Technology

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said he expects longtime rival Apple will “open up” iOS and its platforms more in the future as a result of contention with developers and growing antitrust concern from regulators, according to an interview with Ek published on Tuesday by Bloomberg. Spotify filed a regulatory complaint with the European Union last year, calling Apple’s mandatory 30 percent App Store cut a “tax” that stifles innovation and unfairly benefits Apple against its competitors. Spotify also cited Apple’s control over system-level features like its Siri voice assistant, which at the time did not work with Spotify but naturally did integrate with Apple Music. The complaint resulted in an ongoing EU antitrust investigation. “Long term, we do expect Apple to open up.” While the two companies hav...

Google’s Stadia Controller will finally work wirelessly with laptops and desktops starting this week, the company announced today (via Engadget). Since the cloud gaming service’s November launch, the only way you could use your controller wirelessly was if you were playing Stadia on your TV with a Chromecast Ultra. You still can’t use the Stadia Controller wirelessly with an Android phone, though, and it’s not clear when that functionality might arrive. When used wirelessly, the Stadia controller connects to Google’s servers over Wi-Fi instead of connecting to the device in front of you over Bluetooth, like most other gaming controllers. Google says this helps the controller “deliver precise controls.” If you want to connect your Stadia controller wirelessly, you can follow Google’s suppor...

:Slack’s mobile apps have always valiantly tried to replicate the desktop and web experience with a single home screen and a reliance on swipe-based navigation and cumbersome menus. But a new update the company is rolling out on its Android beta channel is introducing a “simpler, more organized” Slack with major visual and user interface changes. The update’s biggest new feature is the navigation bar at the bottom that now lets you easily jump to various sections of the app without having to swipe, tap a tiny icon, or scan a menu of sometimes hard-to-read text. The bar includes a home screen for laying out all of your channels, and from there, you can swipe right to access other workspaces or left to go back to the last channel you were looking at. Next to the home tab is now a dedicated D...

Lenovo’s first gaming phone, the Lenovo Legion, has leaked in a series of promotional videos showing off the device. A “trusted” anonymous source provided the unreleased material, in addition to some new specs, to XDA Developers. There’s no guarantee that these videos will reflect the product’s final design, but they offer an interesting look at some features we may have to look forward to. Per XDA, the videos indicate that the phone will feature fast 90W wired charging (a slogan claims “30 minutes to 100%”) thanks to a beastly 5,000mAh dual-cell battery. We’re also looking at a USB-C charging port, a SIM card tray, and a data port (but no headphone jack) on the bottom; an additional USB-C on the side; speakers in the top and bottom bezel; and a microphone hole on the top. The back of the ...

If your region is under stay-at-home guidelines, it’s best to avoid using ride-share apps like Uber and Lyft. But not everyone has that option. And with both companies having suspended shared rides and carpooling during the pandemic as a safety precaution, some people who need rides are finding themselves left without more affordable, reduced-fare ways of getting to their destination. Lyft is trying to offer up one solution by expanding its “wait and save” ride option to cover “most” riders in the United States and Canada. The name says it all: if you’re willing to wait a longer-than-normal amount of time to be picked up, you’ll save on the cost of your trip. Drivers make their standard rate no matter what. “More riders than ever will see Wait and Save as an option in their Lyft app alongs...

NBC’s The Blacklist is another show whose producers and writers are finding intuitive ways to end the season while on-set production has come to a halt amid the coronavirus pandemic. The show’s seventh season finale will air as a half-live-action, half animated special next week. The animation will be comic book-style, according to Variety. Based on the artwork above, it looks like the episode might be visually similar to movies like Sin City, which used similar art styles. The animated component will be added to incorporate the live-action scenes that have already been filmed, Variety reports, with lead actors James Spader and Megan Boone recording audio from their individual homes. Everyone’s work on the episode will be carried out remotely. The animation style evokes Frank Miller’s Sin ...

NASA is working with Tom Cruise to film the first movie shot in space, according to NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. The details of the project aren’t clear, but Bridenstine says the film will take place aboard the International Space Station. We don’t know yet how Cruise will be participating in the adventure, but he’s well-known for performing increasingly impressive stunts in his recent films, including clutching the side of an Airbus A400 as it takes off in 2015’s Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation. It’s hard to think of a more difficult stunt to pull than making a feature film in space. News of a possible collaboration between Cruise and NASA was first reported by Deadline. The report said that Cruise was working with SpaceX to shoot the film, though neither NASA nor SpaceX have co...

A worker at Amazon’s Staten Island, New York, fulfillment center has died of COVID-19, the company confirmed. Workers at the facility, called JFK8, have been calling for greater safety precautions since early March. While Amazon has made changes, the number of workers diagnosed with the virus continues to climb. According to alerts viewed by The Verge, at least 29 workers have fallen ill. Managers notified several workers at JFK8 of the death yesterday. Amazon says the employee was last on site on April 5th and was placed on quarantine after he was confirmed to have COVID-19 on April 11th. “We are deeply saddened by the loss of an associate at our site in Staten Island, NY,” an Amazon spokesperson said. “His family and loved ones are in our thoughts, and we are supporting his fellow collea...

Airbnb is laying off around a quarter of its employees today, or about 1,900 people. The company has been struggling over the last couple months as stay-home orders led to mass cancellations of bookings and as future bookings look likely to return very slowly as the United States and other countries carefully lift restrictions. Airbnb currently has 7,500 employees. The virus has led to a steep drop in revenue for Airbnb. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky says 2020 revenue will be half of what the company brought in during 2019. “Airbnb’s business has been hit hard,” he writes in a note emailed to employees. The Information, which first reported the layoffs, says the cuts are supposed to save the company between $400 million to $500 million per year. An Airbnb spokesperson directed us to Chesky’s not...

Disney was at the top of the world at the end of 2019: a record-breaking year at the box office, the launch of Disney Plus, and a release of the biggest movie in history. Now, just five months into 2020, Disney is in for a bumpy ride. “While the COVID-19 pandemic has had an appreciable financial impact on a number of our businesses, we are confident in our ability to withstand this disruption and emerge from it in a strong position,” CEO Bob Chapek said in a press release. “Disney has repeatedly shown that it is exceptionally resilient, bolstered by the quality of our storytelling and the strong affinity consumers have for our brands, which is evident in the extraordinary response to Disney Plus since its launch last November.” Disney generated a higher revenue than expected, coming in at ...

WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann is suing investor SoftBank for scrapping a $3 billion stock buyout agreement. The New York Times reports that Neumann accused SoftBank of breaching its contract and “secretly taking actions to undermine” the agreement, which SoftBank abandoned last month. He’s looking to merge the case with a similar suit by WeWork’s board in April, but SoftBank has called those claims a “desperate and misguided attempt” to rewrite the deal’s history. SoftBank agreed to bail out The We Company last year while writing off billions of dollars on an investment due to WeWork’s unprofitable and ill-advised operations. The deal included a plan to buy $3 billion worth of stock from Neumann and other shareholders. But in April, SoftBank backed out, saying that WeWork hadn’t met the c...

Christian Reber, founder of the beloved productivity application Wunderlist, announced today that he’s got a new company called Superlist in the works. Its goal, as stated by its very pretty landing page, is to enable “supercharged productivity for teams of the future.” It’s not yet clear what Superlist will do — aside from being a productivity tool, per Reber’s thread on Twitter — but it makes sense that he’s returning to familiar ground for his next venture. Today’s Protocol newsletter had a bit more detail: some of Superlist’s team will come from Microsoft, and Reber is thinking of the app as “an investment into the next generation of Wunderlist.” Superlist will be more than just a todo app, but never as bloated as the project management software you loathe to use. Slick, fast, and hype...