Technology news

For photographers and videographers spending a lot less time on location and a lot more time at the desk right now, one great use of time is going back through archives and backlogs to find hidden gems, and honing those edit skills. One recently released device called the Loupedeck CT can make that an even more enjoyable experience, with customizable controls and profiles that work with just about all your favorite editing apps — and that can even make just using your computer generally ea

Miriam Vogel ContributorShare on Twitter Miriam Vogel is the president and CEO of EqualAI, a nonprofit organization focused on reducing unconscious bias in artificial intelligence.The murder of George Floyd was shocking, but we know that his death was not unique. Too many Black lives have been stolen from their families and communities as a result of historical racism. There are deep and numerous threads woven into racial injustice that plague our country that have come to a head following the r

Photo by Michele Doying / The Verge Amazon has announced that it’s launching a new Counterfeit Crimes Unit as the latest effort by the online retailer to fight counterfeit products on its website. The new team is said to be made up of “former federal prosecutors, experienced investigators, and data analysts,” who will work to proactively “go on the offensive” against counterfeiters, instead of just reacting by trying to identify and block bad listings.According to

Earlier today we took a look at two companies that have filed to go public, nCino and GoHealth. The pair join Lemonade in a march toward the public markets.
But those three firms are hardly alone. We know that DoorDash filed privately earlier this year (it also raised a pile of cash lately, so its IPO may not be in a hurry), and Postmates filed privately last year.
Even more, there are a number of companies whose IPOs we anticipate in short order. So, what follows is our incredibly scientific su

In 2019, the global fertility services industry was estimated to be worth $14.8 billion with demand driven by the significant growth in the median age of first-time mothers, according to a Research & Markets report.
Gina Bartasi,founder and CEO of NYC-based fertility center Kindbody,has pointed to macroeconomic trends responsible for the industry’s consistent growth, such as the increase in single mothers by choice and the fact that “heterosexual couples are waiting to have child

The PACT Act is a new bipartisan effort to reform Section 230, the crucial liability shield that enables internet platforms to exist, approaching the law’s shortcomings “with a scalpel rather than a jackhammer,” as Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) describes it. It is a welcome alternative to the dangerous EARN IT Act and risible executive order also in the running.
Section 230 protects companies online from being liable for content posted by their users, as long as those companies r

Apple will start switching its Macs to its own ARM-based processors later this year, but you won’t be able to run Windows in Boot Camp mode on them. Microsoft only licenses Windows 10 on ARM to PC makers to preinstall on new hardware, and the company hasn’t made copies of the operating system available for anyone to license or freely install.
“Microsoft only licenses Windows 10 on ARM to OEMs,” says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. We asked Microsoft

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images California is seeking to force Uber and Lyft to reclassify their drivers as employees, in a dramatic escalation of the state’s months-long war with the gig economy companies.In May, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, along with city attorneys of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego, sued Uber and Lyft, arguing that their drivers were misclassified as independent contractors when they should be employees under the state’s AB5 law that we

AWStoday announced the beta launch of Amazon Honeycode, a new, fully managed low-code/no-code development tool that aims to make it easy for anybody in a company to build their own applications. All of this, of course, is backed by a database in AWS and a web-based, drag-and-drop interface builder.
Developers can build applications for up to 20 users for free. After that, they pay per user and for the storage their applications take up.
Image Credits: Amazon/AWS
“Customers have told us tha

FuboTV announced that it signed a multiyear distribution deal with Disney to bring ESPN to its service, filling in the missing link that could make it one of the best over-the-top live TV streaming services available for sports fans. It was already great for watching the Super Bowl and other live sporting events (especially since it has a free trial). But starting this summer, subscribers to FuboTV’s $54.99 standard subscription plan will get ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN 3, ABC, along with access to

Think you’ve found a way to consistently brick someone’s PS4, or make it run code that it shouldn’t? Sonywants to know — and now they’re willing to pay.
This morning Sony announced that it’s opening its bug bounty program to the public, and will pay for newly discovered bugs and exploits that impact either the PlayStation 4 or their online PlayStation Network.
Sony is pretty explicit about what kind of bugs they’re looking for: anything that hits “

Hoxton Ventures, a London-based early-stage VC firm best known for backing British unicorns Babylon Health, Darktrace and Deliveroo, announced its second fund last week, coming in at just under $100 million.
The firm’s self-proclaimed strategy is to seek out startups that can scale globally into “large, category-defining leaders” in nascent industries — A strategy that appears to be bearing fruit.
However, although fund two is twice the size of the firm’s $40 millio

Photo by Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images A new bipartisan Senate bill is taking aim at the liability protections enjoyed by internet platforms like Facebook and YouTube.
The Platform Accountability and Consumer Transparency (PACT) Act, introduced by Sens. Brian Schatz (D-HI) and John Thune (R-SD) on Wednesday, would require online platforms like Facebook and Google to reveal their content moderation practices through a range of mandatory disclosures. The bill would also create a new avenue for hold

Zoran Basich ContributorShare on Twitter Zoran Basich is the crypto editor for Andreessen Horowitz. More posts by this contributorCrypto Startup School: How to build projects and keep them safe     Crypto Startup School: How to build companies by building communities    
Editor’s note: Andreessen Horowitz’s Crypto Startup School brought together 45 participants from around the U.S. and overseas in a six-week course to learn how to build crypto

When Dell bought EMC in 2016 for $67 billion it was one of the biggest acquisitions in tech history, and it brought with it a boatload of debt. Since then Dell has been working on ways to mitigate that debt by selling off various pieces of the corporate empire and going public again, but one of its most valuable assets remains VMware, a company that came over as part of the huge EMC deal.
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Dell is considering selling part of its stake in VMware. The

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a formal complaint against Detroit police over what it says is the first known example of a wrongful arrest caused by faulty facial recognition technology.Robert Julian-Borchak Williams, an African American man, was arrested after a facial recognition system falsely matched his photo with security footage of a shoplifter. The New York Times reports that the ACLU is calling for the dismissal of Williams&r

Instagram is expanding its TikTok competitor known as “Reels” to new markets, following its launch last year in Brazil. Starting today, Instagram is rolling out further access to Reels in France and Germany, allowing users to record short, 15-second video clips set to music or other audio, then share them on the platform where they have the potential to go viral.
The Reels feature is similar to TikTok in that it presents a set of editing tools that make it easier to film creative vid

After what felt like winter, investors say startup deals are back on — although the numbers suggest they never stopped. As Semil Shah of Haystack VC phrased it in a blog post, “It’s game on, pandemic or bust.”
This is good news for founders and big funds, but the investment landscape becomes more complicated when it comes to up-and-coming venture capitalists. “My impression of the current mood amongst traditional limited partners is that most have slowed down consid

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge When you think of Slack, you probably think of a chat app that’s growing in popularity for businesses large and small. Originally designed by accident as something that could potentially replace email, Slack hasn’t quite killed off email just yet. But over the past four years, Slack has quietly been building a major platform change for its communications app that might help replace your work email in the future.Slack Connect furthers the idea

Netflix is set to introduce 59 new original things in July, including several new seasons of popular TV shows, entirely new series, new movies, new documentaries, and even some new anime.There’s a new season of Umbrella Academy, a high-profile Charlize Theron film, a sequel to the popular teen romcom The Kissing Booth, a final season of the popular sports documentary series Last Chance U, and the highly anticipated remake of The Babysitters Club. Quite frankly, it’s a lot. That 59 nu

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verg Thinking about picking up a new Apple Watch? It’s never a bad idea to wait until there’s a good deal, and thankfully, those happen with some regularity. The latest model, the Apple Watch Series 5 starts at $400, but it’s frequently available for $100 less than that. If that’s a little too expensive, you can drop at least another $100 off that price for the Series 3 Watch.The Series 4 is a good choice, too, though not many retailers sell i

Does your elevator pitch lack traction? Could it do with a serious makeover? We’re here to help. Tune into Pitchers & Pitches, an interactive pitch-off and feedback session, on July 1 at 4 p.m. ET / 1 p.m. PT. This event is 100% free — simply register here to attend.
Pitchers & Pitches — part pitch-off, part masterclass — features startups (all exhibitors in Digital Startup Alley during Disrupt 2020) delivering their best 60-second pitch to a panel of judges. The

Times Square on June 23, 2020| Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images People traveling into New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut from states with high rates of positive COVID-19 tests will be required to quarantine for 14 days. The new restrictions were announced by the governors of those states in a joint press conference today. The new travel advisory goes into effect tonight.The three states were the first to be hit hard by the pandemic and were the target of similar travel advisories in March whe

Photo by Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images Twitter has banned a group that appeared to leak years of records from 200 police departments. The platform removed the account of Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), a collective that recently published nearly 270 gigabytes of data under the title “BlueLeaks.” Twitter also added a warning page that appears if you click an existing link to the dataset, and it’s blocking new tweets that include the link, warning that it&rsqu

Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images Safari 14, the version of Apple’s browser that will ship with iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur, will let you use Face ID or Touch ID to log in to websites built to support the feature. The functionality was confirmed the browser’s beta release notes, and Apple has detailed how the feature works in a WWDC video for developers. The functionality is built on the WebAuthn component of the FIDO2 standard, developed by the FIDO Alliance. It should m

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a preliminary investigation into allegations of failing touchscreens on Tesla’s older Model S vehicles.The federal agency launched the probe after receiving 11 complaints from Tesla owners over a 13-month period alleging failures of the touchscreen in 2013 through 2015 Model S vehicles. The problem, which stems from a problematic flash memory device, renders the touchscreen black, including the loss of the rear camera image disp

Tesla’s earliest Model S electric sedans shipped with a flawed battery back design that was prone to coolant leaks which could lead to fires, according to Business Insider. The report describes how the company appears to have cut corners on this particular part of the Model S, which Tesla was scrambling to ship in mid-2012 as it started to establish itself as a mass-market electric automaker.
The new report comes as Tesla was ranked last in JD Power’s annual study of new vehicle qual

Image: 林嘉雯 / Facebook Chen San-yuan, the Taiwanese “Pokémon Go grandpa,” has evolved his bike into a new form: a peacock-esque contraption with 64 smartphones mounted on the front.San-yuan originally went viral in 2018 after an image was shown of him playing Pokémon Go with 11 phones attached to his bike. Over the last two years, this iconic gamer has added more phones to his arsenal. In 2019, he was using 45 smartphones concurrently as he biked ar

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google is rolling out the ability to have different Voice and Fi numbers on the same Google account. That could be handy if you want to use one service for a personal number and the other for a business number, for example.
The feature addresses a criticism of Fi that has existed since the initial wave of invites went out for the service in 2015. Previously, if you wanted to use your Google Voice number on Google Fi, you had to port your Voice number to Fi, whi

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a formal complaint against Detroit police over what it says is the first known example of a wrongful arrest caused by faulty facial recognition technology.Robert Julian-Borchak Williams, an African American man, was arrested after a facial recognition system falsely matched his photo with security footage of a shoplifter. The New York Times reports that the ACLU is calling for the dismissal of Williams&r

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you, like me, prefer typing on your laptop’s keyboard rather than the tiny iPhone keypad, or you just don’t want to switch devices to answer a text or call, you can set up your Mac to receive calls and texts from your iPhone. With an Apple ID, you can also send texts and make calls over the internet using the Messages and FaceTime apps on your Mac.To make calls using cellular service or to send SMS messages through your carrier (as oppo

When we announced the formation of The TechCrunch List last week, we had no idea what response we would get to our proposal for founders to recommend their “first-check” investors. While plenty of founders over the years have told us that they wanted such a database to rely on or to refer to other founders who are raising for the first time, there is always something nerve-wracking about launching a new product and waiting for feedback.Who’s writing first checks into startups?W

At a time when IT has to help employees set up and manage devices remotely, a service that simplifies those processes could certainly come in handy. Apple recognized that, and acquired Fleetsmith today, a startup that helps companies do precisely that with Apple devices.
While Appledidn’t publicize the acquisition, it has confirmed the deal with TechCrunch, while Fleetsmithannounced the deal in a company blog post. Neither company was sharing the purchase price.
The startup has built techn