Technology

A Tesla employee has tested positive for COVID-19 at the company’s solar panel factory in Buffalo, New York, according to an employee at the factory who spoke to The Verge on the condition of anonymity. It’s the fourth known Tesla employee to test positive for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus but the first since the company reopened its US factories in May. One employee from Panasonic, which shares space with Tesla at its New York and Nevada factories, also tested positive back in March before the shutdowns. Tesla quietly reopened the New York facility on May 19th after the state gave the region the green light, according to a new letter to local officials first reported on Friday by Buffalo Business First. But the company is not back at full production capacity and won’t be for...

Amazon-backed EV startup Rivian has laid off about 40 employees at its engineering and design center in Plymouth, Michigan, The Verge has learned. The cuts, which the company has confirmed to The Verge, were made across departments and included engineers, recruiters, and others, according to two former employees. The company has also made a number of new executive hires, and has replaced its first chief operating officer. Rivian has been on a hiring spree over the last year fueled by $3 billion worth of investments from Amazon, Ford, T. Rowe Price, and others. The startup currently employs a little more than 2,000 people overall, meaning the layoffs account for roughly 2 percent of its workforce. The former employees say they believe the cuts were related to the stresses of the COVID-19 pa...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg held an extended conference with employees today, addressing accusations that Facebook allowed election misinformation and veiled promotions of violence from President Donald Trump. While Zuckerberg said he should have offered more transparency to employees, he stood by what he called a “pretty thorough” evaluation of Trump’s posts, saying the choice to avoid labeling or removing them was difficult but correct. According to a recording obtained by The Verge, Zuckerberg described being upset by Trump’s recent posts, one of which warned protesters that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” But “I knew that I needed to separate out my personal opinion … from what our policy is and the principles of the platform we’re running are — knowing that the ...

Google may be close to launching its next streaming TV device, and now XDA Developers has got its hands on marketing material that gives us our first real glimpse at what that device might look like. The report says the Android TV-powered dongle is codenamed “Sabrina,” and past reports have revealed it will come with a remote and a proper software interface, so you no longer have to rely on pushing shows and movies to your TV using Chromecast and a phone or tablet. The device looks a bit like a Chromecast Ultra, although less circular in design. Other screenshots obtained by XDA Developers show off pink, white, and black color options. The report also says the marketing video from which the images were grabbed shows off the top half of the remote and its dedicated Google Assistant button. ...

The protest was peaceful. Then the police shot tear gas. At least 10 canisters went off, according to The Guardian’s Julia Carrie Wong. Officers clad in riot gear ordered protesters to go home before the 8PM curfew. Then they arrested 40 people. This was the scene that aired on Fox KTVU and NBC News, which featured aerial footage of tear gas and mayhem as people ran from the police. But it’s not the full story. Before the warnings, and tear gas, and handcuffs, the protest had been peaceful for hours. “Mainstream media is pushing a narrative about these ‘riots’ we had,” said Brianna Boyd, a 20-year-old protestor. “They’re trying to dampen the message by not showing the peaceful protests.” Officers threw tear gas and flash-bang grenades The event, organized by students at Oakland Technical H...

Streaming platform Roku has removed a channel dedicated to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement after facing criticism for letting it slip through its review and moderation processes last month. The show, called “Q Channel – QAnon Channel,” was hosted by popular QAnon supporter Dave Hayes and advertised as a “opinion based shows for getting the truth out, as we know it, about the Qanon movement.” A Roku spokesperson tells The Verge, “The channel is no longer on our platform.” But the company would not elaborate on why it allowed the show to launch last month. The Verge has asked for more information about measures in place to review and moderate questionable content users post through its channel creation feature. The link to the channel now leads to a blank page. Roku is best known ...

With the success of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon launch this weekend, NASA now has the capability to launch its own astronauts from the US once again — and that means changes are in store for the future of the International Space Station. Soon, a new suite of vehicles could be regularly flying people to the station from the Florida coast, along with the Russian Soyuz rocket that has been solely responsible for taking humans to the outpost since 2011. This will be a new era of human spaceflight where private vehicles and state-operated vehicles fly along aside one another, getting humans into space, and to the ISS. Here’s how traffic to the space station will evolve as SpaceX and NASA’s other commercial partner, Boeing, start sending people to and from the ISS on a regular basis. The Russian relati...

Activision is postponing new content updates for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Mobile, and Call of Duty: Warzone. “Right now, it’s time for those speaking up for equality, justice, and change to be seen and heard,” the company announced on Twitter. Activision’s message refers to the widespread protests happening across US cities in response to the death of George Floyd. Season 4 of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was supposed to launch on June 3rd, while Call of Duty: Mobile’s seventh season was originally planned to release sometime this week. New seasons in both games introduce free content drops, including new multiplayer maps, modes, and weapons for both game’s online multiplayer modes. This move follows similar decisions by other companies in the gaming industry. Sony annou...

Peloton is making its app available on one more device: Apple TVs. The company announced the news today, which will bring the workout streaming app to Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD devices. New members can access the app on their TV for a free 30-day trial, too. The app is already available on iOS devices and the Apple Watch but is missing a desktop app. (The company does offer streaming through users’ browsers.) The COVID-19 pandemic has been marked with remarkable growth for Peloton. It gained 600,000 new members in one quarter and grew revenue by 66 percent in a year. When the pandemic first started, the company gave new users a 90-day free trial and briefly broadcasted its live workout classes from its New York studio until an employee was diagnosed with the virus. After that point, Pelo...

Facebook is launching a new feature called Manage Activity that lets users delete their old posts. It can be used to delete individual posts or in bulk, and Facebook says it will offer filtering options to help find posts with specific people in them or in a certain time range. The feature will come to Facebook’s mobile apps first. According to Facebook, the feature is meant “to make it easy for you to curate your presence on Facebook to more accurately reflect who you are today.” As an example, it suggests that someone might want to delete old content when they’re about to start working full time after college or remove posts that remind them of an old relationship. Posts can be filtered by category, date, or people, and then deleted individually or in bulk.Image: Facebook There are a cou...

Lenovo’s C740 14-inch laptop is one of the best laptops you can buy, and it’s also the most affordable option in our buying guide. Now, at Best Buy, it costs even less than usual. The standard configuration with a quad-core 10th Gen Intel Core i5-10210U processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD is just $600 instead of its regular $800 price. This laptop has a 2-in-1 design that lets its display flip nearly 360 degrees around, so you can use it as a tablet. It also features two USB-C ports, a USB Type-A port, and a headphone jack. In my colleague Monica Chin’s review, she says that the C740 doesn’t stack up to some pricier 2-in-1 laptops when it comes to performance, battery life, or having a standout feature, though it’s reliable for everyday purposes and has a sturdy aluminum build. Its grea...

Some Google Pixel owners have received the Android 11 Beta early, revealing yet more details about this year’s version of Android. In a tweet, Mishaal Rahman from XDA Developers said that two Pixel 4 XL users reported having received the update, revealing new details about Android 11 features like the power button menu, three new icon shapes, and auto-generated app suggestions in the home screen dock. Google planned to announce the Android 11 beta on June 3rd but decided to delay the launch. “Now is not the time to celebrate,” the company said without linking it directly to national protests about police violence that have since gone global. The company is yet to set a new date for the announcement, so it’s unclear when this beta software may be more widely available. The beta software sho...