Technology

An independent committee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially recommended Tuesday that the limited first batch of COVID-19 vaccines in the United States go to health care workers and residents in long-term care facilities. “We expect a constrained supply environment for some months and need to make the best use of available vaccine,” said Sara Oliver, an epidemic intelligence service officer at the CDC, during Tuesday’s meeting. Officials in the Trump administration have pushed for an early wave of vaccinations to go to older adults over the age of 65, who are at high risk of having a severe case of and dying from COVID-19, Stat News reported. But the committee, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), stuck to the expected plan of placing hea...

The Mandalorian’s second season is halfway done and, beyond The Child’s big name reveal, what’s become more apparent as the show goes on is how much it relies on Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Audiences turning to The Clone Wars as a way to better understand what’s happening in The Mandalorian or refresh their memories makes sense, but the spike in Clone Wars viewership has an even bigger winner — Disney Plus. Spoilers below for The Mandalorian season 2, episode 5 Like anything in the Star Wars universe, The Mandalorian is rooted in deeper Star Wars lore. It was this week’s episode, however, and the appearance of Ahsoka Tano that finally convinced me to start Clone Wars. And based on data provided to The Verge by Parrot Analytics, I’m not the only person who’s looking to marathon Dave Filoni’s...

Microsoft is getting into the holiday spirit a bit early today by offering an MS Paint-themed “ugly” sweater for sale on its online store, with a portion of the proceeds from each sale donated to Girls Who Code. The company made Windows XP and 95 sweaters in the past to give to influencers and super fans, but this marks the first time the company is selling a sweater directly to customers. There were briefly three varieties of Microsoft “soft-wear” available for purchase this morning: the previously mentioned MS Paint sweater and leftover stock of the Windows 95 and XP sweaters. When we first checked the store, those XP and 95 sweaters were already running low on stock, and as of right now, only this year’s MS Paint sweater is available. You can check out all three varieties in the gallery...

Facebook’s Oversight Board, an independent body that reviews Facebook moderation decisions, has accepted its first cases. The six appeals involve content removed under Facebook’s hate speech rules, nudity ban, and misinformation policies. They’re now open for seven days of public comment, after which the board will determine whether the posts should have been removed. Most of the cases involve users outside the US posting non-English content — a known weak point for Facebook moderation — and at least two hinge on the nuance of someone publishing hate content to implicitly criticize it. One user posted screenshots of offensive tweets from former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, for instance, allegedly to raise awareness of “horrible words.” Another post involved a user who shared ...

Wyze, the smart home company best known for its range of budget internet-connected security cameras, has announced its debut smartwatch. The Wyze Watch will be available in two sizes — 44mm and 47mm — when it ships in the US in February 2021, and like the rest of the company’s lineup, it’s priced affordably at $20. Wyze’s announcement follows the release of the company’s first fitness tracker, the $25 Wyze Band, earlier this year. The watch will ship with a fairly standard selection of smartwatch features, including blood oxygen monitoring, heart rate tracking, an IP68 water and dust resistance rating, nine-day battery life, activity and sleep tracking, and integration with Google Fit and Apple Health. However, the watch will also integrate with Wyze’s other devices; the company promises t...

Pinterest shareholders are suing the company’s top executives, including CEO Ben Silbermann, for allegedly enabling a culture of discrimination. The toxic work environment has hurt the company’s reputation, leading to a user boycott and financial harm, the complaint alleges. The CEO “repeatedly placed himself before the Company, surrounding himself with yes-men and marginalizing women who dared to challenge Pinterest’s White, male leadership clique,” the complaint says. The company ignored or silenced employees who tried to speak out. The plaintiff in the suit is the Employees’ Retirement System of Rhode Island, which oversees $8.5 billion in public assets, including retirement funds for thousands of Rhode Island teachers, firefighters, and nurses. The suit claims Pinterest executives and ...

Amazon is adding a large vault of music videos to its Amazon Music Unlimited service. Unlike some competitors like YouTube Music, Amazon’s videos are only available to paying subscribers, according to Android Police — not listeners on the ad-sponsored free tier. But the selection seems on par with other services. You’ll now see music videos show up as their own section in search results and on artist pages. There will also be music video playlists to watch through. As with YouTube Music, there’s a toggle on the now playing screen to switch between the music video and just the audio of whatever you’re currently listening to. The debut of music videos comes after Amazon brought its X-Ray feature to the service for US and UK customers in November as a way to display behind-the-scenes trivia a...

Qualcomm has officially announced the Snapdragon 888 at its Snapdragon Tech Summit, offering a first look at its next-generation flagship smartphone processor. The 888 will power the next wave of 2021 Android flagships from companies like Samsung, OnePlus, LG, Sony, and more. In a first for the company’s top-of-the-line 8-series chipsets, the Snapdragon 888 is making a big improvement for 5G: it’ll finally offer a fully integrated 5G modem, unlike last year’s Snapdragon 865 (which required that manufacturers include a separate modem chip inside the cramped interior of a modern smartphone). The future of Android flagships is here The Snapdragon 888 will feature Qualcomm’s X60 modem, announced earlier this year, which jumps to a 5nm process for better power efficiency and improvements for 5G...

Facial recognition algorithms are getting better at recognizing faces in masks, according to data published on Tuesday by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). Drawing on independent testing of more than 150 separate facial recognition algorithms, the new report suggests masks may not be as big a problem for facial recognition systems as initially thought. Vendors voluntarily submit their facial recognition algorithms to NIST for testing as part of the Facial Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT). The institute publishes results of those tests on a rolling basis as each algorithm is submitted. When NIST first examined masks’ effect on facial recognition in July, it found that algorithms weren’t great at identifying faces with masks. Unsurprisingly, it’s harder to recognize a...

The Libra cryptocurrency is getting a new name today, Diem, in an effort to show that the project has “organizational independence” as it attempts to get regulatory approvals for launch. The project initially received widespread pushback in part because it emerged out of Facebook and in part because its ambitious aims seemed to threaten traditional government-run financial systems. The independent organization that runs the project, the Libra Association, will now be known as the Diem Association. Diem, as it is now known, has shrunk significantly in scope since it was first announced. Major launch partners pulled support in quick succession last year because of its controversial nature and the regulatory hurdles it faced due to concerns from lawmakers. At a House Financial Service Committ...

China’s Chang’e 5 mission, tasked with bringing a sample of lunar dirt back to Earth, successfully landed on the Moon on Tuesday, marking the third time that China has placed a robotic spacecraft on the lunar surface. The lander will soon begin digging up samples of lunar soil, which will be returned to our planet later this month. Chang’e 5 launched from China’s Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on November 23rd, flying to space on top of a Long March 5 rocket. It’s a complex mission consisting of four main spacecraft that will all work together to bring between 2 to 4 kilograms of lunar dirt back to Earth. The quartet traveled to the Moon attached together and got into lunar orbit on November 28th. Two of those four spacecraft include a lander and an ascent vehicle, which are stacked on to...

Amazon is bringing macOS to its AWS cloud for the first time ever. New Mac mini instances will be available on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), allowing developers to create apps for iPhones, iPads, Macs, and more all on AWS. Amazon’s introduction of macOS instances is significant for developers. They now have a big cloud provider that will let them run Xcode and Swift development tools in the cloud, moving away from having to maintain and patch dedicated Mac machines. Amazon hasn’t announced pricing just yet, but the company is expected to reveal more information at its re:Invent event today. Amazon is using Mac minis for AWS Amazon is using Apple’s Intel-powered Mac mini computers for its cloud version of macOS. Each Mac mini comes with Intel’s 8th Gen Core i7 processor and 32GB of ...