Technology news

Do you crave bass? Do you need to feel like you're at Coachella at all times? Do you like to "DJ"? Is your name Chris Ziegler? Well The Basslet is here to satisfy your body-rattling desires. Maybe. It could be bullshit, who really knows with Kickstarter gadgets. But according to Lofelt, the company behind The Basslet, says it's a wrist-worn device is a wearable subwoofer that delivers bass straight into your body without having to blast your music.Lofelt claims The Basslet will last about s

I rush out to try every new major brand pair of Bluetooth headphones that hits the market, because I’m still in search of the perfect ones. The latest contender is the Bose QC 35 released earlier this month, which is basically a wireless version of the QC 25 that’s on the head of everyone in Business Class on every flight you’ve ever taken. As our own Chris Welch observes, the noise reduction on this model is astounding — it instantly boils off the ambient din of midtown

Jim Wicks, the man responsible for the celebrated designs of the 2013 Moto X and 2014 Moto 360 smartwatch, is leaving the former Motorola after 15 years of loyal service. Having joined Motorola in 2001 after design lead roles at Sony and Sapient, Wicks was part of the leadership team that stayed on during the tumult of being taken over by Google and sold on to Lenovo. But this year has seen the Motorola name phased out from public use and Rick Osterloh, the previous chief of the c

In 2013, Ticketmaster lost a class action lawsuit over its shady processing fees. This week, those of us who purchased tickets between October 1999 and February 2013 reap the rewards of the court case in the form of free ticket vouchers applicable to a limited set of shows preselected by the ticket seller. The options are, broadly speaking, terrible.
However, buried deep beneath the '90s piss-rock (looking at you Korn) and '70s dad-rock (I see you Steely Dan) are a few legit options. I

Three years after a court first ruled that Apple was liable for conspiring to fix ebook prices, consumers are finally getting their money back for buying overpriced books. Starting today, booksellers are beginning to refund customers by placing store credit into the accounts they bought the affected ebooks with. Apple will pay out $400 million to impacted consumers. It still denies wrongdoing with regard to ebook pricing. Continue reading…

This year’s E3, the gaming world’s annual marquee show, was virtual reality’s chance to shine. Two high-end headsets — the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive — are on sale already, although they serve only a small market. We’re four months from the launch of PlayStation VR, which will open up the medium to potentially tens of millions of PlayStation 4 owners. And Oculus is supposedly releasing its Touch motion controllers by the end of the year, making the headset signi

Another day, another rumor that Apple is going to ditch the headphone jack on the next iPhone in favor of sending out audio over Lightning. Or another phone beats Apple to the punch by ditching the headphone jack in favor of passing out audio over USB-C. What exciting times for phones! We’re so out of ideas that actively making them shittier and more user-hostile is the only innovation left.
ditching the headphone jack on phones makes them worseLook, I know you’re going to tell me th

The Disney film Frozen, which I have admittedly only watched once in its entirety and that was in a minivan, is a constant burden to me. It has murdered so many things that I care deeply about and today it has done so for the 14th time.
To recap, here are the first 13 things Frozen murdered right in front of my very eyes:Idina Menzel, who used to be the brightest light on Broadway and is now one half of a memeMeTaylor Swift's dignityThe Broadway adaptation slot I had hoped would go to the f

Epson unveiled two new projectors this week, which it says are the first "WirelessHD projectors with 4K content support." That's cool, but what's really special about these projectors is that they’re both priced below $3,500. The Home Cinema 5040UB and the Home Cinema 5040UBe are 3LCD projectors that come with 4K UHD signal input and high dynamic range support. The 4K works with HDMI 2.0a and HDCP 2.2.  The 5040UBe will cost $3,299, and the 5040UB is priced at $2,999. They aren’

Today, Microsoft released a big update to its mobile wallet app with NFC tap-to-pay features. That puts Microsoft Wallet on par with Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Android Pay. Like those other digital wallets, Microsoft's only works on the company's own software. You'll also need a Lumia 650, Lumia 950, or Lumia 950 XL device — those are the new Windows 10 Mobile ones — to use the tap-to-pay feature.
Windows 10 Mobile testers get to try it out starting today in the US. The service

The Wall Street Journal is today backing up rumors that Apple's iPhone 7 will bear a close resemblance to its two most recent predecessors, the iPhone 6 and 6S. The device, due this fall, will see "subtle changes" and you've already heard about the biggest one: the headphone jack is going away. The screen sizes offered will remain unchanged at 4.7- and 5.5 inches. This will mark a departure from Apple's "tick tock" cycle of completely overhauling the iPhone's design every two years.
Instead

Love it or hate it, Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest movie, The Neon Demon, is hard to forget. The film premiered at Cannes in May 2016 to divided reviews and the festival’s increasingly famous chorus of audience boos. On June 24th, it heads to American theaters, where viewers can judge for themselves whether it’s straight-faced black satire or Grand Guignol horror. There’s evidence in both columns: Elle Fanning (Super 8, Maleficent) stars as Jesse, a naïve new arrival

Workplace chat service Slack will now let users interact with third-party services without ever having to leave the app. The new feature, called message buttons, lets companies create interactive Slack apps for performing tasks from within the chat window, like approving expense reports or booking a trip. For example, companies that rely on the project-management software Trello can now create new project cards, add members to those cards, and set due dates for the project all by clicking button

Sony has made its internet TV service PlayStation Vue available on Roku TVs and set-top boxes, the company announced today. The service, which offers a pretty robust lineup of channels including ESPN and a cloud DVR starting at $29.99 a month has been expanding its availability over the past few months as Vue became a nationwide service in March.
With the addition of Roku, you can use Vue on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, and iOS, leaving nativ

In April, Ford launched its Credit Link program as a pilot in Austin, which allows up to six people to share a single vehicle using an app to manage payments and availability — basically, a private Zipcar for you and a few friends. Sounds useful enough for young urban dwellers who only occasionally drive, right? There's only one problem: not a single person has signed up for it. "We are still seeing a good flow of traffic to the website but we don't have any customers signed up a

The Impossible Project was created in 2008 in order to preserve Polaroid’s instant film process after Polaroid revealed that it would be killing it off, and in the past few years at least, it’s a bet that worked. The project has kept a tiny part of the photography market alive with the supplies that are necessary to continue shooting this particular brand of instant film.The company then spent a few years making and peddling something called Instant Lab, a pseudo-camera that used you

Port Canaveral — the busy naval port on Florida’s Space Coast — is considering making a big change to its tariff fees. Specifically, the port is mulling over charging companies a hefty fee for bringing "aerospace" or "aircraft items" into the harbor. If the new change goes into effect, companies transporting spacecraft into the port would have to pay $500 for every ton the vehicle weighs. Continue reading…

This week was the third and final part to the Chadwick Trilogy. We last saw a jilted Chad returning to the Bachelor Mansion for what we presumed would be a violent showdown. And so we open with the guys, blissfully unaware of the looming threat and jovially celebrating Chad’s departure by throwing his protein powder ashes into the air. I cannot believe that was a real thing that happened and not a joke I made up.
When Chad shows up to the mansion, the dudes realize the error of their ways

There are a bunch of companies selling autonomous drones to mining and construction companies. SkyCatch is working with Komatsu, the largest builder in Japan. And Kesprey is trying out autonomous drones in the US. Today, a new player entered the market, Israel's Airobotics. And it brought along the most high-tech landing pad we've seen from a drone company yet.
Seriously look at this thing.It looks like a Transformer, and that's fitting, since Airobotics has dubbed its drone "Opti

BMW announced today that it's working with Germany's Beck Automation to use complete i3 battery packs as a home energy storage solution. As with other car companies getting into this business — Daimler and Tesla, notably — the idea is to store energy from renewable sources like solar so that it's available even when energy isn't being generated. It's also useful as a backup power source should traditional power fail, for example in a storm or an area with an unrel

Memes are ephemeral novelties. The best evolve. The worst are abandoned. No meme lasts forever. That’s why the return of 2014’s best meme is so odd.
"But that’s none of my business" exploded in the summer of 2014, likely because of its ease of construction. The meme had the structural depth of a knock-knock joke. Take an image of Kermit the Frog, add an insult, and close with the same passive-aggressive punchline "but that’s none of my business."
Here’s an example:U

Electronic music godhead Aphex Twin (aka Richard D. James) just released his first new music video in 17 years, an eight-minute clip representing his new song "CIRKLON3 [ Колхозная mix ]." It's cut from his upcoming EP Cheetah, which is being released in full on July 8th, and it's the latest chapter in a late-career renaissance you can track back to the release of his masterful 2014 full-length Syro. It's a glitched-out clip populated by danc

Nest customers can already save money by opting into a rewards program or having their thermostat automatically adjust their home’s temperature while they sleep. Now the company is launching a "Time of Savings" feature that claims to save homeowners money by adjusting their house's temperature based on time-of-use rate plans. Some energy companies tailor the cost of power throughout the day, so it costs more when it’s most in demand, and Nest will take those prices into acc

Despite a precipitous fall in its second weekend performance at the US box office, Warcraft has now become the most successful video game film ever.
The movie bought in just $6.5 million in American theaters this past weekend (a fall of 73 percent compared to its $24 million opening), but continues to be buoyed by its massive success in China. Warcraft had the biggest debut of a foreign language film in the country's history, pulling in $156 million in its first five days, an

Tumblr is getting into live-streaming — but don't worry, it isn't launching yet another live-streaming platform. Instead, Tumblr will integrate with existing platforms, starting with YouTube, YouNow, Kanvas, and Upclose. Beginning today, you'll be able to share a live stream from any of those apps directly to a Tumblr blog, even sending out alerts to the account's followers, who'll be able to watch from right within Tumblr's website or app.
The intention is to make Tumblr a home for l

It's hard to believe that there's only one episode left in season six of Game of Thrones, mainly because I have no memory of what my life was like before this season began. What did I do on Sundays? What did I think about for many, many hours at work? How did I steer conversations toward Kit Harington's perfect face?
[SPOILERS FOR GAME OF THRONES AND A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE BELOW]
Yet, here we are, and the finale looks terrible. Can you believe that Daario is in this teaser? Can you believe

This is The Harper Spin, a weekly column from seasoned auto critic Jason H. Harper. He’s raced at Le Mans, crushed a car in a 50-ton tank, and now, he’s bringing his unique style to The Verge.Never underestimate humanity’s drive to pursue idiotic endeavors. Like that first guy who thought that the best way down a snow-covered mountain was to strap sticks to his feet. Or the chap who wondered how many buses he could jump over on his motorcycle.
Then there are the mountain climb

This morning the Federal Aviation Administration unveiled "Part 107," a new set of rules to govern the use of drones by commercial operators. Before today any for-profit entity flying a drone — from real estate agents to farmers to photographers — had to have a pilot's license. The updated regulatory framework replaces that license with a knowledge test and certificate specific to flying a drone — allowing companies a much cheaper, faster, and simpler path to getting in th

An iOS app that claimed it could help people locate refugees lost at sea has been pulled from Apple's App Store following reports that it didn't actually work, The Guardian reports. The app, called I Sea, said it showed users real-time satellite footage of the Mediterranean Sea so they could locate and flag refugee boats in trouble. But several developers recently discovered that the app really just showed users one unchanging image of the ocean. Continue reading…

It’s that time of year again where I consider giving up all video game activities on my laptop due to it being too damn hot to touch. I bought one of those laptop cooling pads one year with some built-in fans, but that didn’t really work. The only real way to keep a CPU cool is something like this Scythe Kabuto 3 heatsink. Or moving to Antarctica. Everything else is playing pretend.
The Kabuto 3's fan can move up to 113 cubic meters of air per hour across its myriad fins and heatpipe

My entire body clenches when I hear the word doxxing. Each time I write something that, for whatever reason, upsets a corner of the internet, I wonder if my personal information — phone numbers, address, social security number, credit card information — will be made public, or doxxed. And if it is made public, then how will it be used?
Even though our identities on the internet are more public than ever, we are still individually afforded a certain amount of privacy. Our passwords, o

A weight-loss device approved by the FDA last week has some doctors up in arms, with one even attempting to put together 4,000 physicians to sue the agency. That’s because they say the device, which lets patients pump some of the food they've just eaten directly from their stomachs into the toilet, isn’t safe and may lead to eating disorders.
"I am absolutely, utterly, and totally appalled that it was approved"
"This is the first time that I look at a device that was approved by the

Dating is a bleak, bleak endeavor.Between seemingly endless swipes, missed IRL connections, and no one being emotionally available, it’s dark out there — and sometimes, it can even be dangerous, especially for women. Burner — a company that lets people create temporary phone numbers — markets itself as an option for online daters (or journalists) who have yet to vet matches in person. Today, the company is launching a new experiment in modern dating called Ghostbot. The n

Twitter-owned Vine rose to prominence with its looping 6-second videos, a creative constraint that created a notably diverse and entertaining playground. But almost four years after launching, the company has seen its early lead in social video evaporate in the face of competition from the likes of Facebook, Snapchat, and newer players like Musical.ly. In part that's because the platform hasn't evolved: while vines are organized differently in the app than they used to be, it's fundame