Technology

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...

Miso Robotics is one of the many firms trying to automate food preparation, and today, it announced that its latest machine — which places its burger-flipping bot Flippy on rails to move it about the kitchen more easily — is now on sale globally. Prices for the contraption (known as Flippy Robot-on-a-Rail or Flippy ROAR) start at “around $30,000,” according to VentureBeat, though Miso Robotics reportedly wants to bring the cost down to $20,000 over the next year. The company is also offering the option to hire Flippy ROAR for $1,000 a month, a fee which includes maintenance and upgrades. Like Flippy before it, Flippy ROAR is designed to automate simple food prep, specifically anything involving fryers and grills. The robot uses machine learning to identify foodstuff and a camera array (whi...

Amazon shared with us that more Prime Day 2020 deals would start on October 6th, and that’s today. Starting now, you can save on more TVs and other smart home products, if you’re in the market for those. Keep in mind, though, that you’ll need to be signed in with a Prime account to be able to see some of the price drops take place. One of the newly discounted devices is the Amazon Echo Show 5 smart display, which is $45 instead of $90 — a full 50 percent price drop. The Echo Show 5 is Amazon’s smallest smart display, though it’s loaded with the same features you’ll find on the bigger Echo Show 8. If you want a small, relatively unobtrusive display that you can use to watch movies or look through your Blink or Ring smart home cameras, this is a solid (and now, affordable) option. Image: Ama...

A virtual reality version of Bloober Team’s Blair Witch game is coming to Oculus Quest on October 29th, featuring improved dog interaction mechanics. Blair Witch: Oculus Quest Edition adapts the 2019 survival horror game that’s set in the same world as the cult 1999 film. Its new features take advantage of VR’s hand controllers, giving players more ways to interact with the world. And by “the world,” we mean “your dog” — the game’s friendly canine companion, Bullet. Actually, Blair Witch’s VR edition includes a variety of new things to do with your hands. Besides stacking and throwing objects you couldn’t interact with in the original game, you can do things like map out your progress by drawing on a map. There are also some unspecified new encounters. Crucially, however, you can now pet B...

Instagram launched ten years ago today: the photo-sharing app first hit the App Store on October 6th, 2010, a few months after the release of the iPhone 4. To celebrate, Instagram has added an easter egg to the app that lets you change its home screen icon. The icons available include the classic Polaroid-style camera designs that were used for more than five years. There are themed variations on the current logo, too, including Pride rainbow colors and monochrome options. The app update also includes another feature: a private map and archive of your stories from the past three years. To access the new icons, go to the settings within the app and do a long swipe down on the screen to reveal some emoji. Once you’ve swiped down far enough, the icons will be unlocked and you’ll see a message...