Technology news

For both aspiring and established creators, T-shirts and hoodies are so passé — the new wave of merchandise is all digital.Teespring, one of the biggest platforms for creator and influencer merchandising and an official commerce partner for YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, is rolling out the ability to sell digital merchandise. These include photo filters, e-books, premium content, zines, and other items that creators can sell directly to fans instead of relying on physical merchandi

Image: Nikon Nikon has announced its latest full-frame mirrorless cameras, the Z6 II and Z7 II, which improve upon their predecessors with faster performance, improved autofocus, and the inclusion of a secondary memory card slot. Otherwise, the second-gen cameras are largely similar to the Z6 and Z7, using the same sensors and with no outward design updates. The electronic viewfinder and vari-angle LCD — it can’t be rotated to face forward for vlogging — are unchanged in both

Western Digital 12TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive| Image: Western Digital There are a few hours left before Prime Day 2020 wraps up, but there are still a bunch of deals available to take advantage of. If you are looking to beef up your desktop storage, Western Digital’s 12TB desktop hard drive is on sale for just $175 at Amazon, Best Buy, B&H Photo, and Newegg. Normally, this product will set you back $250 or more, so if you need an excuse to add a lot more space to your computer, thi

A joint European and Japanese spacecraft is about to slingshot around the planet Venus, performing a short gravitational dance that will change the vehicle’s course through space. This critical maneuver will take place just before midnight Eastern Time, and the spacecraft has to nail its routine in order to reach its ultimate destination — Mercury — within the next five years.
The spacecraft making this planetary swing is BepiColombo, which is really two spacecraft wrapped into

Mad Max: Fury Road prequel Furiosa has found its lead with Anya Taylor-Joy (Split, Emma)in the eponymous role. Chris Hemsworth and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II will also star in the film, though it’s still unclear what roles both actors will play.The standalone movie will follow a younger version of Imperator Furiosa, originally portrayed by Charlize Theron. George Miller is returning to direct, co-write, and produce the film; he announced that he was casting for the movie in May. Following confi

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter will ban posts that deny the Holocaust, a company spokesperson confirmed today. The news, first reported by Bloomberg, comes two days after Facebook implemented the same policy.
“We strongly condemn antisemitism, and hateful conduct has absolutely no place on our service,” the Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. They said that “attempts to deny or diminish” violent events are prohibited under Twitter’s hateful c

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, lover of dirty jokes and weed jokes, is back at it again. On Wednesday, Musk tweeted that Tesla would be reducing the price of its flagship sedan, the Model S, to $69,420.Musk said the “gauntlet has been thrown down,” a likely reference to the announcement today from Lucid Motors that its forthcoming luxury electric sedan, the Lucid Air, would start at $77,400. That version of the Air would come with 480 horsepower and a range of 406 miles on a single charge. Tha

Screenshot by Nick Statt / The Verge Verizon’s new ad for the iPhone 12 is introducing another 5G logo, but this one — unlike AT&T’s 5G E one — actually means something. Now, if you’re an iPhone 12 owner and in one of the small but growing areas of Verizon’s network that supports its mmWave variety of 5G, you’ll see a new “5G UW” logo.The UW stands for ultra-wideband, the type of radio technology that allows Verizon to deliver connectivi

Apple’s new MagSafe accessory ecosystem isn’t even a day old, but Belkin is already getting started with new charging accessories that use the magnetic charging system with the introduction of its new BoostCharge Pro MagSafe 3-in-1 Wireless Charger and its MagSafe Car Vent Mount Pro.
The $149.95 BoostCharge Pro MagSafe 3-in-1 Wireless Charger is effectively the culmination of Belkin’s years of Apple-focused wireless charging hubs, featuring no less than three different wireless

Image: Google You probably haven’t thought about Google Glass in a while, but the Enterprise Edition of its heads-up display is getting a neat new trick: it’ll be able to use Google Meet (formerly Hangouts Meet) to let remote supervisors see through the eyes of their workers in the field and help them complete tasks with live chat.
It’s an idea Microsoft has been pursuing since the very first HoloLens demos, where it walked us through the process of fixing a light switch via a

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Lightning Deal for Acer’s 27-inch 4K Predator gaming monitor at Amazon lasted about 10 seconds. For a brief flash of time, it dropped from its usual $1,200 price to $720. The deal was supposed to last until tonight 11:45PM PT / 2:45AM ET, but that clearly didn’t happen. This monitor has swung down to $900 a few times, but this was the best deal yet.
Here are the specs that matter: it’s an 4K IPS panel with a 120Hz refresh rate (c

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge For the first time, Apple’s Apple TV app is making its way to Android TV. Sony has announced that, as of today, the app will begin rolling out in the United States to the company’s new X900H series of 4K HDR TVs via a software update. This might push along efforts to sideload the app onto other Android TV devices like the Nvidia Shield or the new Google Chromecast.The Apple TV app provides access to Apple TV Plus originals — Ted Lasso, a

Image: Virgin Galactic Planetary scientist Alan Stern will become one of the first researchers to fly to space on board a future flight of Virgin Galactic’s tourist spaceplane. Stern will oversee two different experiments while on board the flight, each meant to take advantage of the brief stay in the space environment.
Virgin Galactic’s vehicle, SpaceShipTwo, is designed to take customers high above Earth to get a taste of weightlessness. The company has flown both people and resea

Photo: Canon Vlogging from home has become more and more popular as video creators are driven indoors and are coming up with new and interesting ways to entertain their fans. A new version of the Canon EOS M50 Mark II camera could make the process of vlogging and interviewing easier with several new features, such as the ability to just tap the screen to autofocus on a subject while you’re looking through the electronic viewfinder (EVF).
The Mark II, which should sell for about $600 (body

Image: Spotify In the weeks since iOS 14’s release, more and more apps have been adding new features that take advantage of what’s in Apple’s latest update. And now, Spotify is joining in. Today, the leading subscription music service announced the launch of its widget for iOS 14 and iPadOS 14.Similar to Apple’s own widgets for Apple Music, Spotify’s serve as a means of quickly getting back to something you were recently listening to. You can pick between small and

There are more than 2 billion websites in existence in the world today, millions of apps and a growing range of digital screens where people and businesses present constantly changing arrays of information to each other. But all that opportunity also has a flip side: How can you say what you want, just how you want to say it, without technical hurdle after hurdle getting in your way?
A startup called Sanity has built a platform to help businesses (and their people) do that more easily with a Saa

“The Embrace” by Sergey Gorshkov took this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year grand title at the Natural History Museum in London. | Photo by Sergey Gorshkov / Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2020 A Siberian tiger just gave the world the hug it needs in 2020. The intimate moment was caught on hidden camera by Sergey Gorshkov, whose photo, “The Embrace,” just won him the prestigious title of Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
“A scene like no other&rdq

After months of rumors, Apple announced yesterday that it would be removing wired EarPod headphones and wall chargers from iPhone boxes. The only accessory you get in the box is a USB-C to Lightning cable. Apple is positioning this as an environmentally-friendly move that will reduce carbon emissions and let the company ship more devices on a single pallet. But if you had come to rely on getting a new pair of headphones and a wall charger when you bought a new iPhone, those are now only availabl

Illustration by Alex Castro / Th I.
The biggest trend at platforms this month is changing your mind. Facebook belatedly banned QAnon. Twitter tapped the brakes on retweets. And on Monday, Facebook made one of the biggest policy reversals in its history, banning posts that deny or distort the Holocaust.
Today, let’s talk about the company’s long journey to doing the right thing — and what other platforms might learn from Facebook’s experience.
First, the news. Here’

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook has reduced the reach of a New York Post story that makes disputed claims about Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, pending a fact-check review. “While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform,” tweeted Facebook policy communication

Amazon We’re closing in on the end of Prime Day 2020, but there are still plenty of good deals going live on Amazon. Starting now, you can buy JBL’s highly rated Go 2 speaker for just $20. This speaker is usually $39.95, which means you’re saving $19.95. This price is available for the black, red, and blue options.The newer item in this line, the JBL Go 3, also costs $39.95. That means the Go 2 isn’t a great buy at that price anymore, but it’s definitely worth a lo

Image: Apple This week, Apple unveiled the iPhone mini, the smallest iPhone it has debuted in years, and it looks like the iPhone I’ve been wanting for a very long time.
I haven’t been a fan of the trend toward bigger smartphones. The first one I bought for myself was the iPhone 7 Plus. I returned it within a week because it was too big and got the iPhone 7 instead, which I loved. Last year, I upgraded from the iPhone 7 to the iPhone 11, but returned that within a week, too —

Image: Apple Apple revived one of its more beloved technologies, MagSafe, at its annual iPhone reveal on Tuesday, showing off a new line of smartphones with magnets built into the back for fast and sturdy connections to wireless chargers, snap-on cases, and other accessories.While the old MagSafe was a safety feature for charging laptops without worrying about damaging your machine when the cord was ripped out, the new MagSafe is a savvy, smartphone-centric accessory play for Apple. It lets the

Videoconferencing app Zoom is trying to keep its lockdown success rolling with two big new features: a marketplace called OnZoom that will allow users to schedule and monetize virtual events, and new ways for business apps like Asana and Box to integrate their wares directly into your next Zoom call.
First, OnZoom. This is an “event discovery and monetization” platform that will make it easier to find virtual events in a whole range of categories, says Zoom — from cooking class

Just months after it announced a $33 million Series B, Chicago-based M1 Finance today disclosed a $45 Series C.
The new financing event was led by Left Lane Capital, the same investor that led M1’s Series B. Bear in mind that so-called inside rounds are now a bullish sign in 2020, as opposed to in prior VC eras when they were viewed more cooly. Other M1 investors include Jump Capital, Clocktower Technology Ventures and Chicago Ventures, though only the first two appear to have taken p

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Videos containing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation will be removed from YouTube, the platform announced today. Content about a vaccine that contradicts information from health experts or the World Health Organization won’t be permitted.“A COVID-19 vaccine may be imminent, therefore we’re ensuring we have the right policies in place to be able to remove misinformation related to a COVID-19 vaccine,” Farshad Shadloo, a YouTube spokesm

The Exchange regularly covers companies as they approach and crest the $100 million revenue mark. Our goal in tracking startups growing at scale is to scout future IPO candidates and better understand the late-stage financing market.
Today we’re digging into a company that is a little bit bigger than that. Namely Databricks, a data analytics company that was most recently valued at around $6.2 billion in its October, 2019 Series F when it raised $400 million.The Exchange explores star

The image captioning algorithm will be used to improve apps like Seeing AI, here being used by developer Florian Beijers.| Image: Microsoft / Maurice Jager Microsoft has developed a new image-captioning algorithm that exceeds human accuracy in certain limited tests. The AI system has been used to update the company’s assistant app for the visually impaired, Seeing AI, and will soon be incorporated into other Microsoft products like Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint. There, it will be used for

Image: OnePlus Alongside the new OnePlus 8T smartphone, the company has just announced its second pair of true wireless earbuds. At just $45.99, the OnePlus Buds Z are priced even more aggressively and are more affordable than the OnePlus Buds. And they also feature a different design — now with silicone ear tips instead of the AirPods-like hard plastic, one-size-fits-most style. Hopefully that’ll be enough to prevent any problems at the border. The OnePlus Buds Z will be available

The OnePlus 8T is available in green or silver. | Image; OnePlus OnePlus has officially announced the OnePlus 8T. As previously revealed, the new phone features new 65W fast-charging tech and a 120Hz display. Alongside the new phone, OnePlus also announced a new $45.99 (£55) pair of true wireless earbuds called the OnePlus Buds Z.
There are two main models of the OnePlus 8T: one with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage and a second with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. In the US, you only ge

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The second and final day of Prime Day 2020 is here, but there are still a ton of deals to take advantage of for the next several hours, including this fantastic deal on Sony’s new WH-1000XM4 wireless over-ear headphones. Normally, these headphones cost $350, but if you are an Amazon Prime member, you can buy a pair for just $298. Even better? Amazon will also give you a $25 gift card to its website when you purchase these headphones. Best Buy and B&H P

Photography by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Day two of Amazon Prime Day 2020 is underway, and you have until later tonight at 12:00AM PT / 3:00AM ET to get in on all of the deals. If you were shopping the Prime Day deals yesterday, you likely saw hefty price cuts on must-have products, like Sony’s WH-1000XM4 wireless noise-canceling headphones, AirPods wireless earbuds, tablets, and more. You still have a chance to get in on those Prime-exclusive deals, plus some news ones that pop up to

After several years of trying to take down zombies in Resident Evil, Milla Jovovich is teaming up with an army of soldiers to take on a mega monster invasion in Monster Hunter.Based on Capcom’s popular game franchise, Monster Hunter follows Jovovich’s Captain Artemis and her team as they’re transported to an alternate universe where monsters reign supreme. Without any knowledge of how to kill monsters (it’s not exactly something most people on Earth have to deal with), Ar

Spotify Spotify is tying podcasts and music close together. The company announced today that it’s testing a new podcast format that’ll allow podcast listeners to hear entire music tracks during a show, as opposed to a brief sample. Hosts will also be able to create shows in this format through Anchor, the Spotify-owned podcast creation app. The new format effectively makes Spotify the only podcast platform where hosts can include entire songs in their shows without having to worry a

From left to right: the iPhone 12 Pro Max, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12, and iPhone 12 mini There are a lot more iPhones than there used to be these days. Picking a phone used to be simple: Apple would offer just a single new iPhone model, where all you had to do was choose a color and storage size. This year, Apple has launched four new phones: the iPhone 12, 12 mini, 12 Pro, and 12 Pro Max, which join the already available iPhone SE that was released earlier this year for a total of five new phon

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Lucid Motors is releasing a “more attainable” version of its recently revealed luxury electric sedan, the Lucid Air.At an unveiling event in September, Lucid said the base model would start at “around $80,000” — without revealing the actual price. Now the company says it has settled on a base model price of $77,400 — or $69,900 after applying the US federal tax credit of $7,500.This version of the Lucid Air will hav