Technology news

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said Monday that the platform is taking steps to “better support the black community” and will review how it recommends content and deals with harassment and verification. Mosseri didn’t provide specifics about what the Facebook-owned photo sharing app will do, but he laid out some key areas where Instagram has heard complaints from black users about bias.“The irony that we’re a platform that stands

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Peloton announced today that users now have the option to select nonbinary as their gender, as part of the company’s broader commitment to Pride Month. Nonbinary users will appear as “NB” on the leaderboard, where they compete against other people using the app. Users will still be able to filter the leaderboard by age and gender.
Nonbinary gender options are still uncommon in many tech products, although Peloton’s move could p

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Peloton announced today that users now have the option to select nonbinary as their gender, as part of the company’s broader commitment to Pride Month. Nonbinary users will appear as “NB” on the leaderboard, where they compete against other people using the app, bike, or treadmill. Users will still be able to filter the leaderboard by age and gender.
Nonbinary gender options are still uncommon in many tech products, although Peloton&

Image: Apple Apple has released a Mac version of its Apple Developer app, a week before its Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off. Apple initially launched the app in late 2019, but it was only available to iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV users.Much like the iOS version, the macOS version of the Developer app provides various resources from developer-related news to videos showcasing new features for Apple operating systems. The update also adds a new interface to search for previous WWDC sessio

The US Department of Transportation launched a new voluntary program to collect and share data from autonomous vehicle operators. Companies testing AVs on public roads are invited to submit information to the government, which will then publicize it online. But given the voluntary nature of the program, safety advocates say the effort is likely to fall short of providing useful data to the public.There is currently no federal rule requiring AV companies to submit information about their testing

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Google is opening up its Google Maps Platform to everyone so developers can incorporate Maps data into their games, the company announced on Monday. Its tools let developers use Maps data to build games that let you explore a modified version of the real world, similar to Niantic’s Pokémon Go. (Niantic, once a startup within Google, has its own developer toolset for making AR games that use live camera and 3D mapping data, called the Niantic Re

Microsoft is expanding the number of participants visible during a Teams meeting to 49, the company announced in a blog post Monday. The maximum number of participants in a private Teams meeting is 250; rival Zoom’s paid plans allow up to 500 participants at a time. But the 49-person on-screen view — which Microsoft announced it was planning less than two weeks ago — matches Zoom’s max. Teams will roll out the 49-person view as a preview this month and to all users in the

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T customers are experiencing issues placing calls across the US, according to user reports on Downdetector and on social media, with reports spiking around 2:20 PM ET.The issue appears to be entirely on T-Mobile’s end: While AT&T tells The Verge that its network is “operating normally” and Verizon says its network is “performing well,” T-Mobile has now confirmed that it’s working to

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon are experiencing network issues across the US, according to user reports on Downdetector and on social media. Two Verge staffers were unable to place calls on T-Mobile. It appears both Sprint, now a T-Mobile subsidiary, and US Cellular are also experiencing problems.It’s unclear what the issue might be at this time. When asked for comment, AT&T tells The Verge it’s looking into the reports. T-Mobile and

Photo courtesy Google Many years ago, when I was studying ASL (American Sign Language), my teachers used to depend on separate devices that would hook into their TV sets to supply closed captioning — captioning that was limited and, to tell the truth, not very accurate. These days, almost every video (and every TV) has closed captioning available for people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or who just have difficulty following the voices from the set.
Unfortunately, closed captioning isn&rs

Matt Petit - Handout/A.M.P.A.S. via Getty Images The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has decided to delay the Oscars by two months because of the COVID-19 pandemic.The 93rd Oscars will now take place on April 25th, 2021 instead of February 28th, 2021. The Academy also announced that eligibility for films is extended beyond the typical December 31st date — films released between January 1st, 2020 and February 28th, 2021 will be eligible.
“For over a century, movies have

Things are getting weird on the Fortnite island. Today’s much-anticipated event, called simply “The Device,” was a confusing yet thrilling ride, and one that hints at some big changes for the game’s future. It also raises some interesting questions about just what the Fortnite island even is. In the immediate aftermath, The Agency, a central building on the island, has been destroyed, while the ever-present electrical storm is now made of water.
The event was slated to be

ThePsychicArtist It’s been 87 days since Governor Andrew Cuomo issued social-distancing guidelines in New York. Eighty-seven days trying to read the books gathering dust on my shelves instead of staring at the wall. Eighty-seven days mindlessly scrolling through TikTok and dating apps for some form of reprieve from the lonesome dread occupying my daily life. And at least 87 days since I last went on a date. So when I saw a viral TikTok over the weekend from a girl who paid an Etsy psychic

eBay new logo STOCK Six former eBay employees have been charged with a bizarre stalking campaign against an e-commerce newsletter. The Department of Justice alleges that James Baugh, David Harville, Stephanie Popp, Brian Gilbert, Stephanie Stockwell, and Veronica Zea viciously harassed the couple who published the newsletter for their negative eBay coverage — sending them online threats and abuse, mailing live insects and a “bloody pig face” mask, and driving to their Massachu

I don’t think of streaming services as heroes, mostly because streaming services are not real people, and most of them are owned by multibillion-dollar conglomerates with no interest in saving the world. But AT&T and WarnerMedia want to change that by fashioning their new platform HBO Max as a superhero team.A new comic book launched by DC Comics in partnership with WarnerMedia, To The Max will “feature stories about ordinary people achieving their maximum potential when they tra

Startups need money. State and local governments need startups and the employment growth they offer. It should be obvious that the two groups can work together and make each other happy. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.
Each year, governments spend tens of billions of dollars on economic development incentives designed to attract employers and jobs to their communities. There are a huge number of challenges, however, for startups and individual contributors trying to apply

Photo by GEORGE FREY/AFP via Getty Images The Food and Drug Administration is withdrawing emergency authorization for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as treatments for COVID-19, the agency announced today. Recent clinical trials showed that the drugs were not effective against the disease.The medications are still FDA-approved for diseases like malaria and lupus, so they remain on the market. Because they are approved for other diseases, doctors could technically still prescribe them for COV

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple’s back-to-school promotion for 2020 is an especially good one if you’re in need of some headphones. At Apple’s education store, students and educators can get a free set of second-generation AirPods when purchasing the $899 MacBook Air or $479 iPad Air (both prices listed reflect the educational discount). What’s also cool is that Apple is giving you the option to upgrade to the AirPods with the wireless charging case for an extra

The kit comes with instructions on how to build five robots. | Image: Lego Lego’s Mindstorms Robot Inventor kit is a new set that lets kids build and design robots. You get 949 pieces as part of the kit, which includes a color sensor, distance sensor, four motors, and Lego’s Bluetooth-enabled “Intelligent Hub.” It’s designed as a way to teach children basic STEM skills, including programming, and it’s the first new entry in the Mindstorms lineup in seven year

EA has announced a new Star Wars game, Star Wars: Squadrons, a first-person space combat game that will have players flying the series’s famous starfighters in head-to-head single-player and multiplayer battles.Developed by Motive Montreal (which previously contributed to both Battlefront II and Anthem), Squadrons will let players fly a variety of Star Wars ships, including the X-Wing, A-Wing, Y-Wing, U-Wing, TIE Fighter, TIE Interceptor, TIE Bomber, and TIE Reaper fighters.EA won’t

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Amazon’s Echo Studio is its first great-sounding smart speaker, and you can get it for $170 today. That’s $30 off its regular price, which we only saw happen once before a few months ago. What makes this deal even better than that one is you can get a free Philips Hue white ambiance bulb for no extra charge. Since the Echo Studio uses the Zigbee standard for Internet of Things devices, you won’t need a Hue Bridge to use the bulb.
Where the Echo

When 2020 began, the year seemed set to include another year of record-setting venture capital investment and, perhaps, some long-awaited IPOs. All that quickly faded when COVID-19 spread globally, shutting economies, undercutting swaths of the business world and rearranging the working life in countries around the globe.
Here at TechCrunchwe’re navigating the changing landscape, talking to the founders and venture capitalists that make up the startup realm that we cover, hoping to de

WhatsApp After testing a beta version in India, WhatsApp has launched in-app payments in Brazil, the company announced in a blog post on Monday (via TechCrunch). The payments are enabled through Facebook Pay, which parent company Facebook said last year it would be rolling out to Instagram, Messenger, Facebook, and eventually WhatsApp.“Payments on WhatsApp are beginning to roll out to people across Brazil beginning today and we look forward to bringing it to everyone as we go forward,&rdq

Photo by Avery White for The Verge Apple will begin selling an SSD kit for the Mac Pro that allows buyers to add more storage to the high-end desktop computer. The kit, which Apple tells The Verge should be available later today, includes options for up to 8TB of storage. That storage will replace the machine’s existing SSD, so this kit is really designed for buyers who originally configured the Mac Pro with a smaller SSD option (it can go as low as 256GB), rather than people who already

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our short-form week-starter in which we go over the weekend, look to the week ahead, talk about some neat funding rounds and dig into what is stuck on our minds.
So, by section then:
The weekend:The market narrative seems to have changed from optimism to pessimism, impacting stock prices and possibly closing the IPO window some, afte

Cameo Cameo has a new way for fans to interact with celebrities: Zoom calls. The company launched a video call option over the weekend, called Cameo Live, where people can, instead of a prerecorded shout-out, book a 10-minute Zoom call with their favorite talent.The prices are wildly more expensive than the usual Cameo videos, with stars like Jeremy Piven charging $15,000 for 10 minutes. (He charges $400 for a video shoutout.) Skateboarder Tony Hawk charges $1,000 for a Zoom call, and football

Niantic has announced more information about this year’s Pokémon Go Fest, which is shifting to an online event because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tickets go on sale today for $14.99 through an in-app purchase. In support of the Black Lives Matter movement, Niantic says it will be donating half of the proceeds to black AR creators and half to US NPOs working on rebuilding local communities, with a minimum donation of $5 million.
While in-person Pokémon Go events have often been

The Samsung Galaxy A71 5G is coming first to T-Mobile and Sprint. | Image: Samsung Samsung’s Galaxy A71 5G, which sits at the top of its midrange A-series lineup, will launch in the US starting on June 19th, the company announced today. Initially, the handset will be available from T-Mobile, Sprint, and Samsung.com, but Samsung says that the phone will be coming to AT&T, Verizon, and other carriers later this summer along with an Unlocked by Samsung model.Announced back in April with