Technology news

The Hampton Inn in Sandy, Utah, is trying keep J. Cole down.
The hotel's Twitter account, which, apparently doubles as a music publication, dissed Cole's new album, 4 Your Eyez Only, suggesting their beds are a comfortable place to rest if the album is"putting you to sleep early." Is the new J Cole album putting you to sleep early? Stop on by and stay the night with us at the Hampton Inn Sandy! ☺😴 pic.twitter.com/WvBJDEUvTQ
— Hampton Inn-Sandy UT (@HamptonInnSandy) Decem

On Saturday evening, the Twitter account of Richard B. Spencer, one of the more prominent leaders of the alt-right movement, had his suspended Twitter account reactivated, spurring outrage among other users on the platform.
SEE ALSO: The empowered alt-right trolls have created a cesspit on Twitter
After being suspended for nearly a month, Spencer sent out a short tweet on Saturday night confirming his return.I'm backpic.twitter.com/ngfq4aHWtc
— Richard 🐸 Spencer (@RichardBSpencer)

When The Matrix first came out in 1999, it blew away viewers with its insane special effects, including the groundbreaking use of "bullet time." But what would it look without any special effects at all?
Our CineFix series, Homemade Movies, serves up DIY-style versions of your favorite trailers and movie scenes. All videos are exact shot-for-shot remakes created at home without everyday objects and zero special effects. 
Subscribe to CineFix for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/cinefi

Firefighters recently saved a dog in Romania using one of the most basic first aid techniques: CPR.
The dog had collapsed from smoke inhalation after a fire broke out Dec. 9 in a ground-floor apartment in Pitești, a city just west of Bucharest. 
SEE ALSO: Google's new app will help loved ones find you in an emergency
The dog's owner, a 51-year-old man, was seriously injured and quickly taken to the hospital, Romanian media reported. But the dog stayed behind, lying motionless on the cu

Tomorrow, NASA will attempt to launch eight small satellites to space on board a Pegasus XL rocket, manufactured by private spaceflight company Orbital ATK. Called the CYGNSS mission, the probes are meant to study various aspects of tropical storms and hurricanes from orbit, in order to help scientists better understand how these cyclones form. But launching these satellites into orbit won’t look like your typical trip to space, where a rocket takes off vertically from a launch pad on the

Rogue One, hitting theaters next week, is an experiment on the part of Lucasfilm to see if the Star Wars franchise can survive without having a Skywalker starring in a central role. Described as standalone films, they have the potential to tell different types of stories than the backbone films of the saga. But both Rogue One and the as-of-yet-untitled Han Solo film could also run into familiar problem: they’re prequels. And when it comes to prequels, Star Wars has history.
When George Luc

Should the Kylie Cosmetics empire crumble, Kylie Jenner has a promising career as a Christina Aguilera impersonator to look forward to. 
Jenner dressed up as Aguilera in her "Dirrty" video for Halloween and Xtina liked what she saw, so she invited Kylie (Kristina?) to her birthday bash. And when it was about time for Jenner's arrival, she killed it, yet again. Birthday Bae
A photo posted by Kylie (@kyliejenner) on Dec 10, 2016 at 10:56pm PST
SEE ALSO: What to buy anyone in your life wh

J.K. Rowling's stamp of approval can make or break just about anything, and a new spider species was sorted into the cool kids club by Rowling herself. 
Researchers in Mumbai named a new species Eriovixia gryffindori after Godric Gryffindor because it looks like it's wearing the famed Sorting Hat from the Harry Potter universe. @jk_rowling We named a spider, after the sorting hat, from the films! :) Meet Eriovixia gryffindori. Link to paper: https://t.co/XpGcCy4TO6 pic.twitter.com/Qwf1

Fuzzy mittens and a crop top? Yes, that is the perfect outfit in this teen winter wonderland. 
Jingle Ball, the annual tour that teams up with radio stations across the country to bring together some of pop's biggest names, stopped by Madison Square Garden over the weekend to party with Z100. 
SEE ALSO: 'Dangerous Woman' is an irresistable trip down Ariana Grande's latex rabbit hole
Acts making a splash this year like Daya and the Danish band Lukas Graham joined the likes of Ariana Gra

GUEST: As an early stage entrepreneur, you’ll rarely be short of people offering their (often unsolicited) advice, and many of them will tell you that you can’t succeed as a startup without doing X, Y, and Z. Don’t listen to them. From my experience of bootstrapping a company to over $25 million ARR and 3,800 percent revenue growth over the last five years, I’ve found there are rather a lot of supposedly indispensable things you can do without, as long as you get the basi

When did banking apps from the big finance giants suddenly get good? Lately I’m finding the various money-related apps on my phone (Bank of America, Citibank, Capital One) to be genuinely helpful and capable of things that they couldn’t do even a year ago. They’re even becoming intuitive. I can temporarily lock my debit card if I’ve misplaced it but am not yet convinced it’s lost. I can activate replacement cards with a tap — something that always required a c

Why do people do the things they do? It's a question that has plagued mankind for ages.
SEE ALSO: 11 deeply horrifying Royal Family face swaps that'll keep you up at night
And, now, the question is being asked after seeing a new set of terrifying photoshops that seamlessly paste Donald Trump's face on the body of England's Queen Elizabeth. #trumpqueen #trumpsucks #donaldtrump #trump #makedonalddrumpfagain #drumpf #drumpf2016 #antitrump #donaldtrumpisanidiot #photoshop #photoshopmagic #makea

Postmates will be getting a new executive tasked with boosting the on-demand delivery service’s product design. The company has hired serial entrepreneur Matt Galligan as its new vice president of product design. Previously, he was the cofounder and chief executive of news startup Circa (prior to its purchase by Sinclair Broadcasting) and also location-based offering SimpleGeo.
Galligan announced the move on Facebook and said his first day will be in January.
The role at Postmates seems to

GUEST: Recently, Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc., made news with an announcement that it had confidentially filed for an initial public offering (IPO). As expected, news about the company’s potential on the public markets has caused lots of chatter from a wide-ranging audience, including investors, financial analysts, entrepreneurs, business leaders and consumers – but it also put the spotlight back on the popularity of confidential IPO filings.
Almost immediately after be

The last time I clearly remember saying a non-VR game was “worth the price,” it was 2013. The game was The Swapper, and I remember because game developer Jon Blow went on a Twitter rant about the turn of phrase soon after, which may or may not have been directed at me. Regardless, I figured he was right: people were more than capable of reading my work and calibrating it to their own spending habits. If film and TV critics didn’t have to judge a work’s aesthetic value aga

Uber has launched another activation campaign to get people to sign-up for the service, but this time it’s joined the Dark Side. The company has teamed with Disney for a special promotion for the upcoming release of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” which will premiere in theaters on Friday, December 16.
Above: Uber has teamed with Disney to promote the new “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” movie.Image Credit: Uber
Riders from “hundreds of cities” globally wil

Donald Trump says he doesn't need daily security briefings as president because he's "like, a smart person."
In case you're wondering, every president since President Harry S. Truman has received a daily briefing on the security threats facing the United States. Sometimes they say important things, such as, "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." 
SEE ALSO: Meet Trump's archenemy on Twitter
But President-elect Trump, talking to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, explained why they're just no

Al Gore released his climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth back in 2006, and just over a decade later, he’s set to premiere a sequel at the Sundance Film Festival on January 19th. The new film will follow his efforts during those 10 years to bring awareness to our changing climate.“Now more than ever we must rededicate ourselves to solving the climate crisis”
Variety reports that the sequel will be directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, and that it will be released

When people are bursting into pizza parlor with guns because of fake news stories, it must be addressed at Saturday Night Live's fake news desk. 
Cecily Strong, in character Cathy Anne, stopped by the Weekend Update desk to try to wrap her head around Pizzagate and white supremacists. 
"People like me do not need to be encouraged on Fortune and Redding," explains strong. "4Chan and Reddit," corrects Michael Che. 
Her prescription for the country? "Everyone needs to get off the in

GUEST: It was speculated 2016 would see even more cybersecurity activity than 2015, and it did not disappoint. Consider the $81 million stolen from Bangladesh Bank, the 500 million accounts swiped from Yahoo, or the 19,000 emails leaked from Democratic Party officials in the run-up to the election. Not to mention the IoT-powered botnets launching record-breaking DDoS attacks that have brought down major parts of the Internet.
But, in reality, this year’s cyber-attack headlines offer just a

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story comes out next week, and unless you've been living under a rock, you probably know that the movie involves the theft of the plans for the Death Star. There's also a chance that you've wondered if this movie will finally explain what a Bothan is, and why many of them died to bring you this information.There are no Bothans in Rogue One
But we here at The Verge would like to correct this misconception. Rogue One details the story of Jyn Erso and her band of Bothan-less

March 30, 1962Caroline Kennedy sits astride Macaroni on the South Lawn of the White House.Image: JFK Presidential Library and museumPresidential pets have always been celebrities of sorts, from Checkers the dog to Socks the Cat, but for a few years one could regularly be seen nibbling on the White House lawn.Macaroni, a 10-year-old part-Shetland gelding, was given to young Caroline Kennedy as a gift from Lyndon B. JohnsonThough usually stabled at the Kennedy family home in Virginia, the pony was

Need something soothing as 2016 finally (finally!) draws to a close?
Let Patti Smith's rendition of Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" make you cry and then build you back up. Smith performed the rendition at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, where an absent Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Like us all, Smith needed a little moment to make it through the song. But she, like you, will make it to the end.Apple Music releases '808' doc starring Pharrell, Questlove and t

In 2016, 4AM became a close friend. I’d awake with no provocation, roll over to check my phone, and mutter a string of my favorite swears. My insomnia was as reliable as it was frustrating, but it was unusual for me, too. All my life, I’d bragged about my ability to fall into a deep, coma-like state wherever, whenever, rivaled only by the dead.These sleepless weeks stretched into months. Desperate to put an end to my wakeful nights, I stocked up on melatonin, invested in an aromather

GUEST: Last month, LinkedIn released the results of a survey of its members, gathering the opinions of more than 600 startup investors and founders on the current state of diversity in the venture capital industry.
The results — though unsurprising to many of us — were quite sobering.
In an industry where 98 percent of senior investors are either White or Asian, and African American male founders receive just two percent of all venture capital deployed, less than five percent of thos

Back in January, President Obama asked Congress to set aside $4 billion for computer science education, in what would have been the federal government’s largest targeted funding for promoting the subject in schools. The proposal seemed designed to generate more headlines than actual funding — and now, nearly a year down the road, that largely seems to be what’s happened.
In a release on Monday highlighting what the administration’s “Computer Science for All” i

The game The Last Guardian features one big achievement that’s fairly awe-inspiring.
It’s not the level design or even the gameplay, which are both compelling enough. (You can read our full coverage of the title here.) As a long-time gamer who has fond memories of playing Ico quite a few years ago and then beating the spiritual successor to that release called Shadow of the Colossus in 2005 (all created by designer Fumito Ueda and his team with a focus on forming an em

When President-elect Donald Trump officially becomes the president of the United States in January, he will take complete control of America’s nuclear arsenal. Should he decide to start a nuclear war, there are no legal safeguards to stop him. Instead, a much less tangible web of norms, taboos, and fears has reined in US presidents since World War II. But as North Korea escalates its nuclear weapons tests and the president-elect of the United States openly contemplates using nukes, experts

Google’s search algorithm has been changed over the last year to increasingly reward search results based on how likely you are to click on them, multiple sources tell Business Insider.
As a result, fake news now often outranks accurate reports on higher quality websites.
The problem is so acute that Google’s autocomplete suggestions now actually predict that you are searching for fake news even when you might not be, as Business Insider noted on December 5.
There is a common misconc

(Reuters) – Twenty-First Century Fox’s plan to buy the remaining stake in Sky further insulates the Murdoch family-owned media company from a U.S. television advertising market roiled by sagging ratings, experts said.
In a highly-anticipated move, Rupert Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox struck a preliminary deal on Friday to buy the 61 percent of British pay-TV firm Sky it does not already own for around $14 billion.
Owning Sky would give Fox, whose cable networks include Fox

The Verge reports that Yik Yak, an anonymous messaging app that swept college campuses in 2014 and 2015, has laid off about 50 workers, leaving only about 20. Yik Yak told The Verge the layoffs amounted to 60% of staff.
Layoffs were reportedly concentrated in the company’s community, marketing, design, and product teams.
This comes less than two years after a November 2014 investment round, led by Sequoia Capitol, that valued the startup at $400 million. App growth stalled quickly after th

Last week, UploadVR let you know about 10 great SteamVR games that work well with the Rift and Touch by default. Now that the Touch controllers have officially released into the world, we decided to tackle the topic in a bit more detail. How well do the Oculus Touch controllers work with SteamVR apps that are only designed with Vive in mind? Is anything unplayable? What are the common hiccups and limitations? Is it even worth buying things that may or may not get official support?
First of all,

GUEST: Artificial intelligence came alive in the ’80s with many startups, governments, and large enterprises deploying new systems that executed tasks typically performed by human experts. These were largely rule-based systems that encoded behaviors in rules instead of using the strict procedural logic of traditional programming languages. Then, as memory became more affordable, systems were able to handle much more computationally intense tasks, such as machine learning, planning and sche

GUEST: Chatbots are all the rage these days. And it’s no surprise, as they offer a method of frictionless, natural conversation between a brand and its customers, as well as the ability to improve the customer service experience without the need to augment expensive department staff.
At this point in time, while the “chat” part of the chatbot interaction may seem superficial, the seamless and ubiquitous interface promises to disrupt a range of technologies, including search eng