Technology news

Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images Some workers for grocery delivery platform Instacart are still waiting on the safety kits the company promised two weeks ago, according to a new report in Wired. And, according to shoppers Wired spoke with, the process to receive the kits was confusing and cumbersome.Instacart said March 29th it would distribute hand sanitizer to all its full-service shoppers, most of whom are independent contractors. On April 2nd, the company said the sh

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon With New York’s marriage bureaus closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday that the state will begin allowing marriage licenses to be granted remotely, and, for clerks to conduct ceremonies over video.“There is now no excuse when the question comes up for marriage,” he said during his Saturday briefing. “You can do it by Zoom. Yes or no.”
NEW: I am issuing an Executive Order allowing New Yorkers to

Instagramfounders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have teamed up to launch their first product together since leaving the Facebook mothership. Rt.live is an up-to-date tracker of how fast COVID-19 is spreading in each state.
“Rt” measures the average number of people who become infected by an infectious person. The higher above the number 1, the faster COVID-19 races through a population, while a number below one shows the virus receding. For example, Rt.live displays that Georgia has

Cognizant,one of the largest tech and consulting companies in the Fortune 500, has confirmed it was hit by a ransomware attack.
Details remain slim besides a brief statement on its site, confirming the incident.
“Cognizant can confirm that a security incident involving our internal systems, and causing service disruptions for some of our clients, is the result of a Maze ransomware attack,” the statement read. “Our internal security teams, supplemented by leading cyber defense f

Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images Using data from the Covid Tracking Project, the cofounders of Instagram created a website to track the state-by-state spread of COVID-19 in the US, Bloomberg News reported.The website, RT.live, uses a statistic known in epidemiology as the effective reproduction number. It tracks the average number of people who catch the virus from one infected person.
“We’re trying to take what is a complex topic and boil it down to a simple number that

Cities around the world have become home this decade to distributed tech teams and homegrown startup successes. Each of these additional layers of experience and specialization help to make each local community stronger, like what began happening in Silicon Valley many decades ago.
Now layoffs are striking deep into these fragile, complex ecosystems.
Yes, companies in San Francisco and other tech metros are seeing big cuts, as you can read all about on TechCrunch this week. But the satellite off

Amazon is now using thermal cameras at its warehouses to help screen workers for fevers, Reuters reports. The thermal imaging cameras are faster to use than the standard forehead thermometers Amazon had been using to test workers for fevers, which are a primary symptom of the coronavirus.“We implemented daily temperature checks in our operations locations as an additional preventative measure to support the health and safety of our employees who continue to provide a critical service in ou

We discussed our initial impressions of “Devs” on an episode of the Original Content podcast a few weeks ago, shortly after the show launched on FX/Hulu. At the time, we observed that even the show made time for bits of Silicon Valley satire, the mood was mostly one of mystery and dread.
Now that we know the full story, it seemed like a good time to revisit our discussion. If anything, the dread increases over the course of the show’s first and only season, becoming oppres

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.
The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads in 2019 and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie’s “State of Mobile” annual report. People are now spending 3 hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idl

Here’s a nice thing. It’s not revolutionary or life-changing, but it’s nice. And right now we can all use a little bit of nice. Earlier this month, Samsung announced an addition to its line of “eco-packing” that will turn TV boxes in a wide variety of different “furniture.” I use furniture in quotes here because it is, in fact, still cardboard.As someone who has transformed a box or two into a piece of pet shelter in his time, however, I’m pretty o

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Welcome to the weekend. GameStop is hosting a one-day deal on video games, consoles, accessories, and more. If you’ve had a few titles, a spare controller, or anything else on your wishlist, it’s worth checking out some of the deals.Since GameStop’s physical stores are closed due to the pandemic, you’ll be able to shop all of these deals online and have them delivered straight to your residence.Here are a few stand-out offers. (Note: if

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A federal judge has ruled that Twitter can’t reveal surveillance requests it received from the US government, putting an end to legal battle that lasted six years, Reuters reported. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers wrote in her order that Twitter’s request to reveal part of its Draft Transparency Report “would be likely to lead to grave or imminent harm to the national security.”
Twitter sued the Justice Department in 2014, arguing tha

The diagnostics startup Curative has received an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for its novel test to determine COVID-19 infection.
The company says that its tests have already been used by the City of Los Angeles since late March and have tested over 53,000 city residents.
Curative’s tests use an oral-fluid sample collected by having the subject cough to produce sputum, which release the virus from deep in the lungs, according to a spokesperson.
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Chinese investors, who have poured about $6 billion into Indian startups in the last two years, will be subjected to tougher scrutiny for their future investments in the world’s second largest internet market.
India amended its foreign direct investment policy on Saturday to require all neighboring nations with which it shares a boundary to seek approval from New Delhi for their future deals in the country. Previously, only Pakistan and Bangladesh were subjected to this requirement.
The na

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KazMeMP1vRg/hqdefault.jpgA video teaser popped up for a VR game on Oculus Quest that uses controller-free hand-tracking for a familiar musical experience similar to Rock Band and Guitar Hero. And it already carries the perfect name — Unplugged: Air Guitar. The game is a side project by Ricardo Acosta that he’s been working on at night. He works at Microsoft on the Maquette…Read More

TL;DR: Buy one annual Masterclass membership and share one for free, saving £170 on list price.We don't know about you, but we're running out of entertainment options. You can only game and stream for so long before boredom strikes. We all need more options.
Enter Masterclass: an immersive online experience that lets you take online classes with the world's best instructors, including the likes of Christina Aguilera, Serena Williams, and Steve Martin. All the video courses are 100% exclusi

At this point, it hardly seems worth saying that America has long had an uncomfortable view of female ambition. Not because it's untrue, but because it's so obvious as to seem almost meaningless. 
What's more challenging, and more interesting, is to consider what that means in practice — what forms this unease takes, how it's enforced implicitly and explicitly, how women have shaped their lives around it, and what there is to be done about it. That's where Mrs. America dives in.
Creat

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google searches for terms related to COVID-19 will now display information for more than 2,000 COVID-19 testing centers across 43 states in the US, the company tells The Verge.There are other changes, too. When you search for something related to COVID-19, you’ll now see a new “Testing” tab as part of the information shown in Google’s COVID-19 SOS alert. When you click or tap that Testing tab, you’ll see a number of resources

Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images President Trump has spent the week fumbling to lay out his vision for “reopening” the US economy during the novel coronavirus pandemic. First, he convened a group of CEOs from the tech, transportation, and other industries without telling many of them about their participation. Then, on Thursday, he rolled out a “plan” that was a surprise to many of those same industry leaders. Now, on Friday, Trump called for citizens in Michiga

When it comes to the casualties of the pandemic, your first thought might not be of your ability to anonymously view porn. And yet.
The non-profit Tor Project announced Friday that it was forced to lay off a sizable chunk of its team responsible for the privacy-preserving Tor browser. As the coronavirus ravages citizens' lives and the world economy, decimating industries as diverse as hospitality, education, the performing arts, and the news media, an unlikely victim may end up being your abilit

You didn’t think the U.S. government would send up tp $1,200 to millions of Americans without catching the eye of at least a few scammers and unscrupulous online marketers, did you?
Hundreds of domain names related to the $2 trillion stimulus package have been registered in the past month, according to a new report by security firm Tessian. 
The domain names in question are being used for a variety of purposes. Some  are spam and data mining traps. Others appear to lead to educat

Crowdfunding platform for startups Republic has acquired crowdfunding platform for games Fig, joining forces to help creators get their ideas off the ground. Users of each service will be happy to know they’ll continue as-is for the foreseeable future.
The model of publicly accessible micro-equity has proven an effective one, and both platforms have recent successes under their belts. Startups of a wide variety have raised hundreds of thousands on Republic, while Fighas had a great year wi

You’ve shown off your pets and had some good LOLs, and now the Zoom/FaceTime/HouseParty hang is winding down. But how to actually end it? It’s not like you have anywhere to go.
In a virtual hangout, the regular outs of in-person hangs aren't an option: no waiter is bringing a check, there's no drive home, no babysitter to relieve. 
But you still have to call it quits before the conversation devolves into awkward silence. Or, worse: an uncomfortable divulging of stories, feelings