Trending Stories from theverge.com
In a letter to Tim Cook, Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lee "strongly urge" Apple to reconsider refusal to provide a witness for upcoming hearing on app stores
Verizon is recalling 2.5M Ellipsis Jetpack mobile hotspots, ~1.3M of which are in use, after investigation found batteries could overheat and cause fire hazards
Facebook says it is adding contextual labels to posts by Pages like "satire page" and "public official" to reduce confusion about their origin
T-Mobile launches its 5G home internet service, costing $60-$65/month with no data caps, hardware rental fees, or annual contracts
Twitch expands its misconduct policy to ban users who harass members of its community, even when that harassment takes place off Twitch
Gadget trade-in site Gazelle says it changed its mind and will continue to offer its online trade-in program, after briefly ending its program in February
TikTok says creators will soon be able to add automatic captions to videos in US English and Japanese with support for other languages "in the coming months"
YouTube says that 18 out of every 10K views in Q4 2020 were on videos that violate its policies, down from 72 out of every 10K views in Q4 2017
Yahoo Answers, one of the internet's most storied Q&A sites, will be shut down on May 4 and the company says a comprehensive archive will not be provided
Supreme Court sides with Google in Oracle’s API copyright case
Apple complies with Russia's demand to feature Russian apps on iOS, with an easily dismissible prompt at setup, containing a list of some local App Store apps
Code in Spotify's latest app release reveals new details of its Car Thing project, including a color screen and various mounts for attaching to a car dashboard
A federal judge has ruled that a class action lawsuit against Apple for selling MacBooks with defective display cables can proceed
Discord debuts Stage Channels, a Clubhouse-like way of broadcasting audio to a room, available on all platforms; only Community servers can make Stage Channels
Sponsor of Arizona's HB2005 bill, which allows alternative payment systems in app stores, says it won't get a hearing this year after being pulled last week
Facebook shorted video creators thousands of dollars in ad revenue
Amazon is becoming the face American inequality
Reddit · 1 week ago
Netflix says it wants to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2022, by reducing electricity use by 45%, hiring local crews, and offsetting the rest
PayPal will let US users pay with Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin starting today
Broadcasting George Floyd’s death violates Twitch rules, even during a murder trial
Spotify is launching its own Clubhouse competitor
Google announces upgrades to Maps, including indoor AR directions, a new directions interface including eco-friendly driving routes, and new weather map layers
A modder made a way to mine bitcoin on a Game Boy (very, very slowly)
Boston Dynamics unveils Stretch, a robot that it says can move up to 800 boxes an hour in warehouses
OpenAI says GPT-3 is being used in more than 300 apps, by "tens of thousands" of developers, and produces 4.5B words per day
Today I learned BMW charges extra for a ‘don’t blind other people’ software update
Q&A with NYT's Kevin Roose on his new book Futureproof, how robotic process automation might replace some white-collar jobs, Microsoft Excel TikTok, and more
Volkswagen offers new details about its adorable ID Buzz electric microbus
Hulu’s Android TV app finally gets bumped from 720p to 1080p, at least on some devices
Amazon is waging an increasingly aggressive PR strategy, picking fights with Democratic politicians such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders on Twitter
Techmeme · 2 weeks ago
Amazon keeps trying to troll US Congress members in perplexing new PR strategy
Reddit · 2 weeks ago
House tech hearings revealed unorganized lawmakers who conflated issues of competition, privacy, and moderation and were unable to move past personal grievances
Rep. Jamaal Bowman introduces new bill to classify broadband as a utility
Chrissy Teigen, who had 13.7M Twitter followers and was once called "unofficial mayor of Twitter" by the company, quits the platform after years of harassment
Five-year-old Fairphone 2 getting updated to almost three-year-old Android 9
Rocket League is coming to Android and iOS with a spinoff called Sideswipe
Arizona Senate skips vote on bill HB2005, which would have forced Apple and Google to let apps in their app stores use alternative in-app payment systems
Interviews with 14 current and former Medium employees portray a dysfunctional company; Medium started 2021 with 700K paid subs, on track for $35M+ in revenue
Disney+ will cost $1 more per month starting March 26, increasing to $7.99/month or $80/year, marking the first price hike for the service
Mark Zuckerberg proposes limited 230 reforms ahead of congressional hearing – Under new proposal, platforms would be required to build systems for removing illegal content
Amazon says it's opening a new game studio in Montreal which will create original AAA games and that the studio will be led by the creators of Rainbow Six Siege
Techmeme · 3 weeks ago