Technology news

American Express has launched a Facebook Messenger bot to give customers access to their accounts, Messenger announced in a post today.
Initially announced at the Cannes-Lions Film Festival in June, the bot can tell customers any time a purchase is made with their American Express card, and provide information about past purchases by industry, cost, and other details.
Things like restaurant recommendations and loyalty program messages may also be sent to Amex bot users. For more on the bot&rsquo

Following Samsung’s announcement that it will replace Galaxy Note7 smartphones weeks after their release, today the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a statement warning of the device’s potential health hazards. This comes after multiple people have documented cases of the phone’s battery exploding.
“Lithium-ion batteries pack a lot of power into a small package. When these batteries overheat and burst, the results can be serious. This is why the U.S Consumer

Samsung recalled the Galaxy Note 7 after it started blowing up, but the company was blasted by Consumer Reports for not making the recall official with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. Thankfully, that’s now changing. The commission issued the following statement today: Lithium-ion batteries pack a lot of power into a small package. When these batteries overheat and burst, the results can be serious. This is why the U.S Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is urging all con

GUEST: Artificial intelligence and shopping — does that mean robots that’ll stock the shelves?
Yes, absolutely. We’ll have robots that will use A.I. to check inventory, help customers find the items they’re shopping for, ferry supplies from one part of the warehouse to another, aid with shipping, you name it. But the real revolution for A.I. and shopping will be invisible because the technology will create better experiences for consumers while helping employees

Chelsea Manning has launched a hunger strike seeking better medical treatment for her gender dysphoria, according to a statement released today by her representatives. Beginning today, Manning will decline all food and any liquids other than water. She will also refuse to cut her hair until her demands are met. "I need help. I am not getting any," Manning’s statement reads. "Today, I have decided that I am no longer going to be bullied by this prison."
Currently serving 35 years in prison

Let’s just get this out of the way: I’m a movie crier. There’s something about walking into a darkened room, watching a story unfold, and going through a cathartic experience with a bunch of strangers that’s always been emotionally liberating for me. Sadly, it’s also something that’s been happening less and less. Modern studio filmmaking is largely designed to elicit two responses: shock and awe, and as mid-budget dramas have dried up, audiences have been

A Bulgarian company called Quark VR just announced that it’s working with Valve to create an HTC Vive that streams over Wi-Fi. Given that wireless connections are often unreliable and slower, Quark relies on a special pocket-sized Wi-Fi transmitter that would help stream VR footage. The transmitter communicates between the headset and the PC, but isn't totally wire-free; there would still be a wire running from your pocket to the headset. Still, there wouldn’t be any cables around yo

From breakout star to mascot to second-tier franchise and hiatus, Crash Bandicoot has had an interesting 20 years.
The original Crash Bandicoot came out for the Sony PlayStation on September 9, 1996. That’s 20 years ago. Crash became one Sony’s first major franchises, and it established developer Naughty Dog as a premier studio that would later developer major hits for Sony like the Uncharted series and The Last of Us. Crash has been quiet for some time, but this platformer hero look

The US plans to formally recall the Galaxy Note 7 and is telling consumers to power down and cease charging the phones immediately.
The recommendation came through a US Consumer Product Safety Commission statement today, which referenced the various fires that have been linked to battery issues with Samsung's new phone. "These incidents have occurred while charging and during normal use, which has led us to call for consumers to power down their Note 7s," the commission writes.
It put

In case you haven’t heard, Samsung has issued an unprecedented recall on the Galaxy Note 7, after isolated cases of phones catching fire during charging. The company was blasted for not working with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission at first, but has now begun the process to make the recall official with the government. Fret not, as Samsung has a couple of systems in place to tell new units apart from the old ones. It’s worth noting these instructions come from Samsung Austr

The models for Spanish clothing brand Desigual walked the runway at New York Fashion Week yesterday with faithfully recreated Snapchat filters as their only makeup.
The brand, known for zany prints and patchwork, showed off a denim-heavy, '70s-inspired collection. It paired pretty well with the whimsy of Kim Kardashian's favorite filter, the flower crown, as well as my mom's favorite, the bee face! Other models sported the deer lens, a crown of yellow butterflies, and of course, a dog nose.

HBO’s next big series Westworld ran into its share of problems last fall when the network halted production so that its writers could "get ahead of the writing." It turns out that "getting ahead" meant laying out a roadmap for the show’s next five years.
"It was about mapping out what the next 5 or 6 years are going to be"
Entertainment Weekly has helped clear up the picture surrounding the production. In a recent interview with the magazine, James Marsden revealed that the prod

A new sci-fi comedy project from Seth Rogen and longtime collaborator Evan Goldberg (Superbad, Pineapple Express) has been picked up to a series at Hulu. The 13-episode series, Future Man, is about a janitor-slash-gamer who time travels with "mysterious visitors" trying to prevent mass extinction on Earth, Deadline reports.
Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games) will play the heroic, alien-befriending janitor. Future Man will also starEliza Coupe, Derek Wilson, Ed Begley Jr., and Glenne Headly,

Facebook’s Trending Topics news ticker has been updated after showing readers a tabloid article promoting September 11th conspiracies. This morning, The Washington Post reported that the "September 11th Anniversary" topic was paired with a story from the Daily Star, which repeated a largely dismissed accusation that the 2001 terrorist attacks were actually controlled explosions. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the issue to the Post and BuzzFeed, saying that "we’re aware a hoax arti

Blizzard wants to improve the quality of online play in Overwatch, and that’s the purpose behind its next patch.
The studio is upgrading Overwatch’s netcode to a high-bandwidth mode that updates data (something called a tick rate) 60 times per second instead of only 21 times per second on PC. This patch will ensure that servers more accurately reflect player actions, and it could reduce instances where you do one thing and see another in the replay of your elimination. This feature o

For the full three minutes that it takes Vince Staples to perform "Smile" live for the first time, he opens his eyes for a total of about five seconds.
He has his hands in his pockets for the first half of the performance and barely moves except for to wiggle his shoulders on a downbeat or rock back and forth as if to loosen his Converse from some superglue on the stage floor. The lighting is harsh — green from above, and a white light from below that has the effect of casting enormous sha

When Marshall McLuhan came up with his famous Understanding Media theory that film is a “hot” medium, he was not actually talking about the sticky, sweaty experience of watching films at the Toronto International Film Festival at the beginning of September every year. He was laying out an argument that film doesn’t demand as much active engagement as some other art forms. Supposedly, audiences passively lie back and let cinematic stories wash over them, without mentally working

After a day of heated criticism, Facebook has reversed its stance on banning an iconic Vietnam War photo from being shared on its social network. "Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed," Facebook said in a statement obtained by Recode. The episode is just the latest editorial

Samsung is nearly ready to begin shipping a new batch of Galaxy Note 7 devices that don't suffer from the "isolated battery cell issues" that led to a worldwide recall just one week ago. When the replacements are received by customers and retailers over the next couple weeks, the Note 7 box will be clearly marked to indicate that the battery inside is safe. You'll see a small black box on the white barcode label, but the more obvious identifier will be a circular sticker with a blue S in the mid

Today on Verge ESP, Liz and Emily are talking endings. How do endings influence how we think about events, stories, and TV shows? What does a good ending do? How does a bad ending torpedo a good movie?
Who gets to survive to the end? If it's a horror movie, you already know: the final girl.She's young, virginal, and pure — unlike the sexually active girl who is usually the first to get murdered. Her purity and self-sufficiency are what qualify her for survival. A series of movies in the la

The latest WhatsApp Android beta is adding a number of new features that should make sharing images with your friends a bit more fun – and a lot more like Snapchat. Android Police noted that the latest Android beta of the app introduces the ability to draw on an image and paste stickers, much like Snapchat – or even the recent Instagram Stories, which added some similar functionality. Not only that, but the interface is incredibly similar too. It would be easy to confuse one fo

Director Jeff Nichols is signing on to helm the remake of the 1988 science fiction movie Alien Nation, according to Deadline. The news comes as Nichols’ latest film, Loving, screened at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The original Alien Nation takes place after a starship of enslaved aliens arrive on Earth and follows a xenophobic police officer who is partnered up with one of them. Directed by Graham Baker, the film spawned a spinoff TV series and five additional TV movies. In 20

James Liang, a veteran Volkswagen engineer, pled guilty Friday to conspiring to defraud the American public about its vehicle emissions, Bloomberg reports. It is the first criminal charge in the ongoing Dieselgate scandal that has loomed over the German company since last September.Liang entered his plea in Detroit federal court on Friday and is cooperating with the investigation, Bloomberg notes. This could mean more resignations for a company that has already seen its CEO and chief US executiv

Smell ya later, friends! Don't need your dad's boat, Tanner, because I'm going dronesurfing.
We've seen cases of droneboarding before, where drones are used to drag people across snow with underwhelming results. (The verdict was that it needs bigger drones or smaller humans.) But with the help of the combined forces of wind and water (not to mention a full running start), dronesurfing actually looks pretty doable, and fun!
Keep in mind though, that the drone shown here is a Freefly Sys

Crucial emails have gone missing from WikiLeaks’ Syria files, according to a report published today by The Daily Dot — and WikiLeaks isn’t happy about the discrepancy coming to light. The missing emails detail a 2011 transaction that moved $2.4 billion from the Central Bank of Syria to Russia’s VTB Bank, indicating both suspicious financial activity by the Assad regime and unusually close ties to the Russian banking sector.
The email is present in a cache of court-recorde

The most fascinating thing about Loving, Jeff Nichols’ drama about precedent-setting interracial couple Richard and Mildred Loving, is the repeated revelation that no one in Virginia would have cared about their relationship if they hadn’t had the temerity to get legally married. In Nichols’ version of the story, Richard (Joel Edgerton, one of the best parts of Nichols’ Midnight Special) and Mildred (Preacher’s Ruth Negga, the best part of Loving) seem completely un

Ford has acquired the ride-sharing and shuttle service startup Chariot, CEO Mark Fields announced at a press conference in Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco today.
Chariot currently operates nearly 100 shuttles along 28 routes in the San Francisco Bay Area and will expand to five additional cities in the next 18 months.
Ford also launched a first of its kind public-private partnership between Ford, other companies, and Bay Area cities. Ford wants to reduce congestion i

Mario is going mobile, and the game may dominate the world.
Smartphone and tablet gamers could download Super Mario Run from the iOS and Android app markets 1.5 billion times throughout its lifetime, according to Kantan Games analyst Serkan Toto. It will launch first on iPhone and iPad in December before rolling out to Android at a later date. Mario represents a huge shift from Nintendo as the company is using its most recognizable character to signal that it is serious about mobile. Investors a

Ford, purveyors of Built Ford Tough Ford trucks, announced today it was doing more things designed to appeal to people who aren’t interested in owning cars (or Built Ford Tough Ford trucks, for that matter). The company is acquiring Chariot, a private, crowdsourced shuttle service based in San Francisco, and is investing in Motivate, the largest operators of bike-share programs in the US. It also announced plans to set up a new division within the company tasked with advising cities direct

EXCLUSIVE: Adobe is announcing today that its Adobe Analytics Challenge 2016 will award $50,000 to a winning college team that does the best job of analyzing Sony’s PlayStation business. The point is to show how data is king in the modern business world.
Now in its 11th year, the challenge will kick off on September 22. University students can team up to use Adobe’s analytics tools to sort through data from a big company. In this case, Sony was chosen from among numerous proposed com

Tronsmart is the latest headphone maker to announce a pair of in-ear Lightning headphones designed for the new iPhone 7, but it looks to be the first to include a DAC (digital-to-analog converter) for the tiny speakers. The Tronsmart Encore in-ear headphones use a DAC and a Lightning audio module (LAM) to deliver 48 kHz/24 bit digital audio (the DAC and LAM sit near the microphone instead of in the speaker). They also have noise-isolating ear tips and a Kevlar fiber cable to help

Google is in the midst of rolling out a nifty update for its Hangouts extension for Chrome. The upgrade brings a fresh, new interface to the plugin that has been specifically designed to mimic the look of the Hangouts application for Android and iOS. The development team have also done a bit of tweaking behind the scenes to make the Hangouts extension feel more like a standalone app. Previous builds of the extension only worked when the browser was open, but this latest vers

Bethesda revealed this morning that the reason user mods are not in the PlayStation 4 version of Fallout 4 is because Sony is against the practice, and this has Microsoft on the attack
Xbox One has had mods for Fallout 4 since May, and Microsoft has come out this morning to reiterate that feature. The company is on something of an assault against Sony this week. Xbox One outsold PlayStation 4 in the U.S. over the last two months, and Microsoft is emphasizing features that its Xbox One

Every wireless carrier knows millions of people are trying to buy the iPhone 7 right now — and every one of them is using it as an opportunity to draw in customers. That’s why AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint are all offering the extremely eye-catching opportunity to pick up an iPhone 7 for free. It sounds too good to be true. And, of course, it is. So here’s what the deal is when it comes to these free offers.
The first thing to know is that all of these free iPhone 7 o

Technology never likes us to stand still. It’s always moving forward, but I’d like to hit pause for a moment and take us into the past. I’ve compiled my list of the top 25 tech movies of all time.
Technology in movies used to be a bit of a joke. But with the advent of awesome computer animation, it’s no longer outlandish to execute someone’s vision of the future in a movie. Now sci-fi writers and tech creators can use movies to paint the road ahead and inspire milli

No Man’s Sky is an almost impossibly huge game, an entire virtual universe filled with 18 quintillion planets, each one different from the next thanks to the powers of procedural generation. Instead of a typical review, I’m going to be writing regular dispatches from No Man’s Sky, giving a firsthand account of what the experience is like, and what you can expect if you choose to dive in. You can follow along right here. Spoilers below.
This planet might just be the worst I&rsqu

TRVL is an app that takes the on-demand economy and spins it on its head. Gone are the days of trawling the Web for hotel listings, car rentals, flight information, airport transfers, taxis, where to eat and above all else — where to go. Instead, you can leave the heavy lifting to friends and ‘agents’ that can create a custom itinerary for you based on extensive research — or, more likely — familiarity with an area. “The idea is simple,” says CEO a