Technology

Microsoft isn’t planning to fully reopen its US offices until at least January 2021. Sources familiar with the company’s plans tell The Verge that Microsoft has selected January 19th, 2021, as the earliest possible date for its US offices to be open for employees. The software giant is currently planning a “hybrid workplace” for a phased reopening of its offices, and Microsoft has produced a six-stage dial that illustrates the return to normal for employees. Stage six of the dial will be when offices are ready to fully reopen for employees to return to work. Microsoft’s offices will return to normal operations only when most restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 outbreak have been lifted and health data suggests it’s safe to return. These are the six stages of Microsoft’s workplace dial...

Less than a month after Rocket Lab lost one of its vehicles during a mission, the small satellite launcher has approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to start launching its Electron rockets again. The company plans to launch its next rocket sometime in August from the company’s primary launch site in New Zealand. On July 4th, Rocket Lab launched its 13th mission to space from New Zealand, carrying seven small satellites, most of which were designed to image the Earth from above. Just a few minutes into the flight, the engine on the upper portion of the Electron shut down too early, according to Rocket Lab. As a result, the rocket didn’t achieve orbit and fell back into Earth’s atmosphere where it burned up and destroyed all the satellites on board. Rocket Lab claims that it kept...

Apple is now the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, passing Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco. As of close of business Friday, Apple has a market valuation of $1.84 trillion, while Saudi Aramco’s is $1.76 trillion, according to CNBC. Apple’s stock, which has been on a largely-steady climb since the end of March, closed up more than 10 percent on Friday following the company’s record-breaking third-quarter earnings on Thursday, ending the day at $425.04. Apple’s total revenue for Q3 hit $59.7 billion, up 11 percent from last year. Strong Mac and iPad sales were a highlight, and the company likely saw increased demand for the devices while people have been sheltering in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Apple also announced a four-for-one stock split as part o...

Google said earlier this year it would join other web browser companies to block third-party cookies in Chrome, and today, developers have their first chance to test a proposed alternative to tracking users across the web: trust tokens. Unlike cookies, trust tokens are designed to authenticate a user without needing to know their identity. Trust tokens would not be able to track users across websites, because they’re theoretically all the same, but they could still let websites prove to advertisers that actual users — not bots — visited a site or clicked on an ad. (An explainer on GitHub suggests that websites could issue multiple different kinds of trust tokens, though.) Google’s been a little slower to adapt a solution for the third-party tracking cookies that everyone seemingly hates; S...

Amazon and WarnerMedia have struck a new temporary agreement that will allow HBO Now customers to continue streaming on Fire TV while the companies continue negotiations over HBO Max. Before we go any further, let’s break down this situation. In April, WarnerMedia launched its new crown jewel streaming service, HBO Max. The app was made available everywhere except on Amazon Fire TV and Roku. Two weeks after HBO Max launched, WarnerMedia announced it was getting rid of the HBO Go app. This is how HBO customers who purchased the network via their cable provider could stream content. At the same time, WarnerMedia announced that the HBO Now app would simply become HBO. To quickly summarize: HBO Go is disappearing, HBO Now is becoming HBO, and HBO Max still isn’t available for Amazon customers....

Microsoft is rethinking its Cortana assistant, announcing that it will shut down the current iOS and Android apps, end Cortana support for the Harman Kardon Invoke smart speaker, and remove the original Cortana functionality from the first-generation Surface Headphones starting in 2021. These changes are still a few months away, but it marks another big step for Microsoft in pivoting Cortana away from a Google Assistant or Alexa alternative to a more specialized, productivity-focused assistant — changes the company has already started making on the Windows 10 version of Cortana earlier this year. (To that end, Microsoft also put a September 7th date on the already-announced sunsetting of third-party Cortana skills for Windows.) Microsoft will focus on its productivity features Instead, Mic...

President Donald Trump intends to sign an order that would direct ByteDance to sell its ownership of the US-based video-sharing app TikTok, according to Bloomberg. The order, which could be announced as soon as Friday afternoon, would employ the Council on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to force ByteDance to divest, similar to the process undertaken against Grindr’s Chinese investors last year. Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News that the Trump administration was “certainly looking at” banning TikTok in the country, stopping short of explaining exactly how it planned to do so. “We are taking this very seriously. We are certainly looking at it,” Pompeo said at the time. “With respect to Chinese apps on peoples’ cellphones, the United States w...

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: V for Vendetta (2006) directed by James McTeigue The future: In V for Vendetta, a lot has gone wrong very quickly, and it doesn’t seem like there’s much to be done about it. The film is set in 2020, and London is now under the authoritarian rule of the fascist High Chancellor Sutler (John Hurt), the leader of the extremely Nazi-looking Norsefire party. The parallels to real-world 2020 are alarming: the “St. Mary’s virus” has unleashed a pandemic on the world, crippling the United States (which doesn’t really factor into the film’s London-centric plot) and sending it on a path to...

It didn’t surprise James Gilmore to hear that the NBA was turning to smart rings to help manage the risk of COVID-19 inside its “bubble” at Disney World, where the league hopes to finish the rest of the season. “The NBA, and the NBA Players Association, has been at the forefront of embracing wearable technology for individual players,” says Gilmore, an assistant professor who studies the use of wearable technology in daily life at Clemson University. All players inside the bubble have the option of wearing an Oura ring, normally marketed as a sleep and activity tracker. Health data collected by the ring, the league says, will be used to flag changes that could indicate someone has symptoms of COVID-19, even if they don’t feel sick. The catch: it’s not clear if the Oura ring can actually do...

Twitter has suspended the account of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke for “repeated violations of the Twitter Rules on hateful conduct,” a spokesperson confirmed to The Verge on Friday. “This enforcement action is in line with our recently-updated guidance on harmful links.” Duke joined Twitter in September 2009, an archived version of his page shows, and his account had more than 53,000 followers. YouTube suspended several white supremacists’ channels last month, including Duke’s, for violating its hate speech policies. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which describes Duke as a neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier, says Duke “built an international reputation as the American face of white nationalism and pseudo-academic anti-Semitism.” The Anti-Defamation League says Duke has been active in...

This weekend, two NASA astronauts are slated to return home to Earth inside SpaceX’s new passenger capsule, the Crew Dragon. It’ll be the first time that the Crew Dragon carries passengers back to the planet’s surface, ultimately proving if the vehicle can safely transport people to space and back. Veteran astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be aboard the spacecraft. The duo made history at the end of May when they launched to the International Space Station inside the Crew Dragon, marking the first time a privately made vehicle carried people to orbit. The launch heralded the return of human spaceflight in the US. The last time people flew to orbit from the United States was in 2011, with the last flight of the Space Shuttle. For nine years, NASA relied on Russian rockets to get a...