Technology news

Brazil just gave Elon Musk's X the boot.On Friday, Brazil's top court ordered that Musk's social media company X, formerly known as Twitter, be banned in the country.SEE ALSO:Elon Musk's X is the 'home of social media piracy,' sports leagues say
The move comes after Musk has feuded with Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has previously ordered that X remove content that spread fake news and misinformation. Musk and company classified the judge's requests as "censorship orde

Image: Bluesky X is currently banned in Brazil following an order from a Supreme Court justice, and Brazilian users seem to be turning to Bluesky, an alternate social network, in droves.
“Brazil, you’re setting new all-time-highs for activity on Bluesky!” the official Bluesky account says in a post.
“There will almost certainly be some outages and performance issues,” Bluesky developer Paul Frazee says. “We’ve never seen traffic like this. Hang with us!&

The Verge A judge in Brazil has ordered the suspension of X after owner Elon Musk failed to designate a new legal representative for the country, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Earlier this month, Musk closed X’s offices in Brazil, saying Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes threatened to arrest the company’s legal representative for not complying with “censorship orders.” Brazil’s Supreme Court notified X on Wednesday that if it didn’t a

If you looked at the Facebook app on your phone today and saw that the colors had changed, you're not alone. Don't worry, though; you won't be stuck with it.Users on X reported the change early on Friday, noting that the Facebook app's logo on their mobile devices — typically a white F on a blue background — had changed to a blue F on a black background.Tweet may have been deletedTweet may have been deletedTweet may have been deletedTweet may have been deletedTweet may have been dele

Spotify users on iPhone who listen to music and podcasts via Spotify Connect will have to take a few extra steps in order to control the volume on their audio devices — Spotify seems unhappy about it.According to Spotify, Apple has "discontinued" the technology that let Spotify users control their volume via the physical iPhone buttons when streaming to speakers, smart TVs, gaming consoles, and other devices via Spotify Connect.SEE ALSO:Apple Sports app will give real-time NFL and CFB upda

If you're reading this, you're looking for a little help playing Strands, the New York Times' elevated word-search game.Strands requires the player to perform a twist on the classic word search. Words can be made from linked letters — up, down, left, right, or diagonal, but words can also change direction, resulting in quirky shapes and patterns. Every single letter in the grid will be part of an answer. There's always a theme linking every solution, along with the "spangram," a special, w

Image: NASA SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission will launch to the International Space Station with only NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Aleksandr Gorbunov onboard, according to an update on Friday. Crew-9 will launch “no earlier” than September 24th, with plans to bring delayed Starliner astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams back to Earth next February.
Wilmore and Williams arrived at the ISS in June and were only supposed to stay for about a week while conducting test

Image: NASA SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission will launch to the International Space Station with only NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Aleksandr Gorbunov on board, according to an update on Friday. Crew-9 will launch “no earlier” than September 24th, with plans to bring delayed Starliner astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams back to Earth next February.
Wilmore and Williams arrived at the ISS in June and were only supposed to stay for about a week while conducting tes

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Grzegorz Wajda, Getty Images A lawsuit aimed at punishing critics of Elon Musk’s X will go forward, thanks to a ruling from a judge with a financial interest in Musk’s success.
On Thursday, Judge Reed O’Connor denied a motion to dismiss X’s lawsuit against Media Matters For America. The suit was filed in Texas last year and alleges that MMFA should be held legally liable for negative reporting that caused companies to p

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Apple wants to be the hub for all your football updates. With Twitter's slow degradation as X and an overwhelming number of competing sports apps, it doesn't seem like the worst idea. The tech giant announced new features in its free Apple Sports app to help users access real-time updates to their favorite teams and games. This announcement comes as the all-important NFL and college football seasons kick off next week. SEE ALSO:How to watch the NFL online for free
Apple Sports is intended to ser

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Almost every online retailer is pushing a big Labor Day sale, but Dyson’s been a bit more low-key

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Labor Day weekend is here, and it's time to rack up the savings. You've likely already spied some of the best Labor Day

Image: The Verge A senior CrowdStrike executive will testify before the House Homeland Security Committee next month about the IT outage that ground planes and workplaces to a halt globally on July 19th.Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike’s senior vice president of counter adversary operations, has agreed to appear before the panel on September 24th at 2 p.m. Eastern Time, the committee announced. Committee leaders had previously called on CEO George Kurtz to testify, but he’s not currently lis

OpenAI and rival company Anthropic have signed agreements with the U.S. government to have new models tested before public release. On Thursday the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced that its AI Safety Institute will oversee "AI safety research, testing and evaluation" with both companies. "These agreements are just the start, but they are an important milestone as we work to help responsibly steward the future of AI," said Elizabeth Kelly, director of the AI Safety

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Check out the best Labor Day weekend sales on outdoor gear from retailers like REI, Amazon, and Home Depot.These are the best Labor Day sale outdor deals:Best camping dealREI Co-op Magma 30 Sleeping Bag$265.29 at REI(save $113.71)Get DealBest emergency preparedness deal Emergency Mylar Thermal Blankets$6.99 at Amazon(save $6)Get DealBest backyard dealTraeger Pro 575 Wifi Pellet Grill and Smoker$599 at Home Depot (save $200)Get Deal
Labor Day weekend is finally upon us. Before you clock off and h

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Congrats on making it through another month of 2024. Your reward, besides a three-day weekend, is a bunch o

Image: Intel It’s been a burning question for months — are Intel’s laptop chips susceptible to the same permanent damage that can potentially lay 24 different flagship desktop chips low?Today, Intel has finally confirmed: its 13th and 14th Gen laptop chips do not seem to have an instability issue. And the company claims they are definitely not affected by the too-high voltage issue, which it’s now calling “Vmin Shift Instability.”While Intel maintains that Vmi

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In Barcelona, digital nomads risk being attacked by angry water pistol-wielding locals. But other parts of sun-soaked Spain are welcoming remote workers with open arms — and wads of cash. This week, the local government of Extremadura announced it is offering digital nomads and remote workers up to €15,000 to move to the rural region. The grants are for “available housing, arable land, and everything necessary to expedite their arrival,” said officials in a press release.

Image: The Verge Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France last weekend, and a few days later was charged with a number of offenses connected to criminal activity on Telegram. There’s a lot about this story we don’t yet know, but this week’s events seem to signal a shift in how countries and governments plan to hold executives accountable for what happens on their platforms.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we try and make sense of what happened here — and what mig

Apple Intelligence is upon us, but not every company that owns a major website is a fan of Apple scraping its data to train AI.A new report by Wired found that several widely recognizable online brands have chosen to opt out of training Apple's AI bot. Among those who have deliberately turned it off are Facebook, Instagram, the New York Times, Craigslist, and Condé Nast. If the opt-out request is truly honored, Apple Intelligence cannot and will not get any data from those sites until, or

A smarter version of Amazon's Alexa is coming — but it might not be powered by Amazon's tech. According to a new report by Reuters, the new version of Alexa will "primarily" be powered by Anthropic's Claude AI models, instead of Amazon's own AI. Anthropic is an AI company founded by ex-OpenAI employees, which claimed that Claude 3's Opus model, which launched in March this year, was in some ways more powerful than comparable models from OpenAI and Google. Amazon is a big investor in Anthro

It’s the end of an era. | Image: AnandTech, Future Hardware enthusiast site AnandTech is shutting down after nearly three decades of covering computers. AnandTech’s final Editor-in-Chief, Ryan Smith, announced the news in a farewell post this morning, writing, “...Few things last forever, and the market for written tech journalism is not what it once was — nor will it ever be again. So, the time has come for AnandTech to wrap up its work, and let the next generation of te

Google's AI arm is reportedly tapping into "bioacoustics" — a field that blends a combination of biology and sounds that, in part, help researchers gain insights on how pathogen presence affects human sound. As it turns out, our sounds convey tell-tale information about our well-being.According to a Bloomberg report, the search-engine giant built an AI model that uses sound signals to "predict early signs of disease." In places where there is difficulty accessing quality healthcare, this t

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google Play Store can now download, install, and update multiple Android apps simultaneously. Previously, if you attempted to run all your updates manually, Play Store would only process a single app at a time. Now, as we’ve tested, it can do up to three.
As reported by Android Police, Google has tested concurrent app updates for Play Store before, starting as far back as 2019 and as recently as last March. Now it looks like the speedier updates are

The Verge TikTok is giving users a way to more precisely shape what kind of content they see on their feeds — or at least to signal to the algorithm what they’re interested in.
Under Content preferences > Manage topics (which can be found in “Settings and Privacy”), users can adjust sliders to signal they want more or less of certain topics in their For You page. Topics include “creative arts,” “current affairs,” “humor” and more. Sl

Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge I’m something of a hoarder when it comes to interesting facts — I’ll see something online or in a photo, and a small voice in my brain says, “You’ll be able to use that reference somewhere, somehow. Save it so you can find it later!” Which is fine if it’s just a line or two of text, but what if that info is within an image — a photo, say, or even a drawing?
Luckily, back in 2021, Apple introduced a feature in iOS 15

The new version of the voice assistant, dubbed “Remarkable Alexa,” is expected to launch in October and require a subscription fee. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge The improved version of Alexa that Amazon’s expected to release this year will primarily be powered by Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence model, according to Reuters. The publication reports that initial versions of Amazon’s smarter, subscription-based voice assistant that used the

Nintendo Our first couple of looks at Echoes of Wisdom made it seem like Zelda would be fighting to save Hyrule with just her wits and new magic powers, but the game’s latest trailer is all about the princess’ skills with a blade.
Though Princess Zelda will wield a mystical staff that basically summons monsters and conjures useful items, she also has a straight up sword in Echoes of Wisdom’s newest trailer that highlights a new game mechanic. After finding the blade, Zelda will