Technology

Huawei has announced the second version of its HarmonyOS operating system and detailed plans to bring it to a wider range of devices, including smartphones. Consumer business CEO Richard Yu made the announcement today at Huawei’s developer conference in Shenzhen, China. Huawei will make a beta version of the HarmonyOS 2.0 SDK available to developers today, though it’ll initially only support smartwatches, car head units, and TVs. A smartphone version of the SDK will follow in December 2020, and Yu hinted that phones running HarmonyOS might appear next year. Huawei is also kicking off its OpenHarmony project, which allows developers to build upon an open-source version of the OS — similar to what AOSP is to Android. As of today the project only supports devices with 128MB of RAM or below, b...

Nintendo is releasing a new Fortnite-themed special edition Switch next month, via NintendoLife. The bundle includes yellow and blue Joy-Cons — the latter with the Battle Bus etched around the home button — and a dock that features various well-known Fortnite skins. The Switch tablet itself also has characters on the back. Fortnite is preinstalled on the Switch, and the package includes 2,000 V-bucks plus some exclusive cosmetic items. It appears only to have been announced for launch in PAL regions, however — NintendoLife reports an October 30th release date for Europe and 6th November for Australia and New Zealand. There’s no word yet on a release for the US or other regions. This could be a popular holiday item, though — particularly for Fortnite obsessives who can’t play the iOS versio...

Walmart has started making its first deliveries by drone, launching a small pilot program this week in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The retailer will be delivering “select grocery and household essential items” using automated drones operated by Israeli startup Flytrex. Each of the drones can fly at speeds of 32 mph, travel distances of 6.2 miles in a round trip, and carry up to 6.6 pounds (that’s roughly “6-8 hamburgers,” according to converted units offered on Flytrex’s own website). A demo video of the drone shows how it lowers packages to the ground from 80 feet in the air rather than having to land itself. Flytrex received approval from the FAA to test food deliveries in North Carolina last year, with caveats that its drones only fly predetermined routes in the daytime over unpopulat...

One reason I enjoy writing a column about the intersection between big technology platforms and democracy is that on most days, it feels like one of the most important things in the world. But on this strangest of days in San Francisco, where wildfires up and down the west coast blotted out the sun and gave the town the eerie feel of permanent midnight, it was hard to pay the usual attention to my beat. My colleague Vjeran Pavic flew a drone over Sutro Tower this morning and captured the surreal imagery. The word “apocalypse” gets thrown around with truly unfortunate frequency these days, but on Wednesday nothing else really fit. Distracting as the orange sky outside my window has been, I had one fascinating thing to occupy my attention: a conversation I had on Tuesday with Adam Mosseri, t...

It was a long game of price-war chicken, but it’s finally come to a close. Microsoft flinched first, and now we know how much the next generation of console gaming will cost. The Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X will officially launch November 10th starting at $299, the company announced this week, after spending 15 months revealing details about its next-generation Xbox in dribs and drabs. Many questions remain, like whether the $299 Xbox Series S will truly feel next-gen, since it’ll only have a third the raw GPU performance of the $499 Xbox Series X and less than half that of the PlayStation 5. (They’re all based on the same AMD RDNA 2 graphics architecture.) But the biggest question is a little more immediate: What will PlayStation do? It’s about time to find out. Remember when PS4 was ...

IFTTT, a perennial favorite of smart home tinkerers everywhere, is going Pro. That means paid subscriptions for faster and more sophisticated IFTTT applets that can query more data sources to trigger multiple actions in the home. The free version will stick around but is now limited to just three applets — only Pro subscribers will be able to create unlimited personal applets. Historically, you could create as many IFTTT applets as you wanted, although these were limited to one trigger controlling one action. For example, If the Ring doorbell is pushed, an applet can then pause the music playing out of a Sonos speaker. Now IFTTT can be configured to pause the music and light up the doorway light and send an SMS message whenever that doorbell is pressed, all from a single applet configurati...

The 2020 NFL season kicks off tomorrow, despite the ominous threat of COVID-19 lurking around just about every corner. (It remains to be seen whether the precautions the league has been taking will be effective.) For fans who have been practicing social distancing, the season’s beginning might feel bittersweet: it’s great that football is back, but it does suck to not be able to safely watch games with your pals in person. But that doesn’t mean you have to watch ‘em alone. Verizon is launching a new feature on its Yahoo Sports app, called Watch Together, which will let you live-stream NFL games with up to three of your friends over video chat. You won’t need to be a Verizon customer to watch games for free, but you will need to watch on a smartphone or a table. (Streaming rights, you know?...

Last September, Amazon announced a voice assistant alliance ahead of its yearly fall event with the goal to ensure smart devices are compatible with multiple digital assistants concurrently. Nearly a year later, the coalition has over 70 companies pledging support, including Facebook, Garmin, and Xiaomi, which recently joined. Yet, Amazon’s biggest rivals in the voice assistant space — Apple, Google, and Samsung — have yet to join. Amazon’s Voice Interoperability Initiative’s goal is to have companies create smart devices that support multiple voice assistants like Alexa or Cortana concurrently. But without Apple, Google, and Samsung’s voice assistants (Siri, Google Assistant, and Bixby), the biggest competitors to Alexa, the idea feels empty. They’ve got 70+ companies on board, but it see...

Alongside an influx of next-gen console news, Microsoft also confirmed today that it will raise its pricing for Xbox Game Pass for PC from $4.99 per month to $9.99 a month starting on September 17th. Existing members on the introductory price will still pay the same rate through the next billing cycle, so if you subscribe before September 17th, Microsoft will not change the price on you abruptly. We’re retiring the introductory price on the 17th, but if you’re already a member, you’ll pay the same rate through the next billing cycle. look out for a notification on the 17th to get more details — Xbox Game Pass For PC (@XboxGamePassPC) September 9, 2020 A price increase for any subscription service is never fun, but even at $9.99 a month, Xbox Game Pass for PC still offers ...

The Portland City Council has passed the toughest facial recognition ban in the US, blocking both public and private use of the technology. Other cities such as Boston, San Francisco, and Oakland have passed laws barring public institutions from using facial recognition, but Portland is the first to prohibit private use. The ban passed unanimously, according to CNET, CNN, and OneZero. The new law is actually established as two ordinances. The one prohibiting public use of facial recognition (PDF here) is now in effect, and city bureaus must complete an assessment of their facial recognition usage within 90 days. The ordinance prohibiting private use (PDF here) takes effect on January 1st, 2021. “Portlanders should never be in fear of having their right of privacy be exploited” “Portlanders...

International travelers arriving in the United States will reportedly no longer go through enhanced health screenings at the airport. The planned change in policy, first reported by Yahoo News, is expected to go into effect on September 14th. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been screening travelers coming into the US from certain countries since January when it started flagging anyone coming from or through Wuhan, China. The screening involves a temperature check and symptom check. Travelers are also expected to provide information that could be used for contact tracing in the event they were exposed to someone with COVID-19. The White House ordered the change in practice, according to Yahoo News. US Customs and Border Protection told The Verge to contact the Depar...

Google’s Fundo — a service that allows creators to host paid, ticketed virtual meet-and-greet events — is expanding from a limited test into a full-fledged product that anyone can use starting today. Developed by Google’s Area 120 incubator, Fundo (which is not the name of an adorable floppy-eared dog) was launched in a limited beta last summer for several hundred “trusted testers,” according to Variety. It’s now available for anyone to use. Fundo (also not a wacky new artificial cheese product) was originally meant as a virtual photo booth-style service. Fans could wait in a digital line, chat briefly with the celebrity or creator, and get “photos” with them, just like a real-life meet-and-greet. The service provides creators with an easy way to run these kinds of events, complete with vi...