Technology news

Image: Nikola Electric big rig startup Nikola received a $4.1 million loan from the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) meant to help small businesses keep people employed during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an April 15th filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It’s at least the third EV startup to receive money from the PPP, following Faraday Future (which got a $9.1 million loan) and Workhorse (which got a $1.1 million loan).The loa

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch Active 2 has taken another big step toward offering blood pressure monitoring, a feature Samsung has been promising since the original Galaxy Watch Active was released in 2019. This week saw Samsung’s Health Monitor app get regulatory approval from South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS), the first government agency to do so — but there’s a whole lot of caveats that bring to question how useful Samsung’s measuring will real

A massive database storing millions of credit card transactions has been secured after spending close to three weeks exposed publicly to the internet.
The database belongs to Paay, a card payments processor based in New York. Like other payment processors, the company verifies payments on behalf of selling merchants, like online stores and other businesses, to prevent fraudulent transactions.
But because there was no password on the server, anyone could access the data inside.
Security researche

Photo by YURI CORTEZ/AFP via Getty Images Federal researcher and vaccine development expert Rick Bright says he was removed from his position in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) after objecting to the agency’s efforts to push the use of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment.“I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic into safe and scientifical

John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images Joe Biden won key environmental endorsements this week as the 50th anniversary of Earth Day focuses attention on climate change. Longtime proponents of climate action Al Gore and Jay Inslee announced today that Biden has their endorsement. The League of Conservation Voters endorsed Biden on April 20th, potentially unlocking tens of millions of dollars in funding if the group continues the big spending it’s put into previous

Since first uploading a YouTube teaser video of its tech five years ago, Magic Leap’spresence in the augmented reality industry has been controversial.
Some have lauded the team’s ambitions, while others I’ve talked to say the company’s posturing has dissuaded investors from taking chances on other AR hardware startups, which has hampered the industry’s advance.
Regardless of its impact, Magic Leap carries outsized weight, leading one to question what would happen t

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images Chinese operatives helped amplify a viral text message that falsely claimed President Trump was going to instate a nationwide lockdown due to COVID-19, reports The New York Times. US officials said the operatives were engaging in disinformation tactics similar to the ones Russia used in 2016.
The rumor, which gained traction around mid-March, claimed to be coming from someone close to the White House. It said Trump was doing to lock down the country to stop th

China-based electric car startup Byton has furloughed about half of the 450 employees who work at its North American headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., putting the release date of the automaker’s upcoming M-Byte vehicle into question.
Byton told TechCrunch the furloughs were the result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The intention is to bring these furloughed employees back, the company said without providing a timeline.
“Given the impact of the pandemic on the global economy and the aut

Photo by Ethan Miller/FilmMagic Russian Doll co-creator and showrunner Leslye Headland is reportedly working on a new Star Wars TV series for Disney Plus, according to a new report from Variety. The series is said to be a “female-centric” show set in a different part of the timeline than other current Star Wars projects, although there aren’t too many details on what the premise of the show will actually be.Headland is best known for her work as the co-creator, showrunner, and

Ever since it first started rolling out, 5G skeptics have attempted to link the next-gen cellular technology to all manner of health issues. Most recently, it’s become an easy scapegoat for the global COVID-19 pandemic, given the rapid rise of both.Conspiracy theories have gained such a foothold that vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands by destroying cell towers in various European countries. In its latest bid to tamp down on the spread of false information pertaining to the

Image: Netflix The most pressing issue entertainment companies around the world are facing is what the rest of their year looks like. Production on sets around the world has completely stopped, movies are being delayed on a weekly basis as theaters remain closed and shelter-in-place orders from government bodies remain. Some analysts and industry insiders have already called 2020 a total write-off for nearly every company, except one — Netflix.While Disney, Warner Bros., Sony, Universal,

Facebook Facebook says today, it’s going to display the location of “high-reach” Facebook pages and Instagram accounts on every post the owners share in order to give people “more information to help them gauge the reliability and authenticity of the content they see in their feeds.” The company didn’t say what it considers a high-reach page or account.The change is first coming to accounts based outside of the US that reach large audiences primarily in the U

Left: YouTube when unfolded / Right: split-screen when folded | Image: Samsung YouTube has released a new update to take advantage of the Galaxy Z Flip’s “Flex Mode,” allowing the app to split the screen in two.While watching a YouTube video on Samsung’s new flip phone while the phone is partly unfolded, the top and bottom of the screen will now switch into separate displays. The top of the screen shows the actual video, and the bottom portion of the screen displays the

Google’sdata centers run 24/7 and suck up a ton of energy — so it’s in both the company’s and the planet’s interest to make them do so as efficiently as possible. One new method has the facilities keeping an eye on the weather so they know when the best times are to switch to solar and wind energy.
The trouble with renewables is that they’re not consistent, like the output of a power plant. Of course it isn’t simply that when the wind dies down, wind ene

Update April 22nd, 3:48PM ET: SpaceX successfully launched and deployed all 60 Starlink satellites into orbit. The Falcon 9 rocket also successfully touched down on the company’s drone ship at sea — a smooth landing after two previous failed attempts to recover the vehicle in the ocean.
Original Story: On Wednesday afternoon, SpaceX is pressing ahead with its internet-from-space initiative, launching another batch of 60 broadband-beaming satellites into orbit from Florida. This is th

SpaceXhas launched another big batch of Starlink satellites, the low Earth orbit spacecraft that will provide connectivity for its globe-spanning high-bandwidth broadband internet network. This brings the total number of Starlink satellites on orbit to 422, though the company plans to de-orbit two of those (the first two prototypes launched) shortly.
Already, SpaceX is the largest private satellite operator in existence – by a wide and growing margin. It’s also managed to keep up the

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge AT&T is nearly doubling the number of markets in which it offers its 5G network, with coverage in 90 new areas starting today. The new additions bring AT&T’s total number up to over 190 markets covering more than 120 million people.
New cities on the list include Sacramento, Chicago, New Orleans, Seattle, and Madison. For the full list, check out AT&T’s announcement here. For now, the new cities are just getting access to AT&T&

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Security researchers say the iPhone has a severe flaw in the native iOS Mail app that makes it vulnerable to hackers, according to a report published on Wednesday by San Francisco-based firm ZecOps.
The flaw had not previously been disclosed to Apple, making it extremely valuable to a variety of bad actors. ZecOps says it believes “with high confidence that these vulnerabilities... are widely exploited in the wild in targeted attacks by an advan

Facebook’smajor bet on Jio Platforms could create a headache for mobile payments services that have amassed tens of millions of users while struggling to find a business model in the world’s second-largest internet market.
The $5.7 billion investment, Facebook’s second-largest to date, could also further its dominance in India — its biggest market by user count — by expanding the reach of consumer-facing services like WhatsAppand expanding its lead over ByteDance&rs

AT&T gave a first look into how the pay TV business is faring amid the coronavirus pandemic…and it’s not great. The company reported today as a part of its Q1 2020 earnings that its traditional pay TV services, including DIRECTV and its newer streaming option AT&T TV, saw a combined net loss of 897,000 subscribers in the quarter. Meanwhile, its over-the-top streaming service, AT&T TV Now, also lost 138,000 subscribers, following a number of price hikes.
The company&rsquo

Nuro, the autonomous vehicle startup founded by two ex-Google engineers, is using its small fleet of road-legal delivery robots to transport medical supplies around two California stadiums that have been converted into treatment facilities for people stricken with COVID-19.The coronavirus pandemic has forced self-driving car companies in California to temporarily shutdown their operations and ground their fleets, thanks to “shelter-in-place” orders that ban nonessential transportatio

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge If there’s anything I’ve learned from working on the internet, peddling writing for a number of years, it’s that the content must flow. Or maybe it’s better to say that content will flow because its creation is a foregone conclusion. No matter what your feelings on the issue are, there will always be more of it. And while the word used to be deployed as a synonym for low-quality art, the kind that’s relatable and snackable an

A Nintendo Switch is hard to come by these days; the limited Animal Crossing edition, even harder. Players who failed to snag the island-themed console can either fight over marked-up consoles from resellers or turn to customization options — like Dbrand’s (not) Animal Crossing skins for the system’s Joy-Cons and dock.
For $39.95, buyers can snag skins to redecorate their Switch, plus a microfiber cloth. The store is also selling scratch-proof tempered glass and a pro controlle

The Los Angeles Cleantch Incubator is rebooting its incubator program and moving from rolling applications to a cohort model beginning with 16 new startups. 
Los Angeles’ not-for-profit incubator exchanges sweat equity in the form of services and office space, and the promise of $20,000 in funding for local pilot projects, for a 1.5% to 3% stake in a company.
“This is a renewed incubation program switching to the cohort model. The great part of a rolling program was that you cou

Ask any woman and she will tell you that most of her bras do not fit her optimally. In fact, a majority of women end up wearing the wrong size. A large part of the problem is that sizing is standardized, unlike women’s bodies. With every passing year, more people are also shopping online, meaning fewer opportunities to actually try on bras — a trend that’s only accelerating given the shutdown the world is experiencing right now.
One particular problem, and a widespread one, acc

Call of Duty: Mobile has quickly grown to become one of the biggest games in the world, and soon it will have a competitive tournament to match. Today, Activision revealed the Call of Duty: Mobile World Championship 2020 Tournament, a lengthy esports tournament that features more than $1 million in total prizes, which include both cash and in-game cosmetics.
Online qualifiers for the tournament kick off on April 30th and will run through May 24th, after which the tournament will begin. Details &

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Chinese EV startup Byton is furloughing more than 200 workers at its North American headquarters in Santa Clara, California due to the coronavirus pandemic, and is reevaluating its plans to launch its first vehicle later this year.“Given the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the global economy and the hit that the auto industry is taking, we like others have had to take measures to weather the hard times ahead,” the company said in a statem

Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health has released updated projections of when we can expect U.S. case numbers of COVID-19 infections to peak and decline, based on different levels of social distancing measures. The updated projects, which take into account the most recent information, show that with around a 30% decrease in social contact we could be nearing a national peak of new cases for now by the end of April — but that if you decrease social contact by just 20%

Photo: HBO Westworld has been renewed for a fourth season, HBO announced today, meaning that the sometimes infuriatingly complicated science-fiction / Western series will continue to enthrall viewers with its violent delights for another season, via Variety.
The third season of the series was a reinvention of sorts, moving the action outside of the titular Westworld theme park and out into the “real” world, where the rebellious robots (namely, Evan Rachel Wood’s Delores) are w

The tech industry (and the world at large) is not experiencing temporary anxiety — the uncertainty we’re all coping with is the new normal.
Sudden shifts in behavior have made some startups targeting slow-moving, old-school industries more relevant than they could have imagined, such as those in telehealth, distance learning and remote work. Most, however are seeing massive decreases in revenue, forcing them to cut costs and even lay off teams to slash burn rates. Other startups simp

Photo by Roberto Ricciuti/Redferns Punk acts like Pussy Riot and Idles will be logging into Minecraft on Saturday to play sets for the Block by Blockwest online music festival to raise money for novel coronavirus relief efforts.The event is being organized by a group called the Courier Club, and it starts at 3PM ET. Around two dozen bands will play shows at the festival including Pussy Riot, Idles, Citizen, Nothing, Nowhere, Sir Sly, Cherry Glazerr, and Wicca Phase Springs Eternal. All proceeds

Google Meet’s new Zoom-like gallery view is rolling out across the globe “gradually” starting today, the company said in a blog post. Previously, you were only able to see four people on-screen at a time, but with Meet’s new tiled layout, you’ll be able to see 16 call participants at once. Google announced the feature was on the way last week.Zoom’s gallery view is still able to show more participants than Meet’s — it’s possible to see the th

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Mixed reality company Magic Leap is reportedly laying off around 1,000 employees and abandoning its focus on consumer headsets. Bloomberg reported the news earlier today, citing anonymous sources, and Magic Leap confirmed an unstated number of layoffs were happening on its site. “These changes will occur at every level of our company, from my direct reports to our factory employees,” writes CEO Rony Abovitz.
Bloomberg writes that in addition to lay

SpaceXCEO and founder Elon Musk said on Twitter on Wednesday that the cause of the failure of a single Merlin engine during the most recent Starlink launch (which didn’t prevent the launch from ultimately succeeding at its mission) was the result of an undetected, “small amount” of a cleaning fluid that ignited during the flight.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle uses nine Merlin engines on its first-stage, and can still operate successfully in case one stops working. One did stop wo