Technology news

The latest League of Legends patch was released Tuesday, bringing a bunch of changes to champions, kicking off the 2017 competitive season and teasing some upcoming winter skins.
The patch notes for the 6.24 update was released Tuesday, listing all of the changes and explaining the reasons behind them, from visual tweaks to minor ability calibrations to jungle fixes — all of which work toward fulfilling Riot's 2017 preseason plans. 
Most of the updates were implemented into the game T

It’s hard to believe that a patent hearing would be so popular, but the line to get into Hearing Room A at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) in Alexandria, Virginia, this morning stretched into a crowd of almost 100 people. The first to arrive, at 5:45AM ET, was a patent attorney who took a day off to be here. The second in line, a biotech investor, got here at 6:15AM. Most of the people in line are wearing black or gray business suits; they’re patent lawyers, inves

White-knuckle footage of an iguana running away from snakes on Planet Earth II became an internet sensation last month. But it turns out that was just the prequel.
Finally, Marshawn Lynch is here to give the clip the treatment it deserves. 
SEE ALSO: Marshawn Lynch forever: An ode to Beast Mode
What we have below is a bona fide piece of internet gold. Some diabolical genius took that Planet Earth II footage, then overlaid audio of Lynch describing his famous "Beast Quake" run from 2011. Tur

Google’s parent company Alphabet has ambitions to open an online marketplace where customers could place orders on food, coffee, and other goods to be delivered by drone, according to The Wall Street Journal. Alphabet’s X division, the “moonshot factory” where the company’s most outrageous ideas are sent to sink or swim, has apparently met with businesses like Whole Foods, Domino’s, and Starbucks about the service. “Wing Marketplace,” as it’s

A Lowe's hardware store in Abilene, Texas, is feeling the praise online after hiring a veteran and his service dog.
 Air Force veteran Clay Luthy was having difficulty finding a job due to his service dog named Charlotte, who accompanies him at all times. But while other companies were unable to hire Luthy and Charlotte, the hardware store stepped in and offered the two a job. 
“We were interviewing people for his position and he was one of the applicants. And so he showed up for

GUEST: If you own an Amazon Echo, you might have noticed that most of the 3,000+ skills in the Alexa Skills Store totally suck. Luckily for you, we at TOPBOTS have combed through the entire directory to hunt down the best Alexa Skills that are actually worth trying.
Keep reading to learn the 12 most useful (or at least funny) Alexa Skills, features, and integrations to get the most out of your smart home device, whether you want to find your car or your phone, get in touch with friends, outsourc

I’ve already written about the rumors that Pokémon Go may be getting an update in partnership with Starbucks on Thursday, and we’ve also seen other hints, and now Pokémon Go’s developers has revealed it will make a special announcement with mobile carrier Sprint on Wednesday.
Starting at 8:30 a.m. Pacific time tomorrow, Sprint and Niantic will hold a joint press conference to discuss some news related to Pokémon Go and Sprint. Marcelo Claure

(By Andrew Chung, Reuters) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with Samsung in its big-money smartphone patent fight with Apple, throwing out an appeals court ruling that the South Korean company had to pay a $399 million penalty to its American rival for copying key iPhone designs.
The 8-0 ruling, written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, held that a patent violator does not always have to fork over its entire profits from the sales of products using stolen designs, if the designs co

After about a month in public beta, Sonos and Spotify are releasing an update today allowing Spotify to directly play to Sonos speakers to all users. The update essentially makes any Sonos device into a Spotify Connect speaker, with the added bonus of Sonos' signature multi-room functionality built in.Control music throughout your home on Sonos speakers directly from the Spotify app
The new feature, which was originally announced in August, allows anyone to control music playing on Sonos speaker

The average lawn mower does nothing but keep your lawn trimmed and bouncy. But researchers at the University of Tokyo think they can take the lawn mower to the next level, by which I mean they created a mower that’ll leave designs on your lawn. It’s called the Grassffiti. A custom app lets users specify what they want drawn, which seems like a great way to threaten people, delight them, or mark your territory.
The researchers imagine their technology will be great for large-scale des

The days of having to enter your cable account login details into every individual TV app on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV are coming to an end — maybe. Depending on who you get your cable from. As MacRumors notes, today Apple rolled out its single sign-on feature for iOS, which lets users enter account details (for participating cable providers) just once and then be automatically signed into TV Everywhere apps. Here’s Apple’s help page that explains the feature and how to enable

Donald Trump is mad at Boeing, but what else is new? On Tuesday, the president-elect tweeted that he was considering canceling the Chicago-based aerospace company’s contract to build the new Air Force One because it was too expensive.Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2016Enough ink has been spilled trying to suss out Trump’s mot

Apple, the most the secretive member of the technology industry, is starting to break down its walls. Russ Salakhutdinov, the company’s director of artificial intelligence research, says Apple will start letting its AI researchers publish papers and engage with the greater AI community, according to a report from Business Insider. Salakhutdinov reportedly made the announcement earlier today at the NIPS conference in Barcelona, Spain.
AI researchers thrive on open collaboration, which Apple

The year is basically over now that the last handful of games are hitting retailers, and we’ve got a podcast all about ’em.
GamesBeat Decides turns its attention this week to new VR controllers, HD remasters of games that never came out, and big events. Your host, Jeffrey Grubb, has also managed to chain GamesBeat’s Dean Takahashi and Mike Minotti to their microphones.
The trio discusses the following topics:
Do Oculus Rift owners need to get the Touch?
Is The Last Gu

 GoDaddy is on a shopping spree. Yesterday we reported that the domain and hosting company had bought WP Curve, a WordPress services startup to expand its WordPress support team. And today the company has just announced a much bigger deal. GoDaddy has acquired European rival Host Europe Group (HEG) for $1.8 billion — including €605 million paid to existing Host Europe… Read More

Battlerite is ready to let it snow.
Developer Stunlock Studios announced a winter patch coming to its PC arena brawler. The update is coming on December 14 and will add a new ranking system, cosmetics, and a new (yet unrevealed) champion. The game came out in September, and Stunlock has said that game has sold over 440,000 copies. New content can attract more players.
Battleriite is kind of like a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena), like popular titles Dota 2 and League of Legends.

 Today, Ruvento is announcing a new $25 million seed fund for hardware startups in need of capital from Singapore, China and the U.S. The fund, managed by Slava Solonitsyn and Alex Toh, will write 70 percent of its checks between $100k and $500k. The rest of the capital will be reserved for follow-on investments of up to $2 million. Ruvento is not the first investor to take a… Read More

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son made a surprise appearance at Trump Tower today where he appears to have worked out a deal with the president-elect to invest $50 billion in the US over the next four years and create 50,000 new jobs.
Details of the planned investment are basically nonexistent, but it’s more than likely that it involves Sprint, which represents SoftBank’s main presence in the US. Sprint has been struggling since its acquisition by SoftBank in 2012, falling into fourth place

It’s December, the most wonderful time of year for supercuts, mash-ups, and the crippling realization that time is trickling through our fingers like whatever metaphor you best prefer! (Water.) But no end-of-the-year examination is complete without a viewing of the latest entry in David Ehrlich’s 25 Best Films series. This year’s list includes everything from Manchester by the Sea and Moonlight to Kubo and the Two Strings and La La Land.Ehrlich, a senior film critic at IndieWir

GUEST: In a recent study by Gartner Reports, the analyst estimated that by 2020 the average person will have more conversations with bots than with their spouse. The report failed to clarify if this was attributed solely to increasing dependence on AI technology, or if deteriorating spousal relations played a role as well. I suppose it could be a blend of both. What is clear is that there is an inevitable trend moving from screen interfaces to chat interfaces that has all major tech companies sc

Can we save the world through empathy? For the past year, that idea has been a source of public debate as people try to figure out who deserves empathy, who doesn’t, and how to cultivate more of it to solve our problems.Technology has been a key part of this conversation. Virtual reality proponents have long seen the potential of their work to do good, whether it’s using Oculus Rift to understand homelessness or trying to Kickstart an “empathy-increasing device to end avoidable

Netflix knows how difficult it is to actually find something you want to watch in its massive streaming catalog. To that end, the company is adding a long-awaited feature to its TV apps: video previews.
The previews will show up while you’re browsing through Netflix’s content, allowing you to get an idea of the flavor of the show or movie without having to hit play. Netflix says the previews aren’t trailers, but instead serve as curated experiences for “quickly highlighti

Arcades aren’t what they used to be, especially in the West. They’re looked upon as places for retro nostalgia, not where you’ll find some of the most interesting games available. But that’s where Japan has an advantage as some of the arcades are being used to test cutting-edge virtual reality games.
Above: Japan’s arcade business, as measured by its manufacturer’s association.Image Credit: JAMMA
Arcades, or “game centers” as the Japanese call them

Walt Disney World’s Epcot — the park-within-a-park that encourages children to appreciate the fact that there are literally hundreds of cultures in the world besides the American one — is a good place. There are not so many cool rides, especially now that Norway’s Maelstrom has been replaced with some scary Frozen-themed thing, but it is educational and optimistic. The theme of the nightly fireworks and laser show (IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth) is basically “

This post contains minor plot spoilers for the beginning 30 minutes of Rogue One.Standing before a crowd of journalists in a private movie theater at Skywalker Ranch this past weekend, Gareth Edwards made an appeal to the hardcore fans. “I feel like I’m standing on sacred ground,” he told the audience. Edwards, the director of the upcoming Star Wars standalone film Rogue One, knows the significance of his position. He’s only the second director, after J.J. Abrams, to helm

LinkedIn has added a feature it hopes will make it easier for you to network with people you’re interested in talking to. Starting today, when you’re messaging someone to connect with them, the professional social network will display what it calls “conversation starters.”
“We know that reaching out to reconnect, ask for advice or network for potential job opportunities can be intimidating, so we’ve added personalized conversation starters in LinkedIn messagin

Sonos and Spotify partnered earlier this year to solve a problem that has frustrated Sonos and Spotify fans alike: Sonos’ app isn’t very good, but it’s the only one that works with the company’s otherwise great connected speakers.
This changes today for “Premium” Spotify users — the two companies announced that you can now control your Sonos speakers using Spotify’s mobile app. T

VB LIVE: You can capture more data than ever before — but do you know how to use it? Big players like Match are using sophisticated strategies to pull ahead in the fixed-pie world of ad buying. Join this VB Live event for insight into the sophisticated data strategies you need to leverage to stay competitive.
Register here for free.
“It’s an evolve-or-die, a survival-of-the-fittest type situation,” says James Peng, head of mobile and social acquisition at Match Group, whi

There’s a lot of excitement about Amazon Go, the company’s new kind of grocery store that lets customers take what they need and leave without ever waiting in line, but there weren’t a whole lot of specifics on how this system works. An Amazon patent filed in 2014 gives us a glimpse of how this could all operate, and it involves — you betcha — hella cameras.
The patent describes a system where cameras could capture you as you walk into the store, then identify who y

Our rapidly warming planet has melted a chunk of sea ice the size of India, according to climate scientists. What’s more, the sea ice near Antarctica has started melting, too, after years of expanding despite global warming.Climate skeptics once loved to argue that the growing Antarctic sea ice proved that climate change was a hoax, even as scientists freaked out over the unexpectedly bleak numbers. But now the ice is melting at both poles, and ice levels in both areas are at record lows.B

NASA has just commissioned a new type of spacecraft that will be able to refuel satellites while they’re still in orbit around Earth. Dubbed the Restore-L Spacecraft Bus, the vehicle will act like a traveling gas station, by meeting up with probes in orbit and filling up the satellites’ tanks. Such a spacecraft will make it possible for satellites to operate a whole lot longer in space than they were originally supposed to.
NASA won’t be making the entire Restore-L spacecraft o

Docker, the startup that pushes open source software for packaging up code into containers that can be deployed on many machines, today announced its latest acquisition: file transfer app Infinit.
Yes, that’s right, Docker bought a company with a consumer-friendly app. It lets you sync files to your other devices or send them to others.
But of course, Docker sees potential in the technology that enables Infinit. Which isn’t that surprising when you consider that the company that pred

Google has a new trick up its sleeve on Twitter — it can now understand emoji you tweet at it. Simply tweet an emoji @Google and the company's Twitter account will respond with a fun GIF and a handy link to for local search results.
We speak emoji. Let’s talk.#KnowNearby pic.twitter.com/HjIMs3KPKe— Google (@Google) December 6, 2016For example, tweeting a burger emoji results in the following tweet, complete with some local burger joints nearby:@cgartenberg Search results that a

When I started at The Verge in 2014, I needed an excuse to learn about technology. My background was in covering video games, television, and pop culture, and I lacked the basic cognitive functions to hold a phone above my head without dropping it on my face. So I launched a podcast called What’s Tech.
For two years, the show was an opportunity to learn the fundamentals about the technology that supports everyday life. Free to ask silly, obvious, and embarrassing questions, I learned a ton

Gamers all know that moment when you’re out tracking down monsters in Pokémon Go but you’re also running out of energy. Well, Starbucks is about to come to your rescue with the Pokémon Go Frappuccino Blended Crème drink … if certain rumors are accurate.
Above: It’s beginning to look a lot like Pokémas.Image Credit: Reddit
Leaked images allegedly from a Starbucks employee website claim that Pokémon Go is getting new c

Twitch may be the go-to destination for watching video game players stream their screens, but a whole network of third-party apps exist in and around Twitch’s service that the company would very much like to provide on its own. Now, the Amazon-owned company is taking aim at one of the most prominent of those third-party sectors: live game chat. Starting today, Twitch’s Curse communication app will support live video calling with up to five players, according to Engadget. The addition

While Dropbox has let users save individual files for offline viewing for years, the company is now building in the ability to save entire folders. The company announced today that Dropbox Pro and Business users will be able to select folders that will then automatically sync to a phone or tablet locally. For now, however, the feature will only be available through the Android app. It’s coming to iOS early next year, Dropbox says.
Dropbox has introduced multiple mobile features this year,

Over the watch and through the team kills, to Sombra’s house we go.
Overwatch’s Twitter account has teased a new in-game event, this time centered around the December holidays. The tweet includes an animated GIF of a Christmas card showing the King’s Row map decked out in snow and lights and shows a starting date of December 13. These in-game events add new, limited-time cosmetic content to the team-based shooter on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, which gives gamers extra

The next couple of years for Pixar Animation Studios are heavy on sequels. Cars 3, Toy Story 4, The Incredibles 2 — they’re all on the production roster, and they make it look like the studio is retrenching into safer bets and guaranteed successes, after a long run of award-winning original works. But there’s one exception on the schedule: Coco, a Pixar original film we knew little about before today.Coco, announced in 2012 and slated to arrive in November 2017, is set in Mexic

At 0.78 inches thick, Gigabyte's Aero 14 laptop is one of the thinnest gaming PCs around. And now, the Aero 14 is getting a serious boost in power with an announcement last week that it’s upgrading to Nvidia's newest GeForce GTX 1060 GPU.
Along with the new, VR-ready GPU, the Aero 14 also offers a 14-inch QHD display, and maxes out at a 1TB SSD for storage and 32GB of RAM. It's also got a massive 94.24 Wh battery, although Gigabyte isn't giving any estimates beyond "long battery life." And