Technology news

Apple is shifting how it ships devices to consumers: instead of sending out all of its hardware products directly from China or from local warehouses, the company is now going to use its network of Apple Stores as de-facto fulfillment centers, shipping products directly from the stores to get to customers faster.
The change, Bloomberg reports, will use Apple’s nearly 300 stores in the US and Canada to speed up local delivery for customers within 100 miles of a store. The company has alread

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google’s Meet videoconferencing service is getting breakout rooms, but they’ll only be available to Google Workspace Enterprise for Education customers at first, according to a Google blog post (via 9to5Google). With the feature, teachers and educators will be able to break their classes into smaller groups for things like projects or focused discussions.Google will let you make up to 100 breakout rooms in a single call. Once you’ve deci

Microsoft‘s Xbox Game Pass is currently stuck in App Store limbo — and rumor has it the company is planning a workaround that’ll let them get xCloud streaming onto the platform without having to work within Apple’s restrictions. According to Business Insider, Xbox head Phil Spencer called an all-hands meeting earlier this week, and said Microsoft is looking for a browser-based solution to the conundrum, allegedly saying, “We absolutely will end up on iOS.” It

Google Meet is adding a feature that could make large group calls a lot more useful for educators. Within the next couple of days, teachers using the Enterprise for Education tier of Google Workspace (formerly known as G Suite), will be able to create breakout rooms within video calls, allowing them to divide participants into smaller groups. The feature will arrive on other versions of Google Workspace “later this year.” To begin a call, tap on the Activities button and select Brea

My biggest complaint about Disney Plus for the longest time was that it didn’t seem to understand how people (read: me) want to watch movies. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a perfect example.When Disney Plus launched, the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies weren’t exactly organized. There were rows for featured titles, movies, and TV shows, but everything was kind of strewn together. Almost every Marvel Cinematic Universe movie you wanted was here — you just had to spend a minu

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Pakistan’s telecom regulator has banned TikTok, claiming the app failed to remove “immoral” and “indecent” content. The ban comes just over a month after the regulator, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, banned dating apps, including Tinder and Grindr, for the same reason.
TikTok had been installed 43 million times in Pakistan, according to the analytics firm Sensor Tower. That made it the app’s 12th largest mark

Local volunteers help board up a business ahead of Hurricane Delta on October 8th, 2020, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Residents along the Gulf Coast are bracing for the arrival of Delta, which is expected to make landfall in Louisiana on October 9th. | Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images Hurricane Delta is the latest storm to threaten the US during a hurricane season that’s smashed records and mangled Gulf Coast communities time and again. The Atlantic hurricane season has lived up to early

The Haunting of Bly Manor is more afraid of you than you are of it. 
Writer-director Mike Flanagan and his popular Haunting anthology returned to Netflix Oct. 9, almost two years to the day since The Haunting of Hill House darkened our queues in 2018The Haunting of Bly Manor, partially based on Henry James’ 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw, invites viewers to a regal English country home owned by the ill-fated Wingrave family and maintained by their equally unlucky house staff. 

Looking for an eerie new adventure? This might be it.
Based on the 1978 dark fantasy novel by Stephen King, CBS All Access' upcoming 10-part miniseries, The Stand, has a group of survivors getting trapped in the struggle between good and evil in an apocalyptic plague-stricken world. Together, they must face their biggest fears, which are brought to life by the mysterious Dark Man.
The sleek, heart-pounding trailer gives us a glimpse of the series biggest stars including Whoopi Goldberg, Alexande

The iPhone 11 Pro. Not an iPhone 12. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple is likely taking the wraps off its 2020 iPhones at an event on October 13th, and with just days to go until the big reveal, we might now know nearly everything about them — including when you might be able to buy them for yourself.
Many rumors suggest the iPhone 12 lineup will have a brand-new design with squared edges instead of rounded ones, perhaps similar to the beloved design of the iPhone 4 and

The PlayStation 5 offers backwards compatibility for the existing PlayStation 4 lineup of games, meaning you’ll be able to play almost any PS4 game you already own on the new console. Some games will also offer the option to upgrade to a proper PS5-optimized next-gen title, like Cyberpunk 2077 or Spider-Man: Miles Morales.Here’s how to get started:How to play backwards compatible PlayStation 4 games
The PS5 will be able to play nearly every PS4 game that’s available through bac

The best deals from the Wayfair kitchen sale as of Oct. 9: OUR TOP PICK: Vitamix Ascent Series A2300 Blender —save $100
BEST FOR THE BAKING OBSESSED: KitchenAid Sifter with Scale Attachment — save $30
BEST FOR THE LAZY COOK: Gowise USA 6.6 Liter Air Fryer — save $36Cooking at home is all the rage these days, but there isn't always time to cook an elaborate meal. That's where upgraded kitchen gadgets come in: From air fryers to smart blenders and KitchenAid stand mixer atta

Illustration by Alex Castro Twitter announced a slew of temporary changes on Friday aimed at staving off abuse around the November 3rd US presidential election. Tweets that include premature claims of victory will be labeled, tweets intended to incite interference in the election or election results will be subject to removal, and tweets from political figures with more than 100,000 followers — which includes President Trump — that are labeled as “misleading” will be mor

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google contractors who recently unionized say their jobs are being slowly shipped to Poland. On Thursday, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint laying out the allegations against HCL America, an engineering and IT contractor that works with Google in Pittsburgh.Obtained by Motherboard, the complaint argues the jobs are being outsourced in retaliation for legitimate union activity. In particular, the NLRB says the conduct took place &

Songwriter‘s block can be a problem for even the world’s most successful musicians. They can sometimes overcome it by taking breaks, seeking new forms of inspiration, or simply pushing through. And if none of that works, they could try out a new AI lyrics generator called keyword2lyrics. The system was created by Mathi Gatthi, a data scientist from Argentina, who told TNW he got the idea from his own songwriting struggles: Sometimes I have a few ideas that I

Image: Riot Games Riot’s tactical shooter Valorant is entering its third season, which the developer is calling Act 3, on October 13th, and we’ve just seen the last of the update’s new additions: an Australian agent named Skye joining the roster and bringing with her some pretty nifty supernatural powers.The character, a more passive agent with a penchant for nature and non-human companions, can summon birds for scouting and even a dog you can embody and scour the map with to

Everlywell, the HelloFresh of lab tests, debuted an STI subscription service called Current last month. 
For $14.99 a month, Everlywell will send you one of five STI tests (usually priced at $49 on their website). The company boasts that you'll get physician-reviewed results within days, a physician from a third-party telehealth network will reach out should you have a positive test, and, on top of that, there's no cancelation fee. But is it something you need?
Image:everlywell
Current came

Showtime At a time when American politicians and media personalities speak glibly of patriotism and freedom, it’s easy to forget that very few people who dedicated themselves to advancing those causes have ever been particularly popular — at least before they’re dead. “Most folks never heard of John Brown,” The Good Lord Bird’s opening narration begins, introducing us to one such unpopular subject. “If they have, they know he was hung for being a traito

We all deserve a good laugh right now, what with the ongoing pandemic and the constant the political shitshow.
What better way to catch a few laughs than some good tweets? We've been collecting our favorite tweets for, well, countless weeks now because hey, a little humor never hurt in the end-times. 
So here they are, 13 of our favorite tweets. 
1. Not me thoughme: it’s okay to be a person struggling with productivity during a prolonged crisis
my brain: not u though
me: not me t

Save $80: Select versions of the AeroGarden system are on sale at Best Buy for $99.99 as of Oct. 9.The weather is getting cooler and it's time to move your plants and veggies indoors. Of course, that's not a simple task if you don't have an AeroGarden. 
An AeroGarden is your own personal in-home gardening system that can hold up to six seed pods that grow whatever you prefer — veggies, herbs, or even flowers. The best part? You can take away the constant worrying about whether or not

TikTok and the John Lennon estate (alongside Universal Music) are marking the late singer’s 80th birthday by partnering to give creators access to several of his most popular songs.“Instant Karma! (We All Shine On),” “Imagine,” “Mind Games,” “Beautiful Boy,” “Woman,” “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” “Give Peace a Chance,” “Stand By Me,” “Nobody Told Me,” “Remember,” and &ldquo

SAVE $78: As of Oct. 9, you can bundle a Google Nest Thermostat E and a Nest Temperature Sensor at Best Buy for just $129.99 (a $208 value).Many parts of the country have already seen their first frost (or will very soon), which can only mean one thing: Winter is coming. (RIP, socially distant picnic season — we hardly knew ye.)
Too soon? Maybe. But if you're planning on blasting the heat in the coming months, you're definitely not going to want to miss this deal: You can bundle a Goo

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge This week, the House Judiciary Committee released its final report on tech antitrust, concluding that Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook are exerting monopoly power and that legislative action should be taken against them.On The Vergecast, co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn talk to The Verge’s Russell Brandom and Adi Robertson about what the congressional report lays out as antitrust violations for each company and how the proposed solutions to t

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Sony is detailing its PS5 backward compatibility support for playing older PS4 games today. The next-gen PS5 will support more than 4,000 PS4 games on the new PS5 console, a number Sony says is the “overwhelming majority.” While most PS4 games will play, Sony does warn that “some PS4 games may exhibit errors or unexpected behavior when played on PS5 consoles.” Some functions in PS4 games may also not be available on the PS5.
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This morning, YCharts, a financial data and charting service, announced that it has been purchased by LLR Partners, a private equity firm.
The companies are dubbing the transaction a “growth recapitalization,” indicating that the smaller firm won’t be stripped of its talent in hopes of driving near-term positive EBITDA. The deal was an all-cash transaction, TechCrunch confirmed.
Digging into YChartsitself, the company told TechCrunch via email that it expects to “surpass&

Yelp plans to alert users when a business on its platform has been accused of racist conduct, the company announced in a blog post. When someone associated with a business is accused of or is the target of racist behavior, Yelp will apply its general public attention alert. But if there’s “resounding evidence of egregious, racist actions” by a business owner or employees, such as using racist symbols or slurs, Yelp will apply a “business accused of racist behavior alert&r

The Postal Service is under attack and Newman is not having it. 
OK, so really it's actor Wayne Knight, who played the iconic mailman Newman on the sitcom Seinfeld, but he's definitely in character in a new ad urging folks to vote. 
"There's been a systematic, premeditated assault on the U.S. mail by President Trump and his so-called postmaster general," Knight-as-Newman says in the video. "Everybody knows the only person who can slow down the mail is a mailman!" 
Newman goes on t

The AR goggles will allow military canine handlers to issue commands remotely.| Image: US Army The US Army is trialing a new technology that could “fundamentally change how military canines are deployed in the future” — a pair of augmented reality goggles for dogs.
Dogs are put to many uses in modern militaries, from detecting explosives and searching for targets to accompanying infantry patrols in dangerous areas. Usually, handlers issue commands to their dogs using hand sign

Weighted blankets on sale as of Oct. 9:MOST LUXURIOUS: Layla Weighted Blanket — save $30
MOST PLUSH: Tempur-Pedic weighted blanket — save up to $39.80
MOST AFFORDABLE: BlanQuil Weighted Blanket — save $70
It's ok to admit it: We all need a little extra comfort this year.
That could come in the form of music that reminds you of Normal Times, calling your grandparents more often than usual, or a home-cooked meal.
Above all, none of us are about to turn down extra cuddle

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Before the pandemic, many companies were already using the videoconferencing app Zoom for business meetings, interviews, and other purposes. These days, many individuals facing long days without contact with friends and family have moved to Zoom for face-to-face and group get-togethers.
This is a quick guide for those who haven’t tried Zoom yet or who aren’t yet familiar with its features (or who have used it with friends but want to start ini

Get a $30 Amazon credit: Try in-garage delivery and get a $30 Amazon credit — just enter code KEY30 at checkout.Package thieves are real and the holidays are prime time for them to strike. If you want to protect your packages, consider getting them delivered in your garage instead of at your doorstep. And yes, there's a safe way to do this.
Amazon linked up with the MyQ app, which connects to WiFi-enabled garage doors and lets you open/close the door via your phone. If you have one of thes