Technology news

Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images In one of a series of wild tweets posted last week, Elon Musk stated he would be “selling almost all physical possessions” and that he would “own no house.” He appears to be actually following through with that promise, as chronicled in a great story in The Wall Street Journal about Musk’s personal finances that you should go read.According to the WSJ, despite being worth an estimated $39 billion on paper:
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Alert: Spoilers for the Netflix docuseries “The Tiger King” ahead. “President Trump we are asking you today to please free Joe Exotic. He’s absolutely not guilty. And we’re going to be able to prove that. We’re asking for a pardon.” Eric Love, lead investigator for the Tiger King’s legal team. TMZ today revealed an exclusive video from the legal team of Joe Maldonado-Passage, AKA Joe Exotic the Tiger King, requesting a pardon for the disgraced for

Photo by Emmanuele Ciancaglini/NurPhoto via Getty Images Food and beverage delivery services like DoorDash, Postmates, and Uber Eats aided in a surge of alcohol deliveries to underage minors in California last month, the state’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) found in a new investigation. And because of relaxed restrictions around alcohol takeout and delivery during COVID-19, the issue is getting worse, regulators say.The investigation’s findings, posted as an indust

Melinda Sue Gordon Warner Bros. was always betting that Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, his espionage-meets-time-travel film that marked his first since Dunkirk in 2017, would be one of the summer’s biggest movies. Now, Warner Bros. — alongside every other major studio — is looking at Tenet to see if summer movies can even exist right now.Tenet is scheduled to open on July 17th. Other blockbusters originally slated to open before Nolan’s movie have already found new rel

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple’s US retail stores have been closed since mid-March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the company is going to start opening some of them back up next week. “We’re excited to begin reopening stores in the US next week, starting with some stores in Idaho, South Carolina, Alabama, and Alaska,” an Apple representative told CNBC. “Our new social distance protocol allows for a limited number of visitors in the store at on

Image: Facebook Facebook’s redesigned desktop site is now available globally, the company announced on Friday. Prior to this change, the new version of Facebook was available only if you opted into it starting in March and only in some markets, although the company said at the time that a majority of people would get access that month.In a blog post published today, Facebook says the new site will “now be the web experience for Facebook globally,” adding that “it’s

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google’s Duo video chat app will soon let you make group video calls on the web, the search company announced today. That could be a handy way to catch up with your friends and family while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, though group call participants will need a Google account to join, Google says. The feature is rolling out as a preview in Chrome in the coming weeks.
There’s also a new “family mode” in Duo, which

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has extended its work-from-home policy for the remainder of 2020. After previously telling employees that they would be working remotely until June 1st, CEO Sundar Pichai has told employees that they’ll likely work from home until the end of the year, via The Information.According to Pichai, employees whose work requires physically being in the office will be allowed back in either June or July, but with increased safety precautions and a &ld

Photo by Megan JELINGER/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Ohio asked employers to report workers who stay home during the novel coronavirus pandemic, but at least one person is trying to clog the system in protest. As the state begins lifting its shelter-in-place orders, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) posted a form for reporting coronavirus-related “employee fraud” — in other words, people who quit their jobs or refuse to work because they’re concer

Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images A combination of heat and humidity so extreme that it’s unendurable isn’t just a problem for the future — those conditions are already here, a new study finds. Off-the-chart readings that were previously thought to be nearly nonexistent on the planet today have popped up around the globe, and unyielding temperatures are becoming more common.Extreme conditions reaching roughly 115 degrees Fahrenheit on the heat-index scale — a measur

Image: Detroit Lions / Twitter All 32 NFL teams unveiled their schedules for the 2020 season yesterday. However, the Detroit Lions got a little more creative in how they did it, announcing their entire schedule through Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
The team posted a seven-minute video on Twitter last night that kicks off with a daily announcement from Tom Nook. Throughout the video, the Lions unveiled which opponents they will face throughout the 2020 season in a variety of hilarious ways, lik

MTV’s first ever broadcast on August 1st, 1981 starts with footage of the Apollo 11 rocket launch. As the rocket lifts off, the footage cuts to an astronaut jumping on the moon, an acid-pop colored flag standing proud as the classic MTV logo shimmered. A music video for The Buggles’ “Video Killed The Radio Star” plays.
It’s an iconic scene, and one that I’ve watched countless times over the last few days thanks to a recent upload on the Internet Archive. Tens

Twitter seems to be rolling out one of the most useful features everyone would want to use — scheduling. This feature would be quite handy for social media managers and news publications to handle their tweets. The new feature lets users schedule a tweet on a specific date and time. You can even look at your all your scheduled tweets in the scheduling window. Scheduling seems to be currently available only to some folks on Twitter for desktop. It’s not clear if this is just a test,

Bitcoin is nearing one of its most important milestones: The Halving (or Halvening), an automated event that cuts the monetary reward for mining BTC by 50%. Depending on who you believe, Halvings either cause Bitcoin‘s price to skyrocket, its hash rate to crash, or simply exist as a relatively boring exercise in economic theory. [Read: Gambling on Bitcoin with Trump’s $1,200 corona check was a good bet] Rather than debate whether the market has already “priced in” t

Andy Serkis, perhaps best known for his CGI-enhanced performance as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings movies, is reading The Hobbit live on YouTube as a benefit for UK charities providing COVID-19 relief. He started his Hobbitathon at around 5AM ET today and already has raised £203,699 (about $253,000).
“So many of us are struggling in isolation during the lockdown,” Serkis wrote on the GoFundMe page for the fundraiser. “While times are tough, I want to take you on one of t

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Deals on the Apple Watch Series 5 have mostly dried up for the time being, but if that model was still a little out of reach price-wise, Walmart and Best Buy each have the Apple Watch Series 3 (38mm, GPS) for $179. This price isn’t necessarily the lowest ever, though this deal is notable because stock, in general, for this model has been scarce since Black Friday. Both retailers currently have a few color options to choose between. Image: Sony
If you want

There were a lot of announcements in the consumer tech world this week, with new hardware from both Microsoft and Apple, plus some promising early gameplay videos for the Xbox Series X console.This week on The Vergecast, co-hosts Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Paul Miller walk through those announcements: the Microsoft Surface Go 2, Surface Book 3, and a new 13-inch MacBook Pro from Apple. The crew also discusses how the Xbox Series X will have games optimized for the console with faster load tim

Taylor Walker worked hard during her time at Salem State University. She was her class’s homecoming queen, she sang in the university’s Grammy award-winning choir, and she completed a double degree in communication and speech. Graduation was her chance to reflect on all those accomplishments. To celebrate, she planned to host a party with her family, who she hasn’t seen much because she’s been so busy.“I wanted to have this time to celebrate not just me, but my fami

For every star Twitch streamer with thousands of viewers there are thousands of channels putting on a show for an empty audience. There’s no shame in it, that’s simply how things are. But now there’s an app that helps you encourage small-time streamers by randomly connecting you to channels with no viewers. Enter Twitch Roulette — it’s like Chat Roulette of sorts, but without any of the penises. That, and it has been specifically designed to filter through str

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
This week shares of SaaS and cloud companies reached new record highs as investors bid their equities higher following an earnings cycle that came in better than some expected.
SaaS stocks, as measured by the Bessemer-Nasdaq cloud index, closed at a 1,484.93 yesterday, a record, and just a hair under its intraday high of 1,491.59.
The raw numbers matter less than the index&rsquo

At a time when simply sharing space with a fellow human being can be a dangerous activity, many governments, airports, and hospitals are discovering the non-contagious delights of robots, which can be deployed to clean surfaces and deliver goods without fear.Their latest deployment comes from Singapore, where municipal authorities are using Boston Dynamics’ four-legged Spot robot to remind park visitors to keep a safe distance from one another. Starting today, a Spot unit will patrol the c