Technology

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, agreed to pay $90 million to settle a 2012 lawsuit accusing the company of tracking users even after they logged out of their accounts. The settlement was submitted for approval Monday evening in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. It is still awaiting final approval from the court. Plaintiffs affected by Facebook’s improper data tracking will receive portions of the $90 million. Meta will also be required to delete all of the data it wrongfully collected from those users. “We’re glad to move past this issue” Reached for comment, Meta spokesperson Drew Pusateri told The Verge, “Reaching a settlement in this case, which is more than a decade old, is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders and we’re glad to move p...

Meta is changing the name of Facebook’s News Feed, the primary part of the service that users scroll through to see what their friends and family have shared. Going forward, it’ll just be called the “Feed,” according to a tweet from the company on Tuesday. The “News Feed” name had been in place since the feature was first introduced more than 15 years ago. In some ways, it’s a massive change — Facebook is one of the world’s most-used platforms, and the Feed is its main interface. On the other hand, it is “just a name change to better reflect the diverse content people see on their Feeds,” according to an email sent to The Verge by Facebook spokesperson Dami Oyefeso. The change “does not impact the app experience more broadly.” There’s a lot in a name, though, and the rebranding seems to re...

On Tuesday, OpenSea and NFT communications platform Metalink announced a new partnership aimed at preventing social engineering attacks carried out through Discord DMs. As The Verge previously reported, some confidence tricksters have made millions of dollars by posing as customer service agents in OpenSea’s official Discord server and tricking NFT holders into sharing details that will let the scammers take control of their cryptocurrency wallets. OpenSea hopes to mitigate these scams by using Metalink, which operates a “token gated” communications platform so that only users holding certain NFTs in their cryptocurrency wallets will be able to get access. When they do so, they’ll be connected with authenticated OpenSea support representatives, theoretically cutting out potential scammers ...

Intel has announced that it’s buying Tower Semiconductor, an Israeli chipmaking company that focuses on specialty products like radio frequency (RF) chips, CMOS image sensors, and power management parts, for $5.4 billion. The deal is specifically intended to bolster the company’s fledgling Intel Foundry Service division, which Intel created last year to apply its chipmaking techniques and manufacturing facilities to build chips for other third-party companies. Once the deal closes, the goal is that Tower and IFS will be integrated together as a “fully integrated foundry business.” Intel has made no bones about its plans to rapidly ramp up production capabilities, with recent news of a $20 billion investment to expand its existing Arizona manufacturing facilities, along with a second $20 bi...

Microsoft Teams is getting new 3D emoji today. The software giant has started refreshing its more than 1,800 emoji in Microsoft Teams with new Fluent design ones. The 3D emoji design is available in preview today in Teams, and it’s the same as Microsoft announced last year for both Windows and Teams. While Microsoft Teams is getting new 3D emoji, Microsoft has only launched 2D versions in Windows 11 and recently hinted that it’s still working on 3D emoji for Windows. “Users will see a new take on most of the previous Teams emojis, along with some new picks,” explains Kaushal Mehta, a member of Microsoft Teams’ engineering team, in a blog post. “All skintone-enabled emojis will continue to have 6 skintone options.” The new 3D emoji in Microsoft Teams.Image: Microsoft The new 3D emoji will a...

Space tourism company Virgin Galactic announced its plans to open up ticket sales to the general public on Wednesday, February 15th, giving people an opportunity to buy a ride on the venture’s spaceplane that takes customers to the edge of space and back. Tickets will run interested customers a cool $450,000. In order to secure their seat, people must pay a $150,000 deposit and then pay the remaining $300,000 before flight. Virgin Galactic has an application that individuals can fill out on the company’s website. Tickets will run interested customers a cool $450,000 Ticket sales may be opening soon, but it could be a while before customers get the chance to fly. Virgin Galactic successfully flew its founder, billionaire Richard Branson, to space in July of last year, a major milestone that...

Bärí Williams is a legal and operations advisor to tech companies who focuses on AI and diversity. Her credentials are rock solid: Bärí was lead counsel at Facebook working on various projects, including internet connectivity efforts and diversifying the company’s supply chain. After that, Bärí went to work at StubHub, an AI startup studio called All Turtles, and a data and identity analytics company called Bandwagon Fan Club. But now, she’s independent — a business of one, consulting on operations with a focus on diversity and AI. I was curious why she decided to leave being a tech executive behind and make that shift to diversity work. We talked about that, but our conversation actually started with sports news — NFL news. The week we recorded this episode, Brian Flores, the former coach...

OM Digital Solutions, the new company formed after Olympus sold off its camera business to a Japanese investment fund, has announced its first camera. The OM System OM-1 is a flagship Micro Four Thirds mirrorless camera that serves as a successor to previous high-end Olympus models like the O-MD E-M1 Mark III. The OM-1 name will be a familiar one to Olympus shooters — a 35mm SLR camera with the same name launched the OM line in 1972. The new OM System OM-1 still has the Olympus name on the body, though the company tells DPreview that this is likely to be the last model where that’s the case. The OM-1 has a new 20-megapixel stacked CMOS sensor and an upgraded processor that lets it shoot stills at 50 frames per second with autofocus and auto exposure, or at up to 120 frames a second with fo...

Motorola has a new wearable 5G neckband that is designed to power lightweight VR and AR headsets (collectively known as XR headsets) such as parent company Lenovo’s ThinkReality A3 smart glasses, the company announced today. The neckband looks a lot like a large plastic lanyard, and is equipped with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, a 5,000mAh battery, a touchpad, SIM card slot, speakers, and a range of sensors including a gyroscope and accelerometer, Engadget reports. Motorola says it’s partnered with Verizon on the neckband, which is able to connect to the carrier’s mmWave 5G network. The idea is that the neckband, which Motorola doesn’t provide an official product name for, will be able to act as the brains and brawn for a connected VR or AR headset. By offloading components like a powerf...

Instagram is rolling out a new feature it calls Private Story Likes, which lets you like somebody’s Insta Story without sending them a DM. Previously, any response you sent to someone about a Story — whether it was an emoji or a full-on message — showed up as a response in their DM inbox; with this new feature, you can show some appreciation for a Story without clogging up the user’s DMs. “So now, as you go through Stories, between send message and that little paper airplane, there will be a heart icon,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a video. “And if you tap on it, it’ll send the author of that story a like, and that like will show up in the viewer sheet, not in your DM thread with them.” ❤️ Private Story Likes ❤️ Starting to roll out today, you can now se...

Japanese industry titans are teaming up for a new cinematic universe based on iconic properties. Toho, Toei, Khara, and Tsuburaya Productions have announced the upcoming launch of the Shin Japan Heroes Universe, which will include representation from the Godzilla, Ultraman, Kamen Rider, and Evangelion franchises. Toho is the company that created Godzilla, Toei is behind Kamen Rider, Tsuburaya produces Ultraman, and Khara is the animation studio founded by Neon Genesis Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno. Tsuburaya Productions’ founder, the late tokusatsu special effects pioneer Eiji Tsuburaya, did effects work for movies in both the Godzilla and Ultraman series. Toho released the Anno-directed Shin Godzilla in 2016, and Anno is also directing the upcoming Shin Ultraman and Shin Kamen Rider, wh...