Technology news

A Tesla employee has tested positive for COVID-19 at the company’s solar panel factory in Buffalo, New York, according to an employee at the factory who spoke to The Verge on the condition of anonymity. It’s the fourth known Tesla employee to test positive for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus but the first since the company reopened its US factories in May. One employee from Panasonic, which shares space with Tesla at its New York and Nevada factories, also tested positive

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Zoom had a blockbuster quarter as its app became the hottest videoconferencing service of the pandemic. In an earnings report today, Zoom reported making $328 million in revenue during its February–April quarter. That’s up far more than double from the same time last year, when it made $122 million, and it comes in well above the $200 million that Zoom expected it would make when it issued guidance just a few months ago.
Zoom doesn’t say

Photo by Saul Martinez/Getty Images President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting social media companies faced its first legal challenge Tuesday, claiming that Trump violated the companies’ rights to free speech.
In its lawsuit, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) called Trump’s order “retaliatory” because it specifically attacked Twitter for using its First Amendment right to comment and moderate the president’s tweets. By attacking Twitter, t

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge You can try out the Android 11 developer preview software right now if you have a Pixel 2 or later, but it’s understandable if the idea of flashing your device to install the OS is intimidating. It can be a tricky process, and the steps differ slightly depending on what phone you have and what kind of computer you’re going to use to download the software. But now that process has been streamlined by Google.Google recently released the Android Flash

Image: Humbolt Hublot is taking another crack at the smartwatch market with the Hublot Big Bang e, a high-end watch running Wear OS that will set you back thousands of dollars.The Big Bang e comes in two variations: titanium, which retails for $5,200, and black ceramic, priced at $5,800. Both include a 42mm OLED high-definition touchscreen covered with sapphire crystal along with a Snapdragon Wear 3100 processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, and a 300mAh battery.The watch includes a few extra fe

Instacart will expand its COVID-19 sick pay to include more gig workers as part of an agreement with the attorney general for Washington, DC. Under the agreement, the company is also launching a telemedicine pilot in the DC area to remotely diagnose shoppers who believe they may have contracted the disease, and provide childcare assistance pay to eligible workers while schools are closed.
“We thank Instacart for doing the right thing”
In March, Instacart announced that employees who

Instacart will expand its COVID-19 sick pay to include more gig workers as part of an agreement with the attorney general for Washington, DC. Under the agreement, the company is also launching a telemedicine pilot in the DC area to remotely diagnose shoppers who believe they may have contracted the disease, and provide childcare assistance pay to eligible workers while schools are closed.
“We thank Instacart for doing the right thing”
In March, Instacart announced that employees who

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. As people around the world participate in protests and demonstrations the world over in support of Black Lives Matter and to honor the late George Floyd, some are running into resistance from law enforcement. Should you be arrested while participating, here’s how you can make sure your iPhone can’t be unlocked without a pin code. My colleague

With the success of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon launch this weekend, NASA now has the capability to launch its own astronauts from the US once again — and that means changes are in store for the future of the International Space Station. Soon, a new suite of vehicles could be regularly flying people to the station from the Florida coast, along with the Russian Soyuz rocket that has been solely responsible for taking humans to the outpost since 2011.
This will be a new era of human spaceflig

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Streaming platform Roku has removed a channel dedicated to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement after facing criticism for letting it slip through its review and moderation processes last month. The show, called “Q Channel - QAnon Channel,” was hosted by popular QAnon supporter Dave Hayes and advertised as a “opinion based shows for getting the truth out, as we know it, about the Qanon movement.”A Roku spokesperson tells The Verge, &ldquo

Zoe Schiffer / The Verge The protest was peaceful. Then the police shot tear gas. At least 10 canisters went off, according to The Guardian’s Julia Carrie Wong. Officers clad in riot gear ordered protesters to go home before the 8PM curfew. Then they arrested 40 people.
This was the scene that aired on Fox KTVU and NBC News, which featured aerial footage of tear gas and mayhem as people ran from the police. But it’s not the full story. Before the warnings, and tear gas, and handcuff

In 2015, Atlassian was preparing to go public, but it was not your typical company in so many ways. For starters, it was founded in Australia, it had two co-founder co-CEOs, and it offered collaboration tools centered on software development.
That meant that the company leaders really needed to work hard to help investors understand the true value proposition that it had to offer, and it made the roadshow deck production process even more critical than perhaps it normally would have been.
A majo

Coronavirus in Context is a weekly newsletter where we bring you facts that matter about the COVID-19 pandemic and the technology trying to stop its spread. You can subscribe here. These are dark days for democracy. It hardly feels like the time to address anything other than the brutal murder of George Floyd and the ongoing horrors occurring in the US, but the COVID-19 pandemic is no less dangerous today than it was a week ago. In fact, the selfish actions of impeached US Presid

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google may be close to launching its next streaming TV device, and now XDA Developers has got its hands on marketing material that gives us our first real glimpse at what that device might look like.The report says the Android TV-powered dongle is codenamed “Sabrina,” and past reports have revealed it will come with a remote and a proper software interface, so you no longer have to rely on pushing shows and movies to your TV using Chromecast a

The “out of context bojack horseman” account usually tweets memes and screenshots to its nearly 180,000 Twitter followers. But recently, the account’s feed has looked a lot different: it’s listed bail funds for people to donate to, posted advice on safely protesting, and amplified black voices fighting against police brutality.Over the past week, the creators behind fan accounts like out of context bojack horseman (179.5K followers), Adult Swim Out Of Context (25.3K follo

Pokémon Sword and Shield’s upcoming expansion, Isle of Armor, will be available on June 17th. The Isle of Armor, along with The Crown Tundra, which was announced in January, add new characters, pokémon, and areas to explore. A new trailer today shows off some of the content players can expect.
In Isle of Armor, players will also get Gigantamax evolutions for their starter pokémon’s final evolutions, Rillaboom, Cinderace, and Inteleon. Original starters Venusaur a

Across the globe, the month of May saw a wide assortment of encouraging and discouraging COVID-19-related headlines emerge from communities, organizations and governments. China permitted over one million people to venture to its parks, including Disneyland in Shanghai, while European countries too eased lockdowns. In the US, the seeming hopefulness of relaxed restrictions in much of the country was dampened as the country surpassed the 100,000 deaths milestone. Meanwhile, the World Health Orga

TL;DR: It's time for the Lowe's major appliance sale. As of June 2, save thousands of dollars on tech for your kitchen. Upgrading your kitchen isn't as simple as getting a new dresser or switching a picture frame, but it doesn't have to be as expensive as you think. With Lowe's major appliance sale going on right now, you can save thousands of dollars on tech that'll make your cooking area look all shiny and new. 
The sales are advertised as offering savings as high as 40% off, but we'

TL;DR: Society6 is currently holding its Summer-Ready sale, where you can save 35% on bedding and bath and 20% on everything else through June 6.Comfort is a hard thing to come by these days.
Sure, the home-reno-during-isolation trend is probably a result of canceled social plans and more free time for projects. But being stuck inside the same four walls has a way of making it very clear if your space truly makes you feel at home.
After you've exhausted every page of Target's home decor section,

The killing of George Floyd by police officers has spurred not only protests across the United States, but also — often embarrassing — responses from brands.
The queer dating app Grindr offered its own statement on Twitter and Instagram on Monday, coinciding with the first day of Pride Month. They will take action including not only donating to both BLM and the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, but also by removing their ethnicity filters for their next app release:We will not be sil

In an attempt to manage soaring health care costs, some government officials and health care companies are turning to algorithms to determine how to allocate limited benefits, who to provide care to first, or whether a person should receive care at all. The intent behind those tools might be reasonable, but critics of the automated decision-making systems say they can amplify the damage of errors, and entrench bias, with sometimes severe consequences. What could go wrong?  Here’s one

Overjet, a startup focused on using AI to help dentists and insurance companies understand dental scans, today announced that it has raised $7.85 million in what it describes as a seed round.
According to Overjet’s CEO Wardah Inam (an MIT PhD in electrical engineering and computer science), the company raised the funds from Crosslink Capital, which led its round, and E14 Fund, which “only invests in MIT startups,” Inam said.
The MIT-E14 connection is not surprising, given that

Photo: 9to5Mac The latest iOS 13.5.5 beta has revealed a new audio feature for the company’s Apple News Plus service that adds podcast-style recordings of longform articles to the app, as discovered by 9to5Mac. Apple was reportedly working on the feature earlier this year, but the newly revealed section of the News app marks the first real look at the audio endeavor.The beta adds a new “Audio” tab to the Apple News app where the audio versions of stories will be collected. The

Image: The Video Game History Foundation Digital archivists working with the Video Game History Foundation have discovered a previously lost NES game based on the 1990 film Days of Thunder. The game was co-authored by Chris Oberth, a developer known for the arcade games Anteater, Time Killers, World Class Bowling, and Winter Games for the Commodore 64. Preservationist Rich Whitehouse has written about his weeks-long journey to resurrect the long-lost title, and the saga is worth a read for anyo

TL;DR: Warm up any room with a FLÎKR® Fire2 for $79.99, a 15% savings as of June 2.Just because you are spending more time at home doesn't mean you have to say goodbye to (arguably) the best summer activity of all time: sitting around a campfire. 
While there are tons of personal fireplaces designed for use inside your home, many of them are more of a pain than anything. Either they are too small to emit any warmth or they release harmful chemicals into the air like carbon monoxid

If you’ve noticed your Instagram feed full of black squares, there’s a reason behind it.
It might seem like a straightforward moment of solidarity, but it gets a little bit complicated when you consider the whole picture. In a nutshell: It's a music industry initiative that's been picked up by the public (myself included) on Instagram as posts showing just a black square, which have been flagged as potentially unhelpful by some activists as they currently appear. But there are ways t

TL;DR: As of June 2, the Samsung Galaxy Buds are on sale at Best Buy for just $99.99 — a $30 savings and their lowest price so far.Who needs Christmas in July when you can have Black Friday in June?
Get this: Samsung's first-gen Galaxy Buds just dropped to a mere $99.99 at Best Buy, down 23% from their suggested retail price of $129.99. For those of you keeping up at home, that's their lowest price ever and *exactly* what Amazon was selling them for this past Black Friday, according to the

A team of researchers in the BioProducts Institute at the University of British Columbia has developed biodegradable COVID-19 mask prototypes, made from locally sourced wood fibers and pulp.
The coronavirus pandemic will result in millions — if not billions — of masks polluting streets and entering rivers and oceans, creating a massive environmental impact. That's why it is important now to test more robust and flexible supply chains that assure the masks are protective and compostab

You have to either be foolish or actively part of the problem if you fail to recognize at this point that there's a policing problem in the United States.
You know who isn't a fool? Griffin Newman, star of The Tick and co-host of the Blank Check podcast. He also played a cop on TV in a couple episodes of Blue Bloods, and came to the unfortunate revelation that since we can't necessarily rely on IRL cops to do the right thing during this fraught moment, maybe the fictional police can step up to h

Protesting in the United States, and in many countries around the world, is a legally protected right — theoretically. But digital surveillance is increasingly being exploited by law enforcement to identify protestors, and threaten privacy, free speech, and due process in the name of crime prevention.  As Andy Greenberg and Lily Hay Newman wrote for Wired, “You should assume that any digital evidence that you were at or near a protest could be used against you.” Such

This article was originally published by Sarah Wray on Cities Today, the leading news platform on urban mobility and innovation, reaching an international audience of city leaders. For the latest updates follow Cities Today on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, or sign up for Cities Today News. By 2026, more than a million drones could be carrying out retail deliveries, up from 20,000 today, according to new analysis from Gartner. Drones have played a part in the response to t

TL;DR: As of June 2, Wayfair is running an Indoor Refresh sale with merchandise up to 70% off.After spending extra time in your house the last couple months, you may have realized you don't actually like the furniture and decorations you previously picked out. It's unclear how much longer we're going to be confined to our homes in some capacity, so you might as well make it a space that you enjoy looking at and being in.
To totally revamp your space, check out Wayfair's Indoor Refresh sale, wher

TL;DR: As of June 2, you can get your caffeine fix with the Keurig K-Cafe at-home barista station — it's $30 off at Target right now. Going to your local coffee shop might not be an option for you right now, considering social distancing orders and all. So what, you're supposed to just not have your morning cup of coffee? We don't think so.
Easy fix: Buy yourself a coffee machine. If you want to go super fancy and basically get an in-home barista station, the Keurig K-Cafe is currentl

Cybersecurity is by far the most important area in any industry. Without it, we would be in hacker open season.
But cybersecurity is difficult to get right. One wrong move and you can leave the door open for data breaches, ransomware, and nation state-backed espionage. That’s why there’s such an intense focus on cybersecurity from an investor’s point of view. How does an investor know what’s a worthwhile security solution and not snake oil? And in an already saturated sec

Rokuis expanding its free live, linear channel lineup that’s part of its free movies and TV hub, The Roku Channel. In the U.S., Roku customers will now be able to stream from over 100 live channels, including those offering free access to news, sports, movies, TV, kids and family programming, lifestyle content, and Spanish-language programming. Along with the expansion, Roku is also launching a new Live TV guide to make it easier to browse through its free content.
The update would seem to

Photo by Avery White for The Verge Lenovo’s C740 14-inch laptop is one of the best laptops you can buy, and it’s also the most affordable option in our buying guide. Now, at Best Buy, it costs even less than usual. The standard configuration with a quad-core 10th Gen Intel Core i5-10210U processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD is just $600 instead of its regular $800 price. This laptop has a 2-in-1 design that lets its display flip nearly 360 degrees around, so you can use it as a ta

The sound of millions of cicadas is so deafening that George Hamilton, an entomologist, has even heard them over the rock and roll music blasting from his car speakers. 
In different regions at different times, there are massive emergences of cicadas from the ground in the U.S., where for 17 years they feed on plant roots. One of these grand emergences of cicada populations, known as Brood IX, is now mostly happening in parts of Virginia and West Virginia, and will last through mid-June. Af

UPDATE: April 27, 2021: In the spring of 2021, Brood X of the cicadas will gloriously emerge from the ground (last year was Brood IX) in parts of the Midwest, Southeast, and the mid-Atlantic. Brood X is shown in yellow on this map. They are a native species who don't threaten humans, and as detailed below, aren't "invading." 
They'll emerge from the earth when the soil temperature is just right, at around 64 degrees Fahrenheit. The sound of millions of cicadas is so deafening that Geor

TL;DR: The Lego Star Wars Imperial Star Destroyer is on sale for £549.99 on John Lewis as of June 2, saving you £100 on list price.We're all doing our best to keep busy, and some people are content with relaxed activities like reading, walking, or gardening. That's not enough for everyone, though.
Some people will need something far more challenging to stay occupied, and for these people we have a deal. You can now save £100 on the Lego Star Wars Imperial Star Destroyer on John

It was a busy week in security.
Newly released documents shown exclusively to TechCrunch show that U.S. immigration authorities used a controversial cell phone snooping technology known as a “stingray” hundreds of times in the past three years. Also, if you haven’t updated your Android phone in a while, now would be a good time to check. That’s because a brand-new security vulnerability was found — and patched. The bug, if exploited, could let a malicious app trick