Technology news

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. Google recently rolled out a new feature to all Gmail users — namely, that you could both have and switch between multiple email signatures. It’s easy, and you can take advantage of it to be a little more creative with your emails. Multiple signatures to swap between doesn’t, at first blush, sound like something terribly useful. But sup

You can quit Amazon Prime. 
I did it last week, in response to Amazon firing user experience designers Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa. They were protesting the company's firing of warehouse workers who were themselves protesting for better working conditions.
The coronavirus pandemic has hit "essential workers" hardest, a category that includes doctors and the workers who pack and deliver your online purchases. Some of those workers are currently on strike, demanding hazard pay, adequate

Photo by Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images Congress has opened a probe into Carnival Corporation, the operator of the Princess Cruises line of cruise ships, over its handling of COVID-19 outbreaks, according to a report from Bloomberg. Officials are now requesting Carnival turn over documents and communications about its coronavirus response and its plans for future improvement.The investigation, led by the US House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, is specifically looking into how

Video calls suck, and have always sucked. 
We've long known this truth, though as our opportunities for real human interaction evaporated like the national supply of hand sanitizer we somehow forced ourselves to forget it. No more. Welcome to the stage of quarantine where we invent elaborate ways to get out of Zoom calls. 
Enter Marina Fujiwara and her latest creation. The Japan-based artist describes her work as "useless invention[s]," and her "emergency escape" button might fall into

CNN's Anderson Cooper just became a dad and decided to share his joyful news with viewers in a touching on-air segment.
To close out Thursday's CNN Town Hall, Cooper announced the birth of his son Wyatt in an emotional and deeply personal speech.
"It's been a difficult time in all of our lives and there are certainly many hard days ahead." Cooper said. "It is, I think, especially important in these times of trouble to try to hold onto moments of joy and moments of happiness. Even as we mourn the

Image: EVO The annual Evolution Championship Series (EVO) fighting game tournament will be held as an online event this summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event’s organizers announced today. EVO had been scheduled to take place from July 31st to August 2nd at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. All tickets and hotel reservations will be refunded automatically.This year’s EVO lineup was scheduled to include Street Fighter 5: Champion Edition, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Dragon Ball Figh

The ultimate goal of most high-level AI research is the development of a general artificial intelligence (GAI). In essence, what we want is a synthetic mind that could function the same as a human were it placed into a physical vessel of similar capability. Most experts – not all – believe we’re decades away from anything of the sort. Unlike other incredibly complex problems such as nuclear fusion or readjusting the Hubble Constant, nobody really understands yet what GAI actua

If you try calling Zoom, you may be greeted with a gruff voice asking, “Are you looking for Zoom dot-us or Zoomus Marketing?”
That’s Frank Cahill, who runs a small marketing company called Zoomus out of New Jersey. You can find its website at Zoomus.com. He does not work at Zoom, the massively popular video chat service, which is located at Zoom.us. 
A lot of people seem to be getting the two confused.
A new pop-up on Zoomus.com informs visitors that they are not on Zoom.u

If you told everyone exactly how high school would play out, odds are many would opt the hell out. High school in America is a bizarre and unkind time, a collective coming-of-age story that has as much room for variety as there are people who go through it. Never Have I Ever, a new Netflix sitcom from The Mindy Project creator Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher, takes the broad strokes of high school and gives them new life by centering its story on an Indian-American girl. It’s an absolute deli

Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times/Pool/Getty Images The Food and Drug Administration just authorized the emergency use of remdesivir, an experimental anti-viral drug, to treat COVID-19.Emergency authorization does not mean that the drug is FDA-approved, a standard that only comes after a detailed review showing a drug can safely and effectively treat a particular disease. The agency can issue an emergency use authorization (EUA) for unapproved medical products that may help treat a life-th

Microsoft’s Surface Earbuds, announced way back in October, just showed up in an FCC listing, suggesting the AirPods competitor could arrive any time now. The appearance of an FCC filing is one of the most reliable indicators a gadget is up for imminent release. The filing doesn’t reveal much we didn’t already know about the earbuds, although it does include the product’s (sparse) manual. The document confirms the pairing process — surprise, hold down a button for

The Environmental Protection Agency denied Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s claim that the agency made a mistake in its test of the Model S sedan, which resulted in a lower range than Musk thought was deserved.In an earnings call this week, Musk claimed that the Tesla Model S Long Range should be the first electric vehicle to sport a 400-mile range, and that the EPA’s 391-mile rating was the result of a snafu. Musk said someone had left the keys in the vehicle and the door open overnight, causi

A Fujifilm X-H1 mirrorless camera used as a webcam. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge If you’ve been working from home for the past few weeks, you’ve probably had to join more than a few video conference calls. Or perhaps you’ve been using video chat apps to keep in touch with friends and family while social distancing. Either way, you’ve probably noticed that the webcam on your laptop is, well, crap. It leads to blurry, pixelated video calls, and unflattering viewing a

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Steam will no longer support SteamVR on macOS. RIP! It is the end of a very short era. Steam introduced SteamVR for Apple computers way back in the mists of time — 2017’s Worldwide Developers Conference. As The Verge wrote then: “Valve has been working with Apple on this since last summer, which shows a high level of technical and business confidence in Apple’s VR efforts.”The move was announced in a short post on SteamVR&rsq

Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images A group of Senate Republicans is planning to introduce a privacy bill that would regulate the data collected by coronavirus contact tracing apps. The COVID-19 Consumer Data Protection Act would “provide all Americans with more transparency, choice, and control over the collection and use of their personal health, geolocation, and proximity data,” according to a joint statement. It’s not clear how the legislation would be enf

The Verge art team in group flight. It’s been more than a few weeks now that many of us have been forced to use Zoom for communication. In that time, really creative backgrounds for Zoomers have popped up. There are lots of options out there right now, and lots of people are getting in on the game. But yesterday Mike Winkelmann, also known as Beeple, dropped what might be the coolest (at least IMHO) so far.
Behold COVID-COCKPIT!
pic.twitter.com/BGiRVzLbEt— beeple (@beeple) April 30,

Automatic has announced that it’ll be abruptly shutting down on May 28th because “the COVID-19 pandemic has adversely impacted our business.” As such, the company is discontinuing its Automatic service and recommending that customers remove the connected car adapters from their vehicles and recycle them.As the company explains in an FAQ, “with fewer customers purchasing and leasing vehicles and drivers on the road, we unfortunately do not see a path forward for our busine

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield thinks Microsoft Teams isn’t a competitor to Slack. Questioned on the ongoing battle between Slack and Microsoft Teams for the enterprise space, Butterfield once again challenged Microsoft’s approach to bundling Teams with Office.
“What we’ve seen over the past couple of months is that Teams is not a competitor to Slack,” said Butterfield in an interview with CNBC this week. “When they [Mic

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales It’s earnings season and The Verge has been paying close attention to the impact of COVID-19 on the tech world. This week on The Vergecast, co-hosts Nilay, Dieter, and Paul discuss the takeaways from earnings reports by Twitter, Tesla, Facebook, and other big tech companies.
Second half of the show, the big topic is the recent shift in CEOs at the three big mobile carriers in the United States: AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. How will things change under a

Tokyo‘s Sumida Aquarium has noticed a bizarre side effect of the coronavirus pandemic — it’s making the in-house spotted garden eels afraid of humans. To compensate, the aquarium is attempting to bring humans in via technology in order to reassure the poor little sea noodles. Starting on May 3, you’ll be able to video call the eels. Apparently the eels are used to constant human attention, seeing them often outside their tanks. Now that the coronavirus is preventing

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Automakers are letting hundreds of thousands of customers around the country defer loan and lease payments during the pandemic, offering a small bit of financial relief in a dramatically uncertain time. But customers who call Honda of North America to ask for one of these deferrals are likely talking to a representative who’s still working in one of the company’s regional offices, because it’s making many employees come into these office

Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Friday that Tesla’s stock price is “too high imo,” and the stock fell immediately after. Tesla’s stock is down more than eight percent as of this writing.
Last year Musk made an agreement he made with the Securities and Exchange Commission to have a company lawyer pre-approve tweets about Tesla’s finances, sales, or deliveries last April. The settlement exists because Musk tweeted he was thinking of taking Tesla private, “funding se

Image: Samsung AT&T and Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile are bringing Samsung’s $399 Galaxy A51 to their networks this month. The phone, which is the successor to the incredibly popular Galaxy A50, launched on Verizon and Sprint in April. Although Samsung plans to release a 5G version of the handset in the US later this summer, for now only the LTE-variant is available.
There’s a lot packed into the Galaxy A51. The phone comes with four rear cameras, including a main 48-megapixel

Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images The House Judiciary Committee called on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Friday to testify before the body after Democratic leader accused company officials of allegedly lying before Congress last week.In a letter addressed to Bezos, seven bipartisan members of the committee said that recent reporting from The Wall Street Journal about Amazon’s data tactics for creating private label products calls into question previous statements company officials have mad

Consumer Reports has analyzed the privacy policies of Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Webex and discovered that they may be collecting more data than you realize.
To be clear: Consumer Reports isn’t saying that these apps are unsafe to use (and indeed, a separate Mozilla report found that nearly every major video conferencing app meets basic security standards).But by agreeing to the privacy policies of these services, you are giving companies like Google and Microsoft access to plenty o

Consumer Reports has analyzed the privacy policies of Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and WebEx and discovered that they may be collecting more data than you realize.
To be clear: Consumer Reports isn’t saying that these apps are unsafe to use (and indeed, a separate Mozilla report found that nearly every major video conferencing app meets basic security standards).But by agreeing to the privacy policies of these services, you are giving companies like Google and Microsoft access to plenty o

Mark Cuban isn’t impressed that you’ve raised money.
“If you think the accomplishment is raising money first, we’re probably not gonna get along,” said Cuban in an Extra Crunch Live interview. “If your orientation is ‘I got to raise the money first,’ you don’t really have a company yet, and you really haven’t accomplished anything yet. […] Sweat equity is the best equity.”
We also got his take on today’s economy, the

Switching from HBO Now to HBO Max is a decision that incoming AT&T CEO John Stankey once said will be an “IQ test.” Now, AT&T and WarnerMedia are trying to make that upgrade even more appealing by offering a year of HBO Max, which launches on May 27th, to subscribers for $11.99 a month. That’s$3 cheaper than current HBO Now subscriptions.There are a couple of caveats. The new price tag is only available to “new subscribers and returning HBO Now subscribers, who si

Spotify ESPN and Netflix are looking to Spotify for ancillary content to complement their newest docuseries about former Chicago Bulls player Michael Jordan. The Last Dance tells the story of Jordan’s career over the course of 10 episodes released weekly, and now, Spotify is creating music and podcast playlists that viewers can check out after watching the show. The music playlist was partially curated by the series’ music supervisor Rudy Chung, while Spotify’s internal podcas