Technology news

Nintendo is releasing more details on the upcoming Nintendo Switch later this week, but the first piece of official news has already dropped. The New York-based Nintendo store Twitter account announced that a “limited quantity” of preorders for the new console will be available this Friday, January 13th at 9AM ET at the Nintendo World NY location.A limited quantity of pre-orders for the #NintendoSwitch will begin on 1/13 at 9AM while supplies last at #NintendoNYC.— Nintendo NY

Just a week and a half before he is set to leave office, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has issued a new report stating that the zero-rated video services offered by AT&T and Verizon may violate the FCC’s Open Internet Order.
Assembled by the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, the report focuses on sponsored data programs, which allow companies to pay carriers to exempt exempt their data from customers' data caps. The programs have always been controversial, but the issue has gr

The Brains vs. AI poker tournament being put on by Carnegie Mellon University kicked off today. It pits four humans pros against an AI trained to play Heads Up (1 vs. 1) No-Limit Texas Hold’em poker. The system runs on supercomputers, the humans on caffeine. No matter what, the human pros get to take home $200,000, divided up among the quartet based on their performance. But if the AI, named Liberatus, outplays them, it will earn a place in the history books.
You can watch the entire event

Yesterday, President-elect Donald Trump met with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a man who believes in the debunked and fraudulent theory that vaccines cause autism. Trump also reportedly asked Kennedy to head a new “commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity.” The purpose of this new commission isn’t exactly clear, but hours after the meeting a Trump spokeswoman said in a statement that the president-elect is “exploring the possibility of forming a commission on

A sewage treatment plant in Canada has figured out a way to reduce the levels of chemicals that stick around in the treated wastewater, according to a new study. These include chemicals that have caused fish to develop both male and female sex organs. Eliminating them from our water system is important because they are devastating fish populations, and they can end up back in our bodies, too.Intersex fish are on the rise because of hormones in the water system
Hormones from drugs like birth cont

JetBlue has completed its rollout of Fly-Fi, it’s free high-speed internet service, to its entire fleet of planes. The service, which launched in 2013, offers speeds between 12-15Mbps (although those speeds may dip if everyone is streaming Netflix), and is available at every seat, far exceeding the usual GoGo Inflight experience found on most airlines these days.Given that inflight Wi-Fi usually costs around $20 on most major airlines, JetBlue is stepping into unchartered territories. It r

What if Siri could edit your pictures for you? That's essentially the question Adobe Research hopes to answer with a digital assistant for editing photos, a new project that the software company unveiled yesterday.The video depicts a modified version of one of Adobe's photo apps that features a microphone button, which activates a digital assistant that interacts with the user and helps crop, reframe, and share the picture entirely though voice commands.The video is a proof of concept for the id

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the original iPhone introduction, and with it, a flood of stories about the design and development of the device. One video from Sonny Dickson, showing what looks like an iPod interface with a virtual click wheel, has attracted a ton of attention, since the longstanding story has been that two teams inside Apple competed to make the iPhone — one to turn the iPod into a phone, and the other to shrink OS X to work on a mobile device.
Not so, says Tony

The r/conspiracy subreddit is the birthing ground of such feats of imagination as “Hillary Clinton has financial ties to ISIS” and “the Ft. Lauderdale shooting was a failed MKUltra experiment,” as well as the adopted home of Pizzagate theorists after Reddit shut down r/pizzagate. There are friendly weirdos who just want to talk about Stanley Kubrick, but there are also more sinister paranoids who feel the need to investigate the “influence” Jewish people have

 When Google picked up Titan Aerospace in April 2014, the sky was, as they say, the limit. The high-flying drone producer seemingly had a lot to offer the tech giant, including the potential to expand Project Loon, its balloon-based plan to develop low-cost internet access to remote rural areas. The UAV maker, which was reportedly also being courted by Facebook around the same time, also had… Read More

 When Google picked up Titan Aerospace in April 2014, the sky was, as they say, the limit. The high-flying drone producer seemingly had a lot to offer the tech giant, including the potential to expand Project Loon, its balloon-based plan to develop low-cost internet access to remote rural areas. The UAV maker, which was reportedly also being courted by Facebook around the same time, also had… Read More

Scientists say they have figured out the most precise age for the Moon than ever before, thanks to samples of lunar rocks gathered during NASA’s Apollo 14 mission. Analysis of the rocks pinpoint the Moon’s creation to 4.51 billion years ago, just 60 million years after the Solar System first formed.This suggested age makes the Moon a lot older than some recent estimates, which claim our lunar neighbor is 4.3 or 4.4 billion years old. If the results are accurate, it means the giant im

Back in 2014 Google (now Alphabet) bought Titan Aerospace, a company specializing in solar-powered drones that could fly at high altitudes for long periods of time. The goal was to offer internet access to rural areas that lacked connectivity by beaming it down from on high. In that way it was similar to another moon shot, Project Loon, and to Facebook’s Aquila.Today, however, Alphabet confirmed to Business Insider that it was ending its exploration of solar-powered drones. The news, first

The US Department of Energy has released new rules to protect government scientists from political agendas, and not a moment too early given the troubling relationship President-elect Donald Trump has already developed with scientists.Outgoing energy secretary Ernest Moniz announced the rules on Wednesday while speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The policy could have widespread effects, as the Energy Department is a major funder of scientific research—notably, funding m

Steadicam's camera stabilizer is legendary in Hollywood, and now the famed video technology is making its way to an even more portable form factor: smartphones.
The Steadicam Volt Smartphone Stabilizer is a new Steadicam device from parent company Tiffen that's currently looking for funding on Kickstarter. It's a handheld device similar to DJI's Osmo stabilizing system, but unlike the purely motorized Oslo, the Volt uses Steadicam's traditional mechanical gimbal in combination with an electronic

For the first time in 167 days, President-elect Donald Trump held a press conference today. The session was, in part, an opportunity to discuss a damning, but unverified report detailed by CNN, then published in its entirety by BuzzFeed last night. The report, which sources believe came from a former British intelligence agent, claims Trump has been “supported” and “cultivated” by the Russian government for years.Because of this report, the highlight of today’s conf

Here at The Verge, we like to cover cars from a slightly different angle. Also at The Verge, we like to focus on the weird side of internet culture (and just culture) under the banner of TL;DR.Lucky for us, car shows, like any big press event, are inherently weird. And things are getting increasingly bizarre as the industry continues to push (or claim it’s pushing) toward an electric, autonomous, and ride-sharing future — things that were all on display at the 2017 Detroit Auto Show.

The European Commission has proposed new regulations that would curb the way companies track users on the internet. Part of that plan would be to remove website banners that provide disclaimers on cookie policies and have the user’s browser preferences automatically apply to each site they visit.
Cookies are small data files that a website saves to “remember” you. They can be used to preload websites for faster browsing, or save your sign-in information for services that requir

 JetBlue today announced that it has officially completed its fleet-wide rollout of Fly-Fi, bringing free wireless internet to all of its planes. The carrier first introduced to the service in late 2013, bringing speeds of around 12 to 15Mbps – far surprising the wireless offerings available on other domestic flights at the time. Along with installation on all of its planes, JetBlue has… Read More

Ahead of the release of the live-action Ghost in the Shell adaptation, the original 1995 classic will hit theaters and Blu-ray. The film will have a one-night-only screening on January 25th in the UK, and Funimation will screen both the subtitled and dubbed versions on the film and February 7th and 8th. On March 7th, Lionsgate will rerelease the movie on Blu-ray in a Deluxe Collector’s Edition set, complete with Mondo artwork and Steelbook packaging.
Limited screening events have become po

Last night, BuzzFeed published an unconfirmed intelligence report on President-elect Donald Trump’s ties with Russia, sending the political world into red alert. But as explosive as the Trump allegations were, there was one passage that was particularly interesting for cryptography buffs, concerning the popular Telegram chat app.
According to one of the report’s unidentified sources, the app may not be as secure as it seems:
An FSB [Russian secret service] cyber operative flagged up

There is nothing more frustrating than taking your car into the mechanic with only the vaguest sense that something is wrong. You know that odd little creak or strange whine is new, but you don’t have a clue what it’s trying to tell you. You would like to know before it becomes a serious problem, and an expert is going to charge you a bunch of money to find out.What if we could diagnose machines, and keep them healthy, just by listening to the noises they make. That’s the premi

 As consumers have shifted to the web to order and pay for services like broadband and insurance, price comparison sites have become one of the main ways that they search for the best deals to cover what they need. Today, one of the bigger companies in the space in Europe, CompareEuropeGroup, announced that it has raised €20 million ($21 million) to expand and move ahead of the pack.… Read More

 As consumers have shifted to the web to order and pay for services like broadband and insurance, price comparison sites have become one of the main ways that they search for the best deals to cover what they need. Today, one of the bigger companies in the space in Europe, CompareEuropeGroup, announced it has raised €20 million ($21 million) to expand and move ahead of the pack. The… Read More