Technology

Google has tweaked the appearance of the compose button in Gmail’s Android app. First spotted by 9to5Google, the old button, a small “floating action button” with a plus in it, is now an oblong button containing a pen icon along with the word “Compose.” It minimizes into its old circle shape when you scroll down your list of emails. Ultimately, though, I’d still argue that the bottom-right of the screen is a bad place for the app’s most important button. I’m sure that Google’s floating compose buttons — which it uses across other G Suite apps like Drive and Docs — are the result of hours of testing that show that users easily find buttons when they’re positioned on the bottom right of the screen. I don’t doubt that there are objectively good reasons for them. The old button was a cross con...

Let’s conclude what turned out to be Free Speech Week on The Interface with a look at a case involving the co-chairman of Facebook’s new Oversight Board, a Zoom recording of his law school class, and the N-word. Can you use a racist slur on Facebook? The answer is probably not, but also maybe. The company’s community standards prohibit “direct attacks” on people based on their race. But the company also published a blog post in 2017 laying out some of the nuances involved in deciding whether a slur is, in fact, an attack, which often depends heavily on context that goes beyond the written word. Later this year, some of the hardest decisions about whether a post should stay up on Facebook will be made by an independent Oversight Board. The board, whose initial members were announced last mo...

Gas stations in Germany will be required to provide charging for electric vehicles as part of the country’s €130 billion coronavirus stimulus package, Reuters reports. In addition, the government is also increasing its subsidy for electric vehicles by €3,000 to €6,000 for cars costing less than €40,000. Combined, these measures could be a big boost for electric car adoption in a country where many of the world’s biggest automakers are headquartered. Electric vehicles are currently relatively uncommon in the country. According to Reuters, less than 2 percent of the cars sold in Germany last year were electric, compared to 32 percent for diesel cars and 59.2 percent for petrol. A key limiting factor for adoption is range anxiety, with customers worried that they won’t be able to recharge if ...

On Wednesday, LinkedIn hosted a town hall about racial justice in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. The forum was supposed to be an opportunity for employees to come together and discuss how they could support one another. Instead, the conversation turned suddenly hostile, as people used the video chat’s anonymous commenting feature to defend racist sentiments and question the efficacy of the protests. The comments were first reported by The Daily Beast; The Verge has independently confirmed them. “Blacks kill blacks at 50 times the rate that whites kill blacks,” wrote one employee. “Usually it is the result of gang violence in the inner city. Where is the outcry?” Another employee said, “As a non-minority, all this talk makes me feel like I am supposed to feel guilty of my s...

A pair of alarming videos appeared to show at least one Caviar delivery worker being arrested by New York City police on Thursday, allegedly for violating the city’s curfew imposed this week in response to demonstrations protesting the death of George Floyd and systemic police brutality. But the worker and other on-demand food delivery app contractors are permitted to work in the city, even past curfew, based on a designation as essential workers by city officials. Caviar parent company DoorDash tells The Verge it is “alarmed” by the reports of the arrests and that it is “prepared to provide them with our support.” “food delivery workers are deemed ‘essential’ and permitted to travel.” “We are alarmed by reports that a courier appears to have been arrested this evening in New York City sho...

Infinity Ward just released an update for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare that adds a splash screen message in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Players are being told they need to update their client upon finishing multiplayer games, and once they do, the message appears on screen. “Our community is hurting,” the statement reads. “The systemic inequalities our community experiences are once again center stage. Call of Duty and Infinity Ward stand for equality and inclusion. We stand against the racism and injustice our Black community endures. Until change happens and Black Lives Matter, we will never truly be the community we strive to be.” The Verge has confirmed that the message subsequently appears every time you launch Modern Warfare on a PS4. It also appears on loading screen...

Apple is working on a way to make it easier to change iPad keyboard brightness, according to new code analyzed by 9to5Mac. A beta version of iPadOS 13.5.5 reportedly contains references to keyboard shortcuts that could change the brightness of the keyboard backlighting as well as the iPad’s screen. Apple’s new iPad Pro Magic Keyboard is in many ways a great solution for iPad power users, but the company’s continued refusal to include a function row on its iPad keyboards comes with some big tradeoffs. In order to change keyboard backlighting brightness, for example, you currently have to delve down multiple levels in the Settings app. 9to5Mac hasn’t been able to actually make use of the keyboard shortcuts in this beta software, so it’s possible that they won’t ship until a later version of ...

Hublot is taking another crack at the smartwatch market with the Hublot Big Bang e, a high-end watch running Wear OS that will set you back thousands of dollars. The Big Bang e comes in two variations: titanium, which retails for $5,200, and black ceramic, priced at $5,800. Both include a 42mm OLED high-definition touchscreen covered with sapphire crystal along with a Snapdragon Wear 3100 processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, and a 300mAh battery. The watch includes a few extra features beyond those typically found in the Android-based operating system. The Big Bang e has its own watchfaces with some additional abilities, such as one that keeps track of the lunar calendar and another that changes color throughout the day as part of the #HuboltLovesArt initiative. Image: Hublot Hublot also...

Sega has now revealed full details of its just-announced Game Gear Micro portable console — or, I should say, consoles. It turns out that the four color variants are different systems each with four different games preloaded, no doubt in an attempt to drive collectors to buy them all. Here’s what you get on each. The black model comes with: Sonic the Hedgehog Puyo Puyo 2 Out Run Royal Stone The blue variant includes: Sonic Chaos Gunstar Heroes Sylvan Tale Baku Baku Animal The yellow Game Gear Micro has: Shining Force Gaiden: Ensei – Jashin no Kuni he Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict Nazopuyo Aruru no Ru And the red version is preloaded with: Revelations: The Demon Slayer Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible Special The GG Shinobi Columns The hardware itsel...

You can try out the Android 11 developer preview software right now if you have a Pixel 2 or later, but it’s understandable if the idea of flashing your device to install the OS is intimidating. It can be a tricky process, and the steps differ slightly depending on what phone you have and what kind of computer you’re going to use to download the software. But now that process has been streamlined by Google. Google recently released the Android Flash Tool, a web application that handles most of the steps of flashing for you. There are a few steps that you’ll need to do yourself before the new software can be installed, which we’ll walk you through below, but Google’s tool basically eliminates most of the hassle and complexity that makes it easy to mess up. There are a few important notes to...

President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting social media companies faced its first legal challenge Tuesday, claiming that Trump violated the companies’ rights to free speech. In its lawsuit, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) called Trump’s order “retaliatory” because it specifically attacked Twitter for using its First Amendment right to comment and moderate the president’s tweets. By attacking Twitter, the organization claimed that Trump’s order could discourage other platforms from exercising their free speech rights to moderate the president’s posts out of fear of retaliation from the federal government. “The Executive Order is designed to deter social media services from fighting misinformation, voter suppression, and the stoking of violence on their platforms,” CDT’...

Apple’s iCloud service experienced an outage on Tuesday evening, causing errors with account sign-in, iCloud Mail, and web apps via iCloud.com. The issues began shortly after 7PM ET, when user-reported issues began pouring in on Downdetector.com and across Twitter. Apple acknowledged the issue on its system status website, as well on its Apple Support Twitter account. Many users started seeing similar error messages, including one that says, “The application you have selected does not exist.” MacRumors reported that some other Apple services, like Apple Pay and the company’s web-based app-specific password generator, were also experiencing issues, although Apple never acknowledged as much on its system status page. As of 8:30PM ET, Apple’s system status page says the issues affecting iClou...