Technology

Tesla has told its workers they are allowed to take Juneteenth off as an “excused absence” after some had already showed up for work on the holiday that recognizes the end of slavery in the United States, according to internal emails first reported by BuzzFeed and CNBC. The company also told employees that they would not be paid if they don’t show up. Just after this story published, CEO Elon Musk tweeted that Juneteenth will be “henceforth considered a US holiday at Tesla & SpaceX,” but that employees will have to use one of their allotted paid-time-off days, which he said was “true of many other holidays.” Other Silicon Valley companies like Spotify, Uber, and Twitter had previously announced ahead of time that they were making Juneteenth a paid company holiday. Automakers like Ford ...

Facebook has removed a manipulated video posted on President Trump’s account after receiving a copyright complaint from the rights owners. The manipulated video shows a black toddler running away from a white toddler, with a CNN chyron reading “terrified toddler runs from racist baby.” The original video, which went viral last year, sees the total opposite, with the two toddlers running toward each other on the sidewalk so they can hug. The video was created by Carpe Donktum, a prolific pro-Trump meme creator who the president has amplified in the past, and uploaded to both Facebook and Twitter. It arrives as protests across the country fighting against systemic racism in the United States, and on the eve of Juneteenth — a day that many people celebrate as the day slavery ended. Facebook t...

Apple is closing several recently reopened retail stores in four US states after a resurgence in COVID-19 cases, Bloomberg reported. A total of 11 stores in Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, and South Carolina will be temporarily shuttered. The company closed all of its stores outside of mainland China in March as the coronavirus pandemic spread. It began reopening US stores in May, with some offering only curbside or storefront service and not allowing customers inside. Stores that did open to customers were conducting temperature checks and required customers and employees to wear face masks. “Due to current COVID-19 conditions in some of the communities we serve, we are temporarily closing stores in these areas,” an Apple spokesperson said in an email to The Verge. “We take this step wi...

In an abrupt about-face, the movie theater chain AMC said Friday it would require guests to wear face masks when its theaters reopen, after CEO Adam Aron earlier said it would not. “This announcement prompted an intense and immediate outcry from our customers, and it is clear from this response that we did not go far enough on the usage of masks,” Aron said in a statement. “Accordingly, and with the full support of our scientific advisors, we are reversing course and are changing our guest mask policy. As we reopen theatres, we now will require that all AMC guests nationwide wear masks as they enter and enjoy movies at our theatres.” On Thursday, Aron told Variety the chain would not require patrons to wear face masks because it “did not want to be drawn into a political controversy,” sayi...

Hulu is partnering with IMAX to exclusively carry 16 of the technology company’s documentaries in the United States, including A Beautiful Planet, Destiny in Space, and Into the Deep — but none of the titles will be available in 4K. A spokesperson for IMAX tells The Verge that “Hulu is not planning on showing the documentaries in 4K,” but a press release notes that many of the films heading to Hulu have been remastered. Other streaming services, like Disney Plus, have offered 4K remastered versions of films, including the Star Wars series, for streaming purposes. While not every IMAX movie has received a 4K home release option, some IMAX titles, including A Beautiful Planet, received IMAX Enhanced Blu-ray physical releases, which offers 4K viewing. Hulu has a complicated relationship with ...

The Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) has announced that its members are voluntarily suspending operations out of US ports through September 15th, 2020. Its members include Royal Caribbean, Carnival, and Norwegian Cruise line and as CNBC notes, the extension goes beyond the CDC’s July 24th “no-sail” order. Carnival had previously announced it intended to resume operations in the US on August 1st. The CLIA’s statement says in part that “although we had hoped that cruise activity could resume as soon as possible after that date, it is increasingly clear that more time will be needed to resolve barriers to resumption in the United States.” It’s reflective of the harsh reality that the US has not made as much progress as other countries in tamping down the spread of COVID-19. On Ma...

In its latest filter blunder, Snapchat has debuted a Juneteenth filter that allows users to “smile and break the chains.” The filter was panned by critics on Friday morning for its tone deafness. Atlanta-based digital strategist Mark S. Luckie demonstrated the filter on Twitter, calling it “interesting.” The filter shows what appears to be an approximation of the Pan-African flag, and prompts the user to smile — a common trigger for animated Snapchat filters — causing chains to appear and then break behind the user. Juneteenth is the anniversary of the day in 1865 when a group of enslaved people in Texas finally learned that slavery in the US had ended, more than two years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The Juneteenth filter arrives just over a week after repor...

The Verge is a place where you can consider the future. So are movies. In Yesterday’s Future, we revisit a movie about the future and consider the things it tells us about today, tomorrow, and yesterday. The movie: A.I. Artificial Intelligence The future: A.I. begins with a brief summary of the sorry state of the world: climate change has melted the polar ice caps, wiping out coastal cities and severely reducing the human population. With regulations in place for reproduction on a resource-starved planet, corporations developed Mecha — androids that appear human but lack emotions. They’re seen as objects — useful for labor or sex work, just human enough to not be strange but machine enough to not mistake them for people. The story kicks into gear when Professor Allen Hobby (William Hurt) p...

If I had to sum up my condition over the last few weeks, it’d be exhaustion. I’m tired. I told a friend this week that my soul feels like it needs to hibernate. Not only in grieving for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade but also in viewing what feels like hundreds of accounts of hotheaded police officers violently attacking protesters who are demonstrating against police violence. Once again, I’m forced to confront the reality that I’m not as free as I’ve been led to believe. That our system is broken. That people want me dead, due to no fault of my own. Before, during, and after times of hardship, many in the Black community create art to take in the pain and struggle and release a beauty that heals and teaches. Black creatives are always working, trying to find...

The Verge’s flagship podcast The Vergecast is split into two parts this week: WWDC predictions and a discussion on tech policy. First half of the show, co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn run through the most interesting rumors, leaks, and guesses about what will be announced at the 2020 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference next week — from updated Mac hardware to Apple addressing the ongoing noise from developers about their relationship to the App store and its fees. Second half of the show, senior reporter Adi Robertson stops by to update us on new policies being proposed in Congress and at tech companies this week, including the Limiting Section 230 Immunity to Good Samaritans Act and Google’s back-and forth of revoking access to its ads program for websites publishing racist content...

Twitter has labeled a video tweeted by President Trump as “manipulated media,” as first reported by The Washington Post. The label is primarily cosmetic, but represents a significant escalation in the ongoing feud between the president and his preferred social media platform. “This tweet has been labeled per our synthetic and manipulated media policy to give people more context,” Twitter spokeswoman Katie Rosborough told the Post. The clip edits footage of two children playing into a bizarre warning against race-baiting by the media, presented as a false CNN broadcast with the chyron “terrified todler [sic] runs from racist baby.” Since the presented footage was never actually aired by CNN, the false appearance of a broadcast may have provided the basis for the manipulated media tag. part ...

Japan’s government today released its coronavirus contact tracing app for iOS and Android. The apps rely on Apple and Google’s co-developed exposure notification platform, using Bluetooth to help determine whether users have come into close contact with others who have tested positive for COVID-19. Though the app store listing simply reads “COVID-19 Contact App,” Japan refers to the app as COCOA, a somewhat convoluted backronym that stands for COVID-19 Contact-Confirming Application. It was developed by Microsoft engineers, according to Nikkei, who were hired in May after Google and Apple’s conditions reportedly led the government to abandon the work done by a Tokyo-based team in favor of a bigger corporation. COCOA doesn’t store personal information like location data or phone numbers, th...