Technology

Verily Life Sciences, the Alphabet-owned healthcare company, is suspending employee spot bonuses, as reported by Business Insider. The money will be funneled instead to fund diversity and inclusion initiatives. The move frustrated workers, many of whom have been working grueling hours on the company’s COVID-19 testing projects. In a letter to management obtained by Business Insider, employees said the decision implied these initiatives are not a priority. They wrote: “The use of spot bonuses to subsidize social justice programs such as Healthy@Work for HBCUs [Historically Black colleges and universities], clinical trial recruitment of underrepresented populations, and an internal Product Inclusion group implies that these efforts are charity causes not worthy of their own investment.” Beca...

Facebook has shown off a new proof-of-concept virtual reality headset, and it has a completely different design than most other VR devices on the market today. Instead of a bulky contraption that covers up the top half of your face and has to be strapped to your head, this proof-of-concept headset looks kind of like a pair of large sunglasses that can sit comfortably on your ears. Yet Facebook is billing this new device as not a pair of augmented reality glasses, as common conceptions of AR devices go, but a legitimate VR product. They’re very thin, with a display thickness of less than 9mm, and Facebook claims they have a field of view that’s “comparable to today’s consumer VR products.” Here’s a top-down view: Image: Facebook The proof-of-concept glasses aren’t just thin for looks, thoug...

If you play Forza Horizon or Forza Motorsport, you have some freedom to personalize cars in the game, even adding your own custom designs. One popular example: players have used the feature to recreate the General Lee, the 1969 Dodge Charger from The Dukes of Hazzard, in almost every single Forza game since at least 2007. But the General Lee famously includes the controversial confederate flag on its back — and Microsoft has just announced it will ban players who use that symbol (among others) in the game. In a statement posted on Twitter last Friday, Microsoft updated its enforcement guidelines to have a zero-tolerance policy for any player using the confederate flag or other symbols that represent “notorious iconography,” including Nazi imagery and the rising sun, which can be a symbol o...

Earlier this year, Apple reportedly canceled several contracts for games that were set to launch on Arcade, the company’s game subscription service known for its library of high-quality titles that don’t have ads or in-app purchases. It allegedly canceled each of them for the same reason: Apple wants new games that will keep players coming back to the service. A report from Bloomberg notes that an Arcade executive told some developers who were on contract that Apple is seeking out games that have a high level of “engagement,” as it was put by one of the publication’s sources. For developers wondering where Apple’s bar for engagement currently lies, the report mentions that an Apple Arcade representative cited Grindstone, Capybara Games’ charming, multilevel puzzler, as a model example. Acc...

Employees at Cards Against Humanity (CAH) are unionizing. In a statement posted today on Twitter, workers said that they have sent a letter to CAH’s owners to voluntarily recognize their union under CMRJB Workers United. “The time has come for us to follow in the footsteps of our comrades at The Onion, Gawker, and Kickstarter,” a statement from CAH Workers United reads. Cards Against Humanity employees have come forward over the past few weeks to talk about a long office culture of racist and sexist behavior, as well as sexual assault allegations against co-founder Max Temkin. The Verge’s sister site Polygon spoke with dozens of current and former employees; many shared stories of how Black writers’ concerns and ideas were often ignored, people of color faced regular microagressions, and m...

NASA is pushing back the launch of it next Mars rover, called Perseverance, by a week, due to a problem with the rocket that’s supposed to send the spacecraft to the Red Planet. The rover is now slated to launch no earlier than July 30th out of Cape Canaveral, Florida. That puts the launch of Perseverance perilously close to the end of its limited launch window, which originally spanned from July 17th to August 11th. NASA and other space agencies only have a small window of time every two years to send spacecraft to Mars, when the Red Planet comes closest to Earth on its orbit around the Sun. NASA has already pushed back the launch a few times before, to July 20th and then to July 22nd, due to issues with the ground equipment that supports the launch. If NASA misses the chance to launch Pe...

6 items in this article 1 item on sale! Photo: HBO Even though most movie theaters across the country are currently scheduled to be open in July, that doesn’t mean that all moviegoers are willing to brave the risk. If you aren’t quite ready to sit in an enclosed space with strangers who may frequently remove their masks to eat popcorn and drink from two-gallon jugs of soda, there is an alternative: the backyard movie theater. This spring, my son and I decided to use our time during quarantine to put together an outdoor theater at our home in New Jersey. As COO of Vox, my background is in tech, and he is going to college for audio engineering, so we had a pretty good idea of what we were looking for. We just needed to find the right equipment. After a few days of research, we had everything...

Discord on Tuesday announced it’s making a number of changes to expand its service beyond the gaming community. The company says the change is one its users have requested as Discord has become more of a tool for “day-to-day communication.” “Games are what brought many of you on the platform, and we’ll always be grateful for that,” reads a blog post by Discord CEO Jason Citron and CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy. “As time passed, a lot of you realized, and vocalized, that you simply wanted a place designed to hang out and talk in the comfort of your own communities and friends. You wanted a place to have genuine conversations and spend quality time with people, whether catching up, learning something, or sharing ideas.” “Your place to talk” The company has launched a redesigned website with the ...

YouTube TV has announced that it’ll be raising its monthly price from $50 per month to $64.99 as the company starts to offer eight of ViacomCBS’s channels, which are available today: BET, CMT, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Network, TV Land, and VH1. The new price takes effect today for any new subscribers, while existing customers should see it on their next billing cycle (either on or after July 30th). The $15 increase in price marks the latest price hike for YouTube TV, which was $35 per month when it originally launched. The price was first raised to $40 per month in early 2018 as it added Turner networks (including TBS, TNT, CNN, Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, truTV, and Turner Classic Movies). Costs went up again in 2019 to $50 per month when YouTube TV added Discovery’s l...

On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission officially designated telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE as threats to national security. “With today’s Orders, and based on the overwhelming weight of evidence, the Bureau has designated Huawei and ZTE as national security risks to America’s communications networks — and to our 5G future,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement Tuesday. “Both companies have close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and China’s military apparatus, and both companies are broadly subject to Chinese law obligating them to cooperate with the country’s intelligence services.” By designating Huawei and ZTE as threats to US national security, the FCC bars telecommunications providers from using government subsidy money through the $8.3 billion Universa...

French game studio Dontnod loves the supernatural. The team’s breakout hit was the original Life is Strange, which starred a teenage girl who had the ability to rewind time. The sequel featured a young boy with telekinetic powers, and in 2018, the studio dabbled in roleplaying games with Vampyr, which put players in the role of a bloodthirsty denizen of the night. But around 2016, the team decided they wanted to create something a little more grounded. They eventually landed on the idea for Twin Mirror, an adventure game about a former investigative journalist named Sam who ventures back to his hometown following the death of his best friend. Naturally, he gets wrapped up in a much bigger mystery involving the entire town. Sam does have some video game-esque abilities — including a “mind p...

It’s one thing to read about the massive dinosaurs that used to roam the Earth; it’s quite another to imagine how they’d look stomping around your neighborhood. Google can help, though. The company has added 10 augmented reality dinosaurs to Google search, meaning that next time you’re looking for vital statistics on a Brachiosaurus or Pteranodon, you’ll also be able to get an idea of how these creatures looked in real life. Google started adding augmented reality animals to searches last year at Google I/O and has since introduced a veritable menagerie, covering cats, scorpions, bears, tigers, and many more. Now, a herd of dinosaurs has also been added to this list, each of which uses graphics developed for the Jurassic World Alive augmented reality mobile game. [embedded content] The ful...