Technology

Like most shared scooter companies, Lime was hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. “We saw a 95 percent drop in ridership,” Lime CEO Wayne Ting says in an interview. “We’re a mobility company. And one of the things with mobility companies, when communities shut down, riders shut down.” But while the world still remains in the grip of COVID-19, Lime’s scooter business has begun to rebound. In May, the company made a crucial investment deal with Uber and others for $170 million to take over the ride-hailing company’s bike and scooter business Jump. That deal also saw Ting, then Lime’s global operations head (and former chief of staff to Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi), replace Brad Bao as CEO. Now, Ting says that Lime’s riders are coming back; the company just announced it has reached the milest...

The creators of Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most anticipated video games of the last few years, are having a rough go of it in the lead-up to launch, complicated by yet another delay announced yesterday to help the CD Projekt Red developers finish polishing the game before it launches across nine platforms on December 10th. Now, senior game designer Andrzej Zawadzki has taken to Twitter in the aftermath of the delay announcement to plead with fans to exercise some basic human decency by not continuing to send the Polish studio death threats. “I want to address one thing in regards of the @CyberpunkGame delay. I understand you’re feeling angry, disappointed and want to voice your opinion about it. However, sending death threats to the developers is absolutely unacceptable and just wrong. We ...

Say you’re a female employee working for a small tech company. You’re sitting in a meeting with your boss, the CEO. He’s — hypothetically — a 38-year-old white man with $1.2 million in the bank. You have student debt, a sick cat, whatever. Basically, you need this job. But your boss, he won’t stop hitting on you. Slack messages asking you to drinks, photos of the views from his weekend bike rides. Then, during the Wednesday morning meeting, he takes things even further. Puts a hand on your knee, says he wants to get to know you better. What do you do? You could go to HR, try to work things out internally. Maybe your company has a dedicated HR specialist, rather than an overworked recruiter who’s been given HR responsibilities and doubles as the office manager. And what if that doesn’t work...

Apple’s iPhone 12 lineup has the ability to wirelessly charge an external accessory, according to a series of newly unveiled FCC filings that just went public yesterday. The documents first spotted by VentureBeat’s Jeremy Horwitz say the phone “supports a built-in inductive charging transmitter and receiver.” Apple has not officially announced any such functionality that could be used to charge future AirPods or Apple’s long rumored Tile-competitor dubbed “AirTags.” “In addition to being able to be charged by a desktop WPT [wireless power transfer] charger (puck), 2020 iPhone models … also support WPT charging function at 360 kHz to charge accessories,” one of the documents reads. It lists a series of FCC IDs of iPhones with the new feature, which include the the iPhone 12 mini (BCG-E3539A...

The LG Wing is a smartphone unlike any other, with a wild rotating design that makes it stand out when compared to even the weirdest 2020 phones. It’s also the first phone in LG’s new Explorer Project brand, which looks to experiment with new ways to think about how we design and use our smartphones. The $999 Wing is a bold experiment, but it can’t translate that creativity into a phone that’s worth the added price. Verge Score 7 out of 10 Good Stuff Interesting design Excellent build quality Solid performance Bad Stuff Expensive Not enough use cases for the second screen No waterproofing or fast refresh rate The LG Wing looks cool, but it’s also expensive — at $999, it costs as much as a brand-new iPhone 12 Pro or Galaxy S20 and more than plenty of other fantastic phones. That’s a lot of ...

As far as pack-in games go, Astro’s Playroom may not seem all that exciting at first. It’s not an instant classic like a bundled Super Mario., nor something with the obvious appeal of Wii Sports. But Sony made a smart decision in giving Astro away to every PS5 owner: it might just be the ideal showcase for the console’s new DualSense controller. The game itself is a fairly simple 3D platformer, but one that exudes charm. Everything is bright and colorful, and there are lots of fun little animations. If you leave Astro alone for too long, he’ll pull out a PSVR and start playing games on his own. (If the adorable robotic character looks familiar, it’s because it also starred in the PSVR title Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, another game designed to showcase new hardware.) Everything takes place i...

In the week leading up to Election Day, The Verge is running a series of editorials about what we’re voting for — not candidates but the ideas that move us to engage with the electoral process in the first place. On the night of March 11th, 2020, I sat in my Brooklyn apartment next to a stack of old magazines, some glue sticks, and scissors. I’d spent the week staring at coronavirus models and working myself into a knot of overwhelming anxiety, watching as the coronavirus pandemic picked up speed in the United States. My friend thought collaging would be a good distraction. Instead, that night, the world changed: Tom Hanks announced he had COVID-19, the National Basketball Association suspended its season after Rudy Gobert tested positive for the virus, and life in the US jolted to a state...

Sony’s gaming division is continuing to drive major profits for the company even as the PlayStation 4 era winds down. The company announced PlayStation-related revenue of 507 billion yen (~$4.9 billion) and an operating profit of 105 billion yen (~$1 billion) for its July-September quarter, respective improvements of 52 and 40 percent on the same period a year ago. With the PlayStation 5 set to launch in a couple of weeks, normally you’d expect a significant negative impact on Sony’s books for the previous quarter as the company ramps up manufacturing before it starts to bring in more revenue. Sony does say that its profits were hit by an increase in costs, while revenue was reduced by a predictable decrease in PS4 sales. Higher game software sales and PlayStation Plus subscriptions, howev...

Smart home gadget maker Wyze has a new version of its flagship product: the Wyze Cam v3, the company is calling it. The redesigned security camera will still cost just $20, in line with Wyze’s aggressively low-cost smart home strategy, and preorders start today with a ship date of mid-November. Beyond the new design, the Wyze Cam v3 has a few key differences from its predecessor. The new camera can be used as both an indoor and outdoor model, thanks to its IP65 weather resistance. It also has double the infrared LEDs for improved night vision and to support its use in the home and outside. The new model comes with a new color night vision option, thanks to a new lower-aperture sensor that allows it to take in 40 percent more light. Wyze says the option will be enabled on Wyze Cam v3 by def...

When scientists and pharmaceutical companies clear the hurdle of developing a safe, effective, COVID-19 vaccine, they won’t be able to rest on their laurels. Instead, they’ll face another enormous challenge — making millions of doses and keeping those doses extremely cold. They’ll get an assist, though, from temperature-monitoring tech that’s advanced dramatically in the past few years. Vaccines, like most pharmaceuticals, have to be stored within a certain temperature range in order to stay potent. During a future COVID-19 vaccine’s journey from factory to pharmacy, small temperature sensors will monitor the conditions that the vaccines will encounter en route and at their final destination. They’ll be embedded in packaging, freezers, and refrigerators at nearly every point of the vaccine...

Microsoft saw some big growth in Microsoft Teams at the beginning of the pandemic, and it has kept accelerating over the past six months. During an earnings call with investors today, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reveled Microsoft Teams now has 115 million daily active users. That’s a more than 50 percent rise from the 75 million that Microsoft reported almost six months ago. It’s difficult to compare Microsoft’s numbers to its rivals, though. Both Zoom and Google report daily active participants, which means a single user could be counted multiple times through different meetings during a day. Google revealed it has 100 million daily active participants earlier this year, and Zoom said it had 300 million daily active participants. Slack also saw some growth earlier this year. Microsoft has...

Record-setting wildfires in Colorado are wreaking havoc on forests that have already been devastated by outbreaks of another kind: infestations of beetles that burrow beneath tree bark and eventually kill their hosts. State officials last week mentioned that the East Troublesome Fire was burning through an abundance of “beetle-killed” pine trees, boosted by dangerous weather conditions. That fire grew to become the second largest fire in Colorado’s history and was only 20 percent contained as of Tuesday. Three of the largest wildfires on record in the state have burned this year, and they’ve preyed on forests hard-hit by beetle infestations. But researchers warn against blaming the beetles for the unprecedented fire season Colorado is having. There’s growing evidence that beetles play a ne...