Technology news

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new guidelines today recommending that people in the US wear homemade face coverings to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.“This is voluntary. I don’t think I’m going to be doing it,” President Trump said in a press conference today.Since cases of COVID-19 were first reported in the US in January, the CDC said that only health care providers and people who are acute

When you look at the most successful companies in the world, they are almost never just one simple service. Instead, they offer a platform with a range of services and an ability to connect to it to allow external partners and developers to extend the base functionality that the company provides.
Aspiring to be a platform and actually succeeding at building one are not the same. While every startup probably sees themselves as becoming a platform play eventually, the fact is it’s hard to bu

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. Discord is a great program if you’re trying to keep in touch with online friends — and in recent days that’s become more important than ever. It also gives you more options than just text and voice chat, which I recommend taking advantage of in order to alleviate isolation. For example, what could be a better tonic for loneliness and ca

ESPN is set to air 12 hours of esports coverage on April 5th, turning to NBA 2K, Madden NFL 20, and Rocket League tournaments to fill the programming void left behind by traditional sports leagues going on hiatus.“ESPN Esports Day” is a marathon of live events and taped esports coverage that aired on ESPN2 over the last year, according to a press release. The marathon will begin with three hours of previous Madden NFL 20 content, including recaps of the Madden Classic, Club Champions

As of this writing, nearly a million people globally have been infected with the novel coronavirus and 50,322 have died. Healthcare systems are overwhelmed, consumers and profiteers are hoarding supplies and some service workers have launched strikes while many others have been let go. In the world of micromobility, we’ve seen Bird lay off hundreds of employees and Lime is reportedly gearing up for layoffs of its own.
Ride Report creates software that enables cities to better work with mic

Zoomis making some drastic changes to prevent rampant abuse as trolls attack publicly shared video calls. Starting April 5th, it will require passwords to enter calls via Meeting ID, as these may be guessed or reused. Meanwhile, it will change virtual waiting rooms to be on by default so hosts have to manually admit attendees.
The changes could prevent “Zoombombing,” a term I coined two weeks ago to describe malicious actors entering Zoom calls and disrupting them by screensharing of

This is not a drill: Jane Fonda has officially joined TikTok.
On Thursday night, the 82-year-old actress and activist posted her first video to the app TikTok and announced that she would be reviving her legendary home workouts to help people stay active during this period of coronavirus "home sequestration."
In the TikTok, Fonda can be seen lying on an exercise mat in her home and performing a few leg lifts for followers. If you keep watching, however, it becomes clear that physical fitness isn

Amazon is no longer selling N95 masks to average consumers, and instead prioritizing the product sales to hospitals and government organizations responding to the coronavirus pandemic. 
If you attempt to buy N95 masks on Amazon’s website, you’ll see the “add to cart” button is now gone. The company has replaced the function with a notice about the new restriction, which was first reported by Vox. 
Due to the pandemic, N95 masks are already in short supply. So Am

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Seemingly everyone knows about Zoom now: parents, co-workers, friends, grandparents, and neighbors. The videoconferencing software company that went public last year is having a moment during the pandemic. People have flocked to the service to keep up with friends, build digital clubs, and even host weddings. However, in this time of immense growth, researchers and journalists have scrutinized the app and found multiple security and privacy risks. People

Skype is trying to make it as easy as possible to use its video calling software and remind people that using the app isn’t complicated. The company tweeted a reminder today that users can now start a video meeting and invite people to it without using the app or even having an account; the process is done completely on the web. (People can start a call from here.) Skype is likely hoping this feature gives it a leg up on some of its competitors, namely Zoom, which has dominated the video c

Skype is trying to make it as easy as possible to use its video calling software. The company announced today that users can now start a video meeting and invite people to it without using the app or even having an account; the process is done completely on the web. People can start a call from here. This feature could give Skype a leg up on some of its competitors, namely Zoom, which has dominated the video calling conversation ever since the pandemic started.Zoom requires a meeting host to hav

Stocks fell in regular trading Friday, as all major American indices fell in the wake of a broadly negative jobs report. With more than 700,000 jobs lost in the March data, unemployment in the United States rose from 3.5% to 4.4%.
The markets have been bracing for widespread job losses due to the continued fallout from COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus that has prompted local, county and state officials throughout the U.S. and Europe to issue stay-at-home orders. Those directives have

Since 2016, social media companies have faced an endless barrage of bad press and public criticism for failing to anticipate how their platforms could be used for dark purposes at the scale of populations — undermining democracies around the world, say, or sowing social division and even fueling genocide.
As COVID-19 plunges the world into chaos and social isolation, those same companies may face a respite from focused criticism, particularly with the industry leveraging its extraordinary

As more people seek solutions for working out at home during the global measures to self-quarantine and social distance, another connected fitness equipment enters an increasingly crowded category. Forme, a smart mirror with a weight training system built in, combines the look of the reflective Mirror and the pulleys of Tonal, with a few other touches by industrial designer Yves Behar.
Similar to the Tonal, the Forme uses a hidden resistance system to simulate weight so you can perform push, pul

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge With the launch of Chrome 80 in February, Google began gradually rolling out an update that changes how third-party cookies work on websites, called “SameSite.” Today, it announced that it is temporarily rolling back this SameSite requirements in light of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The SameSite policy was a change in how Chrome treats cookies. Before, Chrome accepted more cookies by default, including from third parties. SameSite flipped that defa

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Thousands of Zoom cloud recordings have been exposed on the web because of the way Zoom names its recordings, according to a report by The Washington Post. The recordings are apparently named in “an identical way” and many have been posted onto unprotected Amazon Web Services (AWS) buckets, making it possible to find them through an online search.
One search engine that can look through cloud storage space turned up more than 15,000 Zoom recor

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Federal prosecutors are now warning pranksters and hackers of the potential legal implications of “Zoombombing,” wherein someone successfully invades a public or sometimes even private meeting over the videoconferencing platform to broadcast shock videos, pornography, or other disruptive content.The warning was posted as a press released to the Department of Justice’s website under the US Attorney’s office for the state’s Eas

Image: Marvel Disney is making a number of changes to its upcoming theatrical release dates in order to accommodate delayed films like Black Widow and Mulan. The studio’s upcoming Artemis Fowl movie, originally set to release on May 29th, is now ditching theaters entirely for aDisney Plus debut later this summer.
Mulan will now open on July 24th, four months after the film was originally set to open on March 27th. The move suggests that Disney believes people will be going back to theater

Amazon is planning to delay Prime Day until at least August due to the ongoing pandemic, according to internal meeting notes viewed by Reuters. Amazon expects it could lose $100 million “from excess devices it may now have to sell at a discount” because of the delay, according to Reuters. Amazon didn’t reply to a request for comment from The Verge about the potential delay.
Prime Day is typically a huge sales driver for the company. Amazon said that Prime Day 2019 (which actual

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge On The Verge’s flagship podcast of working from home, co-hosts of The Vergecast Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Paul Miller talk to Verge senior editor Tom Warren about the privacy and security backlash that videoconferencing software Zoom is facing after a surge in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic. What is Zoom doing to fix these issues to continue its strong lead? Well, I left a hyperlink of the episode here for you to find out.
The crew a

Methane-consuming serpulid worms on the seafloor off the coast of Costa Rica. | Image: Alvin, WHOI Scientists exploring deep-sea seeps, where methane bubbles up out of the seafloor, have made a discovery that changes our understanding of these mysterious ecosystems. They found that two species of tube worms actually trap methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, through a never-before-seen symbiotic relationship between the worms and methane-eating bacteria.
By mapping the seafloor near Costa Rica wi

My family never really had many traditions. Before moving to New York from Bangkok, we didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas, and after my father passed away a few days after my seventh birthday, it was hard to fully celebrate knowing that the week bookends itself with life and death.After I met my boyfriend, though, we became fond of traditions. Even though he’d grown up with American holidays, he always felt like they were never truly his as opposed to his parents’. When

Courtesy of NETFLIX Even if people haven’t seen Tiger King, Eric Goode’s seven-part documentary series about private zoo owners with an affinity for large cats (lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, and cougars to name a few), they’ve probably heard of it. Tiger King is unavoidable. It’s trending on TikTok, memes are all over Facebook and Twitter, and it’s sat in Netflix’s Top 10 spot — in the United States, Canada, Britain, and more countries around the wo

Amazon‘s about to make its big debut in the gaming industry. Not only does it have two games on the horizon, it’s also apparently going to take on Google and Microsoft in the cloud gaming space with a new service called Project Tempo. The news comes from a New York Times report, which doesn’t shed much light on Project Tempo beyond its name. The only other thing we know is that Amazon was hoping to reveal an early version of it this year, though the COVID-19 outbreak may

Image: Respawn Respawn’s battle royale title Apex Legends will add a permanent duos playlist to the game starting April 7th, the developer announced on Thursday. The decision is a welcome one for fans of the game who have long clamored for more variety in how the game can be played without needing to login for a special, limited-time event.Also starting the same day is permanent map rotation, so players will be dropping into both Kings Canyon and World’s Edge. It’s not clear i

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google Fi has temporarily increased its high-speed data cap to 30GB per user. Customers who have either a Flexible or Unlimited plan will have access to the data limit increase at no additional charge.Flexible plan users usually have 15GB of high-speed data, so this is a doubling of their typical cap. After they reach the limit, high-speed data will cost an additional $10 per GB for the remainder of the payment period. Unlimited plan members ordinarily ge

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge A few popular noise-canceling headphones are discounted today, including the new Beats Solo Pro over-ear wireless headphones. These usually cost $300, and they’re $50 off today at Amazon. Each color is discounted, so whether standard black, red, or sky blue is your favorite hue, the choice is yours.
This model features Apple’s new H1 wireless chip that makes it fast and easy to pair with your Apple devices. It also enables you to say “Hey, Siri

Photo by Brennan King / The Verge Recent MacBooks have included a security feature that shuts off the microphone at a hardware level when the lid is closed. Apple has now introduced the same feature on iPads, beginning with the 2020 iPad Pro. The iPad doesn’t have a lid, of course, so Apple instead activates the mic cut-off whenever a case with the company’s “Made for iPad” certification is closed over the screen. This should work with Apple’s own Smart Folio, Smar

I finally did it! I bit the bullet, and watched Tiger King on Netflix. And now I can understand each one of the memes and references about Carole Baskin and Joe Exotic. It’s a really gripping show, and I’m surely going to read more articles about those colorful characters. However, I really wish I had watched it with my friends, so that I can make fun of silly things. Alas, this social distancing is cruel that way, and I’m sure you are missing binging sessions with your friend

When the current season of Fortnite debuted, one of the most curious elements was the appearance of Deadpool. The Marvel anti-hero was present in various elements of the game — you could find him hidden away in a bathroom in the main battle pass menu — but you couldn’t actually play as him. That changes today, however, with the debut of a new Deadpool skin.
The skin is available to everyone who purchased this season’s battle pass, and it’s pretty easy to unlock; all