Technology news

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Slack is partnering with Amazon in a multi-year agreement designed to make its communications app more appealing to enterprises. The deal comes just as Slack faces increased competition from Microsoft Teams, and it will see Slack migrate its voice and video calling features over to Amazon’s Chime platform. Voice and video conferencing is a particular weak point of Slack compared to Microsoft Teams, but this new integration should mean it will be vas

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge General Motors is working on an all-electric delivery van, according to Reuters. If true, GM would the latest automaker to hone in on what’s expected to be a successful slice of the nascent electric vehicle market. It’s also a segment that is in desperate need of electrification, especially with the rise of Amazon and home deliveries in general.Five people with knowledge of the project told Reuters that the van, codenamed “BV1,” wi

Mercato Partners,a 13-year-old, Salt Lake City, Utah-based investment firm that oversees a growth fund, a secondary investment fund and a venture fund, has launched yet another fund — this one a $90 million vehicle that the firm says will be used to invest in restaurant concepts that are gaining traction.
Its timing is interesting, given the devastating impacts of the coronavirus on the restaurant industry.
As it happens, deeper-pocketed chains have had a much easier time surviving the dow

There's a new song inspired by Donald Trump's recent and somewhat confusing trip to the White House bunker, and honestly? It's catchy as hell.
On Monday, days after it was reported that Secret Service rushed the president to the White House bunker amidst D.C. protests, singer Courtney Jaye (@TropicalJaye) penned and performed the tune, titled, "Bunker Boy."
Jaye shared a video of herself performing the song to social media, and on top of her gorgeous guitar playing and sweet-sounding vocals, the

Co—Star, the astrology app known for its outlandish push notifications, has come under fire for a post related to the police brutality protests on their popular Instagram account:hey everyone if you have the co—star app do me a favor and delete it right now. they turned the protests into a meme. they turned fighting for the end of police brutality & murder against black people into a MEMEpic.twitter.com/nfrn1AGgQv
— you // stina (@karolinaswitch) June 3, 2020For those not i

Apps like Signalare proving invaluable in these days of unrest, and anything we can do to simplify and secure the way we share sensitive information is welcome. To that end Signal has added the ability to blur faces in photos sent via the app, making it easy to protect someone’s identity without leaving any trace on other, less secure apps.
After noting Signal’s support of the protests occurring all over the world right now against police brutality, the company’s founder Moxie

Photo by GEORGE FREY/AFP via Getty Images A recent large study on the controversial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine was just retracted by The Lancet, the scientific journal that published it. The study had found that the drugs weren’t able to effectively treat COVID-19, but the authors say that they weren’t able to independently analyze the data used to reach that conclusion. The study is no longer considered reliable.
Soon after the research was published in The Lancet, sc

"Hope you know you're an actual icon and we love you," wrote Twitter user @StreaamLightsup to Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi. "This video is my daily dose of serotonin." 
The video was one many Americans know on sight — when al-Zaidi threw his shoes at former President Bush in 2008.Hope you know you’re an actual icon and we love you . This video is my daily dose of serotonin 😍😍😍😍 pic.twitter.com/XfcGdO1GEj
— Rania (@StreaamLightsup) Jun

HBO Max launched last week without any Roku support and integration, and new numbers from multiple research firms show just how much of a problem that might be for the new streaming service.Roku dominates viewing time among streaming boxes. The company commands 44 percent of viewing time, according to research from Conviva. That more than doubles its biggest competitor, Amazon Fire TV, which maintains about 19 percent of viewing time. Roku has also grown its viewing time by about 50 percent year

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Foreign hackers targeted the personal email accounts of staffers on the presidential campaigns of Democratic primary candidate Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, Reuters reported. It appears that state-backed hackers from China tried to target staffers on the Biden campaign, while Iranian hackers targeted the email accounts of Trump campaign staff.Shane Huntley, the head of Google’s Threat Analysis Group, tweeted that the hackers had made phishin

Today Slackreported its earnings results for the three months ending April 30, 2020, the first quarter of its fiscal 2021.
The well-known SaaS chat service posted revenue of $201.7 million, up 50% compared to its year-ago period. Slack also reported an adjusted per-share loss of $0.02, and per-share losses of $0.13 when counting all costs. Analysts aggregated by Yahoo Finance expected the company to lose $0.06 per share against $188.12 million in revenue.
Immediately after its earnings report, s

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Hulu will no longer be supported on some older Roku devices as of June 24th, according to a Hulu support page (via Ars Technica). The affected models were released in 2012 or earlier, and include Roku players with a model number between 2400 to 3100 and Roku Streaming Sticks with a model number of 3420 or earlier.Those older Roku devices were already running the “classic” Hulu app, a more limited version of Hulu that lets you access content fr

Image: Kitty Hawk Secretive Larry Page-backed “flying car” startup Kitty Hawk has pulled the plug on its Flyer electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, and will lay off most of the 70-person team that was working on it, as TechCrunch first reported.“We have learned what we needed from [Flyer] — things like vehicle design and testing, manufacturing aircraft, and most of all, how humans would experience eVTOL,” Alex Roetter, the president of the Flyer

VMwareis acquiring network security firm Lastline, TechCrunch has learned.
Since its launch in 2012, Lastlineraised about $52.2 million, according to Crunchbase. Investors include Thomvest Ventures, which led the company’s $28.5 million Series C round in 2017; Redpoint and e.ventures, which led the company’s 2013 funding round; and Barracuda Networks, NTT Finance and Dell Technologies Capital.
A source tells us that VMware will let go some 40% of Lastline’s employees — ab

A new study on kids’ app usage and habits indicates a major threat to YouTube’s dominance, as kids now split their time between Google’s online video platform and other apps, like TikTok, Netflix and mobile games like Roblox. Kids ages four to 15 now spend an average of 85 minutes per day watching YouTube videos, compared with 80 minutes per day spent on TikTok. The latter app also drove growth in kids’ social app use by 100% in 2019 and 200% in 2020, the report found.
Th

At long last, Facebook announced Thursday that it has started labeling "state-controlled media" on the social network. Labels noting that an outlet is "partially or wholly under the control of a state" are showing up in a page's Ad Library, on Pages themselves, and in the Page Transparency section.
Beginning next week, for U.S. users, Facebook will also affix the label to posts from the pages that show up in News Feed. Ads from the organizations will start getting the label "later this summer."

Since late-2015, LinkNYC kiosks have become a mainstay among New York’s sidewalks. A more modern replacement for decaying and disused public pay phones, the nine-foot-tall towers provide corners with access to public Wi-Fi, USB charging and access to emergency services.The most striking aspect however, are the large side displays that alternate between advertising and “NYC Fun Facts,” designed to offer a little insight into the city that never sleeps. During this past week of n

Facebook will soon add labels to news outlets owned or otherwise controlled by a government, marking that information as, if not necessarily false or unreliable, at least worth considering the origin of. Those so labeled will also be banned from buying ads starting this summer.
The company announced its plan to do this a few months ago as one part of its ongoing “election integrity efforts,” along with such things as requiring a confirmed owner for pages and banning anti-voting ads.

The world feels as fragile as ever, and those with any options at all are looking to get away this summer.
To many, planes and hotel rooms won’t be a possibility, owing to continued concerns about the coronavirus (not to mention the expense, which 40 million fewer Americans can likely afford). That leaves perhaps renting a local Airbnb this summer or, for a growing number of people, looking for the first time to rent an RV or camper van.
Last week, we talked with Jeff Cavins, a serial oper

Image: Facebook Facebook’s Google Photos transfer tool, first announced for the US and Canada back in April, is now available globally, the company announced on Thursday.The new data transfer tool allows you to create copies of all of the photos or videos on your Facebook account and transfer them to a linked Google Photos one. The tool was first made available in select parts of Africa, Asia Pacific, and Latin America last December and it’s been expanding to more countries since.He

Earlier this week, Lego sent a letter to affiliates requesting a wide range of kits be removed from all sites and marketing. The list featured a number of different kits involving police minifigs (yes, including “Donut Shop Opening”), along with the White House.There’s been some murky information surrounding the extent of Lego’s move, but the company was quick to explain that none of the aforementioned kits have actually been canceled. All are still available for sale thr

TL;DR: Coach is running its summer sale, discounting select styles up to 50%.If you’re a shopaholic, the best part about transitioning from spring to summer is the sales. For a limited time, Coach is running its summer sale with up to 50% off select bags, wallets, shoes, accessories, and men’s styles.
This sale is good, y’all. There are some bags for only $105. Yes, bags — not just wallets. You’ll find a few wallets on sale for less than $50. This is great for a Coa

Photo by Leonard Ortiz/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images Americans in all 50 states are protesting against police brutality. That alone should be all anyone needs to know that something is gravely wrong and that police violence has touched every community in the nation. And yet, as people continue to deny what they are seeing, it’s important to remember the reasons why police brutality is undeniable. One of those is the internet’s favorite way of making a death

Kevin Walkup ContributorShare on Twitter Kevin Walkup is president and COO of Harmonate, a data-services firm serving private funds. More posts by this contributorLouis Bacon’s sunset ride may foretell ‘mechanized future’ of data-driven investing
In the world of business and finance, the question on everyone’s mind is whether COVID-19 is going to lead to permanent changes in the economy. Will lockdowns become part of everyday life? Will new disruptive consumer behaviors e

Photo by Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Mangrove forests aren’t moving fast enough to escape rising sea levels and could disappear by 2050, according to new research. That’s because these forests won’t be able to keep up with rising sea levels if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated. The trees play a vital role in storing planet-heating carbon dioxide and protecting communities from storms and coastal erosion.
Mangrove forests will be in danger

Facebook Facebook has begun labeling media outlets that are “wholly or partially under the editorial control of their government,” following an announcement of the policy in 2019. It will start labeling ads from these outlets later this year, as well as banning state-controlled media from advertising inside the US.
The company is labeling these pages because “they combine the influence of a media organization with the strategic backing of a state, and we believe people should

Googlesecurity researchers say they’ve identified efforts by at least two nation state-backed hackers against the Trump and Biden presidential campaigns.
Shane Huntley, director for Google’s Threat Analysis Group, said in a tweet that hackers backed by China and Iran recently targeted the campaigns using malicious phishing emails. But, Huntley said, there are “no signs of compromise,” and that both campaigns were alerted to the attempts.
Recently TAG saw China APT group t

Eric Espada/Getty Images Police in Scottsdale, Arizona have charged popular YouTuber Jake Paul for his alleged participation in a mall riot over the weekend. Paul was charged with two misdemeanor crimes — criminal trespassing and unlawful assembly. He was “issued a summons to appear in court in a month,” according to a statement from Scottsdale Police Department sent to The Verge. The charges were first reported by ABC15 Arizona.
“Following the riots and looting that occ

Civil unrest due to the nationwide George Floyd protests drove Twitter to see a record number of new installs this week, according to data from two app store intelligence firms, Apptopia and Sensor Tower. While the firms’ exact findings differed in terms of the total number of new downloads or when records were broken, the firms agreed that Twitter’s app had its largest-ever week, globally.
Twitter’s usage is on the rise because of the immediacy around news-sharing its platform

As the pandemic surged and companies moved from offices to working at home, they needed tools to ensure the continuity of their business operations. SaaS companies have always been focused on allowing work from anywhere there’s access to a computer and internet connection, and while the economy is reeling from COVID-19 fallout, modern software companies are thriving.
That’s because the pandemic has forced companies that might have been thinking about moving to the cloud to find tools

Sony’s unannounced WH-1000XM4 noise-canceling headphones have leaked in full thanks to a new listing on Walmart’s website that reveals basically everything else there is to know about the refreshed headphones. This includes new AI features to enhance compressed music, the ability to connect to multiple devices at once, and a $348 price tag, via Android Police.
Most of the 1000XM4s appear to be identical to the M3s, with what appears to be a similar design, noise-cancellation technolo

Boston-based micromobility startup Superpedestrian is launching a shared electric scooter-sharing service called Link, which is built around the super durable and smart e-scooters the company announced in late 2018.To bolster that effort, Superpedestrian is acquiring “substantially all of the assets” of fellow Boston mobility startup Zagster, in what is the latest in a rash of consolidations in the space brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Superpedestrian tells The Verge it specific

Snapchatis the latest social media company to take on the president, Fitbit gets approval for its emergency ventilator and we review the new Sonos soundbar.
Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 4, 2020.
1. Snapchat is no longer promoting Trump’s posts
Snapannounced that it will not be promoting content from President Donald Trump’s Snapchat account in its Discover tab, following statements from Trump last week on Twitter threatening that protestors could be met with “vicious