Lyft has made its Bay Wheels e-bikes in San Francisco unavailable to customers after a couple of them caught fire. According to San Francisco Examiner, a witness who saw the first incident on Wednesday said the flames came from the bike's battery. A...
Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
As Wednesday’s night’s Democratic debate came to a close, Joe Biden somehow confused and combined his campaign website and a text message short code in his closing statement.
“Go to JOE 30330 and help me in this fight,” Biden said in his debate night send-off, apparently asking voters to text the number to receive updates from his campaign. But according to a later tweet from Biden’s staff, you weren’t even supposed to text the word “JOE,” but rather “JOIN” to that now viral number.
Joe Biden either thinks he's going to be alive in 30330 or he has no idea what his own website is... pic.twitter.com/WqrZhquYmY
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) August 1, 2019
“With so much happening on the campaign, we want to make sure you’re up-to-date on...
The FAA's free app that kept drone pilots aware of "no fly zones" performed a much-needed service -- but had few fans. The federal agency teamed up with drone software maker Kittyhawk to create a new version of the B4UFLY app that is being released t...
If you've already mastered Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, the game has another challenge for you. When Activision and Beenox revealed their revival of the Naughty Dog classic last month, they kicked off the Nitro Grand Prix. With that first race com...
Fake meat is coming to a barbecue near you. Impossible Foods has been granted approval by the FDA to sell its plant-based meat in US grocery stores this fall, reported Bloomberg. After expressing some initial doubts, the agency formally ruled that so...
While most pranks that originate from YouTube are terrible, a recent one targeted at homeless people in Los Angeles was particularly abhorrent and cruel. According to the Los Angeles Daily News, a group of online pranksters connected with popular You...
Google is levelling up its security for businesses. The company unveiled a host of new protections for its G Suite, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Cloud Identity customers at the Next Tokyo summit. G Suite Enterprise admins can choose to enroll high...
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Lyft is pulling its pink electric bicycles from the streets of San Francisco, just two months after deploying them, because some of these bikes caught fire while in use.
The bikes, officially labeled Lyft bikes and accessible under the newly rebranded Bay Wheels platform (formerly Ford GoBike), are one of the ride-hailing company’s new dockless mobility options, all operated by the Lyft-owned bikeshare company Motivate. Lyft previously pulled its electric bikes off city streets nationwide back in April after a braking malfunction proved extremely dangerous to riders.
Lyft has spent months working on redeploying the fleet so that it could support both docked, non-electric bikes and dockless electric ones. (The electric ones are similar...
Elon Musk isn't the only one who wants us to communicate via brainwaves. Facebook also has ambitious plans to interface with computers using wearables and one day let us type rapidly with our brains. Now, neuroscientists from the University of Califo...
Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge
A few days ago, Facebook disentangled itself from a nettlesome investigation by the Federal Trade Commission into how the company violated users’ privacy. And then, with that matter now squarely behind it, Facebook on Tuesday stepped forward to share some information about its effort to read our minds.
Two years after the company announced its mind-reading initiative, Facebook has an update to share. The company sponsored an experiment conducted by researchers at the University of California San Francisco in which they built an interface for decoding spoken dialogue from brain signals. The results were published today in Nature Communication.
The work itself is fascinating, as you might expect from the subject matter. Brain-computer...
Back in April, Ford chief Jim Hackett admitted that the company overestimated the arrival of self-driving cars. He added that the applications of Ford's first autonomous fleet will likely be narrow, "because the problem is so complex." Now, the autom...
Even the launch of LG’s first 5G handset wasn’t enough to reverse its fortunes. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Both Sony and LG sold far fewer smartphones last quarter than they did the previous year, according to earnings releases from the two companies. LG reported that sales from its smartphone division declined by 21 percent compared to the same quarter the previous year, while Sony’s dropped by almost 30 percent.
LG blames “slow sales of 4G premium models and intense market competition in mass-tier products” which dragged down its results in spite of the launch of its first 5G phone, the LG V50. Meanwhile, Sony reduced its annual forecast for smartphone sales from 5 million to 4 million units for this year, according to Bloomberg.
These declining numbers are especially concerning given the high profile launches we’ve seen from both companies...
At E3 for each of the last two years we've seen previews of Remedy Entertainment's supernatural action game Control, and on August 27th, players will be able to experience its world for themselves on Xbox One, PS4 and PC. You should read through our...
Jaybird is back with another attempt at truly wireless headphones with the Vista, a redesigned model that looks to fix the various issues that held back the company’s Run and Run XT models. The new buds improve on the old ones in nearly every way, including more reliable connectivity, a lighter design, better battery life, and USB-C for charging.
Jaybird already released a pair of truly wireless headphones this year in the form of the Run XT, but they were a lightly updated version of the company’s original truly wireless Run model from 2017. They also stuck with the same design and all of the same problems that the first-generation model had.
I’ve been using the Vista for about a week as my main headphones, and so far, they have held...
Since we reviewed Jaybird's Run, the company's first truly wireless earbuds, the competition has heated up significantly. So much so that just making the Run fully waterproof isn't enough -- Jaybird needs something bold to turn heads (and ears) again...
NASA is helping 13 companies develop technologies that could benefit its future missions. Jim Reuter, the associate administrator of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, explained that the agency has identified the key areas it needs for futu...
The Greek goddess who infamously turned Odysseus's crew into swine in Homer's Odyssey is getting a modern-day reboot. HBO Max has ordered eight episodes of Circe, a modern-day adaptation of the ancient Greek myth that is based on the bestselling nove...
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Samsung Electronics has released second-quarter earnings results in line with its prior guidance, which is to say that they are not great. Operating profit fell 56 percent year-on-year to 6.6 trillion won — the lowest since the company had to deal with the fallout from the 2016 Galaxy Note 7 fire risk — while revenue slid 4 percent to 56.13 trillion won.
Samsung puts its troubles largely down to weak market conditions for its all-important semiconductor business, despite a slight bump in demand for memory. The situation is expected to improve somewhat in the second half of the year, though Samsung is warning of “external uncertainties,” likely a reference to the implications of various international trade disputes.
While revenue was up...
LG has announced an updated version of its 27-inch UltraFine 5K Display, the monitor that Apple endorsed as the best option for the current generation of MacBook Pros but which has been unavailable for some months. The new model boosts power delivery to 94 watts and now offers USB-C connectivity as well as Thunderbolt 3. That means it’ll work with the 2018 iPad Pro over USB-C, though it’s not clear what resolution will be supported.
Otherwise, the product appears to be basically identical to its predecessor, so our buying advice will likely remain the same. LG’s UltraFine Displays have extremely good panels and excellent native support for macOS features, even including True Tone when hooked up to a compatible laptop. But their...
It appears we're now in the era of face filter malfunctions. The popular Chinese vlogger known as "Your Highness Qiao Biluo" was revealed to be decades older than the online persona she projected to her thousands of fans. A technical glitch during on...
LG's UltraFine 5K Display has returned after a months-long hiatus, although you might not scramble to get one depending on what device you're using. The updated version of the 27-inch monitor is compatible with the USB-C output from recent iPad Pros...
As Samsung expected, its Q2 profit is off from last year's by about 56 percent. An operating profit of $5.6 billion (6.6 trillion Korean won) is no small figure, but obviously not up to par for the electronics giant, and follow a similar result in Q1...
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
It was, in retrospect, perhaps not the best two weeks to go on vacation.
Each time I checked in with the news, there was some startling new collision between Facebook and democracy.
There was that $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.
There was that $100 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
There was an announcement that the FTC would open an antitrust investigation against the company. (Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes volunteered his help to build the case.)
There was an announcement that the Department of Justice would open up an antitrust probe against Facebook, Google, and other large tech platforms.
And that was only what happened last Wednesday!
(OK, the DOJ thing broke late the day...
The Khronos Group has launched the first official version of the OpenXR specification, which could make cross-platform AR and VR applications a lot more common in the future. It allows developers to build apps that can run on various devices across b...
Photo by Eric CATARINA/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
Alongside the announcement of its first new album in over a decade, the rock band Tool has said that its catalog will finally be available to stream and to purchase digitally on August 2nd. In an Instagram post first spotted by Pitchfork, the band said its albums would available on “all digital and streaming formats,” which is expected to include the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, and Amazon Prime Music.
Until now, Tool has been one of the biggest artists to refuse to sell its music digitally. However, over the years the band’s position has become more and more isolated, as the likes of The Beatles, Metallica, AC/DC, and Led Zeppelin have all caved one by one and allowed their music to be steamed as part of a monthly...
Despite flagging sales of late, Sony's PlayStation 4 has sold 100 million units, making it the fastest-selling console to hit that number. In its latest earnings report, Sony revealed that it sold 3.2 million PS4s between March 31st and June 30th, af...
Two years in, the Nintendo Switch continues to fly off store shelves. The house of Mario sold 2.13 million Switch consoles in the three months leading up to June 30th, 2019, bringing lifetime sales to 36.87 million. That's a small, but impressive inc...
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Nintendo has now sold 36.87 million Switch consoles after moving 2.13 million units in the April-June quarter, a 13 percent increase year on year. Operating profit for the three-month period was down 10.2 percent year on year to 27.4 billion yen ($252 million), while revenue was up 2.4 percent to 172 billion yen ($1.58 billion).
Nintendo has reason to be optimistic about Switch hardware sales over the next few months. August sees the release of a tweaked model with longer battery life, while in September the company is launching the Switch Lite, a significantly cheaper handheld-only version.
The $199 Switch Lite will be an important device for Nintendo, because its other entry-level option is essentially dead. The company shipped just...
Sony’s PlayStation 4 console has been a huge hit for the company, and it has now hit the 100 million sales milestone. Sony revealed in its latest earnings that the company sold 3.2 million PS4 devices in the quarter ended June 30th, meaning exactly 100 million have now been sold in total. Sony was previously sitting at 96.8 million PlayStation 4 consoles after the previous quarter.
While sales of the PS4 might be slowing down, it’s still the fastest home game consoles to reach 100 million unit sales, according to Daniel Ahmad, Senior Analyst at Niko Partners. That’s faster than both the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo’s popular Wii console. The PlayStation 4 reached this milestone after just 5 years and 7 months, and less than 3 years after p...
Taiwanese chip manufacturer MediaTek has announced its latest flagship processors, the Helio G90 and G90T. The chips include an octa-core CPU clocked at up to 2.05GHz, which uses the same ARM Cortex-A76 and A55 cores as the latest flagship processors from Qualcomm and Huawei. MediaTek’s chip also includes a Mali G76 GPU with speeds of up to 800MHz and support for up to 10GB of LPDDR4x RAM.
The G90 and G90T are the first SoCs (system on a chip) in MediaTek’s gaming-focused G-Series lineup. They include what the company calls its “HyperEngine” technology, which consists of several features that are designed to boost the performance of smartphone games. The chips support HDR10, and they also have an intelligent network prediction engine...
MediaTek's mobile processors are more commonly associated with budget smartphones than gaming, but it's determined to change your mind. The chip designer has introduced a Helio G90 family of processors with performance and features intended with cut...
If you loved its record-breaking theater run but would rather watch the three-hour epic at home where you can take as many bathroom breaks as you like, then we have good news: Marvel Studios' Avengers: Endgame is available across various digital movi...
Nosebleed seats may soon be a thing of the past. Scientists at the University of California San Diego have created a prototype contact lens that is controlled by the eye's movements. Wearers can make the lenses zoom in or out by simply blinking twice...
Los Angeles police officers are the victims of what appears to be a serious data breach. The city's Personnel Department has warned the LAPD that intruders stole personal information for roughly 2,500 officers and 17,500 officer applicants, includin...
Banking institution Capital One has just revealed that it’s suffered a data breach that exposed the names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, dates of birth, and self-reported incomes of approximately 100 million Americans, and 6 million in Canada, due to a “configuration vulnerability” in the servers of an unnamed cloud computing company hosting the bank’s data.
The hacker is already in custody, according to the US Justice Department: 33-year-old Paige Thompson, aka Erratic, who The Wall Street Journal reports is a former Amazon Web Services engineer.
But according to the complaint, the hacker may have shared some of the info on a private Slack chat server before being caught.
Capital One’s press release claims...
