Technology news

Now that we’re spending more time indoors, we’re finding new platforms — and new ways to use old platforms — to stay in touch, whether it’s for work or with friends. This is the case with Slack, an instant-messaging platform which functions somewhere in the space between email and text messages. Designed for quick communication, Slack became an important tool for a lot of workplaces well before everyone started working from home. But you can use it for pretty much a

John Krasinski, best known for playing Jim Halpert on NBC’s The Office, is back behind a desk and talking into a camera — this time, in a video on his new YouTube channel dedicated to sharing good news.The show is exactly what it sounds like: Krasinski will talk about a few heartwarming, good stories that people might be looking for right now while stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.There are stories about the support cities around the world have shown health care workers fro

Baseball season might be indefinitely delayed, but the MLB is doing its best to fill the baseball-shaped hole in fans’ hearts with a new “MLB At Home” initiative that will see classic games and events, like the Home Run Derby, streamed nightly on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
The MLB already started streaming games last week for its “Opening Day At Home,” where it broadcast 30 games (featuring a momentous victory for each of the 30 MLB teams) to mark the missed st

Baseball season might be indefinitely delayed, but MLB is doing its best to fill the baseball-shaped hole in fans’ hearts with a new “MLB At Home” initiative that will see classic games and events, like the Home Run Derby, streamed nightly on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
MLB already started streaming games last week for its “Opening Day At Home,” where it broadcast 30 games (featuring a momentous victory for each of the 30 MLB teams) to mark the missed start of t

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Valve announced today that it won’t automatically update games in customers’ libraries as regularly as before to help preserve bandwidth during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Starting this week, Valve says Steam will only immediately auto-update games you’ve played in the last three days. Otherwise, Valve says Steam will be spreading out updates over several days. Steam had already been scheduling game updates for “the next off-pe

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter has made good — so far — on its pledge to crack down on tweets that contain false or misleading information about COVID-19 cures. The platform has deleted tweets by the presidents of Brazil and Venezuela and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for violating its ban on novel coronavirus-related content that “goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information.”“W

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge With all the uncertainty over when “shelter in place” orders will be lifted, Apple has recently been more willing to let early-stage products leave its campus for further development at the homes of its employees. This is according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who today reported about how Apple has been adapting to the work-from-home culture that’s now the norm across Big Tech and countless other companies around the world.Apple is

Photo: Seamus Blackley / Twitter As more people are faced with endless hours at home due to self-quarantine and social distancing, there’s been a surge in home bread baking show-and-tell on the internet over the past few days. But it’s safe to say that no one has been baking bread quite like Seamus Blackley, who finally has achieved his goal to re-create ancient Egyptian bread using yeast cultivated from samples that were over 4,000 years old and traditional tools and techniques dat

Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images Ford is the latest automaker to announce that it will start making desperately needed ventilators that are crucial for treating the worst symptoms of COVID-19. The automaker announced Monday that it will manufacture ventilators for General Electric’s health care division, which has licensed a “simplified” design that does not need electricity from a Florida ventilator company called Airon. Ford has already been working wi

Image: OpenTable OpenTable wants to let you reserve shopping times at supermarkets to help decrease overcrowding and make stores safer for shoppers.
OpenTable’s new tool will allow you to choose a vacant time slot or join a waitlist at partnered supermarkets and other essential businesses, much like setting up a reservation at a restaurant. Currently, only six grocery stores around Los Angeles and San Francisco are using the new feature, but OpenTable told The Verge it is in “active

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Voice and video calls have more than tripled on Comcast’s network over the past month since people across the US started working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a blog post this afternoon, Comcast said traffic for that category is up 212 percent in total, with overall peak traffic on its network up by 32 percent. In some cities, like San Francisco and Seattle, Comcast says peak traffic is up closer to 60 percent.
The numbers quantify a tr

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge If you’ve bought, flown, seen, or even thought about a drone over the last five years, it was likely one of DJI’s quadcopters. In fact, the Chinese company has so thoroughly consumed both the consumer and commercial drone markets that its dominance is now hitting a point of limited — and possibly even negative — returns, according to a new feature from Bloomberg Businessweek.
The piece is part reflective examination of how DJI got here,

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitch, the live-streaming behemoth, is down for a lot of people right now. More users than ever have been tuning in since the COVID-19 pandemic sent everyone indoors; it’s tough to say whether today’s outage is because of server strain or something else entirely.For its part, Twitch says it’s looking into the problem.We are investigating an issue that is causing the site not to load properly. We will update you when we know more.—

Image: Andrew Liptak / The Verge Back in May 2019, at its I/O developers conference, Google announced that it was bringing a neat feature to its search results: augmented reality models, which allow users to take a look at a 3D image of a search result. Shortly after, the company rolled out the feature to users with an ARCore or ARKit-ready Android phone or iPhone, as spotted by CNET, allowing them to place an AR animal right in their living room, bedroom, or backyard.
Today, with adults and ki

Image: Apple It looks like big updates are coming to Apple’s professional music software, Logic Pro X. Yesterday, a Reddit user noticed that Apple’s education products webpage showed a version of Logic with ported functions from Logic Pro X’s little software brother, GarageBand. The image has since been replaced on Apple’s website, but a cache of the page on Wayback Machine confirms it’s real.
Even though GarageBand and Logic Pro X are both music-making DAWs (digit

Workers at Amazon’s Staten Island, NY, fulfillment center walked out today to protest the company’s response to COVID-19 infections among its warehouse employees. Amazon has confirmed one case of the coronavirus at the New York facility, but workers say there have been at least ten, and that the company has failed to notify workers or properly clean the warehouse. Now, they are calling for Amazon to shut down the facility for two weeks for deep cleaning.“The goal is to get that

Richard Branson’s aerospace company Virgin Orbit, which is primarily focused on developing rockets to launch small satellites into space, is shifting gears during the coronavirus pandemic and has created a new medical device to help health care workers treat patients with COVID-19. The company is hoping to mass-produce the new device after receiving the necessary approvals from the FDA.
The device that Virgin Orbit has created is one that can help people get much-needed oxygen when they&rs

Good Job! was one of the multiple titles Nintendo surprise-dropped in its Nintendo Direct Mini presentation last week, and it arguably couldn’t have come out at a better time. It’s a lighthearted and chaotic puzzle game set at an office complex that’s a perfect, bite-sized replacement for anyone missing their day-to-day work life.
The brightly animated world appears to be based on road or safety signs, and puts players in the role of a featureless caution sign person who we&rsq

Microsoft unveiled its new Microsoft 365 subscription plans today and some new Edge browser features. The biggest new addition is vertical tabs for Edge, which will allow users to stack tabs at the side of the browser instead of the traditional long list of tabs at the top. While it might look a little peculiar at first, it will be ideal for 16:9 monitors and laptops.
Websites typically look stretched out on these types of displays, with a lot of wasted vertical space. If you’re using a 3:

Now that people are finding themselves working remotely or setting up virtual parties to chat with friends and family while maintaining social distance, Zoom is quickly becoming the go-to source for those gatherings. But when you spend days quarantining at home, cleaning up for a Zoom call might be the last thing on your mind.Verge reviews editor Barbara Krasnoff has already told you how you can make use of Zoom’s custom background tool to hide messy backdrops or running children and pets.

Photo by Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images At 10AM ET on March 30th, the US Navy’s gigantic floating hospital ship, the USNS Comfort, arrived in New York City where it has been sent to help relieve the pressure on the city’s hospitals that are overwhelmed with coronavirus patients.The Comfort’s 1,000 beds and 12 operating rooms will largely be used for non-coronavirus patients, freeing up much-needed space at the city’s overtaxed hospitals. The ship is typi

Image: Stack Overflow Stack Overflow, the popular question and answer site for developers and software engineers, announced a new dark mode today. The company says the mode has been the site’s most upvoted feature request ever.
It looks like, well, a dark mode. Here’s a screenshot, provided by Stack Overflow:Image: Stack Overflow
You can turn on dark mode by clicking on your profile, “Edit profile and settings,” and “preferences,” the company tells The Verge.

Fans will get an opportunity to play Riot’s Overwatch-meets-Counter-Strike game Valorant very soon: today, the developer announced that a closed beta will be launching on April 7th. It’s not clear just how big the beta will be or how long it will last, but Riot says that prospective players will need to link their Riot and Twitch accounts to be eligible. “When closed beta activates in your region, watch specific Valorant streams highlighted on Twitch for the opportunity to be e

LockPickingLawyer (YouTube) Tapplock, a company that makes fingerprint-verified locks, has had a rough time with its locks’ security. The company’s flagship lock, which has been available since 2019, is apparently easy to pop open with a magnet. YouTuber LockPickingLawyer published a video last week showing how he could use a powerful magnet to turn the motor inside the Tapplock One Plus, causing it to open. The entire process takes less than 30 seconds.
The Tapplock One Plus costs

Microsoft is unveiling its new Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions today, which are designed to replace and enhance existing Office 365 consumer plans. Much like the Office 365 Personal and Home subscriptions that exist today, Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans will be available on April 21st, priced at $6.99 per month for Personal (one person) and $9.99 a month for a Family (up to six people) subscription. Both options will include access to Office, and new features will gradua

Dominic Toretto’s 1970 Dodge Charger is one of the most iconic cars in the Fast and Furious franchise, and soon, it’ll be available as a Lego set.
The model is a part of Lego’s Technic line, which means that it won’t just look cool; it will also include some moving parts. The car comes decked out with a replica V8 engine and a bottle of NOS (nitrous oxide) in the back — which is important if your goal is to try to race a model train to really set up the mood of the

Photo by Kelly West / AFP / Getty Images 3D-printed firearms company Defcad has released a trove of gun-making blueprints, only to approved US residents. According to The Wall Street Journal, Defcad is selling access for a $50 annual fee, which director Cody Wilson describes as a “Netflix for guns” model.
The company has temporarily released blueprints before. Under the Obama administration, the plan ran afoul of International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) rules that prevent ex

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge At Best Buy, Amazon’s Echo Show 8 comes in a two-pack for $130, the usual cost for just one of these smart displays. To take advantage of this deal, head to this page and simply add two of them to your cart, and feel free to mix up the colors.The Echo Show 8 earned the distinction of being the best smart display for most people in our buying guide. Up against the Google Nest Hub lineup, the Echo Show 8 offers the most features, even if it misses out on a f

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge At Best Buy, Amazon’s Echo Show 8 comes in a two-pack for $130, the usual cost for just one of these smart displays. To take advantage of this deal, head to this page and simply add two of them to your cart, and feel free to mix up the colors.The Echo Show 8 earned the distinction of being the best smart display for most people in our buying guide. Up against the Google Nest Hub lineup, the Echo Show 8 offers the most features, even if it misses out on a f

Image: @OnLeaks and iGeeksBlog The OnePlus 8 will be announced on April 14th during an online live stream, the company announced today. OnePlus says the lineup will consist of a “full series of 5G devices,” and there will be a handset with a 120Hz display in the lineup, up from the 90Hz displays found on some of its phones last year. Two main devices are expected to be launched at the event, the OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro, although recent reports have claimed that they may be joined by a c

Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week.
If you missed Friday’s main episode, it was a fun one so take the time if you have the minutes; we’re settling into a new hosting lineup that is shaping up to be our best ever, so we’re having a blast even if we have to record remotely instead of in the same room.
This morning was a bit of a mixed bag. The world is still in pretty bad shape as societi

Acer has announced that it will release a new version of its Aspire 5 laptop this year, powered by AMD’s Ryzen 5 4500U mobile chip. The company has also revealed the release date for its Ryzen-powered Swift 3.
With both lines, Acer aims to provide fairly slim products at an affordable price; reviewers often note that the devices look and feel more expensive than they are. The U-Series, which both laptops incorporate, is designed for ultraportable devices. AcerThe upcoming Acer Swift 3
The

Photo by James Black/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images The Food and Drug Administration has approved 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 Systems could decontami

Gocycle’s e-bikes are being offered as part of the plan. | Image: Gocycle Key National Health Service (NHS) workers in London are being offered a three-month e-bike loan to help them commute to work while social distancing. There are currently 20 Gocycle GS loaner e-bikes available, with more brands like Raleigh soon to join. The e-bikes and Abus locks and helmets are being distributed as part of a plan being organized by London-based e-bike retailer Fully Charged. Interested NHS workers

Welcome to Cozy Week, where we'll curl up by the glow of our screens to celebrate all that's soft in entertainment. Pour yourself a cup of hot cocoa and sit by us as we coo over the cutest games, cry over the tenderest movie moments, and drift off to the most comforting shows. Because it can be a cold world out there, and we need something to keep us warm.
Even the darkest TV dramas need moments to breathe, so we're spotlighting the moments of unexpected relief in otherwise tension-filled televi