Technology

Amazon’s home networking company Eero could be about to launch its first routers with support for Wi-Fi 6, according to a pair of leaks. ZatzNotFunny reports that two devices — a Eero 6 Gateway and Eero 6 Extender — have hit the FCC, and has also posted an image of a third device’s box, the Eero Pro 6. Wi-Fi 6 is the latest version of the Wi-Fi standard and it delivers faster speeds and better support for more devices connecting to a single router. Eero is adding support for the new standard a little later than some of its competitors, who had Wi-Fi 6 products available last year. However, this year the prices of Wi-Fi 6 routers have started hitting more mainstream price points and are now much more widely available. The router’s label published by the FCC.Image: FCC A photo of one of the ...

Since I am The Verge’s resident “weird animal stories” expert (see: murder hornets and the story of eagle vs. drone) of course my colleague suggested I would want to look into this gaming chair that is made to look like a giant scorpion. Sigh. This is the Cluvens IW-SK zero-gravity esports gaming chair and workstation. It can, according to the Cluvens website, support an ultra-wide 49-inch monitor, or three curved 27-inch monitors, and comes with HDMI/DP cables to connect them. It weighs 265 pounds, is 65 inches long, 47 inches wide and 82 inches tall when fully extended. So it’s not going to just neatly fit in a corner, you’ll need a bit of room. Let me just state for the record that I am neither A) an avid gamer or B) a fan of insects, especially the ultra-poisonous ones like scorpions. ...

It looked like Twitter might finally, at long last, be allowing users to edit their tweets. Users began noticing it Sunday afternoon: If you delete a tweet reply, then try to reply again, the “deleted” text reappears, allowing you to fix any mistakes and re-send it. The Verge’s Tom Warren demonstrated how it works: But on Sunday evening, a Twitter spokeswoman gave us the sad news that it’s just a bug. hey tom – unfortunately, we’re not testing this. it’s a bug and we’re looking into it. — liz kelley (@lizkelley) September 14, 2020 Editable tweets are something Twitter users have long pined for, and begged Twitter to implement. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is on the record saying Twitter would “probably never” introduce an edit button. However, Twitter has rolled out othe...

It can be hard to tell a difference between AirPods and the many earbuds that resemble them, but checking the box is always a good start. US Customs and Border Protection tonight tweeted that its officers had “recently seized 2,000 counterfeit Apple AirPods from Hong Kong, valued at $398K had they been genuine.” There’s also this press release on the situation, which praises CBP officers for “protecting the American public from various dangers on a daily basis” and says that “the interception of these counterfeit earbuds is a direct reflection of the vigilance and commitment to mission success by our CBP officers daily.” The only problem is, based on the agency’s own photos, the seized products appear to be legitimate OnePlus Buds — transported in a box that plainly says as much. But CBP p...

Zipline is partnering with Walmart for a new drone delivery operation in the US, the companies announced. The program is for on-demand deliveries of health and wellness products and will begin in a trial early next year near Walmart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Zipline’s launch and release system allows for on-demand delivery in less than an hour, and operating from a Walmart store, can service a 50-mile radius. Earlier this year Zipline announced it was partnering with a hospital system in North Carolina to make contactless deliveries of medical supplies and personal protective equipment. And this year wasn’t the first time Zipline’s drones have been used for medical supply deliveries. In 2016, it launched the first national drone delivery system in the world to deliver blood ...

Microsoft says it’s not acquiring parts of TikTok’s operations, after its bid was rejected by TikTok owner ByteDance. After weeks of talks and very public back and forths involving the Trump administration, Microsoft ultimately failed in its attempts to acquire TikTok. “ByteDance let us know today they would not be selling TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft,” says Microsoft in a statement. “We are confident our proposal would have been good for TikTok’s users, while protecting national security interests. To do this, we would have made significant changes to ensure the service met the highest standards for security, privacy, online safety, and combatting disinformation, and we made these principles clear in our August statement. We look forward to seeing how the service evolves in these i...

Nvidia said Sunday it is acquiring chipmaker Arm from SoftBank for $40 billion. Arm will operate as an division of Nvidia and will remain headquartered in the UK, and, will “continue to operate its open-licensing model, while maintaining its global customer neutrality,” the company said. But the deal is still likely to face intense regulatory scrutiny. SoftBank bought Arm in 2016 for $31 billion. The British company’s intellectual property helps power mobile device processors for companies including Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm. Arm has likely only increased in value since the SoftBank acquisition, with Microsoft making an ARM-based Surface and a version of Windows for Arm, and Apple planning to switch future Macs to Arm-based chips. Nvidia is the leading maker of GPUs, which Arm also desi...

The last few weeks have seen the release of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 20 Ultra and Note 20, Galaxy Z Fold 2, Galaxy Z Flip 5G, Galaxy Watch 3, a couple tablets, and more — but the company still isn’t finished with events just yet. There will be yet another Samsung Unpacked virtual presentation on September 23rd at 10AM ET. This one is titled “Galaxy Unpacked for Every Fan,” which is a fairly obvious hint that it will mark the official reveal of the rumored Galaxy S20 Fan Edition. Most recently, the unannounced phone was found on Verizon’s website by Android Police. Leaks and rumors have suggested it will retain some hardware specs of the standard S20 — like a 120Hz display and Snapdragon 865 processor — but will make downgrades elsewhere (like a 1080p resolution) to help drive down the price b...

Oracle has reportedly won a deal to manage TikTok’s US cloud operations. Oracle had been rumored to be part of the bidding process to acquire TikTok, but The Wall Street Journal reports that the company has been selected as a “trusted tech partner” instead. This is different from an outright sale, and appears to suggest Oracle will be helping run TikTok’s US operations with its own cloud technologies. News of an Oracle deal comes just an hour after Microsoft revealed it was no longer acquiring TikTok after its bid was rejected by TikTok owner ByteDance. Microsoft had been pursuing a deal to buy TikTok’s operations in the US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. It’s clear talks have swayed away from a full acquisition, with Oracle reportedly winning the bid to be a technology partner instea...

Influencers, brace yourselves: Instagram may be considering charging a fee to add links to photo captions, a patent application suggests. Mike Murphy discovered it as part of his (fascinating!) weekly roundup of tech patents over at Protocol. The patent application, which Instagram parent company Facebook first submitted back in 2016, shows a pop-up appearing when the user adds a URL to a caption, asking if the user wants to pay $2 to make the link live. The patent application (titled “adding paid links to media captions in a social networking system”) describes how the system would work: “If the online system detects the text content of the caption includes a string of link text identifying an address, the online system prompts the posting user to pay a fee in exchange for generating a li...

Apple’s first big fall event is happening on Tuesday, September 15th, but it may be much different than previous September events. Let’s address the elephant in the room up front: it doesn’t seem like there will be new iPhones. Typically, Apple’s September events mark the arrival of Apple’s latest and greatest smartphones, but you shouldn’t expect to see them on Tuesday, according to The Verge’s editor-in-chief Nilay Patel and other well-connected journalists. And Apple has already said that the new iPhones won’t go on sale during their usual late-September timeframe. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some interesting things to look forward to, though, since the Apple rumor mill has been as active as ever. The event’s “Time Flies” moniker suggests we’ll see Apple Watches at the very least. An...

OK so I got out of my rerun rut and binged Away on Netflix over Labor Day and… I really wanted to like it! The acting was so good, and it looked beautiful, but the script just strained credibility at every turn. It got off to a promising start with an incident aboard the spacecraft that makes the rest of the crew question whether first-time commander Emma Green (Hilary Swank) is really up to the long haul mission of guiding them to Mars. And there are great performances from a top-notch cast. I just wish the writers had resisted the urge to include the standard rom-com tensions and the endless Eureka! moments (ex: person on Earth gets a static electricity shock and realizes it may be the key to helping the space crew out of its latest mishap!), and we could have done away entirely wi...