Technology news

PayPaltoday introduced a new installment credit option for PayPal users called “Pay in 4.” The name itself explains what the service offers — basically, it’s the ability for customers to pay for purchases, interest-free, over four separate payments. The service is an expansion on PayPal’s existing lineup of Pay Later solutions, which also includes PayPal Credit’s revolving credit line and its Easy Payments.
With Pay in 4, customers can choose to pay for purcha

Image: OxygenUpdater OnePlus may have accidentally revealed a first look at the OnePlus 8T, thanks to an image found in the latest Android 11 developer preview for OnePlus 8-series devices by OxygenUpdater.
The leaked image doesn’t offer much to go on, just a front-facing view of the device, which appears to be pretty similar to the existing OnePlus 8. It’s possible that this image — which is labeled OnePlus_8T.webp and is a distinct file from the images for the OnePlus 8 and

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Videoconferencing platform Zoom had a huge second quarter, with $663.5 million in revenue compared to $145.8 million a year ago, the company announced on Monday. It now has around 370,000 customers with more than 10 employees, an increase of 458 percent year over year.“Our ability to keep people around the world connected, coupled with our strong execution, led to revenue growth of 355% year-over-year in Q2,” Zoom founder and CEO Eric S. Yuan

American Airlines and Delta Air Lines both said they would permanently eliminate fees associated with changing or canceling a flight. The news comes less than a day after United Airlines first announced a permanent end to its change fee policy.All three carriers have been waiving change fees since March 2020, when the novel coronavirus pandemic first disrupted global air travel. With demand dried up, the airlines are seeking to make flying look safe, stress-free, and, most of all, cheap. And tha

Left: Matt Birchler’s recreation. Right: Apple’s original wallpaper. | Matt Birchler, Apple Many of us are finding cool things to work on while stuck at home, and I think Matt Birchler takes the cake this week. He, like much of the internet, has been taking off in Microsoft Flight Simulator, and he used the absolutely unreal detail in the game to re-create some of the more iconic wallpapers from recent releases of macOS.
To re-create these images, Matt flew to each location, then us

Image: Bang & Olufsen Bang & Olufsen has announced its new Beoplay H95 noise-canceling headphones for the steep price of $800. You can get a stellar pair of headphones for much, much less than that, but the audio specialist is hoping to leapfrog Sony, Bose, and other headphone makers in craftsmanship and sound quality. With their lambskin ear pads (with memory foam inside), aluminum frame, and leather headband, these certainly look the part of top-end, premium headphones.With the H95 he

Intel has teamed up with Square Enix’s Crystal Dynamics game studio to optimize the graphics for the upcoming Avengers game, specifically for PC players. It’s the sort of partnership that usually crops up for graphics card companies like AMD or Nvidia. While Intel wouldn’t provide details on numbers, it did confirm that the deal (which includes a two-year commitment to continue to support Avengers) is its biggest gaming deal yet.
Intel — as a company that largely focuses

Another busy week in cybersecurity.
In case you missed it: A widely used messaging app used by over a million protesters has several major security flaws; a little-known loophole has let the DMV sell driver’s licenses and Social Security records to private investigators; and the U.S. government is suing to reclaim over $2.5 million in cryptocurrency stolen by North Korean hackers from two major exchanges.
But this week we are focusing on how a Teslaemployee foiled a ransomware attack, and,

With Dorian, co-founder and CEO Julia Palatovska said she’s hoping to empower fiction writers and other storytellers to create their own games.
The startup is announcing that it has raised $3.25 million in seed funding led by March Capital Partners,with participation from VGames, Konvoy Ventures, London Venture Partners, Michael Chow (co-creator of the Twitch series “Artificial”), Andover Ventures and talent management company Night Media.
In addition, John Howell, the former v

Filled with innovation labs, co-working spaces and students, Boston has a ton of entrepreneurial characteristics baked into its DNA.However, when the coronavirus swept through the country, the area’s startup scene was stress-tested as badly as other entrepreneurial hubs. Could Boston’s startups still thrive without the city’s robust in-person ecosystems? 
Last month, we answered this question broadly: Boston-area startups raised $3.7 billion in Q2, according to CB insights

Apple’sApp Store policies have gotten quite a bit more attention in the past few months, and while it seems likely that Apple’s team will fight tooth and nail to avoid dismantling any of the core pillars of their Store economy, the company did announce a small policy change today that will hopefully keep users from getting caught in any crossfire.
In a short announcement today posted to their site, Apple shared that they have updated the App Store’s review policy guidelines to

Once upon a time, fintechfounders could pitch 10 investors before closing a round in a relatively hushed way. Entrepreneurs could even ask VCs to sign nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) tokeep their information confidential. Today, everyone is a fintech investor and no one signs NDAs.
This changed dynamic puts founders in a difficult position.
Nabeel Alamgir, CEO and founder of Lunchbox, struggled to raise his first institutional check for his restaurant tech startup. After searching for more than

Brands and influencers have locked in a Twitter bidding war for the chance to get a branded costume added to Fall Guys since August 17th, and that bidding war came to an end today. G2 Esports, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, Aim Lab, and Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson, have emerged victorious as a team effort, pledging to donate $1 million to charity.Mediatonic confirmed the news today, calling it “probably the spiciest team up since The Avengers,” with a tweet from Aim Lab

The latest update to Overcast, a popular iOS podcast app, is bringing new transparency to podcast ads. Listeners who are in the beta can now view the services their favorite podcasts use to serve ads and track listeners. This means listeners will be able to tell when a podcast is using dynamic advertising, which allows networks to swap and target ads based on the specific person listening. For most people, this likely won’t change the shows they enjoy, but for the audience that cares or wa

Ring Federal Bureau of Investigation documents warned that owners of Amazon’s Ring and similar video doorbells can use the systems — which collect video footage sometimes used to investigate crimes — in order to watch police instead.
The Intercept spotted the files in the BlueLeaks data trove aggregated from law enforcement agencies. One 2019 analysis describes numerous ways police and the FBI could use Ring surveillance footage, but it also cites “new challenges”

Lenovo‘s Yoga laptops are some of the OG 2-in-1 laptops, popularizing the 360-degree hinge seen in so many models today. The company has since consistently built some of the best-regarded convertibles, and today it announced the latest in the family, the Yoga 9i, in 14 and 15-inch sizes. The star of the show us perhaps the Yoga Slim 9i — confusingly known as the IdeaPad Slim 9i in North America — a more svelte take on the lineup. A 14-inch laptop clad in black genuine leather,

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge Amazon’s Echo Buds wireless earbuds are $40 off at Amazon, which brings them down to their lowest-yet price of $90. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this deal, but it doesn’t happen regularly. (It happened once before in January 2020.) If you’re in the market for wireless earbuds, these are a particularly good value if you’re seeking a solid set of noise-canceling buds. They utilize Bose noise-reduction technology to help

Photo by Sean O’Kane / The Verge Revel’s shared electric mopeds are now available in San Francisco, with over 430 mopeds scattered across in the city, the company says. Revel has been expanding into new cities across the US this year even as it faces questions about its safety protocols.Revel isn’t new to the Bay Area; the company also operates in Berkeley and Oakland. But the scooters that are available in San Francisco are not the same as the ones offered in other markets li

Image: Activision Cheating in the PC versions of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone has been a huge problem, but now, Activision appears to be cracking down on the people creating these exploits. CxCheat.net, a company known for making exploits in PC multiplayer games, says it will stop creating Call of Duty cheats because Activision threatened legal action.The announcement that it was ending the development and sale of its Call of Duty cheating products was first spotted on Reddit. CxChe

Traditional roadmaps for startups center around this idea of the exit. Oftentimes, the ideal exit in the minds of startups and venture capitalists goes one of two ways: IPO or acquisition by another company.
But there are other ways for startups to exit that could potentially bring more value to a larger variety of stakeholders. Exit to Community (E2C), a collaborative working project led by the University of Colorado Boulder’s Media Enterprise Design Lab and Zebras Unite, explores ways to

A report from CNBC today revealed TikTok‘s allegedly selected a bidder to take over its US, New Zealand, and Australian business — and it’ll reveal who that is very soon. Word is that it’s down to Walmart and Microsoft or Oracle. CNBC reports that TikTok‘s executives could announce the deal as early as September 1. While we don’t yet know who the lucky suitor is, the smart money’s on Walmart and Microsoft — yeah, I didn’t think I’d be

RealPage, a publicly traded full-service property management technology firm with over 12,200 clients worldwide, today announced that it has acquired Stratis IoT, a startup that provides IoT services to the real estate industry, with a focus on access and energy management tools.
“RealPageaims to become a leading provider in the burgeoning rental property automation market, and thereby create significant opportunity for operators to increase rents, improve sustainability, add operational e

The next expansion of the sprawling League of Legends universe is something unexpected: a board game called Tellstones. This isn’t developer Riot’s first foray into tabletop games — that would be 2016’s Mechs vs. Minions — but what makes Tellstones interesting is that it’s a game set within the franchise’s expansive fantasy realm. “We portray Tellstones as a game that’s actually played in Runeterra, as part of their history and culture in the

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge TikTok creators will soon be able to sell merchandise they design and create directly to fans via the app itself.Creator commerce platform Teespring is set to roll out the integration soon, and it’s currently being tested with a limited group of users. Thousands of TikTok creators have already partnered with Teespring to start creating merchandise they can sell to their followers. The integration will allow “creators to create their own produc

Earlier this year, online marketplace OfferUpraised $120 million and acquired a top competitor, letgo, as a part of the fundraise led by letgo’s majority investor, OLX Group. As a part of the deal, OfferUp said it planned to eventually combine the businesses’ respective marketplaces into one but didn’t get into specifics of how that merger would take place. Today, OfferUp says it has now combined the OfferUp and letgo marketplaces into a new app and explained how the transition

As a business model, SaaS has expanded to epic size. A number of major SaaS companies filed to go public last week, and there are now thousands of SaaS startups growing all around the world. That scale makes it easier for banks and financial institutions to offer tailored solutions to this market around everything from equity to debt.
We’ve talked a bit about SaaS securitization the last few weeks, a crop of new financial products that use the metrics of a SaaS company to underwrite its de

The last thing we expected to see near the end of 2020 was a truce between human job-seekers and the deep learning systems replacing them, but the possibility of an impending recession has upended the AI market. According to experts, COVID-19 has stalled the once meteoric rise of available jobs for deep learning developers. I think it's clear that for many smaller companies that invested in deep learning, it turned out not to be essential and got cut post-Covid as part of downsizings. There are

Google is rolling out an update to Google Images designed to make it easier to license photographs or pictures that are covered by copyright. The change could help publishers, photographers, and artists get in front of their audience, while also helping users find images that they have a right to use.Images with licensing information provided by the publisher will now appear in search results with a “Licensable” badge over the thumbnail. Clicking on that image will then bring up its

TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 kicks off in 37 days, but the countdown clock on early-bird pricing runs out in just five. Engage with the mobility community’s brightest minds, makers, visionaries and investors from around the globe on October 6-7. Buy your early-bird pass before the bird expires September 4 at 11:59 p.m. (PDT), and you’ll save $100 over full price.
Why attend TC Sessions: Mobility 2020? It offers beaucoup benefits, but let’s start here. Whether you’re launchi

In last week’s IPO wave, one company fell a bit by the wayside amongst filings from better-known companies like Asana and Palantir. JFrog, a company that TechCrunch reported helps allows developers and companies deliver application updates “in the background without disturbing the user experience” when it raised $165 million in 2018, is positioned for an exciting debut.
Why? The unicorn — the same 2018 round valued JFrogat around $1.2 billion according to PitchBook data &

Amazonhas been granted an approval by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that will allow it to start trialing commercial deliveries via drone, Bloomberg reports. This certification is the same one granted to UPS and a handful of other companies, and while it doesn’t mean that Amazon can immediately start operating a consumer drone delivery service for everyone, it does allow them to make progress toward that goal.
Amazon has said it’ll kick off its own delivery tests, tho

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The Indianapolis-based startup is announcing that it’s leaving private beta testing. It raised $300,000 in pre-seed funding last year, including $80,000 from a pitch competition held by Elevate Ventures (the VC fund based by Indiana State).
Founders Michael Aft and John Necef told me the

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple on Monday announced that its new App Store appeals process, first revealed at WWDC in June, is now live, meaning developers can challenge Apple over whether their app is in fact violating one of its guidelines. In addition to that, Apple says developers can also suggest changes to the App Store guidelines through a form submission on its online developer portal.“For apps that are already on the App Store, bug fixes will no longer be delayed ov

This past weekend, the Ikea Harajuku location in Tokyo was home to something unique: an installation starring a virtual person. The retail giant partnered with Imma, a virtual influencer, in order to explore the concept of “happiness at home.” Over three days, those passing by the first floor could peer into Imma’s living room, watching as she lounged on a couch, mindlessly browsing her phone. Meanwhile, a view into her bedroom was streamed on a screen on the second floor, view

Algorithmic recommendation systems on social media sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have shouldered much of the blame for the spread of misinformation, propaganda, hate speech, conspiracy theories and other harmful content. Facebook, in particular, has come under fire in recent days for allowing QAnon conspiracy groups to thrive on its platform and for helping militia groups to scale membership. Today, Facebook is attempting to combat claims that its recommendation systems are at any way

Amazon unveiled the latest version of its drone last year. | Image: Jordan Stead / Amazon Amazon has been given the Federal Aviation Administration’s approval to operate as a drone airline in the United States, paving the way for it to start offering commercial deliveries on a trial basis, Bloomberg reports. The FAA said that the ruling allows Amazon to “safely and efficiently deliver packages to customers,” according to CNBC, and let its drones carry packages outside of the o

8Bitdo If you’re serious about fighting games, 8BitDo has announced a mod-friendly, wireless arcade stick that may interest you. It’s designed to work with PC and Nintendo Switch, and you can easily toggle between two sets of controls depending on the platform you’re using. It costs $89.99 and ships October 20th, but preorders are open now from the company’s site and Amazon.The wireless arcade stick supports Bluetooth and 2.4GHz wireless via a receiver hidden in its unde

Image: Asus Asus has taken the wraps off its new ZenBook S, a slim ultrabook that can be equipped with up to Intel’s Core i7-1065G7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of fast PCIe-based storage.Asus gave its flagship laptop a glow-up in the screen department, going from a 16:9 aspect ratio in last year’s model to a taller 3:2 aspect ratio for this year’s 3300 x 2200 touchscreen. What’s more, the bezels surrounding it are thin, and the display is Pantone-validated with 100 p

Photo by Brent Rose for The Verge GoPro may be adding one of its most useful new features to its main camera line with the upcoming Hero 9: a front-facing color screen. The feature, revealed in leaked renders obtained by WinFuture, wouldn’t be a first for GoPro; the company added such a screen to last year’s GoPro Max camera. But that device is a 360 camera costing $500, so adding one to the presumably cheaper Hero 9 — so filmmakers (and especially vloggers) can see in full co