Technology news

Bad Scooter / Twitter An apparent Twitter joke got out of control this weekend, falsely convincing some users — and possibly even the leader of the QAnon conspiracy theory — that MSNBC ran a broadcast with World War Z shots instead of real protest footage.
Over the past day, an image and video clip have spread around Twitter comparing a news broadcast with a scene from the Brad Pitt film World War Z. The clip seems to show MSNBC reporting on the weekend’s nationwide protests,

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In order to comply with local curfew orders, food delivery platform DoorDash and ride-sharing companies Lyft and Uber are temporarily suspending service in some cities across the US, CNBC reported. More than three dozen cities have implemented curfews following demonstrations protesting the May 25th death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Police in several cities used tear gas and rubber bullets against protesters, and some businesses were vandalized.A Lyft

Image: Grindr Grindr, a popular gay dating app, will remove ethnicity filters from its app, the company tweeted today. The decision is meant to show solidarity with protests in the US over police brutality against black women and men. The filters, which allow people to pay to avoid seeing people of certain ethnicities, will be removed in the next app update.
The ethnicity filters have been controversial for years, but they went unchanged even as Grindr launched an anti-racism campaign on the pl

Danggeun Market, the startup behind Karrot, South Korea’s largest neighborhood marketplace and networking app, announced today that it has raised a $33 million Series C. The round was led by Goodwater Capital and Altos Ventures.
The funding brings Danggeun Market’s total raised so far to $40.5 million. Its list of investors also include Kakao Ventures, Strong Ventures, SoftBank Ventures and Capstone Partners. Danggeun Market, which launched Karrot in the United Kingdom last November,

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple has released iOS 13.5.1 today, which the company says “provides important security updates and is recommended for all users,” albeit without much detail in the change log. But as noted by Twitter account Apple Software Updates, the update is meant to patch out the kernel vulnerability used by the recent Unc0ver jailbreak.
Apple’s support page lays things out more clearly — the update was designed to prevent an application fro

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge Apple has doubled the price to upgrade the RAM on the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, as spotted by MacRumors. The upgrade now costs $200 to move from 8GB to 16GB of RAM; previously, you could upgrade the RAM for $100.The price increase is actually a price correction, Apple tells The Verge. The price to upgrade RAM from 8GB to 16GB is $200 on other Macs, including the iMac and MacBook Air, and this change is meant to keep the fee consistent. Apple says it will

Photo by SETH HERALD/AFP via Getty Images Law enforcement’s brutal response to this weekend’s protests may fuel mistrust in the health care system as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to smolder through the country.Experts say the danger is especially acute in black communities, which have already been hit hard by the virus, and have historically borne the brunt of discriminatory policing. In the aftermath of the police response to protests, vulnerable communities may be even less lik

Hurricane Dorian makes landfall on North Carolina’s Outer Banks on September 6, 2019  | Photo by NOAA via Getty Images The Atlantic hurricane season officially begins June 1st, and it’s going to be a doozy. “Hurricane season is off to a busy start!” the National Hurricane Center tweeted as it forecast an 80 percent chance of a tropical depression forming over the Bay of Campeche in the Gulf of Mexico this week.There’s a 60 percent chance that this will be a wo

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sony is postponing its PlayStation 5 event that was scheduled for June 4th due to ongoing protests. “While we understand gamers worldwide are excited to see PS5 games, we do not feel that right now is a time for celebration,” says Sony in a Twitter message. “And for now, we want to stand back and allow more important voices to be heard.”
Sony is clearly referencing the response to the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, and the res

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sony is postponing its PlayStation 5 event that was scheduled for June 4th due to ongoing protests. “While we understand gamers worldwide are excited to see PS5 games, we do not feel that right now is a time for celebration,” says Sony in a Twitter message. “And for now, we want to stand back and allow more important voices to be heard.”
Sony is clearly referencing the response to the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, and the res

Four major book publishers have filed suit against the Internet Archive for copyright violations relating to the Open Library project, setting the stage for a major legal fight over one of the internet’s longest-running ebook archives.
Launched in 2006, Internet Archive’s Open Library allows users to borrow ebooks scanned from physical copies, according to a theory called “controlled digital lending” (or CDL) that limits how many times a single scan can be borrowed at onc

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Dozens of Facebook employees staged a virtual walkout on Monday in protest of the company’s decision not to take action against incendiary posts by President Donald Trump last week, according to The New York Times.
The virtual walkout comes on the heels of a decision from Facebook not to take any action against a series of controversial posts from Trump last week, including one that seemed to threaten violence against protestors by saying, “wh

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google is adding its Advanced Protection Program to Nest devices, the company announced in a blog post Monday, giving added security to its smart home devices. Previously, a user could use their Google account for either the Advanced Protection Program or for Nest, but now they can use both with the same Google account at the same time.
“Since we launched, one of our goals has been to bring Advanced Protection’s features to other Google products,&rd

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google is today announcing the next batch of new software features coming to its Pixel smartphones. After adding car-crash detection last year, the company is expanding upon its personal safety features with a new “safety check” tool that’s designed to make sure you’re okay if you’re out somewhere alone — for a walk or run, perhaps.When you enable the feature, you set a time for when you want it to check in. When that time co

Pax is launching a web app today capable of controlling its lineup of connected weed vapes. The launch comes six months after Pax’s app was banned from the Apple App Store, when Apple decided to crack down on vaping apps amid nationwide concerns over vaping-related lung injuries. The app remained available on Android, but the ban meant iOS users were stuck without a way to control many of the settings on their fancy vapes.
Like its mobile app, Pax’s web app allows users to dial in sp

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Images from leaked developer documentation have just given us our best look yet at Android 11’s new power button menu. The menu can include a series of new smart home shortcuts called “Quick Controls,” which can control everything from smart lights to locks and thermostats, alongside payment options and the standard “Power off” and “Restart” buttons. The images were tweeted out by Mishaal Rahman from XDA-Developer

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
This week will see two richly valued SaaS businesses share their Q1 earnings reports: CrowdStrike and Zoom. Both are 2019 IPOs, but these relatively young public companies have enjoyed a strong run in the public markets this year.
Zoomstarted off 2020 worth around $69 per share; today it is worth $179.48 ahead of the start of today’s trading. CrowdStrike started the year a

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Samsung is rolling out Samsung Access, a monthly premium upgrade program in the US for users who purchase new Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20 Plus, or Galaxy S20 Ultra phones, the company announced in a blog post.Unlike its legacy upgrade program, Samsung Access provides additional benefits, including a Premium Care membership, and a premium Microsoft 365 subscription, which includes Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Skype, along with 1TB of OneDrive cloud sto

In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, you assume the role of Byleth, a full-time teacher and soldier. One of today’s best deals is on one of last year’s best games. Fire Emblem: Three Houses for the Nintendo Switch is $45 at Best Buy. This is about as affordable as Nintendo’s own titles usually get. This is also the first time that I’ve personally seen a discount on this game.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses won over several Verge staffers who played through the game multiple times to

Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a brief jumpstart for your week.
A big thanks to the whole Equity crew for doing a stellar job last week with the show while I was on vacation, especially to Danny for taking on this particular installment of the podcast. Equity Monday is still pretty new, frankly, so him stepping up and into the role was a huge boon. Thanks, Danny.
Right, so, what did we talk about today?In the face of outrageous police action and systemic

Vivo has officially announced its first flagship phones of 2020, the X50 series. As previously teased, the key feature is the primary camera’s heavy-duty stabilization system, which Vivo variously compares to professional gimbals and chameleons’ eyes. It previously showed up on Vivo’s Apex 2020 concept phone, but the company wasn’t able to show it off in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic; now it’ll be shipping on commercial devices.
The highest-end model is the X5

Images: Samsung Samsung’s Sero TV, which rotates between landscape and portrait orientations depending on what kind of content you’re watching, has gone on sale in the UK. Samsung says that the 43-inch TV is available for £1,599. That’s a lot considering the TV’s relatively small screen size, but you’re still getting a 4K QLED panel.
The Sero has been available in Korea for a little while now, but back at CES 2020, Samsung announced that it would be bringing

Images: Samsung Samsung’s Sero TV, which rotates between landscape and portrait orientations depending on what kind of content you’re watching, has gone on sale in the US and UK. Samsung says that the 43-inch TV is available for $1,999.99 / £1,599. That’s a lot considering the TV’s relatively small screen size, but you’re still getting a 4K QLED panel.
The Sero has been available in Korea for a little while now, but back at CES 2020, Samsung announced that it