Technology news

Microsoft is launching a new program to allow Skype users to test new features before they're rolled out to everyone. Dubbed Skype Insiders Program, the new feedback program launches today just hours after Microsoft also opened its Xbox Insider Program to the public. Skype users can sign-up to access early features and service improvements, and Microsoft says it will help the company "iron out any quirks before we release them broadly."
Skype users will be able to test the new ver

Sea levels are rising at unprecedented rates, scientists say. New research shows that by 2040, more than 90 percent of the world’s coastal areas could be experiencing sea level rises of more than 8 inches. But certain areas, like the Eastern US, will be hit even harder with water levels climbing more than a foot. By 2100, New York City, for example, could see coastal waters between 3.5 and 7.3 feet higher than they are now. The consequences, in terms of displacing millions of people, could

 A “pottech” company called Wurk has raised $1 million in seed funding to help cannabis businesses such as dispensaries or growers comply with all the different regulations coming into play around the burgeoning legal cannabis industry. The seed deal closed before various ballots issues were voted on today in the U.S., which could make the sale and use of marijuana legal… Read More

As Election Night neared, Donald Trump's campaign aides reportedly seized his Twitter access to prevent any more missteps. (A fact Barack Obama has been quick to skewer.) But it looks like Trump may be back at the wheel, just in time to send some very inaccurate tweets.
Trump has generally tweeted from a Samsung device, while it's been postulated — and forensically tested — that his campaign sends tweets from an iPhone. The tweets from @realDonaldTrump have lately come

Alphabet Inc.’s Project Wing, the drone delivery team that began as part of the Google X “moonshot” factory, has canceled a tentative partnership with Starbucks, according to Bloomberg. Members of Project Wing and Starbucks apparently clashed over the handling of consumer data, Bloomberg reports, straining the partnership and ultimately pushing both companies out of an air-delivered coffee venture.The deal would have marked Project Wing’s second high-profile food and beve

It’s Election Day, and there are dozens of ballot proposals across the country that could potentially raise up to $200 billion for public transportation. But some opponents are using the rising popularity of ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft to undercut these proposals. These critics are arguing that cities and states shouldn’t be pumping so much money into mass transit at a time when more and more people seem to prefer taking Uber and Lyft.Anti-transit campaigns are using @Ub

Walgreens has filed suit against Theranos in Delaware district court, asking for $140 million and alleging a breach of contract.Court filings show that Walgreens is claiming that some of Theranos’ actions violate the non-disclosure agreement and confidentiality agreements that the two companies agreed to. Walgreens successfully moved to seal the complaint, citing the non-disclosure agreement, so the details of the alleged contractual breach are still unknown.
Theranos, once a Silicon Valle

It’s Election Day, which means your social feeds are likely clogged with the most political of selfies: the “I Voted” selfie. This rare format is, of course, a selfie taken with the “I Voted” sticker given to adults who fulfill their civic duty on Election Day.
Our favorite version of “I Voted” selfie isn’t really a selfie at all — it’s the now ubiquitous “I Voted” pet picture. Look at these good puppers who understand the i

Apple is officially selling iPhones for the first time in its online store, as spotted by 9to5Mac. Prices are discounted by up to 15 percent off compared to new models. A listed refurbished rose gold 64GB iPhone 6S Plus is on sale for $589, for instance, and a silver 16GB iPhone 6S Plus is $529.Apple’s refurbished phones come with a one-year warranty — just like new iPhones — and include a new battery and outer shell. They’re also unlocked and don’t include a SIM ca

Today, the trash fire known as the 2016 election will finally be doused with the water of our nation’s citizenry. As Americans file out of their polling place, many will leave with a small sticker bearing the phrase “I Voted.”It’s a cute idea with a long history; stickers are a persistent election tradition that have been around since the ‘80s. Sometimes they can get you free stuff. Mostly they’re a way to show everyone just how patriotic you are.In the year o

The most recognizable scooter brand in the world is going electric. Vespa will make an all-electric scooter to be sold sometime in the latter half of 2017. The news was announced by Vespa’s parent company, Piaggio, two days ahead of the Esposizione Internazionale Ciclo e Motociclo (EICMA), or the Milan Motorcycle Show.
Piaggio published a photo of a concept version of the electrified two-wheeler, which you can see above. It’s called the Vespa Elettrica, and it has a stark metal body

Are you stressed? We are. It’s Election Day here in the states, and American citizens are casting their ballots right now to determine the future of the country. The decisions will influence the future of business, science, foreign affairs, and everyday life.We don’t endorse outright escapism. Today must be met head on. But after you vote, join us as we relieve the anxiety of the real world by revisiting great election moments in fictional worlds.
Science fiction and fantasy in parti

Hopefully by now Ken Bone has made a decision and picked a candidate. The world’s most recognizable undecided voter presumably agonized over the decision for the days leading up to the election and has now found a candidate he can live with. Some of us, presumably, aren’t so lucky. For those that plan to get to the polling place and wing it, maybe it’s time to check out one of several political matchmaking tools to see which candidate most closely shares your values. According

Streaming TV services are running into the exact same obstacles as cable TV providers. And Sony just encountered a huge one. The company has announced in an Election Day blog post that as of November 11th at 12:01AM, PlayStation Vue customers will no longer be able to watch any of Viacom’s networks, which include Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV, BET, VH1, Spike, and others. That’s just three days away, so this announcement is incredibly abrupt and very likely to anger customers.&ldq

 Hyperloop One and the United Arab Emirates are on the fast track to building out the first hyperloop system. Just today H1 announced it would build the first commercial hyperloop transportation system from Dubai to Abu Dhabi. The journey is 99 miles (159.4 km) long and normally takes about two hours by car but H1 promises it would take a mere 12 minutes in the hyperloop. H1 is partnering with… Read More

TiVo is planning a new product, called the TiVo Mavrik, as David Zatz reported yesterday for Zatz Not Funny, along with leaked images of the device. And now, after a second leak, we know that the Mavrik is an over-the-air streaming cloud DVR. Which is to say: it’s a DVR, but instead of storing your shows locally on a hard disk, it stores them up in the cloud and you just stream them when you want to watch them.
There's still a place for a traditional DVR in the market
A set-top box that ca

Tech titans like Uber, Amazon, and Google have all laid out ambitious plans for filling the skies with autonomous aircraft. Uber wants to move people around with flying taxis, and Airbus is committed to producing this kind of vehicle. Meanwhile Google and Amazon are hoping to deliver packages with much smaller drones. All see the potential for fleets of unmanned aerial vehicles that can pilot themselves.
But to make that vision a reality, we're going to need a new breed of sense and av

If you’ve spent a few living minutes in the 90s, you know how important WordArt was during that time. As a teenager, for me it was pretty much the only way to make a document look cool. By clicking a few buttons, my assignment looked at least 70 percent cooler than my classmates’. Make WordArt is a creation by designer Mike McMillan that brings the fun back into designing documents. Gone are the minimalist shapes and copious amounts of whitespace, instead, have some green

The Square Off is a chess board with magnets and motors that can move pieces around by remote command. It’s a new Kickstarter project that’s designed to allow people to play chess on a physical board remotely with each other via a smartphone or against a computer. It can also allow chess fans to watch live or replay famous chess matches on a physical board in front of them.But let’s be honest here: this was clearly designed to be wizard chess from Harry Potter. But I’m no

Reddit took a hard stance that America will still be standing tomorrow. On the homepage today, CEO u/spez greeted US redditors with a message containing resources to assist voters with sample ballots, polling place locations, and general information to help facilitate the democratic process. He also took a second to remind each of us that emotions are running high this time of year, which may be putting it lightly, and that the United States has the “longest stretch of uninterrupted peace

Electric Jukebox is a dongle that streams music to a TV. It can be controlled through a remote or voice commands and was introduced last year. The dongle, the remote, and Electric Jukebox’s streaming service only work in the UK, and the hardware costs £169, or around $209. That purchase price includes a one-year subscription to Electric Jukebox’s music service. After a year, users can listen to certain curated channels for free, or resubscribe for £52 to access all albums

Over the weekend I wrote about some of my experiences with USB-C over the past year. They are, in short, mixed. I’ve had brief glimpses of the future that USB-C promises: a single port and a single cable for all gadgets. But figuring out how to get to that future means dealing with infuriatingly bad cables and hubs and trying to understand a hilariously complicated admixture of different protocols like Thunderbolt, HDMI, and DisplayPort that also theoretically work with this one single cab

Hyperloop One — the well-funded, slightly dysfunctional, futuristic transportation startup — said Tuesday that it would study the possibility of building the world’s first passenger-ready hyperloop in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.But more than that, the company also released a slickly produced video to give us a glimpse at what riding in a hyperloop would be like from the passenger perspective. After making a reservation on your phone, an autonomously driven, box-shaped p

As promised, Microsoft today patched Windows to resolve a critical system vulnerability that Google’s security team publicized last Monday. The search giant controversially chose to acknowledge the bug before Microsoft had fixed it, claiming that hackers were already actively targeting it. As noted by ZDNet, the fix is contained in today’s release of monthly security patches.According to Microsoft’s security bulletin, any attacker who tricked a user into running a “specia

It's been a long and terrifying ride, and now it's almost finally over. For over a year, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have been vying to be the next President of the United States — a contest that at various points has hinged on leaked emails, server management, and fishy DNS traffic. Now, the country's voting and, any minute now, we're going to find out who won. Here's all of our Election Day coverage in one place. Continue reading…

Most countries would be excited to be on the receiving end of $14.4 billion in unexpected tax revenues. But Ireland, which has become a European hub for American teach companies thanks to its friendly tax policies, announced today that it will appeal a decision by a European Court that would claw back that huge sum in tax subsidies from the world's wealthiest corporation, Apple.
The conflict pits the bureaucracy of the European Union against the sovereign governments of its member stat

It’s been just over three months since Instagram copied Snapchat stories and slapped them on top of its feed. The move appears to be a success: within a few weeks, 100 million people were using the feature every day. (Snapchat’s entire app gets 150 million users a day.) Instagram stories are almost identical to the Snapchat version, but they have an extremely useful extra feature: you can rewind them by tapping on the left side of the story. Well today it’s Snapchat’s tur

Today is Election Day in the United States, which means it’s a day set aside specifically for the act of voting. And yet, voting in the US is often more difficult than it could be. Polling places around the country have reported extremely long lines and instances of machines on the fritz. On top of that, voter suppression is a very real threat; Reuters recently obtained emails that proved Republicans in North Carolina were attempting to limit the availability of polling places in locations

 Facebook is on a mission to make the fiber optic networking inside of its data centers go from 40G to 100G. Its Wedge 100 top-of-rack network switch (basically, the device that connects all the servers in a rack to the wider data center network) was already accepted into the Open Compute Project and today, the company lifted the veil of Backpack, its next-gen 100G switch platform for… Read More

Last night I sat in front of my computer for hours with a blank page open, trying to think about how I would finally write a presidential endorsement for The Verge. I wanted to be eloquent, sharp, and timeless — to make a poetic stand In Defense Of The Republic. But after a bit of tequila and a lot of writer’s block, I gave up, closed the tab, and went to bed.
Today I saw this video today of Donald Trump getting booed on his way in and out of a voting booth in his home state. It&rsqu