Technology

Microsoft’s Bing search engine has beaten out competitor DuckDuckGo and will now be offered as an option for Android users during setup in select European countries, according to the results of Google’s most recent default search engine auction. DuckDuckGo, previously the most frequently offered alternative, was not pleased, and the company slammed Google’s auction process as pay-to-play. “This EU antitrust remedy is only serving to further strengthen Google’s dominance in mobile search by boxing out alternative search engines that consumers want to use and, for those search engines that remain, taking most of their profits from the preference menu,” DuckDuckGo wrote in a blog post published yesterday. “The auction model is fundamentally flawed and must be replaced.” Google hosts the aucti...

Following multiple reports of third-party Nvidia RTX 3080 cards crashing, PC builders are now trying to figure out how many capacitors are in their new GPU. That’s right: capacitors. On Friday, concerned buyers stumbled upon one theory for the crashes: a site called Igor’s Lab speculated that Nvidia’s partners were cheaping out on the capacitors used in their third-party RTX 3080s. And over the weekend, that theory spread: numerous outlets cited Igor’s Lab to publish headlines like “NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Stability Woes Traced To Cheap Capacitors” and “Capacitor issues are causing RTX 3080/3090 crashes.” A day later, it appeared there might actually be some evidence that capacitors could have caused the cards to crash. EVGA weighed in on the RTX 3080 capacitor controversy on Saturday, cit...

Spotify made major headlines last year when it announced an exclusive podcast deal with the Obamas’ production studio Higher Ground. Today, the company made a perplexing about-face. The company says it’ll be releasing the first season of The Michelle Obama Podcast on “a number” of other podcast listening platforms starting tomorrow, September 30th — two weeks after the show’s season 1 finale. The company hasn’t detailed which platforms will have the show, but it’s in conversations with several, including Stitcher, Google, Apple, and iHeart. A Spotify spokesperson says future seasons, if the show’s renewed, will “debut exclusively” on Spotify, but didn’t say whether the show will be windowed or fully exclusive to the service. Obama’s show expansion could help Spotify find a larger audience ...

All indications point to Google announcing its latest Chromecast during tomorrow’s hardware event. And I managed to buy one yesterday even before the “official” unveiling. So I can now confirm that, as the rumors and leaks have made clear over the last few weeks, this isn’t the Chromecast that most consumers are familiar with. Instead of a no-frills TV dongle that plays content sent over from the apps on your phone or computer, the new Chromecast finally has a proper menu system and familiar user interface — and now it comes with an actual remote control. Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge It’s a Chromecast in name, but Google’s latest streaming device is actually powered by Android TV, which more closely resembles a Roku or Amazon Fire TV in how you use it. ...

David Attenborough’s debut on Instagram last week landed him the Guinness World Record for the fastest time to reach 1 million followers. It only took the prolific broadcaster and naturalist 4 hours and 44 minutes to obliterate the record, previously held by Jennifer Aniston. Since then, his followers have more than quadrupled. Aniston set the previous Instagram record in October 2019, gathering a million followers 5 hours and 16 minutes after her debut. David Beckham, Pope Francis, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have also held the title in the past. But none of them have commanded the world’s attention for as long as Attenborough has in his nearly seven-decade career. “I’m making this move and exploring this new way of communication to me because, as we all know, the world is in troub...

Sonos has filed another patent lawsuit against Google, alleging that the search giant is infringing five wireless audio patents across the entire line of Nest and Chromecast products. The move comes on the eve of Google’s fall hardware event on September 30th, where it is expected to announce a new Chromecast and Nest smart speaker alongside new Pixel phones. Sonos filed its first patent lawsuits against Google in January in California federal court and with the International Trade Commission; the federal case has been put on hold while the ITC reaches a decision on whether to block Google’s allegedly infringing products from market. The new case is filed only in the federal court for the Western District of Texas — an emerging patent lawsuit hotspot — and represents a more aggressive appr...

HBO Max hasn’t been available on Roku devices since the new streaming service launched at the end of May, but with Roku soon adding support for Apple AirPlay 2 to many of its 4K devices and TVs, there will be a workaround. People with an Apple device (iPhone, iPad, Mac) will be able to use AirPlay 2 to stream HBO Max on their Roku devices even though an official app is not yet live, the company confirmed to The Verge. AirPlay 2 support is supposed to roll out by the end of the year to most recent 4K Roku players and Roku TVs, so it’s possible Roku and HBO parent company, WarnerMedia, could reach a deal before then, making the AirPlay workaround unnecessary. If they don’t, however, using AirPlay 2 will be one of the only options Roku owners will have to watch HBO Max. This isn’t the first t...

Oscar winner Barry Jenkins has agreed to direct the next installment in the Lion King story, according to an exclusive in Deadline. Jenkins is taking over for Jon Favreau, whose “live-action” — photorealistic CGI — update to the classic Disney franchise earned $1.6 billion globally just last year. The sequel also promises to be something of a prequel: according to Deadline, the movie will delve into the characters’ origin stories. As you may recall, that remake starred Beyoncé Knowles (Nala), Donald Glover (Simba), Seth Rogen (Pumbaa), and James Earl Jones (Mufasa), among other massive stars. Though the film has neither a release date nor any actors confirmed to star in its cast, it’s hard to imagine that some of the bigger names on Favreau’s roster won’t be coming back. You can’t make a L...

Hype manof the century When Chinese millionaire Justin Sun acquired BitTorrent, was he tryingto skirt the trade war? Or fly right in the face of it, no matter the cost? By Chris Harland-Dunaway | Sep 29, 2020, 10:00am EDTPhoto by Calvin Sit/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesIllustrations by Alex Castro/The Verge When Chinese millionaire Justin Sun acquired BitTorrent, was he trying to skirt the trade war? Or fly right in the face of it, no matter the cost? By Chris Harland-DunawaySep 29, 2020, 10:00am EDTPhoto by Calvin Sit/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesIllustrations by Alex Castro/The Verge Hype manof the century If Silicon Valley operated under the idea that companies should move fast and break things, then BitTorrent had become an exception. Employees enjoyed patiently tinkering with creative proje...

Yale’s Smart Delivery Box, which was first announced at CES earlier this year, is now available for purchase. The box, which is designed to sit on your porch as a safe place for packages to wait for you until you retrieve them, is available in two different designs ranging in price from $229.99 to $329.99, depending on whether you want Yale’s smart keypad. The idea behind the box is to prevent theft — the dreaded porch pirate — or to prevent damage to your deliveries from rain, snow, or other inclement weather. Yale is also offering an insert to help keep perishables cold in the box. I’ve been testing the Smart Delivery Box on my own porch for the past five days and while I appreciate what it is trying to do, I don’t think it’s currently worth the price of admission. The box is manufacture...

Elon Musk wants everyone to get brain surgery. Specifically, he wants everyone to get a brain implant — the brain-machine interface created by his company, Neuralink. He says it will be able to solve any number of medical conditions — including paralysis, anxiety, and addiction. Machines that connect to the human brain and translate the electrical signals to a computer have been around since 2006. Since then, neuroscientists and engineers have made incremental improvements to that technology. Musk’s Neuralink slots into that work: the company developed a system of thin wires that snake into the brain, which may cause less damage than the usual rigid spikes. But Musk’s ambitions also go far beyond altering the architecture of machine-brain devices. Apart from treating brain-based medical co...

Alienware’s M15 R3 is a solid gaming laptop to introduce, or reintroduce, yourself to what the Dell-owned company is capable of these days. It’s a big improvement over the design of the original M15 released a few years ago, brushing away some of the try-hard LEDs and angular design for a thinner and more sophisticated look. Don’t get me wrong, this is still very much a Gaming Laptop, clad with backlit keys, honeycomb-shaped air intakes, and a strip of LEDs surrounding its rear fan outtakes. Essentially, it’s a slimmed-down version of the humongous, modular Area-51M. But it’s built to attract gamers that want a slightly more refined and minimal look than what Alienware has been known to produce. With this, and support for high-end specs like a 300Hz refresh rate display, Dell shows that it...