Technology news

When Joel Hodgson announced a Kickstarter campaign to bring back Mystery Science Theater 3000, the 1990s cult cable show he’d created and starred in, the internet basically melted down. The show’s combination of bad B-movies and relentless riffing had earned it an active underground fan base, and in the 17 years since its demise MST3K had continued to live on thanks to word of mouth and online chatter. It was the perfect target for a Veronica Mars-esque resurrection, sure — but

GUEST: Imagine if everything around you was connected and A.I.-enabled.
Ordering at your favorite restaurants would be as simple as sending them a text. Your dry cleaner would know exactly when to pick up your laundry without you uttering a word. And when you run low on groceries, your refrigerator would order food for you.
This fully integrated world is right around the corner.
Recently, a friend of mine told me an interesting story. Being one of the few people with a very n

It turns out, lightsaber battles are real — and really entertaining.Last night, well over a hundred people gathered in San Diego's Balboa Park, a short drive from Comic-Con, for an epic lightsaber battle on a scale not seen since the fight in Attack of the Clones.The event was hosted by the Underground Lightsaber Fighters, a group that started up in January and has been hosting monthly lightsaber tournaments ever since.The group's founder, Nick Murico, says he started the event figuri

One of the many things that have become synonymous with Silicon Valley are hackathons, events where developers get together to get creative. But while those are more free-for-all contests, the real benefits to companies aren’t necessarily significant enough to guide any product roadmap further.
Twilio is one such company that has been a big proponent of hackathons, since after all, it’s built around the developer community. But twice a year, it hosts an event called Tweek aimed at le

Just a couple of decades ago, the very idea that there were other planets orbiting stars throughout the universe was something that belonged to science fiction. However, recent research has shown not only are there other planets out there, but that they’re extremely common. The short documentary The Search for Earth Proxima outlines the breakthroughs that have led us to these discoveries, and how a group of astronomers plan to look for habitable planets in our neighborhood.
Equipment such

GUEST: I once asked Howard Hartenbaum, General Partner at August Capital and StartX Advisor, what the valuation of our company should be for our next round of funding. His answer: “It’s entirely up to your salesmanship.”
That statement stuck with me. The worth of our company, measured in millions of dollars, wasn’t about our revenue, our amazing team, or revolutionary product. It was about how well I could sell our value.
Truth is, if you want to succeed as a founder you

The Verge is posted up at the Panorama festival in New York City this weekend, which means we're surrounded by musicians — and we got some of them to talk to us. William Phillips, who records ambient electronic jams under the moniker Tourist, stopped by The Verge lounge backstage to talk about texting, emoji, and why he doesn't like Elon Musk. We also talked about how communication has changed over time — Phillips always prefers a phone call over a text, by the way.
@Tourist hangs wi

Prisma, the sensationally popular iOS photo manipulation app that's been second only to Pokémon Go in terms of summer hype, has now arrived on Android. The Google Play Store has been plagued by sketchy knockoffs of this excellent new app, so it's a welcome relief to have the authentic app now up and running. Prisma's makers say they've ported over all the iOS functionality, so there shouldn't be any difference in user experience or capabilities.
With more than 400 million pictur

Kendrick Lamar took the main stage at the inaugural Panorama festival in New York City on Saturday night, to the biggest crowd Randall's Island has seen thus far this weekend. Performing with a full band, Lamar blasted through favorites from 2012's good kid, m.A.A.d city, and got fans jumping to "Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe" and "Money Trees." He even dropped a few classics from his 2011 breakout mixtape Section .80 — including not one but two renditions of "A.D.H.D." By the time he and his e

Remember a company named Haptik.
The team, based in India, has created a messaging app used by millions of people. It relies on A.I. to help human agents provide personal assistance, a bit like Mezi or Lola. Interestingly, the folks behind this app learned a few lessons about what it takes to create an app when you don’t have the development frameworks handy like we do in the U.S.: They had to create their own.
One of the smart people behind the app is Akhil Aryan, in charge of &ldquo

Microsoft is cutting the price of its Xbox One console to $249. The new price marks the third price cut in less than two months, ahead of the new Xbox One S launch on August 2nd. 500GB versions of the Xbox One are now $249, and this includes bundles with games like Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, Quantum Break, Forza Motorsport 6, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Rare Replay.
Retailers like Best Buy and Amazon will be selling Microsoft's Xbox One console at the new $249 price point immediately,

The Verge has been hanging out with some of the incredible musicians playing the Panorama festival in New York City this weekend, and we're broadcasting our conversations with them live on Facebook. Guitar whiz Delicate Steve popped by our backstage interview space early this afternoon to talk about music and technology, but it didn't take long for us to land on a rather unexpected topic: his cousins. Tom is "older, wiser, more rational;" Joe is like "a jellyfish... [he] might be here one minute

GUEST: Amidst the fervor created by the Pokémon Go app, Signia Venture Partners cofounder Sunny Dhillon shared an important perspective with his July 14 story, “Stop referring to Pokémon Go as augmented reality.” Yes the popularity of this game gives us a glimpse into consumers’ hunger for AR games, but the technology to interact with the real world is just not there yet.
As Dhillon points out, true augmented reality “requires computer vision and dynamic map

Sherlock's next season is supposed to be just about done filming, which means that now — the day of Sherlock's Comic-Con panel — is the perfect moment for a first look. The BBC put out a dark and tense initial teaser today that shows Benedict Cumberbatch back in action as Sherlock Holmes and plays up the mystery around Moriarty's potential survival. It's not much, but it's the first time we've seen Sherlock back in the world of Sherlock in over two years, since his las

The Panorama festival in New York City ramped up on Saturday — and so did the blistering heat. That didn't stop an even bigger crowd from flocking to Randall's Island to catch Day 2. Early high-energy performances by D.C. garage band Ex Hex, and Brooklyn's Caveman woke up the early birds who managed to get to Randall's Island before the sun went down. Blood Orange reminded festival-goers that his recent album Freetown Sound still holds up live, and Flosstradamus donned their best military

Niantic Labs’ John Hanke will be delivering a fireside chat for AR/VR day (augmented reality/virtual reality) at GamesBeat 2016. Get a ticket here!It’s exceedingly hard to take a hit game franchise on consoles and make it successful on mobile devices. Pokémon Go has made that seem easy, but it is a very rare title. When it comes to moving from console to mobile, a lot of games with mixed success come to mind, such as Bethesda’s Fallout Shelter, Rockstar’s

VB LIVE: The bot buzz keep growing as more companies jump on chat platforms with AI-driven software generating and maintaining conversations with users. When brand giants, such as Pizza Hut, Sephora, and Whole Foods are putting a major focus on building and launching chatbots as their points of contact with consumers, you need to take it seriously. If you want to know what’s at the cutting edge of bot strategy, you need to check out this VB Live webinar.
Register here for free.
The bo

Yahoo’s future may be decided on Monday, following reports that the company will be acquired by Verizon Communications in a $4.8 billion deal.
Citing a source with direct knowledge, Bloomberg reported that the agreement could be announced before markets open on Monday. It will drastically change the course of Yahoo’s future, one that has been wrought with failed turnaround attempts by multiple leaders. Verizon was said to have won the bid after a battle among numerous

After over 3,000 people auditioned for the role of a young Han Solo, the role went to Alden Ehrenreich, who will star in the upcoming standalone Star Wars film set to be released in 2018. Conan O’Brian decided to have some fun with imagining what some of the rejected auditions might have looked like.
O’Brien got a whole bunch of actors to give him their own take on the character, including Bill Hader, Will Arnett, Melissa McCarthy, Jeff Goldblum, Adam Sandler, 50 Cent and o

GUEST: Imagine a VR simulation in which you can speak in front of an audience of thousands of people shuffling in their seats. All of those faces in front of you may not be real, but the 360-film footage and audio will trick your brain into firing up all of those familiar nerves, invoking what the VR industry is calling “presence.”
The idea would to create a virtual experience that mimics the real world setting or event to such a degree that it simultaneously triggers psychological c

Today, the International Olympic Committee said individual sports federations will be responsible for barring Russian athletes from this summer's games in Rio. The ruling comes just 12 days before the start of the games, and the call is now left to the 28 federations that oversee individual sports at the Olympics.
The decision follows a report released earlier this week that confirmed a state-supported Russian doping program. While the IOC Executive Board has deferred the decision to the individ

When it comes to making mass market games, few companies succeed like Blizzard Entertainment. The division of Activision Blizzard released its Overwatch first-person shooter game on May 24, and within a couple of weeks, the game had more than 10 million users. Since then, the game has only gotten bigger and more talked about.
Above: Gio Hunt, EVP of corporate operations at Blizzard.Image Credit: Blizzard
We’re going to hear about the Blizzard way of doing things in a fireside chat at 

This column is part of a series where Verge staffers post highly subjective reviews of animals. Up until now, we've written about animals without telling you whether they suck or rule. We are now rectifying this oversight.
Some people ask, what came first, the chicken or the egg? To me, that question is akin to asking whether basketball or Michael Jordan came first. The answer, in both cases, is that the later thing redefined the earlier thing to the point of fundamentally transforming it. MJ tu

Residents of Hugo, Colorado can resume drinking their tap water. That’s the verdict after fears that the town’s municipal water supply had been contaminated with THC, the main psychoactive chemical in marijuana. After additional testing by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, no trace of the chemical was found.
Officials began testing Hugo’s water after a local company had conducted their own test following a round of drug testing with its employees. Faced with inconsistent re

ReCore is one of Microsoft’s biggest exclusives for the rest of year. It comes out on September 13 for Xbox One and PC. Exclusives can help a console stand out for the competition, which is especially important for the Xbox One as it looks to battle the better-selling PlayStation 4 this holiday season.
ReCore is an action-platformer about a girl and her robot friends. Although it has plenty of shooting, it has a lighter tone than you’d usually see in similar games. It helps that your

The beautiful thing about Comic-Con is that it's a safe space for absolute, utter geekdom. It's the kind of event where you can express your love for a story, character, or TV show with zero fear of being judged. And sometimes, it's a place where people actually express love for each other, right in front of the cast and crew of their favorite film. That's what happened Saturday in San Diego at a panel celebrating the 30th anniversary of Aliens, James Cameron's seminal sci-fi action flick.
The p

(Reuters) – An aircraft powered by solar energy left Egypt on Sunday on the last leg of the first ever fuel-free flight around the globe.
Solar Impulse 2, a spindly single-seat plane, took off from Cairo in darkness en route to Abu Dhabi, its final destination, with a flight expected to take between 48 and 72 hours.
The plane, which began its journey in Abu Dhabi in March 2015, has been piloted in turns by Swiss aviators Andre Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard in a campaign to build support

With each passing year – and as nerd culture becomes more simply ‘culture,’ – the San Diego Comic-Con seems to cater more heavily to movies than, you know, comics. That mean we get trailers. Lots of trailers. (Specifically, lots of superhero trailers) Being the thoughtful netizens we are, we’ve made you handy list of all the previews for new movies and TV shows (we’ve omitted returning shows). We’ll keep it updated for anything that may pop up on the la

With each passing year – and as nerd culture becomes more simply ‘culture,’ – the San Diego Comic-Con seems to cater more heavily to movies than, you know, comics. That mean we get trailers. Lots of trailers. (Specifically, lots of superheros trailers) Being the thoughtful netizens we are, we’ve made you handy list. We’ll keep it updated should for anything that may pop up on the last day of the convention. Wonder Woman Finally, a woman-led superhero mov

Niantic Labs’ John Hanke will be delivering a fireside chat for AR/VR day (augmented reality/virtual reality) at GamesBeat 2016. Get a ticket here!As the Pokémon Go frenzy continues, children in civil war-torn Syria are asking the world to consider their plight when hunting for Pikachus, Zubats, and Charmanders.
As reported by The Guardian and U.S. Uncut, refugee advocate Taim Shami had initiated this campaign in hopes of garnering a sliver of the attention being 

Joel Hodgson's Kickstarter campaign to bring back the TV cult classic Mystery Science Theater 3000 broke records earlier this year, but up until know it still wasn't clear where the 14 new episodes he was making would end up. Today we have an answer: Netflix.
The service announced the news via a simple tweet today, around the same time a panel for the new MST3K was kicking off at San Diego Comic-Con. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix will be the home for the series in the US, Can

(Reuters) – Apple found itself on the receiving end of a small, short-lived anti-U.S. protest this week in China, the tech firm’s biggest overseas market and a country where foreign firms have suffered damaging boycotts following international spats.
A handful of unofficial Apple stores were picketed and social media users encouraged each other to destroy their Apple goods, in a rare instance of the tech firm being targeted as a symbol of perceived injustice following an internationa

Marvel finally has its Captain Marvel. The House of Ideas announced at Comic-Con today that Brie Larson, who just won an Academy Award for her turn in Room, will star as Carol Danvers, the company's first leading female superhero.
Marvel's first leading female superhero
With Larson in the role, Marvel Studios can finally start making moves to correct its deeply white and deeply male Avengers roster. Captain Marvel is currently one of the most powerful and respected superheroes in the Marvel

Marvel's already had quite a Comic-Con thanks to its three upcoming Netflix series — and that was all before Marvel's panel actually started. Now it's rolling out the the big names, and one trailer that's getting shared outside of Hall H is for Doctor Strange.
This is Marvel's first full trailer for Doctor Strange, following up a teaser it released in April. And the film continues to look every bit as interesting, like some weird, Marvel-ized Matrix. It's certainly a new vib

If you were in San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter last night, you couldn't have missed the hordes of Pokémon Trainers walking around in the game's distinctive red, yellow, and blue caps.
Hundreds of people had come together just outside the convention center to drink and play Pokémon Go, as part of an unofficial bar crawl put together over Facebook.
That Comic-Con would be taken over by Pokémon Go is perhaps not all that surprising — the game is just over two weeks old and st

This movie is looking more amazing with each passing moment. The latest trailer for The Lego Batman Movie just hit the web, and it adds a whole lot of new footage from the pair of teaser trailers that arrived earlier this year.
This new trailer focuses on Robin, who Will Arnett's Bruce Wayne apparently sarcastically adopted at a charity gala. It only gets better from there.
The Lego Batman Movie will be released on February 10, 2017. Continue reading…