Technology news

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Google sent a memo to all of its North America-based employees recommending they work from until at least April 10th due to coronavirus, the company confirmed to Business Insider. Google had previously told employees in the San Francisco Bay Area, Dublin, and Seattle to work from home in recent days.
Google offices will remain open to workers if they have to be physically present for their job, according to Business Insider. CEO Sundar Pichai also urged peo

Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images US health insurance companies will waive copays for testing and cover the cost of treatment for the novel coronavirus, said Vice President Mike Pence during a press briefing today. Medicare and Medicaid will also cover costs without copays.The CEOs of major insurance companies, including Anthem, Cigna, Humana, and Aetna, attended a briefing at the White House today. The companies also said that there would not be surprise billing for costs associated with COVID

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Whisper, an anonymous secret-sharing mobile app that rose to prominence more than half a decade ago, has been inadvertently exposing sensitive information about its users for years through a public online database, according to a new report from The Washington Post.The app, while far from as popular as it was in the few years after its release in 2012, is still used by more than 30 million people a month, some of whom are under the age of 18 and share con

Photo by Vernon Yuen/NurPhoto via Getty Images Efforts to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus are changing the way people work and play — and those changes are temporarily curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Fear of the outbreaks already led to a drop in passenger demand in January, according to the industry group International Air Transport Association (IATA), which called it “just the tip of the iceberg.” Airlines continue to drastically cut flights as more people decide

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge After trying to establish the Chromecast and later Chromecast Ultra as affordable, flexible streaming devices, the company is now focused on pushing Android TV into more living rooms. According to 9to5Google, Google is currently working on a follow-up to the Chromecast Ultra. But this time, Android TV will be the software that powers it. And like its main competitors — Roku, Fire TV, and Apple TV — Google will now bundle a remote with the

Photo: Epic Games The Epic Games Store now allows you to add games to a wishlist, so you can save games you are interested in buying later and eventually get notifications when they’re on sale.You can add a game to your wishlist by logging into your Epic Games Store account, searching for a game, and clicking the “Add to Wishlist” button — it’s the icon shaped like a heart and adjacent to the game’s retail price. Epic Games says that it plans to add a feature

Photo by ERIC BARADAT/AFP via Getty Images The Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden campaigns have canceled events in Cleveland, Ohio Tuesday after three cases of coronavirus were confirmed in the state. Both campaigns said that they are considering whether to cancel future events as well.
On Tuesday, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine declared a state of emergency after the coronavirus cases were discovered and recommended against spectators attending large indoor sporting events. The Sanders and Biden campaig

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge In light of the novel coronavirus outbreak and its massive impact on the travel industry, Airbnb has tweaked its reservation policies to help hosts and guests cancel bookings without taking a loss. Until June 1st, Airbnb will waive the standard 3 percent host fee that it collects if a host decides to cancel a booking. Airbnb also says it will increase visibility of listings for hosts who take advantage of its new “More Flexible Reservations&rdqu

Photo By Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The New York International Auto Show is the latest big event to be postponed due to the novel coronavirus outbreak. The show was supposed to open to press on April 8th and 9th and to the public from April 10th to the 19th, but organizers announced on Tuesday that they are now aiming to hold the event in August.“We are taking this extraordinary step to help protect our attendees, exhibitors and all participants from the coronavirus,” Mark S

Photo by Johannes Simon / Getty Images Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is funding a significant increase in coronavirus testing in the San Francisco Bay Area through two philanthropic groups he manages with his wife Priscilla Chan, the chief executive announced today on his personal Facebook page.Chan and Zuckerberg are organizing the funding through their philanthropic groups, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. The latter is dedicated to helping combat and research dis

Dell’s2015 decision to buy EMC for $67 billion remains the largest pure tech deal in history, but a transaction of such magnitude created a mountain of debt for the Texas-based company and its primary backer, Silver Lake.
Dell would eventually take on close to $50 billion in debt. Years later, where are they in terms of paying that back, and has the deal paid for itself?
When EMCput itself up for sale, it was under pressure from activist investors Elliott Management to break up the company

Photo by Zach Gibson/Getty Images Congress is maintaining a push for more antitrust enforcement — including new legislation and a hearing where members excoriated Google and Amazon. Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee met to discuss tech companies unfairly favoring their own products. And Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) announced a bill to limit “exclusionary conduct” where a big company locks out smaller competitors, among other changes to antitrust law.
Klobuchar described her b

Image: Levi’s / Nintendo We’ve known about the upcoming Super Mario-themed collaboration between Levi’s and Nintendo since last week, but it wasn’t until Tuesday morning that the two companies revealed the most wonderfully on-brand item in the collection: denim overalls.Levi’s tweeted out more images featuring the new line today, including the overalls and a Levi’s-appropriate jean jacket. There are also some noisy shirts and a pair of shorts brimming with ca

Photo by JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images It seems obvious now that the coronavirus is going to reshape the ways we interact with each other: conferences have been canceled, the stock market is tanking, and white collar employers have begun the process of asking their staff to work from home instead of at the office. Life under an outbreak is difficult — not only because the causative agent is basically invisible and incredibly infectious, but also because even if you do everything righ

NASA is still having trouble managing the development of its next big rocket, the Space Launch System, a new audit has found. The report is the latest in a string of damning reports from NASA’s inspector general, which has been warning about scheduling and budget problems with the rocket for years.
The Space Launch System, or SLS, is the epicenter of NASA’s Artemis program, the agency’s plan to return humans to the Moon by 2024 and put the first woman on the lunar surface. Once

Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call The Federal Communications Commission’s latest plan to expand high-speed internet access across the country has come under criticism by members of Congress who fear over $20 billion in funding might not make it to the communities that need it most.On Tuesday, two dozen senators — Republicans and Democrats — wrote to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai denouncing the agency’s new Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, or RDOF. This new program would establis

illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Game Developers Conference will stream many of the talks it would have aired at its canceled event, organizers announced today. “Thanks to submissions from many of the original speakers who had talks accepted for GDC 2020, organizers will be streaming speaker-recorded versions of the talks they would have given in person, for free all week,” a spokesperson said.
The talks will take place when the conference was scheduled, from March 16th t

Photo: Reddit Reddit now allows brands to pay to appear in the popular discussion site’s tending section.
The ads, called Trending Takeovers, run on both desktop and mobile. Companies can pay to appear on the Trending Today module for 24 hours, giving them the second slots on two of the most commonly visited areas on Reddit: the popular feed and the search tab. These ads are distinguished from standard posts with the word “promoted” appearing at the top in bold lettering.
Redd

Monograph, a startup working on cloud-based software that makes project and cost management easier for architects, announced today that it has raised $1.9 million in seed funding. The round was led by Homebrew Ventures and Parade Ventures, with participation from Designer Fund, Hustle VC and angel investors.
The San Francisco-based startup was founded last year by Robert Yuen, Alex Dixon and Moe Amaya. Each has experience in architecture, design and software development, making them well-positio

Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images Farewell “Infrastructure Week.” We hardly knew ye.The group that coined the weeklong advocacy effort-turned-perennial punchline is rebranding. It will now be known as United for Infrastructure, which is the same name as the nonprofit that hosts the event in Washington, DC every year, according to Politico.“We are much more than just a week,” United for Infrastructure CEO Zach Schafer told the site. “We didn&r

Photo by Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images Instacart has announced new updates to its sick leave policies that give more of its workers, including part-time employees, access to sick pay amid the ongoing spread of the novel coronavirus.
Any part-time employees or full-service shoppers diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, or put in mandatory quarantine will now be able to get up to 14 days of pay. That brings Instacart in line with Uber and Lyft, whic

Photo by Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images Instacart, DoorDash, and Postmates have announced new policies to help their gig workers with potential financial burdens they might incur if they have to miss work due to the ongoing spread of the novel coronavirus.
Any of Instacart’s part-time employees or full-service shoppers diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, or put in mandatory quarantine will now be able to receive up to 14 days of pay, according to Insta

Images: Daimler Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler just unveiled the newest version of the company’s eVito commercial electric passenger van for the European market, and the company claims it can now travel up to 421 kilometers (about 262 miles) on a full charge.
That’s more than double the previous eVito’s 150-kilometer (93-mile) range even when taking into account that Daimler seems to be using the extremely optimistic New European Driving Cycle standard. The big gain in u

Before you can spend all of your time in Animal Crossing: New Horizons fishing and getting stung by wasps, you need to decide what your island will look like. Where should you put your tent? How do you want your rivers to flow? And why wait when you can start planning now? With Happy Island Designer, created by GitHub user eugeneration, players can get a jump-start on just how they want to set up their budding community.
The in-game browser allows you to toy with tents, shops, town buildings, tr

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The worst part about using YouTube as a free service is the 5- or 15-second non-skippable ads that play before many videos — but at least using YouTube is free. Quibi’s ad-supported tier will also run non-skippable pre-roll ads at launch. But unlike YouTube, it’ll cost subscribers $4.99 a month.Quibi, a shortform video streaming service, partnered with 10 companies for exclusive ads in the streamer’s first year, according to Axios:

Photo by Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images People in the US are worried about the new coronavirus outbreak. That concern is warranted: the virus is a scary new threat, it can cause serious harm, and there aren’t any medications that can stop it. That’s not to mention the cancellations of schools, popular events, and the general disruption to people’s lives it’s causing.
But fear, and the things people do when they’re afraid, changes and drives the soc

We’ve all been there: you have a sudden itch to watch a specific movie, and, after a cursory search of Netflix, you realize it’s not there. Next step: Google. Type in a search query for where that particular movie is streaming. It’s not on Hulu or Amazon Prime Video. It is, however, available via HBO Now, and this is where the decision paralysis hits. Do you sign up for the seven-day free trial, rent it for $3.99, torrent it, or give up and just find something on Netflix to fil

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge More details about Apple’s future hardware and software plans are leaking out, thanks to an apparent leaked build of iOS 14 (which, theoretically, doesn’t come out until September) that 9to5Mac has been scouring through. The latest details offer hints at new hardware and several software changes on the iPhone.
An important caveat before diving into all of this: while the leaked code means that Apple is working on all of these features, the

TechnoLike Plus Following yesterday’s leak that allegedly showed the Google Pixel 4A in a fabric case, YouTube channel TechnoLike Plus has shared an extensive hands-on with the purported midrange device, showing what it might offer both inside and out (via 9to5Google).
First off, as we’ve seen in previous leaks, this phone appears to have a 3.5mm headphone jack and a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor. There’s a hole-punch selfie camera in the display and square camera module aro

MessageBird, the Amsterdam-headquartered cloud communications platform backed by Accel in the U.S. and Europe’s Atomico, is unveiling another new product today, this time taking aim at the $350 billion customer service market.
Dubbed Inbox.ai and positioned as “Slack for external communications,” the new product — which is to be offered largely for free — enables customers to communicate with businesses via practically any channel of their choosing. This includes Wh