Technology

Bloomberg is reporting that TikTok-rival Triller and Centricus (a London-based global investment firm) are the latest suitors looking to buy TikTok’s US business with a $20 billion bid, joining Oracle and a recently combined Microsoft / Walmart effort to acquire the popular short-form video application. Following Bloomberg’s report, things have gotten a little weird. A spokesperson for TikTok told Reuters it has not received an offer, or ever been contacted about a potential bid. They downplayed the idea to Bloomberg, too, replying “What’s Triller?” and calling a deal “preposterous.” And yet, Triller went on the record to confirm a bid to The Verge, claiming that it made the bid directly to TikTok owner ByteDance and not to TikTok itself. Here’s a cheeky statement from Triller executive ch...

Elon Musk’s brain-machine interface company Neuralink showcased a pig outfitted with the company’s device, at an event livestreamed on YouTube. One pig, Gertrude, had a device recording signals from an area of the brain linked to her snout. She’d had the implant for two months at the time of the demonstration. As Gertrude’s snout touched things, an array of dots and a series of noises indicated when more neurons were firing. Pigs have large parts of their brains that are devoted to the snout, a sensitive sensing instrument. “Like a Fitbit in your skull.” The design of the Neuralink device has changed since it was unveiled last year, rendering the device itself hard to see on Gertrude. It is now coin-shaped, and meant to sit flush with the skull, rather than having a small module resting ne...

Amid the search for a COVID-19 vaccine and launch of a new Mars rover, there is yet another technological breakthrough on its way — at least, according to Elon Musk. Today at 6PM ET, his company Neuralink will demonstrate what may be one of the first “ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers.” Apparently, Neuralink is looking to connect to the human brain using flexible electrodes thinner than a human hair. And it is now willing to show us a working model. Interested? If so, you can watch the demo today and judge for yourself. When is the Neuralink demo? Today, Friday, August 28th, 2020, at 6PM ET (3PM PT). Where can I find the demo? The live stream will be shown here on Neuralink’s YouTube channel. [embedded content] What am I going to see? Your guess ...

In a companywide meeting on Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg addressed the recent shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, both in a seven-minute public address and in a heated series of questions from employees that was subsequently reported by Buzzfeed News. Protests in Kenosha erupted into violence on Tuesday night, as two people were killed by a bystander later identified as Illinois resident Kyle Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse has been charged with two murders in connection with the event, as well as reckless endangerment and unlawful possession of a firearm. In the wake of the shooting, Facebook has been criticized for allowing self-proclaimed militia groups to organize on the platform, including a group called the Kenosha Guard, which had solicited armed attendees for an event on the night of the protest...

Apple has officially terminated the Epic Games account on the App Store on Friday, following its Fortnite dispute and ongoing legal battle with the game studio over in-app payments in the battle royale game, the company confirms to The Verge. That means the app is no longer available on the iPhone or iPad whatsoever, even if you’ve once downloaded it once before — and other Epic games like Infinity Blade are also no longer re-downloadable. Here’s Apple’s statement: We are disappointed that we have had to terminate the Epic Games account on the App Store. We have worked with the team at Epic Games for many years on their launches and releases. The court recommended that Epic comply with the App Store guidelines while their case moves forward, guidelines they’ve followed for the past decade ...

Post Malone is the latest celebrity to jump into the world of competitive gaming. Today, Envy Gaming announced that the pop star had joined as a co-owner, acquiring “an undisclosed equity stake” in the company. Envy operates teams in multiple games, and it owns the Dallas Empire of the Call of Duty League and Overwatch League team Dallas Fuel, which hosted OWL’s first home game in 2019. “I grew up in Texas and I’ve been gaming my whole life, so this just really felt right,” Post Malone said in a statement. “I have always wanted to be a part of bringing gaming into the professional sports world so to be involved with what Envy is doing in my hometown feels like such a perfect fit.” He joins a growing list of big stars investing in esports. That includes Offset (Faze Clan), Drake (100 Thieve...

Michigan-based electric truck startup Bollinger Motors hasn’t started production on its rugged electric trucks, the Jeep-like B1 and the B2 pickup, but it’s already rolling out a new vehicle type. This week, the company unveiled the Deliver-E, its all-electric delivery van concept that is slated for production in 2022. A lot of companies, from legacy automakers to tech startups, are developing their own electric delivery vans right now. But what sets Bollinger apart is the variability of its platform. The EV startup is promising a variety of battery pack sizes, including 70 kWh, 105 kWH, 140 kWh, 175 kWh, and 210 kWh. This will mean customers will have a variety of range-options, prices, and wheelbase sizes to chose from. The front-wheel-drive platform will be engineered to fit Classes 2B,...

The Verge is a place where you can consider the future. So are movies. In Yesterday’s Future, we revisit a movie about the future and consider the things it tells us about today, tomorrow, and yesterday. The movie: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, directed by Jonathan Mostow The future: The Terminator movies are, with the exception of Terminator Salvation, more about fighting the future than living in it. What glimpses of it we get are usually bleak: human civilization is leveled, reduced to rubble by the rogue artificial intelligence Skynet, which seizes control of the world’s nuclear stockpile to use in a pre-emptive attack on its biggest threat: humanity. A funny quirk of this film and the one preceding it is that while they are mostly set in “the present,” they do not take place in ...

A new set of Bose sunglasses with built-in speakers could be on the way, as revealed by new filings published by the FCC. You might be looking at the next version of the company’s Frames line of audio sunglasses. Check out this gallery for a few other angles on the glasses, showing where the speakers and hardware are built into the frames and and also revealing that the device will have a USB-C port for charging: Grid View The filings also confirm the glasses will be branded under the Frames line and that they’ll be IPX4-certified for water resistance. Image: FCC Bose already offers two sets of sunglasses, the Alto and the Rondo, as part of the Frames line, but these new glasses revealed by the FCC are of a different style than those existing models. You can see what the Rondo and Alto loo...

Los Angeles city attorney Mike Feuer has charged four people, including TikTok creators Bryce Hall and Blake Gray, for allegedly throwing a series of parties in the Hollywood Hills area in violation of public health restrictions in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19. “We allege that these hosts have been incredibly irresponsible with a highly infection disease spreading,” Feuer said during a press conference. He announced that Hall and Gray were being charged with violating the Safer LA health order and the city’s party house ordinance. “These parties can be really out of control night clubs.” The charges follow complaints from neighbors and mayors about the supposedly raucous parties. Hall and Gray are two of TikTok’s most popular creators, with 13.2 million and 5.9 million followers...

If you’re a US resident who bought a pair of wireless Powerbeats 2 earbuds before August 7th, then you could soon get a payout over the allegedly “defective” device, MacRumors reports. Apple has agreed to pay out $9.75 million, after it was accused of falsely advertising the so-called “shoddy” earbuds as “sweat & water resistant” and “built to endure.” However, the plaintiffs say that these claims weren’t true, and that the earbuds would stop holding their charge after “minimal use.” Although Apple has agreed to settle, it hasn’t admitted to doing anything wrong. The legal filing notes that the company decided that settling was cheaper than the expense of going to trial. Although the original lawsuit filing claims that Apple’s 2016 Powerbeats 3 headphones were also defective, the settl...

When the test came back positive, Quinn* felt like he was getting a second sentence. “I believe that they sent COVID here to kill us. Simple as that,” he says. He’s a father living at San Quentin State Prison and one of over 2,200 inmates who’ve tested positive for COVID-19. The correctional facility, located in Northern California, is the center of the largest coronavirus outbreak in the country. San Quentin was likely a preventable tragedy. Since March, experts have been warning that prison outbreaks of COVID-19 would be deadly and calling on federal judges to release inmates and reduce the size of the prison population. That happened too late in California. Instead, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) moved men away from a prison in Chino, which was battli...