Technology

Arcade Fire has a new single out — sort of. The Canadian indie rock band has released a new 45-minute instrumental composition called “Memories In The Age Of Anxiety,” but the new song is actually a collaboration with meditation app Headspace, and you can only listen to it there. The new track was created in collaboration with John Legend and, as Stereogum notes, is one of the first new pieces of music from the group since its cover of “Baby Mine” in the 2019 live-action version of Dumbo. (It’s the band’s first original song since its 2017 studio album Everything Now.) Unfortunately for frugal Arcade Fire fans, it’s also locked behind a paywall in Headspace as part of the app’s Headspace Plus subscription, which costs $12.99 per month or $69.99 per year. You can listen to a snippet in the ...

As online publishers grapple with how to replace dwindling ad revenue and find new ways to bring in money, Reuters, one of the largest news organizations in the world, is using a strategy that’s been around for years and putting its online content behind a paywall. Reuters.com draws 41 million unique visitors monthly, according to the company, but it has not charged for access like other news sites in its business-centric niche have done for some time. It will let users read five stories a month for free and plans to charge $34.99 a month for a subscription. That’s a bit pricier than a sub to The New York Times ($18.42 / month) but closer to similar news organizations of its type, including The Wall Street Journal ($38.99 / month), which put its paywall up in 1996, and Bloomberg.com ($34.9...

Twitter is starting a new initiative, Responsible Machine Learning, to assess any “unintentional harms” caused by its algorithms. A team of engineers, researchers, and data scientists across the company will study how Twitter’s use of machine learning can lead to algorithmic biases that negatively impact users. One of the first tasks is an assessment of racial and gender bias in Twitter’s image cropping algorithm. Twitter users have pointed out that its auto-cropped photo previews seem to favor white faces over Black faces. Last month, the company began testing displaying full images rather than cropped previews. The team will also look at how timeline recommendations differ across racial subgroups and analyze content recommendations across political ideologies in different countries. Twit...

The layoffs happened suddenly. One day, Jose Abalos was employed, working on Disney Infinity 4. The next day, he was not. “It was something that upended everything, everything, all kinds of security,” he tells The Verge. “Everything just went belly-up in a single day.” In May 2016, Disney Interactive shut down its internal studio, Avalanche Software, putting almost 300 employees out of work. For Abalos, there was an extra complication. He was working in the states on an H-1B1 visa, a limited program for workers in Singapore and Chile, that requires renewal every year. Abalos only had a month until his visa expired. Not only would he not get the padding of unemployment benefits for anything beyond that date, like his colleagues, but his visa would soon be void, forcing him to leave the coun...

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in his final letter to shareholders as CEO that the e-commerce giant has to “do a better job for our employees.” The letter comes amid ongoing reports of untenable conditions for Amazon workers. And it outlines a strategy that seems odd for a company that has been accused of treating workers like robots: a robotic scheme that will develop new staffing schedules using an algorithm. Bezos pushed back on the idea that, according to news reports, Amazon doesn’t care for its employees. “In those reports, our employees are sometimes accused of being desperate souls and treated as robots. That’s not accurate,” he wrote. To address concerns about working conditions, Bezos said the company will develop new staffing schedules “that use sophisticated algorithms to rotate em...

Developers who have apps or games on the Oculus Store can now sell recurring subscriptions to their titles, as opposed to offering them for a one-time fee or choosing to handle the subscription process independently. This should give developers an easier, more sustainable way to offer new content, features, and tools to paid subscribers over time. Oculus told The Verge that the approval process for apps with subscriptions is similar to apps that have in-app purchases and add-ons. Oculus shared on its blog that starting today, FitXR, the hugely successful Rec Room, Tribe XR, Tripp, vSpatial, and VZfit are the first to begin operating on a subscription model in the Oculus Store — specifically, for the Quest platform versions of the apps. If you’ve purchased or downloaded any of these apps, y...

Lyft launched a program that will let health care organizations send patients prepaid passes that they can use for rides to doctor’s appointments. “We’ve automated an important piece of health access that allows patients to be self-sufficient and in control, while allowing our partners to focus on the services they provide, rather than on administrative processes,” said Megan Callahan, vice president of Lyft Healthcare, in a statement. The program, called Lyft Pass for Healthcare, lets health care organizations or social services agencies create a budget and set approved pickup and drop-off locations. They can share the pass with patients, who can apply it to their ride. Non-emergency medical transportation is estimated to be a $3 billion market. Transportation is a major barrier to health...

Comcast’s wireless service, Xfinity Mobile, is changing the pricing structure on its unlimited plans. The company will now discount additional lines on its unlimited plan: a single-line plan will still cost $45 per month, but additional lines become cheaper the more you add. With four lines on a plan, you’ll pay $30 per month per line. That’s in contrast to a previous policy of charging the same fee per line, regardless of the number of lines on a plan — a practice touted on its website as recently as yesterday. The company points out that its $45 per month unlimited plan is still cheaper than single-line plans among the major wireless carriers, which is true: postpaid unlimited plans from the big three cost between $60 and $70 per month. Until recently, single-line customers on Xfinity Mo...

Google Earth is getting a new 3D time-lapse feature that lets you observe how Earth has changed from 1984 to 2020, allowing you to see just how much the devastating effects of climate change have already shaped the geography of the planet. “It’s best for a landscape view of our world,” Rebecca Moore, director of Google Earth, Google Earth Engine, and Google Earth Outreach, said in a call with reporters this week. “It’s not about zooming in. It’s about zooming out. It’s about taking the big step back. We need to see how our only home is doing.” The feature (which Google calls “Timelapse,” one word) will be available in Google Earth starting Thursday. To access it, launch Google Earth and then click or tap on the Voyager tab (which has an icon that looks like a ship’s wheel). You can search ...

Despite it not even being a year old, DJI is already upgrading its mid-tier Mavic Air 2 drone. The new $999 Mavic Air 2S (yes, $200 more than the prior model) comes with some notable new features and upgrades, including a much larger image sensor. The new one-inch sensor is capable of shooting 20-megapixel photos, 5.4K video, and 4K up to 60fps. But hold your horses (or wallets), there are a few caveats to those impressive capabilities. Verge Score 8 out of 10 Good Stuff Bigger one-inch camera sensor Finally usable digital zoom Great for beginners and experts Bad Stuff There’s a significant crop in 4K 60fps No D-Log or HDR when zoomed in APAS still needs improvement It’s more expensive now The Mavic Air 2S’s camera sensor is the same size as what you get in the higher-end Mavic 2 Pro. It’s...

Bang and Olufsen’s latest connected speaker is the Emerge. Its thin form-factor should blend right in to most bookshelves, and that’s no accident. In a press release announcing the speaker, the company says its design was “inspired by the compact form factor of a book” with side panels that wrap around like a cover, and a logo on the front that’s meant to evoke a title printed on the spine. It’s a nice contrast from some of Bang and Olufsen’s previous speakers, which have had huge, hulking form-factors that are hard to imagine in any normal home. Instead, the Emerge takes a similar approach to Ikea’s Symfonisk speakers, which have pulled double duty as lamps or shelving to help them blend in with the rest of your furniture. Get it? Like a title on a book spine?Image: Bang & Olufsen B&a...