Technology news

Zoom, a video chat service then popular with corporations, filed to go public on March 22, 2019.Best known in venture and corporate circles, Zoom was far from a household name at the time. However, the groundwork for its 2020-era consumer breakthrough during the novel coronavirus epidemic was detailed during its IPO march in the years leading up to its public debut.
The company didn’t begin trading until mid-April last year, but it was through its March 2019 IPO filing that its name took o

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Facebook is seeing an extreme spike in usage across the globe due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the company outlined in a blog post on Tuesday. But most usage is concentrated among private messaging and video calling, products the company does not monetize. As a result, the social media giant says it’s business is suffering while it struggles to keep its communication tools online and stable.The blog post, penned by analytics chief Alex S

Image: Zenly A Snapchat-owned location-sharing app has created a way to gamify social distancing with a leaderboard comparing who among your friends spends the most time at home (via TechCrunch).
The app, Zenly, typically encourages sharing your location for things like meeting up with friends, but going outside to hang out with people might go against restrictions in place that encourage social distancing and help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. So, in a twist, Zenly can now show

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple on Tuesday released a major update to its Safari Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), the privacy feature that allows the company’s web browser to block cookies and prevent advertisers from snooping on your web habits. According to Apple’s John Wilander, the WebKit engineer behind the feature, Safari now blocks all third-party cookies. That means that, by default, no advertiser or website is able to follow you around the internet using

Having trouble sleeping? Hit Snooze is Mashable's deep dive into the many ways to achieve a more peaceful slumber.In the finale of The Office, there’s a perfect moment. 
Well, there were many perfect moments in the finaleThe Office in its entirety was full of perfect moments — that might be what it did best — but I digress... 
Anyway, I want to talk about one perfect moment from the finale. The gang is participating in a public panel after the documentary finally aire

Even superheroes are getting on board with social distancing. 
Warner Bros. announced today that Wonder Woman 1984 would be pushed back due to the coronavirus, moving from June 5 to Aug. 14.
The studio has also pulled from its calendar In the Heights (original release date: June 26), Scoob (original release date: May 15), and Malignant (original release date: Aug. 14). No new dates have been set for those titles.
Said Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman Toby Emmerich in a statement (via Va

Photo by Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images When China placed a series of cities under lockdown in January to blunt the spread of COVID-19, experts warned that other countries may not be able to implement the same policies. But over the past few weeks, cities, states, and countries around the world have similarly restricted people’s movement in order to stop the virus’s spread.
Some people, who’ve been exposed to the virus, have to stay away from others for t

Worried about your favorite restaurants surviving amid the coronavirus pandemic? A new feature from GoFundMe and Yelp might help you help them. 
On Tuesday, the crowdfunding platform and review website announced a new partnership to help local businesses around the U.S. raise money while they're closed or offering limited services due to COVID-19, the official term for the disease caused by the virus.
Through the partnership, you'll soon be able to donate to restaurants, fitness clubs, nigh

Wonder Woman 1984 is the latest film to be delayed as movie theaters across the country shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.The film, which was supposed to open on June 5th, will now open on August 14th. Warner Bros. has also delayed In the Heights, a movie based on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical, indefinitely. Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated film, Tenet, is still on schedule for July 17th at this time.“When we greenlit Wonder Woman 1984, it was with every intention

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Spotify will no longer work with third-party DJ apps starting on July 1st, 2020. The news was posted by Algoriddim, the developer behind a popular DJ software for iOS called Djay. A Spotify representative confirmed the news to The Verge.
“As of July 1, 2020 Spotify will no longer be playable through 3rd party DJ apps,” reads Algoriddim’s announcement. “You’ll still be able to use Spotify in Djay until the end of June 2020. In

It’s impossible to play Animal Crossing: New Horizons wrong, but occasionally, you can miss crucial steps that will open up your island’s capabilities. If you’re finding yourself stuck — whether it’s a missing recipe or a location you can’t seem to reach — there’s an easier solution than tearing through your new home: invite some pals over or take a trip to one of their islands.
Like past games, New Horizons encourages players to spend some time wi

Plant-based meat products are bigger than ever, with the fast-food industry, grocery stores, and upscale restaurants coming on board. A recent Nielsen report found that plant-based meat alternative purchases went up 279.8 percent last week after Americans were instructed to stay home during the novel coronavirus pandemic.Impossible Foods, a company that develops plant-based meat products, says its mission is to someday replace the incumbent meat industry entirely, stating that, from a mission st

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has released iOS 13.4 and iPadOS 13.4, which add full mouse and trackpad support to iPads, iCloud Drive folder sharing, new nine new Memoji stickers, and more.
Arguably the biggest feature in today’s releases is the mouse and keyboard support for iPads, which Apple revealed last week when announcing its 2020 iPad Pros and the new Magic Keyboard accessory. iPadOS 13.0 introduced mouse support, but it’s significantly changed in iPadOS 13.4

Photo by Scott Heins / Getty Images As gyms across the United States close due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, streaming fitness companies like Tonal, FightCamp, and Mirror have temporarily halted filming new content due to executive orders by California and New York to shut down nonessential businesses. Peloton, however, is continuing to push on with production, hosting up to four live sessions daily filmed in an empty studio.
The decision has caused a divide between Peloton users. While so

Photo by Scott Heins / Getty Images As gyms across the United States close due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, streaming fitness companies like Tonal, FightCamp, and Mirror have temporarily halted filming new content due to executive orders by California and New York to shut down nonessential businesses. Peloton, however, is continuing to push on with production, hosting up to four live sessions daily filmed in an empty studio.
The decision has caused a divide between Peloton users. While so

TL;DR: Get the versatile Microsoft Surface Pro 7 (10th generation Intel Core i5, 8GB memory, 256GB SSD) for $899.99 at Best Buy as of March 24. That's $300 off the regular price, plus it's a better price than Amazon with faster delivery and more pickup options. Working from home is the new reality for those who have that privilege. There's a steep learning curve to adjust to your new daily habits, plus you also need a business laptop that's powerful enough to handle any job. But it doesn't

The video game Plague Inc. allows you to play as a disease, with the goal being to wipe out humanity. Ndemic Creations, the game’s makers, however, are very pro-human: they’ve just donated $250,000 to help fund COVID-19 relief and are now adding a mode to Plague Inc. that lets players stop an outbreak.“Eight years ago, I never imagined the real world would come to resemble a game of Plague Inc. or that so many players would be using Plague Inc. to help them get through an actua

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Ford has announced it’s working with 3M and General Electric to make the kinds of ventilators and masks that are currently in short supply as the world battles the novel coronavirus pandemic. The company joins other carmakers like Tesla and General Motors in helping out the medical community, after idling their automotive plants due to the effects the pandemic is having on both consumer demand and the global supply chain.
It all comes at a cruci

I’m writing this story under self-quarantine for novel coronavirus exposure. I’ve been sequestered for over a week while the city outside my apartment has become America’s COVID-19 epicenter: 13,000 known cases and 125 deaths so far. The governor has ordered six feet of space between all residents in public, and my days are punctuated with the screams of ambulance sirens; at a hospital nearby, doctors have resorted to cleaning used face masks with hand sanitizer. I feel fine, b

Social distancing has made many people miss all of the group activities we’re used to, like watching movies with friends, but there is a way to do it online. Netflix Party, a Chrome extension, lets you watch videos with your friends and chat together at the same time.Here’s how it works: you and your friends log in to your separate Netflix accounts. Pick a movie or show to watch, and Netflix Party will sync the playback across your accounts, so you’re all watching the same thin

An artistic rendering of ESA’s Solar Orbiter. | Image: ESA The European Space Agency is putting four of its space missions into “safe configurations” amid the novel coronavirus pandemic as the agency plans to reduce the number of people who can come into ESA’s primary mission control center in Germany. The instruments on these spacecraft will be turned off, and the vehicles will go “largely unattended” as they travel throughout the Solar System, according to

Wyze Wyze announced that both its Wyze Band fitness tracker featuring Alexa functionality and its Wyze Scale, its new connected weight scale, are available starting today. These fitness-focused devices are a departure for the company, which has focused on smart home tech like cameras, locks, and security sensors. Though, as you might have hoped, they both stick to Wyze’s tack for making tech that doesn’t cost much.
The Wyze Band wearable pictured above costs $25 plus shipping direct

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
The public markets are in turmoil as the economic impact of COVID-19 comes into focus; however, it is less clear what the impact of the changing value of public companies today will have on the valuations of private firms.
Startup valuations are impacted by a host of factors, one of which is the value of their public comparables (comps); if public comps lose value, private start

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Reddit has rolled out a new post type, polls, which lets you ask questions and vote on pretty much anything. Polls can offer up to six answers, be kept open for up to a week, and subreddit moderators can turn them off if desired. You create them like you would any other post type.
Reddit says it was motivated to create the feature because people have been making polls on the service for years using third-party services. In an average month, it says that 1

In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the customization options appear endless. You can make your tools pink, change your bedsheets, and remix your villager’s style with fresh haircuts and clothes. But while dozens of animal villagers have rocked sets of eyebrows for years, the series’s developers have yet to include them as a default customization option for your own character. In the latest installment, the new face painting feature is filling that void.
In order to create your own eye

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Speech recognition systems have more trouble understanding black users’ voices than those of white users, according to a new Stanford study.The researchers used voice recognition tools from Apple, Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft to transcribe interviews with 42 white people and 73 black people, all of which took place in the US. The tools misidentified words about 19 percent of the time during the interviews with white people and 35 percent of the time

If nothing else, we'll all come out of this period of the new coronavirus-induced isolation as better chefs: Not only is cooking a great distraction in these chaotic, uncertain times, but with many restaurants, cafés, and bars closed until further notice, ordering out is no longer an option for the kitchen averse among us.
SEE ALSO: Dealing with coronavirus-related anxiety? Try stress baking.
Whether your cooking skills extend to opening a bag of dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets or prepari