Technology news

Game of Thrones might be coming to a close in 2018, but another world created by George R.R.R Martin could be appearing on television soon. According to Martin,Universal Cable Productions hasacquired the rights to adapt his superhero series, Wild Cards.
The series contains thousands of stories from hundreds of authors
Martin created the series along with Melinda M. Snodgrass in 1987 with the anthology Wild Cards. The series is set in an alternate history which began following the outbreak of an

Your next doctor visit might involve a chatbot.
Your.MD is a new option that joins a few other existing chatbots, like HealthJoy, that help you diagnose common ailments. I tested out Your.MD with an actual health issue (not serious) to see if it could help and was impressed with how it guided me through some questions.
To start, you initiate a conversation in Facebook Messenger. The bot also has a dedicated app for iOS and Android, and it works in Telegram, Slack, and Kik. The first step is to d

GUEST: At this writing, Pokémon Go has been downloaded 75 million times worldwide and had broken records on Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
It’s safe to say that with Pokémon Go, augmented reality (AR) has gone mainstream. For those who follow the technology, this has been a long time coming. Blippar, an AR app, has been on the market since 2011. Yelp tried to push AR with its Monocle feature in 2014. And of course, there was Google Glass’s well-publicized fail

We’re big fans of Netflix’s intriguing and highly entertaining animated comedy Bojack Horseman. One thing that’s struck us is its unique theme song, which Wired takes a close look at in its Song Explorer podcast. The latest episode is devoted to the creation of the show’s opening theme song, which had never been originally intended to be used for television.The song used in the show’s opening credits is from Patrick Carney, the drummer for the Black Keys, along with

Bots don’t always have to be super-intelligent. They often just need to be super-helpful.
A new bot from Icelandair, the iconic airline from Iceland that serves you fresh bread, even in economy class, has a new bot that helps you plan and book a trip. What I didn’t realize before testing it out is that the bot can suggest staying in Iceland for a day or so at no extra charge. You fly there, stay a few days, then jump back on your flight after the “layover” in one of my fa

Welcome back to The Verge’s weekly musical roundup. I’m Jamieson, I’m still your host, and like many of you I spent my Thursday and Friday nights waiting on Frank Ocean. We’re well into the weekend at this point, and Boys Don’t Cry is nowhere to be seen. Are you disappointed? Angry? Amused? Did you see this coming from a mile away? If I’m being completely honest with you, I’m fine waiting as long as it takes. There’s plenty of other worthy music to

GUEST: Europeans look at the US, particularly Silicon Valley, and wonder why the same recipe for churning out successful global companies can’t be repeated in Europe.
Given that my company has a venture capital arm, I have first-hand experience with the reasons why. And many conversations I’ve had with other European VCs and entrepreneurs have confirmed my sense that there are three primary causes for Europe’s inability to match the US’s level of success when it come

GUEST: The global success of Niantic Labs’ Pokémon Go is officially a phenomenon, amassing more downloads, headlines, revenue and memes than anyone could have predicted — and creating a live case study for those looking to have the same success.
As brands scramble to align and partner with the game, ultimately hoping to gain revenue from the relationship, it’s time for current and future creators and developers to reflect on the components that led to Pokémon Go&r

Stranger Things is the first thing in a long time to make me glad I have Netflix. I'm only four episodes in, so I don't want to say too much. Instead, I just want to ask what's up with one very specific part of the show: its episode titles. They're strange!A lot of TV shows keep their episode titles to a standard format, like how most Friends' titles start as "The One With...". Stranger Things kinda sorta tries to do this, but then can't quite make up its mind.First we have these two wonderful,

GUEST: Salesforce announced its acquisition of office productivity app Quip earlier this week for $582 million ($750 million if you include cash incentives). That may seem like a staggering sum to pay for a 4-year-old 40-person startup, but not when you consider what’s at stake: ownership of the CRM and collaboration market.
The deal is not only a shot across the bow at Microsoft (and Google) but has deep implications for the future of the entire collaboration and CRM market. Specific

Joel Johnson used to be a gadget blogger for places like Gizmodo, Wired, and Boing Boing, but now is trying to buy a farm.
Every so often, a glimmer of the old Sony shines through. The Sony that made delightful metal hexahedrons that did amazing things with at least one glaring mistake that made the whole endeavor even more glorious. I have found another one, and it's called the MP-CL1.
It's a pico projector — you know, those things that seem like they'll be good someday, but are squint-in

Pokémon GO might have captivated the world, but one place you won’t be allowed to playis the Islamic Republic of Iran, which banned the game due to "security concerns".
The High Council of Virtual Spaces — which oversees the nation’s online activities — has determined that the game presented some security challenges for authorities, and has banned the game. Iran is the first country to issue a blanket ban. Pokémon GO has faced some specific bans, s

VB LIVE: Much like the Nigerian proverb “It takes a whole village to raise a child,” it takes a thriving community for a game to reach its full sales potential. Join VB’s own Dean Takahashi along with experts from FreshPlanet, OutPost Games, and Google to learn what it takes to have a community rallying for more.
Register here for free.
If you have a community of gamers excited by the mere thought of your product, then the work of winning them over is halfway done. Just ta

Red Sox or Yankees. Democrat or Republican. Chocolate or vanilla. All of these choices are deeply personal, and deeply held. They define who we are — especially that Red Sox / Yankees one, as my colleague Walt Mossberg can attest.McLaren's Sport Series is a little different. If you have $200,000 to spend on a sports car, picking between the 570S and 570GT is less a defining moment and more a reflection of yourself. The cars are more alike than different. Both have the same 3.8-liter twin t

Opera Mediaworks bought mobile video ad platform AdColony in 2014. At that time, Will Kassoy’s Los Angeles company had more than 100 employees. Now, the company has more than 800 people. Its video ad platform now creates more than a billion ad impressions per week.
And, once again, Opera Mediaworks (the division once known as AdColony), is an independent company. A consortium of Chinese companies led by China’s Qihoo 360 acquired the Opera browser for $600 million on July 28, after a

Alcatel’s Idol 4 was announced at the beginning of this year, and it’s now available in the US at Cricket Wireless. The phone was always intended to be affordable and lower end, so we didn’t expect it to come bundled with a VR headset. Now, though, Cricket is selling the phone along with a VR headset for only $199.99. That VR viewer works with content from Alcatel’s VR store or from Littlstar. This is a step up from Google Cardboard and a few big steps below Samsung&rsquo

We really dig Sneaky Zebra’s cosplay videos, but their latest takes them out of the convention scene. Prop Wars: Prop Harder is a fantastic three-way duel with an entire arsenal of props from all of your favorite films and shows.
The video is a sequel to the short film the group put together in 2013. The short video is an assembly of nerdy references and replica props all mashed together into one geeky standoff.If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The sequel is pretty much the same thing, just

With the introduction of Instagram stories this week, the internet had a collective conniption fit over the cloning of one of Snapchat’s most popular features. Now, in addition to posting a pristine filtered photo to your Instagram timeline, you also can snap a rough selfie, doodle over it, and watch it disappear after 24 hours. Instagram didn’t even bother to alter the name, and its CEO doesn’t seem embarrassed about it. "You’re going to see stories pop up in other

(Reuters) – Nissan is in talks with Panasonic and overseas companies including Chinese firms over the possible sale of its controlling stake in a car battery manufacturing venture, sources said.
Two people with knowledge of the matter said on Saturday that the Japanese automaker wants to sell its 51 percent stake in Automotive Energy Supply Corporation, which makes lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. The company is jointly owned by NEC.
The Nikkei daily on Friday reported that Nis

Last week Mail.ru Group, a major, LSE-listed Russian Internet group, released Artisto, an app which allows users to edit short videos, processing them in the style of famous artworks or any other source image. Using a neural network-inspired technology, the app is now available globally on the App Store and Google Play.
Artisto now processes 10-second videos and offers 14 filters to choose from (see sample videos here). Currently, the most popular filters are&n

You cannot catch ’em all if you happen to live in Tehran.
Iran has blocked Pokémon Go after the country’s High Council of Virtual Spaces expressed concerns about it posing a ‘security’ risk, according to the BBC. The government committee, which controls internet connectivity for Iranians, did not detail its concerns about the game that has players chasing down digital creatures in the real world by combining GPS and Google Maps technologies. Pok&eacu

(Reuters) – The Obama administration is preparing to elevate the stature of the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, signaling more emphasis on developing cyber weapons to deter attacks, punish intruders into U.S. networks and tackle adversaries such as Islamic State, current and former officials told Reuters.
Under the plan being considered at the White House, the officials said, U.S. Cyber Command would become what the military calls a “unified command” equal to combat branches of

A number of long-time members of the self-driving car team at Google are leaving the company, including technical lead Chris Urmson who often acts as the face of the project.Urmson announced his departure in a post on Medium, noting that after the seven-and-a-half years that he has been involved with the autonomous car project, Google is finally “developing a product that we hope someday anyone will be able to use.” That’s a long way from the pre-Google DARPA grand challenges t

If you thought Bear Grylls was cool, you’re gonna love YouTuber Thomas Kim. Kim is a lot like Grylls in that he’s fully capable of escaping a jam while in the wild (like trying to catch Pikachu with 1 percent battery) all while drinking at least 100 percent less urine and avoiding elephant dung entirely — or so it seems. Kim also cooked up a decidedly low-tech way to charge an iPhone by harnessing a nearby stream to power a generator. The concept is the same used by hydro

Months back, Instagram switched its reverse-chronological timeline to an algorithm that sorted posts it thought you wanted to see, much like Facebook’s. Now, it’s taking the Facebook comparison a step further by actually including actual Facebook data in its algorithm in an effort to measure engagement, and thus algorithmic placement on your timeline. Instagram, a 2012 Facebook acquisition, is using Facebook’s data in order to give its new ‘Stories’ feature a

Adding hashtags to Instagram just got way easier. Right now, deciding on and typing out more than one or two hashtags is a pain. There are handful of apps that try to make life easier for you with suggested hastags, but you’ve got to constantly switch back and forth to copy them from the app to Instagram. That’s where Magnifiy comes in: it uses Android’s accessibility features to automatically copy text when you enter a specific keyword. (No iOS version, sorry Team A

Donald Trump is no stranger to being called a scam artist. Shoddy products (Trump University), bad investments (Mexico), and his inability to stop getting sued long enough to trick the populace into believing he’s a viable presidential candidate, it seems, were just the beginning. Now he’s scamming his own supporters with a move that I can only presume has actual snakes recoiling in horror each time they hear ‘The Donald’ being referred to as one of them. The l