Technology

I finally got around to watching The West Wing reunion special and even though I was an ardent fan of the original show, I came away feeling a little frustrated. Let’s get this out of the way first: it was amazing seeing the super talented cast slip back into these roles so easily— Martin Sheen was born to play Jed Bartlet, Allison Janney is still wonderful as CJ Cregg, and Richard Schiff is perfect as grouchy White House conscience Toby Ziegler. Sterling K. Brown had the unenviable task of playing Leo McGarry in place of the late John Spencer, and he pulled it off beautifully. Also: Does Rob Lowe age, ever? Same question for Janel Moloney, tbh. But if the goal of this special performance was to encourage young people to vote, I’m afraid it may have missed the mark. The cut-ins with “why y...

Google will discontinue its emergency location sharing app Trusted Contacts in December, and has already yanked it from the Google Play Store. Instead, it’s directing existing users to try similar but less helpful features in Google Maps. That’s a shame, because while Trusted Contacts could let you find a family member even if they don’t respond (say, if they are unconscious or in danger), Google Maps requires them to proactively broadcast their location to you. The announcement was quite abrupt: Google’s email announcementIan Carlos Campbell Google Maps has been able to do real time location sharing since 2017, but again, you have to opt-in to constant tracking, sharing your location with other people all the time instead of only broadcasting it to loved ones if you don’t respond. Trusted...

Samsung’s next flagship phone could arrive in January 2021, Android Central reported. And new leaked renders show the camera bump of the Galaxy S20 will also feature in the forthcoming Galaxy S30 (or S21; the name isn’t official yet). According to reliable leaker Steve Hemmerstoffer (aka @OnLeaks), the Galaxy S30 standard model will have a 6.2-inch flat screen with a hole-punch front-facing camera. The S30 Ultra shows a larger, curved screen measuring between 6.7 and 6.9 inches. The leaks don’t provide detail about the phones’ internal specs, however. Steve Hemmerstoffer Android Central says three new Galaxy S models are expected in the January release, a standard, a Plus, and an Ultra. The Ultra model will have an S-Pen stylus, Hemmerstoffer says, but there doesn’t appear to be a dedicate...

The Google Assistant Driving mode that the company first announced in 2019 has started appearing on some Android devices, XDA-Developers reported. The UI looks somewhat different from what Google showed at its I/O developers conference last year. XDA says it first noticed something was coming about two weeks ago, when users reported seeing a new navigation interface in Google Maps. It’s not clear whether the rollout of this new mode is part of a test or will be coming for all users. Mishaal Rahman at XDA said he saw the new driving mode on a Google Pixel 4, an Asus ZenFone 7 Pro, and an LG Velvet, and he surmises that the new mode will replace the Android Auto app on smartphones. That seems consistent with what Google told The Verge last year. Whether the new mode will include all the feat...

Facebook vice president for global affairs Nick Clegg said the company has rejected 2.2 million ads across Facebook and Instagram because the ads were trying to “obstruct voting” in the upcoming US presidential election, Agence France-Presse reported. The social media giant also has withdrawn 120,000 posts and placed warnings on 150 million posts for the same reasons, Clegg added. Clegg made the remarks in an interview with the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche. He said Facebook has used artificial intelligence that “made it possible to delete billions of posts and fake accounts, even before they are reported by users” and noted that the company has partnered with 70 media outlets, including five in France, to verify information. Facebook introduced that fact-checking program in the aft...

Simone Giertz, the self-described Queen of Shitty Robots, has created a selfie photo booth out of Legos for her dog Scraps and yes it’s as cute as it sounds. It helps that the dog is a VERY GOOD GIRL and extremely photogenic. Giertz used a Lego Mindstorms kit and Lego bricks (the video is sponsored by Lego) to build the little booth, and rigged a pedal, distance sensor and circuit board to connect to a dispenser that drops a treat and snaps a photo whenever the dog presses the pedal. “She goes in there, there’s a little pedal that she can push with her paw, it triggers a camera that triggers a treat dispenser,” Giertz explains. “She gets a treat, I get a photo, everyone’s happy.” She says she got the idea for the dog photo booth when she was trying to teach Scraps to scroll on a phone with...

Audio media has been an important part of our lives ever since the first news reporters crackled their way into homes in 1920. For a while, it was assumed that visual media and then the internet would be the death of audio-only entertainment, but it turned out that this obit was premature. Podcasting has brought new popularity to audio. From book readings to investigative reporting to political opinion to interviews to theatrical productions, podcasts offer a wide range of entertainment and information. And what’s even better: podcasting is a creative form available to anyone who has a computer, a microphone, and an internet connection. We spoke to Andrew Marino, audio engineer and producer at The Verge, to find out what he recommends for those who want to try this out as well. What follow...

This story is part of a group of stories called Only the best deals on Verge-approved gadgets get the Verge Deals stamp of approval, so if you’re looking for a deal on your next gadget or gift from major retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and more, this is the place to be. In case you paid no attention at all to what happened this week in tech, you missed out on the iPhone 12 announcement along with Amazon Prime Day 2020. You can preorder an iPhone 12 right here, but in regards to Prime Day 2020, some of those deals are still happening. It’s a far cry from what we covered on Tuesday and Wednesday, with 80-something of the best tech deals we’ve seen recently. But what’s left is still worth checking out. First off, Daily Steals is selling the second-generation AirPods wi...

Google said in a new blog post that hackers linked to the Chinese government have been impersonating antivirus software McAfee to try to infect victims’ machines with malware. And, Google says, the hackers appear to be the same group that unsuccessfully targeted the presidential campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden with a phishing attack earlier this year. A similar group of hackers based in Iran had tried to target President Trump’s campaign, but also was unsuccessful. The group, which Google refers to as APT 31 (short for Advanced Persistent Threat), would email links to users which would download malware hosted on GitHub, allowing the attacker to upload and download files and execute commands. Since the group used services like GitHub and Dropbox to carry out the attacks, it made...

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison donated $250,000 to a super PAC supporting Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) reelection campaign as his company closed in on a coveted position as TikTok’s US technology partner. FEC documents show that Ellison made the $250,000 donation to the Security is Strength PAC on September 14th. The Security is Strength PAC has bought ads exclusively in support of Graham’s political ambitions, including his 2015 presidential campaign and his current reelection bid for the US Senate. It’s an unusually large donation for Ellison, who also donated $5,200 to Graham’s Majority Fund in January. The timing of the larger donation is also remarkable, coming mere hours after Oracle officially announced that it had been chosen as TikTok’s technology partner for its US operations, beating ...

For the first time in nearly 20 years, there are multiple new Star Trek shows you can watch at once. There’s the Next Generation sequel series Picard for those feeling nostalgic; for fans looking to undo a few buttons on their Starfleet uniforms and maybe even drink a beer, there’s the off-kilter animated comedy of Lower Decks. But the series I’m most interested in is Star Trek: Discovery, because it boldly goes where no other Star Trek series has ever gone before. I know. Tall order. But Discovery hits real good. Its third season begins with a clean break from the 23rd Century — and yes, you can start there. The season 2 finale ended with the crew of the eponymous U.S.S. Discovery leaping forward 950 years into the future, from the 23rd Century to the 32nd, which is to say an era where no...

This week’s US Food and Drug Administration approval of an Ebola drug is a big milestone in drug development — one that’s closely tied to our current efforts to fight COVID-19. Before COVID-19 started sweeping across the world, Ebola was one of the most high-profile viral diseases on the planet. “Everyone was ready to speed up and contribute and do things with Ebola that they don’t routinely do because Ebola is such a dire situation,” virologist Daniel Bausch told The Verge’s Justine Calma last August. “There are a lot of bad diseases in the world, but there’s not many that provoke the same sort of response and kind of an all-hands-on-deck approach to things.” More than a year later, and the Ebola experiments have finally paid off in more ways than one. The drug is an antibody treatment ca...