Technology news

GE’s been making some really simple and accessible smart lights called C by GE for the past two years, and today, the company is announcing its first big upgrade to the system. It’s a hub, called the C-Reach, that connects C by GE lights to Wi-Fi so that they can be controlled by Alexa or the Google Assistant.
The device costs $50 on its own, but GE will also sell it bundled with pairs of bulbs at a discount — $65 for two “Life” bulbs (which have a single color opti

Riot Games is making a big change to its professional League of Legends championship series in North America. Back in June, the developer announced a major shift for the NA LCS, which would see the circuit move from a system of promotion and relegation to one with 10 permanent teams. Now, Riot is revealing the 10 franchises that will compete in the new league format starting next year, and the list includes brand-new teams backed by the likes of the Houston Rockets and Golden State Warriors. &ld

Amazon’s second-generation Echo has the benefit of easily swappable shells, and today the company announced that it’s releasing a red version of the smart speaker to benefit (RED) and its fight against AIDS.
Other than the unique color, the (RED) Echo is identical to the regular version. The only difference is that for every (RED) Echo sold, Amazon will donate $10 to the charity. Plenty of tech companies have teamed up with (RED) in the past to release special versions of their produ

Chinese robotics company Ubtech has launched Lynx, the first humanoid robot with Alexa built in. It does everything Alexa can, like setting reminders and playing music through the speakers in its “ears,” plus a few extra features. There’s a Surveillance Mode that will have Lynx take and send a 30-second video to the companion app on your smartphone if it detects any sound or movement via its infrared chest sensor. And the Avatar Mode lets you see and speak through the robot&rsq

A few days ago, there was a flash-in-the-pan controversy over Google "forking" Apple's open-source programming language Swift. After a few minutes of speculation over whether Google was going to make its own special flavor of the language for its own purposes, Swift's creator Chris Lattner (who now works at Google) helpfully clarified the situation:
Swift at Google has enough folks working on it that we need a staging ground/integration point, and we decided it should be public. https://t.co/hyp

Several years after US government officials got involved in the massive Takata airbag recall that encompassed tens of millions of cars, many still haven’t been repaired. One of the automakers implicated in the recall scandal is turning to Facebook to track down owners.
On Monday, Honda announced a new set of initiatives to complete the replacement of defective Takata inflators, which have caused hundreds of injuries and deaths. Millions of Hondas sold in the US still haven’t been rep

While Americans are busy traveling, paying attention to Black Friday deals, and spending time with family, the Federal Communications Commission will be rolling out its least popular proposal of the year: its final plan to dismantle net neutrality — the set of rules that prevent internet providers from giving some websites and internet traffic an advantage over others. According to The Wall Street Journal, the FCC is expected to unveil its proposal this week, less than three months after t

Huawei’s Honor sub-brand has announced its newest midrange device, the Honor 7X, which serves as the successor to last year’s Honor 6X. Like the 6X, which served as a cheaper option below the Honor 8 (Honor’s 2016 flagship), the 7X is a more budget-minded alternative to this year’s Honor 9 flagship.
But while the 6X stood out from other budget phones by offering a dual-camera system usually found on high-end smartphones, the 7X is hoping to make an impression by going big

The Justice Department today filed suit to block the proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner. The news, reported first by Bloomberg and later in subsequent reports from Reuters and Politico, is a drastic heightening of tensions between the DOJ and AT&T.Until today, only secondhand accounts from the inner workings of the merger approval process suggested the DOJ may not approve the deal, with the shadow of President Donald Trump hanging over the situation due to his personal feud wit

Astronomers have confirmed that an object that recently passed by our planet is from outside our Solar System — the first interstellar asteroid that’s ever been observed. And it doesn’t look like any object we’ve ever seen in our cosmic neighborhood before.
Follow-up observations, detailed today in Nature, have found that the asteroid is dark and reddish, similar to the objects in the outer Solar System. It doesn’t have any gas or dust surrounding it, like comets do

The Walking Dead is back, and for us here at The Verge that’s an opportunity to examine just how effective the show can be in creating a complex villain. As played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, big bad Negan has always been violent. But thanks to his man-baby antics, he’s stubbornly remained a comic book thug, never becoming the nuanced character the show so sorely needs.
Each week, I’ll be analyzing the show through its presentation of Negan: how he acts, how he delivers his jokes a

The Sonos One may have only come out a few weeks ago, but Sonos is already putting its latest speaker on sale for $25 off, bringing the price down to $175 on Sonos’ website.The Sonos One is Sonos’ first speaker with integrated smart assistants (Alexa for now, but Google Assistant support is promised for 2018), and this discount is the first time Sonos has offered a price cut on it. Given how rare Sonos hardware sales are, the fact that the company is offering any sort of discount thi

KFC has launched lots of gadgets in the past, and we've routinely covered them. But this past week, the fried chicken company introduced a different kind of gadget: a massive Faraday cage. The Internet Escape Pod, as KFC calls it, features a drumstick-shaped door handle with a massive Colonel Sanders atop it. The dome is constructed out of steel and stainless steel mesh, a high-density foam, and enamel paint. It weighs eight pounds. Only one model exists, however, so if you want it, you have to

iRobot has been continuously adding ways to make Roomba a more necessary part of connected homes since introducing the Roomba 980, its first Wi-Fi-connected model in 2015. Now, it’s introduced IFTTT functionality, adding 11 applets to further automate Roomba’s work around your home, as spotted by TechCrunch.
The functions range from actually practical to why. As of now, the most popular ones are the most practical, like “When I answer a call, pause Roomba,” and “Whe

Texas Rangers have served Apple with a search warrant for data from deceased Sutherland Springs gunman Devin Patrick Kelley, who killed 26 people in a Texas church earlier this month.
The San Antonio Express-News reports that the warrant covers files stored directly on an iPhone SE found near Kelley’s body, as well as files stored in his iCloud account. Law enforcement is apparently seeking phone call and message information, photos and videos, and other data dating back to January 1st, 20

Texas Rangers have served Apple with a search warrant for data from deceased Sutherland Springs gunman Devin Patrick Kelley, who killed 26 people in a Texas church earlier this month.
The San Antonio Express-News reports that the warrant covers files stored in Kelley’s iCloud account, with law enforcement apparently seeking phone call and message information, photos and videos, and other data dating back to January 1st, 2016. Another warrant allows law enforcement to look for this data ind

This past weekend, Justice League finally landed in theaters. The movie was meant to be Warner Bros.’ answer to The Avengers; the crowning achievement of the DC Extended Universe. But those plans hit some speed bumps along the way. Batman v. Superman wasn’t the level of hit the studio was hoping for, and Suicide Squad was disastrous on a critical and financial level. Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins did deliver the kind of cultural-zeitgeist blockbuster the studio was looking for,

Uber will buy 24,000 XC90 SVUs from Volvo to form a fleet of driverless vehicles, reports Bloomberg. The XC90s, which start at $45,750, will be delivered between 2019 and 2021. The base vehicles feature core autonomous driving technologies that will enable Uber to add its own automation features as well, Volvo says. “This new agreement puts us on a path towards mass produced self-driving vehicles at scale,” Jeff Miller, head of auto alliances at Uber said in a statement.
Volvo said e

Uber has added a few new features right before the holidays that should make getting a ride for you or a friend a bit easier. The ride-hailing service has added live location sharing, which will allow your driver to see your location once you tap the gray icon on the bottom right of the screen. This can be helpful when you’re walking to your pickup location so your driver isn’t left in the dark.
Beacons are also being expanded (now available in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco),

There haven’t been many updates on Apple’s iMac Pro since it was first announced back at WWDC in June. However, over the weekend, news broke from the internet’s favorite Apple firmware gurus Steven Troughton-Smith and Guilherme Rambo that the upcoming pro desktop computer will feature an A10 Fusion coprocessor.
Based on the leaked code, which has been compiled and explained by Jonathan Levin, it seems the A10 Fusion chip will enable two interesting new features. The first is th

Last week, I visited the lava planet Mustafar, infiltrated an Imperial base as a stormtrooper, battled alongside the cantankerous droid K-2S0, and collected data on a piece of secret Imperial cargo that could have far-reaching ramifications for the fate of the galaxy. And I did it all without ever leaving a tiny warehouse in Glendale, California.What I experienced was Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire, the much-anticipated collaboration between virtual reality park designers The Void and ILMxLAB,

Back in August, DJI launched a bug bounty program meant to reward researchers who came to the company with security vulnerabilities they had discovered. This approach to cybersecurity is now widespread, with big companies like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo running their own programs, and smaller companies relying on platforms like BugCrowd and HackerOne.Unfortunately for DJI, its effort to work with white hat hackers is already causing controversy. Kevin Finisterre, a security researcher whose ea

Google is releasing a fix in the coming weeks to remove a faint buzzing sound that appears during phone calls on some Pixel 2 devices. A community manager posted a short message on the Pixel User Community forum confirming the fix, stating, “We’re rolling out a software update in the coming weeks which eliminates a faint buzzing sound on some Pixel 2 devices when the phone is placed to your ear during a phone call.”
Some users received replacement handsets, but said the problem

It's hard to find USB-C earbuds despite so many Android phones — including Google’s Pixel 2 devices and the Razer Phone — making a switch to the new connector while getting rid of the 3.5mm headphone jack. Fortunately, there’s a new pair of USB-C buds just released called the Razer Hammerhead USB-C. They’re made to match the Razer Phone, but you can easily plug them into any other device that has a USB-C jack.The earbuds are fitted with 10-mm drivers and acoustic ch

 Earlier this month, U.K.-based challenger bank Monzo announced that it had raised a further £71 million in a round led by Goodwater Capital, giving the startup a post-money valuation of £280 million. However, what wasn’t reported at the time was that the round included £11 million in secondary investment, meaning that only £60 million entered the company’s balance sheet and… Read More