Technology

Teardown and repair website iFixit has just posted what its CEO Kyle Wiens says is “the most comprehensive online resource for medical repair professionals.” The new database contains dedicated sections for clinical, laboratory, and medical support equipment, in addition to numerous other categories of devices. It also provides more than 13,000 manuals from hundreds of medical device manufacturers. Wiens says the effort began with a crowdsourcing campaign to collect repair information for hospital equipment, with a focus on “ventilator documentation, anesthesia systems, and respiratory analyzers — devices widely used to support COVID-19 patients.” But the effort grew from there, spanning more than two months as iFixit added dozens more staff members to the project; began talking to more bi...

Facebook is launching what it’s calling a “universal product recognition model” that uses artificial intelligence to identify consumer goods, from furniture to fast fashion to fast cars. It’s the first step toward a future where the products in every image on its site can be identified and potentially shopped for. “We want to make anything and everything on the platform shoppable, whenever the experience feels right,” Manohar Paluri, head of Applied Computer Vision at Facebook, told The Verge. “It’s a grand vision.” Facebook wants to create a “social-first” shopping experience Product recognition is the first in a slew of AI-powered updates coming to its e-commerce platforms in the near future, says the company. Eventually, these will combine AI, augmented reality, and even digital assista...

Microsoft is revealing some new features for its Edge browser today. The first is a new sidebar search option that’s designed to let you search the web without having to leave a tab. You can highlight text on a page and right-click to “search in sidebar” and see the results to the side of the page you’re currently viewing. Pinterest is also partnering with Microsoft Edge to bring suggestions to the Collections feature inside the browser. Collections is used to collate groups of content like links, images, and text into a single place. Pinterest suggestions will soon appear at the bottom of Collections if the new feature is enabled, and Edge users will even be able to export Collections to Pinterest. Microsoft is also adding the ability to send Collections to OneNote soon. New Edge sidebar ...

Razer’s new $200 Opus noise-canceling, wireless headphones aren’t good enough to tempt me away from my tried-and-true $350 Sony WH-1000XM3. I’m not surprised by that, partially given the huge price difference. More so, I wasn’t expecting miracles given Razer’s comparative lack of experience in making headphones. However, they are good enough to make me doubt if my Sony’s are that much better to warrant costing almost double the amount. My answer to that question is yes, but nevertheless, that the Opus is making me question it at all speaks to their quality and value. For the money, these come with almost everything I want in a set of headphones: comfort, good sound quality, and long battery life — with a few extra features as a bonus. For instance, the ear cups can swivel 90 degrees to res...

Microsoft is creating a new lists app for businesses that use its Microsoft 365 services. Not to be confused with To Do, Microsoft’s consumer lists app, Microsoft Lists is designed to be the next evolution of SharePoint Lists. SharePoint users have been using lists for years to track issues and organize information, and Microsoft Lists will work across Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Outlook. Microsoft Lists will include templates for quick lists, configurable color formatting, and even the ability to create alerts and processes. Lists can track issues, assets, routines, contacts, inventory, and more for companies. While Microsoft has created a separate web and mobile app for Microsoft Lists, it’s also fully integrated into Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Lists integration in Microsoft Teams. ...

Microsoft is promising to dramatically improve its Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) with GUI app support and GPU hardware acceleration. The software giant is adding a full Linux kernel to Windows 10 with WSL version 2 later this month, and it’s now planning to support Linux GUI apps that will run alongside regular Windows apps. This will be enabled without Windows users having to use X11 forwarding, and it’s mainly designed for developers to run Linux integrated development environments (IDE) alongside regular Windows apps. While it has been possible to run Linux GUI apps within Windows previously using a third-party X server, poor graphics performance has always been an issue. Microsoft is promising to solve this, too. Windows 10 will soon get added support for GPU hardware acceleration ...

A group of senators, led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), is demanding that all calls between the Senate and the House of Representatives be encrypted, according to a new letter obtained by The Verge. In the letter dated Tuesday, a bicameral group of Republicans and Democrats requested that the House sergeant at arms and the chief administrative officer “take immediate action to secure telephone calls” between both the House and Senate. The group of 20 lawmakers, including Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX), Ed Markey (D-MA), Kamala Harris (D-CA), Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX), and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), are asking that the officials provide a plan to secure calls by June 12th. “Calls between the Senate and House are still vulnerable to spying by anyone who gains access to the data connection between the...

British airline EasyJet says that it has been the victim of a cyberattack that exposed the email addresses and travel details of around 9 million of its customers, Bloomberg News reports. In a statement, the company said that, of these customers, 2,208 had their credit card details accessed by what the company describes as a “highly sophisticated” attack. EasyJet said that it has already closed off the unauthorized access that allowed the data breach, and it has contacted customers who had their credit card details exposed. Although EasyJet says that “there is no evidence that any personal information of any nature has been misused,” it added that it will be contacting all 9 million customers who have been affected by the breach by May 26th. No passport details were exposed in the hack, Th...

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai responded to a report that Google has dramatically scaled back diversity and inclusion programs to appease conservative critics, promising that the company remains committed. “Diversity is a foundational value for us. Given the scale at which we build products and the fact we do it locally for our users, we are deeply committed to having that representation in our workforce,” said Pichai in an interview on The Vergecast. “What we are doing in the company is constantly at our scale. We look at that first — see what works, what we can scale up better. All I can say is we probably have more resources invested in diversity now than at any point in our history as a company.” Last week, NBC News reported that Google had ended a “well-liked” diversity program called Soj...

IFA 2020 will be taking place as an in-person event in Berlin this fall, conference organizers announced. However, it’ll look very different than previous years due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has seen almost every other major technology conference canceled or moved online this year. Set to run from September 3rd–5th, it’ll mark the first major conference to take place in the technology industry. “After all the event cancellations during the past months, our industry urgently needs a platform where it can showcase its innovation, so that it can recover and rebound,” commented Jens Heithecker, the executive director of IFA Berlin, noting that digital events could only do so much to replace the “immediacy, hands-on experience and human connections” of events like IFA. “#IFA20 will ...

OnePlus will temporarily disable a camera filter on the OnePlus 8 Pro after users discovered they could use it to see through certain plastics and clothes. Although the company has stressed that the “Photochrom” filter cannot see through thick materials, it apologized for “creating privacy concerns and causing troubles for OnePlus users and other netizens,” Abacus News reports. OnePlus announced the move in a statement on its Weibo page. The OnePlus 8 Pro was released back in April, but it wasn’t until last week that people started paying serious attention to what its camera was capable of. On Twitter, Ben Geskin demonstrated how the filter can be used to see through the Apple TV’s black plastic housing, while Unbox Therapy observed that it could even see through an (admittedly thin) black...

On Friday, Facebook made its fifth-largest known acquisition ever. The company bought Giphy, a database and search engine for the short looping videos known as GIFs, for $400 million. Today let’s talk about some of the reasons, stated and unstated, that Facebook bought Giphy, and then consider what might come next. The stated reason for acquiring Giphy, as expressed in this blog post from Instagram’s head of product announcing the deal, is twofold. One, Facebook can now build tighter integrations between the products to enhance stickers, stories, and other products. And two, it can make further investments in Giphy’s technology and content library to benefit all the companies that rely on Giphy for GIF supply. Here’s Vishal Shah: People will still be able to upload GIFs; developers and API...