Technology news

America's transportation infrastructure is crumbling. Thankfully, Volvo is here to help. 
With its high-riding, efficient and extremely luxurious V90 Cross Country wagon, the Swedish automaker has something for every taste — and every road surface.
Like the name suggests, the V90 Cross Country takes the standard set from its high-tech and stunning S90 sedan and V90 wagon and adds some much-needed ruggedness.
SEE ALSO: Sorry, Tesla: Chevy Bolt officially goes 238 miles on a single cha

LOS ANGELES — Even Orlando Bloom struggles with Tinder.
Or at least he plays someone who does in a new Netflix anthology series from director and writer Joe Swanberg.
Easy, which debuts on Netflix on Sept. 22, is an eight-episode series that explores the "modern maze of love, sex, technology and culture."
SEE ALSO: Netflix's 'Making a Murderer' filmmaking duo win big at Creative Arts Emmys
It features a lot of celebrities including Bloom, Malin Akerman, Jake Johnson, Marc Maron, Dave Fran

Muzik, the Twitter-backed company that's supposed to revolutionize headphones has shipped its first pair, the Muzik One. With the tagline "the smartphone of headphones," Muzik is trying to separate its "smart" headphones from the rest of the fray, and it packs some features to back up that claim.
(More importantly, Jeremy Meeks, better known as the Hot Convict is in the ad for these headphones, and that's really the only reason you need to watch the video.) Continue reading&hellip

In its first 24 hours of existence, the trailer for the sequel to last year's Fifty Shades of Grey garnered more views than the trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens did in its first day. The Fifty Shades Darker trailer was viewed more than 114 million times during a one-day time frame, according to Deadline. The Force Awakens trailer previously held that record with 112 million views.
The first Fifty Shades of Grey movie was wildly successful, at least in terms of money, if not cri

Moments ago Samsung announcement a formal, CPSC-backed recall of the Galaxy Note 7 in the United States. And in a press release dealing with that news, Samsung also provided an update on when its new, replacement Note 7s (with safe batteries inside, hopefully) will reach retailers: they'll be arriving by next week. "We confirmed that new Note 7 replacement devices will be available in the United States at most retail locations no later than September 21st, 2016," the company said in a

Uber won preliminary approval to settle a claim that it misled riders about a 20 percent gratuity for drivers. According to Bloomberg, US District Court Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco gave an early thumbs up to a deal that would have Uber repay $384,000 to 47,000 customers.For over a year, users claimed Uber charged them a 20 percent tip for drivers, but then would only pass along less than half the tip amount to those drivers. Uber collected about $860,000 from users for the gratuity charge

After weeks of investigation, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a formal recall of Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 today. The move outlines the problems with the phone's exploding battery and puts in place a path for consumers to return or replace the device. The news should come as source of relief for Samsung customers, many of whom have been grappling with the company's mixed messaging and sometimes confusing responses to the Note 7's ongoing issues. The formal recall covers ab

It's not really a secret at this point that Apple has been finding some unexpected results in iMessage's GIF search. Most of those have been pornographic — first there was an explicit My Little Pony GIF, then there was hardcore porn, and then there was a bunch of other nudity that Gizmodo found.
It turns out there's also a Nazi meme and various GIFs of Hitler.
If you search for the word "power" in iMessage right now, the first result will be a meme'd image of the P

Samsung has finally issued a real, honest-to-goodness recall of the Galaxy Note 7 with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission after continued reports of the handset catching fire. That means the recall is no longer a voluntary option for retailers; it’s now straight up illegal to sell old versions of the device. The agency also advises that users stop using their devices and turn them off. Samsung has been under fire (too soon?) for beginning its US recall without formal approval from

VR games can take you anywhere, and now, they can even carry you into the sky on the back of an eagle. What? Futuretown, a VR gaming company backed by former HTC CEO Peter Chou, announced its new hardware platform called 5D Totalmotion at the Tokyo Game Show today. The device is a motion machine that’s used in coordination with an Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, or 3Glasses VR headset. The machine can have various modules screwed into it depending on the needs of whatever game is being played.

UK police ticketed a Back to the Future fan doing 88 MPH in a Delorean. Fans of the Back to the Future franchise may remember that Doc Brown’s Delorean had to reach the same speed, 88 MPH, in order to transport Marty McFly back to 1955. Of course, the car also required a flux capacitor and power in excess of… Nigel Mills, the ticketed Delorean owner, denied that he was trying to time travel, but we’re certainly not buying it. You can’t have a Delorean and not try t

Microsoft is quietly updating its Health app on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone to rebrand it as the Microsoft Band app today. Android and Windows Phone have already been updated with the name change, and iOS is set to follow shortly. While Microsoft launched its Health service as a portal for the Band, the company originally wanted other companies to feed their apps and hardware into the service. However, it has been primarily used by Microsoft Band users, so a name change on mobile devices mak

Thousands of vials containing the DNA of Italians with very long lifespans have gone missing.
This DNA was collected years ago as part of widespread research interest in the island of Sardinia, whose residents are some of the world’s longest living people. On average, 21 out of every 10,000 residents in one area of Sardinia live to age 100. In comparison, only four out of 10,000 Americans get to celebrate that birthday.
Researchers discovered the theft in August, but nobody knows when the

Leica is getting into the affordable camera game. Well, not really. But its newest camera comes with a price tag that’s more often associated with low-end compact cameras than elite German photography machines. The only catch is it’s an instant camera.
The Leica Sofort, which will hit stores for $299 in November, uses Fujifilm’s Instax film to produce prints immediately after you snap the shutter. It has a variety of automatic modes, including standard auto, party, people, spor

The US election is, as of today, still happening to us. Even better: debates are coming up, and apparently Facebook is going to be involved. At this point, why not? “For the town hall debate, Facebook will be working with the moderators to help source questions for the candidates,” said an announcement from the Commission on Presidential Debates, the nonpartisan organization responsible for organizing these televised discussions. I’m sure the vast majority of submissions from

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange offered today to surrender to the United States under a single condition — that Chelsea Manning be released from the US Disciplinary Barracks in Leavenworth, Kansas. Manning — a transgender woman born Bradley Manning — is currently serving the remainder of her 35-year prison sentence after being convicted under the Espionage Act after leaking nearly 750,000 classified — or unclassified, but ‘sensitive’ — military and dip

Microsoft is making three changes to Outlook.com today, with Google Drive support the big addition. While Outlook for iOS and Android already support Google Drive access, Microsoft is extending this directly to Outlook on the web. The new changes mean Outlook users can attach documents from Google Drive and receive and edit files within Outlook. You'll even be able to fully edit a Google Drive file side-by-side with an email on Outlook.com.
Alongside the Google Drive support, Microsoft is also b

Swagway is one of the only hoverboard companies that went through the trouble of making an explosion-proof hoverboard right before everyone stopped talking about hoverboards. So now, the company is putting its electric tech to a few different uses. The company recently (and quietly) launched an electric skateboard and an electric scooter — both with price tags of under $400.
The scooter, which Swagway calls the Swagger, costs $399 and has a 17-mile range. It tops out at 15 miles per h

Swagtron is one of the only hoverboard companies that went through the trouble of making an explosion-proof hoverboard right before everyone stopped talking about hoverboards. So now, the company is putting its electric tech to a few different uses. The company recently (and quietly) launched an electric skateboard and an electric scooter — both with price tags of under $400.
The scooter, which Swagtron calls the Swagger, costs $399 and has a 17-mile range. It tops out at 15 miles per

Twitter, once thought of as a second screen service for NFL fans to bitch about pass interference penalties and talk about what a washed-up hack their teams’ quarterback was, is now a full-service broadcast destination. We brought you the news back in April of Twitter’s agreement with the NFL to livestream games each Sunday, and tonight marks the first of 10 games you can catch on the platform. They are: Week 2, Sept. 15: New York Jets at Buffalo Bills Week 3, Sept. 22: Houston

The data collected by the fitness app Strava turns out to be a pretty accurate way to get a handle on how many people commute on foot or by bike, say scientists with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This could help urban planners as they try to make cities safer for walkers and bikers who commute to work.
Commuting, however, is really hard to observe
Cities trying to become more bike- and pedestrian-friendly need to know how many people are active commuters. Commuting, howeve

There’s an argument to be made that films and TV shows based on harrowing, true-life tragedies serve as a form of collective cultural catharsis. They can bring order to chaos, give context to horror, and provide a general framework that allows us to move on. With the rise of modern long-form documentaries, reexamining old tragedies can even be used as a lens to examine larger, deep-seated cultural issues.
And then sometimes it’s just all about good old-fashioned rubbernecking.
Deepwa

News organizations can now sell subscriptions inside Apple News, The Wall Street Journal is reporting. The new feature is available to iOS 10 users in the Apple News app. Before this change, publishers could only monetize content inside Apple News via advertisements. Publications that put the bulk of their content behind paywalls needed to build their own apps, and sell subscriptions through them, potentially limiting audience size. This change lets publications find customers within an app tha

Google owns dozens of Web properties which collectively run on billions of lines of code — two billion, to be exact. The original space shuttle, a relic from 1982, only required 400,000 lines of code to launch a crew and several tons of fuel into orbit. To put that into perspective, your search for dank memes requires 5,000 times more code than it took to launch people into space. Speaking of perspective, Business Insider put together a handy list to show just how much code both mode

Bats are adapting to human noise by changing their hunting strategies, according to a new study. That’s good news for bats, since the number of city-dwellers in the world is expectedto increase to 6.5 billion in 2050, from nearly 4 billion today.
In noisy environments, instead of relying only on hearing to find their food, bats also activate echolocation, according to the study published today in Science. It’s the first time that scientists show bats can switch sensory systems,

T-Mobile is urging all customers using an iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, or iPhone SE to hold off on installing iOS 10 for now. On Twitter, the company and its top executives including CEO John Legere have warned against installing Apple's latest big update. The three iPhone models are reportedly losing connection to T-Mobile's network; several employees at The Verge have experienced the issue over the last two days. These are massively popular phones we're talking about, so it's no small inconve

Unlimited, free data is basically the dream, right? Jacob Ajit, a 17-year high school student from Virginia, hacked his way to just that. It all started with boredom, as Ajit explained in a post on Medium: I had a T-Mobile prepaid SIM on a spare phone with no active service, so I came up with a fun challenge: could I somehow get access to the internet without a data plan? That is considerably more ambition than I had at 17, but the crazy thing is, he found a way to actually get this working. Aj

Last week on Ctrl-Walt-Delete, we were fresh off the Apple event, and we shared our first impressions of the new gadgets that were announced. This week, we saw reviews from both Walt and Nilay about the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. The two compare notes on their feelings about Apple's latest product, as well as its timeliness in light of competitor Galaxy Note 7's batteries exploding.We love your feedback on the topics of the show and suggestions on how to make our show better and more fu

Tesla has been selected to build a 20 megawatt-80 megawatt/hour power storage facility at Southern California Edison’s Mira Loma substation in Ontario, California. The massive battery facility will contain enough energy to power 2,500 homes for a day, or charge 1,000 Tesla cars, Tesla says.
The system will use Tesla’s Powerpack industrial energy storage system, with final manufacturing happening at its Gigafactory facility in Sparks, Nevada. At an event at the Gigafactory earlier thi

Infinite Warfare may be moving the Call of Duty series to space, but some things aren't changing: namely, the series' love of celebrity cameos. In the latest trailer for the game, which focuses on Infinite Warfare's story, we get our first real in-game glimpse of Game of Thrones' Kit Harington as the antagonist Admiral Salen Kotch.He's also joined — albeit very briefly — by UFC fighter Conor McGregor, who will be taking on the role of Captain Bradley Fillion. He's only

Apple is having trouble removing porn from iMessage's new GIF search feature. Overnight, Deadspin noticed a highly sexual My Little Pony GIF appearing in searches for the word "butt," but the problem goes well beyond that.
A woman who emailed The Verge this afternoon says her eight-year-old daughter, while trying to send a message to her dad, was presented with "a very explicit image" of "a woman giving oral sex to a well endowed male." Her daughter hadn't searched for anything explicit, ju

Going into an event like the Toronto International Film Festival, it's easy to predict a few of the hot-ticket hits — the movies that built major buzz at other festivals, or that come with particularly high-powered cast-and-crew lineages. And then there films like Barry Jenkins' Moonlight, an artfully intense coming-of-age story which started as a promising word-of-mouth highlight and grew into TIFF's breakout must-see movie, surpassing the demand of much bigger budgeted, starry premi

Google really wants people to use its new video chat app Duo. So much so that it made not one or even two, but five different video ads promoting the service. The ads, five full 30-second ones and another five shortened 15-second versions, are polished and professional spots, with anthropomorphic jam jars and socks showing off the app's benefits like its standout live preview feature. The blitz is a bit perplexing, but so is the existence of Duo. The app is a FaceTime clone, but it rem