Technology news

Photo By Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile via Getty Images Thuan Pham, Uber’s chief technology officer, is stepping down, the ride-hailing company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday. Pham was the longest serving top executive at the company, having joined Uber in 2013.The news of his departure was first reported by The Information, which also is reporting that executives at Uber are actively discussing a cost-cutting plan that could involve layoffs of up to 20

Matt Petit - Handout/A.M.P.A.S. via Getty Images The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science will allow some movies released on streaming platforms and via digital release to qualify for the 2021 Oscars because of the COVID-19 pandemic.This doesn’t mean that every movie on every streaming service is suddenly going to be eligible to be nominated for Best Picture, though. The board of governors have decided that a movie which winds up on a streaming service must have a previously planned

AMD posted its Q1 2020 financial results, and quarter-to-quarter revenue is down by 16 percent. Its quarterly operating income also took a dive, as revenue slowed and R&D costs went up. On the bright side, it shared that its $1.79 billion year-to-year revenue is up 40 percent compared to this time in 2020. It attributes this big jump to its computing and graphics segments, including its Ryzen processors and Radeon graphics cards — both of which have gotten major updates recently.The co

Earlier this month,href="https://www.zettavp.com/">Zetta Venture Partners, a B2B, AI-focused venture outfit, announced a new $180 million fund.
As new VC funds are anecdotally a bit thinner on the ground these days — and because we’re in the midst of economic upheaval, which is changing investing patterns and shaking up startup verticals — I got on the phone with Zetta’s Jocelyn Goldfein (a TechCrunch regular) to chat about what her firm is doing and what’s up wi

Image: Epic Games Epic Games will occasionally require users to enable two-factor authentication before redeeming free games on its digital storefront between now and May 21st.
The goal is to encourage “players to take steps to strengthen their Epic account security,” the company wrote in a blog post. To enable two-factor authentication, users have to log into the Epic Games Store and head into their account settings.Two-factor authentication typically requires users to confirm thei

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google parent company Alphabet managed to weather the storm caused by COVID-19 in its first quarterly earnings that take into account the society-altering shifts of the global pandemic.But this past quarter included barely two months of time since many countries instituted shelter-in-place orders that have all but eliminated global travel and other industries that spend big on web advertising. That means the worst is yet to come for Alphabet’s busin

Image: Ford Ford is pushing back the launch of its forthcoming robotaxi and autonomous delivery services from 2021 to 2022, the company announced today, due to the economic impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic.The company has spent the last few years testing self-driving prototypes in Miami, Austin, and Washington, DC as it got ready to launch the services, though it hadn’t made any announcements about in which markets it planned to operate.Ford announced the delay as it revealed its

Netflix Netflix has announced that the creative team behind Orange Is The New Black has created a new series centered around social distancing.The show, called Social Distance, will be scripted, produced, and directed remotely, according to a statement from the executive producers. The cast will act and film themselves in their homes.Social Distance’s executive producers include Orange Is The New Black creator Jenji Kohan, as well as Tara Herrmann, Blake McCormick, Diego Velasco, and Hila

Rapid7 announced today after the closing bell that it will be acquiring DivvyCloud, a cloud security and governance startup, for $145 million in cash and stock.
With Divvy, the company moves more deeply into the cloud, something that Lee Weiner, chief innovation officer, says the company has been working toward, even before the pandemic pushed that agenda.
Like any company looking at expanding its offering, it balanced building versus buying and decided that buying was the better way to go. &ldq

Wally Skalij/Los Angles Times On June 9th, 1990, a young Damien Patton took part in a drive-by shooting against the West End Synagogue in Nashville, Tennessee, alongside a leading member of the Klu Klux Klan. Nobody was injured, but the event sent Patton on the run from the authorities. A year later he enlisted in the Navy, later becoming a NASCAR mechanic, a crime scene investigator, and finally, a Silicon Valley founder.Today, the Medium publication OneZero published an exposé of the f

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Ford and its luxury brand Lincoln have canceled an all-electric SUV that was going to be powered by technology provided by EV startup Rivian, the companies told Automotive News on Tuesday.
Lincoln says it is still working closely with Rivian, including an “alternative vehicle” that will also be based on Rivian’s electric vehicle skateboard platform.“Given the current environment, Lincoln and Rivian have decided not to pursue th

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google on Tuesday announced a planned update to the permissions window for its Docs, Drive, and Sheets apps that is designed to make sharing files less confusing. Now, when you click the share button, the box that pops up has a clear distinction between who the file is being shared with through a searchable directory of your contacts or co-workers and the permissions the link has.The prior share window bundled both options together into the same window wi

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Apple Support app has been updated to version 4.0 and now has dark mode, an updated user interface, and offers support for Apple services and subscriptions (via 9to5Mac).In a few minutes of playing around with it, the updated app has been pretty easy to navigate, and the dark mode looks good, in my opinion. Here are some screenshots of what the new interface looks like, with dark mode turned on:And here are the full patch notes for version 4.0, from A

Lucasfilm Ltd. Yesterday, the Disney Plus Twitter account encouraged fans to share their favorite Star Wars memory, promising it might show up “somewhere special” on May 4th. But a follow-up tweet suggested the hashtag came with some hefty legal baggage: “By sharing your message with us using #MayThe4th, you agree to our use of the message and your account name in all media and our terms of use here.”It included a link to Disney’s terms of use, which total approxim

Instagram Instagram is making it easier for people to raise money for nonprofits today by building a feature that’ll allow Live viewers to directly support approved organizations. Live stream hosts can decide what organization they want to support, and during their show, they’ll be able to see how much money has been raised as it’s happening, along with how many people are supporting the cause. They can also tap and view individual contributions if they want to shout people ou

Photo by Robin Utrecht / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images The United States has confirmed more than 1 million cases of COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center. Since March, the US has reported more confirmed infections than any other country in the world, although some have raised doubts about the accuracy of China’s official case numbers. The growth in those cases has leveled off over the past two weeks, averaging around 30,000 new ca

Image: Anchor Anchor, a podcast-making app owned by Spotify, will now let you take recordings of your video calls and chats and turn them into podcasts (via TechCrunch). If you’ve been doing a regular Zoom meetup with your friends to talk about Animal Crossing: New Horizons town designs, for example, this new tool could help you turn those conversations into a podcast you can publish and share.
However, it’s important to note that all Anchor is doing here is letting you upload a fil

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Over the weekend, Tesla told some of its employees in California to get ready to return to work this week. But by Monday, the company reversed course and told those employees to stay at home. Now, it faces the possibility that its electric car factory will have to remain closed for longer than previously anticipated as public health officials say they will extend the stay-at-home orders in the San Francisco Bay Area through much of May.Tesla told employees in

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As more businesses, creators, and artists turn to internet live-streaming tools during the pandemic, Facebook has announced that it’ll be adding the option for people to charge for access to events with Facebook Live streams.“To support creators and small businesses, we plan to add the ability for Pages to charge for access to events with Live videos on Facebook – anything from online performances to classes to professional conferences,&

Last week, Japanese techwear firm Acronym released a new version of its iconic J1A-GT jacket, one based on Hideo Kojima’s PS4 game Death Stranding. Like most Acronym gear, the jacket was both rare and expensive: it sold out almost immediately, despite a price tag of just under $2,000. But in another seemingly unconnected corner of the internet, fans managed to get their hands on it for free. At the subreddit ACNHstreetwear, a space dedicated to streetwear enthusiasts playing Animal Crossin

Image: HTC HTC’s Exodus blockchain smartphones will soon receive their own mining app, letting them mine Monero cryptocurrency when plugged in and idle, The Block reported earlier this month. The DeMiner app, which is being developed by Midas Labs, is scheduled to launch in Q2 2020.
According to Midas Labs’ Jri Lee, one of HTC’s Exodus 1S smartphones should be able to mine $0.0038 of Monero a day, which doesn’t exactly turn the phone into a moneymaking machine. In fact,

Illustration by Alex Castro When people were ordered to stay home during the pandemic, online shopping became a vital resource for basic goods like toilet paper, groceries, and cleaning supplies. People need those products fast, and Amazon provides that service.Before the pandemic, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance reported in 2016 that Amazon captures nearly one in every two dollars that Americans spend online. Over the past month, Amazon’s stock value has increased significantl

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube will begin adding informational panels containing information from its network of fact-checkers to videos in the United States, the company said. The panels, which were introduced last year in Brazil and India, appear on searches for topics where fact-checkers have published relevant articles on the subject. The move comes at a time when platforms have seen a surge in misinformation related to COVID-19 and its origin, possible cures, and other sub

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube will begin adding informational panels containing information from its network of fact-checkers to videos in the United States, the company said. The panels, which were introduced last year in Brazil and India, appear on searches for topics where fact-checkers have published relevant articles on the subject. The move comes at a time when platforms have seen a surge in misinformation related to COVID-19 and its origin, possible cures, and other sub

Image: Google Google is bringing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) to Stadia today, and it’s promising to launch several EA games later this year. PUBG will be free for Stadia Pro members and will include the new Cold Front season pass. Stadia Free members will be able to purchase the base game for $29.99 or bundled with the season pass for $39.99.
Google appears to be launching one of its promised Stadia features with PUBG today: the ability to click a game link and instantly pl

Faze Clan is expanding beyond platforms like Twitch and YouTube. Today the esports and lifestyle company announced the launch of Faze Studios, alongside producer Michael Sugar’s Sugar23 platform, with the goal of producing original film and TV projects. No specific shows or movies were announced, but Faze says that “the original content will align with Faze Clan’s brand ethos as a powerful lifestyle and cultural driver.”Faze is best known as an esports and content brand,

The world has been turned upside down the past few weeks, but one lesson of business remains as important as ever: treating your customers well is the best avenue to future business strength, particularly at a moment of extreme stress.
As businesses come to terms with the economic crisis underway, executives are moving resources from customer acquisition to customer retention — and that’s proving very lucrative to startups that service the customer success market.
Case in point: New

Affinity Serif’s Affinity Photo desktop application is $25 per license right now directly through Serif itself, B&H Photo (via Slickdeals), and through the respective app stores on Windows 10, macOS, and iPadOS. It’s usually $50 ($20 in the case of the iPad), and if you’re in need of a comprehensive, affordable alternative to Adobe Photoshop, this deal is up your alley. In case you haven’t heard of Affinity Photo, it’s a fully featured photo manipulation app th

Photo by Cynthia Johnson/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images/Getty Images It’s been two weeks since Verge politics reporter Makena Kelly dove into the IT tangle that has taken down unemployment insurance systems across the country. Since then, another 4.4 million people have filed claims — bringing the total to more than 20 million people since mid-March — and the situation has hardly improved. Some people report having to call hundreds of times before getting through,

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
Last week we dug into a set of benchmarks that Bessemer Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in software companies among other categories, drew up to grade software-as-a-service (SaaS) startups. The performance metrics were designed to bucket SaaS startups into quality cohorts based on their performance, giving founders and other investors a measuring stick for

Photo by Sarah Silbiger / Getty Images Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) is calling on federal prosecutors to open a criminal antitrust investigation into Amazon, as laid out in a letter released on Tuesday.In his letter to Attorney General William Barr, Hawley presses the Justice Department to open an investigation into Amazon’s data tactics that were detailed in a report from The Wall Street Journal last week. In this report, the Journal outlined several instances in which Amazon employees peered

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge WhatsApp video calls can now include up to eight people instead of just four. In order to reach the new upper limit, everyone on the call will need to be running the updated version of the app. To start a group video call, you can either initiate the call directly from a group chat or add extra people manually after starting a one-on-one call. WhatsApp’s site notes that its video calls are end-to-end encrypted.
For those keeping track, WhatsApp&