Technology news

Messenger Rooms, Facebook’s Zoom competitor that can support up to 50 people in one video call, is now available in the US, Mexico, and Canada. It “will be available to everyone globally in the next week” said Mark Zuckerberg in a post on his Facebook profile. Zuckerberg highlighted some of the differences between Messenger Rooms and existing video calling options. While regular Messenger and WhatsApp “are already the most popular video calling services globally,”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple’s global supply chain is making safety changes to better protect workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, as outlined in the company’s 2020 Supplier Responsibility report. Sabih Khan, Apple’s senior vice president of operations and the person in charge of the company’s global supply chain, detailed the changes the company’s suppliers are making in a letter at the beginning of the report.
The company has worked with its glo

Rick Riordan’s beloved young adult fantasy series, Percy Jackson, is getting another shot at the live-action treatment seven years after the last film was released — but this time, as a Disney Plus series.Riordan announced the project on Twitter, adding a note of reassurance to fans who were left livid over 20th Century Fox’s original film adaptations in 2010 and 2013: it wouldn’t end up like last time. Both Riordan and fans of the books, which follow demigod Percy Jackso

Photo Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), which makes Apple’s A-series chips, plans to build an advanced chip factory in Arizona, The Wall Street Journal reported. The plant would make 5-nanometer transistor chips for TSMC, which the company has been testing with customers in Taiwan over the past several months, the report states.
TSMC’s board made the decision to build the plant earlier this week at

Sucker Punch Productions has released a new 18-minute gameplay trailer for its upcoming open-world samurai game Ghost of Tsushima, showcasing exploration, combat, and customization elements of the game.
The new trailer marks the first real footage of Ghost of Tsushima that Sucker Punch has shown since E3 2018 when the studio first showcased the game’s mix of swordplay and stealth. Since then, Sucker Punch has also released a story trailer introducing players to the main protagonist, Jin Sa

Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images The United States Postal Service (USPS) is pushing back the deadline for official bids to make its next-generation mail truck because of “the current COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on Postal Service and supplier operations.” The delay, which was first reported by Trucks.com, comes as the Postal Service is seeking billions of dollars in emergency funding as part of the Trump administration’s Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Ac

Image: Facebook Facebook’s new video chat product, Messenger Rooms, is now available to everyone on both mobile and desktop, the company announced on Thursday. The product is a more feature-rich and expanded version of the existing Facebook Messenger’s video calling function, and it allows up to 50 people to chat on video with no time limit through either the main Facebook app or through the dedicated Messenger one.Facebook says you can set limits on who can join, or you can make it

The most upsetting thing about The Eddy is that it’s already over. Netflix’s latest bingeable show is a limited series, an eight-episode run about a jazz club in Paris. Produced by Academy Award-winning La La Land and First Man director Damien Chazelle (who directed the first two episodes) and written by acclaimed playwright Jack Thorne, The Eddy feels like it brings something truly new to the many original series the streaming giant has cultivated of late, and it’s one of the

The Senate has voted to reauthorize the USA Freedom Act, bringing the surveillance bill closer to becoming law. The USA Freedom Reauthorization Act restores government powers that expired in March with Section 215 of the Patriot Act. While the Senate adopted an amendment to expand oversight, it shot down a proposal that would have restricted warrantless collection of internet search and web browsing data.
The USA Freedom Reauthorization Act lets law enforcement collect “tangible things&rdq

The Universal Windows Platform, UWP for short, was supposed to be the future of Windows. Back when Microsoft still had aspirations for Windows to be a major mobile OS, UWP apps were supposed to be able to function on desktops, tablets, and phones alike. Yet over the years, developers largely stuck to the tried and trusted Win32 platform. Now it seems Microsoft is getting rid of UWP altogether. As spotted by Paul Thurrott, a session for the company’s upcoming online-only Build conference w

Photo: NextVR Apple has confirmed it did indeed purchase virtual reality company NextVR, which specializes in recording live events like concerts and sports matches to be experienced in VR, according to Bloomberg. The company’s confirmation arrives after 9to5Mac first reported the acquisition in early April.NextVR’s website was also changed this week to read, “We’re heading in a new direction,” and the company thanked its “partners and fans around the world f

Researchers from the University of Washington and Microsoft’s AI team today unveiled a ‘Smart To-Do’ tool for automatically generating task lists from emails. Smart To-Do is an AI feature that scans your outgoing emails for actionable text and turns your self-given tasks into items on an automatically generated to-do list. If, for example, you tell your boss that you’ll give them an update on the Amsterdam account by noon on Wednesday, the AI will put something like &ldq

Cruise, the self-driving car startup that is a majority-owned subsidiary of General Motors, is laying off 150 employees, or about 8 percent of its workforce, to cut costs amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. The news was first reported by Bloomberg.“In this time of great change, we’re fortunate to have a crystal clear mission and billions in the bank,” spokesman Milin Mehta said in a statement. “The actions we took today reflect us doubling down on our engineering work an

T-Mobile and Sprint officially became one last month, and the two networks have already begun merging their networks. We’ve known for a while that the Sprint brand would be phased out in favor of T-Mobile as well, but now we know when. During an investor call, T-Mobile CEO Mike Seivert said the company will transition to a unified brand starting this summer. The process was originally expected to begin in early summer, but COVID-19 pushed it to mid-summer instead: With COVID-19, we moved

The face shield design | Amazon A team of Amazon engineers from its drone delivery unit worked with a group of 3D printing volunteers to develop reusable face shields for frontline workers, the company announced in a blog post Thursday.
Amazon Prime Air’s mechanical design and hardware teams adapted the design for the shields from the Washington State 3D Face Shield Hub, upgrading the shields to be more comfortable and the design more practical based on feedback from medical professionals

TikTok is in hot water yet again, this time for failing to protect its youthful users in spite of its promise to do so — and if history repeats, it might have to pay another seven-figure fine if this complaint bears fruit. The complaint was filed by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and the Center for Digital Democracy, along with a dozen other groups. The gist of it is that TikTok continues to thumb its nose at rules designed to protect the privacy of children by leaving video

Earlier today, DigitalOcean announced that it raised $50 million more from prior investors Access Industries and Andreessen Horowitz. The capital comes after the SMB and developer-focused cloud infrastructure company raised nine-figures worth of debt back in February.
DigitalOceanis a large private company that generated revenue at a run rate of around $250 million towards the end of 2019. The company announced today that it has reached $300 million in annual recurring revenue, or ARR. (We recen

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google’s Chrome browser will begin blocking resource-heavy ads starting in late August, the company announced today (via VentureBeat). By not displaying those resource-heavy ads, Chrome could ease the strain on your phone’s battery or your home network capacity.
“We have recently discovered that a fraction of a percent of ads consume a disproportionate share of device resources, such as battery and network data, without the user knowing

A new AI system that quietly watches over you from inside your home can work out if you’re gorging on microwave meals or constantly blowdrying your hair. The system, called Sapple, collects data from two separate sensors: a wall-mounted device that tracks the movements of residents, and a smart electricity meter that monitors the total energy consumed in the home.  This data is fed to a deep learning model that connects the resident’s location to t

It’s the early 2000s. You stay up late to watch anime on your TV hoping your parents don’t hear. Next thing you know, you hear the iconic intro to Cowboy Bebop play, and all is well in the world.The Japanese band Seatbelts — which performed Cowboy Bebop’s opening theme, “Tank!” — grouped up recently to assemble an at-home performance for fans. The performance is every bit as fast-paced and energetic as the song itself, with the video edited to quickly cu

Tetris Effect, the trippy musical VR take on Tetris that won plaudits in 2018 from people like... me, is now available on the Oculus Quest headset. The game was originally released for the PlayStation 4 and came to the Epic Games Store on PC last year. Tetris Effect is one of the most beloved VR games out there and the Oculus Quest is my favorite VR headset, so I would describe this as good news.I’ve spent some time with the Quest version and, well, it’s Tetris Effect on the Quest. I

A team of programmers and songwriters from Australia have won the inaugural (and unofficial) AI Eurovision Song Contest, using a neural network trained on noises made by koalas, kookaburras, and Tasmanian devils to help score their winning entry.
The group, named Uncanny Valley, said their song was a response to the bushfire season that began ravaging Australia in June 2019. Scientists estimated that around a billion animals were killed by the fires (a figure that excludes insects, fish, frogs,

Photo by Sean O’Kane/The Verge Tesla is getting ready to introduce a long rumored lower-cost, longer-lasting battery for its electric vehicles in China sometime later this year or early next year, according to a new report from Reuters. The battery — which has been colloquially called a “million mile” battery in reference to how long it can last in a car before breaking down — is being co-developed with Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge T-Mobile and Sprint are preparing to take the next step in merging their wireless companies, with the two brands reportedly planning to merge their customers and retail stores under a single T-Mobile banner this summer, via Fierce Wireless. In other words: the end of Sprint is near.
The immediate changes are largely surface-level: Sprint’s brand will be eliminated in favor of T-Mobile’s on things like storefronts and bills. T-Mobile CEO Mike S

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Today, Twitch is announcing the formation of its new Safety Advisory Council, a group made up of streamers, academics, and nonprofit leaders that will advise the company on online safety issues. The council will help Twitch draft new policies and update old ones, develop new products for safety and moderation, protect the interests of marginalized people, and identify new, toxic trends emerging from the platform.On the streamer side, the group is comprise

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A group of child privacy advocates has filed a complaint against TikTok with the Federal Trade Commission, claiming the video app violated an agreement to protect children on its platform, The New York Times reported.TikTok paid a $5.7 million fine to the FTC in February 2019 over allegations that an earlier version of its app, called Musical.ly, violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by allowing users younger than 13 to sign

With the global economy still sorting itself out in the face of the pandemic, we’re hearing about fewer new venture capital funds these days. However, today is an exception, as Cathay Innovation has raised a $550 million second fund, which is about double the size of its first fund and, according to its leader Denis Barrier, is larger than the firm’s “original target.”
Cathay Innovation’sinitial fund had some winners. The firm, which is part of the same org but dist

Image: Rockstar The Epic Games Store has been counting down to the launch of an unnamed free title at 11AM ET today, and we learned last night that game would be Rockstar’s smash hit Grand Theft Auto V, thanks to an early tweet posted by Epic Games’ official Twitter account. However, since the clock passed 11AM ET, the Epic Games Store has been down entirely, presumably as people have been refreshing the site trying to claim the free game.
Epic acknowledged in an 11:05AM ET tweet an

Image: Rockstar The Epic Games Store has been counting down to the launch of an unnamed free title at 11AM ET today, and we learned last night that game would be Rockstar’s smash hit Grand Theft Auto V, thanks to an early tweet posted by Epic Games’ official Twitter account. However, since the clock passed 11AM ET, the Epic Games Store has been down entirely, presumably as people have been refreshing the site trying to claim the free game.
Epic has acknowledged that the store is exp

Headspace Headspace is making its premium mindfulness and meditation app free for all people who are now unemployed in the US. The deal is available through headspace.com/unemployed and relies on the honor system for verification. People have to fill out their name, where they previously worked, what they did, where they live, and their last date of employment. Then they have to check a box to verify that what they’re claiming is true. From there, they’ll have access to all of Heads