Technology news

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Health insurance provider UnitedHealth paid a multimillion-dollar ransom to hackers who broke into one of its subsidiaries, disrupting healthcare providers across the country for months, CEO Andrew Witty confirmed on Wednesday.In a hearing before the Senate Committee on Finance, Witty said the decision to pay the $22 million ransom was entirely his. “This was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make,” he said. UnitedHealth a

Image: Crunchyroll While Crunchyroll’s monthly prices haven’t jumped in five years, Sony is getting ready to change that for subscribers in a handful of countries.
Crunchyroll announced today that the prices for its Mega Fan and Ultimate Fan streaming subscription tiers are going up as a result of “the company’s investment in more anime, additional services like music and games, and additional subscriber benefits.” While the basic Crunchyroll Premium will continue t

Why wait? | Image: Netflix Want to try the nine games that Netflix now streams from cloud servers directly to your laptop, desktop, or TV? Officially, you’re supposed to wait until the beta rolls out more broadly, but for now, there may be an easier way.If you fire up a desktop web browser, log in to Netflix, and click these links, you should be able to start playing, even if you don’t see any of these games listed normally.Oxenfree: https://www.netflix.com/title/81569946
The Almost

An ethernet port! | Screenshot: Superdell-TV Walmart is apparently getting ready to release a new Onn “Pro” Google TV 4K streaming box that’s also a smart speaker. Yesterday, YouTuber Superdell-TV hosted a livestream where he showed off the streaming device, which he said he had bought from the retailer in-store for $50. As 9to5Google noted today, the Onn Pro was already previously rumored but hasn’t been announced, so it may have been stocked by mistake, as it still does

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos by Getty Images A new bill seeking to track security issues by mandating the creation of a database recording all breaches of AI systems has been filed in the Senate.The Secure Artificial Intelligence Act, introduced by Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), would establish an Artificial Intelligence Security Center at the National Security Agency. This center would lead research into what the bill calls “counter-AI,” or techniques to lear

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile has completed its acquisition of Mint Mobile, the carrier partially owned by Ryan Reynolds. In an update on Wednesday, T-Mobile says Mint Mobile will continue to offer its $15 per month / 5GB of data plan (that requires paying for three months upfront), while also offering access to some of T-Mobile’s perks rolling out now and “over the next few months.”
The acquisition also includes Ka’ena Corporation, the parent company of

Illustration: The Verge WhatsApp is adding a new way to plan and organize events in group messages, making it easier for friends and organizations like schools and neighborhoods to set up virtual and in-person meetings.
The new events feature lets members of a group set up birthday parties, work meetings, and more, similar to various e-vite services that send out invitations via email. New WhatsApp events get pinned to a group’s information page and also get their own group chat thread so

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images It’s gone from one piece to three.Tesla’s ambitious plans to manufacture the underbody of its vehicles into a single piece, a process known as gigacasting, has been put on hold, according to Reuters, citing two sources with knowledge of the move. It was another sign that the company was pulling back from some of its previously reported plans as it struggles to adapt to falling sales and shrinking profits.Typically, automakers piece together the

Inviting friends to your PS5 multiplayer sessions is getting much easier. | Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment Sony is working on an easier way for anyone to join your gaming sessions — whether you’re friends on the PlayStation Network or not. The company says that “in the coming months,” you’ll be able to generate a link either on your PS5 or in the PlayStation App that you can share with others so they can join your multiplayer session.
On the PS5, that means p

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images Conservatives are pushing a story about Biden, covid-19, and content moderation on social media platforms in both the court of public opinion and the Supreme Court. A new report shared exclusively with The Verge and set to be released by a Republican-led House subcommittee brings the congressional effort to establish this narrative in line with a pending Supreme Court case, focusing on allegations that the Biden administration violated the First Ame

It was already the cheapest Qi2 multi-charger, and now the price is even better. | Image: ESR If all-in-one chargers are your jam and you’ve been waiting for a great opportunity to upgrade to Qi2, check out this deal on ESR’s latest model. You can save $56.99 ($16 off) on ESR’s Qi2 3-in-1 wireless charging station after clipping the coupon at Amazon. That’s the lowest price we’ve seen on this particular model and easily the best deal you’ll find on a Qi2 3-in-

Another Dutch tech firm has been caught in the simmering tensions between the West and China. Amid growing calls to curb Chinese access to chipmaking equipment from ASML, a Dutch minister has raised a separate alarm about the sale of Philips spinoff Anteryon. Although the digital-optics developer remains based in Eindhoven, the business was bought in 2019 by China’s Jingfang Optotelectronics. The Suzhou-based firm reportedly spent between €40mn and €50mn on the acquisition. Foll

Image: Bethesda Softworks Starfield players on Xbox will no longer have to deal with the game’s 30-frames-per-second (fps) cap. As part of an update arriving on May 15th, Bethesda will let Xbox Series X players run the game at 60fps.
The 60fps option comes as part of several new display customization settings. The game will let you choose to prioritize visuals to “[keep] the highest resolution while maintaining full detail for special effects, lighting, and crowds” or choose to

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 because it was “very worried” that Google was years ahead in scaling up its AI efforts. An internal email, titled “Thoughts on OpenAI,” between Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, CEO Satya Nadella, and co-founder Bill Gates reveals some of the high-level discussions around an investment opportunity in the months before Microsoft revealed the partnership.
The email was released on Tuesday as pa

Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 because it was “very worried” that Google was years ahead in scaling up its AI efforts. An internal email, titled “Thoughts on OpenAI,” between Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, CEO Satya Nadella, and co-founder Bill Gates reveals some of the high-level discussions around an investment opportunity in the months before Microsoft revealed the partnership.
The email was released on Tuesday as pa

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Audible is testing a new section that provides audiobook recommendations based on your Prime Video viewing history. The test is rolling out to half of all users with both Audible and Amazon Prime, and there’s no way to opt out for now.
If you have both services, you might see a new carousel on the mobile and web app titled “Based on what you watched recently on Prime Video.” It will contain audiobooks relevant to what you’ve watched

Utrecht-based Vitestro has raised €20mn to bring its robotic blood drawing device to market. Founded in 2017, Vitestro aims to improve the blood draw experience for patients and address personnel shortages in healthcare — where the demand for skilled laboratory professionals is growing at a higher rate than any other occupation. The startup’s device relies on infrared to locate the vein and ultrasound to create an image of the blood vessel. Then, an AI-based robotic needle uses

Image: LastPass It’s been over a year and a half since LastPass suffered back-to-back high-profile hacks, and the company now says it has separated from its parent company, GoTo.GoTo announced that it would spin LastPass off as its own company back in December 2021, six years after buying the company. Now, the password vault company will operate under a shareholder holding company called LMI Parent.LastPass’ most recent troubles began in late 2022, when it admitted that hackers stole

Blockchain is often criticised as a solution in search of a problem. But one group of people has already found immense value in the tech: money launderers. Their crimes cause painful headaches for financial institutions, crypto businesses, legitimate law enforcement agencies, and cryptocurrency regulators. All of them need to tackle illicit activity on blockchains. Enter Elliptic, a British firm that specialises in cryptocurrency forensics. The company uses blockchain analytics to protect

Image: The Verge Anthropic, which makes the Claude 3 family of AI models, is launching an iOS app and adding a second paid tier for groups to share access to the models.The Claude mobile app can act as a chatbot, and users can also upload photos straight to the app for “image analysis.” Previously, Claude was only available through Anthropic’s Claude.ai website and third-party model libraries like Amazon Bedrock, Hugging Face, or Microsoft Azure.Scott White, product manager at

Image: Meta Today, Meta has announced that the next entry in the iconic Batman: Arkham series will be Batman: Arkham Shadow, a VR game that’s exclusive to the Meta Quest 3.
Iron Man VR developer Camouflaj and Oculus Studios are developing the game, which is set to release later this year. Meta didn’t share much about the game itself, giving us a short trailer featuring Batman’s POV as he swoops over the grimy, rain-slicked streets of Gotham.
Though light on the actual gameplay

The shark still looks fake. | Image: Wes Davis / The Verge Remember Google’s AR search, which can make augmented reality bugs, dinos, neat NASA objects like the Apollo 11 command module, and buildings appear atop the real world through the lens of your phone? On Monday, 9to5Google noticed they seemed to be disappearing, as it was only able to find a handful of the extensive collection that Google has built up over the years.
My editor, Richard Lawler, saw the same thing on his Pixel 8 Pro

Photo: LinkedIn LinkedIn is now in the gaming business. Starting today, users on the LinkedIn mobile app or on desktop can play one of three different games — Pinpoint, Queens, and Crossclimb. You’ll be able to play each game once per day, and after your daily session, you’ll get access to all kinds of metrics including your high score and daily streak, different leaderboards, and who in your networks has also played. The games are available here under the LinkedIn News and My

Ring’s Indoor Cam now comes in a pan and tilt version and three new colors. | Image: Ring Amazon-owned Ring has announced a new version of its wired indoor security camera. The $79.99 Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam adds a motorized pan-tilt base to the Ring Indoor Cam (2nd Gen), which otherwise retains the same features as before: 1080p HD video, two-way talk, motion alerts, a built-in siren, and a manual privacy cover that blocks all audio and video. It’s just now you can point the camera

Image: Nvidia Nvidia is updating its experimental ChatRTX chatbot with more AI models for RTX GPU owners. The chatbot, which runs locally on a Windows PC, can already use Mistral or Llama 2 to query personal documents that you feed into it, but now the list of supported AI models is growing to include Google’s Gemma, ChatGLM3, and even OpenAI’s CLIP model to make it easier to search your photos.
Nvidia first introduced ChatRTX as “Chat with RTX” in February as a demo app,

Image: The Verge The US could lose out on valuable AI and tech talent if some of its immigration policies are not modernized, Google says in a letter sent to the Department of Labor.Google says policies like Schedule A, a list of occupations the government “pre-certified” as not having enough American workers, have to be more flexible and move faster to meet demand in technologies like AI and cybersecurity. The company says the government must update Schedule A to include AI and cybe