Technology

WhatsApp announced on Wednesday that it will roll out some improvements to voice messages over the coming weeks, including the ability to listen to a message while reading other chats and play messages at 1.5 or 2 times speed (yes, please, put this feature everywhere). The experience of recording messages is also improving. WhatsApp now lets you pause and resume your recording, so you don’t have to leave large gaps of silence if you’re thinking of what to say next or redo a recording if you need to have a brief conversation in real life. You’ll also be able to listen to a message before you send it to make sure you didn’t accidentally get cut off or include something you didn’t want to. An example of what the new voice chat UI looks like.Image: WhatsApp There’s also a slight aesthetic imp...

T-Mobile said Wednesday that its shutdown of Sprint’s 3G network is proceeding as planned, beginning on March 31st. As part of the shutdown process, the company said in a statement emailed to The Verge, it will migrate customers over the next 60 days “to ensure they are supported and not left without connectivity, and the network will be completely turned off by no later than May 31.” Earlier reports suggested that the actual shutdown date was being pushed to May 31st, which would have been the second delay; originally, T-Mobile was going to phase out the network in January but said in October that it would extend the deadline to March 31st. As one of the conditions of the T-Mobile / Sprint merger, which closed in 2020, Dish acquired Boost Mobile in July 2020 with the goal of Dish taking S...

Mark Vande Hei, who clocked the longest single spaceflight for an American astronaut, has returned to Earth. Vande Hei spent 355 consecutive days in space, breaking retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly’s record by 15 days. Vande Hei traveled back to Earth in a Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft with Russian cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov. While some initially feared that Vande Hei could be left stranded due to ongoing U.S. sanctions against Russia, the Russian space agency Roscosmos gave a statement in early March ensuring that Vande Hei would be welcomed onboard the spacecraft. The three passengers left at 11:30 p.m. EDT on March 29 and touched down at 7:28 a.m. EDT (5:28 a.m. local time) in Kazakhstan via a parachute-assisted landing. Rob Navias of NASA’s public affairs office reported o...

After introducing the “creator mode” profile setting last year, LinkedIn has announced several new video and analytics features to help creators grow their platforms on the career-oriented social media site. The latest suite of updates will include up-close analytics for performance measurements on individual posts, as well as at-large account statistics to clearly present “who’s reading and engaging” with a creator’s content. Additionally, the platform is integrating new features that will aid creators in increasing their presence and attracting a larger number of users to their content, including a new post notification tool. Creators will also be able to highlight specific excerpts from newsletters and post them directly to their profiles. Elsewhere, LinkedIn is introducing a revamped p...

The Biden administration has launched COVID.gov, a website geared toward connecting Americans with more information about COVID-19 spread, prevention, and treatment in their communities. On the front page of the site, you can enter the name of your county, and it will display the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 risk level in your community. That metric is based on hospital capacity in an area. The site also links you to more information about vaccinations, masking, and travel from the CDC. Some pages offer community-specific guidance, helping you find free N95 masks and vaccination sites near your location. You’ll also find a link to COVIDTests.gov, a site that lets you order four free COVID-19 tests through the US government. (And remember, if you’ve already ordered ...

The Biden administration has launched COVID.gov, a website geared toward connecting Americans with more information about COVID-19 spread, prevention, and treatment in their communities. On the front page of the site, you can enter the name of your county, and it will display the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 risk level in your community. That metric is based on hospital capacity in an area. The site also links you to more information about vaccinations, masking, and travel from the CDC. Some pages offer community-specific guidance, helping you find free N95 masks and vaccination sites near your location. You’ll also find a link to COVIDTests.gov, a site that lets you order four free COVID-19 tests through the US government. (And remember, if you’ve already ordered ...

Music hardware startup Roli says it’s not giving up on the line of squishy Seaboard keyboards that launched its brand. Despite reports last year that the company was pivoting to focus on educational and subscription products, Roli today announced the Seaboard Rise 2 — an upgrade to the more compact model in its Seaboard range. “It’s lots of small improvements that collectively make it into a much, much better product,” Roli CEO Roland Lamb told The Verge. “In a way, this is the product I’ve always wanted to launch. It’s very, very complete.” “this is the product I’ve always wanted to launch” Upgrades to the Rise 2 include new internal engineering, a refreshed port structure, and a more durable, platinum blue chassis. The big change, though, is the addition of frets to the keyboard’s playin...

Music hardware startup Roli says it’s not giving up on the line of squishy Seaboard keyboards that launched its brand. Despite reports last year that the company was pivoting to focus on educational and subscription products, Roli today announced the Seaboard Rise 2 — an upgrade to the more compact model in its Seaboard range. “It’s lots of small improvements that collectively make it into a much, much better product,” Roli CEO Roland Lamb told The Verge. “In a way, this is the product I’ve always wanted to launch. It’s very, very complete.” “this is the product I’ve always wanted to launch” Upgrades to the Rise 2 include new internal engineering, a refreshed port structure, and a more durable, platinum blue chassis. The big change, though, is the addition of frets to the keyboard’s playin...

Waymo plans to start offering rides in its fully autonomous vehicles — without human safety drivers behind the wheel — in San Francisco. The Google spinoff says its driverless vehicles will only be available to employees at first but will soon grow to include members of the company’s “Trusted Tester” program. Waymo is also making big moves in Arizona. The company’s service area is finally growing to include downtown Phoenix after operating exclusively in the exurban towns of Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, and Tempe for nearly five years. Waymo has been running fully driverless rides without a safety driver in those towns outside of Phoenix for more than a year now. The company is one of a handful trying to launch a wide-scale commercial service built around autonomous vehicles, like Argo AI (whi...

Waymo plans to start offering rides in its fully autonomous vehicles — without human safety drivers behind the wheel — in San Francisco. The Google spinoff says its driverless vehicles will only be available to employees at first but will soon grow to include members of the company’s “Trusted Tester” program. Waymo is also making big moves in Arizona. The company’s service area is finally growing to include downtown Phoenix after operating exclusively in the exurban towns of Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, and Tempe for nearly five years. Waymo has been running fully driverless rides without a safety driver in those towns outside of Phoenix for more than a year now. The company is one of a handful trying to launch a wide-scale commercial service built around autonomous vehicles, like Argo AI (whi...

While running on the Peloton Tread, I couldn’t help but think about how Peloton the company was spiraling out of control. Under my feet was this sleek, well-built treadmill. In front of me was a slick screen where a peppy instructor was encouraging me to dig deep to push it a little further. But even as I cranked up the speed, I couldn’t reconcile this excellent treadmill with the corporate disaster unfolding in my news feed. I’ve run on a lot of treadmills, but most don’t get as much coverage as the $2,495 Peloton Tread. Do you know when the treadmill at your local gym launched? Or even what brand it is? I don’t. And yet I know the Tread was supposed to launch in February 2021, got pushed back to May, and then got recalled alongside the more expensive Tread Plus before officially launchin...