Technology

Lyft continues to struggle to bring in money amid rising case numbers of COVID-19 in the US. The ride-hailing company lost $495 million over the last three months, with its adjusted net revenues down 48 percent year over year. Its ride-hailing is significantly smaller than it was last year. This quarter, Lyft reported having 12.5 million active riders, compared to 22.3 million in the third quarter of 2019 — a drop of 44 percent. It’s a deep hole, but Lyft is starting to claw its way out. The company’s ridership has been steadily growing over the course of the year: this quarter’s number is 44 percent improvement over Q2. Lyft is starting to claw its way out Lyft brought in nearly $500 million in revenue this quarter, versus $956 million in the third quarter of 2019. It was a steady improve...

Xbox Live users are struggling to log into the service today, amid the launch of both the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. Xbox Support tweeted at 2:33PM that its teams were “closing in on a fix for this issue.” However, some users were still struggling to sign in across multiple platforms as of 4:40PM. A resolution is still pending. Microsoft’s next-gen consoles arrive today (though it might be tricky to find a console, thanks to the challenges of high demand in a pandemic). In addition to launch titles like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the console also allows for backwards compatibility for Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One games playable on existing Xbox One hardware. Online services are already important for players to download new games, updates, and more for their consoles. For the Xbox Ser...

Apple’s MacBook Air is one of a collection of the company’s computers to receive the newly announced M1 chip today. The beloved laptop appears almost identical from the outside, but if you open it up you’ll notice the familiar keyboard has changed. Apple’s traded out some of the function keys on its new MacBook Air, adding in new ones for Spotlight, Do Not Disturb, and Dictation. The last time the functionality of the MacBook Air keyboard changed was to add Touch ID for securing passwords and payment details. This change goes further, removing the brightness keys for the keyboard along with the Launchpad key that pulled up macOS’s SpringBoard-inspired app launcher. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman first noticed the change and shared the new layout in this tweet: The new MacBook Air has updated keyb...

It’s been a little bit weird that Apple would sell both a 13-inch MacBook Air and a 13-inch MacBook Pro simultaneously, but perhaps never more than today — because Apple’s new $999 and $1,299 laptops seem nearly identical if you look beyond the differently curved frames. They’ve got the same M1 processor, the same memory and storage options, the same ports, and very similar screens. I’m not joking when I say: the biggest difference is a fan. This fan, which is exclusive to the MacBook Pro: The 13-inch MacBook Pro’s fan.Render: Apple I mean, yes, it is a little bit hilarious the MacBook Air is now a laptop that doesn’t blow air, just like it’s amusing that the Air technically continues to be a thicker laptop than the 13-inch Pro. (I guess it’s been a long time since manila envelopes were a ...

Google has added another promotion to help push its cloud gaming service Stadia into more households: now YouTube Premium subscribers can get its $100 Stadia Premiere Edition bundle for free. Google’s Stadia Premiere Edition features one Stadia controller in addition to a Chromecast Ultra. However, it is important to note that the Chromecast Ultra included is an older model and not the newer one that was recently released. Google has said that the new Chromecast Ultra will not support the cloud gaming service until the first half of 2021. With Stadia’s one-year anniversary coming up next week, the service has come a long way over the last year Unfortunately, if you plan to subscribe to YouTube Premium now, you will not have the option to redeem this offer. The promotion is only available i...

Apple’s big Arm-based M1 Mac announcements brought the company’s first Apple silicon-powered laptops in the form of the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini. But the event also had a surprising guest star: actor John Hodgman reprising his role as the PC guy from Apple’s “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” commercials that it ran in the mid-2000s. In the short video, Hodgman’s put-upon PC reacts to the announcement of Apple’s new M1-powered Macs, complaining about the improved performance and battery life that the new chip purportedly offers on the updated Macs, compared to what PCs can do. (Absent is Justin Long’s Mac character, who made up the other half of the ad spots.) [embedded content] The original ads — launched in 2006, just after Apple began its last major architecture transition to I...

Apple just wrapped up its “One More Thing” hardware live stream, where it announced new versions of the MacBook Air, the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the Mac mini, each with its newly announced, promising M1 silicon. Apple first detailed its transition from Intel to its own processors earlier this year — but this event was all about diving deep into what that reality now looks like and when you’ll be able to get your hands on a computer featuring the just-announced M1 chip. If you missed out on the stream, I highly recommend taking the purist route of rewatching it alongside our live blog coverage to get the moment-to-moment commentary on each announcement. Otherwise, if you just want the headlines and major details, that’s what I’m here for! Here are all of the biggest announcements. Image: A...

Apple announced three brand-new Macs today powered by its new M1 Arm-based CPUs: a 13-inch MacBook Air, a 13-inch MacBook Pro, and a Mac mini. But now that the new Macs are here, Apple has started to remove some of its Intel-based Macs from its product lineup. Here’s what’s changed: The MacBook Air is now only available with Apple silicon chips. It’s no longer possible to buy a MacBook Air with an Intel CPU. The new MacBook Air has configurations that start at $999 and $1,249. You can still buy a 13-inch MacBook Pro with an Intel CPU, but those models are only available at the higher end of the price spectrum. The M1-based 13-inch MacBook Pro replaces the previous entry-level MacBook Pro with two Thunderbolt ports and starts at $1,299 and $1,499. Intel processors power the configurations t...

A graphically pedestrian Japanese roleplaying game is perhaps not what many Xbox Series X owners were hoping for as their premier next-generation-exclusive launch title, but here we are with Yakuza: Like a Dragon. While it might not be much of a technical workout for Microsoft’s most powerful console, it’s a revolution for the series and, by some distance, the most substantial console exclusive in the Series X and S launch lineup. This is the eighth mainline Yakuza game, with Sega presumably ditching the series numbering in an attempt to gain a wider audience. (It’s still called Ryu ga Gotoku 7 in Japan, “Like a Dragon” being a direct translation of the Yakuza series’s Japanese name.) This game is a canonical sequel, with occasional recurring characters and references that fans will apprec...

Cruise is partnering with Walmart to test out a delivery service using a fleet of autonomous and electric vehicles. The pilot project will kick off in early 2021 and take place in Scottsdale, Arizona. Cruise has yet to settle on a final number of cars it will use as part of the delivery service. The company has maintained a small fleet of five vehicles in Phoenix since 2016. It’s the latest in a series of announcements centered on the use of autonomous vehicles in last-mile delivery scenarios, underscoring a core truth about the technology: it’s risky to put human passengers in robot vehicles, but it’s much less risky to put groceries and Walmart purchases in them. It’s the latest sign that Cruise, which is a majority owned subsidiary of General Motors, is interested in expanding beyond ro...

Over a billion gallons of sewage pass through New York City’s wastewater treatment plants every day. Since the spring, the city has been one of the many places around the country to use that stream of excrement to track the spread of COVID-19. When people are infected with the coronavirus, some of the virus exits their bodies via their feces. It starts to show up reliably in their waste even before they start to display symptoms. Those virus-laden feces end up in wastewater, along with everything else we flush down the drain. Research shows that upticks in the levels of virus in sewage for a particular area come about a week before the number of people testing positive spikes. There are 14 wastewater treatment plants in New York City, and at each one, facility workers regularly siphon off ...

Samsung has slashed the cost of its previous-generation Galaxy Tab S6 Android tablet. The previous best price was $470 late last month, but today, it’s just $320 at Samsung’s site. It debuted for $650 last year, so it’s effectively 50 percent off today. This discount puts it around the same price of Apple’s latest-generation iPad, which is obviously a different tablet in many ways. But if you’re looking for a better value when it comes to specs, this deal should get your attention. The Tab S6 has considerably more space for apps and downloads than the base iPad, with 128GB of onboard storage and the ability to accept microSD cards to expand it even further. If that doesn’t do it for you, its gorgeous 10.5-inch OLED screen might do the trick. My colleague Dan Seifert reviewed this model, sa...