Technology

The US is considering a ban on Chinese social media apps like the popular video-sharing platform TikTok, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News on Monday. “We are taking this very seriously. We are certainly looking at it,” Pompeo said. “With respect to Chinese apps on peoples’ cellphones, the United States will get this one right too.” Over the last few years, US lawmakers have grown increasingly concerned over TikTok’s handling of user data and the relationship between its parent company — the Beijing-based ByteDance — and the Chinese government. Lawmakers allege that TikTok could be pressured into handing over data or other intelligence to the Chinese Communist Party. A TikTok spokesperson responded to Pompeo’s remarks Tuesday in a statement, writing “TikTok is led by an American ...

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has tested positive for COVID-19, he announced today. He is 65 years old. Over the weekend, he attended a US Independence Day event with US Ambassador Todd Chapman. Neither Bolsonaro nor Chapman wore a mask at the event. Like US President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro has downplayed the risks and extent of the COIVD-19 pandemic and said that the danger was over-exaggerated by the media. Brazil now has the second-worst outbreak in the world, behind the United States. To date, there have been more than 1.6 million cases in the country and more than 65,000 people have died of the disease. Stores and businesses are fully reopened in cities around the country, and masks aren’t required. CNN Brasil reported Monday that Bolsonaro had a fever, which his office denied, ...

Samsung has announced a new 10W wireless charger that tops up your phone’s battery while sterilizing the device using UV-C light. The company says the ultraviolet light can kill 99 percent of bacteria and germs, though marketing materials don’t mention whether it destroys the novel coronavirus responsible for the current global pandemic. News of the charger first emerged last week from Samsung Thailand, but now the company has announced the product globally. Right now, we’ve seen pages for the product in Samsung’s German, Romanian, Singaporean, and Hong Kong stores. In Germany, it’s being sold for €58.38 (around $65). The announcement comes at a time when people are particularly worried about the spread of COVID-19, and products that claim to clean your phone and stop the virus are on the ...

Last week, the worlds of technology and journalism were transfixed by a conflict that played out across across Instagram, Twitter, and the upstart audio-only social network Clubhouse. One reason it generated so much attention — you can read thorough accounts from varying perspectives at Vice, on Quora, or this venture capitalist’s Substack — is that you can approach the drama from so many angles. But despite the best efforts of everyone here, I still think the most clarifying way to understand the story of Steph Korey, Taylor Lorenz, Balaji Srinivasan, venture capital, and Clubhouse has mostly gone unspoken. And those who fail to see it, I think, could be in for a rude awakening of their own. Let me start with a brief recounting of events — and acknowledge that I played a role in some of t...

Photos allegedly showing Samsung’s unannounced Galaxy Note 20 Ultra have been shared by YouTuber Jimmy Is Promo. The pictures could be the first real-life glimpse we’ve seen of the new Note series. Samsung tends to announce new Galaxy Note phones in August each year. Although we can’t verify the images, they show a very similar device to one that was leaked earlier this month on Samsung’s own website. They also include a view of the front of the phone for the first time, showing a centered hole-punch notch at the top of the display. We can also see what looks to be the Note 20 Ultra’s volume rocker and power button located on the right side of the device, similar to the S20. On last year’s Note 10 they were positioned to the left of the screen. Jimmy Is Promo also claims that the phone’s S...

Uber is launching an on-demand grocery delivery service in Latin America and Canada, the company announced on Tuesday. It’s Uber’s first major move into the competitive world of online grocery shopping since acquiring Cornershop, a leading online grocery provider in Chile, Mexico, Peru, Canada, Brazil, and Colombia. Grocery delivery will be available through both Uber’s main app and its Uber Eats app. Customers will see food delivery available from local grocery stores and will be able to receive their orders “in as little as one to two hours,” according to Uber Eats head of product Daniel Danker. The service is available starting today in 19 cities across Latin America and Canada. Later this month, it will be available in the US, Danker said. And when it launches, it will be included in U...

TikTok says it will stop offering its social video app in Hong Kong after the region adopted a new national security law granting expanded powers to the mainland Chinese government. “In light of recent events, we’ve decided to stop operations of the TikTok app in Hong Kong,” a spokesperson tells Axios. Global tech companies operating in Hong Kong have expressed concern that the new law could force them to comply with China’s draconian censorship standards and possibly send user data to the mainland. Google, Facebook, and Twitter have already stopped processing requests for user data from the Hong Kong government. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a major Chinese internet company. But it has been at pains to differentiate the Western app from its parent and Douyin, the Chinese version of the pl...

Newly independent Xiaomi spin-off Poco has announced its latest smartphone, further broadening the brand beyond the Poco F1’s initial pitch of high specs for low prices. Like the X2, the M2 Pro is more of a mid-range affair: it’s basically a tweaked version of Xiaomi’s global Redmi Note 9 Pro that’s aimed at the Indian market. No-one will mistake the M2 Pro’s spec sheet for that of a flagship, but it could be a compelling option for customers who prioritize battery life. There’s a 5,000mAh battery with a 33W fast charger included in the box; Poco says it should provide a 50-percent charge in 30 minutes. Combined with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G processor, I’d expect this phone to last a pretty long time. The M2 Pro has a 6.67-inch 1080p LCD with a 16-megapixel hole-punch selfie camera. Th...

Google, Facebook, and Twitter are pausing the processing of data requests from the Hong Kong government as they review a new security law that went into effect on July 1st. Google put its pause into place as soon as the law took effect last Wednesday. “[W]hen the law took effect, we paused production on any new data requests from Hong Kong authorities,” a Google spokesperson told The Verge in an email, “and we’ll continue to review the details of the new law,” the spokesperson said. Twitter also halted its handling of government requests as of July 1st, with Facebook announcing its pause on Monday, The New York Times reported. Social media platforms typically produce private user information in response to valid court orders, depending on the legal process in various countries. But under t...

Google is rolling out a dark mode for its Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps on Android starting today. The tech giant says all Android users will gain access to the dark theme within the next two weeks. Users can activate the dark theme on Docs, Sheets, or Slides by going to the respective app’s settings. Google also says that the apps will automatically use your system theme, meaning if your device already has dark theme enabled, you will not have to enable it manually in these apps. Last year, Google promised to deliver dark mode to all of its first-party apps. It’s slowly added dark mode to a number of apps in the year since, including the Google app, Gmail, and Google Calendar, though some apps such as Google Maps do not have dark mode on iOS. In the last several years, dark mode has been ...

Google Plus, the company’s failed social network, is officially gone as of today. After Google Plus personal accounts were shut down last year, Google announced that it would be replacing the social network for enterprise users with Google Currents. Currents is generally available starting today, and the Google Plus Android and iOS apps have been rebranded to Google Currents to reflect the change (via 9to5Google). Currents, given its enterprise focus, is designed to help people within organizations communicate with each other. Users can post and comment on discussions and can see content in a News Feed-like “home stream,” which can be ranked by relevance or chronologically, according to Google. G Suite admins can also moderate discussions if needed. If you want to get an idea of what the r...

Leading up to Gmail’s 15th birthday last year, Google added a lot of productivity and machine learning tools to its email service. (It may also have been trying to make up for the disappearance of its Inbox email app, but that’s an argument for another day.) Additions included a way for Gmail to write email subject lines for you and schedule an email to send at a later time. It can be a little confusing to navigate some of Gmail’s features. In this tutorial, we’re going to focus on Gmail’s auto-completion tools Smart Reply and Smart Compose, which are designed to save time. Letting a machine help write emails and subject lines for you can feel a bit unusual, but if you’re open to at least trying it out for yourself, here are the ways to automate your Gmail responses. Enabling Smart Reply a...