Technology news

The Miami-based startup Papa has raised an additional $18 million as it looks to expand its business connecting elderly Americans and families with physical and virtual companions, which the company calls “pals.”
The company’s services are already available in 17 states and Papa is going to expand to another four states in the next few months, according to chief executive Andrew Parker.
Parker launched the business after reaching out on Facebook to find someone who could serve

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge The initial wave of preorders for the Xbox Series X and S have sold out at all major retailers. Of course, there’s still a chance that you’ll find one in stock if you click through one of the many links on our preorder guide, but this morning’s rush of orders seems to have scooped most of the consoles up.
Though, if you were trying to order a console earlier today, there was a decent chance that you were actually able to get that done. So Micros

This Gillmor Gang episode is as much about what we didn’t talk about as what we did. In the run up to the recording session, we somehow suspected we’d talk about Apple’svirtual event on Tuesday. Then, 15 minutes after we finished, RBG lost her battle to keep the Supreme Court from tipping even further to the right. With barely 7 weeks to the election, things changed.
Apple’s event focused on two product announcements — a next gen Apple Watch and an iPad Air refresh

Carnegie Mellon Universityand spin-off space startup Astrobotic are developing a robotic rover to look for water on the moon, and the little bot just passed the crucial preliminary design review phase, putting it one step closer to its inaugural mission planned for 2022. MoonRanger is aiming to be the first robotic detective to investigate whether buried ice is present in sufficient quantities to be useful to future lunar explorers.
MoonRanger could well be the first, provided it sticks to its

Facebookremoved two networks of fake accounts spreading government propaganda on the platform Tuesday, one originating in China and one in the Philippines.
In its latest report on this kind of coordinated campaign, the company says it took down 155 Facebook accounts, 11 pages, nine groups and seven Instagram accounts connected to the Chinese activity and 57 accounts, 31 Pages and 20 Instagram accounts for the activity in the Philippines. Both operations broke Facebook’s rules against &ldqu

Blockbuster movies don’t get much stranger than the Disney live-action remake. Beginning in earnest with 2015’s Cinderella (2014 if you count Maleficent, which I do not), there’s been at least one new film every year, culminating in 2019 with a staggering four live-action remakes of animated classics. Just about every single one of them is an oddity: massively successful but never really beloved — buzzed about more for the litany of ways they disappoint than their box-off

Image by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft has expanded its ongoing partnership with San Francisco-based artificial intelligence research company OpenAI with a new exclusive license on the AI firm’s groundbreaking GPT-3 language model, an auto-generating text program that’s emerged as the most sophisticated of its kind in the industry.The two companies are already entwined through OpenAI’s ongoing Azure cloud computing contract, with Azure being the platform on which OpenAI ac

The excitement around the ability to customize your iPhone home screen following the release of iOS 14 has been paying off for Pinterest. According to new third-party estimates, Pinterest’sapp has seen record global daily downloads and a swift climb up the App Store’s Top Charts as users sought out iPhone design inspiration — like photos to use for custom icons or wallpapers to match their new widgets, for example.
App store intelligence firm Apptopia was the first to note the

Updated Oct. 6.
Following months of uncertainty, Amazon Prime Day has a date for 2020. 
We previously reported that Prime Day 2020 will be on Tuesday, Oct. 13 after a slew of other publications like CNET and The Verge went live with stories rumoring the date, but now Amazon has confirmed that Prime Day 2020 will be Tuesday, Oct. 13 and Wednesday, Oct. 14. The event will run from 12 a.m. PT (3 a.m. ET) Oct. 13 to 11:59 p.m. PT (2:59 a.m. ET) Oct. 14. (If that's confusing, just know that for

Updated Sept. 29.
Following months of uncertainty, Amazon Prime Day has a date for 2020. 
We previously reported that Prime Day 2020 will be on Tuesday, Oct. 13 after a slew of other publications like CNET and The Verge went live with stories rumoring the date, but now Amazon has confirmed that Prime Day 2020 will be Tuesday, Oct. 13 and Wednesday, Oct. 14. The event will run from 12 a.m. PT (3 a.m. ET) Oct. 13 to 11:59 p.m. PT (2:59 a.m. ET) Oct. 14. (If that's confusing, just know that fo

While electric scooters first launched at scale in the U.S., they quickly made their way overseas. Now, there’s a bustling electric scooter market in Europe, China, Latin America and one that’s growing in parts of Africa.
At TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 on October 6 & 7, we’ll explore the journey of electric scooters and bikes from the U.S. to a number of countries across Europe, all the way to Rwanda in Africa, with Spin co-founder Euwyn Poon, Gura Ride founder Tony Adesina

A satellite image showing Paulette’s rainfall on September 22 | NASA/NOAA/NRL Tropical Storm Paulette just came back to life in the eastern Atlantic. The revival comes days after storm trackers issued what would have been their last update on Paulette. But you can’t keep a storm like Paulette down — it’s come back as a zombie.“Zombie” isn’t a technical designation, just a nickname for storms that peter out, only to come back from the dead when condition

Millions of homes have voice-enabled devices, but when was the last time you heard a piece of synthesized speech longer than a handful of seconds? WellSaid Labs has pushed the field ahead with a voice engine that can easily and quickly generate hours of voice content that sounds just as good or better than the snippets we hear every day from Siri and Alexa.
The company has been working since its public debut last year to advance its tech from impressive demo to commercial product, and in the pro

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google is shutting down paid Chrome extensions offered on the Chrome Web Store, the company announced today. That means that developers who are trying to monetize their extensions will have to do so with other payment-handling systems.
As of Monday, developers can no longer make new paid extensions, according to Google — though that’s cementing a policy that has already been in place since March. And that policy follows a temporary suspension

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Steam has added a big update to its experimental news hub feature: the ability to actually browse gaming news from a list of publications curated by Steam’s Curator system. The first collection of sources includes “top sites serving players across seven languages,” the company wrote in a blog post. And the whole thing is free.Obviously, the list of publications and sources is customizable, and alongside articles and blurbs players will b

Last week at TechCrunch Disrupt, TechCrunch media and advertising reporter Anthony Ha sat down with Blavity CEO Morgan DeBaun and The Shade Room CEO Angelica Nwandu to chat about their respective media companies, 2020 in the media world and how they view a recent conversation inside of media to hire and retain more diverse workforces.
Blavity is a network of online publications focused on Black audiences across verticals like politics, travel and technology. To date, the company has raised $9.4

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge An internal Amazon email seen by The Verge confirms that its Prime Day shopping event will take place October 13th and 14th, and that the company will make an official announcement September 27th.In a separate internal email, Amazon warehouse workers were told no new vacation requests would be accepted between October 13th and October 20th, which suggests that the company needs all hands on deck for Prime Day.
An Amazon spokesperson said in an email to Th

Image: Studio Ghibli Studio Ghibli has released a treasure trove of 400 free-to-use images from eight of its classic movies. The images, which are available on the studio’s website, come from From Up On Poppy Hill, Ponyo, Spirited Away, The Tale of The Princess Kaguya, The Secret World of Arrietty, Tales From Earthsea, When Marnie Was There, and The Wind Rises. Studio Ghibli says it will release images from all of its films over time.
“From this month, we will provide scene photos o

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is rolling out more artificial intelligence-powered technology to catch more videos that may require age restrictions, meaning more viewers will be asked to sign into their accounts to verify their age before watching.Similar to how YouTube used machine learning techniques to try to better catch violent extremism and more of the platform’s most severe content in 2018, and then in 2019 to find videos that included hateful conduct, the same ap

French startup Mirakl has raised a $300 million funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation — the company is now a unicorn. Miraklhelps you launch and manage a marketplace on your e-commerce website. Many customers also rely on Mirakl-powered marketplaces for B2B transactions.
Permira Advisers is leading the round, with existing investors 83North, Bain Capital Ventures, Elaia Partners and Felix Capital also participating.
“We’ve closed this round in 43 days,” co-founder and

Microsoft kicked off its virtual Ignite conference today with a look back at how Microsoft Flight Simulator has changed since its introduction in 1982. The nearly 40-year history shows just how much PC gaming has changed, to the point where Microsoft Flight Simulator can now accurately (most of the time!) map out the real world into a virtual one.Microsoft’s video begins with Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0, which was originally released in 1982 for IBM-compatible PCs. It allowed players to

Photo: Wyze Gadget maker Wyze, best known for its series of low-cost security cameras, is expanding further beyond its core product line to include new devices in the audio and smart home markets. The company is announcing three new products today: a pair of over-the-ears noise-canceling headphones, a video doorbell, and a smart thermostat. Those join the company’s cameras, fitness band, and smart versions of various household appliances like a lock, lightbulb, and wall plug.Much like how

Earlier this year, Manticore Games launched Core, a development tool that aimed to make game creation more accessible. Now, the company is getting an injection of $15 million, thanks to a funding round led by Fortnite creator Epic Games, in order to expand even more.
“At Epic we believe the industry is ultimately headed to games becoming more like open platforms where creators can build their own worlds,” Epic president Adam Sussman said in a statement. “Built in Unreal, Core e

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple’s status page indicated that several of the company’s services were experiencing issues on Tuesday, September 22nd, including the App Store, Apple Music, and Apple TV Plus. People also that Apple Music was experiencing issues for over an hour on DownDetector.
A few of us here at The Verge weren’t seeing problems with the App Store while the services were impacted, despite what Apple’s page was reporting. But if you were seein

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple’s status page indicates several of the company’s services are experiencing issues, including the App Store, Apple Music, and Apple TV Plus. People are also reporting issues with Apple Music on DownDetector.
A few of us here at The Verge aren’t seeing problems with the App Store, despite what Apple’s page is reporting. But if you seeing issues or an outage with Apple’s services, the errors might look something like this:

Image: WinFuture Google has already announced an event for its upcoming Pixel 5 and Pixel 4A 5G smartphones on September 30th, and it has even teased the phones themselves. But a new leak from WinFuture has revealed the best look yet at Google’s new flagship Pixel 5, along with nearly all of its specs.As rumored, the Pixel 5 will reportedly feature a Snapdragon 765G processor, complete with Qualcomm’s integrated X52 modem for 5G support, although WinFuture says that it’ll only

The Nokia 3.4. | Image: HMD / Nokia HMD’s resurrected Nokia has built a brand for itself around budget and midrange phones, and the company’s latest devices continue that trend with the $139 Nokia 2.4 and the $179 Nokia 3.4, which offer improved specs, displays, and cameras for the company’s under-$200 lineup.At $139, the Nokia 2.4 is the cheaper of the two phones, and it shows in the specs: a MediaTek Helio P22 processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, and a sadly outd

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook says it could aggressively restrict content if the US presidential election sparks violent unrest, according to the Financial Times. Global affairs head Nick Clegg told FT that Facebook was looking at “some break-glass options available to us if there really is an extremely chaotic and, worse still, violent set of circumstances.”
Clegg didn’t discuss what those options were. But he mentioned Facebook’s past use of “p

For the next four Tuesdays, Vergecast co-host Dieter Bohn will host a series of discussions diving deep into tech review season, each focusing on a specific product.
For this episode, Dieter and Verge deputy editor Dan Seifert talked with Engadget’s Cherlynn Low to compare notes on their respective reviews of Microsoft’s new foldable device, the Surface Duo.
I call it a “foldable device” because we don’t really know what else to call this gadget. It’s sort of

Your setup will probably never look this cool, in part because Razer’s gear is pretty costly. | Razer Razer has released three new wireless gaming products, each in a different category. There’s the $179.99 BlackShark V2 Pro wireless gaming headset that is, in many ways, just like the BlackShark V2 — sans cable. It’s similarly a very comfortable headset that I’ve found easy to wear for hours on end without feeling fatigued or like my head is in a vice. Razer claims

New Outlook iOS 14 widget. | Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge Microsoft is announcing a number of new features that are coming to Outlook mobile soon. These include emoji email reactions, voice commands, and the expansion of Cortana support.
Apple’s iOS 14 update arrived last week, and Microsoft is adding an Outlook calendar widget that will display upcoming meetings from multiple accounts on the home screen. Similar improvements are also coming to the watchOS 7 complications for Outlook,

Microsoft has been testing a new Outlook for Mac design over the past year, and it’s now ready to roll out to all users next month. The new design includes Microsoft’s Fluent icons, rounded corners, and changes to make the email app ready for macOS Big Sur.Microsoft’s Ribbon interface has been removed, and everything looks a lot cleaner. It’s a hybrid of Apple’s macOS design and Microsoft’s own Fluent design. Reading and writing emails have been improved with

Microsoft’s 85-inch Surface Hub 2S. | Microsoft Microsoft is starting to take preorders for its 85-inch Surface Hub 2S today. The large screen device, originally unveiled in April 2019, will now go on sale in January 2021, just missing Microsoft’s initial target of releasing the hardware at some point in 2020. Microsoft is pricing the 85-inch model starting at $21,999.99.
A $21,999.99 collaboration display might not seem like the type of device that businesses are rushing to buy in

Microsoft is planning to launch a preview version of its Edge browser for Linux next month. After officially confirming plans for Edge on Linux earlier this year, Linux users will be able to download a preview of the browser in October.The preview will be available from Microsoft’s Edge Insider site or through the native Linux package manager. Microsoft isn’t discussing how many features found on the Windows and macOS versions of Edge will be available on Edge just yet, but it’

Microsoft is expanding its new Together Mode for Microsoft Teams soon, allowing co-workers to pretend they’re holding meetings in coffee shops, break out into smaller meeting rooms, or use custom layouts to overlay presenters directly onto slide decks.
Together Mode, created for pandemic-era virtual meetings, has been part of Teams for a few months now, but Microsoft is adding a few more features that better emulate the way many of us used to work. New scenes include a number of auditorium