Technology news

Microsoftis pulling out of an investment in an Israeli facial recognition technology developer as part of a broader policy shift to halt any minority investments in facial recognition startups, the company announced late last week.
The decision to withdraw its investment from AnyVision,an Israeli company developing facial recognition software, came as a result of an investigation into reports that AnyVision’s technology was being used by the Israeli government to surveil residents in the W

Social distancing has made dating more complicated, but that doesn't mean it's off the table entirely. 
Brooklyn-based photographer Jeremy Cohen stepped up social-distancing dating and documented it all in a series of TikToks. Last week he noticed his neighbor, Tori Cignarella, dancing on her roof across the street from his apartment and took a chance. Flirting is "usually daunting" for him, he said in his TikTok, but the circumstances gave him a boost of confidence. 
"I think being co

If you dye it, they will not come.
Police in Buxton, England found a clever way to prevent would-be influencers from flocking to the town's Instagrammable Caribbean-blue quarry lake — they dumped buckets of black dye in the water and called it a day.
According to a Facebook post by the local police department, they'd received calls complaining of people gathering at the picturesque "Blue Lagoon." The UK government instituted a stay-at-home order last week to combat the on-going coronavirus

WinFuture.de/Roland Quandt A pair of leaks shows renders for the upcoming OnePlus 8 series that include a slate of new colors, including a purplish-red one called Interstellar Glow. WinFuture and Ishan Agarwal both posted images of the new colors, which also include a Glacial Green and Onyx Black, according to Agarwal.#OnePlus8 Official Renders have leaked! I know what the marketing name for these colours will be:
-Interstellar Glow
-Glacial Green
-Onyx Black
Looks amazing in my opinion! What d

Coronavirus has created a new normal, and it's quieter and far less crowded. 
With more than one-third of the world's population hunkered down indoors, once-bustling international landmarks and attractions are now vacant. The near-total absence of people has allowed for extraordinary photographs that show some of the world's most celebrated places as quiet shadows of their pre-COVID-19 existences. 
While it may be tempting to go out to visit historical sites near you, it's best to stay

Most people are staying at home, but that doesn't mean we can't appreciate good art. 
To combat the spread of the coronavirus, the state of California issued a stay at home order last week. That means that all non-essential businesses, including museums, have to close for the foreseeable future. To keep the appreciation for the arts alive, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles asked people to recreate their favorite works of art using household objects. 
After all, it's not like anyone was d

Photo by BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP via Getty Images Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New York will postpone its April 28th presidential primary election until June 23rd, as the Empire State deals with the largest coronavirus outbreak in the US, the New York Times reports.“I don’t think it’s wise to be bringing a lot of people to one location to vote, a lot of people touching one doorknob, a lot of people touching one pen,” Cuomo said during a news conference Saturday. New York’s pr

Let me make this incredibly clear *clears throat*:
Turn off your iPhone Screen Time notifications. Go ahead, do it. It's OK. 
When every day of coronavirus social distancing feels like a Tuesday on repeat, the weekly iPhone Screen Time alert is one way to know it's actually Sunday. And friends, it's a brutal reality to wake up to when all you wanted to do was make pancakes and finish Tiger King. 
Each Sunday morning, your iPhone lights up with a notification. No, it's not a kind-but-wo

On CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, the leading U.S. authority on the COVID-19 pandemic made some grim predictions about the course of the novel coronavirus as it rages through communities within the United States.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and emerging face of American leadership in the fight against the virus, estimated that the U.S. may see between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths from COVID-19, the deadly disease ca

Photo by James Black/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images The Food and Drug Administration has approved the limited use of a process that would clean much-needed N95 protective face masks and allow them to be reused, the agency said in a release. Columbus-Ohio based Battelle uses a “vapor phase hydrogen peroxide” process to decontaminate the masks being used by healthcare providers and others to protect against the spread of COVID-19. Battelle says its Critical Care Decontamination Syst

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft is seeing a massive increase in demand for its cloud services during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. “We have seen a 775 percent increase of our cloud services in regions that have enforced social distancing or shelter in place orders,” explains a Microsoft Azure blog post. This increase in demand includes Windows Virtual Desktop usage growing more than three times, and record numbers across Microsoft Teams, Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Li

Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren may have ended her 2020 presidential run, but the tech used to drive her campaign will live on.
Members of her staff announced they would make public the top apps and digital tools developed in Warren’s bid to become the Democratic nominee for president.
“In our work, we leaned heavily on open source technology — and want to contribute back to that community…[by] open-sourcing some of the most important projects of the Elizabeth Warren

March Mindfulness is Mashable's series that examines the intersection of meditation practice and technology. Because even in the time of coronavirus, March doesn't have to be madness. My mind is too active to meditate. Too busy. There's too much going on. 
Those feelings are valid. Meditation, even in normal times, is not easy. If you have experienced trauma, meditation might not even be effective. 
For me, however, saying my mind was “too active” was a flattering way

It can be difficult to find time to finish a video game, especially if you only have a few hours a week to play. In our biweekly column Short Play, we suggest video games that can be started and finished in a weekend.
Growing up, I played a lot of educational games on the Apple IIe, like Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? The games that actually taught me things were also the ones that were fun to play, learning how a particular subject aligned with how you needed to think a

The 2020 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit has been canceled as FEMA officials prepare to use its venue, the TCF Center, as a temporary field hospital for COVID-19, CNBC reports.“Although we are disappointed, there is nothing more important to us than the health, safety and well-being of the citizens of Detroit and Michigan, and we will do what we can to support our community’s fight against the coronavirus outbreak,” Rod Alberts, executive director of t

Rick and Morty fans, rejoice! As you're waiting for news about the last five episodes of the show's fourth season, watch as the duo temporarily enters the anime world. 
In this animated short titled "Samurai & Shogun," Rick and Morty fight off a group of vengeful ninja Ricks who insist he kidnapped Morty. Fans are taken on a trippy ride throughout the almost six-minute clip, complete with colorful graphics that don't disappoint as the duo defend their lives in this parallel universe. &n

Weird times call for weird measures, and that means thousands and thousands of people using a business video conferencing app to show off their cats to their friends during a nationwide quarantine.
Zoom has gotten a bunch of interest in the past few weeks as Americans scramble to figure out the right video chat app for them. Many have settled on the business-focused service because it doesn't leave their Android-having friends out to dry like FaceTime and it can accommodate more video callers at

After the shutdown, the testing and tracing. “Trace, test and treat is the mantra … no lockdowns, no roadblocks and no restriction on movement” in South Korea. “To suppress and control the epidemic, countries must isolate, test, treat and trace,” say WHO.
But what does “tracing” look like exactly? In Singapore, they use a “TraceTogether” app, which uses Bluetooth to track nearby phones (without location tracking), keeps local logs of those c

For all the debate over whether the best coffee comes from a Chemex or a French press or an AeroPress, sometimes you just want to turn on a machine and let it do all the work. We asked 14 coffee experts — baristas, roasters, food-industry professionals, and just plain coffee snobs — what coffee makers out there will give you a good, simple at-home brew without all the fuss. Below are their eight favorite machines for people who think the best part of waking up is having a gadget make

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge US government officials are using cellphone location data from the mobile ad industry —not data from the carriers themselves— to track Americans’ movements during the coronavirus outbreak, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with state and local governments have received cell phone data about people in areas of “geographic interest,” the WSJ reports.The goal is to create a go

Wooing March sisters requires proper hydration. And Laurie was thirsty.
Little Women suffered a Game of Thrones Starbucks cup moment, but none of us noticed until now. Twitter user @DUNENATION spotted a plastic water bottle and a Hydro Flask (or possibly a Yeti — the internet is divided) in the background of a scene in Greta Gerwig's 2019 retelling of the Louisa May Alcott classic.
See for yourself:PLEASE THE HYDROFLASK AND WATER BOTTLE I CANNOT pic.twitter.com/KxwFOSAfOL
— mya (@DUN

Remember desktop pets? In the very early days of the web, they came in many forms (cats, ants, cockroaches, even spyware), all of them cute little pixels who just hung out on your screen to keep you company. It made the strange, isolating new world wide web we all found ourselves in feel a little more like home.
Sadly, most of the ones we knew and loved in the past died quiet digital deaths. Yet we can thank indie game and web art designer Natalie Lawhead (aka alienmelon) for keeping the dream o

Having trouble sleeping? Hit Snooze is Mashable's deep dive into how we cope with our collective insomnia and the many ways we can achieve a more peaceful slumber.You're exhausted. All you need is sweet, precious, lovely sleep. But the very thing you need right now just won't happen. You toss, you turn, you tear your hair out, but you don't drift off.
So, what do you do when you can't fall asleep? It's a question I've asked myself many a time when slumber has escaped me. Sleeping doesn't always

The world does not look the same as it did the last time we did one of these posts. Don't get us wrong, things weren't great in February, either. But, we weren't dealing with, you know, a pandemic. 
And while we don't want to make light of a genuinely serious situation, we thought it might be nice to just take a moment away from the crushing anxiety about the state of our world to talk about the fun stuff we bought this month — mainly because we needed things to keep us occupied and m

TL;DR: Get a lifetime subscription to XSplit VCam for just $19.99, a 59% savings as of March 29. If you're navigating the transition from an actual office to your home, you're not alone. Consider yourself one of the lucky ones and try to make the most of the shift. After all, you get to stay in your pajamas all day if you want. 
But while the business world has slowed down, it hasn't stopped completely. And that means you still have to stay on top of things — like attending meeti

TL;DR: Get this super light balance bike, the Brilrider FLIGHT, for $84, a 47% savings as of March 29. Being cooped up in the house is, for lack of a better word, dull. And if you're social distancing with your kids, there's only so much Frozen II you can take before losing your damn mind. 
If you're looking for something to do outdoors with your young ones, you should check out this Brilrider FLIGHT Balance Bike.
Super lightweight and easy to use, the Brilrider FLIGHT will have your t

TL;DR: Get a 3-month subscription to Canva Pro for just $12.99, a 66% savings as of March 29. With non-essential businesses closing left and right for the indefinite future, everyone – from small shop owners to restauranteurs – is looking for ways to expand their online presence. Social media  is more important than ever if you don't want to be completely forgotten when this is all over. But it's kind of hard to learn how to code and design marketing materials when you're s

So now that you're working from home due to the coronavirus outbreak, you're probably realizing your current laptop kind of sucks. Right? The battery only lasts a couple of hours, at most, the screen is cracked and dirty, and the storage isn't even worth talking about. Since nobody knows for sure how long this new reality will last, it's probably worth upgrading your setup.
Don't worry, you don't need to spend a fortune. We've rounded up 11 laptops, desktops, and tablets that have either been re

TL;DR: Ann Summers has extended its mid-season sale, with savings of up to 70% on list price.Ann Summers knows how desperately we all need entertainment, and has extended its mid-season sale. You can now save up to 70% on the list price of sex toys, lingerie sets, nightwear, and more.
An Ann Summers Sale isn't going to solve all the world's problems right away, but it could help. At the very least, it's a welcome distraction.
SEE ALSO: 6 of the best vibrators in the UK: The good, the great, and

TL;DR: A three-year subscription to CyberGhost VPN is on sale for £2.10 per month, with 10% of sales donated to the Coronavirus Relief Fund.We're all in this together, and even VPN providers are now joining the global battle against coronavirus.
To ease the burden of this pandemic, CyberGhost VPN has teamed up with GlobalGiving, a nonprofit organisation that connects donors with grassroots projects around the world, to contribute to the Coronavirus Relief Fund. 
SEE ALSO: Best VP

The North American International Auto Show,which was scheduled for June in Detroit, has been canceled as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread and the city prepares to repurpose the TCF Center into a temporary field hospital.
NAIAS is held each year in the TCF Center, formerly known as the Cobo Center. Organizers said they expected the Federal Emergency Management Agency to designate the TCF Center as a field hospital.
“Although we are disappointed, there is nothing more important to u