Technology

Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong has escaped arrest after a court in Seoul denied prosecutors’ request to detain him while they conduct an investigation into alleged accounting fraud. Lee, who goes by Jay Y. Lee in the West and is the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, spent almost a year in jail until February 2018 for his role in a separate scandal. “It appears that prosecutors have secured considerable amount of evidence through their investigation, but they fell short of explaining the validity to detain Lee,” the Seoul Central District Court said, as reported by Nikkei. “Considering the significance of the case, it is appropriate to determine whether the suspects are responsible and the degree (of their involvement) through sufficient trials and debates.” As such, the case against Lee cou...

Nintendo Switch styluses aren’t exactly a common accessory for the hybrid gaming system. Sure, there have been a few attempts, but nothing has come close to making a stylus a practical accessory for Switch owners. The Colors SonarPen, the latest attempt at a Switch stylus, goes beyond hardware to try to transform the device into a proper tablet. The stylus is an accompanying piece for Colors Live, a digital painting app for the Nintendo Switch that is the successor to the Nintendo 3DS stylus art game Colors! 3D. The SonarPen is a wired stylus that connects to the Switch’s 3.5mm audio jack due to the console’s lack of built-in Bluetooth. “Because the Switch doesn’t have general Bluetooth, it’s not possible to use professional styluses available for other platforms,” Colors Live designer Jen...

Digital assistants from Amazon, Apple, and Google state their support for the Black Lives Matter movement when prompted (via Business Insider). As people have protested in all 50 states and across the world over the death of George Floyd and against racism and police brutality, tech companies have responded by putting out statements of solidarity against racial injustice. Though not all tech companies or their executives have outright said the words “black lives matter” in their public statements, Amazon, Apple, and Google have programmed their voice assistants state the phrase. The voice assistants also have responses to the question “do all lives matter?”, referencing a right-wing refrain commonly used to criticize the Black Lives Matter movement. Apple and Google’s assistants more empha...

German air taxi startup Lilium said on Monday it has raised an additional $35 million to fuel its goal of launching an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle by 2025. That’s in addition to $240 million raised by the company in early March, when much of the globe began to feel the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lilium, which is based in Munich, is one of the more promising ventures with its sights set on an urban taxi service meant to supplant normal car traffic. And while other eVTOL companies are struggling to stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lilium is continuing to raise funds. As part of its expanded round, Lilium is adding a new investor: Baillie Gifford, the 112-year-old Scottish asset management firm that is the second biggest shareholder in Tesla after Elo...

Google’s Duo video calling platform now has invite links on mobile, making it even more of a viable competitor to Zoom and other videoconferencing apps, according to Android Police. Unlike Google Meet, the company’s more fully-featured platform designed for businesses, Duo is a more mobile-friendly and consumer-focused app. Yet given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, more people than ever before are using video conferencing for casual hangouts at scales much larger than your standard video call. That’s led Google to plan and launch more robust features to all of its various chat apps, Duo included. Invite links help Duo better compete with Zoom The app recently gained a bump in call quality thanks to Google supporting the new AV1 codec, and Duo also now supports up to 12 people on a call. Goo...

OnePlus will release a midpriced phone called the OnePlus Z in India in July, Android Police reports. Several leaks of the phone, first identified as the OnePlus 8 Lite, have shown a device with a 6.55-inch 90Hz OLED display that has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage as well as a 48MP camera with a 16MP wide-angle lens. The device is said to come with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 765 processor, according to XDA-Developers. The OnePlus Z will be priced at 24,990 rupees (about $330) in India, which is roughly $200 less than what the OnePlus 8 retails for in India, Android Police says. The base price for the OnePlus 8 in the US is $699, and that model has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage with a Snapdragon 865 processor. OnePlus CEO Pete Lau tweeted that the company would be holding an...

HP has announced its Chromebook x360 14c, which it says is its most premium Chrome OS product yet. It starts at $499 and will be available in June. The 3.5-pound convertible device has a 14-inch touchscreen with an 88 percent screen-to-body ratio —the largest ever for an HP-made consumer Chromebook. Take a peek at the photos below — it looks nice: Image: HP Inside, you’ll find up to 10th Gen Intel Core i5 processors, up to 128GB of eMMC storage, and a claimed 13.5 hours of battery life. There’s a backlit keyboard, a webcam privacy switch, a fingerprint reader, and fast charging (HP claims you’ll get 50 percent in 45 minutes). The fingerprint reader is something we wouldn’t necessarily expect to see on a $499 laptop (but whether it’s really a benefit will obviously depend on how well it wor...

Even though E3, Gamescom, and other summer gaming events have become online-only or outright canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s still going to be a lot of gaming news this summer. Publishers and media have already scheduled many digital events, promising news and announcements, which could help fill the void left by the loss of the big tentpole events. And it seems likely that some of these events will provide early looks at the first Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 games, making them particularly intriguing. To help you keep track of everything that’s planned, we’ve collected every event that we know about in this post. We’ve put together details about each event, when they’re scheduled to happen, and how to watch them. Be sure to check back here often; we’ll be updating this ...

Over the last few days, a furor has been brewing on Twitch: out of the blue, streamers started seeing copyright takedown notices appear in their inboxes. The claimant was listed as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and the infringing material was mostly recorded clips of old live broadcasts. And that’s a problem because it’s stated very clearly in the Twitch terms of service that if your account is dinged with three of these strikes, you get permabanned from Twitch. The clips themselves were sometimes years old, too, which is a bigger headache because streamers who have been on the platform long enough have accumulated tons of these and now have a backlog rights holders can mine to file takedowns. Twitch doesn’t have the tools yet to let creators bulk delete clips, let ...

Gigabit home internet has been available in the US for some time, but in the past couple of years, more people have been able to sign up for it. Even though the average home broadband connection is just around 130Mbps, at least 80 percent of US households are able to get gigabit broadband service, according to a report from the NCTA. Of those, between 2.5 percent and 6 percent of homes actually have it, depending on which report you read. While gigabit internet service has been gaining ground, actually making use of all that speed without tearing apart your home and installing wired networking throughout has remained a challenge. The Wi-Fi routers supplied by internet service providers are far too slow to allow a single device to reach anywhere near the provided speeds, and even high-end a...

Brave, the open-source browser designed to prioritize privacy by blocking third-party ads and trackers, is facing criticism from users for redirecting URLs from cryptocurrency companies to affiliate links that Brave profits from, Decrypt reported. A Twitter user spotted the redirect when he typed “binance.us” into the Brave search bar, and the browser autocompleted it to “binance.us/en?ref=35089877.” Both URLs go to the same page, but the affiliate link at the end can be used to track users and generate income. Many websites, including Vox Media and The Verge, use affiliate links, but most are transparent about doing so. Brave co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich tweeted that the company had made a mistake and was correcting it. “Brave default autocompletes verbatim ‘http://binance.us’ in addre...

Sony’s popular noise-canceling true wireless earbuds, the WF-1000XM3, are on sale for $178 today on Amazon. That’s $51.99 off the typical $229.99 retail price. This is close to the lowest we’ve seen these earbuds sell for, which was a few weeks ago at Google Shopping for $70 off. Despite their small size, the WF-1000XM3 offer noise cancellation and a lengthy battery life of six hours between charges. My colleague Chris Welch pointed out in his review that Sony’s latest entry in the wireless earbud market is “its best AirPods rival yet.” Samsung Galaxy S20 PlusPhoto by Brennan King / The Verge In addition to the WF-1000XM3 sale, Amazon has the 128GB unlocked Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus for $950 today. The Galaxy S20 Plus offers a 120Hz screen refresh rate and 5G, and today’s discount is $250 of...