Technology news

April 22nd, 2020, marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, the annual celebration of the environmental movement. In 1970, according to EarthDay.org, about 20 million Americans assembled to demand greater attention to the protection of the planet. Since then, activists around the world have gathered each year to mark the day.
Ironically, this year’s Earth Day is taking place during one of the most widespread and deadly pandemics the world has seen for generations. As a result, any gathering

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Despite employees adapting fairly well to working from home during the global pandemic, Netflix is reducing the number of product features it experiments with as a precaution.“Our product teams, for example, have been relatively unaffected,” Netflix’s letter to shareholders reads. “As a precaution, we have temporarily reduced the number of product innovations we try, while continuing to release features that we know will add meanin

Did your Zoom meeting just get hijacked? Well, you’ll soon be able to report the incident directly to the company. 
The video conferencing service is adding a new “report a user to Zoom” button, which is scheduled to roll out on Sunday, April 26 in a software update. “This feature will generate a report which will be sent to the Zoom Trust and Safety team to evaluate any misuse of the platform and block a user if necessary,” according to the company’s rel

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Adobe is now bundling Photoshop for iPad and Fresco Premium into one package. The bundle allows iPad owners to gain access to both for just $9.99 a month, instead of paying that same price for each of them.Creative Cloud customers with a subscription to the individual Photoshop app will also have access to Fresco Premium as part of their monthly package, Adobe announced in the blog post.
Adobe said in the same blog post that it’s also released a

Photo by Interim Archives/Getty Images In-flight internet provider Gogo is placing more than 600 workers on unpaid leave, or about 60 percent of its workforce, the company announced on Tuesday. The Illinois-based company says sales of its in-flight internet service are expected to drop as much as 70 percent in April on commercial airlines, as passenger air travel falls to historic lows during the coronavirus pandemic.
Gogo said Tuesday that it has also applied for a $150 million loan and an $81

Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge IFA announced on Twitter that its upcoming 2020 conference will be affected by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, but it’s not canceling the show. The Berlin government has banned events with more than 5,000 participants from taking place until October 24th, 2020 — well past the conference’s usual timing in September. Instead, the conference organizers say that IFA 2020 will carry on with “an innovative new concept.” It didn’t s

If you're trying to round up your friends or family for a good ol' video chat sesh, look no further than Snapchat. In addition to sending disappearing photos and videos, you can also use it for group video chat.
Unlike Zoom or Google Hangouts, it doesn't require setting up meeting rooms, sending links, or entering passwords. Quarantine is stressful enough, amirite?
Not to mention, there's always that one clueless friend in the group who somehow misses the text message or email with all the login

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Snap has been building a product optimized for the pandemic. It features more original content than ever before, as well as games and augmented reality lenses for people to play with, keeping people glued to their screens and in the app longer than usual.The strategy is paying off. The company said in its earnings call today that it grew its daily active users by 11 million this quarter and by 20 percent year over year. During the first quarter, 60 Snapch

Courtesy of NETFLIX Tiger King was already one of Netflix’s most viral shows, but now, the streamer has confirmed it’s also one of the biggest: it tied Stranger Things’ third season as one of the most watched shows on Netflix.Netflix’s letter to shareholders notes that Tiger King was watched by more than 64 million households in its first four weeks. That’s the same number as Stranger Things’ third season, which Netflix said was the most watched season of the

Image: Evan Blass Motorola is hosting an online event tomorrow, April 22nd, at 12PM ET, and it appears the company will be announcing a new flagship called the Edge Plus at the event, according to a now-pulled blog post spotted by Droid Life. The information Droid Life grabbed from the post seemingly confirms many of the rumored specs about the phone.
The Edge Plus, which reportedly costs $1,000, will apparently have a 6.7-inch OLED FHD+ display with a 1080p resolution and a 90Hz refresh rate.

Ernesto S. Ruscio/Getty Images for Netflix Netflix is one of the rare companies benefiting from the global pandemic, which has kept billions of people at home with nothing to do but stream, but the question is how long can it last?Although much of Netflix’s recent boom didn’t start until mid-March, when more people were forced to stay home to help curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, a series of popular, original shows and movies helped Netflix boost subscribers in its first qu

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Cryptocurrency company Ripple is suing YouTube for its “inexplicable failure” at stopping scammers from impersonating its CEO. In a complaint filed today, Ripple accused the video platform of selling ads and verifying accounts that promote fake cryptocurrency giveaways, then ignoring complaints about them.
Ripple runs an exchange network for the digital currency XRP, which is aimed at people who want to send money internationally. Over the pas

When disaster strikes, it never hurts to have an extra Chromebook.
That's what I learned when I had a friend visit me in Lima, Peru, where I was working remotely for the month of March. We were planning to hike and camp in Cusco and the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu. But instead of a bucket-list trip, a strict nationwide quarantine kept us cooped up in our apartment rental three days after she arrived. Suddenly my friend went from vacation mode to work-from-home mode, but she had only brought he

Seattle-based gaming convention PAX West will still take place during Labor Day weekend, organizers announced today. The event is planned for September 4th–7th, with more information to come on badges and hotel registrations. “Actions already taken by our convention center and local government have left us optimistic, and we will continue working with them to make sure we take the correct steps throughout the summer,” organizers wrote via the event’s site.As the novel cor

Dr. Jeremy Brown, veteran ER doctor, director of the Office of Emergency Care Research at the National Institutes of Health, and the author of 'Influenza: The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History,' spoke to Mashable about what the 1918 pandemic can tell us about what to expect in the quest for a COVID-19 vaccine, treatment, and an end to social distancing. Dr. Brown spoke to us in a personal capacity, not as a representative of any organization. Read more...More about Scien

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Some of Apple’s iPhones rumored to launch in the fall and a larger iPhone SE model apparently slated for 2021 could be delayed, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (via MacRumors).This fall, Apple is rumored to launch as many as four iPhones that support 5G, and Kuo says the iPhones that support the faster mmWave 5G have a “potential delay risk,” according to MacRumors. In addition, mass production of the rumored 6.7-inch iPhone

As much of the world continues self-quarantine and social distancing measures, Animal Crossing has taken over online culture. From hot discourse about Tom Nook's capitalist empire to escapist fantasies about being able to pay off a mortgage, Animal Crossing is driving pandemic entertainment. In-game pop culture escaped to the real world — K.K. Slider's iconic album covers are a meme now. 
In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players "win" the game when they get singer K.K. Slider to perf

Nilay Patel / The Verge The Verge’s Nilay Patel deemed the 2020 Apple MacBook Air “the best Mac for most people” in his review. And if you need or want to upgrade, you can grab this particular model for the lowest price that we’ve seen yet at B&H Photo. Both the silver and space gray color options are $900, which is $100 off of their usual price.
As for why this iteration of the MacBook Air is worth your money over the previous (now more affordable) models, it’

Google is starting to “roll out gradually” a feature allowing you to customize voice detection sensitivity on Google Assistant devices, a spokesperson confirmed to The Verge.Although the feature has not been widely released yet, Mishaal Rahman, editor-in-chief of XDA Developers, was able to access the feature by tinkering with the Google Home app’s code, he told The Verge.
Screenshots that Rahman posted to Twitter show the “‘Hey Google’ Sensitivity” feat

Photo by Stefan Etienne / The Verge Epic Games has released its battle royale hit Fortnite through the official Play Store on Android, 18 months after releasing the game as third-party software downloadable outside Google’s official mobile app marketplace. Epic says it’s doing so because Google puts third-party software at a disadvantage by warning users of potential security issues that may not exist and characterizing any software not issued through the Play Store as malware.&ldqu

The first few months of 2020 have been absolute trash, but they've also made people far more appreciative of good things in the world.
For today's piece of good news, we're happy to announce that there's been yet another virtual reunion between former co-stars of The Office. Since social distancing guidelines went into effect across the country, we've seen John Krasinski catch up with both Steve Carell and Rainn Wilson. Now — shortly after Wilson reconnected with Angela Kinsey (who played

Photo by Fabian Sommer/picture alliance via Getty Images Across Idaho, the number of people getting tested for sexually transmitted infections and HIV has cratered. The Department of Health and Welfare is screening far fewer people than they did at this time last year, and many community organizations that do rapid HIV testing shut down when the state’s stay-at-home order went into effect on March 25th.“Those things kind of just stopped,” says Kevin Brinegar, HIV prevention he

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge General Motors is shutting down Maven, the car-sharing service it launched in 2016, the company tells The Verge.“After critically looking at our business, the industry, and what’s going on with COVID-19, we have made the tough but necessary decision to wind down our business,” the company explained in an email to Maven customers sent on Tuesday.Wowwww, Covid19 claimed the Maven car-sharing platform, it's shutting down immediately. Bummer

Photo by Alex Wong / Getty Images For weeks, President Trump has been giving daily briefings on the US pandemic response, often running more than two hours and often lashing out against perceived critics or veering off into attacks on sitting governors.
But while the hours of briefings have been frustrating for reporters, they’ve been unexpectedly good for content.
One audio clip from earlier this month has gone unexpectedly viral on TikTok, racking up more than 250 videos and more than a

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge The Nintendo Switch sold more than double the number of consoles in March 2020 in the US than in March 2019, according to data from The NPD Group, showing that the Switch continues to be a hit more than three years after its 2017 launch (via VentureBeat). PlayStation 4 and Xbox One sales in the US were up as well, growing 25 percent year over year, reports NPD.
The increased sales of all of the consoles show that people are turning to video games for entertain

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge It’s good to be aware of what graphics card you have in your computer for several reasons. First, it will help you know if your machine meets the recommended specification required to play a game or run an application. Also, it’s useful if you want to keep your driver up to date, or even if you want to upgrade.The process for figuring out which graphics card (GPU) is inside your computer is easy, but it varies depending on the operating system you&r

Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images As we stumble into the second month of quarantine in many US cities, it’s clear that by and large, we’re starting to adapt. Things that felt strange, perhaps antisocial and even reactionary — like grocery stores only allowing a limited number of people in at a time — are newly normal. It’s easier to claim personal space even in cities now that most people have accepted social distancing as the norm. That six-fo

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Federal Communications Commission rejected calls from city governments on Monday asking for the agency to extend the comment filing period for part of its 2018 net neutrality rollback, rebuking their effort to gain more time to respond to the docket during the novel coronavirus pandemic.New York City, Los Angeles, and Santa Clara County wrote to the FCC last week asking for an additional 60 days to file comments beyond the April 20th deadline as they

The internet is littered with zombie websites: forums that most users have long abandoned, novelty pages whose cultural moments have passed. This Website Will Self-Destruct will not have that fate. If nobody posts on the site for 24 hours, it will permanently delete itself, leaving only an error message behind.
This Website Will Self-Destruct features a simple web form that lets you submit a letter to the site. The messages are stored anonymously in a database, and visitors can view them at rand

TL;DR: Get the latest iPad Mini WiFi model with 64GB storage for only $329.99 at Best Buy as of April 21. That's a $70 discount and it also includes free gifts, including Webroot Internet Security with Antivirus, a free month of iCloud storage, and four free months of Apple Music. If you're stuck at home and still have the privilege of working, it's still important to take a step back from your company laptop to unwind. It's the perfect chance to read a book, and a brand-new tablet might be

Image: Sony If you’re in the market for an extra PS4 controller, the rose gold DualShock 4 is $45 at GameStop today only. Sony makes a lot of different color options of its controllers, and this is certainly one of the most unique, if not eye-catching, options. It usually costs $65 at GameStop, so you’re getting $20 off.
PS4 controllers also work perfectly for playing games when paired via Bluetooth to an iOS 13 or Android 10 device. Additionally, it works with Google Stadia, either

Tributes, it's finally time to re-enter the Games.
On Tuesday, Lionsgate announced the multi-billion dollar Hunger Games franchise would return to theaters with an adaptation of Suzanne Collins' upcoming novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Due on shelves May 19, the prequel centers on the 10th annual Hunger Games and a teenage Coriolanus Snow, years before he would become the tyrannical leader of Panem. 
“Suzanne’s new book has been worth the wait," Lionsgate chairman Joe

Photo by Stefan Etienne / The Verge If you’re finding that background noise is disrupting voice or video calls made from your computer, then a new piece of software from Nvidia might help (provided you have the necessary hardware to run it). Released earlier this month, RTX Voice uses the hardware found in Nvidia’s RTX GPUs to process your incoming and outgoing audio and eliminate almost all background noise.
Below, you’ll find a quick demonstration I recorded to show how it w

AT&T is giving tens of millions of eligible customers who are already using its various internet, mobile, and video plans free versions of HBO Max when it launches on May 27th.In most cases, that means being a customer on one of AT&T’s more pricey service tiers. That includes customers who are enrolled in AT&T Unlimited Elite’s wireless plan, AT&T Internet 1000’s internet plan, and AT&T TV Now Max, DirecTV Premier, AT&T U-Verse U400, and U450’s vid