theverge--2020-07-10--How to stop Facebook’s iOS bug from crashing Spotify, Pinterest, Tinder, and other apps

Facebook ’ s iOS SDK is causing a number of popular iPhone apps to crash today , including Spotify , Pinterest , and Tinder .
You don ’ t even need to have the Facebook app installed for other apps to crash , as developers have implemented the Facebook login through their own apps .
This is the second time the issue has occurred in recent months , but there is a workaround available to get the apps back up and running before Facebook fixes the problems .
Lockdown Apps , a firewall and privacy protection app on iOS , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things like Facebook ’ s iOS SDK from loading in third-party apps .
It will allow apps like Spotify , Pinterest , and Tinder to launch during a Facebook iOS SDK outage , and it ’ s completely free to use .
Here ’ s how to get the app set up : • Hit cancel when it asks you to sign up or log in • Tap the “ firewall on ” button at the top of the app • You ’ ll need to agree to set up a VPN profile @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you can toggle the VPN / firewall from within Lockdown Apps • Skip the trial and apps will now work freely This is a good temporary workaround for the Facebook iOS SDK issues , and it should work with every app that is crashing today .
If you no longer need Lockdown Apps after Facebook resolves the problems , you can simply remove the app , and it will also remove the VPN profile .

Facebook’s iOS SDK is causing a number of popular iPhone apps to crash today, including Spotify, Pinterest, and Tinder. You don’t even need to have the Facebook app installed for other apps to crash, as developers have implemented the Facebook login through their own apps. This is the second time the issue has occurred in recent months, but there is a workaround available to get the apps back up and running before Facebook fixes the problems.
Lockdown Apps, a firewall and privacy protection app on iOS, uses a VPN to block trackers and things like Facebook’s iOS SDK from loading in third-party apps. It will allow apps like Spotify, Pinterest, and Tinder to launch during a Facebook iOS SDK outage, and it’s completely free to use. Here’s how to get the app set up:
Download Lockdown Apps from the App Store
Launch Lockdown Apps, and follow the on-screen tutorial
Hit cancel when it asks you to sign up or log in
Tap the “firewall on” button at the top of the app
You’ll need to agree to set up a VPN profile on your iPhone
Once set up, you can toggle the VPN / firewall from within Lockdown Apps
Skip the trial and apps will now work freely


theverge--2020-07-10--Spotify, Pinterest, Tinder, and many other iOS apps are crashing again due to a Facebook issue

A number of popular apps and services including Spotify , Pinterest , and Tinder are currently broken on iOS devices , with early analysis suggesting Facebook is to blame .
There are widespread reports on social media of apps crashing whenever they ’ re launched on iPhones and iPads , and corresponding outage spikes on DownDetector.com .
The apps can be launched if the device is offline , which is useful in some cases ( if you have lots of music saved on Spotify , for example ) but will completely break their functionality in others .
Although the exact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yet confirmed , early reports suggest the problem is caused by Facebook ’ s software development kit , or SDK , which many apps use to manage user logins .
Users don ’ t have to be using Facebook to log into an app for this to affect their software , and there are no reports of the same apps crashing on Android .
Facebook acknowledged on its developer platform this morning that its software was causing problems .
“ We are aware and investigating an increase in errors on the iOS SDK @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” said the firm .
In a GitHub thread posted around 7AM ET , numerous developers reported problems with their apps and blamed Facebook , too .
The annoyance from developers and users is justified considering this isn ’ t the first time the social media giant ’ s SDK has knocked out a large number of apps like this .
A near-identical problem occurred on May 6th and affected dozens of services for a good chunk of the day .
As app developer Guilherme Rambo told us at the time , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Facebook encourages developers to integrate its log-in services into their apps by offering them valuable insights about app usage and advertising in return .
“ Facebook really pushes developers into installing their SDK , likely because they want the very rich data they can collect on those app ’ s users , ” said Rambo in May .
“ The SDK is offered as a convenience for both developers and marketing teams , since it can also be used to track the conversions of ads run through Facebook.
” This means when there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s services , it affect a huge number of other apps , as it has today .
Every time a user opens an app using the SDK , it makes a call to Facebook ’ s servers in preparation to authenticate any logins .
( That ’ s why opening an app offline prevents the problem , although you can install an app that blocks these calls . )
We ’ ve reached out to Facebook for comment and will update this story if we hear more .

A number of popular apps and services including Spotify, Pinterest, and Tinder were inaccessible today on iOS devices due to a now-resolved issue involving Facebook log-ins.
There were widespread reports on social media of apps crashing whenever launched on iPhones and iPads, and corresponding outage spikes on DownDetector.com.
The cause of the outages seems to have been Facebook’s software development kit, or SDK, which many apps use to manage user logins. Users don’t have to be using Facebook to log into an app for this to affect their software (they don’t even have to have it installed), and there were no reports of the same apps crashing on Android.
Facebook acknowledged on its developer platform this morning that its software was causing problems. “We are aware and investigating an increase in errors on the iOS SDK which is causing some apps to crash,” said the firm. In a GitHub thread posted around 7AM ET, numerous developers reported problems with their apps and blamed Facebook, too.
By around 9.30AM ET, though, most users were reporting that the apps were working again, and by 10.30AM ET Facebook had marked the issue as “resolved.”
“Earlier today, a code change triggered crashes for some iOS apps using the Facebook SDK,” a company spokesperson told The Verge by email. “We identified the issue quickly and resolved it. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
The annoyance from developers and users was justified, though, considering that this isn’t the first time that Facebook’s SDK has knocked out a large number of apps. A near-identical problem occurred on May 6th and affected dozens of services for a good chunk of the day.
As app developer Guilherme Rambo told us at the time, the root of the issue is that Facebook encourages developers to integrate its log-in services into their apps by offering them valuable insights about app usage and advertising in return.
“Facebook really pushes developers into installing their SDK, likely because they want the very rich data they can collect on those app’s users,” said Rambo in May. “The SDK is offered as a convenience for both developers and marketing teams, since it can also be used to track the conversions of ads run through Facebook.”
This means when there’s an issue with Facebook’s services, it affect a huge number of other apps, as it has today. Every time a user opens an app using the SDK, it makes a call to Facebook’s servers in preparation to authenticate any logins. (That’s why opening an app offline prevents the problem, although you can install an app that blocks these calls.)


theverge--2020-07-10--Apple’s range of unannounced ARM-based MacBooks detailed in new report

Apple ’ s first Macs based on its own ARM-based silicon will include a new MacBook Air , as well as MacBook Pros with 13.3- , 14- , and 16-inch screen sizes , according to a new report from reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo .
The research note was reported by 9to5Mac and MacRumors .
Apple officially confirmed the long-standing rumors of a switch to its own processors at WWDC last month , which will see it move away from the Intel chips it ’ s been using for over a decade .
Reiterating his prediction from last month , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ARM-based 13.3-inch MacBook Pro to enter mass production in the fourth quarter of this year , but he now also says that it could be joined by an ARM-based MacBook Air .
Kuo says the new Air could start shipping at the end of this year or the first quarter of next year .
The 14 and 16-inch laptops could feature new Mini-LED displays Then , in the second or third quarter of next year Kuo says we ’ ll see new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros running on Apple Silicon .
Kuo @ @ @ @ @ @ @ screen sizes will be equipped with new Mini-LED displays , offering far better contrast than the MacBook lineup ’ s existing LCD displays .
The 14-inch machine is expected to have a similar size overall to Apple ’ s existing 13-inch MacBook Pro , but with smaller bezels to allow for its bigger screen .
MacRumors notes that there ’ s no mention of an ARM-based iMac in Kuo ’ s latest report , which he previously said would be coming in the first quarter of next year .
An Intel-based refresh of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ predicted for later this year .
Bloomberg ’ s Mark Gurman has also previously predicted a new 16-inch MacBook Pro coming later this year .
Officially , all Apple has confirmed so far is that it will release its first Mac powered by its own chips later this year , but it ’ s yet to reveal exactly which model this will be .
Developer kits produced by the company have seen the new silicon installed into Mac mini enclosures , but this hardware is meant primarily to allow developers to get their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s new ARM-based Macs .
Apple says it expects the transition to its own chips to take a total of two years .

Apple’s first Macs based on its own ARM-based silicon will include a new MacBook Air, as well as MacBook Pros with 13.3-, 14-, and 16-inch screen sizes, according to a new report from reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. The research note was reported by 9to5Mac and MacRumors. Apple officially confirmed the long-standing rumors of a switch to its own processors at WWDC last month, which will see it move away from the Intel chips it’s been using for over a decade.
Reiterating his prediction from last month, Kuo says that he expects a new ARM-based 13.3-inch MacBook Pro to enter mass production in the fourth quarter of this year, but he now also says that it could be joined by an ARM-based MacBook Air. Kuo says the new Air could start shipping at the end of this year or the first quarter of next year.
The 14 and 16-inch laptops could feature new Mini-LED displays
Then, in the second or third quarter of next year Kuo says we’ll see new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros running on Apple Silicon. Kuo has previously predicted that MacBooks with these screen sizes will be equipped with new Mini-LED displays, offering far better contrast than the MacBook lineup’s existing LCD displays. The 14-inch machine is expected to have a similar size overall to Apple’s existing 13-inch MacBook Pro, but with smaller bezels to allow for its bigger screen.
MacRumors notes that there’s no mention of an ARM-based iMac in Kuo’s latest report, which he previously said would be coming in the first quarter of next year. An Intel-based refresh of Apple’s all-in-one computer was also predicted for later this year. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has also previously predicted a new 16-inch MacBook Pro coming later this year.


theverge--2020-07-10--PC shipments surge as the world gets serious about working from home

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has made it more difficult to buy a new laptop recently , and we ’ re now starting to see how PC shipments have been affected .
While PC shipments declined sharply during the impact to manufacturing in Q1 , both IDC and Gartner report that shipments have now grown in Q2 despite an economic slowdown .
Remote working and schooling is undoubtedly fueling an increase in demand for PCs .
Businesses and students have had to adapt to working and learning remotely , and demand for laptops has increased as a result .
IDC says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year , while Gartner places it at a more modest 2.8 percent .
Gartner does not include Chromebooks in its PC shipments , but IDC includes them in its numbers .
It ’ s clear Chromebooks are helping drive overall PC demand .
IDC even highlights an “ intense Chromebook demand from both consumers and institutions ” in Canada , and “ record demand from stay-at-home orders ” for PCs in general in the US .
PC shipment numbers don ’ t reflect actual sales , though .
These are simply shipments to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the laptops to consumers .
Sales will likely be higher , as consumers buy up existing inventory .
We ’ ve seen long delivery times and stock issues for laptops at some retailers in the US , and NPD reported a mid-40 percent year-over-year increase in unit sales of Windows laptops and Chromebooks in May .
Microsoft also reported an increase in demand for PCs during its latest earnings back in April , and a big overall jump in Windows usage .
“ The PC is back ” joked Jared Spataro , head @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with The Verge at the beginning of the pandemic .
“ People are recognizing… trying to use an iPad to work from home is not gon na work .
That PC form factor is huge and you can see that data in everything from supply chain and what ’ s happening with devices.
” Microsoft is also adjusting its Windows 10X plans thanks to the pandemic .
The 10X operating system variant will now be arriving on traditional single-screen laptop devices first .
Microsoft had originally planned to introduce Windows 10X on dual-screen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ company ’ s priorities .

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has made it more difficult to buy a new laptop recently, and we’re now starting to see how PC shipments have been affected. While PC shipments declined sharply during the impact to manufacturing in Q1, both IDC and Gartner report that shipments have now grown in Q2 despite an economic slowdown.
Remote working and schooling is undoubtedly fueling an increase in demand for PCs. Businesses and students have had to adapt to working and learning remotely, and demand for laptops has increased as a result. IDC says PC shipments have increased 11.2 percent year-over year, while Gartner places it at a more modest 2.8 percent.
Gartner does not include Chromebooks in its PC shipments, but IDC includes them in its numbers. It’s clear Chromebooks are helping drive overall PC demand. IDC even highlights an “intense Chromebook demand from both consumers and institutions” in Canada, and “record demand from stay-at-home orders” for PCs in general in the US.
PC shipment numbers don’t reflect actual sales, though. These are simply shipments to retailers like Best Buy who then sell the laptops to consumers. Sales will likely be higher, as consumers buy up existing inventory. We’ve seen long delivery times and stock issues for laptops at some retailers in the US, and NPD reported a mid-40 percent year-over-year increase in unit sales of Windows laptops and Chromebooks in May.
Related Microsoft thinks coronavirus will forever change the way we work and learn
Microsoft also reported an increase in demand for PCs during its latest earnings back in April, and a big overall jump in Windows usage. “The PC is back” joked Jared Spataro, head of Microsoft 365, in an interview with The Verge at the beginning of the pandemic. “People are recognizing… trying to use an iPad to work from home is not gonna work. That PC form factor is huge and you can see that data in everything from supply chain and what’s happening with devices.”


theverge--2020-07-10--What a damning civil rights audit missed about Facebook

The Interface is a daily column and newsletter about the intersection of social media and democracy .
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After two years of work , an independent civil rights audit of Facebook is now complete .
The company had been under pressure from Congress and civil rights groups to undertake such an effort for some time , but the audit was voluntary on Facebook ’ s part .
And while sometimes these outside consulting projects approach the client with kid gloves , lead auditor Laura Murphy and her team at the law firm Relman Colfax delivered an 89-page assessment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suppression , hate speech , algorithmic bias , and content moderation that is measured but often unsparing .
Auditors took particular exception to Facebook ’ s decisions to let stand recent posts from President Trump that , in their view , violated the company ’ s stated policies around voter suppression and incitements to violence .
“ Facebook ’ s constrained reading of its policies was both astounding and deeply troubling for the precedents it seemed to set , ” the report stated .
In their introductory remarks , Murphy and her team @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of steps Facebook has taken to better support civil rights : overhauling its ad platform to prohibit various forms of discrimination ; expanding policies against voter suppression and Census information ; building a team to study and eliminate bias in artificial intelligence ; and agreeing to hire an employee at the vice president level to focus on civil rights work .
It ’ s clear from the audit that Facebook has taken civil rights much more seriously over the past two years than it ever has before , in ways that can be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s also clear that the authors believe that a series of recent policy decisions has significantly undermined progress to date .
The audit was delivered in the midst of an advertiser boycott spearheaded by civil rights groups in connection with the same Trump posts that upset auditors .
Representatives of some of those groups met virtually with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg this week , and sharply criticized them afterward .
Here are Kurt Wagner and Naomi Nix in Bloomberg : The groups have 10 demands that I ’ m @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about them to me is how small most of them are .
This campaign is not calling for Facebook to adopt a new business model , spin off its acquisitions , or end all algorithmic promotion of groups .
Instead it calls for that civil rights executive Facebook plans to hire to be given a C-level title rather than vice president ; refund advertisers when their ads are found running next to hate speech ; and to submit to further audits like the one that wrapped up this week .
The biggest ask @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which the company has dug in its heels against doing .
Otherwise the demands reads like a list of requests that Facebook is already moving toward directionally .
That ’ s why I trip a little bit over the way these groups are excoriating Facebook here .
The level of outrage feels disconnected from the demands .
Perhaps this is because they are practicing realpolitik — Rashad Robinson , who has helped to organize the ad boycott as the head of civil rights group Color of Change , suggests as much in an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York Times .
Robinson says : But from the auditors to the organizers , the refrain is the same : take down those awful Trump posts !
The Trump posts are at the heart of everything .
The outsiders disagree with a content moderation decision that the CEO made , and everything else is downstream of that .
There is another way of thinking about this problem .
Facebook is so big that two of its properties , which collectively have hundreds of millions of users between them , were exempted from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deemed outside the scope of the two-year project , as were Facebook ’ s civil rights problems outside the United States .
It ’ s true that addressing the auditors ’ complaints about the core Facebook app will have civil-rights benefits to Instagram , WhatsApp , and the larger world .
But it also seems notable that even a multi-year audit resulting in a report that runs to nearly 100 pages can ’ t even attempt to consider the problem in a holistic way .
As in so many other things , Facebook @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get your arms all the way around .
When the reckoning over social media platforms began in 2017 , it was often said that Facebook ’ s proposed solution for every problem identified was “ more Facebook ” : more employees , more policies , more processes , more product , more features .
It seems notable that the civil rights audit , for all its harsh judgments about recent decisions by the company , adopts the same point of view .
The audit calls for the hiring of more people with civil-rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It suggests various new policies and procedures be put in place to identify civil-rights risks and mitigate harms .
It proposes trainings and seminars to educate the workforce and a civil rights expert in the room whenever a controversial decision about content is being made .
The auditors ’ view of Facebook is one in which the company looks more or less the same as it does today , except with an extra person in every meeting saying “ civil rights.
” That would surely do some good .
But it would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ less consequential , or reduce the chance that a future content moderation decision or product problem stirs up the present level of outrage .
The company could implement all of the auditors ’ suggestions and nearly every dilemma would still come down to the decision of one person overseeing the communications of 1.73 billion people each day .
When the internet was smaller and less centralized , we worried less about the awful posts on individual forums .
They didn ’ t travel as far , or land as hard .
The forums @ @ @ @ @ @ @ every internet user , and so they could not recruit new users via a machine-learning system that guessed , accurately , which users might be sympathetic to anti-vaccine views , or white supremacist views , or QAnon .
Facebook didn ’ t start any of those movements , but an open question is the degree to which it could be accelerating them .
And that is not a question about policy or enforcement so much as it is about the platform ’ s underlying dynamics and its staggering size .
Nor it is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of civil rights will likely be empowered to ask , no matter how relevant the answer is to the task at hand .
The good news is that the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee is empowered to ask that question , and plans to .
Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to appear before it , along with his peers at Amazon , Google , and Apple , on July 27th .
If the root cause of our troubles with Facebook is to be addressed , it will not be with an audit , however well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Today in news that could affect public perception of the big tech platforms .
Trending down : Black YouTube creators are questioning why the company booted them off the YouTube Kids app .
In recent years , YouTube has come under intense pressure for how it handles kids content , but some creators say their channels were removed unfairly .
( Mark Bergen and Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg ) Rhode Island has opened up movie theaters , restaurants , museums , and daycare centers — not because Governor Gina Raimondo is ignoring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but because she is actually controlling for them .
Raimondo has rolled out an impressive system of testing , tracing , and isolation across the state — and it ’ s working .
Since April , coronavirus-related deaths , hospitalizations , and infections have plummeted in American ’ s smallest state , according to Politico .
Nearly a quarter of the state ’ s population has been tested to date .
Raimondo also enlisted the help of US tech companies to help stop the spread of the disease .
Salesforce built a contact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has helped tp monitor peoples ’ symptoms .
It ’ s worth pointing out that many of these initiatives could have — and should have — been aided by the federal government .
“ If the Trump administration in January had started to stockpile [ personal protective equipment ] , get serious about testing , put together a plan , we would have far fewer deaths , far fewer people out of work , far fewer sick people , ” Raimondo said .
Luckily for those in Rhode Island , she took on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Schiffer ⭐ Facebook , Google , and Twitter may face a choice between bending to Hong Kong ’ s new internet law or leaving the region altogether .
The tech giants already suspended requests for data from the Hong Kong government after the law was announced Monday night .
Here are Jamie Tarabay and Iain Marlow from Bloomberg : While living without Facebook , Instagram and YouTube is a mundane reality in mainland China , those apps are beloved in Hong Kong .
Now US tech giants must contend with an extreme , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they have to leave if they refuse to comply with the draconian internet law ?
( Karen Chiu / Abacus ) Google abandoned plans to offer a major new cloud service in China due in part to concerns over geopolitical tensions and the pandemic .
The news underlines the challenges for US tech giants trying to make it in that market .
( Ryan Gallagher and Mark Bergen / Bloomberg ) ByteDance is considering changing TikTok ’ s corporate structure as it comes under increasing scrutiny in some of its biggest markets like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is discussing creating a new management board for TikTok or establishing a headquarters for the app outside of China .
( Liza Lin and Shan Li / The Wall Street Journal ) Here ’ s what it would take to ban TikTok in the US , as the Trump administration has lightly threatened to do .
The Commerce Department would have to put TikTok on the “ entity list ” that limits its commercial ties to US companies , which could force Apple and Google to take TikTok off the app stores .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ TikTok took down more than 49 million videos from users across the globe for content violations during the second half of 2019 .
The news comes as part of the company ’ s first-ever transparency report , which it released Thursday morning .
( Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge ) Facebook shut down pages and accounts linked to Roger Stone and Proud Boys , a far-right group Facebook banned under its hate policies .
The Trump associate ’ s personal Instagram account was shut down as part of the takedown .
( Donie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Katelyn Polantz / CNN ) Amazon will start displaying the business names and addresses of third-party sellers on its US marketplace .
The move is meant to create more transparency in Amazon ’ s US market and make it easier to contact sellers of counterfeit product .
( Eugene Kim / Business Insider ) But : Amazon hasn ’ t always been great at removing posts of products that are supposed to be banned by its own rules .
Unlike Facebook , Twitter , and YouTube , Amazon also won ’ t say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even whether the company has increased the size of that workforce in recent years .
( Annie Gilbertson / The Markup ) Reddit moderators say the company finally appears to be listening to their calls for help fighting hate and harassment on the platform .
The company ’ s recent move to crackdown on subreddits for hateful content came as a welcome surprise to those who ’ ve been advocating for such actions for years .
( Suhauna Hussain / Los Angeles Times ) Microsoft researcher Josh Benaloh is working on voting software @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in secret-ballot elections .
The technology , which relies on a new form of encryption , could allow ballots to be aggregated , tallied , and verified without the individual votes having to be decrypted .
( Sue Halpern / The New Yorker ) The UK and Australia launched a joint probe into the controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI .
The company claimed to have “ scraped ” more than 3 billion images from social media — which is now part of the regulators ’ investigation .
( Sam Shead / CNBC @ @ @ @ @ @ @ social media in India that it is Chinese-owned .
The misinformation started to spread after the Indian government banned 59 apps owned by Chinese firms last week .
( Pranav Dixit / BuzzFeed ) ⭐ Every major TikTok collective is pursuing a potential reality show .
And while the recent drama between Hype House and Sway House seems like a natural fit for TV , it ’ s unclear whether the industry will bite .
Here ’ s New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz : Microsoft launched “ Together Mode ” for Teams @ @ @ @ @ @ @ working on since the pandemic began .
It ’ s designed to create virtual live avatars of you and your colleagues to help people better engage with meetings .
( Tom Warren / The Verge ) WhatsApp Business is expanding the reach and use of QR codes to let customers easily connect with businesses on the platform .
It ’ s also giving businesses a series of stickers to kick off “ we ’ re open for business ” campaigns .
( Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch ) The leaders of the activist organization @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dispute centered on titles , credit , and equality .
Nandini Jammi said she ’ s leaving the organization because was not being treated as an equal by her cofounder , Matt Rivitz .
Sleeping Giants is , among other things , a vocal Facebook antagonist .
( Megha Rajagopalan / BuzzFeed ) The Zoom shirt is the breakout garment of quarantine season .
It ’ s a top , typically kept on the back of the computer chair or a hanger nearby , that you can pop on in the moments before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ / The New York Times ) Stuff to occupy you online during the quarantine .
Watch Baited .
Ziwe Fumudoh ’ s incredible series of interviews in which she tries to get mostly white people to say racist things is the funniest thing I have seen in months .
( The videos are somewhat haphazardly organized , but click a few of them here and YouTube will start showing you the rest in your feed . )
Read Big Technology .
The new newsletter from former BuzzFeed reporter Alex Kantrowitz just put out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , comments , questions , and civil rights violations : casey @ theverge.com and zoe @ theverge.com .

I.
After two years of work, an independent civil rights audit of Facebook is now complete. The company had been under pressure from Congress and civil rights groups to undertake such an effort for some time, but the audit was voluntary on Facebook’s part. And while sometimes these outside consulting projects approach the client with kid gloves, lead auditor Laura Murphy and her team at the law firm Relman Colfax delivered an 89-page assessment of Facebook’s policies around voter suppression, hate speech, algorithmic bias, and content moderation that is measured but often unsparing.
Auditors took particular exception to Facebook’s decisions to let stand recent posts from President Trump that, in their view, violated the company’s stated policies around voter suppression and incitements to violence. “Facebook’s constrained reading of its policies was both astounding and deeply troubling for the precedents it seemed to set,” the report stated.
In their introductory remarks, Murphy and her team write:
While the audit process has been meaningful, and has led to some significant improvements in the platform, we have also watched the company make painful decisions over the last nine months with real world consequences that are serious setbacks for civil rights. [...] Unfortunately, in our view Facebook’s approach to civil rights remains too reactive and piecemeal. Many in the civil rights community have become disheartened, frustrated and angry after years of engagement where they implored the company to do more to advance equality and fight discrimination, while also safeguarding free expression. As the final report is being issued, the frustration directed at Facebook from some quarters is at the highest level seen since the company was founded, and certainly since the Civil Rights Audit started in 2018.”
The audit also catalogs dozens of steps Facebook has taken to better support civil rights: overhauling its ad platform to prohibit various forms of discrimination; expanding policies against voter suppression and Census information; building a team to study and eliminate bias in artificial intelligence; and agreeing to hire an employee at the vice president level to focus on civil rights work.
It’s clear from the audit that Facebook has taken civil rights much more seriously over the past two years than it ever has before, in ways that can be observed throughout the company; it’s also clear that the authors believe that a series of recent policy decisions has significantly undermined progress to date.
The audit was delivered in the midst of an advertiser boycott spearheaded by civil rights groups in connection with the same Trump posts that upset auditors. Representatives of some of those groups met virtually with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg this week, and sharply criticized them afterward. Here are Kurt Wagner and Naomi Nix in Bloomberg:
“Facebook approached our meeting today like it was nothing more than a PR exercise,” Jessica González, co-chief executive officer of Free Press, a non-profit media advocacy group, said in a statement following the meeting. “I’m deeply disappointed that Facebook still refuses to hold itself accountable to its users, its advertisers and society at large.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg also met with members of the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League and Color of Change, who have organized a boycott of the company’s advertising products in seeking to prompt change. The executives didn’t “commit to a timeline” to remove disinformation and hate speech, Gonzalez said, but instead “delivered the same old talking points to try to placate us without meeting our demands.”
The groups have 10 demands that I’m aware of. What is most striking about them to me is how small most of them are. This campaign is not calling for Facebook to adopt a new business model, spin off its acquisitions, or end all algorithmic promotion of groups. Instead it calls for that civil rights executive Facebook plans to hire to be given a C-level title rather than vice president; refund advertisers when their ads are found running next to hate speech; and to submit to further audits like the one that wrapped up this week. The biggest ask is that Facebook fact-check political ads, which the company has dug in its heels against doing. Otherwise the demands reads like a list of requests that Facebook is already moving toward directionally.
That’s why I trip a little bit over the way these groups are excoriating Facebook here. The level of outrage feels disconnected from the demands. Perhaps this is because they are practicing realpolitik — Rashad Robinson, who has helped to organize the ad boycott as the head of civil rights group Color of Change, suggests as much in an interview with Charlie Warzel at the New York Times. Robinson says:
I believe we’re not going to win this fight through policies that Facebook puts in place. Yes, there are things Facebook could do tinkering on the margins. And, honestly, the only reason I’m at the table is because we don’t have the legislative and regulatory levers to pull right now. So I feel I need to be there. But the big fixes need those levers.
But from the auditors to the organizers, the refrain is the same: take down those awful Trump posts! The Trump posts are at the heart of everything. The outsiders disagree with a content moderation decision that the CEO made, and everything else is downstream of that.
There is another way of thinking about this problem.
II.
Facebook is so big that two of its properties, which collectively have hundreds of millions of users between them, were exempted from the audit altogether. Instagram and WhatsApp were deemed outside the scope of the two-year project, as were Facebook’s civil rights problems outside the United States.
It’s true that addressing the auditors’ complaints about the core Facebook app will have civil-rights benefits to Instagram, WhatsApp, and the larger world. But it also seems notable that even a multi-year audit resulting in a report that runs to nearly 100 pages can’t even attempt to consider the problem in a holistic way. As in so many other things, Facebook is a problem you can’t get your arms all the way around.
When the reckoning over social media platforms began in 2017, it was often said that Facebook’s proposed solution for every problem identified was “more Facebook”: more employees, more policies, more processes, more product, more features. It seems notable that the civil rights audit, for all its harsh judgments about recent decisions by the company, adopts the same point of view.
The audit calls for the hiring of more people with civil-rights expertise at every level of the company. It suggests various new policies and procedures be put in place to identify civil-rights risks and mitigate harms. It proposes trainings and seminars to educate the workforce and a civil rights expert in the room whenever a controversial decision about content is being made. The auditors’ view of Facebook is one in which the company looks more or less the same as it does today, except with an extra person in every meeting saying “civil rights.”
That would surely do some good. But it would not make Facebook’s decisions any less consequential, or reduce the chance that a future content moderation decision or product problem stirs up the present level of outrage. The company could implement all of the auditors’ suggestions and nearly every dilemma would still come down to the decision of one person overseeing the communications of 1.73 billion people each day.
When the internet was smaller and less centralized, we worried less about the awful posts on individual forums. They didn’t travel as far, or land as hard. The forums were not plugged into a directory of every internet user, and so they could not recruit new users via a machine-learning system that guessed, accurately, which users might be sympathetic to anti-vaccine views, or white supremacist views, or QAnon.
Facebook didn’t start any of those movements, but an open question is the degree to which it could be accelerating them. And that is not a question about policy or enforcement so much as it is about the platform’s underlying dynamics and its staggering size. Nor it is a question that the incoming vice president of civil rights will likely be empowered to ask, no matter how relevant the answer is to the task at hand.
The good news is that the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee is empowered to ask that question, and plans to. Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to appear before it, along with his peers at Amazon, Google, and Apple, on July 27th. If the root cause of our troubles with Facebook is to be addressed, it will not be with an audit, however well intentioned. It will be in Congress.
The Ratio
Today in news that could affect public perception of the big tech platforms.
🔽 Trending down: Black YouTube creators are questioning why the company booted them off the YouTube Kids app. In recent years, YouTube has come under intense pressure for how it handles kids content, but some creators say their channels were removed unfairly. (Mark Bergen and Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg)
Hotspots
Rhode Island has opened up movie theaters, restaurants, museums, and daycare centers — not because Governor Gina Raimondo is ignoring the risks of the novel coronavirus, but because she is actually controlling for them. Raimondo has rolled out an impressive system of testing, tracing, and isolation across the state — and it’s working.
Since April, coronavirus-related deaths, hospitalizations, and infections have plummeted in American’s smallest state, according to Politico. Nearly a quarter of the state’s population has been tested to date. Raimondo also enlisted the help of US tech companies to help stop the spread of the disease. Salesforce built a contact tracing app for free, and SurveyMonkey has helped tp monitor peoples’ symptoms.
It’s worth pointing out that many of these initiatives could have — and should have — been aided by the federal government. “If the Trump administration in January had started to stockpile [personal protective equipment], get serious about testing, put together a plan, we would have far fewer deaths, far fewer people out of work, far fewer sick people,” Raimondo said. Luckily for those in Rhode Island, she took on much of this instead. — Zoe Schiffer
Governing
⭐ Facebook, Google, and Twitter may face a choice between bending to Hong Kong’s new internet law or leaving the region altogether. The tech giants already suspended requests for data from the Hong Kong government after the law was announced Monday night. Here are Jamie Tarabay and Iain Marlow from Bloomberg:
“We are absolutely headed for a showdown, and there are no indications that the Hong Kong government is particularly prepared if Facebook or another company refuses a removal request,” said James Griffiths, a journalist and author of “The Great Firewall: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet.” “These companies appear to have realized that there is no compromise they could make that would truly satisfy Beijing or make them seem trustworthy. This could make them more willing to stand up against Chinese censorship in Hong Kong.”
While living without Facebook, Instagram and YouTube is a mundane reality in mainland China, those apps are beloved in Hong Kong. Now US tech giants must contend with an extreme, though not impossible, prospect: Will they have to leave if they refuse to comply with the draconian internet law? (Karen Chiu / Abacus)
Google abandoned plans to offer a major new cloud service in China due in part to concerns over geopolitical tensions and the pandemic. The news underlines the challenges for US tech giants trying to make it in that market. (Ryan Gallagher and Mark Bergen / Bloomberg)
ByteDance is considering changing TikTok’s corporate structure as it comes under increasing scrutiny in some of its biggest markets like India and the US. The company is discussing creating a new management board for TikTok or establishing a headquarters for the app outside of China. (Liza Lin and Shan Li / The Wall Street Journal)
Here’s what it would take to ban TikTok in the US, as the Trump administration has lightly threatened to do. The Commerce Department would have to put TikTok on the “entity list” that limits its commercial ties to US companies, which could force Apple and Google to take TikTok off the app stores. (Adi Robertson / The Verge)
TikTok took down more than 49 million videos from users across the globe for content violations during the second half of 2019. The news comes as part of the company’s first-ever transparency report, which it released Thursday morning. (Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge)
Facebook shut down pages and accounts linked to Roger Stone and Proud Boys, a far-right group Facebook banned under its hate policies. The Trump associate’s personal Instagram account was shut down as part of the takedown. (Donie O’Sullivan, Marshall Cohen and Katelyn Polantz / CNN)
Amazon will start displaying the business names and addresses of third-party sellers on its US marketplace. The move is meant to create more transparency in Amazon’s US market and make it easier to contact sellers of counterfeit product. (Eugene Kim / Business Insider)
But: Amazon hasn’t always been great at removing posts of products that are supposed to be banned by its own rules. Unlike Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, Amazon also won’t say how many people review content — or even whether the company has increased the size of that workforce in recent years. (Annie Gilbertson / The Markup)
Reddit moderators say the company finally appears to be listening to their calls for help fighting hate and harassment on the platform. The company’s recent move to crackdown on subreddits for hateful content came as a welcome surprise to those who’ve been advocating for such actions for years. (Suhauna Hussain / Los Angeles Times)
Microsoft researcher Josh Benaloh is working on voting software that could solve the problem of trust in secret-ballot elections. The technology, which relies on a new form of encryption, could allow ballots to be aggregated, tallied, and verified without the individual votes having to be decrypted. (Sue Halpern / The New Yorker)
Zoom is fighting rumors circulating on social media in India that it is Chinese-owned. The misinformation started to spread after the Indian government banned 59 apps owned by Chinese firms last week. (Pranav Dixit / BuzzFeed)
Industry
⭐ Every major TikTok collective is pursuing a potential reality show. And while the recent drama between Hype House and Sway House seems like a natural fit for TV, it’s unclear whether the industry will bite. Here’s New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz:
“We’d have a hard time selling a show about these TikTokers doing their videos for TikTok, or getting deals with advertisers,” Ms. Pizzi said. “We’re more interested in their lifestyle and how they interact with each other, what the relationships are like between the different people in the house.” Disparate management and representation is also an issue. In some houses, each influencer has their own separate management team and sometimes different agents. “Even just for a pitch it’s an enormous amount of legal work. You have to put every single person under contract,” Ms. Pizzi said.
Microsoft launched “Together Mode” for Teams — a project it’s been working on since the pandemic began. It’s designed to create virtual live avatars of you and your colleagues to help people better engage with meetings. (Tom Warren / The Verge)
WhatsApp Business is expanding the reach and use of QR codes to let customers easily connect with businesses on the platform. It’s also giving businesses a series of stickers to kick off “we’re open for business” campaigns. (Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch)
The leaders of the activist organization Sleeping Giants are splitting up over a dispute centered on titles, credit, and equality. Nandini Jammi said she’s leaving the organization because was not being treated as an equal by her cofounder, Matt Rivitz. Sleeping Giants is, among other things, a vocal Facebook antagonist. (Megha Rajagopalan / BuzzFeed)
The Zoom shirt is the breakout garment of quarantine season. It’s a top, typically kept on the back of the computer chair or a hanger nearby, that you can pop on in the moments before your video meeting. (Joel Stein / The New York Times)
Things to do
Stuff to occupy you online during the quarantine.
Watch Baited. Ziwe Fumudoh’s incredible series of interviews in which she tries to get mostly white people to say racist things is the funniest thing I have seen in months. (The videos are somewhat haphazardly organized, but click a few of them here and YouTube will start showing you the rest in your feed.)
Read Big Technology. The new newsletter from former BuzzFeed reporter Alex Kantrowitz just put out its first edition.
And finally...
Talk to us


theverge--2020-07-10--Images of Samsung’s bean-shaped earbuds leak again, including its charging case

Samsung ’ s upcoming bean-shaped earbuds have leaked again in a series of new images that also include its charging case for the first time .
The images were initially leaked by Evan Blass , before being republished by 9to5Google .
As well as giving us our best look yet at the earbuds ’ charging case and bronze color scheme , Blass also suggests that the earbuds will be called the Galaxy Buds Live , rather than the “ Galaxy Beans.
” Although these are set to be Samsung ’ s second pair of true wireless earbuds this year , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Galaxy Buds Plus .
What ’ s notable about the design of the Galaxy Buds Live is that they don ’ t appear to have a silicon ear tip that sits in your ear canal while you wear them .
Instead , there ’ s just a bean-shaped earbud that you wear in the outer part of your ear .
The charging case , which wasn ’ t included in a previous leak from WinFuture , is similar to what we ’ ve seen with other true wireless headphones .
There ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ear-tips to slot into , but otherwise we can see a typical set of charging pins .
A final note is that the images appear to show that the earbuds have a pair of microphones on the outside , as well as what 9to5Google calls a “ vent-like speaker.
” These microphones are likely to be used for taking calls , and may also play a part in the active-noise cancellation that Gizmodo UK has reported that these earbuds will support .
Alongside these images of Samsung ’ s upcoming true wireless earbuds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Galaxy Tab S7 .
The images , which were later republished by SamMobile , show a tablet with a similar design to the Galaxy Tab S6 .
It will reportedly be powered by a Snapdragon 865 Plus chipset , and will have an in-display fingerprint sensor .
We shouldn ’ t have long to wait to find out if these rumors are accurate .
The earbuds and tablet are expected to be unveiled in August , where they ’ ll likely appear alongside the Galaxy Note 20 .

Samsung’s upcoming bean-shaped earbuds have leaked again in a series of new images that also include its charging case for the first time. The images were initially leaked by Evan Blass, before being republished by 9to5Google. As well as giving us our best look yet at the earbuds’ charging case and bronze color scheme, Blass also suggests that the earbuds will be called the Galaxy Buds Live, rather than the “Galaxy Beans.”
Although these are set to be Samsung’s second pair of true wireless earbuds this year, they’re a significant departure from the Galaxy Buds Plus. What’s notable about the design of the Galaxy Buds Live is that they don’t appear to have a silicon ear tip that sits in your ear canal while you wear them. Instead, there’s just a bean-shaped earbud that you wear in the outer part of your ear.
The charging case, which wasn’t included in a previous leak from WinFuture, is similar to what we’ve seen with other true wireless headphones. There’s no recessed section for the non-existent ear-tips to slot into, but otherwise we can see a typical set of charging pins.
A final note is that the images appear to show that the earbuds have a pair of microphones on the outside, as well as what 9to5Google calls a “vent-like speaker.” These microphones are likely to be used for taking calls, and may also play a part in the active-noise cancellation that Gizmodo UK has reported that these earbuds will support.
Alongside these images of Samsung’s upcoming true wireless earbuds, Blass has also posted new images of the Galaxy Tab S7. The images, which were later republished by SamMobile, show a tablet with a similar design to the Galaxy Tab S6. It will reportedly be powered by a Snapdragon 865 Plus chipset, and will have an in-display fingerprint sensor.


theverge--2020-07-10--YouTube creator Jeffree Star dropped by makeup retailer Morphe

Makeup retailer Morphe has parted with YouTuber Jeffree Star , after weeks of public acrimony in the YouTube beauty community .
Star has been accused of using racist and offensive language , as well as manipulating other creators and people close to him .
“ Today we ’ ve made the decision to cease all commercial activity related to Jeffree Star and affiliated products , ” a tweet from Morphe ’ s account reads .
As of right now , Star ’ s products remain on the site , but a tweet from the Morphe account says that will change @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without giving a specific date .
Star ’ s relationship with Morphe was once a major source of income for the creator , who ’ s launched several lines with the company and become a face for its brand .
“ We ’ ve made the decision to cease all commercial activity related to Jeffree Star and affiliated products.
” Until now , Morphe hasn ’ t said anything publicly about the accusations against Star or resurfaced videos showing the creator using racist and other types of offensive language .
But that ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is in the middle of several controversies , some more severe than others .
On one end is the aforementioned videos resurfacing , arriving at a time when several prominent YouTube personalities — including Star ’ s close-friend-turned-collaborator Shane Dawson — are grappling with past videos featuring racially insensitive or offensive content .
On the other end is a situation that feels more like high school drama : rumors being spread over Twitter DMs and text message threads .
This is a little complex , so stay with me : YouTube creator Tati @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fellow makeup YouTuber James Charles used his influence to make inappropriate advances with another man .
As it happens , Charles also partnered with Morphe for a couple of his own palettes .
After Westbrook ’ s accusation , fans of Charles who purchased his Morphe collection recorded videos of themselves destroying the palettes and posted them to TikTok and Instagram .
The video resulted in Charles losing millions of subscribers , and he ultimately posted his own video on the subject .
It reportedly garnered more than 30 million views before he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rumors about rumors : more specifically , that Star had been behind the Charles rumors , and intentionally spread them .
Last week , Star and Dawson were accused by creator Tati Westbrook of gaslighting and manipulating her into a public feud with Charles through those rumors .
YouTube “ drama ” often plays out in the form of numerous videos and responses being published by creators to address whatever is happening in their corner of the internet .
With the beauty community , the financial repercussions can be a little more extreme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ palettes , are a serious source of revenue for the beauty community ’ s top creators — and for Morphe , who carries lines like Jeffree Star Cosmetics .
Morphe has turned cosmetic line rollouts into star-studded events , with in-store appearances by influencers that are so popular malls shut down and extra security is needed .
With the beauty community , the financial repercussions can be a little more extreme Star and Dawson ’ s “ Conspiracy ” palette , for example , was expected to generate $ 17.5 million through in-store @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Star ’ s website , according to Morphe executives who spoke to Star and Dawson about the potential profit of the line in a seven-part documentary series , as well as Star ’ s own calculations .
The first batch of 60,000 units Star and Dawson released sold out within 30 minutes .
The YouTubers and Morphe released another 60,000 units as quickly as they could .
Those , too , sold out fast .
Prior to the Conspiracy palette , Star had worked with Morphe on carrying a number of his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year .
As important as it is for Star to have his collections sold in malls across the country , it ’ s just as big a deal for Morphe to carry high-profile personalities in the community .
Emine ErSelcuk , Morphe ’ s then vice president of global retail , said in a 2019 interview that teaming up with beauty creators , many of whom have millions of subscribers on YouTube , early in the company ’ s life played a part in its success .
“ We do influencer collaborations that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beauty influencer , ” ErSelcuk told Retail Insider .
“ And we ’ ve been very , very successful with this formula.
” Star can continue to sell his products through his online store and other potential physical retail partners , but Morphe ’ s decision to publicly step back from the relationship is a distinct rebuke .
It ’ s not clear whether Morphe will team up with Star again , either .
The Verge has asked Morphe for more details on the extent of the company ’ s decision to “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we look to the future , we will continue to share updates on what lies ahead for the Morphe brand , ” the company said in a tweet .

Makeup retailer Morphe has parted with YouTuber Jeffree Star, after weeks of public acrimony in the YouTube beauty community. Star has been accused of using racist and offensive language, as well as manipulating other creators and people close to him.
“Today we’ve made the decision to cease all commercial activity related to Jeffree Star and affiliated products,” a tweet from Morphe’s account reads. As of right now, Star’s products remain on the site, but a tweet from the Morphe account says that will change in “the coming weeks,” without giving a specific date. Star’s relationship with Morphe was once a major source of income for the creator, who’s launched several lines with the company and become a face for its brand. A statement posted on Jeffree Star Cosmetic’s Instagram account stated the team was “shocked and extremely saddened by the decision” to part ways.
“We’ve made the decision to cease all commercial activity related to Jeffree Star and affiliated products.”
Until now, Morphe hasn’t said anything publicly about the accusations against Star or resurfaced videos showing the creator using racist and other types of offensive language. But that’s only part of it. Star is in the middle of several controversies, some more severe than others. On one end is the aforementioned videos resurfacing, arriving at a time when several prominent YouTube personalities — including Star’s close-friend-turned-collaborator Shane Dawson — are grappling with past videos featuring racially insensitive or offensive content.
On the other end is a situation that feels more like high school drama: rumors being spread over Twitter DMs and text message threads. This is a little complex, so stay with me: YouTube creator Tati Westbrook made a video in 2019 suggesting fellow makeup YouTuber James Charles used his influence to make inappropriate advances with another man. As it happens, Charles also partnered with Morphe for a couple of his own palettes. After Westbrook’s accusation, fans of Charles who purchased his Morphe collection recorded videos of themselves destroying the palettes and posted them to TikTok and Instagram. The video resulted in Charles losing millions of subscribers, and he ultimately posted his own video on the subject. It reportedly garnered more than 30 million views before he deleted it.
Then, there were rumors about rumors: more specifically, that Star had been behind the Charles rumors, and intentionally spread them. Last week, Star and Dawson were accused by creator Tati Westbrook of gaslighting and manipulating her into a public feud with Charles through those rumors.
YouTube “drama” often plays out in the form of numerous videos and responses being published by creators to address whatever is happening in their corner of the internet. With the beauty community, the financial repercussions can be a little more extreme. Makeup lines, especially eye shadow palettes, are a serious source of revenue for the beauty community’s top creators — and for Morphe, who carries lines like Jeffree Star Cosmetics. Morphe has turned cosmetic line rollouts into star-studded events, with in-store appearances by influencers that are so popular malls shut down and extra security is needed.
With the beauty community, the financial repercussions can be a little more extreme
Star and Dawson’s “Conspiracy” palette, for example, was expected to generate $17.5 million through in-store revenue sales and another $17.5 million on Star’s website, according to Morphe executives who spoke to Star and Dawson about the potential profit of the line in a seven-part documentary series, as well as Star’s own calculations. The first batch of 60,000 units Star and Dawson released sold out within 30 minutes. The YouTubers and Morphe released another 60,000 units as quickly as they could. Those, too, sold out fast. Prior to the Conspiracy palette, Star had worked with Morphe on carrying a number of his other lines, including one earlier this year.
As important as it is for Star to have his collections sold in malls across the country, it’s just as big a deal for Morphe to carry high-profile personalities in the community. Emine ErSelcuk, Morphe’s then vice president of global retail, said in a 2019 interview that teaming up with beauty creators, many of whom have millions of subscribers on YouTube, early in the company’s life played a part in its success.
“We do influencer collaborations that are true to the vision of that beauty influencer,” ErSelcuk told Retail Insider. “And we’ve been very, very successful with this formula.”
Star can continue to sell his products through his online store and other potential physical retail partners, but Morphe’s decision to publicly step back from the relationship is a distinct rebuke. It’s not clear whether Morphe will team up with Star again, either. The Verge has asked Morphe for more details on the extent of the company’s decision to “cease all commercial activity.”
“As we look to the future, we will continue to share updates on what lies ahead for the Morphe brand,” the company said in a tweet.


theverge--2020-07-10--Samsung’s 5G Galaxy Z Flip may have been fully revealed in these latest leaks

We knew a 5G variant of Samsung ’ s vertically folding Galaxy Z Flip clamshell was on the way , after the first images leaked earlier this month .
Now , we have an entire leaked video and a set of rumors about the new “ Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5G ” that seems to leave nothing to the imagination — and suggest it might be ready for Samsung ’ s upcoming August 5th Galaxy Unpacked event .
Basically , it looks like it ’ ll be practically the same folding phone but with a faster processor and 5G .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ video — which shows the phone from practically every angle — it looks practically identical to the original LTE version that went on sale on February 14th .
The only differences other than 5G support and a new “ mystic bronze ” color , according to XDA-Developers ’ Max Weinbach , is that it ’ ll be oh-so-slightly taller and thicker , and be powered by Qualcomm ’ s new Snapdragon 865 Plus chip — a small spec bump over the Snapdragon 855 Plus that came in the original .
The phone may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ according to Weinbach , which makes us wonder how long it might last on a charge — the original wasn ’ t a battery champ , and now it ’ ll reportedly have 5G and a faster processor to power as well .
Chinese telecommunications certification center TENAA previously corroborated that the phone would likely have the Snapdragon 865 Plus chip , and the Wireless Power Consortium also listed a “ Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5G ” as a phone that would support wireless charging , so it sounds like that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will keep working .
( You can thank MySmartPrice for spotting both of those . )
While 5G might be the flagship feature here , 5G phones still have a ways to go before they are the new normal .
Although 5G can make downloads faster and cloud services respond quicker — depending on the type of 5G — there are many tradeoffs like how much 5G phones cost and whether you ’ ll be able to easily find a signal .

We knew a 5G variant of Samsung’s vertically folding Galaxy Z Flip clamshell was on the way, after the first images leaked earlier this month. Now, we have an entire leaked video and a set of rumors about the new “Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5G” that seems to leave nothing to the imagination — and suggest it might be ready for Samsung’s upcoming August 5th Galaxy Unpacked event.
Basically, it looks like it’ll be practically the same folding phone but with a faster processor and 5G.
Based on phone leaker Evan Blass’ video — which shows the phone from practically every angle — it looks practically identical to the original LTE version that went on sale on February 14th. The only differences other than 5G support and a new “mystic bronze” color, according to XDA-Developers’ Max Weinbach, is that it’ll be oh-so-slightly taller and thicker, and be powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 865 Plus chip — a small spec bump over the Snapdragon 855 Plus that came in the original.
The phone may also have the same size battery, according to Weinbach, which makes us wonder how long it might last on a charge — the original wasn’t a battery champ, and now it’ll reportedly have 5G and a faster processor to power as well.
Chinese telecommunications certification center TENAA previously corroborated that the phone would likely have the Snapdragon 865 Plus chip, and the Wireless Power Consortium also listed a “Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5G” as a phone that would support wireless charging, so it sounds like that’s probably the name and your wireless chargers will keep working. (You can thank MySmartPrice for spotting both of those.)


theverge--2020-07-10--Letterheads: social media and the end of discourse

There used to be something called the public intellectual .
A class of thinkers — mostly writers with prestigious degrees and academics with a knack for writing — set the Discourse .
They told other people what to think , or rather , they told the unwashed masses what was going through their own heads lately .
These disclosures were taken with great seriousness , even if they tended toward rambling , incoherent , or obvious .
From there , the educated and those who wanted to be seen as educated would pick and choose the opinions they wished to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this process that politics were created , refined , and rehashed .
( Indeed , the phrase “ Overton window ” was popularized by them . )
This was part of what it meant to participate in the public sphere .
I used to be told , in all seriousness , to read the opinion sections of major newspapers as an edifying activity I explain this , partly out of facetiousness , but partly because I belong to the last generation to remember the age of the opinionators .
I used to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ read the opinion sections of major newspapers as an edifying activity .
But by the time I was in my mid-20s , words like “ think piece ” were already jokes at the expense of the opinionating class .
Part of this had to do with the rise of blogs .
It was cheaper — and faster — to write opinion pieces than to do reporting , and anyone could create a blog .
It became a broader trend in media , thanks to the economic pressures exerted first by Craigslist and later @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the market for advertisements .
Writing up facts takes work , and work must be paid for .
On the other hand , opinions are cheap .
Everyone ’ s got one .
It was a tidy solution to generating content , especially as social media took off .
Social media and opinion writing fed off each other .
Editors sought out writers based on tweets they liked .
( My own career began this way . )
Opinions were written quickly about whatever the writer had seen on social media the other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ masse on whatever opinion writing caught its imagination .
Occasionally , the reaction was laudatory , but the loudest reactions were that of outrage .
Now , anyone with a cellphone and a nice turn of phrase can roast an anointed opinionator into a corncob The size of the opinionating class was once constrained by the physical size of a newspaper page .
Now , anyone with a cellphone and a nice turn of phrase can roast an anointed opinionator into a corncob .
In some ways , the fall of the opinion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , secular press at the expense of the church .
After the Enlightenment , Western public life moved toward a set of secular institutions that included a class of public intellectuals — and away from the pulpit .
When societies remake themselves , it doesn ’ t happen because of a handful of pamphlets ( or a hashtag or two ) .
Just like the opinionating class first used social media for its own ends , Johannes Gutenberg ’ s printing press existed for centuries — printing religious pamphlets , sermons , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ religion ’ s monopoly on public life .
And the printing press is only one piece of a picture that includes a scientific revolution , religious strife , industrialization , and economic exploitation .
Similarly , our current cultural moment is happening against a background that can be best described by that cartoon dog sipping coffee amid a house in flames .
Still , the production of the French libelles — vitriolic political pamphlets that frequently sought to cancel various public figures , especially royal family members — would not have been possible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ themselves played an undeniable role in the French Revolution .
Likewise , the protests of 2020 and the sudden shift in public opinion around policing and race would not have happened without social media and the mass adoption of smartphones .
With the fall of the opinion class , the mask rips off To be clear , the opinionators are not in danger of an actual guillotining — except maybe metaphorically , which is not at all the same .
They will continue to publish .
Some of them will continue to make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ll be less important — not least because they ’ ll no longer be setting the Overton window .
Indeed , there might not even be an Overton window .
Engaging in political life may even become indistinguishable from being part of an internet fandom .
I don ’ t mean to say facts or logic will disappear .
But we will no longer pretend that they persuade others in a free marketplace of ideas .
We have long conflated civic life with “ engaging with ideas ” or “ participating in debate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spectrum.
” But with the fall of the opinion class , the mask rips off , revealing politics as little but clashes between competing cults of information that primarily convey values in terms of emotionality , rather than rationality .
No thin veneer of “ fair and unbiased ” will cover these bastions of information dissemination .
This is not as dire as it sounds ; most internet fandoms behave more responsibly than at least one ( or maybe even both ) of America ’ s major political parties .
This week , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ missive that I have since taken to referring to as “ The Letter.
” Signed by a number of opinionators , and then also J.K. Rowling for some reason ( just kidding , I know exactly why ) , The Letter decries the “ censoriousness ” that is taking over the culture , describing it as “ an intolerance of opposing views , a vogue for public shaming and ostracism , and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.
” This is not a particularly clear formulation of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so the meaning and intent behind The Letter are subject to multiple interpretations .
This is evidenced by the near-instantaneous backpedaling on Twitter by a number of signatories who were unaware of the identities of all their fellow signatories .
“ Censoriousness ” in the abstract is bad , and “ free speech ” in the abstract is good .
But without further elaboration , it ’ s very easy to talk at cross-purposes about both .
To the extent that The Letter has a point at all , it appears to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extent that The Letter has a point at all , it appears to be about opposing “ illiberalism.
” Here , the “ liberalism ” referred to is the general philosophy that society ought to be based on free and equal discussion from a plurality of viewpoints .
“ Illiberalism , ” therefore , is a fancy stand-in for what opinionators have alternately called “ campus culture , ” “ cancel culture , ” and “ wokeness.
” This very vague illiberal force is called “ a successor ideology ” by Wesley Yang @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up by a number of conservative commentators like Ross Douthat ( whose name does not appear on The Letter ) and Andrew Sullivan ( whose name does ) .
But this term seems to only muddy the waters since the thing that they are concerned about isn ’ t actually a concrete ideology but an inchoate social force with the hallmarks of religious revival .
It is perhaps no surprise that Douthat , a devout Catholic , is able to put his finger on the aspect of “ spiritual renewal ” sought by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seems to be unable to go further with that observation .
But I suspect he also senses what I sense , as someone raised in an evangelical Christian family : the feeling of charismatic spirituality that pervades the marches and rallies of 2020 , the fervor of the newly converted , the unsettling hunger for moral righteousness .
Matthew Yglesias ( a signatory of The Letter ) has referred to this cultural moment as “ The Great Awokening , ” comparing it somewhat cursorily to the 19th century religious revival that fed into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ slavery .
He does not mention the other Awakenings of American history , like the 18th century precursor to the American Revolution or the more recent 20th century big tent revivals that paved the way for the evangelical Christian politics that marked the Bush era .
Our current era has been mostly defined by the pretense that religious fervor and emotional sentiment are incidental to politics , and that all can and should be grappled with through rational discourse .
This was never true , but we at least pretended .
What is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ described in the language of the old paradigm — and for that reason , we all sound like absolute morons trying to talk about it This Fifth Great Awakening is what Thomas Kuhn called a “ paradigm-shift ” and what Martin Heidegger called “ world-collapse.
” In the words of St. Paul , “ We shall not all sleep , but we shall all be changed — in a moment , in the twinkling of an eye , at the last trumpet.
” What is happening right now can not be adequately described @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — and for that reason , we all sound like absolute morons trying to talk about it .
Part of this has to do with the various fallacies deployed by people who decry “ cancel culture.
” First , there is the ongoing conflation of “ wokeness ” — roughly defined as the idea that white supremacy and patriarchy permeate our society — with illiberalism .
As my friend Ezekiel Kweku , an editor at New York Magazine , has observed , neither springs from nor necessitates the other .
There are plenty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” while using the language of so-called civil debate , with all the rigmarole of “ I concur , ” “ with all due respect , ” and “ to play devil ’ s advocate for a moment.
” Then there ’ s the motte-and-bailey fallacy around what “ canceling ” even means .
Is someone canceled because they have been vigorously criticized ?
Or is someone canceled because they received death threats ?
Or is someone only canceled because they lost their job ?
Presumably , politicians should lose their jobs if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rule also apply to prominent figures who have been either formally or informally designated as representatives of public opinion ?
Where should one draw the line between the truly outrage-inducing and the undeserving victims of an internet mob ?
But this general incoherence about the problem of “ cancel culture ” isn ’ t entirely the fault of the anti-woke commentariat .
They are working with old tools that are crumbling in their hands and in an old workspace that is disappearing into thin air .
Despite the talk about illiberalism and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fear that motivates The Letter becomes obvious in the text itself , right around where its writers are spinning in circles about the obvious contradiction that a pro-speech coalition has come together to ask its critics to shut the fuck up : “ It is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.
” The opinionators are not actually afraid of being silenced .
They wish to take up column inches without a pack of nobodies telling them how wrong @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to logic and debate above all else , the old paradigm bred an irrational and incomprehensibly unjust society .
The opinionators frequently circulated debunked or faulty science , and they kept alive a “ debate ” around climate change that has not existed among scientists for decades .
They tolerated the intolerant and treated dehumanization as a difference of opinion .
They were — despite being held as the paragons of rational discourse — never particularly rational .
One only needs to point to the war in Iraq as proof of that .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ evil I am nonetheless uneasy about the days to come .
I admit this is partly because I am a professional opinion writer who has been aggressively canceled online , but really , mostly because I am past the age of 30 while staring down the barrel of mass societal change .
But chaos is not the same thing as evil .
And although the Reign of Terror may have followed the French Revolution , the terrors wrought by the system that preceded it were far greater .
In Mark Twain ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I ask you to remember that chaos is not evil , change is not wrong , conflict is not violence , and relevance is not a human right .
All things change .
And while you have a right to have hurt feelings about it , don ’ t be surprised when your feelings lose out in the new marketplace of emotion .

There used to be something called the public intellectual.
A class of thinkers — mostly writers with prestigious degrees and academics with a knack for writing — set the Discourse. They told other people what to think, or rather, they told the unwashed masses what was going through their own heads lately. These disclosures were taken with great seriousness, even if they tended toward rambling, incoherent, or obvious. From there, the educated and those who wanted to be seen as educated would pick and choose the opinions they wished to align themselves with. It is through this process that politics were created, refined, and rehashed. (Indeed, the phrase “Overton window” was popularized by them.) This was part of what it meant to participate in the public sphere.
I used to be told, in all seriousness, to read the opinion sections of major newspapers as an edifying activity
I explain this, partly out of facetiousness, but partly because I belong to the last generation to remember the age of the opinionators. I used to be told, in all seriousness, to read the opinion sections of major newspapers as an edifying activity. But by the time I was in my mid-20s, words like “think piece” were already jokes at the expense of the opinionating class.
Part of this had to do with the rise of blogs. It was cheaper — and faster — to write opinion pieces than to do reporting, and anyone could create a blog. It became a broader trend in media, thanks to the economic pressures exerted first by Craigslist and later Google and Facebook, which ate up the market for advertisements. Writing up facts takes work, and work must be paid for. On the other hand, opinions are cheap. Everyone’s got one.
It was a tidy solution to generating content, especially as social media took off. Social media and opinion writing fed off each other. Editors sought out writers based on tweets they liked. (My own career began this way.) Opinions were written quickly about whatever the writer had seen on social media the other day. And social media descended en masse on whatever opinion writing caught its imagination. Occasionally, the reaction was laudatory, but the loudest reactions were that of outrage.
Now, anyone with a cellphone and a nice turn of phrase can roast an anointed opinionator into a corncob
The size of the opinionating class was once constrained by the physical size of a newspaper page. Now, anyone with a cellphone and a nice turn of phrase can roast an anointed opinionator into a corncob.
In some ways, the fall of the opinion class mirrors the rise of the democratized, secular press at the expense of the church. After the Enlightenment, Western public life moved toward a set of secular institutions that included a class of public intellectuals — and away from the pulpit.
When societies remake themselves, it doesn’t happen because of a handful of pamphlets (or a hashtag or two). Just like the opinionating class first used social media for its own ends, Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press existed for centuries — printing religious pamphlets, sermons, and Bibles — before it began to undermine religion’s monopoly on public life. And the printing press is only one piece of a picture that includes a scientific revolution, religious strife, industrialization, and economic exploitation. Similarly, our current cultural moment is happening against a background that can be best described by that cartoon dog sipping coffee amid a house in flames.
Still, the production of the French libelles — vitriolic political pamphlets that frequently sought to cancel various public figures, especially royal family members — would not have been possible without movable type, and the libelles themselves played an undeniable role in the French Revolution. Likewise, the protests of 2020 and the sudden shift in public opinion around policing and race would not have happened without social media and the mass adoption of smartphones.
With the fall of the opinion class, the mask rips off
To be clear, the opinionators are not in danger of an actual guillotining — except maybe metaphorically, which is not at all the same. They will continue to publish. Some of them will continue to make very good money! But they’ll be less important — not least because they’ll no longer be setting the Overton window.
Indeed, there might not even be an Overton window. Engaging in political life may even become indistinguishable from being part of an internet fandom. I don’t mean to say facts or logic will disappear. But we will no longer pretend that they persuade others in a free marketplace of ideas. We have long conflated civic life with “engaging with ideas” or “participating in debate” or entertaining a “broad political spectrum.” But with the fall of the opinion class, the mask rips off, revealing politics as little but clashes between competing cults of information that primarily convey values in terms of emotionality, rather than rationality. No thin veneer of “fair and unbiased” will cover these bastions of information dissemination.
This is not as dire as it sounds; most internet fandoms behave more responsibly than at least one (or maybe even both) of America’s major political parties.
This week, Harper’s Magazine published an open missive that I have since taken to referring to as “The Letter.” Signed by a number of opinionators, and then also J.K. Rowling for some reason (just kidding, I know exactly why), The Letter decries the “censoriousness” that is taking over the culture, describing it as “an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.”
This is not a particularly clear formulation of the cultural phenomenon they condemn, and so the meaning and intent behind The Letter are subject to multiple interpretations. This is evidenced by the near-instantaneous backpedaling on Twitter by a number of signatories who were unaware of the identities of all their fellow signatories. “Censoriousness” in the abstract is bad, and “free speech” in the abstract is good. But without further elaboration, it’s very easy to talk at cross-purposes about both.
To the extent that The Letter has a point at all, it appears to be about opposing “illiberalism”
To the extent that The Letter has a point at all, it appears to be about opposing “illiberalism.” Here, the “liberalism” referred to is the general philosophy that society ought to be based on free and equal discussion from a plurality of viewpoints. “Illiberalism,” therefore, is a fancy stand-in for what opinionators have alternately called “campus culture,” “cancel culture,” and “wokeness.”
This very vague illiberal force is called “a successor ideology” by Wesley Yang, with his coinage being immediately taken up by a number of conservative commentators like Ross Douthat (whose name does not appear on The Letter) and Andrew Sullivan (whose name does). But this term seems to only muddy the waters since the thing that they are concerned about isn’t actually a concrete ideology but an inchoate social force with the hallmarks of religious revival.
It is perhaps no surprise that Douthat, a devout Catholic, is able to put his finger on the aspect of “spiritual renewal” sought by Americans in this moment, though he seems to be unable to go further with that observation. But I suspect he also senses what I sense, as someone raised in an evangelical Christian family: the feeling of charismatic spirituality that pervades the marches and rallies of 2020, the fervor of the newly converted, the unsettling hunger for moral righteousness.
Matthew Yglesias (a signatory of The Letter) has referred to this cultural moment as “The Great Awokening,” comparing it somewhat cursorily to the 19th century religious revival that fed into the fire of the movement to abolish slavery. He does not mention the other Awakenings of American history, like the 18th century precursor to the American Revolution or the more recent 20th century big tent revivals that paved the way for the evangelical Christian politics that marked the Bush era. Our current era has been mostly defined by the pretense that religious fervor and emotional sentiment are incidental to politics, and that all can and should be grappled with through rational discourse. This was never true, but we at least pretended.
What is happening right now cannot be adequately described in the language of the old paradigm — and for that reason, we all sound like absolute morons trying to talk about it
This Fifth Great Awakening is what Thomas Kuhn called a “paradigm-shift” and what Martin Heidegger called “world-collapse.” In the words of St. Paul, “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed — in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.” What is happening right now cannot be adequately described in the language of the old paradigm — and for that reason, we all sound like absolute morons trying to talk about it.
Part of this has to do with the various fallacies deployed by people who decry “cancel culture.”
First, there is the ongoing conflation of “wokeness” — roughly defined as the idea that white supremacy and patriarchy permeate our society — with illiberalism. As my friend Ezekiel Kweku, an editor at New York Magazine, has observed, neither springs from nor necessitates the other. There are plenty of public intellectuals who champion “wokeness” while using the language of so-called civil debate, with all the rigmarole of “I concur,” “with all due respect,” and “to play devil’s advocate for a moment.”
Then there’s the motte-and-bailey fallacy around what “canceling” even means. Is someone canceled because they have been vigorously criticized? Or is someone canceled because they received death threats? Or is someone only canceled because they lost their job? Presumably, politicians should lose their jobs if they stoke sufficient outrage. Does this rule also apply to prominent figures who have been either formally or informally designated as representatives of public opinion? Where should one draw the line between the truly outrage-inducing and the undeserving victims of an internet mob?
But this general incoherence about the problem of “cancel culture” isn’t entirely the fault of the anti-woke commentariat. They are working with old tools that are crumbling in their hands and in an old workspace that is disappearing into thin air.
Despite the talk about illiberalism and the threat to free speech, the real fear that motivates The Letter becomes obvious in the text itself, right around where its writers are spinning in circles about the obvious contradiction that a pro-speech coalition has come together to ask its critics to shut the fuck up: “It is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.” The opinionators are not actually afraid of being silenced. They wish to take up column inches without a pack of nobodies telling them how wrong they are.
For all its pretense to logic and debate above all else, the old paradigm bred an irrational and incomprehensibly unjust society. The opinionators frequently circulated debunked or faulty science, and they kept alive a “debate” around climate change that has not existed among scientists for decades. They tolerated the intolerant and treated dehumanization as a difference of opinion. They were — despite being held as the paragons of rational discourse — never particularly rational. One only needs to point to the war in Iraq as proof of that.
Chaos is not the same thing as evil
I am nonetheless uneasy about the days to come. I admit this is partly because I am a professional opinion writer who has been aggressively canceled online, but really, mostly because I am past the age of 30 while staring down the barrel of mass societal change. But chaos is not the same thing as evil. And although the Reign of Terror may have followed the French Revolution, the terrors wrought by the system that preceded it were far greater. In Mark Twain’s words:
There were two ‘Reigns of Terror,’ if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions.


theverge--2020-07-10--Tesla to hold shareholder meeting and ‘battery day’ in person on September 22nd

Tesla has finally settled on a date for its delayed annual shareholder meeting and “ battery day ” for investors : September 22nd .
The meeting will be held in person at the company ’ s vehicle factory in Fremont , California , though it will presumably also be live-streamed .
Only people who are shareholders of the company ’ s stock can attend .
The annual shareholder meeting was originally scheduled for July 7th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View , California .
The company planned to have shareholders attend in person and watch online , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ monitor public health and travel safety protocols required or recommended by federal , state and local governments.
” But large gatherings have remained banned in California because of the COVID-19 pandemic , so CEO Elon Musk announced last month that the meeting would be delayed .
Musk previously said he was “ tentatively ” targeting September 15th .
At the meeting , shareholders are slated to vote and voice opinions on a number of matters , like whether the company should start paying for traditional advertisement .
Many of Tesla ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , including chairwoman Robyn Denholm , who took over after Musk was banned from chairing any publicly traded company for three years in 2018 as a result of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission .
The battery day event was originally supposed to take place earlier this year , but was also delayed because of the pandemic .
Tesla is expected to reveal a number of advancements in its battery tech that could give it an even greater advantage over other companies pursuing electric vehicles .
Musk said last month that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the company ’ s “ cell production system , ” which is likely a reference to the company ’ s secretive “ Roadrunner ” project to bring down the cost of making batteries will increasing volume .

Tesla has finally settled on a date for its delayed annual shareholder meeting and “battery day” for investors: September 22nd. The meeting will be held in person at the company’s vehicle factory in Fremont, California, though it will presumably also be live-streamed. Only people who are shareholders of the company’s stock can attend.
The annual shareholder meeting was originally scheduled for July 7th at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. The company planned to have shareholders attend in person and watch online, and said at the time that it would “monitor public health and travel safety protocols required or recommended by federal, state and local governments.” But large gatherings have remained banned in California because of the COVID-19 pandemic, so CEO Elon Musk announced last month that the meeting would be delayed. Musk previously said he was “tentatively” targeting September 15th.
At the meeting, shareholders are slated to vote and voice opinions on a number of matters, like whether the company should start paying for traditional advertisement. Many of Tesla’s board members are also up for reelection, including chairwoman Robyn Denholm, who took over after Musk was banned from chairing any publicly traded company for three years in 2018 as a result of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.


theverge--2020-07-10--First Crucible, now New World: Amazon delays another tentpole game after early feedback

Amazon has delayed its upcoming open-world MMO New World , one of two tentpole games from its burgeoning games studio , from August 25th to an undefined spring 2021 date .
The announcement comes less than two weeks after Amazon brought its other tentpole game , the free-to-play shooter Crucible , back into closed beta following barely a month of wide availability .
It sounds like Amazon may be taking a more cautious approach to game development after early feedback from testers that the games weren ’ t quite what they hoped .
The New World team wants to add @ @ @ @ @ @ @ share it with a wider audience , ” including “ plenty of middle and endgame experiences , ” studio director Rich Lawrence said in a blog post that was also shared on Twitter .
“ We want our players to feel completely immersed in the game , and know that our studio stands for quality and lasting gameplay you can trust — and that means added time to get things where we want them before we fully release.
” Though most of us will have to wait until next year to try New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ early access opportunity : if you signed up for the beta on or before July 9th , already preordered the game , or are a current alpha tester “ in good standing , ” you ’ ll be able to participate in a “ first-hand look at New World ” beginning on the game ’ s previously scheduled launch date , August 25th , according to an FAQ on the New World website .
If you get access to that first look , you ’ ll be able to play the game “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ a limited period of time , ” according to Lawrence .
New World ’ s delay ( which is the game ’ s second ) leaves Amazon Games with just one other title that might be releasing in the near term : Pac-Man Live Studio , a new version of Pac-Man that you ’ ll be able to play directly on Twitch , which is owned by Amazon .
Bandai Namco and Amazon Games announced in May that the game would be available in June , but it ’ s still not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s website now says that it ’ s “ coming soon.
” And we ’ re also not sure when Crucible will be widely available again now that it has returned to closed beta .
That game , which mixes pieces of mobile online battle arenas ( MOBA ) and hero shooters , originally launched in late May .
But in early June , Amazon pulled two of the game ’ s three modes , leaving only its MOBA-inspired mode , and then returned the released game to closed beta on July 1st @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2019 , Amazon laid off “ dozens ” of developers from Amazon Games as part of a reorganization .
And in 2018 , it canceled fantasy sports game Breakaway , another tentpole title , which Amazon first announced in 2016 but took back to the drawing board in October 2017 before outright canceling it .

Amazon has delayed its upcoming open-world MMO New World, one of two tentpole games from its burgeoning games studio, from August 25th to an undefined spring 2021 date. The announcement comes less than two weeks after Amazon brought its other tentpole game, the free-to-play shooter Crucible, back into closed beta following barely a month of wide availability. It sounds like Amazon may be taking a more cautious approach to game development after early feedback from testers that the games weren’t quite what they hoped.
The New World team wants to add “more features and content before we share it with a wider audience,” including “plenty of middle and endgame experiences,” studio director Rich Lawrence said in a blog post that was also shared on Twitter. “We want our players to feel completely immersed in the game, and know that our studio stands for quality and lasting gameplay you can trust — and that means added time to get things where we want them before we fully release.”
Though most of us will have to wait until next year to try New World, there’s still an early access opportunity: if you signed up for the beta on or before July 9th, already preordered the game, or are a current alpha tester “in good standing,” you’ll be able to participate in a “first-hand look at New World” beginning on the game’s previously scheduled launch date, August 25th, according to an FAQ on the New World website.
If you get access to that first look, you’ll be able to play the game “in its current state” and for “a limited period of time,” according to Lawrence.
New World’s delay (which is the game’s second) leaves Amazon Games with just one other title that might be releasing in the near term: Pac-Man Live Studio, a new version of Pac-Man that you’ll be able to play directly on Twitch, which is owned by Amazon. Bandai Namco and Amazon Games announced in May that the game would be available in June, but it’s still not out yet, and the game’s website now says that it’s “coming soon.”
And we’re also not sure when Crucible will be widely available again now that it has returned to closed beta. That game, which mixes pieces of mobile online battle arenas (MOBA) and hero shooters, originally launched in late May. But in early June, Amazon pulled two of the game’s three modes, leaving only its MOBA-inspired mode, and then returned the released game to closed beta on July 1st to make more improvements.