Technology news

Children ordering (accidentally or otherwise) items from gadgets is nothing new. Major retailers have refunded purchases made by children playing with phones or computers, and with voice activated devices making their way into homes, it’s a problem that parents will have to be on the lookout for.One recent instance occurred in Dallas, Texas earlier this week, when a six-year-old asked her family’s new Amazon Echo “can you play dollhouse with me and get me a dollhouse?” Th

Children ordering (accidentally or otherwise) items from gadgets is nothing new. Major retailers have refunded purchases made by children playing with phones or computers, and with voice activated devices making their way into homes, it’s a problem that parents will have to be on the lookout for.One recent instance occurred in Dallas, Texas earlier this week, when a six-year-old asked her family’s new Amazon Alexa “can you play dollhouse with me and get me a dollhouse?” T

This year we tried something new with The Vergecast at CES and streamed all three episodes on Twitter Live! In case you missed it, we’ve embedded each episode below for easy playback.The show was hosted by Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Megan Farokhmanesh and featured Casey Newton, Lauren Goode, Paul Miller, Ashley Carman, and assorted members of the massive Verge team on the ground in Las Vegas.Day 1:
CES Unveiled, digesting Samsung’s CES press conference (and lack of apology for the

Apple has released a new ad for its iPhone 7 Plus called Take Mine, which highlights the phone’s portrait mode. The ad will air during tomorrow’s Golden Globes ceremony.The ad follows a young woman who returns to her home village in Greece, bringing along her iPhone 7 Plus. While catching up, she takes a picture of her grandmother, who is amazed at how the image comes out. Before too long, the young woman is taking pictures of everyone in the entire village.The ad does a good job por

Samsung has released the long-awaited iOS apps for its Gear wearable accessories, including the Gear S2 and S3 smartwatches and the Gear Fit 2 fitness tracker. The two new apps let you set up and pair the devices with an iPhone. Prior to this, the Gear devices were only compatible with Android devices.
Samsung says that the Gear S app will let you download and install apps on the smartwatches, push notifications from the phone to the watch, as well as sync health and fitness data with S Health.

It’s no surprise that internet connected household items are all over the show floor at CES 2017. My eyes glaze over when I see the word “smart” or “Wi-Fi” or “app” on a standing banner.That’s why this little friend, a 4.3” LED portable television from RCA that doesn’t connect to the world wide web and has no apps, gets me excited for gadgets at CES. RCA pretty much just never stopped making these, so I guess that's why they have one ou

The section of the show floor at CES dedicated to drones continues to expand with each passing year. But this year definitely highlighted that many drones are now being used to signify “high tech” capabilities, when in fact they are just cheap toys at best, cynical marketing gimmicks at worst.You can velcro three rings of black cardboard to the top of a Parrot Bebop and call it a “Magic Air Cleaner,” but you’re not fooling anyone. Well, actually you are. The same go

Amazon Alexa everywhere, and that might be a problem.
At CES 2017, the voice assistant kept popping up in unusual places. At a booth for smart home integrator Legrand, there were outlets used for plugging in lamps and appliances that will work with Alexa (in addition to the lights and appliances themselves). At the Dish Network booth, a demo for Alexa let me quickly change channels by voice and find Tom Hanks movies. A watch called the Martian Mvoice lets you push a button to activate Alexa. The

GUEST: Digital music really could use some help. Industry revenues are dipping due to piracy and illegal use of content. Singers and composers are being short-changed by music companies and streaming services. And business models built upon patterns and practices dating back to early 20th century, decades before the invention of digital and online services, are fueling a lot of bad will.
But a number of blockchain innovators are forging new solutions that could knock down inefficient intermediar

The Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit against the Taiwan-based D-Link Corporation and its US subsidiary, D-Link Systems, Inc., for not taking steps to secure their devices, which left them vulnerable to hackers.In the complaint, filed on Thursday, the FTC alleged that the company “failed to take reasonable steps to protect their routers and [Internet Protocol] cameras from widely known and reasonably foreseeable risks of unauthorized access.” D-Link also failed to test for

Hulu has released the first trailer for its upcoming show The Handmaid’s Tale.The tense teaser shows off Elizabeth Moss’s character Offred, a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. We also get glimpses of the times before the collapse of the United States into an oppressive theocratic regime that in which women are stripped of their rights.
The Handmaid’s Tale is adapted from the 1985 dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood. Atwood wrote the novel in response to rise of extreme-right r

Sitting in the passenger seat of Faraday Future’s mythical FF91, I found myself clinging to the red strap that doubled as the door handle to keep from flying out the window. The car kicked up dust as it rail-gunned down the length of the giant tent where FF set up shop during CES in Las Vegas. As the electrically powered propulsion pushed me back into the bucket seat, I couldn’t help but let out an involuntary squeal as my brain tried and failed to process the speed. Holy shit, was t

Gary Shapiro is the voice of the tech industry. The president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association is the leader of the trade group that puts on CES, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas this week. I spoke with him about his agenda for the incoming Donald Trump presidency, and Shapiro explained that he’s approaching the policy discussion as an opportunity for innovative thinking.
CES has an estimated 165,000 attendees this week, looking at 3,800 exhibitors spread across 2.6 milli

Thursday afternoon, something very unusual happened to superbigcocks.com. That site and 255 others — many of them porn sites — suddenly began dropping off the web. The servers showed no problems, but users from Russia to Hong Kong were typing the URLs into their browsers and getting blank pages. Something on the internet was getting in the way.
That obstacle, as it turns out, was the state telecom of Iran. The country has long maintained an extensive-but-scattershot web censorship sy

Can’t get enough of Netflix’s Stranger Things or Narcos? The streaming video company has created a side-scrolling, endless running game based on a handful of their original shows. It’s the perfect way to waste a couple of minutes while you wait for the next episode to load.
tap the spacebar twice, and you jump twice as high
The game is incredibly simple: select which character you want to play, then hit the spacebar to jump over obstacles as you run through each character&rsquo

Uber Developer Experience Lead Chris Messina announced Friday that he has left the ride-sharing company.
Messina is known as the creator of the hashtag, and for accurately declaring 2016 the year of conversational commerce.
While at Uber, Messina was a champion of chatbots and the Uber developer platform to promote Uber API integrations.
He also spoke at tech gatherings like MobileBeat, IBM Watson developer conference, or recently at the Slush conference for startups in northern E

The only problem with studios releasing so many interesting movies during the holidays is that you really don't have time to see them all. I have a whole list to catch up on, and I got started last week with 20th Century Women, which was really great.
What I love most about the film is how honest and messy it is. It has so many stories to tell, nothing wraps up neatly, and even the characters who try their very best still end up doing sloppy things.
The thing that really boggles my mind about th

GUEST: I don’t know about you, but if I’m driving through downtown Detroit in the dead of winter, I might want to feel like I’m driving through the Florida Keys instead.
Soon, that may just be possible.
Swiss-headquartered WayRay, which makes holographic augmented reality displays for cars, announced a strategic collaboration with Harman, the car audio giant that is about to be acquired by Samsung. The technology, which I demoed at WayRay’s space in Harman’s massive

Hulu is giving closed-door demonstrations of its upcoming internet TV service here at CES in Las Vegas. The fact that Hulu plans to challenge Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, and DirecTV Now isn’t new; the company has been trickling out details — network agreements, mainly — over the last few months. This week Hulu revealed that its service will be priced at under $40 monthly. For reference, Sling starts at $20-per-month, Vue at $30 (or $40 in markets with live network programming),

c. 1915Image: Library of CongressThrough the late 1800s, magic shows occupied American stages alongside traveling circuses and vaudeville acts. Near the turn of the 20th century, however, magicians began to occupy an elevated theatrical status, commanding their own one-man shows in prestigious theaters across the United States.Historically, magicians were often practicing spiritualists and considered tricksters or con men, even occultists. The new practitioners were skilled entertainers and illu

For at least the second year in a row, CES was quiet. Much like 2016's show, this year's consumer electronics spectacle lacked blockbuster products, brands behaving badly, or unpredictable trends. Technology, whether it's our phones, TVs, or computers, is in its adult period, where changes happen slowly and iteratively.
But there was still movement at CES this year. Self-driving technology took a couple more baby steps forward, while the smart home continued to expand and develop. Even the age-o

LONDON — Online dating is a dog-eat-dog world. And, when the competition is this tough, the strength of your profile photo is more important than ever before. 
Your mirror selfies and those shots of you and your mates on holiday aren't gonna do you any favours in finding a match. That said, it's not all that easy selecting an alluring photo that shows off your personality and good looks. 
SEE ALSO: We asked total strangers to tell us what to wear on a Tinder date
Do you show off

Microsoft today said that its has added support for 13 more services in its Microsoft Flow service, which lets people use templates that automate processes across multiple apps, as well as building custom “flows.”
Flow now offers support for integrations with Salesforce’s Chatter service, the Disqus commenting system, the FreshDesk customer support tool, the Google Contacts contact management app, Citrix’s GoToMeeting video conferencing service, Atlassian’s HipChat

(Reuters) – A declassified report by U.S. intelligence agencies said Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an effort to help Donald Trump’s electoral chances by discrediting Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign.
The following quotes are some highlights of the report, which was drafted by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency, and released on Friday:
– “Russian efforts to influence the

A police captain made some eyebrow-raising remarks about an increase in sexual assaults in a New York City neighborhood, according to an article published Friday.
His comments were so off-base, and they whipped up a storm of controversy so large, that the mayor's office had to respond. So did the New York Police Department. 
In comments reported by local news website DNAinfo New York, NYPD's 94th precinct Capt. Peter Rose distinguished between "stranger rape" and "acquaintance rape," lumpin

For a moment, the Raiders had it all.
Their best record in 16 years, a ticket to the postseason, a homegrown quarterback having an MVP-calibre season. Oakland's 2016 season was surreal for a franchise that had only seen one Super Bowl in the past three decades.
SEE ALSO: Odell Beckham Jr. posed as a Lyft driver and it took passengers forever to notice
In theory, Saturday's wild card playoff game against Texas should be cause for celebration, seeing as Oakland hadn't seen the postseason since 200

Apple and Google have agreed to remove LinkedIn from iOS and Android app stores in Russia, according to a new report from The New York Times. In November, the service was ruled to be in violation of a 2014 law requiring all data collected on Russian citizens to be stored within Russian borders. Moving data within Russian borders has been widely viewed as a first step towards more aggressive surveillance measures, and many web companies have declined to relocate their data centers to comply with

Apple computer users should be extra diligent when surfing the web.
For the past few weeks, people have been tricked into visiting a phony website embedded with malware that can freeze Apple computers, according to a report this week by the cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes.
When Apple users visit the website via their Safari browser, often by clicking on a link in a bogus email, they inadvertently load malicious code onto their computers. The malware then triggers either two sets of actions depen

LAS VEGAS — Sometimes, you just need a damn hug. 
Human interaction and affection is important, but when you're physically away from your loved one, it's impossible to receive the admiration and love you may desperately need. But thanks to this cute and cuddly stuffed animal called the Parihug, you'll be able to send a hug to a friend anywhere in the world.
SEE ALSO: Vinci smart headphones have a friggin' screen on them
The connected plushes, which are actually a made-up animal optimi

CES is as much about the future as it about the junk that gets left behind. Here in the cavernous halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center and the suites of the city's most opulent hotels and casinos, we see a lot of gadgets that spring up out of nowhere as fast as they fade into obscurity.
As part of a promotional campaign for his American Greetings brand of greeting cards, Parks and Recreations star Nick Offerman came to Vegas to opine about the pitfalls of modern technology. As part of the ca

Two Google Home devices are deep in conversation. And thousands are watching the robots attempt to mimic human interaction.
The bots' ongoing chat, which has ranged from the meaning of life, religion, love, ninjas and Chuck Norris, is streaming on Twitch. The video has had nearly 780,000 views as of Friday afternoon since it started streaming a few days ago.
The bots have been aptly named Vladimir and Estragon, perfect for their endless chatter reminiscent of the two perpetually waiting characte

Ever wish a wearable could tell you when you might have had too much? The ability to see just how drunk you are in any given situation could certainly come in handy when it’s time to decide on if you’ll be having ‘just one more.’ What is it? BACtrack Skyn is a wearable that can act on its own, or with an Apple Watch integration. While wearing Skyn, the system passively tracks your alcohol consumption and provides a remarkably accurate estimate (in near real-time) of just

No disrespect to the Steph Curry signature sneaker that melted the internet last June, but Nike's Air Monarch IV has always been the most dad-ass dad shoe. 
Now — thanks to Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, who leads Seattle into the NFL Playoffs this weekend — the Air Monarch just became even more dad. And the haters said it couldn't be done! 
SEE ALSO: Record-setting 105-year-old French cyclist is your new inspirational sports hero
Before we plunge forth, let's briefly recap t

Earlier today, two Google Home devices fell in love, argued, made up, and bickered just like an old married couple. It was captured live on Twitch, amassing a whopping 1.1 million visitors as we went to press.
The idea to create an endless, ongoing conversation between the two devices came from AceHax, who works in the home automation business. He grabbed BC_White, FreshGrill, Titokane, and Ace0diamond to make the magic happen.
The twittersphere caught wind of this, creating a custom hashta

LAS VEGAS — CES is more than just a showcase of what the latest technology has to offer — it's a cage match of competing tech trends. The gadgets and technologies we'll be using tomorrow battle it out for our money and attention, and when the dust clears some inevitably come out on top.
This year's CES had a lot to say about smart homes, self-driving cars, laptops and more. There's a lot to be excited about in all those categories, but sometimes such rapid progress can leave some peo