Technology news

Ian Tuttle/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize More than 140 scientists who receive funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Saturday urging him to better enforce the social media platform’s policies against incendiary language, The Washington Post reported. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is the philanthropic organization founded by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan in 2015, which focuses on using technology to solve social ch

Ian Tuttle/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize More than 140 scientists who receive funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Saturday urging him to better enforce the social media platform’s policies against incendiary language, The Washington Post reported. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is the philanthropic organization founded by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan in 2015, which focuses on using technology to solve social ch

A Southern California airport connector project will work with Elon Musk's The Boring Company to build a high-speed underground tunnel and a new Tesla vehicle is reportedly part of the plan. 
The San Bernardino County Transportation Authority approved a connector line between Rancho Cucamonga with the Ontario International Airport last week. The proposal is for a 2.8 mile-long tunnel that would move riders at 127 mph in electric vehicles. But which electric vehicles?
A county supervisor sai

Power to the people.
In the almost two weeks since the killing of George Floyd, who died in police custody on May 25, people all around the world have stepped up to make their voices heard. The message: this shit has to stop. 
Black Americans risk their lives just waking up every day because of a U.S. system that is deeply rooted in its racist history. So when Floyd, who died when a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for almost nine minutes while three other officers stood by an

If you want to find inspiration for all the new art supplies you've stocked up on, or you're simply wanting to delve into a history lesson in a more interesting way, now's the perfect time to stream an art documentary.
Whether it's walking the streets of the Lower East Side with Jean-Michel Basquiat in the 1980s, or staring into the eyes of Marina Abramović, getting to know the work of someone who's spent their life investigating visual and experiential ideas is a valuable use of time &mdas

Apple will allow customers to buy products including iPads, Macs, and AirPods, via monthly installment payments on the Apple Card, Bloomberg reported. Payments will be managed through the Apple Card section in the iPhone Wallet app and added to customers’ monthly Apple Card bills, according to Bloomberg.For iPads, Macs, the Apple Pencil, iPad keyboards, and the Mac XDR Display monitor, a 12-month, interest-free payment plan will be available, and for AirPods, HomePod, and Apple TV, the pla

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is getting more comfortable with shutting Donald Trump down.
On Thursday, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all removed a tribute video to George Floyd shared by the Trump campaign, due to a copyright complaint, Reuters reported. The video, called "Healing Not Hatred," featured Trump speaking about Floyd over protest images and videos (h/t The Verge). It had 1.4 million views before it was removed from the platforms. We are working toward a more just society, but that

Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge Destiny 2’s first ever Fortnite-style live event just wrapped earlier today, and it was unfortunately not quite what some players were expecting. Instead of something monumental and game-changing for a key part of the game world, it was more of a slow burn alternative to a standard video game cutscene. And instead of delivering a strong narrative pay off on a season’s worth of otherwise dull and repetitive activity, the Almighty event ended witho

Apps, hashtags, and Google Docs are circulating online to support the black community after the police killing of George Floyd last month. Black-owned business directory apps are particularly popular as protests continue.
A handful of apps that let you search for restaurants, clothing stores, grocery shops, and other black-owned and -operated small businesses saw download numbers soar in the past week. App analytics firm Apptopia crunched the numbers on six of these apps, like EatOkra and Black

On Saturday morning, CNN hosted a joint town hall for kids and families with Sesame Street, called Coming Together: Standing Up to Racism. 
Racism and police brutality are difficult subjects to broach with adults, let alone children. But given the global protests, these issues are — and should be — impossible to ignore. This goes for children, who see what's going on either through media or their parents. In order to adequately explain these complex issues, it's necessary to tal

The beloved online game Neopets is launching an open beta for a new mobile site, the company announced on Twitter Friday. “The Neopets Mobile Beta has arrived! Now you can explore the breathtaking land of Neopia from the palm of your hand!” the very excited company tweeted.In a video posted to Twitter, Neopets brand manager Stephanie Lord thanked fans for their support over the past 20 years, and encouraged fans to test the site. “While this is an open beta, we’re in the

The tech industry has generally wished that structural discrimination would go away, while pretending that it already has. But technology can be used by anyone for anything. And so, the world has watched video after video of police brutality against Black people in a real-time stream that plays through the closing days of quarantine, culminating in the death of George Floyd and ongoing protests. As employees have left their remote offices to hit the streets, even executives at the largest tech c

Say his name, Roger Goodell.
The NFL would like to apologize for ignoring players who have protested police violence and racial inequality since 2016. There's just one problem: Colin Kaepernick is still being erased.
"We, the National Football League, condemn racism and the systematic oppression of black people," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a video statement released Friday night. "We, the National Football League, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier, and enco

Just as the internet as a whole erupted in discussion about the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent protests about police brutality, so have Facebook groups.
That is, if mods keep the posts up.
Some Facebook groups have fallen apart according to The Verge, as a result of infighting or post deletion by mods, or a combination of the two. Anyone who's in a group for their seemingly-unrelated interest — dancing, being a mom, bullet journaling — can see the purview of opinions not

Indian online travel booking company Yatrahas terminated a pending merger agreement with Atlanta-based software firm Ebix and filed a litigation seeking “substantial damages” over alleged breach of deal terms.
In July last year, Ebixannounced its plan to acquire Yatra, giving the Indian firm an enterprise value of $337.8 million, in a move to strengthen its position in India’s hotel and flight ticketing market.
Late Friday, Ebixsaid it had provided a notice to terminate the dea

Photo: Michele Doying / The Verge Facebook published new recommendations for group admins yesterday evening in an attempt to help them facilitate conversations about race and inequality. Groups, which are essential to Facebook’s business strategy, have struggled to moderate discussions about the Black Lives Matter movement and injustice in the US, with many admins and moderators deleting posts they consider “political.”The deletion decisions prompted members to leave groups th

There is, uh, a lot going on in the world right now. Your feeds are likely full of serious and potentially upsetting current events. That's not necessarily a bad thing; actually, some would consider it a responsibility to be informed on what's happening in your country. But that doesn't mean you have to spend every waking moment consuming the news.
In fact, don't do that! Instead, take 42 seconds to stop doomscrolling and watch this pup play with a balloon. See how high she jumps? See her tail w

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.
The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first co

Photo: HBO HBO Max is here, and while I’ve been dreading the ways AT&T will inevitably ruin HBO, I actually like a lot about the new service. The app is far nicer to browse than Netflix thanks to its curated highlights. But the real standout to me has been that the service has most of Studio Ghibli’s catalog of films, which haven’t previously been available to stream.
I watched My Neighbor Totoro for the first time in years over the weekend. The story is simpler than I rem

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have all removed a Trump campaign video from their platforms after receiving copyright complaints, Reuters reported. The nearly four-minute video featured images of the late George Floyd of Minneapolis, who died May 25th after a police officer kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes. A video of the incident has prompted nationwide protests of police violence.
Twitter disabled the video, while Facebook and Instagram

Illustration by Grayson Blackmon and Alex Castro / The Verge When you’re stuck at home because of pandemics, bad weather, or just because you don’t feel like going out, there’s nothing more satisfying than cooking something really fantastic. Even if you’re not an experienced or enthusiastic cook, sometimes it’s really satisfying to create a new and tasty dish for you, your friends, and / or family.
We asked the staff of The Verge what kinds of equipment, gadgets, a

Amy Errett’s company, Madison Reed, sells women’s in-home hair coloring products. It may not sound like a glamorous business but, as it turns out, it’s a very durable one, done the right way. Not only has the seven-year-old outfit been slowly chipping away at the dominant personal care giants like L’Oreal that have long controlled what’s currently a $30 billion market, but during one of the most dramatic economic downturns of the past century, it has been attracting

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook is limiting the spread of pages and groups linked with the word “boogaloo,” an internet slang term used in some far-right extremist circles to refer to the idea of an impending second American Civil War, as first reported by Reuters. The boogaloo term has since evolved into a disjointed anti-government movement with various and at times conflicting views.
Facebook says it will no longer recommend boogaloo pages and groups to users and

Photo by Elif Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos issued a public pledge of support to the Black Lives Matter movement on Friday. The chief executive did so in reply to a customer email criticizing his company’s response to the death of George Floyd and ongoing protests around the country against racism and systemic police brutality. Bezos posted his reply publicly on Instagram.
Right now, Amazon.com has a prominent “Black Lives Matter” banner at the t

Photo by Elif Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos issued a public pledge of support to the Black Lives Matter movement on Friday. The chief executive did so in reply to a customer email criticizing his company’s response to the death of George Floyd and ongoing protests around the country against racism and systemic police brutality. Bezos posted his reply publicly on Instagram.
Right now, Amazon.com has a prominent “Black Lives Matter” banner at the t

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a lengthy statement on his personal page on Friday saying he supports the Black Lives Matter movement and will begin engaging in a series of reviews of company policy. Specifically, Zuckerberg says he and company leadership will review its controversial stance around “threats of state use of force,” following President Donald Trump’s statement about shooting protesters that sparked outrage and vario

Lidar is fast becoming one of the most influential tools in archaeology, revealing things in a few hours what might have taken months of machete wielding and manual measurements otherwise. The latest such discovery is an enormous Mayan structure, more than a kilometer long, 3,000 years old, and seemingly used for astronomical observations.
Takeshi Inomata of the University of Arizona is the lead author of the paper describing the monumental artificial plateau, published in the journal Nature. Th

Let’s talk about chargers. They are, quite possibly, the least exciting thing about a computer. Don’t get me wrong. They’re necessary, obviously. But when was the last time you got really psyched about one?And yet, here I am, tech blogger guy telling you that today is the first day of the rest of your charger-loving life. Why? Because of three alternately cased letters: GaN. Back at CES, I wrote a piece titled “GaN chargers are still worth getting excited about.” I

The Criterion Channel, one of the lesser-known streaming services, this week removed the paywall on several important movies from black filmmakers, allowing anyone to watch them for free. It also expressed its support of the Black Lives Matter and its commitment to financial support of civil rights organizations. Black Lives Matter. pic.twitter.com/aRwDVjuI0O — Criterion Collection (@Criterion) June 4, 2020 The Criterion Collection, the media company behind the site, posted a message on T

Andy Moss ContributorShare on Twitter Andy Moss is currently a Visiting Professor at NYU Tandon teaching entrepreneurship and innovation as well developing the COR Methodology, an active advisor/mentor to startups and business leaders, and is a former Microsoft executive.Connor Spelliscy ContributorShare on Twitter Connor Spelliscy is Director of New Platforms at Hangar,a partner at Connectivity Fund and helps lead COVID-19 Tech Task Force initiatives.John Borthwick ContributorShare on Twitter J