Technology

President Donald Trump said he’s taking antimalarial medication hydroxychloroquine and zinc because he believes the drugs could prevent COVID-19. “Here’s my evidence. I get a lot of positive calls about it,” he said today in a White House roundtable with restaurant executives. Trump said he’s been taking the drugs every day for a week and a half and that he has not had any COVID-19 symptoms. People close to the president, including one of Trump’s valets and Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary, recently tested positive for the virus. Side effects include damage to part of the eye, life-threatening heart effects, and muscular weakness There is still no evidence that taking hydroxychloroquine can prevent someone from contracting or getting sick from the coronavirus. It’s a possibility...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Monday he is “worried” that other countries may be trying to imitate China’s approach to regulating the internet. “Just to be blunt about it, I think there is a model coming out of countries like China that tend to have very different values than Western countries that are more democratic,” Zuckerberg said during an hourlong video conversation Monday with European Union Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton. The Facebook CEO added that it was up to Western democratic countries to have a clear framework for data privacy. “We have a joint responsibility to help develop this,” he said. It was the latest instance of Zuckerberg citing the risks of a Chinese model of the internet spreading around the world. He made similar comments last year, saying it was import...

HTC appears to be close to releasing new wireless earbuds called the U Ear, and they look very similar to Apple’s AirPods. Photos of the earbuds leaked through regulatory agency filings in the US and Taiwan, which were spotted by Android Police. The U Ear have a very similar design to Apple’s AirPods, with glossy plastic, a rounded earbud tip, and a stem that extends down your ear. There seems to be two big differences: the charging pins are located on the front of the earbuds, instead of the end tips, and the earbuds are all black, unlike the AirPods, which only come in white. Though it’s always possible HTC could release other color options. HTC’s charging case takes inspiration from Apple’s earbuds, too. Both look like a compact and polished cube-shaped box. However, there’s a big diffe...

Podcast Addict, an Android podcast app with millions of users, was suspended over the weekend because it lists COVID-19 content. The app’s creator, Xavier Guillemane, tells The Verge that on Saturday, Google suspended and removed the ads from his nine-year-old app because it violated a new policy for developers that requires any app with a reference to COVID-19 to be “published, commissioned, or authorized by official government entities or public health organizations.” Guillemane’s app catalogs publicly available podcast RSS feeds, which he doesn’t control. The content includes news shows, talk shows, and a variety of programming that mentions the pandemic and virus. He says Google told him he’d need to address this problem and then republish his app under a different name to be reinstate...

Square employees will be able to work from home even after the COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders end, Jack Dorsey told workers. The indefinite extension of the company’s remote work policy echoes a similar announcement from Twitter last week. Dorsey is CEO of both companies. “We want employees to be able to work where they feel most creative and productive,” a company spokesperson told The Verge. “Moving forward, Squares will be able to work from home permanently, even once offices begin to reopen. Over the past several weeks, we’ve learned a lot about what it takes for people to effectively perform roles outside of an office, and we will continue to learn as we go.” The new policy will apply to teams that are able to do their jobs remotely. Those that need to come into the office, like sec...

Apple’s upcoming iOS 14 could have a new augmented reality app that can read Apple-branded QR codes and might have new features baked into the Find My app, according iOS 14 files obtained by former TechCrunch reporter Josh Constine. That new AR app, called Gobi in these files, could be able to read both more traditional-looking QR codes and an interesting new circular design for QR codes, reports Constine. Constine also shared images of what those QR codes may look like: Image: Josh Constine “Files in Gobi included QRs that opened the Mac Pro and Apple Watch websites, the Star Wars: Rogue One movie in the iTunes Store, and one that opens the Starbucks Card sign-up flow,” says Constine. Code in the files also apparently suggests the Gobi app could use location data to let customers claim di...

Instagram is launching a new Guides feature today that lets creators curate content together in a single location, with the first ones set to focus on wellness content in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the first Guides include one from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention called “Mental Health and COVID-19,” which collects the group’s content into a single, easy-to-find place. Heads Together, a mental health group, has similar Guides that collect Instagram posts reminding viewers to be kind to each other, practice self care, and talk about how they feel. Starting today, you can check out Guides – a new way to discover recommendations on Instagram. We know people are struggling due to COVID-19, so the first Guides focus on wellness content from respected organizat...

One of HBO Max’s big advantages is WarnerMedia’s massive catalog of classic movies, and today, it’s unveiling the full list of titles. Between Warner Bros. classics, Criterion Collection titles, and licensed classics from third-party studios (including Studio Ghibli), HBO Max will play home to hundreds of beloved movies, ranging from The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, and Citizen Kane to Point Blank and King Kong. Not all of the classics landing on Max will be available day one, but most will, according to the company. HBO Max launches on May 27th for $14.99 a month. HBO Max is set to launch with more than 700 movies. Some of those movies will be Warner Bros. blockbusters, like films from the DC Universe (The Dark Knight, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Aquaman, Shazam to name a few...

Comcast is introducing new data plans for its Xfinity Mobile customers that add free 5G service, the company announced on Monday. 5G access will be included on Xfinity’s new unlimited and gig-based plans, and existing customers will have the option to opt in to a 5G plan. Xfinity Mobile is an MVNO that relies on Verizon’s network for service; its 5G plans will similarly rely on Verizon’s own 5G network. Verizon’s network only offers support for mmWave 5G, which has faster speeds than the sub-6GHz version of 5G but with less range. Other carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile offer a combination of mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G depending on the area. Xfinity Mobile currently has two 5G phones on its network (the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus and Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra), and the company says additional de...

Adobe is releasing a new update to Premiere Pro this week that includes hardware acceleration for Nvidia GPUs. The 14.2 update includes GPU-accelerated encoding using Nvidia’s hardware encoder for the company’s Quadro and GeForce graphics cards, with the promise that video editors will be able to export high-resolution videos up to 5 times faster than by just using the CPU. The changes also apply to Adobe’s Media Encoder, Affect Effects, and Audition apps. Premiere Pro has long supported Nvidia’s CUDA cores for accelerating video effects and even improving export times, but this new update optimizes the app to use the separate hardware encoder on Nvidia’s GPUs. It will improve export times for H.264 or H.265 / HEVC codecs. “These improvements are the result of years of collaboration betwee...

After months of trying, the FBI successfully broke into iPhones belonging to the gunman responsible for a deadly shooting at Pensacola Naval Air Station in December 2019, and it now claims he had associations with terrorist organization al-Qaeda. Investigators managed to do so without Apple’s help, but Attorney General William Barr and FBI director Christopher Wray both voiced strong frustration with the iPhone maker at a press conference on Monday morning. Both officials say that encryption on the gunman’s devices severely hampered the investigation. “Thanks to the great work of the FBI — and no thanks to Apple — we were able to unlock Alshamrani’s phones,” said Barr, who lamented the months and “large sums of tax-payer dollars” it took to get into devices of Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, wh...

Logitech is unveiling a new version of its Circle security camera today called the Circle View. Spec-wise, it’s nearly identical to its predecessor, the Circle 2, but the camera’s housing has been completely redesigned and it now relies on Apple’s smart home system to function. This generation of the security camera is a lot more straightforward, which means less flexibility overall, but it’s something that should be easier to just plug in and start using. The Circle View records 1080p video at a 180-degree field of view, and it can capture infrared footage at night up to 15 feet away. Those key specs are the same as the Circle 2, but Logitech says the camera’s night vision should be clearer this time around. (Weirdly enough, the Circle View drops support for 5GHz Wi-Fi; it’s 2.4GHz only.)...