Technology

Facebook is buying Giphy, and that means how you send and receive GIFs on the internet could change forever. The service claims that more than 700 million people see Giphy content every day, and many of those views come from some of the internet’s most popular apps— from Apple’s iMessage to TikTok and Twitter — most of which rely on Giphy’s API and archives to let users share and post GIFs. It’s likely that at least some of those services won’t want to have a Facebook-owned platform integrated with their products moving forward. Not only do these companies generally prefer not to rely on major competitors, but Facebook’s services have had issues with privacy (like the Cambridge Analytica scandal) and reliability (like when a small Facebook SDK bug took down many major mobile apps earlier t...

Microsoft’s Surface Duo is meant to be a showcase for its unique, dual-screen design, so it may be a bit more forgivable that its specs don’t include the latest and greatest components or anything all that’s impressive by way of battery life and storage. According to Windows Central, the phone will ship with the older Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 (which we knew last year when it was announced), a rather small 3,460mAh battery considering it’s powering two screens, and storage options of 64GB or 256GB. Beyond the Duo’s signature two 5.6-inch displays, which can rotate 360 degrees and transform it into an 8.3-inch tablet when unfolded, Windows Central says the device will pack 6GB of RAM, an 11-megapixel camera for both front-facing and rear-facing photos and videos, a fingerprint sensor for auth...

Panasonic has resumed its work making battery cells at Tesla’s Gigafactory outside Reno, Nevada, the company tells The Verge. But Panasonic will not return to work at Tesla’s Buffalo, New York solar panel factory this weekend as planned. Mark Shima, president of Panasonic Solar North America (PSNA), has told employees in emails obtained by The Verge that the company has to delay bringing workers back because the region the factory is in, Western New York, did not meet New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo’s new criteria for reopening. “We will NOT restart manufacturing on this Saturday, May 16th,” Shima wrote in an email sent Thursday. “The new target date depends on the COVID-19 situation of Erie County and it will be announced from me in next several days.” A Panasonic employee in Buffalo...

GrubHub has come under intense scrutiny of late for what critics and some restaurant owners say are exploitative fees made only worse during the coronavirus pandemic. Now, a revealing BuzzFeed News story has shed light on another controversial yet longtime practice around phone ordering. The company, which also owns the Seamless and Eat24 services and is the largest food ordering platform in the US, uses an assortment of fees to collect revenue from restaurants, ranging from fees for marketing to various commissions on orders made through the web and its app. But as BuzzFeed points out, a lesser known method GrubHub uses to extract money from small businesses involves putting its own custom phone number on business pages that redirects calls to the partner restaurant. That way, when a cust...

A bipartisan group of senators are sounding the antitrust enforcement alarm Friday over Facebook’s newly announced acquisition of Giphy, a GIF-making and sharing website. On Friday, Facebook announced that it would acquire Giphy for the reported price of $400 million. Giphy is one of the largest GIF sites on the internet and social media and messaging services like Twitter, Tinder, Slack and iMessage already have Giphy integrated into their apps. In a Friday blog post, Facebook said that half of Giphy’s traffic comes from Facebook apps and that the gif website would be rolled into Instagram, a Facebook-owned product. In that same post, Facebook suggested that Giphy’s core function as a GIF-sharing app across social media would not change and that developers would “continue to have the same...

Fitbit, which makes fitness-tracking wearables, will be shifting supply chain resources to make emergency ventilators, Fitbit CEO James Park said to CNBC. The ventilators will be used to help treat COVID-19 patients and could help bolster the national supply of the medical devices, which have been in need during the pandemic. “There was a lot of concern about the shortage of ventilators and we realized we had expertise already around the supply chain,” Park said to CNBC. Fitbit plans to submit the designs for the ventilator to the FDA under an emergency use authorization Fitbit plans to submit the designs for its ventilator to the Food and Drug Administration under an emergency use authorization “in the coming days,” according to CNBC. An emergency use authorization is exactly what it soun...

While treats like chips, popcorn, and ice cream (and for some reason, oat milk) topped grocery purchases during the first few weeks of COVID-19 lockdowns, more Americans continue to turn to a different comfort food: plant-based meat alternatives. Grocery store sales of products like Beyond Meat and Tofurky were up 264 percent during a nine-week period ending on May 2nd, according to Nielsen (via The Wall Street Journal). Overall, retail sales plunged 16.4 percent from March to April. The popularity of faux meat exploded starting in March, with sales of fresh meat alternatives surging 206 percent the first week of March and rising 279 percent the week ending on March 14th, according to Nielsen. Plant-based meat products still lag behind their animal-based counterparts in terms of market siz...

Today, NASA announced the creation of the Artemis Accords, a new set of standards on how to explore the Moon. The agency hopes that other countries will agree to the terms, which lay out how humanity will act on the Moon, including how to mine resources from the lunar surface and ways to protect heritage Apollo sites. The Artemis Accords, first reported by Reuters, are a reference to NASA’s Artemis program, an initiative to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon by 2024. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has been clear that he wants the agency’s international partners to work with NASA to create a sustainable presence on and around the lunar surface. However, NASA wants everyone to be on the same page in how they’ll behave when they reach the Moon. “When we go to the Moon, ther...

American consumers spent more this past quarter on video games than they ever have before, to the tune of $10.9 billion — up 9 percent from the year before, according to industry analyst NPD Group (via Bloomberg). The period covers only January to March, meaning spending in the current quarter ending June 30th might end up being just as high, if not higher. Obviously, the main event in the back third of this quarter was the coronavirus pandemic, which reached American shores at the end of January and has kept the public indoors since mid-March. According to NPD, game sales and in-game microtransactions made up $9.6 billion of that $10.9 billion figure. “Top titles included Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Doom Eternal, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Fortnite, Grand The...

The Justice Department and a coalition of state attorneys general are likely to file antitrust charges against Google in the coming months, according to a new report by The Wall Street Journal. The reporting is consistent with earlier statements by Attorney General William Barr, who said he expected a decision to be made sometime this summer. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton confirmed the general timeline in a statement to the Journal, saying he would “hope to have the investigation wrapped up by fall,” although he would not commit to whether charges would be filed. The investigation is one of the greatest efforts to regulate Google by the US government, with rare coordination between state and federal law enforcement. Google has turned over more than 100,000 documents to investigators as...

Buying a refurbished tech product will save you money compared to buying it new. It also gives a device a second life instead of sending it off to be recycled. And especially during these times when demand is high for all kinds of tech, buying refurbished is sometimes the only way to get your hands on a product when retail channels are strained or just completely out of new merchandise. Those are all good things — yet “refurbished” is still a loaded word for a lot of people. New means new, a product that nobody else has used. On the other hand, buying something refurbished can be a gamble, despite the fact that the product is probably more affordable. If you’re buying a refurbished product, it helps to have criteria If it has been refurbished, that likely means the product was either broke...

Electric racing series Formula E posted a loss of €10.6 million on record revenues of €161.5 million across its fifth season, or about $11.6 million and $177.6 million, respectively, based on the exchange rate at the time. The new financial figures were disclosed in a previously unreported filing with the United Kingdom’s Companies House Registry, and they cover the company’s fiscal year that ended on July 31st, 2019, just a few weeks after the fifth season came to a close. Formula E has now posted a loss in each year of its existence, but the new figures show the series came as close as it ever has to turning a profit — meaning it was on relatively solid financial ground before its sixth season was completely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year. It’s a big accomplishment ...