Technology

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said Monday that the platform is taking steps to “better support the black community” and will review how it recommends content and deals with harassment and verification. Mosseri didn’t provide specifics about what the Facebook-owned photo sharing app will do, but he laid out some key areas where Instagram has heard complaints from black users about bias. “The irony that we’re a platform that stands for elevating Black voices, but at the same time Black people are often harassed, afraid of being ‘shadowbanned’, and disagree with many content takedowns, is not lost on me,” Mosseri said in a statement. Mosseri said Instagram is “hearing concern” about whether it suppresses black voices and if it treats everyone equally in its products and policies. “This is a mome...

Ferrari has released a six minute video called Le Grand Rendez-Vous, a modern spin on C’était un Rendez-vous, the classic 1976 single-take short film that features a driver recklessly tearing through the dawn-lit streets of Paris. While there was zero chance Ferrari was going to recreate that rogue run through the City of Lights, the homage — which takes place in Monaco and features F1 star Charles Leclerc — is already being criticized for its soullessness. The thing that really kills it, though, is how smooth the footage is. This may seem counterintuitive, as stabilized footage is typically a cinematic hallmark. And the original C’était un Rendez-vous was filmed by a gyroscopically stabilized camera mounted to the front of the Mercedes-Benz that was used to make the mad dash through Paris...

Lego’s Mindstorms Robot Inventor kit is a new set that lets kids build and design robots. You get 949 pieces as part of the kit, which includes a color sensor, distance sensor, four motors, and Lego’s Bluetooth-enabled “Intelligent Hub.” It’s designed as a way to teach children basic STEM skills, including programming, and it’s the first new entry in the Mindstorms lineup in seven years. The kit comes with instructions for five robots. Blast looks like the most impressive of the bunch, and Brothers Brick notes that it uses every hub, motor, and sensor that comes with the kit. It’s able to sense its environment and fire darts, Lego says. There’s also Charlie, a smaller robot that’s more about dancing and giving out high-fives, and Tricky, a “sporty” robot capable of playing basketball, socc...

Apple’s back-to-school promotion for 2020 is an especially good one if you’re in need of some headphones. At Apple’s education store, students and educators can get a free set of second-generation AirPods when purchasing the $899 MacBook Air or $479 iPad Air (both prices listed reflect the educational discount). What’s also cool is that Apple is giving you the option to upgrade to the AirPods with the wireless charging case for an extra $40, or all the way up to AirPods Pro for $90 out of pocket. The iPad Air and MacBook Air are the entry point for the deal, and of course, more expensive items are eligible to get you the free headphones, like the MacBook Pro of any size or either size of the 2020 iPad Pro. There are exclusions for this deal, namely the Mac Mini desktop and any iPad less th...

The Food and Drug Administration is withdrawing emergency authorization for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as treatments for COVID-19, the agency announced today. Recent clinical trials showed that the drugs were not effective against the disease. The medications are still FDA-approved for diseases like malaria and lupus, so they remain on the market. Because they are approved for other diseases, doctors could technically still prescribe them for COVID-19 patients under off-label use. Clinical trials focusing on the drugs can also continue. This decision, though, indicates that the FDA is no longer confident that the drug would benefit COVID-19 patients. “We now believe that the suggested dosing regimens for [chloroquine] and [hydroxychloroquine] … are unlikely to produce an anti...

I don’t think of streaming services as heroes, mostly because streaming services are not real people, and most of them are owned by multibillion-dollar conglomerates with no interest in saving the world. But AT&T and WarnerMedia want to change that by fashioning their new platform HBO Max as a superhero team. A new comic book launched by DC Comics in partnership with WarnerMedia, To The Max will “feature stories about ordinary people achieving their maximum potential when they transform into extraordinary superheroes with the help of another new character, ‘Max the dog.’” An important note: WarnerMedia phrases the new comic book as a partnership in the press release, but WarnerMedia owns DC Comics and AT&T owns WarnerMedia, making this less a “partnership” and more a perfect exampl...

Niantic has announced more information about this year’s Pokémon Go Fest, which is shifting to an online event because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tickets go on sale today for $14.99 through an in-app purchase. In support of the Black Lives Matter movement, Niantic says it will be donating half of the proceeds to black AR creators and half to US NPOs working on rebuilding local communities, with a minimum donation of $5 million. While in-person Pokémon Go events have often been difficult to get tickets for, there’s no limitation on the number of attendees for this year’s online fest, and tickets cover the whole weekend rather than a single day. The event will run over the weekend of July 25th and 26th from 10AM to 8PM wherever you are; day 1 features an exclusive Special Research story, rota...

Cameo has a new way for fans to interact with celebrities: Zoom calls. The company launched a video call option over the weekend, called Cameo Live, where people can, instead of a prerecorded shout-out, book a 10-minute Zoom call with their favorite talent. The prices are wildly more expensive than the usual Cameo videos, with stars like Jeremy Piven charging $15,000 for 10 minutes. (He charges $400 for a video shoutout.) Skateboarder Tony Hawk charges $1,000 for a Zoom call, and football player Brett Favre charges $5,000. Cameo says up to four additional friends or family can join the call, and people have up to 24 hours before the call to cancel. If the celebrity doesn’t show up, they’ll get a refund. Fifty stars have signed on to the feature for launch. Prices range from hundreds to tho...

Apple will begin selling an SSD kit for the Mac Pro that allows buyers to add more storage to the high-end desktop computer. The kit, which Apple tells The Verge should be available later today, includes options for up to 8TB of storage. That storage will replace the machine’s existing SSD, so this kit is really designed for buyers who originally configured the Mac Pro with a smaller SSD option (it can go as low as 256GB), rather than people who already picked a larger SSD and still want to add more capacity. Mac Pro owners could already expand their storage by purchasing third-party components, but that expansion had to use a PCIe slot, rather than replacing the SSD directly. This is the first time Apple has offered an official kit for upgrading the machine’s SSD. It’s also a little surpr...

After testing a beta version in India, WhatsApp has launched in-app payments in Brazil, the company announced in a blog post on Monday (via TechCrunch). The payments are enabled through Facebook Pay, which parent company Facebook said last year it would be rolling out to Instagram, Messenger, Facebook, and eventually WhatsApp. “Payments on WhatsApp are beginning to roll out to people across Brazil beginning today and we look forward to bringing it to everyone as we go forward,” the company said in the post. WhatsApp says its digital payments are an open model that will allow it to add more partners in the future. There will be no fees for consumers to use the payments service, but merchants will pay a processing fee to receive payments. Users need to link a credit or debit card to their Wh...

With the world now in a seemingly permanent state of crisis, you may not be in the market for a new email address. And why would you be? Even in the best of times, getting a new email address comes with all the hassle of changing your phone number, without the minor upgrades that a new phone brings. Changing your email address feels like a pointless struggle in a world where the existing options, however unremarkable, work basically fine. Like changing banks, really. Or moving into a new apartment in the same building. In any case, I’m sorry to report that it’s time to consider getting a new email address. The reason is Hey, a new email service from Basecamp. It’s a genuinely original take on messaging that feels like the first interesting thing to happen to email since clever apps like Ma...

Sony showed off its PlayStation 5 console design last week and briefly teased the OS, now Sony’s VP of UX design at PlayStation, Matt MacLaurin, is promising an overhauled user interface for the PS5. Describing the new software interface as a “very interesting evolution of the OS,” MacLaurin says it’s a “100 percent overhaul of the PS4 UI and some very different new concepts” in a LinkedIn thread. “As it’s UI it’s practical first, but it’s a whole new visual language and a complete rearchitecting of the user interface,” explains MacLaurin. The new PS5 OS is “more subtle than flashy, but no pixel is untouched,” he adds. MacLaurin says the team will show off the new OS soon, after Sony briefly teased part of it during its PS5 games stream. The PS5 OS was shown as part of several Easter eggs ...