Technology

Today, let’s talk about a couple little things that could turn into a big thing. In January 2019, Mike Isaac reported a noteworthy development about Facebook at the New York Times. In the months to come, he said, Facebook would unify the technical infrastructure powering Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. To the user, these changes would be invisible. But to Facebook itself, there were clear strategic imperatives to merge the apps. Among them: the move came just as the US government was beginning to consider an effort to break the company up. In the nearly two years since, the government’s effort has accelerated. On September 15th, the Wall Street Journal reported that an antitrust case against the company could come by the end of the year. But Facebook’s effort to puree its family of apps...

Google’s fall hardware presentation was a slickly-produced 30-minute affair with four products, as expected. You can experience it with our liveblog here or catch up on the biggest announcements here. Outside of some very neat software tricks, there were no big surprises. But it turns out that we didn’t know every single detail there was to know about the Pixel 5 and the Pixel 4A 5G. And with every new small detail it became clear that Google has decided to play it extremely safe with these phones. Every decision it made was about bringing costs down without compromising the fundamentals. “What the world doesn’t seem like it needs right now is another $1,000 phone,” hardware boss Rick Osterloh told a small group of reporters after the event. I asked him directly if these phones were design...

Update October 1st, 7AM ET: Yet again, ULA stopped the launch mere seconds before takeoff, after a sensor reported a faulty reading. The main combustion chambers in the engines did not ignite, and CEO Tory Bruno says the rocket and the payload are “safe and unharmed.” Original story: After many weeks of delays due to faulty equipment and bad weather, the United Launch Alliance is set to launch its most powerful rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, lofting a classified spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. The mission is finally ready to fly a full month after the rocket’s first launch attempt, which was aborted just three seconds before liftoff. The rocket going up on ULA’s mission is the Delta IV Heavy, a giant vehicle that consists of three rocket cores strapped together ...

At today’s Google event, the company announced that its Recorder app, which is available for Pixel 2 or newer phones, is getting a nice update that should make it a lot easier to search through audio files. The update will allow you to select a snippet of audio from a recorded clip, which you can then either share or remove from the larger audio file. Additionally, you can search for specific words in a recorded transcript and delete them. So if you’re someone like me who tends to say “uh,” “um,” or any other crutch word during interviews, you can theoretically find and remove them with this new update. According to Google, you’ll be able to use this feature offline, in the same way its live English transcription function works without needing internet access. The company announced the fea...

Astro is debuting its first set of in-ear headphones, the A03. It’s an unexpected step for the company, which traditionally makes over-ear gaming headsets, like the new A20 Gen 2 and the mainstay A40. They’re $49.99, so while not the most affordable wired option, it’s a reasonable price considering they offer punchy sound, and a snug fit with three sets of silicon tips included, each of which provide quality sound isolation. And if you want to use them to listen to music, or stay on the phone, while you game with an over-ear headset, the A03 has a flat cable to sit comfortably between your skin and the ear cup. The A03 plugs in via 3.5mm, so another perk is that it’s compatible with every current platform, like the PC, PS4, Xbox One, the Nintendo Switch and Switch Lite, as well as Android ...

Google’s new $50 “Chromecast with Google TV” has supplanted the Chromecast Ultra in practically every way — so you probably won’t be surprised to hear Google is getting rid of its original 4K streaming device. The Chromecast Ultra is now out of stock at every major US retailer, including the Google Store, where its product page redirects to the new Chromecast. It’s not formally “discontinued,” mind you: Google says it will still be available at “select retailers,” even though we’re seeing no stock at Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, The Home Depot, Staples, etc., and even though B&H Photo actually lists it as “discontinued” right now. But there is still one way to buy one — because when Google announced its 2020 Chromecast, the new product seemingly left a couple of gaping holes. As ...

Facebook will ban ads that wrongly claim victory in the US presidential race. The news comes a week after the company announced it would reject ads from Donald Trump or Joe Biden claiming a premature win on November 3rd. The policy covers ads that claim legal forms of voting — like voting by mail — will corrupt the outcome of the election. It also bans ads that claim rampant voter fraud could alter the results of the election. This is a real concern for the 2020 race. Due to mail-in voting, the electoral process is expected to take longer than in years past, and the official results likely won’t be announced on November 3rd. Experts worry that because more Democrats are expected to vote by mail than Republicans, Trump could declare an early victory, then sow doubt about the results as more...

The Pixel 5, Google’s latest Android flagship, was just announced today, and someone on YouTube has already posted an unboxing video of the new device ahead of its release (via 9to5Google). What’s in the box is fairly standard — there’s the phone itself, as well as a charger, a USB-C to USB-C cable, and a USB-C to USB-A converter. The YouTube user who has the phone, who goes by the name Sergiu, does power it on, giving us a look at the phone’s 6-inch 2340 x 1080 OLED screen and 8-megapixel hole-punch selfie camera. Sergiu doesn’t use the phone all that much in the video, though, sticking mostly to the phone’s home screen. Sergiu also zooms in on back of the Pixel 5, showing the phone’s aluminum back, fingerprint sensor, and square camera housing. If you’ve seen the camera housing on the Pi...

Google’s $799 Pixel 4 had built-in radar. The new $699 Pixel 5 does not — it ditches the sensor-laden forehead of its predecessor entirely in favor of thinner bezels and a hole-punch camera, like the $349 Pixel 4a before it. The result is more screen, but Google’s “Motion Sense” gestures and its answer to Apple’s Face ID are totally gone. But Google hardware boss Rick Osterloh tells The Verge that the Project Soli radar and gestures will return. “They’ll be used in the future,” he says. They were just too expensive for the phone that Google wanted to build this time. (He didn’t say whether they’d appear in a new phone, specifically; a recent FCC filing suggests they might come to a new Nest thermostat as well.) And let’s not get started on Pixel 4 battery life I doubt buyers of the Pixel 5...

Verizon is getting an exclusive model of the Pixel 4A 5G: it comes in white, it supports Verizon-specific 5G bands, and it’s $100 more expensive. Verizon has dubbed this model the “Google Pixel 4A 5G UW” to highlight its support for the carrier’s “ultra wideband” 5G network. If you’re on any other carrier, you’re not missing out. And if you’re on Verizon, this is probably a worse option than buying a standard Pixel 4A 5G at the regular price of $499, rather than spending $599.99 on Verizon’s model. Pay more to maybe use Verizon’s 5G network The issue here is Verizon’s limited 5G network. Unlike AT&T and T-Mobile, Verizon’s 5G network so far relies only on millimeter wave (mmWave) connections. Those connections are the fastest you can get from 5G, but they have issues — they’re very sho...

Google’s fall hardware event ended this afternoon after a breezy 30 minutes of rapid-fire product announcements, with the stars of the show being the new Pixel 5 and Pixel 4A with 5G. Google now has three primary smartphones; two midrange ones (one with 5G and one without) and one flagship. That’s a refreshingly simple lineup, compared with some of the messier, more bloated offerings from competitors. But that doesn’t mean choosing between the devices is necessarily clear-cut. The 4A 5G is not just a 4A with a different modem; the two phones have some key hardware differences, making the Pixel 4A 5G more of a Pixel 5 alternative than a budget phone. The three devices, grouped together, hit price points of $349, $499, and $699, so choosing which one is the right fit for you is best done by ...