Technology

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge These days, we almost take it as a given that piss-poor security will inevitably expose some of your usernames and passwords to the world — that’s why 2FA is so important, and why you might want a password checkup tool like the ones now built into every modern browser (well, Safari is coming soon) so you can quickly replace the ones that were stolen. But nearly all of those password checkup tools owe something to Troy Hunt’s Have I Been Pwned, which was kind of a novel idea when it first launched 7 years ago — and Hunt is now open-sourcing his website codebase so the idea can spread even further. While not all password checkup tools actually use Hunt’s database (a just-announced LastPass feature calls on one hosted by Enzoic instead),… Continue...

Getty Images for WarnerMedia Two of WarnerMedia’s top executives, Bob Greenblatt and Kevin Reilly, are leaving the company as CEO Jason Kilar begins to plan the company’s future with a tighter focus on HBO Max. Greenblatt oversaw all of the company’s direct-to-consumer lines and oversaw WarnerMedia as a whole; Kevin Reilly was WarnerMedia’s content chief. He also served as president of TBS, TNT, and TruTV. As part of the shakeup, Andy Forssell (a former Hulu executive who worked alongside Kilar at the streaming company now owned by Disney) will oversee all of HBO Max, according to The Hollywood Reporter. With Greenblatt and Reilly out, Warner Bros. CEO Ann Sarnoff and HBO programming president Casey Bloys will oversee a new group combining WarnerMedia’s studios… Continue reading&hell...

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Sony’s wireless, noise-canceling WF-1000XM3 earbuds are down to their most affordable price at Amazon and Best Buy. Normally $230 new, they cost $170. This beats the previous lowest price by around $10. Aside from having good sound quality, one of the main reasons to consider these is that they have fantastic sound isolation with the seal they make in your ear. With this fit, its noise cancellation feature cancels out more disturbances than most other truly wireless earbuds. This model launched without the ability to adjust volume (that is, without yanking out your phone and adjusting it there), but there was an update last November that added in this feature. Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If you want to spend a… Continue reading… You Deserv...

Becca Farsace / The Verge The Vergecast is back to a phone-heavy discussion with a guest-heavy show. This week on the podcast, hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn bring in The Verge crew who have used the newest gadgets that were announced the past week, including the Pixel 4A, the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, the Samsung Galaxy Buds Live, and an updated 27-inch iMac. Deputy editor Dan Seifert, news editor Chris Welch, and video director Becca Farsace (a Vergecast debut) join the show to give their reviews and first impressions of these new devices. This is a classic Vergecast format, so sit back and listen to Verge director’s commentary from this busy week of new tech. Stories discussed this week: Apple and Google’s COVID-19 tracking system will make its… Continue reading… You...

Illustration by Alex Castro Alphabet and Google employees are trained to avoid using certain words and phrases in internal communications and “assume every document will become public,” according to a new report from The Markup. But Google says the practice, which it describes as standard compliance training, has been in effect for years. A document titled “Five Rules of Thumb for Written Communications” states that “Words matter. Especially in antitrust law,” according to The Markup. Employees across the company, including engineers, salespeople, interns, vendors, contractors, and temp workers, are encouraged to avoid the terms “market,” “barriers to entry,” and “network effects” (the latter being a reference to how a social network gains value the more users it… Continue reading&he...

A woman jolts awake and gasps for air in a nondescript living room. She can’t explain why, but she’s certain of one thing: she only has one more day to live. So she tells her friend, Jane, and something horrifying happens: Jane also becomes certain the next day will be her last. This strange conviction, it turns out, is contagious. And it’ll infect many more before tomorrow actually comes. Written and directed by Amy Seimetz, She Dies Tomorrow is a new film with a title and a premise that suggests something propulsive — a thriller, perhaps, or a nightmarish horror film. Instead, it is contemplative, a psychodrama that introduces a simple unsettling idea to each of its characters and lets us watch as they become unmoored. It doesn’t give… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make M...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook is joining Microsoft in condemning Apple’s App Store policies today. The social media company is launching its Facebook Gaming app for iOS — primarily an app used to watch streamers play video games — but has had to remove the app’s mini games feature to pass Apple’s strict App Store approval process. Facebook isn’t happy about the compromise. “Unfortunately, we had to remove gameplay functionality entirely in order to get Apple’s approval on the standalone Facebook Gaming app — meaning iOS users have an inferior experience to those using Android,” said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer in a press statement given to The Verge. “We’re staying focused on building communities for the more than 380 million people… Continu...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok has hit back at President Trump’s executive order to ban all transactions with its parent company ByteDance from September 20th, saying it shows “no adherence to the law.” The Chinese firm says the executive order was issued “without any due process” after a year in which it claims it has tried to address the US government’s concerns over its app. TikTok suggests it intends to challenge the order in US courts. “We will pursue all remedies available to us in order to ensure that the rule of law is not discarded and that our company and our users are treated fairly — if not by the Administration, then by the US courts.” It adds that the order “risks undermining global businesses’ trust in the United States’ commitment to the rule… Continue...

Art: Microsoft It’s taken a while, especially considering the number of people who are looking for convenient ways to chat and videoconference these days, but Microsoft has finally created a version of its business Teams app for personal use. The app, which is considered to be in preview, is currently only available for mobile devices (iOS and Android). You get 10GB of file storage for your “team” and 2GB of personal file storage per person. What follows is a quick how-to on using Teams for communicating with friends and family. It is available for both iOS and Android; the two apps are extremely similar. The only difference may be in the placement of, say, the “Start new chat” button. The app offers a variety of ways to communicate: chat, audio-only,… Continue reading… You De...

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Chilling effect go brr Continue reading… You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn rewards by chatting, sharing photos, blogging and help give users back their fair share of Internet revenue.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook reportedly cleared misinformation “strikes” against several posts by conservatives in an apparent attempt to prevent them from being banned, BuzzFeed News reported. A Facebook employee reported that Joel Kaplan, the company’s vice president of global public policy, flagged for review an Instagram post from conservative commentator Charlie Kirk that had earned a “partly false” rating from a third-party fact-checker, according to BuzzFeed News. The same employee also noticed misinformation strikes against conservative website Breitbart had been “cleared without explanation,” although it was not clear whether Kaplan or another person was involved in that decision. “It appears that policy people have been intervening in fact-checks… Contin...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Anyone in the United States who held a Google Plus account between January 1, 2015 and April 2, 2019, and believes they were impacted by a security flaw that Google disclosed in 2018 can now register for a payout from a class action settlement. The lawsuit has settled for a total of $7.5 million. Each class action member is eligible for a payout of up to $12 after attorney fees and other costs are accounted for, although this could vary depending on the number of people who submit a claim. You have until October 8 to register. Although Google said at the time that there was no evidence the exposed data was ever accessed, the company wasted no time in announcing that it would shut down its social network after publicly admitting the… Continue re...