Technology

Things are a lot less rosy for Peloton these days. Once a pandemic darling, the connected fitness company has seen its stock price plunge in recent months. TV shows have turned its bike into a deadly punchline, and there’s been no shortage of rumors speculating which company should buy Peloton to save it from impending doom. Then today, Peloton kicked off its Q2 earnings call with a flurry of news: the company has a new CEO. It’s eliminating 2,800 jobs globally, scaling back marketing, and putting the kibosh on its North American manufacturing ambitions. Altogether, it’s a grim picture that raises questions about whether Peloton can find a way out of this mess. As a fitness tech reviewer, Peloton’s business woes are bewildering because the company has an excellent product. Its hardware, wh...

Disney Plus is experimenting with live streams, dedicating its first to Academy Award nominations. “We performed a test for live streaming capabilities on Disney+ in the U.S. with this morning’s Academy Award nominations,” the company told The Verge in a statement. “We are pleased with the results and will continue to test as part of our ongoing and iterative approach to deliver the best user experiences to consumers.” This was Disney’s first live test and was accessible by all Disney Plus subscribers in the US, company spokesperson Kristie Adler told The Verge. The company did not have any further details to share about livestreaming in the future. The news of Disney’s first livestreaming event was previously reported by TechCrunch. While Disney declined to offer more information about wh...

Apple’s release of iOS 15.4 beta 2 fixes a bug that may have recorded interactions with Siri on some devices, regardless of whether you opted out, according to a report from ZDNet. The bug, which was first introduced in iOS 15, automatically enabled the Improve Siri & Dictation setting that gives Apple permission to record, store, and review your conversations with Siri. “We stopped reviewing and are deleting audio received from all affected devices” Apple told ZDNet that it has since deleted any recordings collected in connection with the bug. After discovering the bug, the company reportedly turned off the feature for “many” users when it released iOS 15.2, but fully fixed the bug in the second beta of iOS 15.4. As ZDNet points out, this is the reason why you might get a prompt askin...

Twitter is testing video playback speed options on Android and the web, the company announced Tuesday. Finally! I am one of those sickos that cranks up the playback speed on every YouTube video and podcast to 1.5x or 2x speed, and I’ve been waiting for years for the ability to do so on Twitter. For those that are in the test, it appears that you’ll see a little gear when watching a video that you can click or tap on to access the different speed options. Based on Twitter’s announcement tweet, it looks like you can watch a video at as slow as 0.25x speed or as fast as 2x. In 2x, 1x, 0.5x…now testing more options in playback speed for videos. Some of you on Android and web will have different sets of playback speeds to choose from so you can slow down or speed up videos and voice Tweets. pic...

If a brand wants to reach — or offend — a large swath of Americans all at once, there are few better venues than a Super Bowl ad. There are plenty of brands advertising this year that wouldn’t have been allowed in the big game just a few years ago, such as hard liquor or sports betting apps. This year’s ad lineup even includes ads for cryptocurrencies, a product still far from the American mainstream despite what your laser-eyed Twitter followers may tell you. But one so-called “lifestyle” product — cannabis — is once again shut out from the Super Bowl this year, even though it’s legal in a majority of US states, and public support for legal weed has never been higher. Marijuana remains illegal at the federal level in the US, however, and cannabis ads — where they’re allowed — are typicall...

Apple is increasing its time off benefits for full- and part-time retail employees, according to a new Bloomberg report and information separately shared by a source to The Verge. The company will introduce the following new benefits starting April 4th, Bloomberg reports: Doubling paid sick days for both full-time and part-time workers. The days can be used for mental health leave and taking family members to the doctor. This change will give full-time workers 12 paid sick days, instead of six. Workers will receive more annual vacation days, beginning at three years of employment instead of five. Part-time employees will now get as many as six paid vacation days for the first time. Another first: They’ll get paid parental leave. That benefit will cover up to six weeks and will include the ...

Google can’t seem to catch a break with software updates for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, the first phones that are powered by the company’s own Tensor chip. After having to pull an earlier update that caused a rash of bugs and connectivity issues for early buyers of the phones, Google tried to get back on track by taking its time with the January update. That seemed to go okay, and yesterday, the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro both received the February software release (with more bug fixes in tow) right alongside older models, and it looked like everything was getting back to normal. Not quite. Yet again, there are initial reports of problems with the February update that are specifically affecting the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro and leaving other Pixels unscathed. According to numerous reports on Twitter and ...

Qualcomm has announced its latest automotive partner: none other than Ferrari, with whom it’ll be entering into a “strategic technology collaboration” that will (eventually) see Qualcomm’s automative technology make its way into future Ferrari cars. As part of the deal, Ferarri plans to use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Digital Chassis suite in the future, although there are frustratingly few specifics as to which Snapdragon technologies Ferrari plans to use or which vehicles they’ll be integrated into. The Snapdragon Digital Chassis branding serves as Qualcomm’s overarching brand for its automotive solutions, including Snapdragon Ride (for automated and assistive driver technologies), Snapdragon Cockpit (for in-car experiences and SoCs), and Snapdragon Auto Connectivity (for adding LTE, 5G, and W...

In an opinion issued on Tuesday, the Oversight Board called on Facebook and Instagram to place tighter restrictions on sharing the addresses of private homes, intended as a protection against doxxing and targeted harassment. The opinion comes in response to a request issued by Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) in April 2021. Currently, Facebook prohibits the sharing of private information broadly but makes a general exception for information that is “publicly available” — defined as having been published in five separate news outlets. The board recommends crafting a tighter policy specifically for information on private residences. It urges removing the exception for publicly available information and creating a specific enforcement channel to prioritize reports of doxxin...

NASA has picked space and defense contractor Lockheed Martin to build a small rocket capable of lifting off from the surface of Mars carrying samples of the Red Planet’s rocks and other materials. The decision is a big step in a long journey to eventually bring pristine pieces of Mars back to Earth so that scientists can study them in greater detail. If successful, Lockheed Martin’s rocket could become the first to launch from another planet. The rocket that Lockheed Martin is charged with building is known as the “Mars Ascent Vehicle,” or the MAV. It’s a key part of NASA’s plan to retrieve samples of Martian dirt that are currently being gathered by the space agency’s Mars rover, Perseverance. Last year, NASA successfully landed Perseverance on Mars with the explicit goal of gathering sam...

Pixar provided a fresh look at its Buzz Lightyear origin story with a trailer that introduces the rest of the cast — including a robot cat. Lightyear is a sci-fi action movie about the character Buzz Lightyear, not the toy, this time voiced by Chris Evans. The new trailer features some of his space ranger compatriots — voiced by Keke Palmer, Dale Soules, and Taika Waititi — along with Sox, a creepy robotic feline played by Peter Sohn. Now, the entire premise of Lightyear is a little confusing, and in a statement, director Angus MacLane tried to clear things up. “In Toy Story there seemed to be this incredible backstory to him being a Space Ranger that’s only touched upon, and I always wanted to explore that world further,” he explains. “So my Lighytear pitch was, ‘What was the movie that A...