Technology news

With many European and American cities in quarantined coronavirus lockdown, the world's hottest club is now the internet.
Or, more specifically, streaming services. 
In lieu of the ability to spend time together physically, people are finding creative ways to watch shows and movies with their friends by streaming the same thing at the same time and chatting about it through text or video chats.
A boon for this co-remote streaming effort is the genius (and free) Chrome browser extension Netf

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Work(out) From Home is a weekly column where we review smart fitness machines in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Thanks to technology, there are still plenty of ways to exercise if your gym is closed.  Read more...
JaxJox KettlebellConnect
$299.00View Product
The Good
Saves space • Easy to set up and use • Classes are challenging• Great for small homes • No subscription fee for workouts
The Bad
App is a bit unintuitive• There aren't many classes on the app &bu

UPDATE: March 21, 2020, 3:24 p.m. EDT Disney+ has joined the fray, saying it will throttle European bandwidth by 25 percent for 30 days after its March 24 launch, per Deadline. Its French launch has also been delayed until April 7.
Original story:
Movie and TV aficionados should get used to reduced image quality on their favorite streaming service, at least for a little while.
Amazon and YouTube both confirmed on Friday that they would be reducing video stream quality in the EU to ensure there a

Microsoft has started testing its Project xCloud game streaming service for Windows 10 PCs this week. The software giant is making the preview version available to all Microsoft employees, and The Verge has been able to obtain exclusive screenshots of how xCloud will work on PCs.
Microsoft has developed an Xbox Game Streaming app for Windows 10 that will be available in the Windows Store. Much like the Android or iOS versions, the app requires a Bluetooth Xbox One controller, a Microsoft account

GameStop is closing its California retail stores until “further notice,” according to Kotaku, only a day after the video game retailer instructed all of its US employees to disregard coronavirus-related lockdowns.“We are closing our stores in California,” GameStop said in a letter to stores leaked to Kotaku. “The closure will remain in effect until further notice as we obtain more information from the California Governor’s Office.” Kotaku also notes that

In the face of a projected national shortage, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has offered to manufacture life-saving ventilators. There's just one problem: The companies actually making medical ventilators today don't think he can pull it off. 
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage the world, officials around the U.Shave warned that, unless drastic measures are taken to create more, will we see demand for ventilators exceed the current supply. When, and if, this happens depends on numerous ha

Google officially canceled its annual Google I/O developer conference.
Originally, the company canceled its "physical" event due to the growing outbreak of the coronavirus. Instead, Google planned to livestream the event.
But that's not happening anymore, either.
First spotted by 9to5Google, the tech giant took to Twitter to announce the news, explaining the decision was "out of concern for the health and safety of our developers, employees, and local communities—and in line with 'shelter

Rosario Dawson will be joining season 2 of The Mandalorian for Disney Plus, where she’ll reportedly be playing fan-favorite character Ashoka Tano, according to a report from SlashFilm.The move marks the most overt link between Disney’s popular animated Star Wars TV shows — which include Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels, both of which feature Tano as a character — and its live-action efforts. Tano (voiced by Ashley Eckstein on the animated shows) recently re

Image: Paramount Following in the footsteps of other movie studios, Paramount Pictures has announced that it’s speeding up the digital release of Sonic The Hedgehog. The film will be available for purchase on March 31st after a successful theater run that established it as the highest-grossing video game film in US box office history, according to Variety.Some digital movie sellers like Apple have already changed their listings for the Sonic movie to reflect the expedited release. It&rsqu

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to impact employment across the globe, Netflix is doing its part to support thousands of entertainment workers now out of a job.
On Friday, Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos announced the streaming company would establish a $100 million relief fund to ease "hardship in the creative community." The initiative aims to assist not only laid-off Netflix employees, but crew and cast members across the industry — including those who are paid hourly wages and

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has completely canceled Google I/O 2020, its biggest event of the year, due to the ongoing spread of the novel coronavirus. The company announced on March 3rd that it canceled the physical I/O event, but now the whole thing is off.
“Out of concern for the health and safety of our developers, employees, and local communities — and in line with recent ‘shelter in place’ orders by the local Bay Area counties — we sadly wi

Seniors in an assisted living facility are cheering themselves up during social distancing with a game of human-sized Hungry Hungry Hippos. 
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, a majority of society has been forced indoors to limit the spread of the novel coronavirusSocial distancing can be incredibly isolating, especially for those who are already vulnerable. 
One nursing home is combating the loneliness by engaging its residents in life-size board games. Bryn Celyn Care Home in Wales

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropic groups are working to help increase the number of tests for the novel coronavirus in the Bay Area by at least 1,000 tests per day in “the coming days,” he said in a Facebook post on Thursday. Zuckerberg’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) tells The Verge that the goal is to be able to support at least 1,000 tests in less than 30 days.
CZI, which Zuckerberg manages with his wife Priscilla Chan, is working with the University of C

28% of a nurse’s time is wasted on low-skilled tasks like fetching medical tools. We need them focused on the complex and compassionate work of treating patients, especially amid the coronavirus outbreak. Diligent Roboticswants to give them a helper droid that can run errands for them around the hospital. The startup’s bot Moxi is equipped with a flexible arm, gripper hand, and full mobility so it can hunt down lightweight medical resources, navigate a clinic’s hallways, and dr

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sony has issued an update to clarify its stance on backwards compatibility for the PlayStation 5, saying the upcoming console will support an “overwhelming majority” of the 4,000-plus existing PS4 titles. Prior to the update, Sony’s Mark Cerny, the system architect for the PS5 who detailed its full hardware specifications in a live-streamed presentation on Wednesday, said the console would support “almost all” of the top 100

Image: Google Google and YouTube have launched new resource pages to help teachers and families continue to educate students while they’re home from school due to the novel coronavirus.
Google’s page, called Teach From Home, offers recommendations on how teachers can teach remotely using Google products. Right now, the page features ideas like doing a video call with a class using Hangouts or creating an online quiz using Google Forms. The page will “continue to evolve,”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge AT&T sent a notice to its retail stores with instructions for how to handle potential questions, including from law enforcement, about why they were remaining open during the COVID-19 pandemic. Describing it as “best practice only,” the guidance sent Thursday “is to be used in the event that any officials, individuals or groups inquire about why the AT&T store is open.”On Wednesday, AT&T said it was closing 40 percent o

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge AT&T sent a notice to its authorized retailer companies in California with instructions for how to handle potential questions, including from law enforcement, about why they were remaining open during the COVID-19 pandemic. Describing it as “best practice only,” the guidance sent Thursday “is to be used in the event that any officials, individuals or groups inquire about why the AT&T store is open.”On Wednesday, AT&T sa

In Little Fires Everywhere, people are constantly talking about how they would never “make something about race.” They often say it with shocked indignation — they don’t see color, how could you think that? — because they think of themselves as good people, in the way only wealthy white folks can. You know the kind of people who describe themselves as “comfortable?” Little Fires Everywhere is a show about that very specific demographic, and what happens

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Discord banned 5.2 million accounts between April and December last year, the company revealed today in its second transparency report. The most common reasons for account bans were spam and exploitative content, which includes nonconsensual pornography (so-called “revenge porn”) as well as sexual content related to minors.The report reveals a stark difference in the kinds of violations that most users are likely to report, versus the actions

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Much like T-Mobile’s “Netflix on Us” promotion, customers who want free access to shortform video streaming service Quibi will have to meet a specific requirement: they must have a multiple-line plan with the carrier.Quibi will only be free in an exclusive offer “to subscribers who pay for two or more lines of postpaid service,” Protocol reports. The Verge has reached out to Quibi for comment. Quibi is also offering a 90-day

Image: Activision Call of Duty: Warzone, Activision’s new battle royale (BR) game that released less than two weeks ago, has more than 30 million players, the publisher announced on Friday. That makes it one of the fastest-growing free-to-play titles in the industry, putting it on par with BR competitor Apex Legends, which hit 25 million players after its first week back in February 2019.Helping the matter, of course, is the massive surge in work-from-home policies and shelter-in-place or

Walmart DTD 555 Walmart is looking to hire 150,000 additional employees to temporarily work at the company’s stores, clubs, and distribution centers to meet the increased demand from shoppers as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic, the company announced on Thursday. The company also plans to pay $550 million in bonuses to its current employees.New Walmart hires will be employed through the end of May, with the application process decreasing from two weeks to just one day. While the

A former Facebook content moderation facility in Phoenix. | Photo by Jessica Chou for The Verge Facebook is close to reaching a settlement with a group of content moderators who developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suffered other harms while working to remove disturbing content from the social network. In a court filing this week, lawyers for the plaintiffs said the parties had reached a tentative agreement with Facebook on February 7th.
In September 2018, a former Facebook moder

In today’s digital age, it sometimes feels like hardware has taken a back seat to the software that drives our devices. Button of the Month will look at what some of those buttons and switches are like on devices old and new to appreciate how we interact with them on a physical, tactile level.
The shutter button on Apple’s iPhone 11 Battery Case is not a very good button at all. It’s a soft, rubber indentation on the side of the phone that barely manages to be distinct enough t

Image: Bandsintown As more musicians kick off online concerts amid the coronavirus pandemic, Bandsintown is launching a new feature to support them. The concert notification service can now push out a “watch live” notification when musicians are live streaming shows. These notifications will appear on Bandsintown, along with Facebook pages, Instagram Stories, and other places that surface Bandsintown listings.
Twitch is increasingly becoming a popular place for indie musicians to ma