Technology news

Photo by Nick Statt / The Verge Google has discontinued its Google Nest Secure alarm system, the company first confirmed to Android Police. And sure enough, if you visit the Nest Secure’s page on the Google Store right now, there’s a big button right at the top that says the product is no longer available.“Google Nest will no longer be producing Nest Secure, however we will continue to support our security users in all the same ways,” a Google spokesperson said in a stat

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is looking for Among Us teammates. On Twitter, Ocasio-Cortez put out an open call for people to play with “to get out the vote.” In a follow-up tweet, she shared a Twitch page for AOC with the note “getting set up!”
Her tweet has already drawn attention from streamers like Pokimane and HasanAbi. “It’d be an honor,” wrote Pokimane. As Election Day 2020 closes in, politicians have been turning to game spaces to reach pr

Disney has quietly introduced a new disclaimer to some of its films. When you start watching these films, you’ll be treated to an unskippable content warning, informing you that the film will contain “negative depictions” of certain people and cultures. While the films themselves aren’t altered in any way, the disclaimer says the depictions are wrong and expresses the importance of “a more inclusive future together.” In case you’re curious, here’s

Image: Apple If you buy an iPhone in the future, you’re not getting an included charging brick or earbuds. Apple says the reasons are environmental. Giving out fewer “free” accessories with every phone means using less materials, the company claims, and also makes for smaller boxes that can be shipped more efficiently. So going forward, those boxes will just come with a phone and a Lightning to USB-C cable.I think Apple’s approach is generally a good thing, but it should

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Justice Department has charged six Russian intelligence officers with involvement in an extensive hacking campaign, including the notorious Petya ransomware attacks that targeted Ukraine in 2015. According to the indictment, the efforts also targeted the country of Georgia, the French elections, the 2018 winter Olympics, and investigations into the poisoning of former Russian military officer Sergei Skripal.Many of the specific incidents in the indict

Today Juniper Networks announced it was acquiring smart wide area networking startup 128 Technology for $450 million.
This marks the second AI-fueled networking company Juniper has acquired in the last year and a half after purchasing Mist Systems in March 2019 for $405 million. With 128 Technology, the company gets more AI SD-WAN technology. SD-WAN is short for software-defined wide area networks, which means networks that cover a wide geographical area such as satellite offices, rather than a

Image: Apple Apple’s latest iPhone supports 5G networks, but not if you use the device in dual SIM mode, according to an internal Apple training document revealing the issue that began circulating on Reddit over the weekend.Dual SIM mode is a feature introduced on the iPhone line with the iPhone XS, and it’s useful for those traveling or staying abroad (or people who maintain work and personal lines on the same device) by allowing both a physical Nano SIM line and data-only service

iPhone icon customization is booming, thanks to new features in iOS 14, but there’s still some big catches. The workaround for a bespoke iPhone homescreen requires routing through Apple’s Shortcuts app every time you want to open an app, and the process of customizing all your apps one-by-one is a time-consuming and frustrating task.
But Launch Center Pro — a popular tool for customizing and creating quick shortcuts on iOS — has solved both of those issues with its latest

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon said Monday it is acquiring “certain assets” of Bluegrass Cellular, a wireless service provider in rural Kentucky. According to a news release, Bluegrass Cellular was the first wireless provider in central Kentucky, launching in 1991. It serves 210,000 customers in 34 Kentucky counties.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and it’s still subject to FCC approval, but is expected to close later this year or early in 2021, accordin

Image: Sony Sony has provided a new way for PS4 owners to show their support for the Black Lives Matter movement inside their consoles. Today, the company released a new static theme on the PlayStation Store called the “Black Lives Matter Theme.”
The theme is available now for free on the PlayStation Store. As you can see from the images above, when the theme is enabled, the lower portion of the PS4’s user interface displays a solid black wallpaper with a yellow outline of the

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Tesla has slashed its used car warranty in another round of what could be seen as belt-tightening ahead of what is expected to be a crucial third-quarter financial report.According to Electrek, the automaker previously offered a two- to four-year warranty on used Model S and X vehicles, but now only offers a warranty of one year or 10,000 miles over the original policy.The used-car warranty is being offered on top of a new-car warranty, which benefits any

Remember back in March when the VC game was done for the year, checkbooks were snapping shut and startup layoffs led the headlines? So much for all that. Q3’s venture capital numbers are in and they are anything but weak.
In retrospect, the Q2 VC slowdown looks more like a short-lived recharge ahead of a big push in Q3 than anything existential. We can see this today through the lens of data concerning what happened after June concluded and we moved into Q3.
According to data from PitchBoo

The Peanuts crew. | Image: Apple Apple TV Plus will be getting the beloved Peanuts Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas holiday specials added to its catalog this year, and they’ll each be available for free to non-subscribers for a short period of time.
The Halloween special, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, will be hitting Apple TV Plus today for subscribers and will be available for free from October 30th until November 1st. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving will be available

The new Google Assistant smart display interface | GIF: Google Google is updating the look and functionality of the software on its Assistant smart displays in a significant way. Starting this week, smart displays such as the Nest Hub and those made by third-party companies will be updated with a new home screen experience: dark mode, and finally, the ability to see calendar events from more than one Google account.
The biggest change is the new home screen, which is designed to provide context

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Pakistan has lifted its ban on TikTok, just 10 days after blocking the app on the grounds that it hosted “immoral” and “indecent” videos. Pakistan’s Telecommunication Authority (PTA) now says that TikTok has “assured” the agency that videos will be moderated “in accordance with societal norms and the laws of Pakistan.”
TikTok had not been fully responsive in the past to Pakistan’s demands for res

Uber wanted to get out of the bike business, so a Mexico City cyclist group took 1,600 bikes off the company’s hands. It’s a good thing they did — elsewhere in the world, Uber just sent them to the scrap heap.When it isn’t rescuing hundreds of bicycles from destruction, Bicitekas advocates for bikeable cities, which it has done for the last 22 years. The group’s hope in rescuing the bikes to give people who usually don’t have access to bike-sharing programs an

Before the 2016 election, Vice Ventures founder and general partner Catharine Dockery was bullish about the future of recreational cannabis in the United States.
“We saw quite a bit more optimism around national legalization, with the feeling that a wave of states legalizing recreational use would be the final push needed” to see drug reform, she said. It was good news for Dockery, who was planning to launch a firm investing in categories like cannabis, CBD, psychedelics and sex tech

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Today, Apple launches Apple Music TV, which is exactly what it sounds like: Apple Music on television. It’s a free, curated, 24-hour live stream of popular music videos (though it’s only available to US residents); you can watch it in the browse tabs of the Apple Music app and on the Apple TV app.Apple Music TV is interesting because it seems like a direct shot at YouTube’s dominance of the music video space. The new channel will host vi

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge When Cadillac reached out recently with an offer to test out the new 2021 Escalade for a day, I eagerly responded in the affirmative. I wanted to try out the latest version of the automaker’s partially autonomous driver assist system, Super Cruise, as well as all the other high-tech bells and whistles (augmented reality? 38 inches of OLED screen?) that Cadillac was stuffing into its flagship SUV.
Instead, I got one of the most stressful driving exper

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook rejected 2.2 million ad submissions for targeting the US without completing its authorization process, Agence France-Presse reported. The social media giant also has removed 120,000 posts across Facebook and Instagram for violating its voter interference policies and placed warnings on 150 million posts debunked by fact-checkers.
Facebook vice president for global affairs Nick Clegg made the remarks in an interview with the French newspaper Journ

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Woot is selling Samsung’s fantastic bean-shaped wireless earbuds, the Galaxy Buds Live, for just $135, knocking $35 off the normal retail price. This deal is exclusive to people with an active Amazon Prime membership. Woot says the sale will last until October 31st unless it sells out before then.
Woot has four color options available for the Galaxy Buds Live: mystic black, mystic bronze, mystic blue, and the newly announced mystic red. Aside from an uncon

The cooling fan of the PS5 as seen in a Sony teardown video earlier this month.| Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge Sony’s next-gen PlayStation 5 console has a massive internal cooling system composed of, among other things, a gigantic fan. But the device, a 120mm-wide and 45mm-thick double-sided intake fan, also has some smart software to power it, and that software will improve the fan’s performance over time based on data gathered from individual games, according to a new inter

Teaching yourself Python machine learning can be a daunting task if you don’t know where to start. Fortunately, there are plenty of good introductory books and online courses that teach you the basics. It is the advanced books, however, that teach you the skills you need to decide which algorithm better solves a problem and which direction to take when tuning hyperparameters. A while ago, I was introduced to Machine Learning Algorithms, Second Edition by Giuseppe Bonaccorso, a b

This article was originally published by Christopher Carey on Cities Today, the leading news platform on urban mobility and innovation, reaching an international audience of city leaders. For the latest updates follow Cities Today on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, or sign up for Cities Today News. Escooters are set to hit the streets of Liverpool as part of a one-year trial by Swedish firm Voi. The pilot scheme – a joint initiative of Liverpool City Region Combi

TLDR: The Ultimate Entrepreneur Bundle doesn’t just focus more than 100 video courses on your professional success. They take on your inner well-being too. There’s a lot to consider when you plan to take the internet by storm and make a bazillion dollars. Do you have a sound business plan? Have you figured out how you’re going to reach your potential customers? Do you have the drive to make this longshot happen? Are you happy? Sure, there are a lot of practical business concer

Betelgeuse is one of the best-known stars in the night sky, as well as the easiest to find. New examinations of this behemoth star suggest it is both smaller — and closer — than astronomers believed. This red giant star will, one day, explode as a supernova. However, it is challenging to determine when the eruption will take place. In addition to new measurements of the star’s size and distance, this new study from Australian National University (ANU) suggests the star is not

Peak Design, makers of one of The Verge’s favorite backpacks, has a new magnetic modular mounting system for your Apple or Samsung phone. The company’s launching a Kickstarter today with the intent to ship an entire range of accessories starting next May, including bike mounts, car mounts, wall mounts, motorcycle mounts, wireless chargers, even a sleek mobile tripod that folds up small enough to palm.I’ve been playing with several of them over the past couple days — and I

TLDR: This 12-course package explores all facets of DevOps training along with hundreds of practice tests to get students ready for critical certification exams. While it probably feels like you only started hearing the term DevOps in the past decade, it may already be time to start considering the next iteration of this trendy job title. With the complexity of IT automation increasing almost daily, some experts think DevOps could start shifting focus in the not too distant future, instead of c

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok has been removing the accounts of users who share QAnon-related content on the platform, NPR reported, part of a policy the video-sharing platform says has been in effect since August. While TikTok initially focused on reducing discoverability of such content — banning QAnon-related hashtags, for instance — its policy now includes removing the content, banning accounts, and redirecting searches and hashtags to display its community guid

Image: 420doggface208 / TikTok Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is a top 10 album this week — more than four decades after its release — thanks to a viral TikTok video that’s had everyone vibing along to “Dreams.” Rumours now ranks seventh on the Billboard 200 chart, the publication announced last night, the album’s first appearance in the top 10 since 1978, a year after it debuted.
Rumours’ newfound popularity is thanks to a viral video from Nathan Apodac

Frictional Games When is a society — or a life — past saving? The reassuring answer is never. But Amnesia: Rebirth, the latest game from Swedish studio Frictional, isn’t designed to be reassuring.Rebirth is a successor to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a 2010 horror classic defined by its shameless jump scares; grotesque monsters; and chilling story about guilt, cruelty, and memory. Frictional has gone back to Amnesia a couple of times. First with a short 2011 add-on called Justin

Eight countries have signed the Artemis Accords, a set of guidelines surrounding the Artemis Program for crewed exploration of the Moon. The United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, Canada, Japan, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates , and the US are now all participants in the project, which aims to return humans to the moon by 2024 and establish a crewed lunar base by 2030. This may sound like progress. Nations have for a number of years struggled with the issue of how to govern a human settlement o

Propseller, a Singapore-based real estate agency that combines a tech platform with in-house agents to close transactions more quickly, announced today it has raised $1.2 million in seed funding.
The round included investment from Iterative; Hustle Fund; XA Network; Rapzo Capital; Lazada co-founder Stein Jakabo; and Dot Property founder Ben Neve. Propselleralso said “three undisclosed highly strategic investors” and returning private investors participated.
Propseller’s last fu

Subscribe to our monthly Byte Me newsletter NOW! Welcome back to Byte Me, our feminist newsletter that makes everyone mad <3 Sorry we missed last month’s edition! We were swamped with TNW2020 which was a gorgeous success. In the meantime, Cara and Gigi have been obsessively inhaling The Handmaid’s Tale, and Anouk fell off her bike, fucked up her foot, and then passed out on her bathroom floor. Each month, our gloriously gifted designer, Saï

Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images The USA’s largest cinema chain AMC is making its screens available for private hire, allowing groups of up to 20 people to watch a film on the big screen without having to share an auditorium with strangers. The move joins cinema chains Cinemark and Alamo Drafthouse, which SlashFilm reports started offering similar screenings earlier this summer. AMC is offering a selection of new and old films to watch, with auditorium rental prices starting at $99 plus t

Starting next year, UK drivers will be considered criminals if they pick up their phone whilst driving. Ok, that sounds pretty bleak, but in other words: the UK government has finally closed a loophole in legislation which made it illegal for drivers to text or call on their mobile phones whilst driving, but didn’t hold them to the same standard if they were playing games or taking pictures. Before these new laws it was fine to cruise whilst playing Candy Crush, but not ok to drive and te

I honestly can’t wait for the cable-free life of wireless charging. However, most wireless chargers juice up phones at around 10W, and that’s simply not enough. Thankfully, companies are making strides towards working on faster wireless charging tech. Xiaomi showed off its new wireless charging tech today that can charge up a phone with a 4,000 mAh battery in just 19 minutes. The 80W charger can charge 10% of the battery in just 1 minute and 50% of the battery in 8 minutes. This cou