COVID-19 testing at a pop-up site in New York City. | Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images In January, early reports out of China started to hint that people infected with the coronavirus were contagious before they started to show symptoms. That’s unusual for a respiratory virus like this one, and it worried public health experts all over the world: it’s much harder to control the spread of a disease if someone who has it can pass it along before they know they’re sick.
It’s since become clear that, yes, it’s possible for people who don’t feel sick to infect other people. What scientists still don’t know, though, is how often it happens. And that matters for managing the pandemic: if only a few people spread COVID-19 when they’re symptom-free, missing them probably won’t have a big impact on the course of the pandemic. If m…
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If you’ve been longing to learn more about the PlayStation 5, Sony’s new console, you’ll want to tune into the company’s live stream event that starts at 4PM ET / 1PM PT, Thursday, June 11th. Sony has been tight-lipped about the PS5, which is set to release later this year, and which we have yet to actually lay eyes on. That might change with this hour-long event — or maybe we’ll have to wait a little longer.
Sony says that this event will offer “a first look at the games you’ll be playing after PlayStation 5 launches this holiday.” Given the long runtime of the event, it’s possible that there will be a few moments dedicated to what the console looks like and more about the DualSense controller. If not, at least we’ll get to see some of…
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Nintendo is hosting one of the biggest sales yet on Switch games, knocking 30 percent off the regular $60 price of titles that rarely see much of a discount, like New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, Mario Tennis Aces, Super Mario Party, and Dragon Quest XI S. Several others, including some highly acclaimed indie and third-party games, are even more affordable.
What’s great about this sale is you’ll get the digital versions of the game, so there’s no waiting for a delivery in the mail or worrying about juggling cartridges. No matter which retailer you buy from, when you receive the code in the email, you can redeem it on your Switch. If you happen to buy your game directly through Nintendo’s online eShop, it will begin downloading…
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No Man’s Sky is heading to Xbox Game Pass on June 11th, along with a Windows 10 version. Developer Hello Games announced that, beginning tomorrow, the game will be available with cross-platform multiplayer, meaning PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC players will be able to adventure together.
Since the game’s launch in 2016, Hello Games has continued to substantially improve upon No Man’s Sky with additional content, multiplayer, and more. “Making No Man’s Sky available to vast new audiences, and allowing those audiences to come together, has been something we’ve been building towards for a long time,” developer Sean Murray wrote on the game’s site. With crossplay, players will be able to join groups together, trade, build, chat, and more….
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Photo by Andrej Sokolow / Picture Alliance via Getty Images Cruise’s self-driving cars are back on the road in San Francisco, but the company may be skirting the city’s shelter-in-place rules in its rush to get there, some of the company’s backup drivers say.
In late April, Cruise announced that it would be redeploying some of its autonomous vehicles to help make deliveries for a pair of food banks in San Francisco. The pandemic had forced the company, a subsidiary of General Motors, to halt its operations in mid-March. Engineers, developers, and backup drivers were told to stay at home, as the city’s shelter-in-place order made public road testing impossible.
But the company found a philanthropic loophole that would allow it to spring some of its vehicles out of pandemic-imposed dormancy. “We…
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Photo illustration by William Joel / The Verge | Photo By David Fitzgerald / Sportsfile via Getty Images How the app is adapting to no in-person dates
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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge 5G internet has been one of the biggest buzzwords in the tech world over the past few years. As the next generation of cellular technology, the faster speeds and lower latencies it offers promise to change everything from your phone to home internet to fields like self-driving cars and remote surgery. But there’s also been a lot of bad information, rumors, and outright bizarre conspiracy theories.
So: what is 5G? Well, as the name implies, it’s the fifth generation of cellular technology. 1G networks were the first cell networks back in the 1980s. 2G networks added basic data for things like SMS messages, which 3G internet expanded even more. And 4G LTE — which our phones currently use — offered truly fast mobile internet, making a whole…
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The Sonos Arc is one of the first products to be released for the S2 platform. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Sonos is releasing its new app and S2 platform today. The new app (now with a tan icon) is now available on the App Store and the Google Play Store, and it will be the only way to control the company’s latest speakers: the Sonos Arc Dolby Atmos soundbar, Sonos Five, and new third-gen Sonos Sub. Sonos says the new platform includes support for higher-resolution audio technologies such as Dolby Atmos on the Sonos Arc, better security, and an improved user interface.
The new app supports all of Sonos’ modern devices, including those that you previously controlled with the old app. You have the option of either updating your existing system to S2 or continuing to use the old app to control those products. This existing app is still live on…
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BioShock Remastered (Nintendo Switch) | Image: 2K Games It’s still rare for the Switch to get blockbuster games that weren’t made by Nintendo, but there has been a trend in recent months to port older games from the last generation of consoles onto the Switch. Last week’s launches of The Outer Worlds, BioShock: The Collection, and Borderlands: The Handsome Collection were some of the most high-profile games to hit the Switch yet. And the result is a pile of great games that simultaneously highlight the Switch’s biggest strengths and weaknesses.
The biggest name in the batch is The Outer Worlds, which is actually a “current-gen” title, having been first released for the Xbox One, PS4, and PC late last year.
Image: Obsidian Entertainment The Outer Worlds (Nintendo… Continue reading…

Ian Tuttle/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize More than 140 scientists who receive funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Saturday urging him to better enforce the social media platform’s policies against incendiary language, The Washington Post reported. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is the philanthropic organization founded by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan in 2015, which focuses on using technology to solve social challenges, including criminal justice reform. It is a separate entity from Facebook.
The scientists said in the letter that allowing President Trump to use Facebook “to spread both misinformation and incendiary statements” was not only a violation of Facebook’s policies but “directly antithetical” to…
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