Technology news

Comcast has been told to stop marketing its Xfinity broadband service as the “fastest internet in America,” according to a recommendation issued today by the National Advertising Review Board (NARB). The decision came after Verizon last year raised questions about Comcast’s marketing, which specifically sought to undermine Verizon’s FiOS offering and cast Xfinity in a superior light.Comcast needs a new slogan
The National Advertising Division (NAD), NARB’s investiga

Tesla cars with second-generation Autopilot hardware should receive a big update “by next month,” according to a tweet from Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The update will apparently include features like autosteer at highway speeds, autopark, and automatic high beams and wipers.
@SundalJ Should all be uploaded by next month— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2017Back in October, Tesla rolled out a suite of more advanced sensor hardware in its cars — radar, cameras, and an onboard &

Otto, the self-driving truck company acquired by Uber in 2016, may be flouting California laws when testing its autonomous tractor trailers on public roads, according to a report in Car & Driver.Otto has been testing its self-driving trucks on the highways surrounding San Francisco “on a daily basis,” according to company documents detailing its testing operations and obtained by the magazine. The company details numerous “disengages,” or times when a human driver was

At a panel in New York, Netflix announced that Girlboss, its upcoming series about eBay retailer-turned-CEO Sophia Amoruso and her Nasty Gal clothing brand, would be available for streaming on April 21st. The series is set to star Britt Robertson (Tomorrowland) as a fictionalized version of Amoruso, and, according to the producers, will be a chance for Netflix viewers to embrace a flawed woman in all her complexity.
“It felt like every story was about a flawed man.”
The series adapts

Microsoft is planning to refresh its Windows 10 user interface in an update later this year, and the software maker has briefly started teasing what’s on the way. Windows Central reports that Microsoft provided a glimpse at what’s known internally as Project Neon during a Windows developer stream today. The brief glimpse looks a lot like the screenshots of the new Windows 10 design plans that we saw leak last month. While the screenshots show some fairly minor adjustments to the over

Today saw the official announcement of LG’s first Android Wear 2.0 watches, the LG Watch Sport and Style. But alongside those bigger announcements came the news that Verizon is releasing its own branded Android Wear device, called the Wear24.
Like LG’s newest watches, the Wear24 runs the newly released Android Wear 2.0 software. On the hardware side of things, it offers a 1.39-inch circular display at 480 x 480 resolution, with LTE, Wi-Fi, and NFC connectivity options, along with the

Netflix is adding a show based on the Castlevania series to its lineup this year. The news, reported by io9, amounts to a single line of confirmation in a Netflix press release: “Castlevania Season 1, Part 1 Coming to Netflix in 2017.”
There’s no word on whether that means a live-action adaption or an anime, though the guy behind the gritty Power Rangers reboot, Adi Shankar, has talked on Facebook and with Collider about working on a “super-violent Castlevania mini-series

DJI launched new accessories for the Mavic Pro today, one of which is a propeller guard. These aren’t the most exciting releases but they’re, as we would say at ol’ Circuit Breaker, “practical gadgets.” In addition to the propeller guard, which goes around the propellers, DJI is launching a propeller cage, which mounts on the Mavic Pro’s arms to completely wrap around the propellers. (It’s pictured above.)
DJI is also releasing a battery charging hub tha

According to several sources familiar with the change, the product teams working on YouTube Music and Google Play Music are being combined into a single unit. Nothing will change for users right now, and both apps will continue to exist independently for the moment. But the move is likely to pave the way for a single unified music app from Google.The business development teams behind these two apps actually combined last year. That made it simpler for Google to negotiate deals with labels and ar

If the partnership between Samsung’s Gear VR and Six Flags to bring you VR roller coasters last year was too much virtual and not enough reality, you’re in luck. The two are collaborating again on a new ride called The New Revolution Galactic Attack, an experience that now incorporates augmented reality for a mess of visual stimulation.
Just like the park’s previous VR roller coaster rides, attendees will again be given a Gear VR headset to wear for the duration. This time, rid

Every now and again, you’ll pick up a science fiction or fantasy novel that will absolutely blow you away because of how boldly it imagines an invented world. N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season did that for me. So did Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, and Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation. These books reassemble the well-worn conventions of their genre in wholly original ways. The latest example is Kameron Hurley’s The Stars Are Legion, a strange, brilliant story set in the

Best Buy and Oculus are closing Oculus Rift demo stations at around 200 of the 500 stores that have them, Business Insider reports. The pop-up installations, which let interested shoppers try out high-end virtual reality for free, reportedly went days without anyone requesting a demo, according to employees. They also said that some locations would sell only “a few headsets per week” during the holidays, and that interest declined precipitously thereafter.
In a statement, Oculus spok

General Motors is starting to feel more comfortable showing off its secretive self-driving technology. Last month, Cruise Automation, the 109-year-old carmaker’s autonomous driving subsidiary, released dash camera footage of a recent test of its self-driving car on the streets of San Francisco. Today, Cruise released another video that was very similar to the last except for one key addition: footage from inside the car.In the video, an all-electric, self-driving Chevy Bolt, code-named &ld

Mice fought off cancer — using bacteria, according to a new study published today in Science Translational Medicine. Basically, the bacteria narced on the cancer, giving the mice’s immune system the heads up to come fight it.The bacteria narced on the cancer
Scientists injected mice with a strain of engineered salmonella that infiltrated the tumors. The salmonella had been tweaked to release a protein named flagellin B, or FlaB, which is found in a deadly flesh-eating pathogen people

Radioactive glass left over from the first ever test of a nuclear bomb is providing scientists with clues about the formation of Earth’s Moon. This glassy bomb byproduct is revealing how certain materials may have evaporated from the Moon when it first took shape more than 4 billion years ago.
For decades now, the leading theory has been that our Moon formed when Earth was hit by a Mars-sized object dubbed Theia. This collision is thought to have been so strong and hot, that it caused cert

The next generation of cellular data networks has been colloquially referred to as “5G” for a while now, but 3GPP — the organization that governs cellular standards — has made that name official with an announcement of new formal 5G branding, as noted by TelecomTV.
The 5G branding is a step away from the more complicated 4G / LTE days, where carrier marketing and changing specifications oftentimes made it unclear what exactly you were talking about. For example, when AT&a

Windows 10 is getting one of the best features from Android and iOS: picture-in-picture support. Microsoft is introducing the new feature as part of the Creators Update, which is expected to be made available to existing PCs in April. Microsoft is calling its picture-in-picture feature “Compact Overlay,” and it will be available for all app developers creating Universal Windows apps. Built-in apps like Movies & TV or Skype will support picture-in-picture, allowing you to watch a

In the latest futuristic crime TV show from Fox, a multi-billionaire vows to change his city after a criminal attack and a devastating personal loss. He isn’t Batman, and he doesn’t dress up in a costume to fight criminals: he buys a police department and takes on street crime with an arsenal of high-tech gadgets. APB is a fun show, but it missed out being anything more than light escapism.The show is loosely based off of 2015 New York Times Magazine feature, Who Runs The Streets of

The first trailer for Netflix’s Dear White People, an expanded retelling of the celebrated 2014 film of the same name, has arrived. The trailer shows a diverse group of students at the fictional, largely white Winchester University fill and often rail against the roles they’re put in, paving the way to both comedy and conflict in their “post-racial” world.
During a panel held in New York City, series creator Justin Simien explained that, while making the original film was

The 21st century workplace is a marvel to behold. We’ve got snacks, bike rooms, recycling, Slack channels, shared Google Docs, unflattering overhead lights, and Wi-Fi. Technology makes it easy to collaborate with coworkers without having to actually speak to them, so imagine my shock when I head about the Luxafor, a light that’s designed to plug into your PC, or connect over Bluetooth, and then stick up from your desk to communicate to your colleagues whether you’re available t

Pinterest today introduced Lens, a new visual search tool that uses machine vision to detect objects in the real world and suggest related items on the service. Lens, which is now in beta, is a tool inside the Pinterest mobile app that functions as a kind of Shazam for objects. Point it at food, furniture, or even the night sky, and Pinterest will return objects that it believes are related.In a demonstration, Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp used Lens to detect a pomegranate. Pinterest returned

Smart bikes are popping up everywhere and are rapidly becoming what we here at The Verge refer to as “A Thing.” That includes bikes like the LeEco Le Syvrac, which runs Android and has a quad-core processor with 4GB of RAM, and Volata’s original bike, the Model 1, which launched last year starting at the hefty price of $3,499.If that cost was a little too much for you, Volata is back with a new, cheaper version, the Model 1c, which starts at $2,499, considerably less than the M

Android Wear 2.0 is available now — at least in the form of two new smartwatches from LG. But it’s also coming to a pretty big list of existing Android Wear watches — and future smartwatch releases (though fewer than you might think, since HTC and Motorola have officially bowed out of making them for the time being). If you have one of those watches, you’ll probably want this upgrade, which is slowly rolling out over the next few months. If you don’t have them &mdas

In the new trailer for indie game Old Man’s Journey, the elderly protagonist gingerly makes his way up a small hill, with a huge bag on his back and a tall walking stick at his side. Magically, a hill in the background lowers to his level — controlled by a player on the other side of the screen — allowing the man to make his way further into what appears to be a quaint and colorful Mediterranean village.
The teaser hints at a game that conceals its mysteries in richly drawn bac

LG’s new smartwatches are here and come complete with the much-awaited Android Wear 2.0. The LG Watch Style and LG Watch Sport both feature circular P-OLED displays, 4GB of storage, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivities, 1.1GHz Snapdragon Wear 2100, wireless charging and dust and water resistance. Spec-wise, that’s about all they share.
As you can probably tell by the name, the 1.38-inch screen LG Watch Sport is designed for fitness junkies, with a built-in gyroscope, accelerometer, bar

Are you wearing a smartwatch? Not likely. Despite the fact that modern wrist computers have been available for over three years, most people have not found them to be as desirable or necessary as the ubiquitous smartphone. They’ve gone from being "the next big thing" to becoming just another thing, and not a thing most people want.That, of course, hasn’t stopped companies from trying to sell them to you. If you are wearing a smartwatch, odds are it’s either an Apple Watch or a

More than 2 million US subscribers are now tuning in to HBO’s standalone streaming service, which launched in April 2015.Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes revealed the subscription growth during today’s conference call discussing the company’s latest earnings report, according to Variety. The pace of subscription growth has picked up slightly in the past year, since the cable-free service had only acquired “about 800,000” customers after its first 10 months on the market,

Fans of Netflix’s supernatural show The OA can breathe easy: the company announced today that it has renewed the show for a second season, according to Variety.The OA is about a woman named Prairie Johnson who returns to her family after vanishing for seven years. She comes back changed: she had been blind, but her sight has been restored, and she now calls herself The OA. Upon her return, she gathers a group of four teenagers and a high school teacher to talk about her experiences, then a

The Nintendo Switch launch game 1-2-Switch will support a lot of head-scratching, “I didn’t know I wanted this until now” mini-games. One Reddit user discovered a treasure trove of mini-game videos uploaded to Nintendo’s Japanese YouTube Channel that include intuitively titled games such as “Wizard,” “Milk,” and “Shaver.”
Lurking among these quirky, bite-sized games is a true horror show. Nintendo calls it “Baby.” I call it

Technology is often a double-edged sword. Take the smartphone, for example, which is both a powerful tool to communicate with anyone around the world, but oftentimes a social deterrent. Or Twitter, a revolutionary real-time social network that also is a hotbed of abuse and harassment.
Or the Biēm butter sprayer, which is at once many things both wonderful and terrifying. What is Biēm, you ask?
Biēm is a kitchen utensil that performs a strange alchemy on a stick of butter and turns

Marvel Studios and Warner Bros. are currently the Big Two producers of superhero television. If you’re watching network television, you’ll likely come across DC Comics series like Supergirl and the new Powerless. If you prefer to stream everything you watch, you’ve almost certainly seen Marvel series like Daredevil and Luke Cage. These are good and sometimes great efforts, and more series are already on the way in their respective camps. However, something has been missing: the

Yesterday, NASA’s Space Launch System — the giant, expensive rocket the space agency is building to take astronauts into deep space and onto Mars someday — got a crucial endorsement from an unlikely ally: the commercial space industry.Alan Stern, the chairman of the board of directors for the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), publicly announced the organization’s support for the rocket at a conference in DC. The CSF is an association representing more than 70 busin

Bill Nye’s new Netflix talk show, Bill Nye Saves the World, officially has a premiere date: April 21st. Nye made the announcement at an event in New York City today, suggesting that it’s only too fitting that it airs on the eve of Earth Day.
A “fact-based” talk show
The new series will feature celebrities like Donald Faison and Rachel Bloom tackling topics like sex, global warming, and alternative medicine. Nye told the audience, with a wry scoff, that it will take a &ldq

Prince’s music catalog, which has long been carefully quarantined from much of the internet, is going to hit several streaming services this weekend, according to a report from Financial Times. FT spoke to people familiar with the plan, who said the music would appear on services like Spotify, Apple Music, and others.
As FT points out, Warner Music owns the licensing rights to all of Prince’s recordings released before 1996 — the year Prince left the label and began releasing m

The Lego Batman Movie hits theaters this Friday, but Lego and Warner Animation Group are already hustling the next spinoff of The Lego Movie series. The first trailer for The Lego Ninjago Movie — also set for release this year — is now on YouTube.
The Lego Ninjago Movie focuses on the toy company’s Ninjago line of sets, and tells the story of Lloyd the Green Ninja (Dave Franco), who must team up with the other Ninjago ninjas led by Master Wu (Jackie Chan) to defeat the evil Gar

There’s one series of books that I’ve been reading recently that I can’t get enough of: Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence. Over five novels, he put a whole new spin on fantasy literature, creating a fantastic world where magic is treated more like law or economics than something mystical. The series recently transitioned over to Tor’s Tor.com imprint, and we have the cover and an excerpt from the next installment, titled The Ruin of Angels.Here’s the new cover, w