Technology

The Food and Drug Administration has granted the first emergency use authorization to diagnostic healthcare company Quidel Corp. for the first COVID-19 antigen test, the agency announced. Antigen tests can quickly detect the coronavirus, but are generally considered less accurate than other types of tests that search out the virus. Antigen tests for COVID-19 are akin to rapid flu or strep tests. This test can be run in a lab or in a doctor’s office, and only takes about 15 minutes. The tests typically used to diagnose COVID-19, called PCR tests, search out the genetic sequence of the coronavirus in a swab collected from a patient’s nose or throat. Antigen tests, on the other hand, look for molecules on the surface of the virus. They return results much more quickly, but are less accurate. ...

After Alameda County health officials cautioned Tesla against reopening its California car factory yesterday, CEO Elon Musk tweeted today that the company would sue the county and move its headquarters out of state. “Tesla is filing a lawsuit against Alameda County immediately,” Musk said on Twitter. “The unelected & ignorant ‘interim Health Officer’ of Alameda is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense!” Musk has been a vocal critic of coronavirus lockdowns, saying at the company’s April 29th earnings call that such restrictions were “fascist” and not democratic. “We are a bit worried about not being able to resume production in the Bay Area, and that should be identified as a serious risk,” Musk said. Frankly, this is ...

Last year’s HP Elite Dragonfly was perhaps the nicest business laptop we’ve ever tested. This year’s Elite Dragonfly is almost identical to that machine, which is fine because, again, the HP Elite Dragonfly was exceptional in just about every way. This new configuration largely feels and looks the same as last year’s model; it’s still one of the sleekest, chicest business laptops on the market, and it has the most eye-catching design of any convertible that HP currently sells. HP has changed four things. First, the Dragonfly is now 5G-enabled, though that feature isn’t coming until mid-2020. Second, it has an integrated Tile tracker, which is coming to models in mid-May. Third, it has a new privacy-oriented screen that includes HP’s latest Sure View Reflect technology. Fourth, its mechanic...

Los Angeles FC forward Adama Diomande is bored. With professional sports on indefinite hiatus throughout most of the world, he misses being on the field with teammates and competing in front of thousands of fans every week. Like the rest of us, he’s been stuck at home; that means trying his best to stay in shape, including jogging around the city at night, and keeping up with friends and family through video chats. But he’s managed to satiate his desire for competition by taking part in eMLS, an esports tournament that pairs professional soccer players and FIFA pros. “I love competing,” Diomande says. “I just love to win.” Like most professional sports leagues, MLS has been slowly taking steps into the video game space, but that process has accelerated in recent weeks. In our current clima...

Starting Sunday May 10th, Razer will host a promotion at Best Buy that bundles its Huntsman Tournament Edition wired gaming keyboard with the Razer Viper mouse. The keyboard alone costs $130, and that price will include the Viper (usually $80 by itself) for free with purchase. Just add the keyboard to your cart and the mouse will be added automatically. The Huntsman TE is an 80 percent form factor keyboard (it lacks a number pad, but has directional keys along with the ever-useful Print Screen and other functions), so it shouldn’t take up much room on your desk. It has linear optical switches, which Razer claims can last longer than standard switches, and they’re faster to register a button press, too. As is usually the case with Razer’s tech, each key here is backlit and the colors and ef...

I watched HBO’s new film Bad Education last week. The whole thing felt a bit like a heist movie in reverse — it’s about a superintendent who’s stealing money from his school district, only you’re watching as the crime unravels, rather than as it plays out. It’s a fun film, in large part thanks to Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney taking on some big characters. But the movie also takes the course a lot of true-story movies do, where they worry more about telling you what happened than they do about building characters. I think this works to a point. It’s a wild story, and they do an entertaining job telling it. But I wish the film pushed a little further into who these people are. Showing the crime only as it’s unraveled is a cool way to tell the story, but it also means we don’t get to learn...

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, and while the ongoing pandemic continues to be a nuisance that is probably preventing you from making special plans this year, you can still pick up a nice gift for a mom in your life. One of those gifts ideas is a DJI Osmo Mobile 3 gimbal to stabilize footage recorded on a phone, whether mom likes to shoot in vertical or horizontal mode. These come in a special pre-wrapped Mother’s Day bundle right now directly from DJI for $139. In addition to the gimbal (which usually costs around $120 by itself), you’ll get a bunch of goodies tossed in for a little extra, including a wrist strap, storage pouch, anti-slip pads, the Osmo Grip Tripod and an Osmo Carrying Case, a digital photo frame, and an 8GB SD card. Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge If your family owns a Roku T...

Former Google engineer James Damore, who sued Google in 2018 for allegedly discriminating against conservative white men, has asked a court to dismiss the suit, Bloomberg reported. The written request by Damore and three other men who joined his suit also was joined by Google. Damore’s attorney said as part of an agreement with Google the men are barred from speaking about the case beyond the Thursday filing in Santa Clara Superior Court, according to Bloomberg. Neither Damore’s attorney nor Google responded to requests for comment from The Verge on Saturday. The company fired Damore in 2017 after he wrote a controversial internal memo suggesting women were biologically less suited for tech jobs. The memo later became public, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent an internal email to staff at ...

In one of a series of wild tweets posted last week, Elon Musk stated he would be “selling almost all physical possessions” and that he would “own no house.” He appears to be actually following through with that promise, as chronicled in a great story in The Wall Street Journal about Musk’s personal finances that you should go read. According to the WSJ, despite being worth an estimated $39 billion on paper: …he has to borrow, sometimes a lot, to pay for his lifestyle and business investments without liquidating shares that help him maintain control of the companies he runs. About half his Tesla stock is pledged as collateral for personal loans, an April 28 financial filing shows. Maintaining his equity stake—about 20%, or around $29 billion at its current valuation—is important for h...

In the months since the Surface Laptop 3’s October 2019 launch, some users have reported cracks appearing on their laptop’s screen for no discernible reason. Microsoft first said it was investigating the issue in February, and today, the company explained a potential cause of the problem and offered free repairs to those affected (via ZDNet). “We have investigated claims of screen cracking on Surface Laptop 3 and have determined that, in a very small percentage of cases, a hard foreign particle may cause a hairline fracture in the glass that may seem to appear unexpectedly or without visible cause,” Microsoft said in a support document. You can get reimbursed if you paid for a repair that would be covered now “If you believe your Surface Laptop 3 is experiencing this issue, you are encoura...

A combination of heat and humidity so extreme that it’s unendurable isn’t just a problem for the future — those conditions are already here, a new study finds. Off-the-chart readings that were previously thought to be nearly nonexistent on the planet today have popped up around the globe, and unyielding temperatures are becoming more common. Extreme conditions reaching roughly 115 degrees Fahrenheit on the heat-index scale — a measurement of both heat and humidity that’s often referred to as what the temperature “feels like” — doubled between 1979 and 2017, the study found. Humidity and heat are a particularly deadly combination, since humidity messes with the body’s ability to cool itself off by sweating. The findings imply that harsh conditions that scientists foresaw as an impending res...

Apple’s US retail stores have been closed since mid-March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the company is going to start opening some of them back up next week. “We’re excited to begin reopening stores in the US next week, starting with some stores in Idaho, South Carolina, Alabama, and Alaska,” an Apple representative told CNBC. “Our new social distance protocol allows for a limited number of visitors in the store at one time so there may be a delay for walk-in customers. We recommend, where possible, customers buy online for contactless delivery or in-store pickup.” There are just six Apple stores between all of those states, as CNBC notes, so this is a small-scale return that will allow the company to monitor things closely and apply what it learns as more locations welcome customers b...