monitor, one of the four monitors confirmed for later this year | Asus Later this fall, Alienware, MSI, Asus, and Acer will each release a 25-inch 1080p monitor made for competitive gaming with an incredibly fast 360Hz refresh rate. Additionally, they’ll be the first monitors to include Nvidia’s Reflex Latency Analyzer feature that aims to help gamers accurately measure and reduce latency from their mouse, display, and PC. Nvidia

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge For many years, Europe has been unhappy with the tax habits of US tech giants. As regulators and politicians have often noted, these firms make vast amounts of money from European citizens but pay a pittance in tax. In the absence of an overhaul of the global tax system, a number of European nations have introduced new taxes aimed specifically at these companies. And the tech giants are responding by passing on the costs.
Over the last month, for example,

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge For many years, Europe has been unhappy with the tax habits of US tech giants. As regulators and politicians have often noted, these firms make vast amounts of money from European citizens but pay a pittance in tax. In the absence of an overhaul of the global tax system, a number of European nations have introduced new taxes aimed specifically at these companies. And the tech giants are responding by passing on the costs.
Over the last month, for example,

The Mandalorian will return with new episodes beginning on October 30th, Disney announced today on Twitter.The announcement seems to indicate that the show will continue its weekly release schedule, much like the first season did. We don’t have a trailer for the new season yet, but expect that imminently now that we have a date. Hopefully, it’s full of adorable Baby Yoda — or, sorry, “The Child” — moments! The Mandalorian’s return to Disney Plus marks th

Panasonic went in at the high end when it released its first L-mount full-frame mirrorless cameras last year, but today it’s announcing a more mainstream and versatile model. Like the $2,499 Lumix S1, the new S5 is built around a 24.2-megapixel full-frame sensor and is designed for both photo and video work.The Lumix S5 is $500 less expensive, though, and significantly more compact. Here’s a picture Panasonic supplied of its current highest-end mirrorless cameras, including the Micro

India is banning another 118 apps said to be either based in or linked to China. PUBG Mobile, Alipay, and Baidu are among the biggest names on the list. India banned TikTok, WeChat, and more than 50 other China-based apps in June, suggesting they were a security issue.
The country’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said that it had received complaints about apps “stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorized manner to servers which h

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Lucid Motors has been making a lot of bold claims in the lead-up to the September 9th unveiling of its first all-electric sedan, the Lucid Air: longest range, fastest charge, biggest battery. But today, the Newark, California-based company is truly laying its cards on the table with its claim to have built one of the quickest production cars ever made.Not just one of the fastest-accelerating electric cars, mind you. One of the fastest-accelerating car

I’m currently reviewing the Microsoft Duo and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 — they’re sitting on my desk right now next to another folding phone, the Galaxy Z Flip. All three represent different ideas for how to make a folding phone and all three are prohibitively expensive. Even if at the end of my reviews I have to go hunt down the socks they knocked off, I think it’s incredibly unlikely I would tell you to buy either of them — or the Flip.
That doesn’t mean,

The JBL Go 3 (left) next to the JBL Clip 4 (right). | Image: JBL JBL has announced new Clip 4 and Go 3 miniature Bluetooth speakers. Both have gotten a visual makeover from their predecessors, with a streamlined design and a few new colors available. The Go 3 will launch first in October for $39.95. The Clip 4 will follow in December for $69.95.In terms of improvements, both speakers support Bluetooth 5.1 and have IP67 water and dustproofing. And instead of charging via Micro USB, which can be

Image: JBL JBL isn’t a newcomer to true wireless earbuds, but today the company is announcing several new sets with noise cancellation at prices that reflect just how competitive the market has become. The JBL Club Pro Plus earbuds ($199.95) have adaptive noise cancellation and “a unibody design inspired by professional in-ear monitors” and offer JBL’s best sound quality with up to eight hours of continuous battery life (plus 24 extra hours with the battery case).Like ma

An artistic impression of colliding black holes| Image: Mark Myers, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) Astronomers may have detected the most massive collision of two black holes ever discovered, a chaotic merger that occurred some 7 billion years ago, the signs of which have only just reached us. The cataclysmic event offered researchers a front-row seat to the birth of one of the Universe’s most elusive objects.
The distant show included two major players

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is covertly monitoring private social media groups used by Amazon Flex workers to discuss their working conditions. According to what appear to be official company documents discovered online by Vice, the retailing giant employs staff to track and categorize discussions in closed Facebook groups, public subreddits, and on Twitter. Some posts are then “escalated” to internal Amazon teams and company leadership.
As Vice notes, these repor

The Samsung Wireless Charger Trio powering three devices. | Image: Samsung Samsung has announced a host of new devices at its Life Unstoppable virtual event today, including the Galaxy A42 5G, which the company said during its presentation would be its most affordable 5G device yet. Alongside it, Samsung also announced a new wireless charger that can charge multiple devices at once, as well as a new Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab A7.The Galaxy A42 5G is the latest in Samsung’s midrange A-

Screenshot: Twitter Twitter will add pinned tweets and short descriptions to some of the trending topics on its service to help people understand why they’ve become popular. In a blog post announcing the news, the company said it would immediately start adding representative pinned tweets to some topics in the iOS and Android apps, and that these would be coming to Twitter on the web soon. Descriptions will roll out in the coming weeks, Twitter said.
According to Twitter, the new feature