Technology news

A bot made to challenge traffic tickets has been used more than 9,000 times by New Yorkers, according to DoNotPay maker Joshua Browder.
The bot was made available to New Yorkers in March. In recent years and decades, residents of The Big Apple have seen a persistent increase in traffic fines. A record $1.9 billion in traffic fines was issued by the City of New York in 2015.
Since the first version of the bot was released in London last fall, 160,000 of 250

Rats care about their rat buddies — unless they’re on antidepressants, it would seem.
A 2011 study found that when a free rat came in contact with a rat trapped in a container, the free rat was empathically motivated to release the distressed rat from its cell. But a new study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, noted that a rat put in a similar scenario but given an anti-anxiety medication, was less likely to free its trapped peer.
Both studies were led in part by Peggy Maso

Rats care about their rat buddies — unless they’re on anti-anxiety medication, it would seem.
A 2011 study found that when a free rat came in contact with a rat trapped in a container, the free rat was empathically motivated to release the distressed rat from its cell. But a new study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, noted that a rat put in a similar scenario but given an anti-anxiety medication, was less likely to free its trapped peer.
Both studies were led in part by Pe

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Imagin

The VR headset designed for cinematic experiences has a new partner.
Computer hardware company Acer and software developer Starbreeze announced today that the two groups have approved a new joint venture created for design, promotion, manufacturing,marketing, and sales of the StarVR Virtual Reality Head-Mounted Display. The new company is provisionally called Acer Starbreeze Corporation and has authorized capital of up to $25 million, shared equally between the two

Google today announced the availability of two new Awareness application programming interfaces (APIs), which were first unveiled last month at the Google I/O developer conference. The APIs give developers a new way to do things in apps based on information about the context in which people are using Android devices.
The Snapshot API gives developers a way to get information about the current situation for a given device and its users. This applies to activity like walking or driving, the proxim

The recalled Jeep shifter that may have been involved in Star Trek actor Anton Yelchin’s death is a straightforward example of how things get harder to use when you take controls out of hardware and put them into software. It’s a UI problem, and an entirely avoidable one.
First things first: if you have a 2014 or 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee or a 2012-2014 Dodge Charger or Chrysler 300, you should call your dealer right now and set up an appointment for the recall. According to my l

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered one more reason why dogs are great: their superior sense of smell is inspiring advancements in the medical field. In a study published today in Diabetes Care, the researchers determined that during a hypoglycemic attack in people with Type I diabetes, the amount of the naturally occurring chemical isoprene in a person's breath increases. And dogs can smell this chemical. Continue reading…

In the Game of Game of Thrones, patience is a virtue, faith is a virtue, and Faith gets burned in the green flames of wildfire. I've been only passingly aware of the trades that have gone down in The Verge's GOGOT league this year, but I do know that Cersei Lannister has not exactly been the hottest commodity. Placed in what has more or less been house arrest for the past nine weeks, with a bad haircut and nobody to snipe at, this year had not seen our queen mother at her best. Some had started

Following a prominent cheating incident earlier this year, participants in the upcoming Tour de France will have to have their bikes scanned for concealed electric motors and batteries. Cycling officials plan to conduct between 3,000 and 4,000 tests, the Union Cycliste Internationale said today. This technology has been used at multiple other races, but this will be the first time it is deployed at the Tour de France.
"Technological fraud tests" rely on a tablet, case, adapter, and software to s

With smaller, faster Xboxes on the way, you have to keep the Xbox One (Original, Large) hype alive somehow, right? Microsoft France has the answer: weird limited-run special edition movie and TV show tie-ins. In April we saw the "designed by Stark Industries" Iron Man Xbox One. Now we have the "designed by somebody on Cake Boss probably" Game of Thrones Xbox One.
There are only three of these being made. Check out this detail shot of the render, which is way more gross if you imagine a

 Next-gen edtech and virtual reality are both high-stakes platforms that have quite a bit of potential when it comes to defining our near-future. The marriage of the platforms may be far from ready for primetime, but their is a lot of flirtation happening in the space right now thanks to some major players. Today, Google for Education announced that it will be adding integration of… Read More

Microsoft announced today that the Xbox Fitness exercise video app for the Xbox One and all content for it will become unavailable on July 1, 2017.
“Given the service relies on providing you with new and exciting content regularly, Microsoft has given much consideration to the reality updating the service regularly in order to sustain it,” Erica Bell, marketing coordinator and community manager for Xbox Fitness at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. “Therefore, the decision has be

Kobo is preparing to release a pair of new e-readers, according to an FCC listing. The company's new e-reader is called the Aura One, according to Mobile Scout, and will come in 7.8-inch and 6-inch variations.
More shockingly, Kobo still exists and is still producing hardware. Who knew? I didn't, so I'm betting you didn't either. That seems like something Kobo should probably try and fix. Anyway, there are no specs available for the Aura One yet, besides a line in the listing noting that it

Facebook really wants people to share more videos, so much so that it will even create them for you. A new feature coming to its iOS app this week, called Slideshow, takes your mobile photos and videos and turns them into a short clip you can customize with different themes and music. Facebook will do this automatically with a pre-made slideshow so long as you've taken at least five photos or videos in the last 24 hours. If you happen upon a slideshow in the News Feed, you can tap a "try it" pro

Following the Brexit vote to leave the European Union, the United Kingdom’s government is investigating the addition of fake signatures in the petition for a second referendum, which has received more 3.7 million signatures.
Bots were reportedly used by 4chan message boards users, according to CNet, to add signatures from IP addresses in North Korea, Antarctica, and Vatican City. Roughly 77,000 of second referendum petition signatures have been disqualified thus far, according to the

Xbox One owners are going to have to find another tool for working out in front of the TV: today Microsoft announced plans to shut down its Xbox Fitness service. Xbox Fitness launched more than two years ago, and since then has received a steady stream of updates, something Microsoft says is unsustainable moving forward. "Given the service relies on providing you with new and exciting content regularly, Microsoft has given much consideration to the reality updating the service regularly in order

Twitch is adding a very animated way to support your favorite streamers. Today the service is introducing the beta of a new feature called “cheering,” which lets you purchase animated chat emotes with real money, with broadcasters earning a share of revenue. It works like this: you type the word “cheer” along with a number in chat during a stream, and that will cause a colorful, shape-shifting emote to appear alongside your message. The higher the number, the larger and m

Twitch has launched a new way of cheering players that could turn into an important new form of monetization. Dubbed “Cheering,” the new form of celebration allows spectators to show support for broadcasters with animated emotes.
Spectators can simply type in “cheer” followed by a number in the chat window. Higher numbers use more Bits, which users can purchase with real money. That can add up to real money for both Twitch and the broadcasters, as the gameplay livestreami

Minecraft is still heading to the big screen, and it finally has a release date.
Minecraft: The Movie will hit theaters May 24, 2019, according to developer Mojang. It’ll come in 3D and IMAX versions in addition to the standard theatrical release. After recently surpassing 106 million copies sold, Minecraft is still one of the biggest franchises in the $99.6 billion gaming industry. It will now follow releases like Warcraft down the path of game-to-film adaptations, which ar

Google has updated its mapping applications with new, higher-resolution imagery from NASA's Landsat 8 satellite, the company announced today. That means Google Maps and Google Earth now contain far sharper and more detailed photographs, which Google used to update its cloud-free mosaic of the planet. By stitching together selective portions of the Earth with clear skies, Google's mosaic is able to eliminate clouds and other weather obstructions to create a crystal-clear snapshot of every co

The millions of PlayStation 4 owners worldwide turned one of Sony’s biggest franchises into a huge digital success last month.
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (read GamesBeat’s review) generated $56 million from downloads and microtransactions in May, according to intelligence firm SuperData Research. That was enough to make it the top grossing console game for the month despite only appearing on a single platform. It beat out Call of Duty: Black Ops III, which has sa

Minecraft has spawned action figures, a spin-off adventure game series, apparel, a convention, plush dolls, cosplay costumes, and more. On May 24th, 2019, arguably the most culturally significant video game since Super Mario Bros. will get its own movie.
The news comes from the blog of developer Mojang. The game studio and its ultra popular game were purchased by Microsoft in 2014 from founder Markus "Notch" Persson for $2.5 billion.
According to the Mojang announcement, the Warner Bros. produce

If you want to check out Adult Swim's newest show well before its cable premiere, there's only one place to do so: Vine. The oddball comedy network has posted the premiere of Brad Neely's Harg Nallin Sclopio Peepio in full there, though it doesn't have much in common with the service's trademark short loops. There's an initial six-second clip that loops if you do nothing, but clicking on it pops out a full-screen player that offers up the full episode, which stretches to almost 10 minutes in len

GUEST: We’ve been talking about the need for more transparency in mobile advertising for quite some time, so what’s the holdup? Turns out the answer is simple: We haven’t been ready.
The perceived delay in transparency is actually in line with the industry’s natural progression. As advertisers’ adoption of mobile ads increases, so will transparency, just as it did with the maturation of desktop.
Consumers’ embrace of mobile devices is well-documented, but many

You know what's easier than landing a 14-story Falcon 9 rocket booster on a drone ship in the ocean? Landing a tiny remote-controlled version of the rocket on a slab of foam in your pool. At least that's my takeaway from the most recent videos uploaded by hobbyist YouTuber ajw61185, the same guy behind this Imperial Speeder Bike drone from last year. In the new footage we see a working RC version of SpaceX's famous rocket repeatedly touch down on a scale model of the company's autonomous drone s

 On the heels of Amazon’s entry into the learning materials market, Google this morning also unveiled a series of product announcements aimed at expanding use of Google products and technologies in the classroom setting. At the ISTE conference today, the company introduced a number of new tools for educators, ranging from a research project that helps teaches kids to code called… Read More

 Online clothes shopping can be a gamble – you never really know if items will fit until you try them on. Meanwhile, shopping at local retailers can be time-consuming. A startup called Boon + Gable aims to solve both those problems with a service that offers a personal stylist who comes to your home with a curated selection of clothes for you to try, then buy on the spot if you like them. Read More

Baz Luhrmann's upcoming Netflix series The Get Down is set in the South Bronx in 1977, and that's mostly what its latest teaser focuses on. It's just 30 seconds long, packed with images of Cadillacs, graffiti, the subway, and summer smog — oh, and a new song from Nas. The only line of dialogue: "That's how we're gonna go down. Do or die."
When the show's first trailer premiered back in January, it looked like a disco-heavy musical drama, but for now most of what we know is that it's a

Sam Paper spent hours creating a PowerPoint presentation on office snack consumption, and now, he was feeling defeated. Though his spreadsheets were complete and his math was double-checked, he realized the whole thing was a little bland. Sure, his C-level overseers always enjoy a good budget discussion, but would they really care about office snack statistics? Everyone already knows the community seltzer water barely sticks around longer than a day while the packs of raisins chill for weeks. St

Here at The Verge, a small contingent of us have been more than a little preoccupied with the most important question in cinema in 2016: will Nicholas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon be the best or worst film of the year? When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, the latest film from the director of Drive, Bronson, and Only God Forgives was met with a chorus of boos, which can be as much a damnation as a sign of quality. (It’s been reported that the festival-goer

Street Fighter V is getting a bunch of new (and needed) content.
Capcom revealed today that Balrog joins Street Fighter V’s roster when the Story Mode update launches on July 1. The fighting game originally came out on PlayStation 4 and PC on February 16. When Street Fighter V launched, fans complained that it didn’t have enough content. The free Story Mode update could appease those players, and adding new characters like Balrog can keep them engaged and bring back bored owners. Cap

3D printing startup Arevo announced today that it closed a $7 million investment led by Khosla Ventures.
Arevo says it offers “advanced materials, intelligent software and additive manufacturing technology to make ultra-strong composite parts.”
“Our 3D printing technology and software suites will lead to higher quality parts in the aerospace, medical, and automotive industries,” said Arevo’s CEO and founder, Hemant Bheda, in a statement. “This funding will ena

Learning to code usually involves sitting in front of a computer, memorizing commands, and carefully checking for syntax errors. But what if instead, coding was colorful, fun, and let you interact with the real world?
That's what Google is trying to do with a new initiative called Project Bloks. Bloks is a system of toy blocks that kids can connect together to control other toys and learn the fundamentals of coding in the process — a bunch of blocks with arrows on them, for instance,

For the last three years, one month, and seven days, Edward Snowden has been living in exile from the United States. On May 20th, 2013, he boarded a flight from Hawaii to Hong Kong after setting in motion the most powerful public act of whistleblowing in US history. In the months that followed, the public learned about programs collecting data on every phone call in the United States, attacking private networks run by Google and Yahoo, and hacking into the web’s advertising networks to tur

At the Red Hat Summit in San Francisco today, Red Hat and Microsoft are making announcements that extend the partnership the two companies established last year, when Red Hat agreed to bring the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distribution to Microsoft’s Azure public cloud.
Now Microsoft is beginning a private preview of its SQL Server 2016 database software on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distribution. This follows Microsoft’s attention-grabbing announcement that it would be