The Verge

Photo by Paul Marotta/Getty Images COVID-19 has caused libraries around the US to stay closed since mid-March. Less than two-thirds of Americans in rural areas have broadband internet connections at their homes. The Markup has written about the ways in which libraries are attempting to keep their patrons online. It’s well worth a read.In the town of Cherokee, Iowa, about 40 percent of school-aged kids have no internet access. Tyler Hahn, director of the Cherokee Public Library, told The Markup that many of the services he previously provided to the town’s residents have had to take new forms. The library has left Wi-Fi on 24/7, and kids sit in the parking lot to use their phones. Hahn has helped older patrons access the internet by shouting instructions through the... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Mercedes-Benz is suspending its two-year-old subscription service after mediocre sales, Automotive News reports.Mercedes-Benz USA head of sales Adam Chamberlain described the service as a learning experience that would have been expanded if sales were better. “If the demand would have been unbelievable, then it could have gone further,” Chamberlain told Automotive News last week. “But demand was just OK, so we kept it.”Mercedes-Benz first rolled out its Collection subscription service in Atlanta in 2018 with the goal of appealing to customers who want to have access to a fleet of fancy cars but don’t necessarily want to own one. The program offered subscribers access to 30 models for a monthly fee, which included insurance, 24/7... Continue reading…

GIF by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 can now be configured with a LED dot-matrix display hidden in its lid, with a new model costing $1,999.99, Asus announced today. This “AniMe Matrix” display consists of 1,215 Mini-LEDs that support 256 levels of brightness each and can be used to show anything from the time to music visualizers, GIFs, or an animated logo from your favorite technology website (see above).Beyond its eye-catching exterior, the Zephyrus G14’s specs are excellent. Asus says it’s equipped with an AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS CPU and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 GPU. There’s 16GB of RAM and a 1TB NVMEe M.2 SSD. When we reviewed the $1,449 version of the laptop (sans the dot-matrix lid display, unfortunately), we found that those specs... Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Amazon’s Fire HD 8 tablets are $30 off today at Amazon and Best Buy. The base model with 32GB of storage costs $60 (usually $90). If you want the option to have wireless charging and to upgrade the RAM to make things a little more smooth with multiple apps open, the Fire HD 8 Plus is $80 (usually $110). The bundle that includes the Fire HD 8 Plus and a wireless charging dock is $30 off, too, costing $120 today instead of $150.Both of these tablets have a USB-C port for faster charging than previous iterations of the Fire HD 8, as well as a faster MediaTek processor. Still, compared to other Android tablets, the app selection is limited to ones that work on Amazon’s Fire OS. Thankfully, as Dieter Bohn points out in his recent review of... Continue reading…

Four workers describe the stress and chaos of the new H-1B proclamation Continue reading…

Surprise! There’s a smart lock in there Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Earlier this month, the Russian authorities lifted their ban on the Telegram messaging app, citing the company’s willingness to help with its counterterrorism efforts. However, despite the official ban being in effect for over two years, Telegram has reportedly remained accessible in the country for much of that time. In a new feature, The Washington Post has written how Telegram’s founder Pavel Durov, “humiliated and outmaneuvered Russia’s state telecommunications regulator,” in preventing the app from being successfully banned. Unsurprisingly, it’s well worth a read in full.Telegram initially gained the attention of the Russian authorities because it had reportedly become one of the apps of choice for the country’s opposition groups.... Continue reading…

Microsoft is releasing its own Windows File Recovery tool, designed to retrieve files you’ve mistakenly deleted. Windows File Recovery is a command line app that will recover a variety of files and documents from local hard drives, USB drives, and even SD cards from cameras. Recovery of files on cloud storage or network file shares is not supported, though.Like any file recovery tool, you’ll need to use it as soon as possible on deleted files to ensure they haven’t been overwritten. You’ll be able to use Microsoft’s new tool to recover MP3 files, MP4 videos, PDF documents, JPEG images, and typical Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Microsoft’s Windows File Recovery app. Microsoft’s file recovery tool has a... Continue reading…

GitHub went down for thousands of software developers this morning. The Microsoft-owned service, which provides version control via Git and hosting for software development, experienced issues for more than two hours. GitHub users experienced errors logging into the service, and some were even unable to use their integrated development environment (IDE) due to how closely linked software development is to the service.GitHub said it was investigating the outage, before identifying the errors and fixing them after more than two hours of problems.GitHub is a large code repository that has become very popular with developers and companies hosting entire projects and code on the service. Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and many other big... Continue reading…

American Airlines will soon remove the booking limits it placed on flights back in April. | Photo by Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images American Airlines will resume booking its flights to capacity starting July 1st, the company has announced. The policy is similar to that of United Airlines, which ABC News reports has never blocked out seats or put a cap on the capacity of its flights. However, the approach contrasts sharply with other airlines, who are continuing to enforce capacity caps in order to allow for in-plane social distancing as the number of coronavirus cases in the United States is on the rise.The airline industry has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, with passenger numbers plummeting. The Chicago Sun Times reports that at its lowest point in April, American Airlines’ passenger numbers were down by around 95 percent. Although passenger bookings... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge This year’s new iPhones might not have as much in the box as you’re used to. According to well-connected analyst Ming-chi Kuo, Apple is planning to stop including a power adapter and EarPods in the box with 2020 models, and will even remove the power adapter from the new iPhone SE’s packaging later this year. Kuo’s research note was reported on by AppleInsider, MacRumors, and 9to5Mac.Apple is attempting to offset the cost increases that come with upgrading the iPhone range to 5G, according to Kuo. Smaller packaging would be more eco-friendly and also reduce shipping costs, since more phones could fit into a single shipment. (Encouraging more sales of AirPods can’t hurt, either.)Right now Apple includes EarPods with all iPhones, a 5W... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon workers at six sites across Germany plan to strike Monday because dozens of staff members at its logistics centers have been infected with the coronavirus, union officials told Reuters. The union says the company is prioritizing profits over workers’ safety.Labor union Verdi says “at least 30 to 40 colleagues were infected” with the virus, according to Reuters. The strike will last 48 hours and be conducted with the motto “good and healthy work.”Amazon warehouse workers in Germany have struck several times in recent years, over worker pay and conditions.In recent months, Amazon warehouse workers in the US have staged protests over what they say are unsafe working conditions, and walked off the job in several cities. Workers... Continue reading…

Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge After launching a dark mode for its desktop interface, Facebook confirms it is testing a dark mode for its mobile apps as well. As first noted by SocialMedia Today, Facebook has made the dark mode available to a very small percentage of people globally, a spokesperson told The Verge in an email Sunday. The mobile version of the dark mode Facebook introduced last month for desktop is “meant to cut down on glare,” particularly in low-light environments, the spokesperson said. There’s no timeline yet for when the dark mode will be available to all mobile users, however.Users who already have the new dark mode on mobile tweeted screenshots of what it looks like:

Photo by Yuriko Nakao/Getty Images Starbucks will join the growing list of corporate entities pausing advertising on social media platforms, the company said in a blog post Sunday. The coffee giant says that it stands “against hate speech” and believes “both business leaders and policy makers need to come together to affect real change.”“We will pause advertising on all social media platforms while we continue discussions internally, with our media partners and with civil rights organizations in the effort to stop the spread of hate speech,” the blog post, titled “Creating Welcoming and Inclusive Online Communities” states.A Starbucks spokesperson told The Verge Sunday that the company’s social media advertising pause will not include YouTube, and while Starbucks will... Continue reading…

WireImage As I put together this latest list of what’s new on streaming this week, I realized a theme running through the selections: bad-ass women. There’s a documentary about crime-solving writer Michelle McNamara, a series based on a manga comic about a warrior nun (yes, really!), and of course the Schuyler sisters, Angelica and Eliza, from Hamilton.I’ll Be Gone in the Dark (HBO, June 28th) This six-part documentary series follows the remarkable story of the late writer Michelle McNamara and her investigation into The Golden State Killer, who terrorized California for years in the mid- 1970s and 1980s. Vulture calls it “a tough, ultimately inspirational work about how life kicks the shit out of you and you just have to get through it... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitter says it’s working on improving how it labels tweets with problematic 5G or coronavirus content, after users reported their tweets were being mislabeled with a COVID-19 fact-check.“In the last few weeks, you may have seen Tweets with labels linking to additional info about COVID-19,” Twitter Support tweeted. “Not all of those Tweets had potentially misleading content associating COVID-19 and 5G.”

Photo by Bobby Quillard What you’ve probably heard: three months after he signed an exclusive two-year contract with Twitch for a “life-changing” amount of money, Twitch has nonetheless “permanently banned” Guy Beahm, aka Dr Disrespect, for something he did in violation of the company’s rules.What you might be thinking: it’s too much of a coincidence for his channel’s abrupt disappearance to happen a single day after Twitch announced it would start permanently banning streamers for sexual harassment and assault.The truth: we do not currently know whether Twitch has even banned Beahm, much less the facts around why Disrespect disappeared on Friday, because the company has repeatedly refused to confirm even a ban to The Verge — and declined to deny a new... Continue reading…

An inside joke about a TikTok meme among a group of friends on Twitter grew into a minor social media mystery before morphing into a fundraiser for anti-racism causes. Yes, that might be the most 2020 sentence I’ve written to date.On Thursday, the eye-mouth-eye emoji meme started appearing in people’s Twitter handles and almost immediately, the buzz started about what it all meant, Gizmodo reported. On TikTok, the meme is usually used to express cringe or embarrassment. Soon an itiseyemoutheye Twitter handle appeared, then its website was featured on Product Hunt (even though there’s no actual product), prompting discussion on Reddit, and receiving some media coverage before the group revealed themselves in a post late Friday.“A... Continue reading…

Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images The Coca-Cola Company is pausing all digital advertising on social media platforms globally for at least 30 days starting July 1st, the soda giant announced on Friday evening.The move is part of a broader boycott of Facebook and Instagram organized by the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, and other organizations called the “Stop Hate For Profit” campaign. Coca-Cola is going one step further than some of those companies and banning all ads globally on social media platforms, not just Facebook and Instagram. That would suggest the boycott will hit Twitter, YouTube, and other platforms as well.“We will let them know we expect greater accountability, action and transparency from them.”“Starting on July 1, The Coca-Cola Company will... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google Meet is working on several new features that will match its competitors, including allowing users to add images or a blur effect to backgrounds on video calls, 9to5 Google reported. As they can on rival videoconferencing platforms Zoom and Microsoft Teams, users will be able to either choose their own image or pick from several default options.Google confirmed to The Verge that in addition to background blur and background replacement images, real-time captioning, low-light mode, hand-raising, and a tile view of up to 49 meeting participants will be rolled out to the consumer version of Meet. The company didn’t provide details about when the changes would be available, but 9to5 Google reported Meet was already previewing some of... Continue reading…

Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images As the coronavirus spread across the US this spring, authorities warned people not to purchase N95 respirator masks, lest they contribute to a shortage of the masks for medical personnel. The N95 respirators are considered the most effective masks to filter out droplets in the air that may transmit the virus. Sites like Amazon suspended sales of N95 masks to the general public and cracked down on sellers who tried to sell counterfeit versions.But a ProPublica investigation uncovered an operation in Texas that was repackaging masks marked as “prohibited” for medical use into unlabeled bags. A man who answered an ad for a TaskRabbit gig told ProPublica what he witnessed:

Image: ZA/UM There’s a TV series based on the 2019 indie game Disco Elysium possibly coming, Variety reports. Disco Elysium launched in October 2019 exclusively on PC, set in the same universe as the 2013 novel Sacred and Terrible Air. In the game, you play as an experienced detective tasked with solving a murder mystery in a city still recovering from a decades-old war.Following its release, Disco Elysium received a positive reception from fans and critics; The Verge even recommends it as a game you should play if you recently bought or built a gaming PC. Many praised the game for its watercolor art style, narrative depth, and writing, all elements that set up the basis for an appealing TV series.The game’s developer ZA/UM is teaming up with... Continue reading…

Disney has delayed Mulan for the second time this year, moving the film from July 24th to August 21st. The move follows Warner Bros.’ decision to delay Christopher Nolan’s Tenet for a second time from July 31st to August 12th.Disney doesn’t want to be the first studio to release a major film in the middle of a pandemic when the company is unsure of about how many people will show up. The delay is added confirmation that Disney and Warner Bros. are engaged in a game of release chicken. Neither studio wants to go first, testing out their potential billion-dollar movies in a market where the films could lose money if audiences don’t turn up or restrictions mean that audiences can’t watch said movies.Disney CEO Bob Chapek previously... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Multiple employees at Ubisoft, including two executives, have been placed on administrative leave as the company conducts a corporate investigation following allegations of professional misconduct, Bloomberg reports.The two executives placed on leave are Tommy François and Maxime Béland, two employees that serve as vice presidents in a division overseeing worldwide development of the company’s games, Bloomberg reports. Both men face numerous allegations that surfaced after multiple accusers came forward on Twitter.Many allegations have been made against several employees at UbisoftIn the last week, the video game industry has faced a #MeToo reckoning with an outpouring of stories on social media. Many in the Twitch and YouTube... Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Alex Castro | Photography by Bobby Quillard Dr Disrespect disappeared from Twitch this afternoon, with his account vanishing from the site, leading to rumors that he had been banned. The disappearance comes two days after Twitch said it would begin issuing permanent suspensions for streamers as it cracked down on accusations of harassment and sexual misconduct.Twitch would not confirm that it had banned Dr Disrespect, why he might have been banned, or whether he might be permanently banned. Twitch signed Dr Disrespect to an exclusive two year contract back in March for an undisclosed but “life-changing” amount of money. The streamer had also made a deal with a production company to create an animated TV series around his character.Dr Disrespect, real name Herschel “Guy” Beahm,... Continue reading…

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images Some critics of President Donald Trump have spent the last few days trying to lock up Trump-branded merchandise by leaving thousands of products from his online stores in shopping carts. But while the attack has become a kind of resistance meme, reminiscent of recent pranks on the president’s Tulsa rally, it’s far less clear whether the hoax actually prevented Trump’s stores from selling merchandise.Earlier this week, TikTok and Twitter users started posting videos and messages claiming they were “buying” the entire supply of items like Trump baseballs and “Baby Lives Matter” onesies, then leaving them in the cart indefinitely, making them unavailable to other visitors. The attacks apparently involved at least two sites: Trump’s... Continue reading…

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images The Trump administration has sent letters to social media companies requesting they take action on posts calling for people to take down statues, commit acts of violence, and break curfews, as first reported by The Washington Post. The acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, sent letters to the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Snap, and Google’s parent company Alphabet.In a copy of one of the letters obtained by The Verge, Wolf claims that DHS agents witnessed “crimes such as burglary, arson, aggravated assault, rioting, looting, and defacing public property” and that perpetrators used social media “as a tool to plan, organize, and effectuate these crimes.”Many companies already have policies prohibiting... Continue reading…

Photo by Abdulhamid Hosbas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Facebook is placing new restrictions on hateful content in ads, explicitly banning ads that encourage racial divisions. Specifically, the new policy will “prohibit claims that people from a specific race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, gender identity or immigration status are a threat to the physical safety, health or survival of others.” The policy will also restrict ads that express contempt for immigrants or refugees.Notably, the new restrictions apply only to advertisements and will not affect posts without paid promotion.“Facebook stands for giving people a voice, and that especially means people who have previously not had as much voice, or as much power to share their own... Continue reading…

Doctors in the COVID-19 unit at a Houston hospital. | Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Strategies to stop transmission may be harder to implement now than they were in March Continue reading…

Photo Illustration by Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Consumer goods giant Unilever said Friday that it would halt all ad spending on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter through the end of the year, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Unilever owns dozens of popular household brands like Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Dove soap, and typically spends more than $1 billion each year promoting them through various ad channels.As of press time, Facebook’s stock had fallen more than 7 percent in the wake of the news.“We invest billions of dollars each year to keep our community safe and continuously work with outside experts to review and update our policies,” a Facebook spokesperson told NBC News. “We know we have more work to do, and we’ll continue to work with civil rights groups, GARM,... Continue reading…

Photo by David McNew/Getty Images California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) has passed a new rule that says all commercial trucks and vans sold in the state in 2045 must be zero-emission, in a bid to move the industry away from the dirty and harmful diesel engines that currently power most of these vehicles.It’s the first rule of its kind in the United States, and it follows California’s 2018 decision to mandate that transit agencies purchase all-electric buses starting in 2029, as well as its long-standing Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program for passenger cars and trucks.There will be progressive milestones along the way, tooOther milestones will need to be hit in the years leading up to that date, too. California regulators are mandating that half of all trucks sold... Continue reading…

Photo by Neil Lupin/Redferns TikTok has signed a deal with Prince’s estate to bring the late artist’s “full catalog” to its app, starting today. Prince was long protective of his work, pulling music from most streaming services before his death. But his estate began bringing albums back to services like Spotify in 2017. TikTok is the “first short-form video app” to gain access to his complete discography, a very specific but still notable superlative, given how popular the story format has become over the past few years.The deal means TikTok users will be able to dance, joke around, or otherwise vibe to Prince’s songs in their videos. TikTok’s relatively young user base isn’t necessarily going to be cheering over this announcement, but the company and estate hope... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok says it will stop accessing users’ clipboard content on iOS devices, after a new privacy transparency feature in iOS 14 revealed the video sharing platform was continuing the practice it had pledged last year to discontinue, the Telegraph reported.Whenever a third-party app accesses the clipboard of a device with iOS 14, a notification pops up. Users discovered that TikTok was checking content from the clipboard every few keystrokes, even when the app was running in the background.

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge TCL’s 10 Pro phone is nearly $70 off at Amazon for the first time since it released recently in May 2020. You can pick one up for $382 (normally $450). You might not have realized that TCL makes smartphones, but this mid-range device actually compares favorably to the likes of Apple’s new iPhone SE and the Samsung Galaxy A51 in terms of build quality and, for the most part, specs. This device has a big 6.4-inch 1080p OLED screen with minimal bezels, an in-display fingerprint reader, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Inside, it features the Snapdragon 675 processor with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage with microSD card support. It’ll work on AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon carriers. These are the LS30, but the LS31LE look almost... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Google’s Phone app appears to be getting a new Verified Calls feature that will show you a business’ name, logo, and the reason it’s calling you. News of the feature first appeared on a Google support page that was spotted by Android Police. The feature relies on businesses supplying its phone number, your phone number, and the reason for its call, directly to Google, which pushes this information to the Phone app. If the information lines up, then the phone app gives the call a Verified Call badge.It’s a feature that has the potential to be enormously helpful, not just for working out who’s calling you, but for knowing when a call is even worth picking up in the first place. I’m happy to pick up the phone if my bank is calling to let... Continue reading…

Melinda Sue Gordon Warner Bros. has announced that it’ll be delaying the release of Tenet — the studio’s mysterious time-manipulating summer blockbuster from director Christopher Nolan — by another two weeks, moving the planned release from July 31st to August 12th as COVID-19 cases continue to spike around the United States.Warner Bros. is still adamant that that $200 million Tenet will debut in a movie theater, commenting in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter that “Warner Bros. is committed to bringing Tenet to audiences in theaters, on the big screen, when exhibitors are ready and public health officials say it’s time.” It’s a commitment that comes at a time when studios — including Warner Bros. itself — are increasingly turning to video-on-demand... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Vergecast’s annual WWDC episode is here. Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference started on Monday, and The Verge’s Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn run through the important announcements from the event as well as the updates you may have missed.The first half of the show starts with a special guest: Wall Street Journal columnist and Verge alum Joanna Stern. Nilay, Dieter, and Joanna analyze the most talked about news from the event: Apple is moving the Mac to its own silicon and away from Intel. The trio discuss what this might mean for the diminishing line between a tablet and a laptop, the probability of a touchscreen Mac in the near future, and Apple reasserting their dominance in the laptop space.Verge news editor Chaim... Continue reading…

For the past week, I’ve spent most of my evenings wandering around a picturesque, nearly deserted island in search of Jigglypuff. It’s been a nice change of pace. “Isle of Armor,” the first expansion for Pokémon Sword and Shield on the Switch, takes one of the best parts of the experience — the big, open “wild area” — and fleshes it out into a larger world to explore. The expansion doesn’t change the experience in any significant ways. But it does provide a nice excuse to jump back in.The new island is a separate area of the Galar region, and it does have its own small storyline to play through. It’s pretty basic: you arrive at a dojo where you play through a few challenges, which ultimately results in you getting Kubfu, an adorable... Continue reading…

Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Microsoft is giving up on physical retail. Today the company announced plans to permanently close all Microsoft Store locations in the United States and around the world, except for four locations that will be “reimagined” as experience centers that no longer sell products.Those locations are New York City (Fifth Ave), London (Oxford Circus), Sydney (Westfield Sydney), and the Redmond campus location. The London store only just opened about a year ago. All other Microsoft Store locations across the United States and globally will be closing, and the company will concentrate on digital retail moving forward. Microsoft says Microsoft.com and the Xbox and Windows storefronts reach “up to 1.2 billion monthly customers in 190 markets.”The... Continue reading…

Apple CEO Tim Cook in front of a silicon wafer platter | Screenshot: Sean Hollister / The Verge Earlier this week, on what Tim Cook called a “historic day,” Apple announced that it’s moving Macs away from Intel processors to its own silicon chips. The first Mac with Apple silicon is coming by the end of 2020, but Apple expects the full transition process to take two years.The new Macs will use arm64, the same CPU architecture that recent iOS devices use (Intel-based Macs use an architecture called x86-64). That’s an exciting move, because it means that they’ll be able to run iOS and iPadOS apps alongside those made for macOS. But it also means that apps that were developed for Intel’s architecture originally won’t run natively on Apple’s upcoming hardware.That’s where Rosetta 2 comes in: It’s an emulator built into macOS Big Sur... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge To close out the week, let’s talk about some of the recent efforts in the United States to settle longstanding questions about moderation and encryption online.One reason I like writing about technology companies more than I like writing about Congress is that technology companies are constantly taking action. They introduce new features, they change their policies, and then they apologize for the unintended consequences of the features and policies they released the previous week. Meanwhile, Congress prefers to talk. It holds hearings, stages press conferences, and releases letters. Occasionally bills are written, and sometimes one house or the other will even go to the trouble of passing one, but rarely do they become law.There are... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has been planning a second, cheaper and less power next-gen Xbox console. Codenamed Lockhart, it’s designed to take most of the key next-gen improvements found in the Xbox Series X and provide them at a lower price point for gaming at 1080p or 1440p. A newly leaked Microsoft document, posted on Twitter, includes references to this Lockhart console and multiple “Project Scarlett consoles.”Project Scarlett was the name Microsoft originally used to reveal its Xbox Series X console before it was officially named. Rumors had suggested two next-gen consoles under the broader Project Scarlett plans: Anaconda and Lockhart. Microsoft has etched an anaconda snake into the Xbox Series X mainboard, but the company has never publicly... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon is acquiring self-driving car startup Zoox in a deal estimated to be worth over $1 billion, The Information and The Financial Times are reporting. The deal would give Amazon control of the nearly 1,000-person startup that has been developing an electric self-driving vehicle. The deal could be announced as early as today. Rumors of the acquisition first emerged last month, when it was reported that Amazon would acquire Zoox for less than the $3.2 billion it was valued at back in July 2018.The acquisition would be Amazon’s biggest investment yet in self-driving car technology, and one of its biggest purchases ever. However, at the moment it’s unclear what exactly Amazon plans to use the technology for. The Information notes that... Continue reading…

Image: @OnLeaks / 91Mobiles “Where is Google’s Pixel 4A?” That’s the question we asked two weeks ago, bringing you up to speed on how Google had seemingly missed the typical window to release its thoroughly-leaked followup to the company’s impressive but short-battery-lived Pixel 4 flagship.But a new FCC filing today, spotted by XDA-Developers, suggests the more affordable Pixel 4A is nigh.Technically, it’s not a given that the Google phone newly authorized by the Federal Communications Commission actually is the Pixel 4A, nor that Google is actually going to announce it anytime soon, if ever.All we know for sure is that the Google “G025J” can now be sold in the United States, and that we typically see the FCC authorize such phones shortly before they’re... Continue reading…

Images: Ford Ford has revealed the 2021 model of the F-150, and many buyers will find the newest version of the automaker’s super popular pickup truck stuffed with technology when it gets released later this year. The new F-150 will have an optional hands-free driving mode, be capable of receiving over-the-air software updates, and come with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. The company will also start selling a hybrid version of the 2021 F-150 that can travel about 700 miles on a full tank of gas.The hands-free driving feature — which Ford calls “Active Drive Assist” — is the same that’s coming to the Mustang Mach-E electric SUV next year. That will make the F-150 one of the only vehicles in the US that has hands-free driving when the... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook has a fringe conspiracy theory problem, and it’s getting worse by the day. According to a new investigation from The Guardian, the far-right QAnon movement continues to flourish on the social network, despite its attempts last month to begin removing accounts and pages promoting it.The investigation, by journalist Julie Carrie Wong, details in depth how QAnon account and page owners caught wind of Facebook’s crackdown in early May and the clever methods they relied on to avoid detection. Earlier today, Verizon announced its participation in a growing advertising boycott of Facebook and Instagram, in part it appears because its ads continue to show up next to QAnon content.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Verizon is the latest, and far and away largest, company to join an ongoing advertising boycott of Facebook and Instagram, the cell carrier announced Thursday. The boycott, organized by the Anti-Defamation League, is in response to the social media giant’s handling of incendiary posts from President Donald Trump, as well as ongoing issues with misinformation that have intensified in recent weeks due to protests against police brutality and racism and other news events that have exposed the flaws of Facebook’s moderation approach.Verizon joins ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s and numerous sports and outdoor lifestyle companies, including The North Face and Patagonia, and film distributor Magnolia Pictures in the boycott. A number of... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge You’d think that months of reading about overflowing hospitals and mounting death statistics would scare almost anyone into following the current Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommendations: wear a mask in public spaces to protect others from possible infection, especially since there is no current way to be sure who may be an asymptomatic transmitter — particularly in relatively crowded urban areas.However, these days, when I go out for a walk or to run errands, at least half the people I see are not wearing masks — or are wearing their masks around their necks, as though those pieces of cloth or paper are good-luck totems rather than items with a specific purpose.Admittedly, face masks are not convenient or particularly... Continue reading…

Amazon Seattle’s NHL team doesn’t have a name yet, but its arena does, after Amazon secured the naming rights to the former Key Arena. But if you guessed the new name would be Amazon Arena, surprise! It will officially be known as the Climate Pledge Arena, a nod to the $2 billion initiative CEO Jeff Bezos announced last year, which sets goals for Amazon to become net carbon neutral by 2040.Of course, that initiative only came after thousands of Amazon employees signed an open letter to Bezos and Amazon’s board of directors asking the company to adopt a wide-ranging plan to fight climate change. It’s worth noting that earlier this year, Amazon warned several employees who were part of that push that they had violated its communications policy.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple is reclosing 14 more of its retail locations in Florida due to a resurgence of COVID-19 cases. Of the 18 Apple Store locations in Florida, only two currently remain open, one in Jacksonville and another in Sarasota, according to Bloomberg. The tally of closed US Apple stores is currently at 32, which represents 10 percent of the company’s total number of 272 stores in the country.Apple last month began reopening a majority of its US retail locations. Yet last week saw Apple’s first wave of store reclosures in Florida, as well as Arizona, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Despite Apple’s staggered approach to reopening its stores that started in late May, the number of COVID-19 cases across the US — particularly in states that... Continue reading…