Technology news

Logitech G has announced a new esports training program for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive called Playmaster, which is designed to help assess your skills and help you practice specific techniques, like tracking players, moving, and (of course) shooting.
The company is taking this seriously, too. It’s built custom maps and levels within CS:GO to help both assess players’ current skill levels and for practice. It’s also worked with the Lero Esports Science Research Lab at the

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon / The Verge If you’re curious what kind of data Twitter stores on you — and what those hackers could have stolen during their big bitcoin scam — you can now find out once again. Twitter has reenabled the ability to download archives of “Your Twitter Data,” nearly two months after shutting off the feature as a precaution against further hacking.
To access it, go to Settings > Account > Your Twitter data and you should see a scr

Illustration by Alex Castro The Department of Justice is preparing to file antitrust charges against Google’s parent company Alphabet possibly as early as this month, The New York Times reported. Attorney General William Barr is moving forward with the case despite the objections of Justice Department lawyers who say they need more time to prepare their case and worry that pushing to file charges this month could weaken the case, according to the Times.
The Justice Department opened its p

A COVID-19 testing site in Flordia.| Photo by Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images When someone gets a COVID-19 test, the result does one thing: tells that person if they have the coronavirus in their body. Some researchers, though, are trying to get tests to do more — and reframing the goal of testing as a result. Instead of simply finding people who are infected with the virus, they’d prefer to focus on finding people who are infectious and at risk of spreading i

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As part of Facebook’s latest study on how social media impacts democracy, the company appears to be paying users to log off of its products ahead of the 2020 US presidential election, according to new screenshots posted by Washington Post reporter Elizabeth Dwoskin on Thursday.
Earlier this week, Facebook announced that it was partnering with outside researchers to study the impact its social media products have on society during the upcoming US pre

If you can host a popular talk show in Animal Crossing, why not stage an official music video there? Particularly when, as you’ll see in Sylvan Esso’s official “Ferris Wheel” music video, the results are excellent. It’s a delightful shot of summery goodness, even if it’s a little on the nose here and there.
Don’t have time for the full vid? Here’s a Twitter sample: SE + AChttps://t.co/kX07F1lCGZ pic.twitter.com/kGANdbeaSw— Sylvan Esso (@Sylva

Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket taking off | Image: Rocket Lab Small satellite launcher Rocket Lab says it has successfully flown one of its own satellites, demonstrating that the spacecraft’s design holds up in Earth orbit. It’s the first time the company has flown its in-house cylindrical spacecraft, known as the Photon, which Rocket Lab hopes to sell to customers for use in ambitious deep-space missions.
The satellite was secretly a part of Rocket Lab’s most recent launc

Warner Bros. Production of Warner Bros.’ The Batman has been delayed yet again, this time because star Robert Pattison has tested positive for COVID-19, Vanity Fair reported. The highly-anticipated retelling of the story of the caped crusader with the Twilight star in the title role had just resumed shooting a few days ago in London.“A member of The Batman production has tested positive for Covid-19, and is isolating in accordance with established protocols. Filming is temporarily p

A man yells in a bus full of people that he browsed eight sites for divorce lawyers. A woman blithely tells her log in information to strangers in a movie house. A pair of coworkers has an unflattering conversation out loud about a nearby colleague (including verbal descriptions of “puke emoji”) and a woman uses a megaphone to broadcast her credit card information to anyone within earshot.Some of them are embarrassing, some are potential privacy violations, but they’re among th

Until now building machine learning (ML) algorithms for hardware meant complex mathematical modes based on sample data, known as “training data,” in order to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to do so. And if this sounds complex and expensive to build, it is. On top of that, traditionally ML related tasks were translated to the cloud, creating latency, consuming scarce power, and putting machines at the mercy of connection speeds. Combined, these cons

Vivo is developing one of the coolest looking phones I’ve ever seen. In a video posted to Weibo (and spotted by Android Authority), the company confirms that its new phone, which doesn’t yet have a name or release date, can change its rear case’s color with the press of a button.
The company claims to be using electrochromic glass to achieve this dazzling effect, the same tech that OnePlus employed in its Concept One phone to obscure its rear camera from view when it wasn&rsquo

Nintendo today revealed in a special Direct that it’s celebrating the 35th anniversary of the first Super Mario game. It’s doing so by packaging several of its old classics in a special anthology called Super Mario 3D All-Stars. It’s also releasing one of the Wii U’s Mario titles, and we’ll also get an (official) Mario battle royale. All in all, a great haul for Nintendo fans. Super Mario 3D All-Stars is a compilation of three extremel

SpaceXhas done it again – a second ‘hop’ flight in under a month for its Starship prototype. This was a 150 meter (just under 500 foot) test flight from its Boca Chica, Texas development site. The prototype used in this instance was SN6, a more recent model than the SN5 test article that SpaceX used to complete a similar test at the beginning of August.
The hop flight is a key part of its testing program for Starship, and its Raptor engine. These prototypes are equipped with on

Welcome to the very first edition of Extra Crunch’s Media Roundup. Over the past few months, we’ve launched features like Decrypted, Deep Science and The Exchange, which aggregate and analyze the latest news in a given sector, so it seemed overdue to do something similar for media.
The goal is to provide a regular update on what entrepreneurs in the content or advertising business should be thinking about. That doesn’t just mean startup funding — we’ll track the bro

Disrupt 2020 is all about helping startups find and create ways to drive their business forward in these most challenging times. We partnered with cela to give exhibitors in Digital Startup Alley one sweet opportunity — networking with 13 accelerators.
If you’re exhibiting — or plan to — don’t miss out on your chance to meet with up to 13 accelerators and pre-interview for their upcoming virtual cohorts. The first in our series of accelerator sessions — where

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple is delaying a controversial new privacy rule it’s implementing with iOS 14 that will require developers to ask users for permission to gather data and track them across mobile apps and websites on the iPhone and iPad, the company announced in a developer update posted Thursday.Apple originally intended for the rule to go live with iOS 14, slated for released sometime this fall, but it’s now giving developers more time to comply with the

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most powerful technologies ever developed, but it’s not nearly as new as you might think. In fact, it’s undergone several evolutions since its inception in the 1950s. The first generation of AI was ‘descriptive analytics,’ which answers the question, “What happened?” The second, ‘diagnostic analytics,’ addresses, “Why did it happen?” The third and current generation is ‘predictive analyt

Image: 505 Games Publisher 505 Games is discounting most of its titles on Steam in time for Labor Day until September 8th. Topping the list includes Death Stranding, which hasn’t seen many discounts. It’s $45 instead of $60 and includes the soundtrack for free with purchase. Control Ultimate Edition has been $32 instead of $40 since it launched last week, but today’s announcement means it’s going to stay that price for a little while longer.
You can check out 505 Games&r

Facebook A new Facebook experiment shows how sound could play a major role in augmented reality. Chief scientist Michael Abrash and his team at FRL Research (formerly Facebook Reality Labs) released details today about what the team calls “perceptual superpowers” — AR systems that figure out what you’re trying to hear, then amplify it and dampen background noise. Combined with spatial audio features, the device creates the aural equivalent of a hologram overlay in a pair

At its global developer conference in June, Applesaid its forthcoming iOS 14 update would allow users to opt out of in-app ad tracking, a privacy feature that quickly drew ire from advertising giants over fears that it would make it harder to deliver targeted ads to users.
But now Apple is delaying enforcing the feature until “early next year”, the company confirmed.
iOS 14, expected out later this year, will contain a new prompt that asks users whether they would like to opt into th

Micromobility, like many other industries, has faced a lot of uncertainty this year. Many shared electric scooter operators paused their services in the earlier days of the COVID-19 pandemic, but resumed operations after putting some safety measures into place. Meanwhile, some industry analysts have pointed to micromobility as a savior for cities where public transit is suffering as a result of low ridership.
Although there have been many layoffs and consolidation across the market, micromobilit

The French government unveiled a massive $120 million (€100 billion) stimulus package earlier today to recover from the economic downturn — it represents 4% of the country’s GDP. As part of this support plan, the government plans to spend a significant chunk on money on all things digital — startup investment, infrastructure investment and digital transformation.
I interviewed France’s digital minister Cédric O earlier today to get some details on ho

If the measure of progress in technology is that devices should become ever smaller and more capable, then OrCam Technologiesis on a roll. The Israeli firm’s OrCam MyEye, which fits on the arm of a pair of glasses, is far more powerful and much smaller than its predecessor. With new AI-based Smart Reading software released in July, the device not only “reads” text and labels but also identifies people by name and describes other important aspects of the visual world. It al

There’s a big question mark hanging over the future of TikTokright now, in the form of what exactly will happen to its US business come September 20, when President Trump said he plans to shut down the Chinese-owned app over security concerns.
But in the meantime, it seems to be business as usual for the app.
Today, TikTok — which has 100 million users in the US — announced a slate of marketing partners to help brands create and measure the impact of campaigns on the app.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has to pay store employees in California for the time they spend waiting for their bags to be checked by security officers, an appeals court ruled this week.The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued the ruling Wednesday, which reverses a summary judgment order in Apple’s favor, as first reported by Law.com. The ongoing case started in 2015 when a group of Apple retail workers in California filed a class action suit arguing that unde

Several months ago, before the world became so much more complicated, it was still crystal clear that TikTok was a force to be reckoned with and that its massive growth signaled big things for both Silicon Valley and the global tech scene. As the Bytedance-owned social media app has been drawn into a political crisis after the Trump administration made aggressive moves to force the app under new ownership, the conversation around the future of the app has grown even more intense.
As tech giants

Episerver is announcing that it has reached an agreement to acquire Optimizely for an undisclosed sum.
Optimizelywas founded in 2009 by Dan Siroker and Pete Koomen. It became synonymous with A/B testing, subsequently building a broader suite of tools for marketers to experiment with and personalize their websites and apps, with more than 1,000 customers including Gap, StubHub, IBM and The Wall Street Journal.
The company had raised more than $200 million in funding from Goldman Sachs, Index Vent

Amid a racial justice reckoning following countless events of police brutality (justice for Breonna Taylor), it’s high time companies and investors in the tech industry do more than just say “Black Lives Matter,” but show that Black lives matter. As Human Utility CEO Tiffani Ashley Bell aptly put it, “Make the hire, send the wire!”
Black women are underfunded and under-appreciated in tech. Since 2009, Black women have received just .06% of all venture funding, accor

Spark is one of those products in Adobe’s Creative Suite that doesn’t always get a lot of attention. But the company’s tool for creating social media posts (which you can try for free) has plenty of fans, and maybe that’s no surprise, given that its mission is to help small business owners and agencies create engaging social media posts without having to learn a lot about design. Today, Adobe added one of the most requested features to Spark on mobile and the web: animati

We’re just about a month away from launching TC Sessions: Mobility 2020, but you have only 48 hours left to save yourself $100 on the price of admission. Join the global mobility community on October 6-8 at the lowest possible price. Snag your pass before the early bird expires on September 4 at 11:59 p.m. (PDT).
You do not want to miss this opportunity-packed conference, especially this year. Why? We’ve added a pitch off! We’re searching for 10 superlative early-stage mobility

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon on Thursday announced Alexa for Residential, a new program designed to make it easier for landlords and property managers to add Alexa devices to rental units to create smart apartments (smarpartments? smartments?). The company is billing it as a service “that makes having an Alexa-enabled home accessible for anyone, regardless of whether they rent or own their home.”Property managers can provide “custom voice experiences for thei

SpaceX’s latest batch of Starlink satellites deploying into space. | Image: SpaceX During the launch of its latest batch of internet-beaming Starlink satellites, SpaceX revealed key details about the planned constellation’s abilities, claiming that the satellites have shown “super low latency and download speeds greater than 100 mbps.” The speeds are still not as fast as what SpaceX originally claimed for the constellation, but they are slightly faster than what early us

Image: MSI MSI is best known for its gaming laptops, but today, it’s announcing a new business line for remote professionals. The line includes the Summit E series and the Summit B series, each with 14- and 15-inch models, along with the 13-inch convertible E13 Flip.
There’s no word on pricing or availability for the Summit line yet, but they certainly look like high-end models. The chassis are aluminum, with thin bezels and what MSI calls “military-grade durability.” Im

Apple is introducing a change to how subscriptions work. No, it’s not lowering its cut, despite the government’s antitrust investigation and its lawsuit with Epic. It announced that developers will be able to offer subscriptions via a new feature, called offer codes. These one-time use codes can be used digitally or printed out for use at offline events, allowing developers to more easily distribute either free or discounted subscriptions to customers.
The company says the feature ca

The new wireless Naga Pro features three swappable button plates to suit your favorite genre of games. | Image: Razer Most gaming mice claim to work great for any type of game, regardless of their design and feature set. Razer’s new Naga Pro wireless mouse proves how well-suited it is for a variety of games with its modular, magnetically attached side button plates that make it a practical option for different genres, especially those that require multiple commands, such as MOBAs, MMOs, R

Boris is the wise ol’ CEO of TNW who writes a weekly column on everything about being an entrepreneur in tech — from managing stress to embracing awkwardness. You can get his musings straight to your inbox by signing up for his newsletter! If you believe the experts, we’re heading towards the worst crisis in the history of… financial crises. That sounds gloomy — and it is. You can look at the news and the state of the world and be excused if you’d want to hi