Technology

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that he’s reopening his company’s car factory in California in violation of a local shelter-in-place order, as The Verge previously reported. Musk said he’ll be on the company’s production line this week. “If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me,” he wrote. Musk spent parts of the weekend railing against the order, which was put in place in mid-March by Alameda County officials in order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. The order restricted all but “essential businesses” from performing anything other than the most minimal operations, like processing payroll. After initially fighting the order, Tesla shut down the factory on March 23rd. Musk has argued that the statewide stay-at-home order put in place by governor Gavin Newsom left room for Tesla...

No one knows exactly what the Democratic National Convention will look like this year, with social distancing restrictions still in place in Wisconsin and across the country. It’s already been moved to the end of the summer, and top Democrats like Nancy Pelosi have suggested holding it in a gigantic empty stadium to curb the spread of disease. But Monday, Lis Smith, former advisor for the Pete Buttigieg campaign, touted a new idea that I’m quite fond of: replicating Travis Scott’s April Fortnite performance but with a gigantic hologram of Joe Biden. “Stefan Smith, who did digital work for Pete Buttigieg, cited the other day how Travis Scott’s takeover of Fortnite… that was a really creative way to think about it,” Lis Smith said Monday. “If we could do that with Joe Biden — Joe Biden...

Motorola is rolling out the Android 10 update for the foldable Razr and adding a host of new features for the external “Quick View” display and some new visual customization options for icons. The bulk of the changes are in new features for the external display, which can now display Google Maps directions even when the phone is closed, do video calls using the main camera (which is still not great, but is better than the internal one), and respond to text messages with a full keyboard (instead of the canned responses it had previously offered). There are also better music controls and new swiping gestures to quickly access your favorite contacts or the camera. Also new in the update are better customization options with new themes — a feature Motorola added to its software with the recent...

To say that Quibi is off to a disastrous start would be an understatement. Co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg attributes “everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus,” he told The New York Times in a new interview published on Monday. But Katzenberg is hopeful that rolling out new features will help, including giving subscribers the ability to share content from Quibi shows on social media. When Quibi launched at the beginning of April, the app blocked sharing to platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit. Now, Katzenberg and the team are working on ways to ensure Quibi is “less walled off from the internet.” People will eventually be able to share Quibi content on social media, but there’s no estimated time frame for when that feature will become available. (Disclosure: ...

Sunday morning, I woke up feeling productive and decided to pull the hose out and give the house a good wash, cleaning the gunk and grime that littered the front porch and blasting away dirt stains that had changed the color of the roof. It was relaxing, particularly because I was not doing this hard labor myself — I was in front of my gaming PC, playing a demo of PowerWash Simulator by FuturLab. The game has you assume the role of a professional with your own power washing business. You’ll need to clean an entire exterior of a home, from the front door to the porch. Even the garage door and its accompanying driveway need a good washing. Attention to detail is key There’s no winning or losing. You receive feedback from the client when the job is done, a before and after picture to show the...

PepsiCo, the insanely big multinational food and beverage giant, wants in on the direct-to-consumer action: they’ve bought the (incredibly good) domain Snacks.com and the (fine) domain PantryShop.com to sell you things faster. As Fast Company reported, the company saw a 10 percent bump in its earnings last month because people were stocking up during the pandemic. Concurrently, however, the situation has meant a lot of shopping is now moving entirely online — and PepsiCo has realized there’s more money to be made with fewer market disruptions if they’re just selling directly to the public. Snacks.com will feature more than 100 Frito-Lay products, while PantryShop.com will offer meal kit-esque bundles of snacks — think Gatorade and Sun Chips. As FastCompany reports, items purchased on these...

Tesla began making cars again at its Fremont, California plant over the weekend despite an ongoing battle with local officials about whether it should remain closed during the pandemic, The Verge has learned. The company called back some of its workers and has completed around 200 Model Y and Model 3 vehicles, according to two current employees who spoke to The Verge on the condition of anonymity. This all happened as CEO Elon Musk threatened on Twitter to move Tesla’s operations out of state and sued Alameda County over its stay-home order. Tesla is also now calling back workers that were placed on furlough last month, according to an email viewed by The Verge. The company had previously only told certain workers to report back to the factory later this week, as was reported by Business I...

Doug Monahan, the creator of the failed iBackPack crowdfunding project, is settling with the Federal Trade Commission and has agreed to never crowdfund again. The agreement, filed today, comes after more than a year of back-and-forth between the agency and Monahan, who served as his own lawyer in the case. The FTC sued Monahan over claims that he misused the nearly $800,000 he raised on Kickstarter and Indiegogo to bring the backpacks to life and instead spent the money on personal expenses and bitcoin. The settlement expresses that Monahan doesn’t agree to any wrongdoing. iBackPack launched on Indiegogo in 2015 and again on Kickstarter in 2016. Monahan billed it as a bag of the future that would “revolutionize” wearers’ lives. They’d be able to charge all their gadgets from the backpack, ...

For obvious reasons, the interest in working out at home has never been higher. Whether you’re doing yoga with Adriene, working your way through Ring Fit Adventure, or scouring Amazon for a spin bike that’s in stock, you’ve probably been looking for ways to keep active without leaving the house. Me? I’ve been using VR. And a new product called Supernatural is one of the more compelling at-home workouts I’ve tried so far. To use a reductive comparison, Supernatural is sort of like Beat Saber meets Peloton. You use motion controllers to bash blocks coming towards you in time to the music, like countless other VR rhythm games. But Supernatural also uses curated workouts, choreographed patterns, and human instructors who are with you all the way, encouraging you to push harder and explaining h...

Lenovo has released the Duet Chromebook, a 10-inch 2-in-1 that runs Chrome OS. The base model, which has 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and a MediaTek processor, costs $279, but only the $299 model, which has 128GB of storage, appears to be listed at Best Buy right now. That’s an attractive price, especially when other highly anticipated Chromebook releases this year have asked over $700. We have the Duet’s size (10 inches is pretty small) and underpowered processor to thank for that. But Chrome OS doesn’t require as much horse power as Windows — and it’s possible we’ll see a battery-life benefit from the weaker chip as well. I’ve spent a few days with the new Chromebook, and it’s been fun to use so far. The device is easy to flip between laptop and tablet use — it ships with a kickstand, ke...

Twitter is introducing new labels to mark tweets with COVID-19-related misinformation, the company announced today. The labels should make it easier tell if a tweet has a misleading or unverified claim and point you toward resources about COVID-19. The new labels will link to a page curated by Twitter or to an “external trusted source” that can provide information about the claims made in the tweet, according to Twitter. Here’s what the new labels look like: Image: Twitter Twitter may also apply a warning onto a tweet if it conflicts with COVID-19 guidance from public health experts. That warning will cover the tweet with a message from Twitter, and to see the actual tweet, you’ll need to specifically click into it. Here is what that warning looks like: Image: Twitter The company also laid...

Microsoft is launching a dedicated new app, Family Safety, designed for managing kids’ screen time and app usage. The app is available now in preview form on both Android and iOS, the company announced in a blog post on Monday. To access it, you have to fill out a form here and specify how many family members you intend to have on the same preview account. The app was first announced at the end of March as an extension of the company’s existing family group features for Windows and Xbox. Microsoft’s take on the digital safety trend has plenty of familiar features. Parents can use it to get reports on screen time and app usage, set time limits and content controls, and turn on location sharing. The app has a pretty sleek design, with a dark green color scheme along with detailed and color-c...