Technology news

If you’re not the inbox zero type — and I’m definitely not — you might sometimes rely on Gmail’s “Select all conversations that match this search” option to read, archive, or delete hundreds or thousands of messages at once.Except we can’t do that anymore, and neither can a number of angry Gmail users we’ve spotted. The option has up and disappeared. Google accidentally removed it, the company confirms to The Verge.@gmail Hey, how come there'

Google is adding a few notable new features to Live View, the augmented reality mode of Google Maps that lets you hold your phone up and see visual overlays over the real world as its captured by your mobile camera’s viewfinder. The biggest addition is the ability to see visual cues corresponding to notable landmarks in your field of view, as well as information about how far away a landmark might be and directions on walking there.“These landmarks can include iconic places, like the

Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images Facebook is taking additional steps to restrict militia movements and the QAnon conspiracy movement. The company will reject ads that “praise, support or represent militarized social movements,” including militias and anarchist groups as well as QAnon. It will also start linking to “credible child safety resources” when people look up child safety-related hashtags like #savethechildren, which has been coopted by QAnon adheren

Kristin Tynski ContributorShare on Twitter Kristin Tynski is co-founder and SVP creative at Fractl, a growth marketing agency that’s helped Fortune 500 companies and boutique businesses earn quality media coverage, backlinks, awareness and authority.Most marketers believe there’s a lot of value in having relevant, engaging images featured in content.
But selecting the “right” images for blog posts, social media posts or video thumbnails has historically been a subjective

Facebooktoday says it has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. against two companies that had engaged in an international “data scraping” operation. The operation extended across Facebook properties, including both Facebook and Instagram, as well as other large websites and services, including Twitter, Amazon, LinkedIn and YouTube. The companies, which gathered the data of Facebook users for “marketing intelligence” purposes, did so in violation of Facebook’s Terms of Servic

It looks like we’re in for another big tech CEO hearing.
The Senate Commerce Committee voted Thursday to move forward with subpoenas for Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet. The unusual decision to subpoena the social media chief executives adds yet another politically volatile event to the schedule in the run-up to the most contentious election in modern U.S. history.
The hearing will focus on Section 230 of the Communicatio

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google says retouched selfies can make people feel bad about how they actually look, so it’s changing how it handles these photos with its newest phones. For the Pixel 4A, 4A 5G, and the 5, it’ll turn face retouching off by default from the Camera app.It’ll soon update the phones to relabel the retouching options and avoid any sort of judging words, like using the word “beauty.” If someone wants to use face retouching effects, Goog

Do you know someone who wants to make it big on TikTok? 
Folks have used TikTok since its evolution from Musical.ly two years ago, but in the months since the pandemic confined most social interactions to the internet, the app's popularity has skyrocketed. Thanks to its prevalence in online culture, more people are open to creating their own account to produce content on the app. Even though you don't need anything but a phone and the app itself to make TikToks, there are some essentials to

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s VC-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week, Alex is on a much-deserved vacation (but not from Twitter, it seems) so Danny Crichton and I chatted through the news and happenings of the week. Somehow we winded our way through the latest tech controversies, gave Chris Wallace a shout out and ended with some funding rounds. I’ll be out next week so don’t miss me too much, but

It takes a certain type of person to wait patiently on hold, listening to the same repetitive messages and piped music for 45 minutes before speaking to an actual human. But most of us are not that type of person, which is why Google this week introduced Hold for Me, a new phone app feature that helps users reclaim their time and mental health.
Starting with the just-announced Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a 5G, U.S. customers who call a toll-free number and are put on hold can simply tag Google Assistant

Augmented reality in Google Maps brings digital arrows, pins, and markers right in front of you as you walk while looking through your phone's camera. Google Maps calls it Live View, it's been around since August 2019, and it's incredibly helpful when you're trying to get oriented or find an address or pinned location. 
Google Maps announced Thursday that iPhone users will "soon" get to experience an updated Live View when location sharing, along with all Android users. Pixel — that's

Santiago Felipe/FilmMagic Jeffree Star, one of YouTube’s most prominent figures and the owner of a multimillion-dollar cosmetics company, is being accused of sexual misconduct and other bouts of physical violence, according to a new report from Insider.Insider spoke to four people who said Star “groped men around him without consent” and five people who said they saw Star use a short-range stun device on people as a means to intimidate them. Star’s attorney denied all al

If you’re not the inbox zero type — and I’m definitely not — you might sometimes rely on Gmail’s “Select all conversations that match this search” option to read, archive, or delete hundreds or thousands of messages at once.Except we can’t do that anymore, and neither can a number of angry Gmail users we’ve spotted. The option has up and disappeared.
@gmail Hey, how come there's no longer an option to "Select all conversations" to mark thousa

While the overall cloud infrastructure market is booming having reached $30 billion last quarter worldwide, Oracle is struggling with market share in the low single digits. It is hoping that the Zoom and TikTok deals can jump start those numbers, but trying to catch the market leaders Amazon, Microsoft and Google, never mind several other companies ahead of it, is going to take a lot more than a couple of brand name customers.
By now, you know Oracle and TikTok were joined together in unholy acq

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge macOS Big Sur, Apple’s upcoming release of its Mac operating system, will finally let you watch 4K HDR Netflix content, but it turns out it’ll only work on 2018 or later Macs with Apple’s T2 security chip, according to a new Netflix support document (via Apple Terminal).
That means the full list of Macs that can watch 4K content on Netflix, at least for now, is as follows:iMac (2020)
iMac Pro
Mac Pro (2019)
Mac mini (2018)
MacBook Air (2

Julio Vasconcellos ContributorShare on Twitter Julio Vasconcellos is the managing partner of Atlantico, a venture capital fund focused on Latin America. He was previously the founder of Canary, Peixe Urbano and was Facebook’s first employee in Brazil.
“Gradually, then suddenly.” Hemingway’s words succinctly capture the recent history of tech in Latin America. After more than a decade of gradual progress made through fits and starts, tech in Latin America finally hit its s

"Where are my tonsils?!"
Those are the words Jessica Alba screamed after surviving her grueling Hot Ones experience.
The talented actor and businesswoman was fairly confident she could handle the spiciest wings, but on the off-chance that she couldn't, she came prepared. Because she was calling into Hot Ones from home, Alba had the chance to assemble an impressive lineup of potential heat remedies — including oat milk, honey, peanut butter, yogurt, ice, and even lip gloss. 
Alba might

Following a particularly dark and vivid display of the threats to the 2020 U.S. election during Tuesday’s first presidential debate, Facebookhas further clarified its new rules around election-related ads.
Facebook is now expanding its political advertising rules to disallow any ads that “[seek] to delegitimize the outcome of an election” including “calling a method of voting inherently fraudulent or corrupt, or using isolated incidents of voter fraud to delegitimize the

Apple Watch | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The heart monitoring feature on the Apple Watch may lead to unnecessary health care visits, according to a new study published this week. Only around 10 percent of people who saw a doctor at the Mayo Clinic after noticing an abnormal pulse reading on their watch were eventually diagnosed with a cardiac condition.The finding shows that at-home health monitoring devices can lead to over-utilization of the health care system, said study aut

Image: Comcast Comcast is announcing a new version of its hexagon-shaped xFi Pods, the mesh Wi-Fi extender pods it sells to extend Wi-Fi networks around your house, with more Wi-Fi bandwidth (up to 500Mbps) and a second wired Ethernet port on each pod as well. The company originally began selling its WiFi extender pods to consumers in 2018 in packs of three or six plugs, but the new ones come in packs of one or two.Similar to its predecessor, the xFi Pods maintain its six-sided polygonal design

Opportunity alert! We’re just five short days away from TC Sessions: Mobility 2020, a two-day event focused on building the future of transportation. Thousands of attendees from around the world will be looking for the latest technologies and up-and-coming startups. Will they find your up-and-coming startup?
The answer is a resounding yes — if you buy an Early-Stage Startup Exhibitor Package. Join more than 40 other early-stage startups exhibiting in our expo area and plant your comp

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins oversees the Universal Waste Management System with technical personnel. Rubins will travel to the International Space Station in October after the toilet arrives. | Image: NASA Late Thursday evening, a Northrop Grumman rocket is set to take off from the Virginia coast, carrying an advanced space toilet for the astronauts on the International Space Station. Touted as smaller and lighter than the current toilets on the ISS, the new commode is also supposed to be more a

Eileen Burbidge ContributorShare on Twitter Eileen Burbidge is a partner at Passion Capital, an early-stage technology venture fund based in London, and is also the UK Treasury's Special Envoy for Fintech.In case you missed it: On Monday, CoinbaseCEO Brian Armstrong wrote a company blog post titled “Coinbase is a mission focused company” which drew both praise and critique that has continued throughout the week. Personally, I wasn’t terribly impressed.
I limited my reaction on

Popular game modding hub Nexus Mods has banned any mods related to “sociopolitical issues in the United States” until at least next year’s presidential inauguration. Site owner Robin Scott explained that he’d seen “a spate of provocative and troll mods” designed to provoke site users, and as a result, the site will take down any US politics mods that were uploaded on or after September 28th.
Scott said that Nexus Mods administrators “have neither the tim

Googletoday announced a few updates to Live View, the augmented reality walking directions in its Google Maps app that officially launched last year. Live View uses your phone’s camera and GPS to tell you exactly where to go, making it a nice addition to the standard map-centric directions in similar applications.
The new features Googleis introducing today include the ability to invoke Live View from the transit tab in Google Maps when you’re on a journey that includes multiple mode

Welcome to Fat Bear Week 2020! Katmai National Park and Preserve’s brown bears spent the summer gorging on 4,500-calorie salmon, and they've transformed into rotund giants, some over 1,000 pounds. The park is holding its annual playoff-like competition for the fattest of the fat bears (you can vote online between Sept. 30 and Oct. 6). Mashable will be following all the ursine activity.   Voting for Fat Bear Week is different this year, and much improved.
To vote for the fattest b

Image: Amazon Auto Mode is a new feature coming to Amazon’s Alexa app that turns your phone into a “driver-friendly display” when used with Alexa auto accessories like the Echo Auto, the company says. As well as offering access to Alexa’s typical voice commands, it includes large touchscreen icons that provide access to features like directions, music playback, and making calls. Amazon says the mode will be available in the Alexa app on iOS and Android in the coming week

Earlier this week, Amazon unveiled Amazon One: new technology for its Amazon Go stores that lets shoppers pay for their groceries by scanning the palm of their hand. By analyzing the shape of your hand and the unique configuration of veins under your skin, Amazon says its technology can verify your identity the same way facial recognition does.
Although Amazon One will initially be used for payments only, it’s clear the tech giant has much bigger ambitions for this hardware. In the future,

Bullpen Capital, a now 10-year-old, venture fund in San Francisco that focuses on what it calls post-seed investing — it backs startups that have already raised up to $5 million and “aren’t quite ready for a $10 million check but another $5 million would make them dangerous,” says firm co-founder Paul Martino — just closed its fifth fund with $130 million in capital commitments.
The firm also brought aboard a new general partner: Ann Lai, formerly of Binary Capital,

Naj Austin, founder and CEO of subscription-based physical and digital community Ethel’s Club, is building Somewhere Good to be a one-stop shop for people of color. Beyond being a place for people of color to connect, it’s also about creating a safe space for folks to be their authentic selves.
“A lot of how we’re talking about Somewhere Good with investors is this idea of a new online world where our identities are centered,” Austin told me. “The vision for S

Trapped-ion quantum computing startup IonQ today announced the launch of its latest quantum computer, which features what IonQcalls “32 perfect qubits with low gate errors.”
Using IBM’spreferred quantum benchmark, IonQ expects to hit a quantum volume of 4,000,000. That’s a massive increase over the double-digit quantum volume numbers that IBM itself recently announced and it’s a pretty extraordinary claim on IonQ’s side, as this would make its system the most

I’ve found a new object of desire which, once acquired, I would probably never use. It’s this OB-4 “magic radio” from Teenage Engineering, a design group that creates tech with a playful but premium approach. This wireless speaker not only looks lovely but has a handful of really interesting features, the most interesting of which has to be letting you, at any time, rewind up to two hours with the spin of a dial.
The truth is I rarely would require the rewinding feature,

Facebookis introducing a suite of new features for Facebook Groups, the private social networking product now used by over 1.8 billion people every month. At the company’s digitally hosted Facebook Communities Summit today, Facebook detailed a set of upcoming tools aimed at those who run Groups, which are designed help them better organize, filter and manage their communities, as well as new features focused on sparking discussions — like chats, prompts and Q&As. Notably, Faceboo

Facebook Facebook is expanding the reach of public groups today with new features that could lead to more people engaging in group discussions, but also potentially more visibility for dangerous or nefarious communities. The company announced multiple updates today for Groups that include automating moderation and covering people’s News Feeds with group discussions.The most intriguing update is starting out as a test at first. Facebook says it’ll start surfacing public group discuss

Braintrust, a network for freelance technical and design talent that launched over the summer, is announcing that it has raised $18 million in new funding.
Co-founder and CEO Adam Jackson has written for TechCrunch about how tech companies need to treat independent contractors with more empathy. He told me via email that the San Francisco-based startup is making that idea a reality by offering a very different approach than existing marketplaces for freelance work.
For one thing, Braintrust only