Monthly Archives: October 2022

Amazon is quietly shutting down Fabric.com, one of the largest online fabric stores

Amazon acquired Fabric.com in 2008. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Crafters, home sewists, and small businesses will soon lose a major online fabric source. Fabric.com, a longtime retailer of fabrics, trims, notions, and other supplies, is shutting down. Since launching in the late ’90s, Fabric.com has been a mainstay for casual crafters…

Big pharma says drug prices reflect R&D cost. Researchers call BS

Enlarge (credit: Mike Kemp/Getty Images) At the end of September, a spot of good news: Relyvrio, a new drug for treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—or ALS, a neurological disorder without a cure—was approved in the United States. The ALS community rejoiced; the drug’s authorization was described as a “long-sought victory for patients.” But the next day,…

Starry Internet cuts 500 jobs—half its workforce—and cancels big expansion

Enlarge (credit: Starry) Wireless home Internet provider Starry is cutting 500 employees, about half of its workforce, and canceling plans to expand into new states. Starry’s board of directors yesterday approved the plan to cut 500 jobs, the Internet service provider said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing today. “The decision was based on cost-reduction…

Lyft co-founder says autonomous vehicles won’t replace drivers for at least a decade

Human drivers on the Lyft platform aren’t going to be replaced by autonomous vehicles anytime soon, company co-founder and president John Zimmer told the audience today at TechCrunch Disrupt. “I can’t imagine anytime in the next decade-plus where we would need any less drivers,” he said. While Zimmer envisions autonomous vehicles handling some percentage of…

Zapier extends its automation service with first-party database and UI tools

For the longest time, Zapier, which launched in 2011, was content with helping its users automate simple workflows and build integrations between various business-critical tools. That’s been a great business for the company, but users today expect a bit more, and over the course of the last couple of years, the company decided it was…