Technology

Cloudflare, which you may know as a provider of DNS services or the company telling you why the website you clicked on won’t load, wants to replace the “madness” of CAPTCHAs across the web with an entirely new system. CAPTCHAs are those tests you have to take, often when trying to log into a service, that ask you to click images of things like busses or crosswalks or bicycles to prove that you’re a human. (CAPTCHA, if you didn’t know, stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”) The problem is, they add a lot of friction to using the web and can sometimes be difficult to solve — I’m sure I’m not the only person who has frustratingly failed a CAPTCHA because I didn’t see that corner of a crosswalk in one image. Cryptographic Attestation of Person...

Just ahead of Google I/O, which gets underway on Tuesday, a new leak purporting to be a preview of what’s coming during the annual developers’ conference gives some insight into what Android 12 might look like. A new video from Jon Prosser shows what appear to be slides from a presentation of Android 12. The first slide sets up what to expect: “A beautiful new experience,” “Stronger privacy and security protections,” and “All of your devices work better together.” The usual caveats about leaked materials apply, of course; there’s no guarantee this is what the final interface will look like, or how much may be announced during I/O. But the most interesting slide in Prosser’s video shows what appears to be a new user interface for Android 12, including a new media widget, a brightness toggle...

Despite new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Apple will keep its mandatory mask policy in place at its US retail stores for the time being, Bloomberg reported. The company informed stores that it is continuing to evaluate COVID-19-related health and safety measures, but that the policy requiring customers and employees at its Apple stores would stay in effect. The CDC announced Thursday that people who had been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus could do away with wearing masks indoors and outdoors, and did not have to continue social distancing. There are some exceptions to the CDC guidance, which recommends people continue masking on public transit, airplanes, and trains, and in health care settings such as a doctor’s office. Immunocompromised people ar...

On Tuesday, a noted Palestinian-American journalist reporting live from protests near Jerusalem was suddenly and mysteriously silenced on Twitter — with every single tweet replaced by the message “@MariamBarghouti’s account is temporarily unavailable because it violates the Twitter Media Policy.” It was a mistake, the company quickly admitted, and her tweets were quickly restored. But it turns out that one part of the incident was not a mistake. While Twitter may have taken action on this person’s account in error, there actually is one particular situation where Twitter reserves the right to make your tweets disappear. And — if you ask me — it’s super, super dumb. ive been on twitter what feels like my entire life and ive never seen before what they’re doing to this palestinian jour...

Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket failed to reach orbit after suffering an unexpected engine shutdown mid-flight on Saturday, losing the mission’s payload of two satellites, the company said. The launch from New Zealand was Electron’s 20th, and marked the company’s second mission failure in less than a year. Electron, a roughly six-story tall rocket with two booster stages, lifted off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand at 7:11AM ET on Saturday, aiming to send a pair of Earth observation satellites for BlackSky into orbit. Two and a half minutes into flight, the rocket’s second stage booster successfully separated from its first stage and ignited for a few seconds before shutting down, indicating a problem as seen on the company’s launch live stream. Mission...

This week, the FDA authorized the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for people 12-15, a moment that many families have been eagerly waiting for since the vaccine rollout began in the US. As shots became available, parents rushed to get their kids the vaccine. But the decision has also contributed to ongoing discussions about how to best distribute vaccines around the world. In Santa Barbara, one 14-year-old got a vaccine for his birthday. In Colorado, schools are setting up vaccine clinics. In Los Angeles, high-schoolers were eager for their shot at experiencing a normal life again. “I have a large family, one that I haven’t been able to see in over a year. I’ve missed out on being with my friends, spending time with family, going to school and so much more,” 15-year-old Malyna Trujillo said at a ne...

Colonial Pipeline said Saturday that all of its systems are back to operating normally, including the pipeline it shut down a week ago amid a ransomware attack. The pipeline is now servicing all its markets including Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, the company tweeted. Colonial carries 45 percent of the fuel supplies for the eastern United States. As we previously reported, Colonial Pipeline initiated the restart of pipeline operations at approximately 5 p.m. ET on Wednesday, May 12. Since that time, we have returned the system to normal operations, delivering millions of gallons per hour to the markets we serve. pic.twitter.com/UJG7SqUxSQ — Colonial Pipel...

Anyone who’s spent more than five minutes on social media can tell you that most platforms have plenty of trolls, reply-guys and other people who may just be unpleasant to interact with. On big platforms like Twitter, Faecbook, and Instagram, the option to block another user allows you to keep someone out of your feed. Blocking is far from a perfect solution, but at least it gives users a way to continue to use the platforms and avoid (some) nasty interactions. But as Will Oremus writes for The Atlantic, the year-old audio chat platform Clubhouse has a different mechanism for blocking, one that affects more than just the blocker and the blockee (I know, but what would you call it?): When you block someone on Clubhouse, it doesn’t just affect communications between the two of you, as it wou...

President Biden on Friday revoked several of former President Trump’s executive orders, including one that would have changed legal protections for social media sites and other online platforms. Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act limits how much online platforms can be held liable for content users share on their platforms. The Trump order, titled “preventing online censorship,” would have allowed federal authorities to hold companies like Twitter, Google, and Facebook responsible if they were found to be infringing on users’ speech by deleting or otherwise modifying users’ posts. Trump signed the order last May, just as Twitter started applying labels to his tweets as “misleading.” Trump was eventually banned from Twitter for tweets inciting the January 6th riot at the US ...

The Verge’s Infrastructure Week focused partly on how dire the broadband problem currently is for Americans. On Monday, we showed you a map of the worst counties for broadband in the US — and on Friday, we closed the week by showing how satellite services like Starlink aren’t enough to close that gap. But even for the people who do have high-speed internet access, many of them have done desperate things to secure access to it. Our team resides all around the US, and they’ve shared some personal tales below about their experiences getting (or failing to get) high-speed internet. But we also want to know what lengths you’ve gone to for internet access. Did you have to plead with an unwilling internet service provider to branch out its high-speed service to your area? Did you resort to using ...

Twitter has previously confirmed that it’s exploring a paid subscription model for some features, and app researcher Jane Manchun Wong tweeted Saturday that she’s discovered how much it will cost and what it will be called. Twitter Blue, Wong says, will cost $2.99 per month, and will include an Undo Tweets feature and bookmark collections. Wong says it appears Twitter is working on a tiered subscription model, which she posits could mean a less-cluttered, premium experience for the highest-paying subscribers. Twitter didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment from The Verge on Saturday, but the company doesn’t usually confirm or otherwise comment on Wong’s typically accurate discoveries of new features before they launch. Twitter has made a slew of new product announcements over the...