Technology

Amazon appears to have reached the “late-prototype stage” in the creation of its secretive home robot codenamed Vesta, claims a new report from Insider. The device has been under development for around four years and now has more than 800 employees working on it, says the publication. If the robot launches, it will be one of Amazon’s biggest and most ambitious new products, in the mold of the Echo, Kindle, and Fire Phone. Indeed, it’s comparisons to the latter device, Amazon’s failed smartphone project, that seems to be concerning some of those involved in Vesta’s development. “People are very skeptical — we’re worried it could turn into another Fire Phone,” one of six anonymous sources cited by Insider as “directly involved in the project” told the publication. Vesta is reported to have a...

Support for Microsoft’s Edge browser is ending today — not the new Chromium-based one, but the original Edge that was built as a replacement for Internet Explorer 11. Microsoft now calls it Legacy Edge, and the company announced it would be discontinuing the product back in August. That day has finally come: Legacy Edge will no longer receive security updates, and anyone still using it should start the process of switching to something else. Legacy Edge was originally codenamed “Spartan” and was included with Windows 10 as the operating system’s default web browser before it was officially named Edge. The Edge mantle is being taken up by Microsoft’s Chromium-based browser, which was in beta throughout 2019 and officially launched in January 2020. This means Edge (the old Edge, that is) sur...

Nikon has announced development of the Z9, its highest-end mirrorless camera to date and the first in the Z-mount line that the company describes as a flagship. Actual details are thin, but Nikon promises that it will deliver “the best still and video performance in Nikon history” upon release. From the single image released, the Z9 looks like a cross between the current mirrorless Z7 and the D6 full-frame DSLR, with a built-in vertical grip. Nikon says the Z9 uses a newly developed full-frame sensor and a new image processing engine, with support for 8K video “as well as various other video specifications that fulfill diverse needs and workflows.” That’s about it for details so far, except that Nikon says the Z9 will be released in 2021. Nikon tends to announce the development of its high...

T-Mobile will soon put a new privacy policy into effect that will allow it to share certain kinds of customer information with third-party advertisers. Starting on April 26th, 2021, all customers will be automatically opted in to the new program, as spotted by The Wall Street Journal. Customers who don’t want to participate will need to manually opt out using their accounts’ privacy tools. T-Mobile’s new policy is no different than AT&T or Verizon’s. This is an about-face for former Sprint customers, however. T-Mobile acknowledges in its announcement of the policy change that Sprint offered a similar opt-in service rather than an opt-out one. The companies say the data they share doesn’t reveal individual customers’ identities The new policy includes the same kind of provisions as AT&a...

Verkada, a Silicon Valley security startup that provides cloud-based security camera services, has suffered a major security breach. Hackers gained access to over 150,000 of the company’s cameras, including cameras in Tesla factories and warehouses, Cloudflare offices, Equinox gyms, hospitals, jails, schools, police stations, and Verkada’s own offices, Bloomberg reports. According to Tillie Kottmann, one of the members of the international hacker collective that breached the system, the hack was meant to show how commonplace the company’s security cameras are and how easily they’re able to be hacked. In addition to the live feeds, the group also claimed to have had access to the full video archive of all of Verkada’s customers. In a statement to Bloomberg, a Verkada representative commente...

Samsung has just announced an Unpacked event coming up on March 17th, 2021, its second for the year so far. The invitation calls the event “Galaxy Awesome Unpacked.” Between recent A-series leaks and the chaotic, “awesome”-themed promotional video for last year’s models, it seems safe to assume that we’ll see the Galaxy A52 and A72 devices debut. [embedded content] An entire event dedicated to unveiling midrange devices is a little unusual, but the leaked information we’ve seen thus far has pointed to Samsung taking these phones very seriously. The A52 5G looks like it will receive monthly security updates — something Samsung has tended to reserve for higher-end phones — and spec leaks have indicated we can expect high-refresh rate screens. If nothing else, we can hope that Samsung will br...

Of course John Legere, the former CEO of T-Mobile, has jumped into NFTs by spending $888,888.88 on one made by Steve Aoki, according to Rolling Stone. It’s nice to know he’s keeping busy after stepping down from T-Mobile’s CEO gig on April 1, 2020. The NFT in question is called “hairy.” It’s a 36 second-long video, featuring music — which Rolling Stone describes as “soundscapes in harmony with digital animations” and I would describe as “if Darude were making music from inside a Game Boy” — and this visual: A portion of the Hairy NFT. GIF: Steve Aoki Not only is Legere’s ownership of the video permanently embedded in the blockchain, but he’ll also get a screen in some acrylic that will display the NFT, as long as he doesn’t sell it in the next two weeks. This display screen is also include...

HTC may be teasing new modules and attachments for its Vive virtual reality headsets, including a lip tracker, UploadVR reports. HTC’s been building up to some kind of announcement on its Vive Twitter account over the last week. Yesterday, it posted an image of a hinge, which savvy Twitter users matched to an experimental lip tracking module HTC announced at the Game Developers Conference in 2019. You can see a picture of the hinged product HTC is teasing and a matching photo of its lip tracking device below. At the time, the company said it was using the module for research and experimentation, according to Road to VR. Combined with the eye tracking HTC’s already integrated into the Vive Pro Eye, it offers an early picture of what full face tracking looks like in VR. Some developers have ...

There wasn’t much left that we didn’t already know, but today, Sonos has officially announced its latest speaker, the Sonos Roam. Just as The Verge reported last week, the Roam is a portable battery-powered speaker priced at $169. Preorders start today, and it will go on sale on April 20th. The Sonos Move was the company’s first try at a portable product, but it’s quite large and hefty to actually travel with. The Roam, however, is a true “bring it anywhere” speaker. It’s the smallest speaker that Sonos has ever made, though the measurements I gave you last week were a hair off. It’s actually 6.61 x 2.44 x 2.36 inches and weighs 0.95 pounds. Sonos told me it considered “hundreds” of different sizes and prototypes before landing on this design. With dimensions like that, the big question is...

A new bill to bring back net neutrality is on its way, supported by one of the open internet’s most fervent advocates. At an advocacy event last month, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) announced that he would be introducing a measure in the next few “weeks” that would engrave the no throttling, block, or paid fast lanes rules into law. Reached by The Verge on Monday, Markey reaffirmed his commitment to introducing a bill soon. “The coronavirus pandemic has proven that broadband is as essential as electricity and other utilities. We need to restore net neutrality protections to ensure that our internet remains open and free and that consumers can continue to benefit from this critical infrastructure,” Markey told The Verge. Legislation like Markey plans to introduce could finally put the debate over n...

Twitter is actively working on a “big overhaul” of its TweetDeck platform, which lets you arrange lists and feeds into easy-to-read vertical rows, and it plans to share more about the project publicly later this year, product chief Kayvon Beykpour said in an interview with The Verge published Tuesday. TweetDeck, as one of the oldest and originally third-party account management apps for the platform, hasn’t seen much in the way of design or major feature changes in years. The app launched 12 years ago and was acquired by Twitter in 2011, and it’s more or less still the same vertical grid viewer for your various Twitter feeds it started as. Mostly, Twitter has ported over new functions added to its main website and mobile apps while keeping the core TweetDeck design relatively static. That ...