Technology news

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple is standing behind its decision to reject future updates for the iOS app of new email service Hey. In a letter sent to Hey creator Basecamp and obtained by The Verge, Apple outlines the App Store rules it says the Hey app breaks and advises the company to adhere to developer guidelines if Basecamp wishes to continue updating the software on iOS or release it for the Mac. It also says it declined to publish the Mac version of the app in its App Store

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Like many social media platforms and apps, TikTok feeds are built using a recommendation algorithm that uses a number of tools and factors to personalize it for each person. Now, TikTok has published a new blog post explaining how its recommendation feed works, and it includes tips for personalizing the feed to avoid being served random videos you might not be interested in.TikTok’s recommendation algorithm is built around input factors in a way som

Verily Life Sciences has announced an app-based health screening service for businesses and schools trying to reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic. The product, called Healthy at Work, will provide COVID-19 diagnostic testing for employees.
It will also make recommendations to employers about how often employees should be retested. Those recommendations will be based on local health data, as well as test results.
The program will conduct daily symptom screening through an app to either route peo

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Lime is expanding its subscription service LimePass to include daily and monthly passes. It’s an attempt by the scooter company to lock in consumers over time in a market with nearly identical products and pricing schemes.LimePass subscribers will be able to rent one of Lime’s electric scooters for a whole day or a whole month for a nominal, flat fee. Daily passes will give customers access to unlimited 30-minute rides for 24 hours, while

The highly anticipated Disney Plus streaming service, which will likely prove as essential as Netflix to many consumers, is now available. Disney Plus combines content from Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic into a single streaming app. You can dig into Disney Plus’ vault of animated classics, superhero blockbusters, TV shows, and new originals, like The Mandalorian.Here’s everything you should know about getting started with Disney Plus.How much does Disney Plus cost

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images Facebook has removed more than 80 ads placed by the Trump campaign for use of imagery linked to Nazism. The ads used the imagery of an inverted triangle, which the Trump campaign has argued is a “symbol widely used by antifa.” The same symbol was used to identify political prisoners in Nazi death camps, leading Media Matters to call it an “infamous Nazi symbol” with no place in political rhetoric.
Facebook agreed, ultimately removing the

Mapillary,the Swedish startup that wants to take on Google and others in mapping the world via a crowdsourced database of street-level imagery, has been acquired by Facebook, according to the company’s blog. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed.
The Mapillary team and project will become part of Facebook’sbroader open mapping efforts. Mapillary also says its “commitment to OpenStreetMap stays.”
Writes Mapillary co-founder and CEO Jan Erik Solem (who also previou

Over the past two decades, the venture capital industry has exploded beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations.
What began as a sleepy industry in Boston and Menlo Park has now expanded to dozens of cities the world over. The National Venture Capital Association estimates that VCs deployed more than $130 billion in 2018 and 2019, and thousands of new investors have joined the ranks in recent years to find the next great startups.
All that activity, though, poses a dilemma for founders: Who acti

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TwitchCon San Diego, the streaming platform’s big annual conference in the US, has been canceled due to the pandemic.“Due to restrictions on large gatherings and ongoing concerns for the health and safety of our community, the Twitch team, and the local San Diego community, we have decided to cancel TwitchCon San Diego this fall,” Twitch said in a statement.An update on TwitchCon San Diego and what comes next. pic.twitter.com/ft2P5gtRX2&

Image: Alex Castro / The Verge OnlyFans allows social media influencers, including sex workers and adult content creators, to sell photos and videos to their audience through a subscription model. But there are a number of tools that allow internet crooks to download and reshare photos and videos from OnlyFans profiles without their creators’ knowledge or consent.In a new report, Motherboard takes a look at these tools and the underground rings that take advantage of them. It’s fasc

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge EA’s Play Live event is happening exclusively online this year, along with every other in-person event that was supposed to happen at E3 2020, which was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. If you want to learn more about Madden 21, the new Star Wars: Squadrons, and all of the other surprise game announcements EA has in store for the PS4, Xbox One, PC, as well as PS5 and Xbox Series X (and maybe some more Nintendo Switch games), then you’

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge All-electric racing series Formula E has announced plans to resume and conclude its pandemic-interrupted sixth season in August. The series will put on six races in nine days at Tempelhof Airport, a familiar location for Formula E. As a result, races scheduled in cities like New York and London won’t be held.
No fans will be allowed to attend, and there will be a maximum of 1,000 people allowed on site at any given time, including medical crew and ot

Photo by Dante D’Orazio / The Verge If you’ve been wondering what could knock out one of the United States’ three big cellular carriers’ ability to deliver calls and text messages — and keep it that way for most of an entire day — T-Mobile now has a partial answer that pertains to its extensive nationwide outage Monday.The company issued an apology late Tuesday that you can read in its entirety below, and on Thursday, CTO Neville Ray provided a further explan

Photo by Dante D’Orazio / The Verge If you’ve been wondering what could knock out one of the United States’ three big cellular carriers’ ability to deliver calls and text messages — and keep it that way for most of an entire day — T-Mobile now has a partial answer that pertains to its extensive nationwide outage Monday.The company issued an apology late Tuesday that you can read in its entirety below, and on Thursday, CTO Neville Ray provided a further explan

Zack Snyder’s “Snyder Cut” of Justice League is expected to get its first big reveal at DC’s FanDome event in August, but the director tweeted out a tease from the upcoming HBO Max special.In the teaser, Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman is seen in an underground cave of sorts, while a voiceover of Jesse Eisenberg’s speech as Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice plays. The footage then cuts to an image of Darkseid, the villain that Snyder has teased and tal

Image: Unit 2 Games Google Stadia’s upcoming exclusive game Crayta launches July 1st with support for a beta version of State Share, the cloud gaming service’s experimental tech that lets any Stadia user jump instantaneously into another person’s game by following a link. The game is a “First on Stadia” title, meaning it won’t be restricted to Google’s platform forever. It may arrive on other consoles, PC, or mobile at some point in the future, though n

Image: Insomniac Games Insomniac Games has confirmed its upcoming PlayStation 5 launch title, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, will be about half the length of the original game. In a blog post published Thursday, creative director Brian Horton said the game would be roughly the size of 2017’s Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, which, since its release, has become an industry reference point for talking about the scope and length of narrative expansions in games. The Lost Legacy clocked in at about 7

Image: HBO Watchmen premiered nine months before the recent mass protests against systemic racism and police brutality happened around the world, but the show feels more timely than ever. Now, HBO is making the entire nine-episode series available to anyone to watch for free this weekend.
The network is making the episodes free as “an extension of the network’s content offering highlighting Black experiences, voices and storytellers,” according to a press release, adding that

Cyperpunk 2077 — the highly anticipated open-world RPG — has been delayed again and is moving from its planned September 17th release date to November 19th, developer CD Projekt Red announced today on Twitter.An important development update pic.twitter.com/uFGrt9Tqpi— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) June 18, 2020The announcement notes that as of today, the game is technically “finished” from a content and gameplay perspective, with all the quests, cutscenes, skills,

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Russia will lift its nearly two-year ban on messenger app Telegram, Reuters reported. The country’s telecom watchdog Roskomnadzor said the company had shown “willingness” to help with counterterrorism efforts.“Roskomnadzor is dropping its demands to restrict access to Telegram messenger in agreement with Russia’s general prosecutor’s office,” the agency said in a statement.A Russian court blocked the app in April

There are too many streaming services, and all of them are fighting over content that feels like it’s bouncing back and forth between streaming sites on a daily basis. This has made sites like JustWatch — a streaming search engine and recommendation site — an essential tool as more and more of these services continue to launch.
JustWatch isn’t a new service; it’s been around since 2014. But the modern-day glut of streaming services and spiraling rights agreements ha

Photo: Picturehouse You’re kind of setting yourself up for failure when you tell someone a movie is surprising. The moment you say that, the person you’re talking to has no choice but to expect the surprise. They scrutinize everything extra carefully, become more sensitive to clues or red herrings they might have otherwise overlooked. Telling someone a surprise is coming very much defeats the purpose of said surprise. The Guest, however — back on Netflix after a long absence &

The new X1 Extreme (pictured) can be equipped with an Nvidia GeForce 1650 Ti GPU. | Image: Lenovo In case you were worried we might go a month without Lenovo announcing some new ThinkPad laptops, the company’s come through with updates to several of its models. There are new P Series models, as well as a new third-generation X1 Extreme, all running Intel’s 10th Gen processors. The big news here, is that as well as the spec bump these laptops will all support Lenovo’s new Ultra

DoorDash has confirmed that it is raising “approximately $400 million” in a Series H round of funding.
Earlier today, Axios reported that the company was looking for a roughly $400 million round at a post-money valuation of $16 billion. DoorDash clarified in a statement provided to TechCrunch that the valuation is slightly under the $16 billion mark.
The round was expected, though the final valuation of the deal came in $1 billion higher than earlier reports had indicated.
DoorDash,t

Pandora Pandora is giving podcast hosts more information about the listeners they reach on its platform starting today. The company just announced its new Podcast Analytics feature with the goal of giving podcasters more data about their listeners, like where they live, how long they listen to each episode, and the number of thumbs up or thumbs down their show receives. For access to their analytics, podcasters have to sign up for Pandora For Podcasters, which is free but requires podcasters to

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite is $100 right now ($30 off) for the 8GB version in black. If you fancy one of the other colors, like plum, twilight blue, or sage, those are $25 off instead. Whichever you choose, you’ll be getting the best e-reader for even less than usual. Compared to the more affordable Kindle model, this one’s screen has a more pixel dense display for smoother fonts and better-looking images. It’s also backlit for nig

The original founders of World View Enterprises — a company aimed at using giant balloons to send payloads into the stratosphere — are launching a new venture together, one that will use those same massive balloons to send people leisurely above the Earth. Named Space Perspective, the now distinct company is focused on floating paying customers up to the edge of “space,” where they can get a rare view of the curvature of the Earth.
Such a relaxed space travel experience h

Kaia Health, a digital therapeutics startup which uses computer vision technology for real-time posture tracking via the smartphone camera to deliver human-hands-free physiotherapy, has closed a $26 million Series B funding round.
The funding was led by Optum Ventures,Idinvest and capital300 with participation from existing investors Balderton Capital and Heartcore Capital,in addition to Symphony Ventures — the latter in an “investment partnership” with world famous golfer, Ror

Apple’s series of macOS (and iOS) devices aren’t just part of a technology ecosystem — they’re part of a lifestyle. From iPhones to iPads to Mac laptops, the constellation of tech devices, joined with the operating system and wide range of apps and games, are what make fans out of Apple users.
But while macOS is known for its ease of use and relatively failure-free operation, there are always questions that will come up — and we’re here to answer them.
If you&

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google is rolling out a software update that improves network performance for Nest Wifi and Google WiFi routers on slow network connections, the company announced in a blog post. “Your Wi-Fi will better support multiple video calls, gaming sessions and more simultaneously,” Google Nest product manager Sanjay Noronha wrote in the post, adding that the latest software update will also “improve device connection speeds on wireless networks and op

There isn’t much downtime in The Last of Us Part II. As Ellie, driven by loss and trauma, players will spend hours shooting, stabbing, and strangling their way to vengeance. Ellie is a swift and capable killer in a game that rarely has a feel-good moment to spare. It’s a breath of fresh air, then, to have some downtime for one of the game’s more calming aspects of play expressed through Ellie practicing guitar.Scattered throughout The Last of Us Part II are cast-off instruments

Image: Nvidia Select Square Enix titles are returning to Nvidia’s cloud gaming service GeForce Now, Nvidia announced on Thursday. The new library of Square Enix games consists of 14 PC titles, including the most recent entries in the Deus Ex and Tomb Raider reboot series. Square Enix was one of the earliest game publishers to pull its library of games from GeForce Now when Nvidia launched its paid version back in February, and some previously supported games will still be missing, like th

Spotify Spotify has a new podcast deal that’ll allow it to make narrative shows around DC Comics characters, like Batman and Harley Quinn. The company announced the multi-year, first-look licensing deal with WarnerMedia, which owns DC Comics, this morning, giving Spotify another group of exclusive podcasts to add to its catalog. The agreement means Spotify can produce, market, distribute, and sell ads against podcasts built around DC Comics IP. Although the company didn’t detail the

Djay’s NeuralMix feature. | Photo: Algoriddim Algoriddim is adding an impressive new feature to its Djay app for iOS: a set of sliders that let you instantly fade out certain portions of whatever track you’re playing, letting you highlight just the drums, the vocal track, or all the instruments in between. Algoriddim says the feature works well with just about any genre of music you throw at it.
“Heavy metal maybe wasn’t the greatest,” Karim Morsy, Algoriddim&rsquo

This morning Chilean company Copec announced a corporate venture capital (CVC) fund, dubbed Wind Ventures. Wind will write checks worth between $1 million and $10 million into Series A, B, and C rounds, with an eye on startups that fit into the categories that its parent company works in, namely energy, retail, and mobility.
According to Wind Ventures’ head, Brian Walsh, the CVC intends to “balance [its] investments across those three sectors,” including putting money to work i

TechCrunch is focusing a bit more on the Boston-area startup and venture capital ecosystem lately, which has gone pretty well so far.
In fact, we had originally intended on releasing this regional investor survey as a single piece, but since so many VCs took part, we’re breaking it into two. The first part deals with the world we live in today, and the remainder will detail what Boston-area investors think about the future.
We broke our questions into two parts to better track investor sen