Technology news

The Smooth XS from Zhiyun is an interesting take on the smartphone gimbal that attempts to snuggle the space between prosumer and novice gear. In many respects it passes with flying colors. The build quality, cost, and usability are all excellent in this gadget. But there are some cons here that could be deal breakers for some users. First off, this is a two-axis gimbal that only works with its own app. Before you read any further you should decide whether you’re shopping for a gimbal or

Perhaps anticipating budget pushback from the federal government, NASAhas released its first-ever agency-wide economic report, documenting the agency’s impact on the nation’s jobs and cash flow. Everyone knew NASA was impactful, but now we know exactly how impactful it is, some $64 billion and more than 300,000 jobs’ worth in FY2019.
It seems clear that the 2,670-page report is meant to show just how valuable the agency is to the country, and how it’s very much an investm

Pedro Alves ContributorShare on Twitter Pedro Alves is the founder and CEO of Ople.AI, a software startup that provides an automated machine learning platform to empower business users with predictive analytics.The machine learning and AI-powered tools being deployed in response to COVID-19 arguably improve certain human activities and provide essential insights needed to make certain personal or professional decisions; however, they also highlight a few pervasive challenges faced by both machin

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The European Commission is appealing a July court judgment in the ongoing saga of Apple’s taxes in Ireland. Buckle in, this one gets a bit complicated. And it’s likely to drag on for some time.
In July, the General Court of the EU annulled a 2016 ruling by the European Commission. In that ruling, the commission had determined that Ireland gave Apple a “sweetheart deal” that let the iPhone maker pay significantly lower taxes than ot

Photo: Sony Pictures Entertainment Samuel L. Jackson is reportedly returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe — but this time, he’ll be taking on a starring role in a new Nick Fury TV series for Disney Plus.Details are slim on the project — reported by both Variety and Deadline — which is still in the early stages and has yet to be formally ordered to series. Kyle Bradstreet, best known for his work as a writer for Mr. Robot, is also said to be on board the project as a

TGIF, am I right? Welcome back to Human Capital, where we explore some of the latest news in labor, diversity and inclusion in tech.
This week, we’re looking at the use of “master/slave” terminology in computer programming and the current state of gig workers in California.
Human Capital will soon be available as a weekly newsletter. You can sign up here.Stay WokeGitHub to sunset master/slave terminology 
This probably isn’t news to developers, but it was news to me

GOG and Konami today revealed it’s releasing several Konami titles on PC, including the first two Metal Gear Solid games. We’re getting several Castlevania and Contra games as well. Now we all know what we’re playing this weekend. Konami teased the release by tweeting a closed box emoji and a link to GOG. A mere 15 minutes later, GOG tweeted the news. Up to now, the rumor seemed to be that these games would be getting some kind of a PC releas

Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images Saturday Night Live’s complete library will be available to stream on NBCUniversal’s streaming platform, Peacock, beginning October 1st, according to Variety and Deadline.
It marks the first time in years that the entire library has been available on a mainstream streaming platform, and it’s a crucial cornerstone for Peacock. Saturday Night Live’s catalog used to be available to stream in the early 2010s, but that was befor

According to an SEC filing, Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit and early-stage VC firm Initialized Capital, is raising a new fund, named 776, with a target of $150 million. The filing comes three months after the entrepreneur left Initialized Capital and a month after The Information first reported on his plans. Ohanian declined to comment on details regarding the fund due to general solicitation restraints.
Along the filing, the fund launched an intentionally cryptic new website: sevensev

A physics student at the University of Queensland recently published a paper indicating they’d ‘squared’ the math when it comes to time-travel. Not only should it theoretically be possible to travel back in time, according to the numbers, but you could do whatever you want without making any fundamental changes to the present. In other words: the ‘paradox of time travel‘ may not be real. The problem goes like this: your eccentric old scientist buddy turns a DeLorea

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Google is banning advertisers from running ads related to the election after Election Day. In an email to advertisers, the company said the change is due to the “unprecedented” number of votes that will be counted after November 3rd, as reported by Axios.While the winner of the US presidential election is often announced on election night, this year the process is expected to take longer as more people are voting by mail due to the pandemic. Tha

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge With iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, Apple finally acquiesced to a longtime request from customers: the company introduced an option to change your default apps for browsing the web and handling email. But many other categories of apps — messages, music, calendar, etc. — remain stuck on Apple’s built-in software. Facebook isn’t too pleased about that. According to The Information, Facebook is making a more forceful push to convince the iPhon

When it comes to smartwatches, it’s Appleagainst the world. It’s not that there aren’t plenty of other products to choose from — it’s more that the company has just utterly dominated the space to such a point that any other device is relegated to the realm of “Apple Watch alternatives.”
The company has been successful in the space for the usual Apple reasons: premium hardware with deeply integrated software, third-party support, a large cross-device ecos

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google parent company Alphabet has settled a shareholder lawsuit over its handling of sexual misconduct. The company has announced policy changes related to the settlement, including a $310 million fund for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. This resolves a complaint that was filed in 2019, following an explosive report that Google offered multimillion-dollar exit packages to executives who were credibly accused of sexual assault or harassment,

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft is about to release a big Xbox app update for iOS that includes the ability to stream Xbox One games to an iPhone. A new Xbox app will arrive in the App Store soon that includes a remote play feature, which lets Xbox One console owners stream their games to an iPhone.
Remote play is different to Microsoft’s xCloud service, which streams games directly from servers instead of your own Xbox One console. This Xbox remote play feature will only connec

Steve Girsky,the former GM vice chairman, consultant and investor whose special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merged with hydrogen electric startup Nikola this summer, is in talks to back self-driving trucks startup TuSimple,according to four people familiar with the deal.
The capital would come from Girsky’s VectoIQ LLC, a consulting and investment company he runs with managing partner Mary Chan, and would be part of a consortium of investors, according to one unnamed source who requ

Mark Settle Contributor Mark Settle is a seven-time CIO, three-time CIO 100 award winner and two-time book author. His most recent book is "Truth from the Valley: A Practical Primer on IT Management for the Next Decade."Tomer Y. Avni Contributor Tomer Y. Avni is an MBA/MS student at the Harvard Business School and the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.Privacy data mismanagement is a lurking liability within every commercial enterprise. The very definition of privacy data is evol

Illustration by Ana Kova Most medical algorithms were developed using information from people treated in Massachusetts, California, or New York, according to a new study. Those three states dominate patient data — and 34 other states were simply not represented at all, according to the research published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.The narrow geographic distribution of the data used for these algorithms may be an unrecognized bias, the study authors argue.

Phil Alves ContributorShare on Twitter Devsquad founder and CEO Phil Alves is an expert entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience in the tech industry leading product development teams for multiple clients.Software developers are some of the most in-demand workers on the planet. Not only that, they’re complex creatures with unique demands in terms of how they define job fulfillment. With demand for developers on the rise (the number of jobs in the field is expected to grow by 22%

Depending on what you’ve read about electric truck company Nikola, its founder Trevor Milton is either the new Elon Musk or the next Elizabeth Holmes. The company, once lauded as ushering in a new clean energy era for the trucking industry, now faces accusations of deception and outright fraud. On Sunday, Milton stepped down as executive chairman, over allegations that he’d wildly overstated the company’s technological capabilities.The claims stem from a report by the short-sel

Depending on what you’ve read about electric truck company Nikola, its founder Trevor Milton is either the new Elon Musk or the next Elizabeth Holmes. The company, once lauded as ushering in a new clean energy era for the trucking industry, now faces accusations of deception and outright fraud. On Sunday, Milton stepped down as executive chairman, over allegations that he’d wildly overstated the company’s technological capabilities.The claims stem from a report by the short-sel

On Thursday, Ring, the home security subsidiary of Amazon, released a new dashcam embedded with a novel feature called “Traffic Stop” that could help bring more accountability to policing. That could be a powerful thing, especially as tens of millions of people have poured onto the streets in cities across the country to demonstrate against systemic racism, white supremacy, and police brutality. It could also be a privacy nightmare.The Ring Car Cam, which will cost $199, has two came

Image: Nintendo Nintendo is reprinting its Animal Crossing amiibo cards, and they’ll be available in “select retailers” this November, the company announced today. The cards are worth collecting not just because they’re cute representations of the many adorable creatures in the series — they’re also one of the most efficient ways to fill your Animal Crossing: New Horizons island with your favorite neighbors.
In New Horizons, you can scan amiibo cards to invit

U.K.-based startup HumanForesthas suspended its nascent “free” e-bike service in London this week, after experiencing “mechanical” issues and after a user had an accident on one of its bikes, TechCrunch has learned. The suspension has also seen the company make a number of layoffs with plans to re-launch next spring using a different e-bike.
The service suspension comes only a few months after HumanForeststarted the trial in North London — and just a couple of weeks

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Earlier this year, Facebook launched a new feature that let small businesses create paid online events. The company framed it as a way of helping organizations struggling with lost revenue during the pandemic, and said that because of the exceptional circumstances, it would not collect any fees on purchases for these events until August 2021.But the social network also stressed that any payments made on iOS would be subject to Apple’s standard 30 pe

Last month, Facebookintroduced support for paid online events — and because many of the businesses offering those events have struggled during the coronavirus pandemic, the company also said it would not collect fees for the next year. At the same time, it complained that Apple had “dismissed” its requests to waive the App Store’s customary 30% fee on in-app purchases.
Today, Facebook is announcing a reversal on Apple’spart: Online event fees will be processed throu

In July, amid the rise of the buzzy audio-only social network Clubhouse, some users reported being harassed by other members. This seemed obviously bad, but at the time the company had no guidelines about how users should behave on the site. Moderation duties were left to the two co-founders, then the company’s only employees, and it’s fair to say that enforcement was not their full-time focus.
When I wrote about the situation at Clubhouse, responses were divided. Some readers said t

It’s nearly October, startup fans, and that means TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 is right around the corner. On October 6 & 7, you’ll experience an incredible two-day agenda packed with the top leaders, visionaries, makers and investors, and they’re ready to drop serious knowledge about crucial trends, issues and challenges related to mobility and transportation tech.
Attendees tell us there’s only one problem with all these great interviews and panel discussions. They ge

Apple has quietly removed the 5W USB charging brick that it had been previously including with its pricier Apple Watch Edition and Apple Watch Hermès models, bringing the luxury models in line with the remainder of the company’s lineup, as spotted by MacRumors.At its “Time Flies” event earlier this month, the company announced that it would no longer include the USB power brick with its cheaper Series 6, SE, Series 3, and Nike models in an effort to reduce its environmen

Twitterhas emailed developers warning of a bug that may have exposed their private app keys and account tokens.
In the email, obtained by TechCrunch, the social media giant said that the private keys and tokens may have been improperly stored in the browser’s cache by mistake.
“Prior to the fix, if you used a public or shared computer to view your developer app keys and tokens on developer.twitter.com, they may have been temporarily stored in the browser’s cache on that compute

“I’d be more worried about the camera on your phone than I would be about a drone,” Amazon devices SVP Dave Limp told me in an interview a few hours after yesterday’s big Echo event. The drone in question is the Ring Always Home Cam, an autonomous indoor drone that can use a map of your home to independently fly around to check out strange noises or run a patrol when you’re not home.The drone was just one of well over a dozen product announcements Amazon made yester

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge OnePlus has axed the price of its OnePlus 8 at its own site and on Amazon, and each configuration is available now for $100 less than before. The most affordable option, with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, is $599 instead of $699. Currently, you can only get this price at OnePlus.com on the “glacial green” color. The upgraded version with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage in the “interstellar glow” color is $699 instead of $799.
If you

Image: Apple On September 15th, Apple announced its new at-home workout platform, Fitness Plus. That same day, Peloton tweeted, “Friendly competition is in our DNA. Welcome to the world of digital fitness, @Apple.”While Apple isn’t a new player to the fitness space (the Apple Watch has included fitness features for quite some time) Fitness Plus is its first shot at original workout content for the Watch. It’s a subscription service that costs $9.99 per month or $79.99 pe

Let’s be honest: trying to preorder a PS5 has been anything but easy. That said, if you want to try to secure Sony’s next-gen console ahead of its November 12th launch, you’ll have another shot at nabbing one at GameStop. Both models of the PS5 will be in stock on GameStop’s website, though the retailer has yet to mention what time it will open preorders online.If you’d rather try your luck in person, you can always go to a GameStop near you. And if you decide to br

This year’s Bessemer Venture Partners’annual Cloud 100 Benchmark report was published recently and my colleague Alex Wilhelm looked at some broad trends in the report, but digging into the data, I decided to concentrate on the Top 10 companies by valuation. I found that the top company has defied convention for a couple of reasons.
Bessemer looks at private companies. Once they go public, they lose interest, and that’s why certain startups go in and out of this list each year.