Technology

Google just wrapped up its fall hardware event where it debuted the Pixel 5, the less expensive Pixel 4A 5G, the oft-rumored Chromecast with Google TV software built in, as well as the Nest Audio smart speaker. It’s a lot of good news for people who like new hardware. All said, the quick half-hour event contained mostly announcements we expected, but there were a few unexpected surprises. Here’s everything you might have missed at Google’s event. In the case of specs, the Pixel 5 isn’t trying to go up against the most powerful phones in the world. Instead of beating them when it comes to raw speed (it has a midrange Snapdragon 765G processor, but the 8GB of RAM should deliver some snappiness), Google is focused on delivering some unique features along with — for the first time — 5G support...

Facebook has taken its biggest step yet in integrating its various messaging platforms, allowing select users on Messenger and Instagram to message one another app to app. In addition to the launch of cross-platform messaging, Instagram is also getting a major overhaul of its DM system, which will be expanded with features taken from Messenger. New Instagram messaging tools include vanishing messages, selfie stickers, custom emoji, chat colors, new ways to block unwanted messages, and the introduction of Messenger’s Watch Together feature, which lets you watch videos with friends during a video call. Users can opt out of cross-platform messaging if they wish Users will be able to reject the update if they choose, but Facebook will no doubt be betting that access to new features will encour...

Zound Industries has announced its latest pair of Marshall-branded headphones, the Major IV. Like previous Marshall headphones, the Major IVs have a formidable battery life, which extends up to 80 hours on a single charge this time around. When it comes time to recharge, you can either plug in a typical USB-C cable or charge them wirelessly using a Qi-compatible charger. We’ve seen numerous true wireless headphones embrace wireless charging over the last couple of years, but the feature is far less common with on-ear headphones like the Major IV. As well as wirelessly charging the headphones at home, the technology means you’ll also be able to charge them using any smartphones that support reverse wireless charging like the Samsung Galaxy S20. We’ll be interested to see how easy it is to b...

Xiaomi has announced the Mi 10T Pro, its latest flagship phone. The device follows the strategy seen last year, where the sleek Mi 9 was followed by a largely unrelated Mi 9T Pro with a heavier emphasis on specs. The Mi 9T Pro was one of the best phone bargains of 2019 in markets where it was available, so expectations should be high for the 10T Pro. The two standout specs on the Mi 10T Pro are its screen and its battery. It uses a 6.67-inch 1080p 20:9 LCD with a refresh rate of 144Hz. That refresh rate is what you’d expect from a high-end gaming monitor, and until now it’s mostly only been found on gaming-focused smartphones, making this the most mainstream phone yet to achieve it. Because the screen uses an LCD panel, though, the fingerprint sensor is integrated into the power button rat...

This year, Amazon’s Prime Day sales will be coming on October 13th and 14th — three months later than usual, due to the coronavirus pandemic. (And yes, Prime Day is actually two days.) If you’re attracted by the goodies being offered, but you haven’t signed up for Amazon Prime, don’t worry — Amazon makes it very easy. (As you’d expect, it’s the sorry vendor who makes it difficult for people to become new customers.) Besides giving access to Prime Day bargains, Amazon has come up with a bunch of features to entice people to sign up to its Prime service. These include: access to Prime Video, its streaming video service; free and faster shipping on purchases (with two-day delivery for many items and even same-day delivery for some); deals on Whole Foods Market purchases; Prime Music audio str...

Amazon has launched Explore, a new platform which it promises will let you “explore anything from lessons to landmarks.” It works via a video stream, with tour guides, instructors, and personal shoppers providing one-on-one sessions. Amazon says the video is one-way, meaning only the host is on camera during the virtual experience, but the audio is two-way so you can ask questions and make requests. The Explore page provides an idea of the range of experiences on offer. These include relatively cheap sessions like a $10, 40-minute virtual shopping experience in Ridgeland, USA, to a 45-minute virtual tour of a mansion in Lima, Peru for $70, or a $129 bagel cooking class. In some cases Amazon lists ingredients and supplies to buy before a session, but it says that these are optional if you j...

Programming note: There’s a presidential debate tonight! Here’s how to watch it online. And here’s Politico’s handy “pre-bunk” of 10 lies you’re likely to hear at the debate. If there is a manager in your life, there is a good chance that they are miserable right now. They are miserable for the reasons everyone is miserable: the pandemic; quarantine; the challenges of working from home while raising children; the steady erosion of American democracy. But unlike us working stiffs, managers are miserable for another reason: their employees are miserable, too — and worse, they expect the managers to do something about it. In July I wrote about how a surge of employee activism inside tech companies was beginning to remake the relationship between managers and their workforces. The turbulent pa...

Sacha Baron Cohen’s sequel to Borat, his iconic and controversial 2006 satirical documentary, is coming to Amazon’s Prime Video at the end of next month, according to Deadline. Cohen filmed the movie in secret shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic began sweeping the US, and Collider reports the British comedian has screened it for select film industry figures. But given the current pandemic-induced shutdowns of movie theaters throughout the country, Amazon has stepped in to acquire the streaming rights. Little is known about the movie except its official title: Borat: Gift of Pornographic Monkey to Vice Premiere Mikhael Pence to Make Benefit Recently Diminished Nation of Kazakhstan, according to a leak on a Writers Guild of America website yesterday. It’s likely the film will revolve around ...

Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red has told employees that six-day workweeks will be mandatory ahead of the game’s November 19th release date, even though the studio has repeatedly and explicitly promised it would never do that, Bloomberg reports. On two separate occasions in 2019, studio co-founder Marcin Iwiński told game journalist Jason Schreier how it would address crunch, once even saying that “we want to be more humane and treat people with respect.” It seemed pretty clear from excerpts like this that mandatory crunch was not going to be part of it! Jason: If I’m a designer at CD Projekt Red and I say you know what I have kids, I have a family, I’m going to work from 10am to 6pm every day, and that’s it. Even until the very end. Am I going to be okay with that? Iwiński: Yes. Ye...

Twitter has just expanded its voice tweets feature, which lets you record a snippet of audio to include with a tweet, to more users on iOS. But perhaps more significantly, Twitter is now saying it plans to add transcriptions to voice tweets to improve accessibility, which could help address criticisms from the feature’s June 17th launch. If you want to get an idea of how voice tweets work right now, just press play on the below tweet to hear a voice clip from my colleague Tom Warren. There’s currently no way to see captions or a transcription of what he’s saying. (Note: Tom is not actually sharing exclusive next-gen console news.) Without any way to see a transcription, voice tweets were quickly criticized for not being accessible. Then it came to light that there wasn’t a dedicated team a...

Many Apple services were hit by outages Tuesday evening, including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, and Apple Arcade, according to Apple’s system status page. For all of the affected services, Apple vaguely says that “some users are affected.” However, as we were writing this article, some of the services were upgraded from being affected by an “issue” to having a full-on “outage.” Here is the full list of affected services: Find My Game Center iCloud Account & Sign In iCloud Backup iCloud Calendar iCloud Contacts iCloud Mail iCloud Web Apps (iCloud.com) iWork for iCloud Photos Apple Arcade Apple Music Apple Music radio Apple TV Plus Radio App Store Apple Books Apple didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. Apple isn’t the only company to experience services outages...

In 2014, after what we described as “frequent failures,” a previous administration’s FCC attempted to change how the United States’ emergency 911 system works, including making it clear who’s responsible when multiple states inexplicably lose the ability to dial 911 at once. Some of that accountability might have come in handy this week — because we still don’t know what caused yesterday’s 911 outage. And it’s not clear anything would change even if we knew. Yesterday, 911 services reportedly disappeared in at least 14 states nationwide, some for as long as an hour and a half. Police departments and public safety agencies across the country had to hand out alternative numbers to call — and in some cases, warn residents not to dial 911 just to test if the systems had started working again. ...