Technology

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Samsung announced its new Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra phones at its Unpacked 2020 online event. The Verge’s Dieter Bohn has the full breakdown on everything you need to know about both devices in the link above, but make sure to check out the video by Becca Farsace. I’m just here to tell you where you can preorder them. Oh, and if you’re curious about when you can preorder the new Galaxy Z Fold 2, that’s coming on September 1st. Both Note 20 phones will release on Friday, August 21st, but preorders are up now. Below, you’ll find all of the carrier stores and retailers that will be accepting preorders, along with their pricing. First, here’s what you’ll get in terms of free incentives along with your preorder. You can get free stuff… Continue re...

There are tens of thousands of genes in the human genome: minuscule twists of DNA and RNA that combine to express all of the traits and characteristics that make each of us unique. Each gene is given a name and alphanumeric code, known as a symbol, which scientists use to coordinate research. But over the past year or so, some 27 human genes have been renamed, all because Microsoft Excel kept misreading their symbols as dates. The problem isn’t as unexpected as it first sounds. Excel is a behemoth in the spreadsheet world and is regularly used by scientists to track their work and even conduct clinical trials. But its default settings were designed with more mundane applications in mind, so when a user inputs a gene’s alphanumeric symbol… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make ...

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Nintendo has posted extraordinarily high earnings for its normally quiet April-June quarter, as Animal Crossing: New Horizons continues to be a sales juggernaut that drives Switch hardware purchases. Operating profit is up 428 percent year-on-year to 145 billion yen ($1.37 billion) off 357 billion yen ($3.39 billion) in revenue, with Switch sales up 166 percent to 5.68 million systems in the quarter. Nintendo has now shipped 61.44 million Switch consoles, just 470,000 shy of the original Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System. Animal Crossing: New Horizons sold more than 10 million units in the quarter, bringing its total sales up to 22.4 million. Nintendo says that of all the new Switch consoles that were played for the first time this… Continue rea...

Error displayed when visiting Canon’s USA website. Just one week after Garmin recovered from a ransomware attack, data and systems belonging to Japanese tech firm Canon are reportedly now being held hostage. BleepingComputer reports that 10TB of company data has been stolen as Canon suffers widespread ongoing system outages. More than two dozen Canon-owned domains have been affected by the outage. Canon’s USA website currently says it’s down for maintenance although its global and Japanese websites seems unaffected. An internal email from Canon IT reportedly said that the company is experiencing “wide spread system issues affecting multiple applications, Teams, Email, and other systems may not be available at this time.” BleepingComputer also obtained a partial screenshot of the alleged...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verg A leaked internal Google document suggests that the company has earmarked the fourth quarter of next year for the release of a foldable Google Pixel phone, 9to5Google reports. The device, codenamed “Passport,” is said to be explicitly referred to as being “foldable,” and is included alongside a list of all Pixel devices going back to 2017’s Pixel 2. As well as the foldable Pixel, the document also mentions a “lower end mid year device” called the Pixel 5A with a “Q2 2021” release date, and two other devices codenamed “Raven” and “Oriole” for “Q4 2021.” 9to5Google speculates these could be Pixel 6 models. Finally there’s the Pixel 4A 5G and Pixel 5, which Google pre-announced alongside the Pixel 4A earlier this week. Officially these… Continue reading&...

A now-deleted sentence from a Google France blog post suggests that the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4A 5G will be available to preorder on October 8th. The two phones were announced this week alongside the Pixel 4A (which is available to preorder now) but Google has yet to share official preorder dates for the handsets, only saying they’re “coming this fall.” The inadvertent leak was reported by 9to5Google, after a reader spotted the preorder date for the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4A 5G mentioned in the official Pixel 4A announcement post from Google France. That mention has since been deleted from the post (though can be seen in the cached page), with Google offering 9to5Google no further comment on the issue. Image: 9to5GoogleT… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are lo...

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images Uber and Lyft are committing wage theft by misclassifying drivers as independent contractors, California’s labor commissioner alleges in separate lawsuits against the companies. The classification of drivers as freelance workers has deprived them of “a host of legal protections in violation of California labor law,” the lawsuits say. “The Uber and Lyft business model rests on the misclassification of drivers as independent contractors,” said California Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower in a statement. “This leaves workers without protections such as paid sick leave and reimbursement of drivers’ expenses, as well as overtime and minimum wages.” The pair of lawsuits are the latest legal challenges against Uber and Lyft in California,… Continue read...

Microsoft has ended its xCloud game streaming test for iOS devices today. The software giant had been testing xCloud on iOS in a very limited way over the past few months, but made it clear the service would only be launching on Android earlier this week. Microsoft had informed xCloud testers that the preview would end on September 11th, but only the Android preview will continue until next month. “Our Project xCloud preview TestFlight period has ended on iOS and we are focused on delivering cloud gaming as part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to Android customers beginning September 15,” says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “It’s our ambition to scale cloud gaming through Xbox Game Pass available on all devices.” M… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make Money...

It’s starting to seem like Etsy only sells two kinds of products: masks, and everything else. The product marketplace just released its Q2 earnings report, and the company says it helped sell $346 million worth of masks during the pandemic, accounting for 14 percent of all sales across small sellers on the platform. 4 million people came to Etsy for masks alone, buying nothing else, and 112,000 different sellers made money by selling those masks on the platform. If “masks” were listed as their own product category in Etsy’s financial results, they’d rank third on the entire site: they’re not quite as big as the $740 million worth of home goods or the $362 million worth of jewelry that Etsy helped sell in Q2, but they… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make Money Even When you a...

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images Twitter said it would prevent President Trump’s @TeamTrump campaign account from tweeting until it removed a tweet that violates Twitter’s rules on COVID-19 misinformation, the company confirmed to The Verge Wednesday evening. However, it appears that @TeamTrump has removed the tweet in violation of the rules, as it has tweeted again several times this evening. The tweet in dispute, according to The Washington Post, was a clip of an interview Trump gave to Fox News where he falsely claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19. If you navigate directly to the tweet as of this writing, you’ll see a notice saying that the tweet “is no longer available” because it violated Twitter’s rules. President Trump had also linked to the… Continue reading&h...

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images Facebook has removed a post posted by President Donald Trump’s account for violations of its misinformation policy, the company confirmed to The Verge. The video posted was of a Trump interview with Fox News’ Fox & Friends program, in which the president claimed children are “almost immune” to COVID-19, which is false. The interview also included Trump saying COVID-19 “is going to go away,” and that his view is that “schools should open” because “this it will go away like things go away.” A recent study conduced by infectious disease experts at Children’s Hospital of Chicago found that children younger than five can carry the virus at levels far higher than adults, although there is still debate over whether children can pass COVID-19 to… Contin...

The 2021 Audi E-Tron, the company’s first all-electric car, will start at nearly $9,000 less than the current version and will get a range bump of 18 miles — bringing its total EPA-estimated range to 222 miles on a full battery pack. The starting MSRP is dropping thanks to a new base version of the E-Tron SUV that will now start at $65,900, which is down $8,900 from the current $74,800 price tag. There are some sacrifices, of course. The company’s “Matrix” LED headlights (which aren’t available in the US to begin with) aren’t included with the base model, and neither is the Bang & Olufsen sound system. Audi will sell more fully-loaded versions of the 2021 E-Tron that start as high as $79,100. The company is introducing a new base trim… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make...