Technology news

Image: Wyze Smart home gadget maker Wyze has released a firmware update and set of instructions for turning its low-cost security camera into a working webcam at a time when proper webcams from brands like Logitech are increasingly hard to find.The update, which was released roughly an hour ago on Wyze’s support website, involves manually installing firmware onto your Wyze camera that will temporarily turn it into a webcam, after which it will no longer connect to the Wyze app and functio

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Tesla announced on March 19th that it would temporarily shut down its electric car factory in California, after back-and-forth with local officials about whether the plant was subject to a county-wide coronavirus shelter-in-place order. But the Silicon Valley automaker fought to keep the factory open after that announcement as well, according to new emails obtained by Protocol. It also came after the county’s health officer decided that keeping the p

The Future Today Institute We’re continuing our Vergecast interview series remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic and this week, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel sits down via Skype with Amy Webb, the founder and CEO of The Future Today Institute.Amy is also a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and recently came out with a book called The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity.The Future Today Institute recently published the 2020 Tech

Movie posters and billboards are useless right now, so marketing teams all seem to have landed on the same solution: Zoom backgrounds.
Yesterday, Pixar tweeted out backgrounds for Toy Story, Cars, and Up. The Twitter accounts for the Top Gun sequel, the Spongebob movie, and the Quiet Place sequel offered their own Zoom backgrounds. And CBS and Starz got in on the move too, offering up backgrounds for Young Sheldon, Big Brother, and a bunch of sitcoms I’ve never heard of.
Your mileage will

Team Cherry If you’ve been wanting to support organizations that are helping to supply those fighting on the front lines against the novel coronavirus, the latest Humble Bundle is a good opportunity to do just that. You can pay anything you want, but you’ll need to pay $30 in order to get the full bounty of PC games available (DRM-free or Steam keys), as well as several ebooks and digital comics (available in several formats), and some software.That $30 gets you a bunch of top games

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge With schools closed and governments issuing orders for people to stay at home, a lot of kids have no choice but to turn to their screens for school and any kind of socializing. The debate over how much screentime is healthy is nothing new, but our devices have arguably never played as big a role in our lives as they do now when it comes to staying connected amid a global pandemic.
devices have arguably never played such a big a role in our lives
To unders

Image: Activision After years of speculation, a remastered version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s single-player campaign is finally here, bringing an enhanced version of one of the most iconic FPS games of the late 2000s onto modern hardware.
The enhanced version of Modern Warfare 2 only includes the single-player campaign. The remastered version adds high-definition visuals and audio improvements to the original story from 2009, according to a blog post by Activision. The game is av

Photo by Horacio Villalobos#Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images Uber is ramping up its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, pledging 10 million free rides and food deliveries for health care workers, senior citizens, and others affected by the outbreak.Uber is already providing free rides and food deliveries to NHS workers fighting the virus in the UK. Now the company is looking to expand this offer globally. Uber says that “any organization, healthcare provider, or governmental entity is eligib

#1777, stock, slack, zoom While many companies are already using the videoconferencing app Zoom for business meetings, interviews, and other purposes, individuals who are facing long days without contact with friends and family are moving to Zoom for face-to-face and group get-togethers.
This is a quick guide for those who haven’t tried Zoom yet, featuring tips on how to get started using its free version. One thing to keep in mind: while one-to-one video calls can go as long as you want,

Update: Unfortunately, we’re going to have to postpone this call. We’ll be in touch soon with the new dates. In the meantime, we have plenty of exciting calls slated and can’t wait to share them with you. Stay tuned!
Stuck at home?
JK! I know you are! You’re not alone.
FirstMark Capital partners Rick Heitzmann, Amish Jani, Matt Turck, Beth Ferreira, and Adam Nelson are also working from home. But neither distance nor virus can truly keep us all apart.
That’s why I&r

Like every other sports league, the NBA is paused right now. However, the fact that there aren’t any actual games airing hasn’t stopped some people from wondering how the rest of the season would play out.
So online stunt collective MSCHF is launching NBA.FM, a new simulation that will broadcast hyperrealistic audio gameplay from the remaining games on the NBA’s 2020 calendar. MSCHF has partnered with official broadcasters to provide commentary on the game as if it were actuall

Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images Zoom states on its website and in its security white paper that it supports end-to-end encryption for its meetings. But new research from The Intercept reveals that’s not exactly true.The Intercept asked a Zoom spokesperson whether video meetings that take place on the platform are end-to-end encrypted, and the spokesperson said that “Currently, it is not possible to enable E2E encryption for Zoom video meetings.”Zoom does use TLS en

The value of technology companies has fallen as the broader public markets have repriced themselves in light of COVID-19-related market and economic disruptions.
And as the public markets sort out the new value of a huge piece of global business, private companies are being shaken as well.
What happens in the public markets trickles into the private markets, so if we’re seeing the value of public tech companies fall, startups are going to take a hit. To understand that dynamic, we spoke wi

Image: Dark Sky Apple has acquired popular weather app Dark Sky and will be shutting down the Dark Sky Android and Wear OS apps in July, Dark Sky announced in a blog post today.“Our goal has always been to provide the world with the best weather information possible, to help as many people as we can stay dry and safe, and to do so in a way that respects your privacy,” Dark Sky co-founder Adam Grossman writes in the post. “There is no better place to accomplish these goals than

Photo: ZeniMax Media QuakeCon, the annual fan convention and tournament dedicated to the legendary first-person shooter game, has been canceled due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The convention has been held every year for the past 24 years in Dallas, Texas, making the official 25th anniversary celebration the first QuakeCon to be canceled in the event’s history. It was to be held in August.The organizers — including Quake publisher Bethesda Softworks and parent company ZeniMa

Last week, the Internet Archive launched a “National Emergency Library” offering access to 1.4 million free books during the coronavirus pandemic. The library aims to serve people who can’t access a normal classroom or public library, and it’s open worldwide until June 30th or whenever the US ends its national emergency. But it’s raised questions about whether the Internet Archive’s trove of books is legal — and whether it hurts writers.
The Emergency Li

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Phone providers will be required to implement call verification technology by the end of June 2021 under rules approved today by the Federal Communications Commission. The technology, known as STIR/SHAKEN, allows phone providers to verify that a call is coming from a real number, letting people know they should pick up the phone rather than ignore a spoofed robocall.
The FCC has been slow to mandate any kind of anti-robocalling technology. Today’s approval

Image: Samsung AKG, one of Samsung’s many audio brands, has quietly announced its first pair of true wireless earbuds, the AKG N400, via a product page posted on Samsung’s South Korean website. According to TizenHelp, which spotted the page, the earbuds feature noise cancellation, and can run for five hours on a single charge (or six if you turn off ANC). They’re available in black, white, and blue, and also support wireless charging.It’s an interesting time to launch a

Today is the last day you can submit your application to become a NASA astronaut, in case you have an overwhelming urge to fling yourself off the planet for a while. The deadline to get your application in to NASA is 11:59PM ET tonight, so there’s only a few precious hours left to potentially line up your escape plan from Earth.
NASA is recruiting a new round of astronauts for its highly touted Artemis program, an initiative to send the first woman to the surface of the Moon. The goal is t

Photo by Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images Donald Trump has finally gotten one of the longstanding wishes of his presidency: the weakening of an Obama-era fuel economy standard that made new cars more fuel efficient and more environmentally friendly. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency announced a new rule on Tuesday that will take its place, one that will increase pollution while the world wrestles with a respiratory virus pandemic and a climate

Palo Alto Networks announced today that it has an agreement in place to acquire CloudGenix for $420 million.
CloudGenixdelivers a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) that helps customers stay secure by setting policies to enforce compliance with company security protocols across distributed locations. This is especially useful for companies with a lot of branch offices or a generally distributed workforce, something just about everyone is dealing with at the moment as we find millions su

Photo by Brooke Palmer / Warner Bros. Entertainment For nearly two decades, brands around the world have gathered each year to celebrate two occasions: the anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks, and April fools’ day. They’re like holidays for the most cringeworthy and deplorable content imaginable, and no natural or human disaster has been able to interrupt them — until now.
Google, which typically spends about 40-percent of its yearly budget on April fools

Rafael Rivera (Twitter) Microsoft has created a scrolling news bar app for Windows 10. It sits above the Windows taskbar and provides scrolling 24/7 news from more than 4,500 publications alongside customizable stock information. It’s very similar to scrolling news apps we used to see in the ‘90s for Windows PCs, and it was developed by Microsoft’s internal News team (formerly MSN News).
Microsoft is releasing the News Bar app as a beta for Windows 10 user this week. The setti

Photo Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Grubhub announced last week that, between the hours of 5 to 9 PM, customers could order takeout or delivery through its platform and receive $10 off orders of $30 or more. It sounds like a good deal, until you realize that while Grubhub is promoting the offer on behalf on restaurants, it’s also contractually forcing those business owners to eat the cost of that discount for every eligible order. (Disclosure: my