Technology news

Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Monday he is “worried” that other countries may be trying to imitate China’s approach to regulating the internet.“Just to be blunt about it, I think there is a model coming out of countries like China that tend to have very different values than Western countries that are more democratic,” Zuckerberg said during an hourlong video conversation Monday with European Union Industry Commissioner

Photo by Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images President Donald Trump said he’s taking antimalarial medication hydroxychloroquine and zinc because he believes the drugs could prevent COVID-19.“Here’s my evidence. I get a lot of positive calls about it,” he said today in a White House roundtable with restaurant executives. Trump said he’s been taking the drugs every day for a week and a half and that he has not had any COVID-19 symptoms. People close to the president, incl

Photo by Win McNamee / Getty Images Elon Musk has always had a certain manic energy on Twitter, but in the past week, his output has taken a more troubling turn. Musk’s ongoing standoff with Alameda County health officials had inspired him to share a wave of disinformation, something he hasn’t backed off from even as much of it has been removed from the platforms themselves. But now, Musk seems to be moving into a more troubling part of the online sphere, and he risks taking a lot o

Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney Disney’s Kevin Mayer is leaving his post as the head of Disney’s streaming efforts to become the CEO of the short form video app TikTok, Disney announced today. He will also become the COO of TikTok’s owner, ByteDance.“Kevin has had an extraordinary impact on our company over the years, most recently as head of our direct-to-consumer business,” said Disney CEO Bob Chapek in a statement. “He has done a masterful job

Image: City of Columbus, OH French self-driving vehicle company EasyMile will add seatbelts to its shuttles in order to be able to once again carry passengers in the US. EasyMile’s shuttles were suspended by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in late February after an incident where a passenger fell out of her seat during a sudden stop in Columbus, Ohio.
EasyMile’s shuttles, which operate on a trial basis in about a dozen US cities, will also feature more sig

I didn’t go into today thinking that I would be awed by a sudoku puzzle. But after a tweet popped up on my timeline promising that I would not only watch a man spend nearly half an hour solving a puzzle, but that it would be “the highlight of my day,” I was intrigued. The result is one of the most incredibly satisfying videos I’ve ever seen.
The man in question is Simon Anthony. He is one half of the sudoku YouTube channel Cracking the Cryptic, which posts several videos

When Verizon (which owns this publication) announced it was buying video conferencing company BlueJeans for around $500 million last month, you probably thought it was going take awhile to bake, but the companies announced today that they has closed the deal.
While it’s crystal clear that video conferencing is a hot item during the pandemic, all sides maintained that this deal was about much more than the short-term requirements of COVID-19. In fact, Verizon saw an enterprise-grade video c

Instagram is launching a new Guides feature today that lets creators curate content together in a single location, with the first ones set to focus on wellness content in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Some of the first Guides include one from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention called “Mental Health and COVID-19,” which collects the group’s content into a single, easy-to-find place. Heads Together, a mental health group, has similar Guides that collect Inst

Image: Josh Constine Apple’s upcoming iOS 14 could have a new augmented reality app that can read Apple-branded QR codes and might have new features baked into the Find My app, according iOS 14 files obtained by former TechCrunch reporter Josh Constine.
That new AR app, called Gobi in these files, could be able to read both more traditional-looking QR codes and an interesting new circular design for QR codes, reports Constine. Constine also shared images of what those QR codes may look li

Photo by Paul Jeffers/Fairfax Media via Getty Images via Getty Images Square employees will be able to work from home even after the COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders end, Jack Dorsey told workers. The indefinite extension of the company’s remote work policy echoes a similar announcement from Twitter last week. Dorsey is CEO of both companies.
“We want employees to be able to work where they feel most creative and productive,” a company spokesperson told The Verge. “Movin

Podcast Addict Podcast Addict, an Android podcast app with millions of users, was suspended over the weekend because it lists COVID-19 content. The app’s creator, Xavier Guillemane, tells The Verge that on Saturday, Google suspended and removed the ads from his nine-year-old app because it violated a new policy for developers that requires any app with a reference to COVID-19 to be “published, commissioned, or authorized by official government entities or public health organizations

A famous investor published notes today concerning its startup investments, detailing where they excelled and where they struggled. To understand why we care about this particular investor’s results, a little context helps.
The investor in question is Japanese telecom giant and startup benefactor SoftBank, which reported its fiscal year results this morning. SoftBank’s investments are famous because of its $100 billion Vision Fund effort, which saw it put capital to work in a host of

Onn Tablet Pro 10.1-inch | Image: Walmarr Walmart has released new versions of its Onn tablets, starting at $99 and including some uncommon features for Android tablets in that price range, as spotted by 9to5Google.The new Onn Tablet Pro comes in eight-inch and 10.1-inch models. The eight-inch variant, which is $99, includes an HD LCD display, 32GB of storage, 2GB of RAM, a 2.0GHz octa-core processor, and 5MP cameras located on the front and the back of the device. The 10.1-inch model is $129 a

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A court in Texas is holding the first jury trial on Zoom. The news comes as court systems across the country face a choice between postponing trials until the pandemic ends or holding remote proceedings.The case in Texas is an insurance dispute in the Collin County District, as reported by Reuters. Judge Emily Miskel live-streamed the jury selection process via her YouTube channel on Monday morning.Next, jurors will hear an abbreviated version of the disp

In short clips filmed in what looks like a home office / basement bunker, director David Lynch has been reporting the weather in Los Angeles and they’re... sort of soothing? The Twin Peaks co-creator has been posting the occasional videos to his David Lynch Theater YouTube channel since May 11th. Each one lasts about a minute, and he gets right to the point: the date, the current weather, and the temperature (in Fahrenheit and Celsius).“Here in LA, by golly, we’ve got rain, gra

Photo: DoorDash There are many things that don’t make sense about global capitalism that I enjoy anyway — the clearly inadvisable, venture-backed monstrosities like dockless scooters and ride-sharing that, in the before times, changed how I interacted with the places I went. The thing that doesn’t compute for me is how these companies continue to burn through a reality-warping amount of other people’s cash in a way that upends the basic economics of things like taxi serv

Image: TNT Snowpiercer, Bong Joon-ho’s gripping sci-fi film, doesn’t seem like a natural fit for television. A tense post-apocalyptic story where the remnants of humanity succumb to class warfare on an endlessly running train, the movie was a finely tuned thriller that also succinctly articulated its themes. More of something isn’t always a good thing. You run the risk of diluting it, especially when the leaner medium of TV forces you to reproduce the original on a tighter bud

Image: Riot Games Riot Games will host a 48-hour League of Legends charity stream to raise money for COVID-19 relief, the studio announced today. The stream, called the Mid-Season Streamathon, will feature competitive and exhibition matches from all over the world, and it’ll kick off on May 29th at 8PM ET.
On the competitive side, viewers will be able to watch the semifinals and finals for the Mid-Season Cup, a tournament pitting the top teams in China’s League of Legends Pro League

A vicious wildfire closed Yosemite National Park in August 1990. Described as "no joke" by a truck driver who escaped the flames, over 6,000 firefighters combated the blaze, remembers Phil Francis, who worked for Yosemite during the crisis.
In total, Francis spent 41 years working for the National Park Service. But among all the crises he responded to over the decades, nothing has been as pervasive and troubling as the current pandemic — caused by a new pathogen with no proven medical trea

Work(out) From Home is a weekly column where we review smart fitness machines and apps in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Thanks to technology, there are still plenty of ways to exercise if your gym is closed. Read more...
Resistance Band Exercises app
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The Good
Clear instructions • Adjustable difficulty levels • Effective workouts • Affordable
The Bad
Infrequent workout updates • Programs locked behind paywall
The Bottom Line
The Resistance Band Exerci

In the past couple months of social distancing, I've noticed that my mind has gone in circles when it comes to thinking — and acting on — some activities. Take masturbating as an example:
Don't say you haven't experienced this.
Image:mashable
And sometimes, it feels more like this:
Actually, this is a bit more accurate.
Image:mashable
Which is to say: I've been masturbating more than in pre-COVID times. Sue me! I'm not able to distract myself with life's pleasures such as an overpric

YouTuber Jed Segovia really undersold their project, writing simply that Netflix's Tiger King had "'been described as a "redneck Game of Thrones.' So [they] made it." 
What they created was a mashup masterpiece. 
The video recreates the iconic GOT opening map-montage with original animation walking you through the Tiger King universe. The intro takes you everywhere from Joe Exotic's pizzeria, to Carole Baskin's Big Cat Rescue, to Doc Antle's Myrtle Beach compound. 
The final image

Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images After months of trying, the FBI successfully broke into iPhones belonging to the gunman responsible for a deadly shooting at Pensacola Naval Air Station in December 2019, and it now claims he had associations with terrorist organization al-Qaeda. Investigators managed to do so without Apple’s help, but Attorney General William Barr and FBI director Christopher Wray both voiced strong frustration with the iPhone maker at a press conference on Monday morn

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Adobe is releasing a new update to Premiere Pro this week that includes hardware acceleration for Nvidia GPUs. The 14.2 update includes GPU-accelerated encoding using Nvidia’s hardware encoder for the company’s Quadro and GeForce graphics cards, with the promise that video editors will be able to export high-resolution videos up to 5 times faster than by just using the CPU. The changes also apply to Adobe’s Media Encoder, Affect Effects, and Aud

If you thought Nintendo Switches were hard to find during quarantine, try getting ahold of an Xbox console right now.
Best Buy's inventory has been completely cleared out — every single Xbox console and bundle listed on its website is sold out online and unavailable for in-store pickup within 250 miles of all major U.S. cities. And at Walmart and Amazon, the only stragglers left in stock are either the rare refurbished models or ones being sold by sketchy third-party retailers.
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Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
Today we’re digging into SoftBank’slatest earnings slides. Not only do they contain a wealth of updates and other useful information, but some of them are gosh-darn-freaking hilarious. We all deserve a bit of levity after the last few months.
The visual elements we quote below come from SoftBank’s reporting of its own results from its fiscal year ending March 3