Technology

Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images The US government awarded a big transportation contract to Uber and Lyft this week, authorizing the ride-hailing companies to provide transportation to up to 4 million federal employees and their families. The General Services Administration, the procurement arm for the federal government, granted the five-year contract to Uber and Lyft, the companies confirmed. The contract is worth up to $810 million, though it’s unclear how much each company will receive. While individual federal employees have previously been able to use ride-hail services for travel, the new contract allows the companies to formally launch their services within agencies and directly work with officials to promote the service. “a natural next step for us” The… Continue rea...

“Infinite Bad Guy” featuring Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” music video. | Google/YouTube Somehow, perhaps by some cosmic intervention, I haven’t gotten tired of hearing Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” on the radio. Apparently, I’m not the only one because tens of thousands of people have gone to the effort of making covers of the song and uploading them to YouTube. In celebration of its music video passing 1 billion views, YouTube and Google Creative Lab have turned all of those covers into an interactive AI experiment. “Infinite Bad Guy,” which YouTube calls “the world’s first infinite music video,” collects thousands of covers and blends them together, using machine learning to align each one within quarter-beats of the original. Going to billie.withyoutube.com pulls up the original “Bad Guy” musi...

iPhone 12. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge It’s rare that Apple slashes the prices on its own products. Fortunately, other retailers are putting a lot of Apple products on sale for Black Friday. A bunch of retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, B&H Photo, Walmart, and Woot are slashing the prices on everything from wearables to its wireless earbuds. Additionally, Apple’s direct website will mark down prices on several products beginning on Friday, November 27th, and running until Monday, November 30th. If you buy an eligible product during Apple’s Black Friday event, the tech giant will give you up to a $150 gift card. Below, we have listed all of the best Black Friday discounts you can take advantage of if you are looking to buy any Apple device. iPhone and iPad deals … Continue r...

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Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Amazon’s Echo Buds are getting new fitness features that allow the true wireless earbuds to track your workouts. According to Amazon, the Echo Buds now have the ability to track walks, runs, and other workouts, all initiated with Alexa voice commands. The Echo Buds rely on built-in accelerometers for tracking steps, and this is used in combination with personal stats entered into a “workout profile” in the Alexa app for other data. Amazon says using your height and weight, in combination with the steps tracked by the accelerometer, the Echo Buds can calculate the distance of your runs and walks and the amount of calories burned. The duration of your workout is calculated using timestamps, and your overall pace is calculated by the… Continue reading&he...

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony’s PlayStation 5 user interface could really use some work, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the simple act of trying to turn the thing off. On most recent consoles, it’s been pretty easy to shut down the device with just the controller. Simply press and hold the PS button / Xbox button / home button, and the UI will helpfully show you an option to power down the console in some way. This is true for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. It takes just a few seconds, and I can happily end a gaming session. But turning off the PS5, for no good reason that I can figure out, is a needlessly cumbersome process. Instead, when I press and hold the PS button — the behavior I have used for years to start the process —… Continue readin...

Steve McQueen’s Widows was one of the best movies to come out in 2018: it was a smart, slick crime thriller that showed the acclaimed filmmaker could follow up a challenging drama like Shame and 12 Years a Slave with tremendous crowd-pleasers. Two years later, he’s back with his follow-up effort: Small Axe, which is five whole movies now streaming on Amazon Prime. We knew McQueen was good, and now it’s undeniable that he has the range. While it presents as a TV series — and that’s how the BBC is airing it across the pond — it’s best to think of Small Axe as five full-on movies, with a new one premiering every Friday. (My suggestion: watch it right after The Mandalorian.) Each film / episode features an entirely new story with a… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make Money Even...

Waze is finally coming to Apple CarPlay’s new multiscreen dashboard. This is sure to come as welcome news to devotees of the Google-owned navigation app, who have been waiting for over a year for it to work with the much-improved, upgraded version of CarPlay. A tipster who is beta testing the new feature sent us this image of Waze operating in CarPlay’s new Split View function. Apple rolled out the new dashboard as part of last year’s iOS 13 software update, but it was limited to only work with Apple Maps at the time. Previously, CarPlay required bouncing between different screens to see a track name while getting directions to a destination. With Split View, you can see a map, what’s currently playing on the car’s stereo, and the next… Continue reading… You Deserve to Make Mo...

Oomba was a startup designed to make a lot of money from the games industry — instead, everyone played each other Continue reading… You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn rewards by chatting, sharing photos, blogging and help give users back their fair share of Internet revenue.

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Google Nest Wifi. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge If you’re looking to improve your home Wi-Fi situation, the best thing you can do is invest in a mesh router. Mesh router systems make it easy to cover all corners of your home with a strong Wi-Fi signal and are easily expandable depending on how much square footage you have. If you have a basic home internet plan of 300Mbps or less, you can do fine with a Wi-Fi 5 based system, such as the entry-level Eero or Google’s Nest Wifi. If you have faster internet at home, up to a gigabit connection, you might want to invest in a Wi-Fi 6 system. Normally, mesh router setups can run a few hundred dollars, making them a significant quality-of-life investment. But several of our favorite systems are discounted right now for Black Friday, letting&#...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge A COVID-19 vaccine developed by the UK’s Oxford University and AstraZeneca has an average efficacy of 70.4 percent, according to interim analysis announced today. In trials, the vaccine’s effectiveness varied depending on the dose amounts given. When two full doses were given a month apart the effectiveness stood at 62 percent, but this rose to 90 percent when the vaccine was given first as a half dose, and then as a full dose. The announcement follows promising early results from vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, and Moderna, which both appear to have slightly higher 95 percent efficacy rates. However, according to BBC News, the Oxford vaccine has the advantage of being cheaper and easy to store, since it can be transported and… Conti...