Technology

YouTube has changed the way it tests new features: it’s now allowing its Premium subscribers access to experimental products in the development pipeline, according to XDA-Developers. Previously, those features were tested by Google users picked at random to beta test. Currently, the new features available for Premium subscribers to test include watching videos with sound and seeking on your YouTube homepage on iOS; voice searching for YouTube videos on-site (only on Chrome); and filtering by topic in additional languages. The language at the top of YouTube’s experimental features page also says that Premium members can only access these features for a limited time. YouTube Premium costs $11.99 a month, and it also gives you ad-free viewing, background play, and access to YouTube Music, amo...

You can’t fly a drone at night. You can’t fly a drone over people. You need to be able to see it with your naked eye at all times — or have a dedicated observer who can. These rules exist to keep dumb drones (and reckless pilots) from crashing into people, property, and other aircraft in the skies. But what happens when drones get smarter, and can dodge obstacles on their own? That’s the kind of drone that Skydio builds, and it appears to be successfully convincing the FAA to create exceptions to that naked-eye, Visual Line Of Sight (VLOS) rule. This week, the FAA granted the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) a blanket waiver to fly Skydio drones beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) to inspect any bridge, anywhere across the state, for four whole years. They primarily need...

The votes are in for Katmai National Park’s annual Fat Bear Week tournament and 747 is the champion! There couldn’t have been a more epic matchup than the championship face-off between two aptly named bears: 747 and Chunk, aka Bear 32. In the end, 747 pulled ahead with more than 47,300 votes compared to Chunk’s roughly 21,900 votes. The annual elimination tournament began in 2014 as a way to celebrate how fat and healthy the park’s bears are. Katmai is one of the most famous places for bear watching in Alaska. Visitors to the park and its Bear Cam webpage can watch the bears splash around in the Brooks River and binge on migrating sockeye salmon. Competition aside, the bears are on a mission to consume enough calories to last them throughout the long winter ahead, when they might hibernate...

Arlo has announced two new security cameras: the Pro 4 Wire-Free Spotlight Camera and the Ultra 2 Wire-Free Spotlight Camera System. You can preorder both cameras now; the Pro 4 starts at $199.99 and the Ultra 2 starts at $299.99. Both cameras are wire-free. That makes them easier to set up and more convenient to place than many other cameras, since you’re not limited by the location of your outlets. The Arlo Pro 4 connects directly to Wi-Fi — no smart home hub required. It produces 2K video with HDR, color night vision, and a 160-degree viewing angle. It also comes with a built-in spotlight to illuminate intruders, a siren, and two-way audio to communicate with guests. The Arlo Pro 4 with the spotlight on.Image: Arlo It can be placed indoors or outdoors, and Arlo says the removable batter...

Facebook has banned all forms of content related to the radical fringe conspiracy group QAnon, marking its most dramatic escalation in the fight against misinformation and what Facebook is calling “militarized social movements.” The company announced the change on its website as an update to its previous moderation sweep in August that banned close to 1,000 QAnon groups. “Starting today, we will remove any Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts representing QAnon, even if they contain no violent content. This is an update from the initial policy in August that removed Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts associated with QAnon when they discussed potential violence while imposing a series of restrictions to limit the reach of other Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts associated with...

James Bond may have been the last straw for Regal and Cineworld, but analysts I spoke to agree: the only thing that will truly save movie theaters in the United States is a COVID-19 vaccine. On Thursday, Regal Cinemas — the second-largest theater chain in the US with 536 theaters and 7,076 screens — will officially shut all its doors in the United States for the second time during the global pandemic. Its parent company Cineworld is closing 127 theaters in the UK as well. Over 45,000 people may lose their jobs or be furloughed, and there’s no timeline for reopening. In what seems like good news, AMC and Cinemark, the first- and third-largest US chains respectively, will not be following Regal’s lead. Each confirmed today that over 80 percent of their US-based theaters are open and will sta...

Ten years after Oracle first sued Google over the code in the Android platform, the two tech giants are finally facing off in the Supreme Court. Since then, there have been three trials and two appeals. Billions of dollars are at stake; many millions have been likely spent on a parade of seasoned litigators, expert witnesses, and bizarre trial exhibits intended to explain programming to non-technical juries. All this may be coming to an anticlimactic close on Wednesday morning, with a teleconference Supreme Court oral argument in the middle of a pandemic. When Google first developed Android, it decided to make the mobile platform compatible with Java. At the time, apps for the iOS environment were written in Objective-C, a language that was similar to the ubiquitous C but otherwise pretty ...

Every Tuesday this month, Vergecast co-host Dieter Bohn is hosting a series of discussions diving deep into tech review season, each focusing on a specific product. This week, Dieter talks with Judner Aura, aka UrAvgConsumer on YouTube, about how the recently announced Google Pixel 5 shares some common ground with an older Google smartphone project: the Nexus 5. The Nexus 5 came out in 2013 at an affordable of $349 and eventually became a much-loved device among tech enthusiasts at the time. Made by LG, the phone had a 5-inch 1080p display, supported LTE, and ran on Android KitKat. Here’s what Dieter had to say about his first impressions in 2013: “The Nexus 5 is as surprisingly inexpensive as its predecessor. Unlike its predecessor, though, it manages to actually support LTE, a complete n...

Facebook’s Portal TV, its screen-less camera device you plug into a big screen, is getting Netflix. The company announced the update today, further rounding out what streaming apps are available through its family of video chat devices and making the Portal platform even more of a streaming stick competitor. (The Portal TV already supports Amazon Prime Video, Showtime, and Sling TV.) Along with the Netflix news, Facebook says it’s introducing a new remote for Portal TV that includes quick-launch buttons for Prime Video, Facebook Watch, and Netflix, so people can immediately sit down and begin streaming. That remote will start shipping with Portal TV devices today and will be in stores in the “coming weeks.” Netflix doesn’t appear to be available on the regular Portal just yet, although Fac...

Google has quietly refreshed its original Google Wifi router as a $99 entry-level option for the company’s wireless networking setup. According to Google, the main update here is the new $99 (for a single unit) and $199 (for three devices) pricing — a drop from the original $129 and $299 prices that the product originally launched for back in 2016. The same hardware, but much cheaper It’s also not here to replace the more recent Nest Wifi that Google launched last year and which offers better range than the original, or the Nest Wifi Points, which offer an integrated Google Assistant smart speaker. The Nest Wifi products are also considerably more expensive, starting at $149 for the Nest Wifi Point and $169 for the Nest Wifi router. There are some minor hardware changes, too: the charger i...

Eero is moving beyond consumers and partnering with internet service providers. The Amazon-owned router company has announced Eero for Service Providers, an offering that includes hardware and software tools for ISPs. It will be available in the US and Canada starting in November, with more features coming in December and throughout 2021. Eero says it’s offering the tools at “attractive price points.” The platform includes three components at launch. One is Eero Insight, which collects usage data to help ISPs foresee customers’ Wi-Fi issues and address them early. The company estimates that the tool will provide technicians “up to an estimated 30 percent reduction in time spent resolving Wi-Fi issues.” The second is Eero Secure, a subscription service that can be deployed with the company’...

Yesterday, SpaceX received a contract worth more than $149 million from the Space Development Agency (SDA), tasking the company with building a new satellite for the US military capable of tracking and providing early warnings of hypersonic missile launches. Another company, L3 Harris out of Florida, was given more than $193 million by the agency to also build tracking satellites. The satellites are meant to be the first crucial part of the SDA’s Tracking Layer Tranche 0, which is designed to provide missile tracking for the Defense Department from space using infrared sensors. SpaceX and L3 Harris will together build eight satellites to deliver to the DOD for the Tracking Layer — the first satellites in a planned constellation. Designed to provide missile tracking from space using infrare...