Technology news

An air traffic controller who had the unusual job of disseminating the news that a guy in a jetpack was crowding the skies Sunday had one observation: "Only in L.A."
On the weekend, two separate pilots flying American Airlines and Southwest Airlines planes said they'd spotted someone flying a jetpack as they approached LAX, NBC Los Angeles reports. 
"Tower, American 1997. We just passed a guy in a jetpack," one pilot reportedly said. The pilot then added that the individual was flying about

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon has deleted two job listings posted to its corporate employment website detailing “intelligence analyst” roles that involved, among other duties, monitoring “labor organizing threats” within the company. The listings, which were posted days ago, first began circulating on Twitter earlier today, before Amazon removed them in response to widespread outcry on social media.The company now claims the listings were not accurate re

Image: Razer If you’re on the hunt for a gaming laptop to help you run your games at reasonably fast frame rates that will also serve as a great all-around machine for non-gaming tasks, the Razer Blade 15 is a solid option. You can get this machine at Amazon for $400 off its original price, which brings it down to $1,400. It comes with Intel’s competent six-core Core i7-10750H processor, Nvidia’s RTX 2060 graphics chip, 16GB of RAM, and a fast 512GB SSD.Its 15.6-inch 1080p dis

Vlambeer, the indie studio behind beloved games such as Super Crate Box, Nuclear Throne, and Ridiculous Fishing, is shutting down. The developer, which celebrates its 10th anniversary today, announced the news on Twitter. “We had a beautiful run, made incredible games, and worked with amazing people, but it is time for new things,” the developer said. “So we’re announcing the end of Vlambeer.”
The Dutch studio was founded in 2010 by Jan Willem Nijman and Rami Ismail

Image: Alex Castro / The Verge OnlyFans confirmed new rule changes to The Verge today that could impact how much money creators make on the platform, as well as how quickly they get paid. The new rules include a $100 cap on paid private messages, compared to $200 before, and a $50 cap on pay-per-view posts for creators who don’t charge a subscription, compared to $200 previously.
There’s also a new maximum tip price of $100 for the first four months a creator is active on the site.

Can we all just collectively agree to ignore the fact that it's already September? Please? (Or maybe it's a good thing that this dumpster fire of a year is getting closer to over and done with.)
SEE ALSO: What the Mashable staff bought this month: July 2020 edition
And what better way to take a moment away from reality than to talk about the cool stuff we bought this month to help improve our daily lives? It gets pretty dour being stuck indoors, not seeing human beings, and whatnot, and we think

The shelves filled with bags of nuts and dried fruit look like any other aisle at an Amazon-owned Whole Foods grocery store (the company bought the grocery business in 2017), but the newest store, in Brooklyn, New York, isn't open for shopping.
The Industry City location near New York Harbor opened Tuesday as Amazon's first online-but-IRL store. Only workers are allowed inside to fill orders for delivery. Orders come from Amazon Prime members shopping for groceries on Whole Foods' online site an

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple on Tuesday released iOS 13.7, adding support for a new exposure notification system for powering COVID-19 tracking. The system is an extension of the existing coronavirus contact tracing efforts, but it removes the burden on states of having to build a dedicated app. News of the new software framework was first announced earlier today in a joint statement from Apple and Google.This native support was expected, as it was announced when the exposure n

Twitter knows its trending section is a confusing mess. 
In an effort to rectify that, the company that brought us trending gems like "demon sperm" plans to revamp the section in an attempt to answer the seemingly unanswerable question of "Why the hell is this thing trending?"
To accomplish this, Twitter is taking a two-pronged approach. Starting today, for some trends, the company will include what it deems to be a representative tweet at the top of a trending page. In the near future, Twi

Gogo, the in-flight internet provider, has found a buyer for its commercial airline business. Intelsat, the world’s second largest satellite operator by revenue, has agreed to purchase Gogo’s Wi-Fi business for $400 million in cash, the companies announced Tuesday. It’s an unlikely pairing, mostly because Intelsat filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May.The bankruptcy was seen as a means for Intelsat to begin paying down its nearly $15 billion debt load while positioning itself

Photo by Bobby Quillard Dr Disrespect says he still doesn’t know why he was banned from Twitch, and he warned viewers that the mysterious ban has been causing him anxiety. “My anxiety levels are something that comes in these huge waves,” said Dr Disrespect, real name Guy Beahm, on a stream compilation posted to YouTube this afternoon. “And I’m having a hard time dealing with it. I’ll be honest.”
Twitch signed Beahm to an exclusive contract at the beginn

As a result of their environmental impact, activist Greta Thunberg doesn't take planes. 
It's this powerful decision that landed the teenage activist on a wind-powered ship bound for the United Nations Climate Change Summit in New York City last summer, as shown in the first footage from Hulu's upcoming documentary I Am Greta. 
Thunberg's trans-Atlantic voyage, beginning from the southern coast of England, makes up just one part of director Nathan Grossman's portrait of the world-famou

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are taking their 2020 campaign to new horizons — Animal Crossing: New Horizons, to be specific.
On Tuesday, the Verge first reported that starting Sept. 1, official Biden-Harris lawn signs will be available for ACNH players to download and display around their islands.
The campaign created four designs that Animal Crossing fans can download to show their support for the 2020 Democratic candidates. There's an official Biden-Harris logo, a Team Joe logo, a Pride-i

Nvidia might have just announced its RTX 3080 successor to the RTX 2080, but the company also had a surprise giant GPU ready: the RTX 3090. While the RTX 3080 will ship with 10GB of G6X memory, the RTX 3090 ships with a huge 24GB of G6X memory. Nvidia is promising that the RTX 3090 will be capable of 60fps gaming at 8K resolutions. This new flagship card is more akin to Nvidia’s Titan series and will ship on September 24th priced at $1,499.
The RTX 3090 is based on Nvidia’s Ampere GP

Nvidia is unveiling its new GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics cards today. Nvidia has been teasing these new cards for weeks, and there have also been plenty of leaks before the RTX 3080 was made official today. Based on Nvidia’s new Ampere architecture, the RTX 3080 is designed to succeed the RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti cards with improved performance and ray-tracing support.
Nvidia is promising big performance with the RTX 3080, up to two times that of the RTX 2080, and faster than even Nvidia&r

Nvidia is unveiling its new GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card today. Nvidia has been teasing these new cards for weeks, and there have also been plenty of leaks before the RTX 3080 was made official today. Based on Nvidia’s new Ampere architecture, the RTX 3080 is designed to succeed the RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti cards with improved performance and ray-tracing support.
At the heart of this new GPU is an updated thermal design. Nvidia has created a new pennant-shaped board for its RTX 3080, combine

Image: Epic Games Nvidia on Tuesday announced that Epic Games is bringing real-time ray tracing to the PC version of Fortnite. The announcement came as part of the company’s Ampere graphics card live stream, where we expect Nvidia to show off the RTX 3090 graphics card later today.Fortnite will support DLSS 2.0, Nvidia’s feature that uses AI to boost frame rates while keeping the ray tracing effects boosted to their maximum. The video clip above shows some high-fidelity surface refl

A girl sits outside her flooded home on the banks of the River Ganges.| Photo by Sanjay Kanojia/AFP via Getty Images Google says its flood prediction service, which uses machine learning to identify areas of land prone to flooding and alert users before the waters arrive, now covers all of India and has expanded to parts of Bangladesh as well.
The search giant launched the tool in 2018 for India’s Patna region, but it says it’s been slowly increasing coverage in coordination with lo

Tennis star Naomi Osaka is using her platform to pay tribute to Breonna Taylor and spread awareness about racial injustice. 
On Monday, during a match against Misaki Doi in the US Open's first round, Osaka walked onto the court wearing a black face mask with the name of Breonna Taylor on it. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was fatally shot by Louisville police officers in March. Despite protests against Taylor's death, none of the police officers involved have been charged. The tribute c

Screenshots of the new Exposure Notification Express system Apple and Google are launching a new auto-generated software framework to help states deploy their own contact tracing apps. Developed as an extension of the earlier exposure notification framework, the new system allows public health authorities to avoid the broader development work of launching a standalone app, simply configuring the basic framework to their state’s needs. Existing applications won’t be affected by the n

It's Dictionary.com official: 2020 has changed language. 
In its latest update for September, the online dictionary Dictionary.com announced massive changes to its entries, including new entries for Black, as it refers to a person, Afro-Latinx, deadname, and gender-inclusive, among many others. 
Citing "the unprecedented events of 2020," the digital dictionary updated 15,000 entries in total, which took the form of 650 new entries, 2,100 new definitions, 11,000 revised definitions, and

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge Nintendo is changing how it handles digital game preorders for the Switch’s eShop, and it’s starting by giving customers the chance to cancel preordered games instead of getting billed upfront.
Under the old system, Nintendo would charge customers the full price of the game when they preordered the title, no matter how far away the game’s release was, with no way to cancel the preorder should you have had second thoughts. As of September 1st,

Back in early July, TechCrunch covered the Envision Accelerator. The program was put together by a group of students and recent graduates, often with some early venture capital experience, to help give some young startups a boost, and to shake up industry diversity metrics at the same time.
Now on the other side of their first batch’s official program and into its investor week, Envision shared a number of statistics regarding that first cohort, and talked about plans for its second.
What

Image: Amazon It’s easy to get the wrong idea about The Boys. Amazon’s satirical take on superheroes — based on Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comic superheroes who get off on behaving badly and the operatives who, in turn, get their jollies from keeping them in line — had a whiff of Deadpool about it. You know: obnoxious, irreverent, very violent, and kind of shallow. But in its surprisingly effective first season, The Boys showed real heart. It’s crass

Ewan McGregor is jumping back in the saddle.
16 years after filming Long Way Round, which saw the Star Wars actor and his best friend Charley Boorman riding on their motorbikes from London to New York, McGregor has filmed a new 11-part series for Apple TV+ called Long Way Up: A 13,000-mile journey from the southern-most point of Argentina, up through South America to LA.
The catch? This time, they're doing it on electric bikes.
The trailer above, which dropped on Tuesday, sees McGregor and Boorm

TL;DR: As of Sept. 1, you can save up to $100 on iRobot vacuums at Best Buy and Amazon. Picture this: fall weather has officially begun, you're snuggled up on your couch having a movie marathon and your robot vacuum is silently moving around you to make sure that every corner of your home is clean and tidy. 
With just the press of a button (or by scheduling a cleaning time on the iRobot HOME app), the work will be done for you. 
iRobot vacuum cleaners are ideal for any kind of hom

TL;DR: As of Sept. 1, you can save 20% on the Dyson Supersonic hair dryer, Dyson Airwrap hair styler, and Dyson Corrale hair straightener by becoming a My Best Buy member.All summer, you've teetered between making a big, treat yoself-level purchase and saving money. There's probably no good reason to spend hundreds of dollars on new clothes or a fancy hair tool during a pandemic that's had you wearing the same sweatpants for four days in a row. Right?
If getting ready to go nowhere or feeling ho

Auctify’s Specs (above) are being marketed as a “productivity-boosting” tool.| Image: Auctify The difficulty of staying focused in an age of distractions is one of those annoyingly accurate cliches. (I checked my phone three times just writing this paragraph.) But a startup named Auctify has what it claims is the solution: smart glasses that use AI to monitor what you’re looking at and nudge you to pay attention. Depending on your worldview, it’s the product of you

Image: Behaviour Interactive Dead by Daylight is coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X this year, and not just as a technicality: developer Behaviour Interactive says the next-gen console versions will not only run at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second, but that it’s aiming to create a “remastered edition of the game” as well.
Players who purchased the game on current-gen will receive a free next-gen upgrade
The PS5 and Series X ports won’t be the only ones to re

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Update August 31st, 6PM ET: The following article has been updated following Apple’s termination of Epic Games’ developer account. That action made it impossible to reinstall all Epic apps associated with that account, including Fortnite and the Inifinity Blade trilogy. The headline has been updated to reflect this fact.Fortnite disappeared from the App Store last week as part of developer Epic Games’ big legal and regulatory showdown with App