My mother’s heart attacks, a TV show, and an ethics book showed me how we can all get what we most want.
It's almost a cliché to say that Apple and Samsung dictate the tempo of the smartphone market, but there's now more evidence to support that claim. Counterpoint Research has calculated that nine out of the top ten smartphones sold worldwide i...“It’s not a matter of letting go, you would if you could. Instead of ‘Let it go,’ we should probably say ‘Let it be.’” ~Jon Kabat-Zinn
Byte, the short-form video platform created by Vine cofounder Dom Hofmann, will soon start giving early creators a cut of its ad revenue. The company first revealed its plans for a Partner Program last month, publishing initial details of how it'll p...
The FDA is determined to step up the pace of coronavirus testing in the US to cope with the recent coronavirus outbreak, and it's willing to greenlight technology at an early stage to make that happen. The regulator said it will allow new diagnostic...
Warren may very well turn out to be the person who buries Bloomberg. But how does that help her?
Please wash your damn hands.
It's 2020 and yes, full grown adults still need to hear it.
Health officials in Washington confirmed the first death from the new coronavirus, officially named COVID-19, on Saturday. The virus is highly contagious, and as of Saturday, has infected 85,641 people worldwide and is responsible for 2,933 deaths. Symptoms include fever, cough, and difficulty breathing.
As panic around the virus rises, preventative supplies like face masks and hand sanitizer are becoming increasingly difficult to buy. They're out of stock in most drugstores and big box stores like Walmart and Target. On Amazon, brands like Purell and Germ-X are only available through third party sellers at high mark-upsFrustrated shoppers on social media warned others of the hand sanitizer shortage, crowdsourcing lists of stores that still had an inventory. Read more...
More about Hand Sanitizer, Coronavirus, Culture, and Web Culture
Wear OS is struggling, in no small part due to its so-so health features -- there's a good reason Google bought Fitbit. However, Google has hinted that it intends to catch up. Droid Life has learned that an ongoing User Experience Research survey t...
The finality of death doesn’t really hit you unless you’ve actually experienced it or seen it right in front of you. Nobody ever thinks of…
Samsung isn't the only Korean tech giant grappling with coronavirus infections. LG Display has temporarily halted work at a smartphone screen factory in Gumi, South Korea after a bank worker near the facility tested positive for COVID-19. The compa...
You may have to be pickier about your choice of phone if you're a mobile photography enthusiast. Moment has stopped working on its Pro Camera app for Android due to a lack of "engineering bandwidth" (read: enough available staff) to develop the soft...
The World Health Organization (WHO) joined TikTok on Friday in an effort to fight misinformation about the new coronavirus, called COVID-19.
"There are several measures you can adopt to protect yourself and others from getting the new coronavirus," Benedetta Allegranzi, technical lead of infection prevention and control said in WHO's first video.
She then explained precautions like frequent hand washing, coughing and sneezing into your elbow or a tissue, and avoiding close contact with anyone who has a fever and cough.
Coronavirus symptoms include fever, cough, shortness of breath, and breathing difficulties, the WHO says. So far, it's responsible for 2,933 deaths worldwide. Health officials confirmed the first death from coronavirus in the United States on Saturday. The patient was in their 50s and "medically high risk," President Trump said in a press conference. Read more...
More about Tiktok, Coronavirus, Culture, and Web Culture
Please wash your damn hands.
It's 2020 and yes, full grown adults still need to hear it.
Health officials in Washington confirmed the first death from the new coronavirus, officially named COVID-19, on Saturday. The virus is highly contagious, and as of Saturday, has infected 85,641 people worldwide and is responsible for 2,933 deaths. Symptoms include fever, cough, and difficulty breathing.
As panic around the virus rises, preventative supplies like face masks and hand sanitizer are becoming increasingly difficult to buy. They're out of stock in most drugstores and big box stores like Walmart and Target. On Amazon, brands like Purell and Germ-X are only available through third party sellers at high mark-upsFrustrated shoppers on social media warned others of the hand sanitizer shortage, crowdsourcing lists of stores that still had an inventory. Read more...
More about Hand Sanitizer, Coronavirus, Culture, and Web Culture
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
The World Health Organization launched a TikTok account on Friday as part of its efforts to cut through coronavirus misinformation online. A specialized public health agency of the United Nations, WHO is one of the leading organizations working to contain the spread of the virus.
In WHO’s first video, Benedetta Allegranzi, technical lead of infection prevention and control, describes measures people can take to protect themselves from the novel coronavirus and directs them to the organization’s website for additional information.
“We are joining [TikTok] to provide you with reliable and timely public health advice,” WHO wrote in the description of its first video.
TikTok has been flooded with memes about the novel coronavirus over the...
Won't someone just let Clearview AI invade our privacy in peace? After having its full client list stolen and leaked on the internet, the controversial facial recognition startup is now in hot water with Apple. The iPhone maker has blocked Clearview'...
YouTube's latest transparency report suggests its appeals process is failing creators. Last quarter, YouTube removed 5.9 million videos from the platform. It received just 108,779 appeals, but it only reinstated 23,471 of those videos. That means rou...
Photo: Pontifical Academy for Life
Vatican officials are calling for stricter ethical standards on the development of artificial intelligence, with tech giants IBM and Microsoft being the first companies to sign its new initiative.
The “Rome Call for AI Ethics” lays out six broad principles: transparency, inclusion, responsibility, impartiality, reliability, and security and privacy. These principles say that technology should “protect people,” particularly the “weak and underprivileged.” They also urge policymakers across the world to create new forms of regulation on “advanced technologies that have a higher risk of impacting human rights,” which includes facial recognition.
“AI is incredibly promising...
Image credit: Moment
Moment has informed users that it will no longer be developing its Moment Pro Camera app for Android (via Android Police). The app isn’t required to use Moment’s lenses, but it provided additional controls for serious photographers. Moment blames the difficulty of making the app compatible across the many different versions of Android made by phone makers.
“We love Android,” said co-founder Marc Barros in an email to Moment customers that was shared with The Verge, “but unfortunately, we don’t have the engineering bandwidth to continue developing this app.”
Here’s Barros’ explanation of the challenges in developing the Android app, from his email:
The short story is that phone makers like to create their own flavor of Android, each with...
According to guidelines released by the Center for Disease Control, one of the most effective ways to protect yourself against the novel coronavirus is to avoid touching your face. This is incredibly useful advice — you shouldn't be touching your face anyway — but it's also making people realize just how much they're scratching their noses and grazing their mouths unconsciously.
The average person touches their face 23 times per hour. Per hour! When you realize you've been doing that for a lifetime, it can be pretty jarring, especially if you know it's best to break the habit. And what do extremely online people do when they're trying to change something about their lives? Tweet about it. Read more...
More about Memes, Health, Social Media, Coronavirus, and Culture
Photo by Amelia Krales / The Verge
Facebook Messenger is getting even simpler with the removal of the Discover tab, which was an attempt from the social network to inject its ill-fated chatbot platform into its private messaging app. The change was first announced in August of last year, and TechCrunch now reports that the switchover will begin happening starting next week.
Following an extensive Messenger redesign announced back in 2018, Facebook pledged to make the app simpler and less cluttered after years of bloat, a direct result of the do-everything design philosophy Messenger followed under chief David Marcus. (Marcus is now in charge of Facebook’s blockchain division, which oversees the company’s Libra cryptocurrency project.)
Now, under the leadership of former...
This mystery box by MSCHF was worth $1,000 unopened, but contained a product valued up to $7,000 inside. So we opened it. Read more...
More about Mashable Video, Culture, Products, Mystery Box, and Mschf
The first time a non-Pixar title was shown before a Pixar feature film in theaters, it was in November 2017 when Olaf’s Frozen Adventure played before Coco. Although the piece was contentious among filmgoers, the pairing made sense: Frozen was Disney’s biggest animated film in years, and the crossover between Frozen and Coco audiences was obvious.
Now, Disney is rolling out another non-Pixar short before of a Pixar movie, but this one is less sensical: The Simpsons in a short called Playdate with Destiny. A tweet from the official Simpsons account confirmed that a short would open before Onward, Pixar’s new movie with Tom Holland and Chris Pratt.
Maggie Simpson is speechless… Playdate with Destiny, a new Simpsons short film before...
Reddit's use expands further than just "Game of Throne" memes. Use it to plan your next vacay — we'll show you how. Read more...
More about Travel, Reddit, Mashable Video, Vacation, and Culture
BLOCKS comes with beams, cubes, a slide, and connectors that allow users to attach the shapes anyway they’d like. Read more...
More about Cats, Mashable Video, Cat, Building Blocks, and Future Blink
Photo by Olly Curtis/Future via Getty Images
Google is preventing employees from traveling to Italy, Iran, Japan, and South Korea because of outbreaks of the novel coronavirus, Business Insider reported. Amazon is asking employees to defer all nonessential travel, a spokesperson confirmed to The Verge, which includes domestic travel within the US.
Both companies had already halted employee travel to China, and Google temporarily closed down its offices in China at the end of January.
A Google employee in Zurich, Switzerland, has the novel coronavirus, a spokesperson confirmed to The Verge. “They were in the Zurich office for a limited time, before they had any symptoms,” the spokesperson said in an email.
Amazon senior vice president Dave Clark wrote in an email that employees...
IBM and Microsoft have signed the Vatican's "Rome Call for AI Ethics," a pledge to develop artificial intelligence in a way that protects all people and the planet, Financial Times reports. Microsoft President Brad Smith and John Kelly, IBM's executi...
Jeff Bezos is rich as hell, but if you have trouble understanding just how obscenely wealthy the Amazon founder is, we suggest you visit TikTok.
Entrepreneur and TikTok star Humphrey Yang, a 32-year-old eCommerce consultant and freelancer from Silicon Valley, recently created a striking visual representation of Jeff Bezos' net worth using grains of rice.
To carry out his project, Yang decided to pretend a single grain of rice represented $100,000. He then counted out 10 grains of rice to show $1 million, and proceeded to measure out $1 billion by counting out a whopping 10,000 grains of rice by hand. Read more...
More about Youtube, Jeff Bezos, Net Worth, Tiktok, and Culture
Virus enthusiasts from all over the world converged in San Francisco this week for America's largest security event: RSA Conference 2020. Before it began, fourteen companies withdrew from RSAC over concerns about the impending Coronavirus (COVID-19)...
A man who was freshly out of quarantine for the coronavirus has raised eyebrows after he began coughing during a Fox News segment.
Frank Wucinski and his three-year-old daughter Annabelle appeared on America's Newsroom on Friday morning to discuss the family's experience in quarantine in San Diego.
"Physically we're great," he said in the segment.
Fox News just interviewed a Pennsylvania man who went through the coronavirus quarantine process — but he couldn't stop coughing during the interview 😳 pic.twitter.com/kzoIYQM8x6
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 28, 2020
His father-in-law had died in China from COVID-19, the official name of the disease caused by the coronavirus. The family was flown back to California during the height of the outbreak, and they were promptly placed in isolation because of their contact with Wucinski's father-in-law. When Annabelle coughed in front of medical staff, the Center for Disease Control suggested the family stay in isolation for longer. Read more...
More about Viral Videos, Coronavirus, Culture, and Web Culture
The rumors were true: the FCC wants to fine major carriers for their approach to selling phone location data. The regulator has proposed a total of $208 million in fines against the top four US carriers for reportedly selling access to location info...
With a 6.45-inch display, there’s so much screen real estate that it bends at a 120-degree angle on both sides. Read more...
More about Mashable Video, Vivo, Bezel Less Phone, Hole Less Phones, and Vivo Apex 2020
Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Every horror story begins with a pause, a held breath, when nobody is quite sure what to make of the unfolding situation. When’s a good time to panic? My favorites put off answering the question for as long as they can.
For the last few days I’ve been thinking about Severance, the prizewinning 2018 novel by the author Ling Ma, because of its premise: a fungal fever in China spreads across the globe and kills millions, decimating society. It feels ominous that the situation with the novel coronavirus is even passingly similar, even though Ma’s book is set in an alternate past.
In 2011, just after Occupy Wall Street, people start to get sick in Shenzhen, and it spreads from there across the world. By the time it hits New York, people...
