Technology news

Motorola Motorola’s foldable Razr phone now comes in a blush gold color variant. The gold version features a black-and-gold color scheme, with the bottom back portion of the product featuring the gold coloring.Much like the original “noir black” model, it is still a Verizon-exclusive phone that will set you back $1,499. Both color variants feature the same specs, including a midrange Snapdragon 710 processor.Although the foldable phone now comes in an additional color option,

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has officially removed the Hangouts brand from its enterprise G Suite offering with the rebranding of Hangouts Chat as Google Chat, the company confirmed to The Verge on Thursday. The rebranding follows a similar name change, confirmed yesterday, from the companion video conferencing app Hangouts Meet to just Google Meet. This latest modification was first hinted at by an updated G Suite support document listing the Google Chat name alongside Googl

An artistic rendering of BepiColombo as it swings by Earth. | Image: ESA / ATG medialab On Friday, an interplanetary spacecraft will slingshot around Earth in the super early morning hours. The spacecraft, a joint European and Japanese creation, will use our planet’s gravity to brake its speed and change its course through the Solar System, putting itself on track to reach Mercury in the next five years.
The probe whipping by our planet is called BepiColombo, which is actually two spacecr

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitch announced today that it’s bringing its beta version of Watch Parties, which allows streamers to broadcast Prime Video content, to all of its partners — and then all American creators. That means every streamer in the US on Twitch will be able to watch Prime content with their viewers, regardless of whether they’re a Twitch Partner. The company plans to bring Watch Parties worldwide eventually, with more news coming in the next few

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google announced today that it’s extending free access to some advanced features in its teleconferencing service Google Meet until September 30th. Google had previously announced on March 3rd that it would offer free access to those features until July 1st.
Google is letting all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers host meetings via Meet with up to 250 participants, live-stream to up to 100,000 people within a single domain, and save meeting

Photo Illustration by Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Being able to stay in touch while social distancing is really important, which is why we’ve come to rely on apps that help you make group calls. WhatsApp, which sends messages over the internet rather than SMS, has become a popular alternative to texting, but it also lets you make calls. On WhatsApp, you can do an audio-only or video group call with up to four people. WhatsApp is a good alternative to Zoom f

Image: James Strommer A prototype smart toilet that can identify you by your “analprint” and monitor your trip to the loo has been created by researchers at Stanford University. It’s equipped with cameras and sensors that collect information on your bodily waste, and it uses that data to look for any health issues you might have.
The “analprint” is the toilet’s primary way of identifying each user. Much to the authors’ dismay, it’s also the aspect

Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images Saturday Night Live adheres to a couple of basic principles: the show is shot in front of a live studio audience at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and the cast works together to produce sketches for the weekly show. Since that’s impossible right now because of circumstances surrounding the pandemic, Saturday Night Live is going to try to make history by producing an entire episode remotely.
This week’s show will feature sketches from cast membe

Amazon-owned Ring today announced a second generation of its home security system that comes with a set of sleeker, smaller hardware. The updated keypad now has buttons for quick access to contacting emergency services, such as police, fire, or medical assistance. (You’ll need to hold the button for three seconds before it begins calling those services.) The new motion and contact sensors are also slimmer, making them easier to blend into the corners and edges of your home. All hardware no

Photo by BENOIT DOPPAGNE/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images Since late March, President Donald Trump has been promoting the antimalarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as treatments for the novel coronavirus. Among other things, he’s described “strong, powerful signs” that the drugs work and called them potentially “one of the biggest game-changers in the history of medicine.” That will be fantastic if it proves true, but right now, we have no idea. As the hy

Back in March, Blizzard introduced hero pools to Overwatch, a rotating list of heroes that would be banned from competitive play. The idea was to shake up the game and keep any one character or team composition from becoming dominant. Now, the developer is making some changes that it says are aimed at making the feature more straightforward and easier to understand.
“We’ve received a lot of helpful feedback since hero pools came to competitive play that the system was achieving our g

Photo by Aidan Loughran / NurPhoto via Getty Images Uber will start distributing face masks to drivers and delivery workers, focusing first on the cities hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. The company will begin urging riders to wear face masks as well, in accordance with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.On Tuesday, the company shipped its first order of masks for drivers in New York City, which is the epicenter of the outbreak in the US, and it expects to rece

Google announced on Thursday that it now offers a Braille keyboard integrated directly into Android. The company says the new feature will make its operating system more accessible for people who are visually impaired, without requiring extra hardware.The keyboard, called TalkBack, uses a six-key layout. Each key represents one of six Braille dots, which will form letters and symbols when tapped in combination. You can use TalkBack the same way you use any other keyboard: it works across all And

Photo by Ross Miller / The Verge Few questions are as divisive as the hot dog / sandwich debate. I’ve certainly had it more times than I can count.But what’s unique about the controversy isn’t how eager people are to argue; it’s how dead-set they are in their opinions from the get-go. Even the most ambivalent, indecisive people I know have strong opinions about the categorical identity of a hot dog. I’ve also never seen anyone change their mind on the matter. Nobod

Just a few weeks after a new Simpsons short film hit theaters alongside Pixar’s Onward, Disney is bringing the short to Disney Plus starting on Friday, April 10th.
“Playdate with Destiny” was the second non-Pixar short to play before a Pixar movie and the first Fox property to do so since Disney acquired the company. The short stars Maggie Simpson as she’s separated from her family, embarking on a “first playdate” with a new friend. A Simpsons short playing be

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple may let you try out parts of third-party iOS apps without installing them on your iPhone by scanning a QR code, according to code in an early build of iOS 14 reviewed by 9to5Mac. The functionality is apparently part of a new API referred to in iOS 14 as “Clips.”
The Clips API “allows developers to offer interactive and dynamic content from their apps even if you haven’t installed them,” according to 9to5Mac. When yo

Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images The American Civil Liberties Union has sued to stop Baltimore police from launching a sweeping “eye in the sky” surveillance program. The initiative, operated by a company called Persistent Surveillance Systems (PSS), would send planes flying over Baltimore at least 40 hours a week as they almost continuously collect wide-angle photos of the city. If not blocked, a pilot program is expected to begin later this year.
The ACLU complaint, filed on

Google’s Nest Learning Thermostat can automatically adjust the temperature in your home, making you more comfortable while you’re there and saving you money on energy costs when you’re not. You can also adjust the temperature from anywhere, inside or outside, with your phone. For a limited time, Daily Steals is offering readers of The Verge a discount on the third-generation Nest Learning Thermostat, which is the latest model even though it released in 2015.It’s normally

Image courtesy of Twitter user @wcharleyw Shortly after noon on a Tuesday, I popped into Animal Crossing: New Horizons to check on turnip prices. Today’s number? A tasty 439 bells, four times the price I picked them up for. I turned a profit worth hundreds of thousands, invited friends to come by, and then decided to go one step further: offer access to my island via a shareable code, which I broadcasted on Twitter. It was instant chaos.One of the riskier ways to turn a profit in New Hori

Zoo Miami Lo, unto you, four cheetah cubs and two clouded leopard kittens have been born. Cat lovers on the internet can now coo over the rare infant cats, thanks to Washington, DC’s National Zoo “Cheetah Cub Cam” and recently released photos from Zoo Miami.A five-year-old cheetah, Echo, gave birth to four cubs on April 8th, and it was all caught on webcam. Anyone at home can see the cubs in real time since the Smithsonian’s National Zoo is sharing the same live stream t

The pandemic is even affecting emoji. The Unicode Consortium, the group behind emoji releases, announced today that it’s delaying its version planned for 2021, meaning that devices won’t receive new emoji next year and instead will get a release in 2022. The good news is that the emoji that were announced earlier this year, like the olive, beaver, and plunger, will still be available this fall. Unicode says the delay is happening because it relies on volunteers who are currently over

Photo by Evan Blass There have been rumors and leaks aplenty about the Google Pixel 4A, but they’re starting to bubble up even more today. 9to5Google published what it claims is a complete set of specs for the Pixel 4A, and most intriguing of all, it says that Google won’t be releasing a Pixel 4A XL. The Pixel 4A will instead split the difference in size between the prior models, with a 5.8-inch display that’s a little larger than the 5.6-inch Pixel 3A but slightly smaller tha

Image: Yelp Yelp laid off 1,000 employees and furloughed an additional 1,100 workers today as it struggles with reduced spending from restaurants.Yelp co-founder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman sent out an email to employees on Thursday announcing that, due to the impact of the pandemic, the company would need to decrease the number of employees through a combination of layoffs and furloughs. At the same time, some of its staff would have its work hours reduced. Yelp declined to comment on which of i

VENN, otherwise known as the Video Game and Entertainment News Network, wants to succeed where G4TV failed by launching a television channel entirely dedicated to gaming that appeals to both hardcore esports fans and people with a casual interest in video games.The network plans to offer a constant schedule of highly produced shows that revolve around professional esports, gaming culture, and video game news. Live and prerecorded shows with charismatic hosts, including a number of Twitch streame

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Online conspiracy theories have been trying to link the novel coronavirus pandemic to the rollout of 5G technology recently. Despite there being no scientific links, multiple 5G towers have been set on fire in the UK. Theories shared on Facebook, Nextdoor, and Instagram are being widely spread, leading the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to very clearly state: “5G technology does NOT cause co

Airbnb announced that it will now offer Experiences that are entirely digital so people who are practicing social distancing and staying at home can find activities to do remotely. The new Airbnb Online Experiences offers activities like bartending and cooking classes, virtual bike tours, Korean makeup tutorials, fortune reading, comedy shows, and language lessons.
When it launched in 2016, Airbnb Experiences was part of the company’s foray into transforming the rental platform into a full

Photo by Steve Pfost / Newsday RM via Getty Images As the rate of COVID-19 testing slowly creeps up in the US, public health experts have a new concern that many people with negative test results actually have the virus.“If you have had likely exposures and symptoms suggest Covid-19 infection, you probably have it — even if your test is negative,” wrote Harlan Krumholz, a professor of medicine at Yale, in The New York Times.Doctors and clinicians struggle with test accuracy al

Image: Logitech Most laptops come with a built-in webcam, but if you’re working at home from a desktop or maybe just looking to touch up the mediocre quality of whatever camera you’re stuck with, external webcams are still a crucial accessory. But with so many people now firmly settled into work-from-home life, they’ve become nearly impossible to find. NPD Group reported a 179 percent jump in sales for webcams over the first three weeks of March as consumers settled into quara

Ready or not, edtech has been shoved into the spotlight as millions of students shifted to remote learning due to pandemic-related school shutdowns.
But backing these companies are investors who have long believed that edtech was always set up for great returns and a big impact. We reached out to several to find out about which trends they’ve been willing to put their money behind. (And frankly, what we’ve been missing.)
We got into how tech can help — or hurt — underserv