Technology news

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Tesla has finally settled on a date for its delayed annual shareholder meeting and “battery day” for investors: September 22nd. The meeting will be held in person at the company’s vehicle factory in Fremont, California, though it will presumably also be live-streamed. Only people who are shareholders of the company’s stock can attend.The annual shareholder meeting was originally scheduled for July 7th at the Computer History Museum

Image: Amazon Amazon has delayed its upcoming open-world MMO New World, one of two tentpole games from its burgeoning games studio, from August 25th to an undefined spring 2021 date. The announcement comes less than two weeks after Amazon brought its other tentpole game, the free-to-play shooter Crucible, back into closed beta following barely a month of wide availability. It sounds like Amazon may be taking a more cautious approach to game development after early feedback from testers that the

Google announced its plans to acquire Fitbit for $2.1 billion back in November. As of this writing, the deal has yet to go through, courtesy of all the usual regulatory scrutiny that occurs any time one large company buys another. EU regulators are often a key hurdle for these sorts of deals, and this time it may be no different.Citing “people familiar with the matter,” Reuters notes that Google may be facing down some scrutiny in the form of an EU antitrust investigation if it doesn

It's been the week of leaks for Samsung — there was the Note 20 Ultra, the Galaxy Tab S7+, these weird Samsung Galaxy earbuds, and now the Galaxy Z Flip 5G. The promotional video, which was most likely reserved for the Unpacked 2020 event in August, was leaked for all to enjoy.
Well-known leaker Max Weinbach posted the video on Twitter, giving us a closer look at the latest version of the foldable phone.Judging by the video, it looks like the 5G variant will  be offered in two colors

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Though it might strike some people as obvious advice, Apple has published a support page that warns MacBook owners not to close their laptop with a camera cover in place. Damage like a cracked display could result, according to the company, because “the clearance between the display and keyboard is designed to very tight tolerances.” MacRumors spotted the advisory, which Apple posted on July 2nd.Those little plastic camera covers with a sliding mech

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Facebook is reportedly considering a ban on political ads before the US elections this year. Bloomberg reported the news this afternoon, saying that the idea is being discussed internally but is not yet a firm policy. The step would drastically escalate Facebook’s current plans for preventing misinformation or meddling in the 2020 elections.
There’s not much detail about the policy, but based on Bloomberg’s report, the blackout would

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram on Thursday announced a new ban on all forms of content, including posts and videos, promoting the widely discredited practice known as conversion therapy, which attempts to forcefully change an individual's sexual orientation. The news was first reported earlier today by CNN.A spokesperson for parent company Facebook tells The Verge this recent change in policy is an expansion of an earlier rule specifically banning ads promoting the practice p

Image: Crytek When Crytek announced that a remaster for the original Crysis would launch this year, fans were excited to see how much the game’s legendary graphics would improve — but a leaked trailer has left so many fans disappointed with the graphical changes that Crytek has now pushed the game’s release on PC, PS4, and Xbox One by several weeks.On July 10th, Crytek announced that the Nintendo Switch version will “still” arrive on July 23rd, suggesting that othe

Home composting is a win-win activity. Not only is it a sustainable way of disposing of kitchen food scraps and garden waste, it also happens to make top-notch compost that your plants will love. 
You do not need a massive garden to get into composting — even small gardens and balconies work! 
NEXT STORY:If you're not sure quite where to begin, we've created a helpful beginner's guide to composting for getting started. 
As Kerry Connolly, founder of Willow and Greene gardeni

Photo by Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images If you, like me, find yourself writing the same email over and over again, or copying and pasting the same message multiple times, Gmail gives you an easier option. By creating and saving email templates, you can insert them the next time you compose a message and save yourself some time.You can store up to 50 templates at a time, so it’s easy to create different templates for different situations. Here’s how.
Create an email templat

In its first few weeks of release, the latest game from QuizUp founder Thor Fridriksson took the top spot in the Games Section of Apple’s App Store and was the top app (for a brief time) in the App Store at large.
Since its launch on June 17, Trivia Royale has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times, with day-one retention of 45% and week-one retention of 45% on iOS, according to the company. Average daily usage per user is around 30 minutes. It currently sits in the number six spot in

Prolific Apple analyst Ming Chi Kuo is at it again with another prediction on Cupertino’s upcoming products. Specifically, Kuo believes Apple is planning to launch a 13.3-inch MacBook Pro and a new MacBook Air with the newfangled chips as early as this year, as well as 14 and 16-inch Pros next year. In a research note, Kuo says(via MacRumors): We predict that Apple will launch new MacBook models including the new 13.3-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ equipped with the ‌Apple Silicon&zwnj

Image: Heritage Auctions Super Mario Bros. keeps breaking records three and a half decades after release. A mint copy of a US version of the 1985 game just sold for $114,000 at Heritage Auctions, breaking the previous record set by a copy of Super Mario Bros. in similar condition that sold for $100,150 at an auction last year.That makes it, according to game collector and journalist Chris Kohler, the most expensive game ever sold to date.A sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. just sold at auction f

Replicated, the Los Angeles-based company pitching monitoring and management services for Kubernetes-based applications, has managed to bring on the former head of product of the $2.75 billion-valued programming giant GitLab as its new chief product officer. 
Mark Pundsack is joining the company as it moves to scale its business. At GitLab,Pundsack saw the company grow from 70 employees to 1,300 as it scaled its business through its on-premise offerings.
Replicatedis hoping to bring the sam

HBO Max, the WarnerMedia-owned streaming service that launched in May, announced today that it has made a series commitment to an untitled TV show tied to the movie “The Batman” (currently scheduled for release in 2021).
The show will be set in the Gotham City police department, with a creative team that includes Matt Reeves, the movie’s co-writer and director, along with “Boardwalk Empire” creator Terence Winter.
This sounds like familiar territory — the poli

Hey, ya’ll. I’m experimenting with a bi-weekly roundup that looks at the state of labor in tech.
We’ll use this space to explore topics related to diversity, equity and inclusion, the future of work, issues relating to pay equality, notable personnel changes and much more.
This week, we’re looking at Facebook’s civil rights audit, a new gig worker earnings study, the latest on California ballot measure Proposition 22 and layoffs amid COVID-19. 
Stay woke
The ar

If Dolly Parton was spurned by a man in 1374, here's what "Jolene" would have sounded like. 
Singer Hildegard von Blingin', a YouTuber who covers pop songs in the style of a medieval bard, covered Dolly Parton's haunting love song with some lyrical twists. Sure Jolene was doing Dolly dirty, but to do all that in the midst of a plague, the crusades, and feudal oppression? That's just rude. 
"He talketh of thee in his sleep, and alas I cannot keep," she croons. "From weeping when I hear

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Facebook’s defense after an appeals court determined it violated anti-robocalling rules. The court will examine whether Facebook’s automated alert texts count as an “automatic telephone dialing system,” establishing a clearer definition of illegal phone spam.
Facebook was sued in 2015 by non-Facebook user Noah Duguid, who complained that he’d been receiving unwanted text messages from the site. Th

If you’re an angel who invested in a startup that was meant to go public in 2014, you might be getting a little bit impatient. High-risk, high-reward investing has lost its shine in this environment: the stock market is a mess these days, and you want your cash back.
Enter recapitalization events, where startups restructure their entire cap table to squeeze out old investors, bring on new ones and shift the way equity and debt is managed. For investors, it’s a killer way to enter a c

After going private in 2016 after accepting a $32 per share, or $4.3 billion, price from Apollo Global Management, Rackspace is looking once again to the public markets. First going public in 2008, Rackspace is taking second aim at a public offering around 12 years after its initial debut.
The company describes its business as a “multicloud technology services” vendor, helping its customers “design, build and operate” cloud environments. That Rackspaceis highlighting a se

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge All of those obnoxious marketing emails that crowd your inbox aren’t just pushing a product. They’re also tracking whether you’ve opened the email, when you opened it, and where you were at the time by embedding tracking software into the message. Just type “email tracking” into your search engine and watch all the software apps appear.
There are a variety of methods used to track emails. For example, one of the simplest is a

Ubisoft was apparently planning to reveal a new Far Cry game at its weekend E3 replacement event. Today, a leak gave away most of the major details about the game, including a look at the main villain. Ubisoft has also confirmed we’ll be seeing the game at the show. Anton would not be pleased. See you on Sunday at #UbiForward. pic.twitter.com/HieToJzDxp — Far Cry (@FarCrygame) July 10, 2020 We already suspected there was going to be a Far Cry game at this weekend

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon says that it will not ask employees to remove the popular social video-sharing app TikTok from their mobile devices, despute sending out an email calling for workers to delete the app earlier Friday morning.
As first reported by The New York Times Friday, Amazon asked employees to remove the TikTok from their mobile devices, citing security risks. An Amazon spokesperson told The Verge Friday that the email was sent in error.“This morning&rsqu

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon asked employees to remove the popular social video-sharing app TikTok from their mobile devices on Friday, as first reported by The New York Times.
“Due to security risks, the TikTok app is no longer permitted on mobile devices that access Amazon email,” the company said in an email to employees Friday morning. “If you have TikTok on your device, you must remove it by 10-Jul to retain mobile access to Amazon email. At this time, u

HBO Max has announced a new TV series focused on the Gotham City Police Department, which will be a spinoff of Matt Reeves’ upcoming The Batman film (which is set to star Robert Pattinson at Bruce Wayne / Batman).The new series will be set in the same world as Reeves’ film and will be produced by Reeves and Dylan Clark (who’s also producing The Batman). Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter is set to write the series.The series promises to “build upon the motion picture

When Mallun Yenstarted Operator Collectivelast year, she wanted to build an investment firm for people who didn’t have a voice in Silicon Valley. That meant connecting women and people of color with operators who have been intimately involved in building companies from the ground up, then providing early-stage investment.
She then brought in Leyla Sekaas a partner. Seka helped build the AppExchange at Salesforce into a powerful marketplace for companies built on top of the Salesforce platf

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Google’s 2020 Pixel lineup may look a bit different than usual if the latest product names found in the company’s Google search app are any indication. Instead of the expected Pixel 5 and Pixel 5 XL monikers, Google is apparently working on a “Pixel 4a (5G)” and a “Pixel 5,” via 9to5Google.
Those two phones were previously discovered under the codenames of “redfin” and “bramble” by XDA-Developers. Both

Fringe is a new company pitching employers on a service offering lifestyle benefits for their employees in addition to, or instead of, more traditional benefits packages.
“We didn’t think it made sense that employees need to be sick, disabled, dead or 65+ to benefit from their benefits,” wrote Fringechief executive Jordan Peace, in an email.
The Richmond, Virginia-based company was founded by five college friends from Virginia Techrounded up by Peace and Jason Murray, who serve

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube creators in the company’s Partner Program can earn money a bunch of different ways — through advertising, subscriptions, donations, live-streaming features, and YouTube Premium revenue. There are a lot of variables, and now YouTube is finally gathering all of those numbers in one place and giving that information to creators in the form of a new monetization metric called RPM.RPM, or revenue per mille, is a take on the standard metric