Technology news

Before every episode of The Vergecast I sit down, read through a bunch of news, and take a bunch of notes. It’s one of the most enjoyable parts of my week, and I started thinking it might be fun to do every day on the site. So, every day this week I’m sitting down and writing some notes on the news as though I’ll be talking about it later. Are you into this? Am I into this? I don’t know. But it’s fun to do! Give me some feedback and we’ll keep mutating this in

Director Taika Waititi has promised a bright and “out there” take on the Thor mythology with his next feature, Thor: Ragnarok. Thanks to Entertainment Weekly, we have our first look at the actors in their roles. Waititi appears to be delivering on his promise. The film already looks like an homage to the weird worlds of Buckaroo Banzai, Flash Gordon, and other classic examples of ‘80s sci-fi.
Waititi has said Ragnarok will strike a more comedic tone than previous entries in the

Soylent, the food replacement substance that shares a name with a 1973 movie about cannibalism, will now be advertised by a fictional AI spokeswoman who also runs a store on the dark web. Trish, as the void-faced silver box is known, is “a nutrition-obsessed artificially intelligent spokesperson” who will “educate people on how to use a range of products” and “help make food decisions easier and stress-free.” She’s the joint product of Soylent and advert

If you’re a parent who wants to show your kids the same classic cartoons that aired when you were a kid — or, at this point, as reruns when you were a kid — here’s some helpful news: Time Warner is launching a streaming service filled with classic Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera, and MGM animation.
The library will include Bugs Bunny, Scooby-Doo, Tom & Jerry, The Jetsons, and The Flintstones, among others, with about 5,000 “titles” in total. It’ll also a

Senators got a chance to publicly grill Ajit Pai this morning for the first time since he was named FCC chairman, during an oversight hearing with the Senate Commerce Committee.
The hearing was a strangely quiet affair given how much is at stake inside the FCC. Senators only occasionally brought up net neutrality or plans to spike internet privacy protections, instead focusing largely on the commission's more bipartisan and banal duties, like figuring out spectrum sharing and ways to deploy broa

Islands in the Pacific Ocean are some of the most practical places to install solar panels. Since there’s no natural gas pipeline or rail line to haul in coal, islands like Kauai in Hawaii have traditionally generated electricity by shipping in many barrels of diesel fuel.
These days, because so many residences and businesses have installed solar power, there’s a greatly reduced need to burn fossil during the day — but at night, the generators kick in. Tesla wants to change all

Sony today announced a major PS4 system software update. The update brings several features to make life easier for all PS4 console owners. The most useful change in Update 4.50 is the introduction of Boost Mode. This setting for PS4 Pro owners will makes it easier to play legacy titles which haven’t been patched for the Pro. Players who opt-in get a framerate boost and (potentially) shorter load times. It might not work for all titles, Sony warns. If you have a PS VR set, you’re in

Pinterest said today that it has acquired Jelly, a bad 4-year-old search engine, for an undisclosed sum. Jelly, which was created by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, tried to reimagine search as a social question-and-answer network. Instead of relying on Google for hard-to-answer questions like “what are some child-friendly places to go in Fresno this weekend,” Jelly would attempt to route your questions to people who might know. After several minutes, it would then give you an answer t

Action scenes can be difficult for filmmakers. They’re technically challenging to film, and directors have to balance action against story. Too much violence can distract from what the characters are trying to accomplish, or just desensitize viewers to the stakes of the film completely. In a new essay, video blogger Evan Puschak (aka Nerdwriter) explains the show-stopping final battle in The Two Towers succeeds because of how it was structured.
The Two Towers is a tricky film. Director Pet

Living in Colorado, I know a lot about driving in the snow. I have Nokian Hakkapeliitta studded winter tires for both my cars, and they allow my front-wheel drive vehicles to competently handle winter weather. Install high-quality winter tires on a car and it’s astonishing how well they can perform. Christian Koenigsegg, founder of Swedish supercar maker Koenigsegg, agrees.“Our owners drove [their] cars over the Alps in terrible weather to get here,” Koenigsegg said to the Top

Fei-Fei Li, chief scientist of artificial intelligence and machine learning at Google Cloud, came on stage at Google’s Next Cloud conference today to talk about the current and next-generation applications of AI that Google’s working on. These technologies will make a difference in self-driving cars and healthcare, sure, but also Snapchat’s filters and Google Photos’ search capabilities. But the big highlight came when she announced a new way to allow software to parse vi

Bungie detailed its plans for the next (and last) major Destiny event, called Age of Triumph. As the final event in the original Destiny before Destiny 2 — expected later this year — Age of Triumph focuses on celebrating players’ achievements and features the return of the original raids: Vault of Glass, Crota's End, and King’s Fall.
The return of the old raids have been a frequent request of the Destiny community, and Bungie is finally delivering by bringing them up to t

Facebook is today launching its first dedicated app for watching 360-degree videos, Facebook 360. It’s currently only available on the Samsung Gear VR, but it’s likely just the first of such apps to come. To be clear, the app doesn’t let you browse your News Feed or do other regular Facebook activities; the emphasis is solely on video. Still, with “more than 25 million 360 photos” and “more than 1 million 360 videos,” you should have plenty to do. It&rs

Facebook today announced a new server design it calls Big Basin, a successor to its Big Sur line of artificial intelligence training systems. These Nvidia-powered GPU servers, tied together into large training networks for AI software, are what enable Facebook products to perform object and facial recognition and real-time text translation, as well as describe and understand the contents of photos and videos.Big Basin can now train on learning models 30 percent larger than its predecessor, Faceb

Didi Chuxing, the ride-hail app that bought Uber’s Chinese business last summer after a lengthy and expensive battle, is now opening an R&D center in Uber’s backyard. Didi Labs will be based in Mountain View, California and will be focused on hiring (and probably poaching) top engineering talent to work on artificial intelligence and self-driving car technology.
The Beijing-based company doesn’t have any plans to launch a rival service in the US, but the opening of a Silico

Vimeo is now rolling out support for 360-degree video. Given YouTube and Facebook, and even Twitter have done so for a while now, it’s about time Vimeo caught up. Videos can be watched on the web, as well as the Vimeo app on your smartphone, Samsung GearVR, Zeiss VR One, and Google Daydream. Oculus Rift and HTC Vive support are on the way. As with other video platforms, you can move your phone around to look through the 360 video, or click and drag your mouse on a computer, but

How much can you learn from Neanderthal plaque? A lot, scientists have discovered: DNA from the plaque provides an amazingly detailed view into the life of our extinct human relatives, including what they ate, how they took medicinal plants to combat disease, and what their mouth bacteria was like. The discovery gives scientists a window into the precious microbial world inside our closest relatives; this information could be used to better understand how bacteria that live inside our own bodies

Facebook is launching its own 360-degree video app on the Samsung Gear VR — the first officially Facebook-branded VR social app released. The app isn’t a full version of the social network. It will show 360-degree photos and videos from your feed and timeline, as well as a more general feed of media companies and selected individuals, and anything you’ve saved from the News Feed on desktop or mobile. You’ll be able to post reactions to videos and share the videos themselv

When Senator Elizabeth Warren protested attorney general Jeff Sessions’ nomination and was silenced, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell brushed off complaints with a terse but strangely literary explanation: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” And thus a feminist slogan was born.
These three sentences are at the heart of every story in “Nevertheless, She Persisted,” a free flash fiction anthology from 11 female science fi

Switch controllers now work with the oldest Nintendo consoles, proving they do make them like they used to. Enterprising company 8bitdo released a firmware update for its Retro Receivers today that adds Switch controller compatibility. Currently the company sells Bluetooth Retro Receivers for the NES, the SNES, and the NES Classic, all of which use the same firmware. You can now use Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons and Pro controller with your NES Classic. FW update at https://t.co/YRrVcZKTpF. pic.twit

In honor of International Women’s Day, Snapchat has unveiled three well-intentioned filter options honoring famous women: Frida Kahlo, Rosa Parks, and Marie Curie. It’s nice, silly, fun; a good way to kill 10 seconds and say “happy International Women’s Day!” to someone in your contact list. For whatever reason though, Snapchat has decided to add smoky eye makeup and full eyeliner to the Marie Curie filter.Presumably, Snapchat is not trying to say that looking hot i

If you’re interested in creative code, the crypto world can be a real buzzkill.Figured out a new way to exchange keys? Sorry, you’re better off using this protocol from the 70s. At least we know it works! Got a cool idea for a random number generator? Doesn’t matter; you’re not supposed to roll your own. Every new idea is a new chance to screw things up, and nobody will ever trust that you’ve gotten it right. Even if you do everything perfectly, someone will still a

It took 26 years for me to begin feeling comfortable in my own skin. Then the phone rang, and I learned that I had cancer for the second time.
When I was 13 years old, I was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that afflicts roughly 1 percent of pancreatic cancer patients. My doctor said if we removed the tumor that had attached to the tail of my pancreas and part of the spleen, I should be cured of whatever caused the pain in my abdomen every time I ate. As a kid, the whole situation came off a

You can now use the Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Con controller with an NES Classic Edition — and all you need is a tiny, inexpensive adaptor. Today 8bitdo, the company behind the “retro receiver” line of wireless adaptors for retro gaming consoles, announced a firmware update for the NES Classic version of the adaptor, which adds support for Switch controllers. That means you’ll be able to play any of the 30 games on the NES Classic using a Joy-Con controller or a Switch

Confide recently made headlines when reports suggested government officials might be using the end-to-end encrypted messenger to leak confidential information straight from the White House. But now it turns out the app might not be as secure as they think. Security researchers from Seattle-based cybersecurity firm IOActive have discovered numerous critical flaws in Confide following its very first security audit earlier in February, CyberScoop reports. While the Confide team tout

I was on my way to photograph the new Lamborghini Huracán Performante when I had to stop, set aside the Lambo plans for a moment, and just feast my eyes on the Renault Trezor concept car. It’s impossible to walk by it without being wowed and impressed by its design, which is equal parts Tim Burton-era Batmobile and 1940s touring car. The Trezor is long and low to the ground, and access to it happens by opening up the whole car — both driver and passenger have to hop in, since

In the days following Susan Fowler’s blog post about Uber, the internet exploded with tweets and blog posts from other women in tech. Some shared their personal observations directly with me as well. There was, appropriately, a fair amount of indignation; the claims Fowler made, and the subsequent stories that emerged about corporate culture at Uber, are so egregious that it’s hard to believe it was all kept under wraps for this long.
But there’s another sentiment being express

Last month I saw Gloria Steinem and Octavia Spencer speak on a panel about the film Hidden Figures at the Makers Conference. An audience member posited the question, “How do we find the other hidden figures in history?”
“We have to be tenacious,” Spencer responded. “If you don’t know the story, how can you seek it out? First we have to ask questions and we have to acknowledge every person on a team. Women couldn’t put their name on reports and men took t

The climb to the top can be tough going for anyone. But as women, there are particular hurdles that can make the journey upward toward positions of power and influence especially challenging. Did you know that despite all the efforts, the gender gap in tech is actually getting worse? In 1984, 37 percent of computer science graduates were women. Today, that number is just 18 percent. Data from the Census Bureau show a similar decline in the workplace.How the hell did that happen? Whether we&rsqu

While esports has been growing slowly but surely over the past two decades and embodying the trappings of other popular physical sports, it’s still not great at tackling the issue of gender diversity. Across most competitive games in the esports domain, male players and teams tend to dominate. For example, at the recent Intel Extreme Masters tournament in Katowice, Poland, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive champions Astralis took home a $250,000 prize; on the other hand, the women’s

In celebration of International Women’s Day, Porhub has put together an intriguing report revealing the many various ways in which women consume porn differently than men – and you might be surprised by some of the findings. As the adult content titan shared in its annual review earlier this year, female visitors account for a little over a quarter of the entire traffic coming to the website – enough to cause some serious drops in traffic when women have more importa

Today, Google announced its first audio podcast for Play Music and iTunes, called City Soundtracks. The show, which is hosted by West Wing Weekly’s own Hrishikesh Hirway, is a conversation between musical artists that explores the places, songs, and moments that influenced their lives, and their work. You can see a trailer for the series below. So far, Google has produced three episodes. One focuses on Kehlani, a recording artist whose R&B tinged music earned her a Grammy nominat

International Women’s Day isn’t being celebrated loudly (or at all) here at the Geneva Motor Show, but just as I was despairing at the old-fashioned use of attractive young women in short skirts as car decorations, I stumbled upon a ray of gender-balanced sunshine. Liberty Walk, a Japanese company that mods supercars to give them extra performance and even sharper looks, has come to Geneva with a pair of booth models to attract the attention of passers-by: one man and one woman. Both

Nest may finally have some new products in the works. According to a report from Bloomberg, the Alphabet-owned company is working on a slate of new connected products, including a home security system, a smart doorbell, an updated version of the indoor Nest Cam, and a cheaper version of its popular smart thermostat.The most interesting of these is the home security system, which Nest has actually been rumored to be working on since last May. According to Bloomberg, the system could consist of a

Women’s contribution to history often gets overlooked in textbooks. Unless you took some women’s studies classes in college, you might think the whole world was built by men. That’s obviously not true. There have been many talented female scientists, engineers, and innovators who changed the world for the better. But because men dominated for an awfully long time, they got to shape and write history. That’s gradually beginning to change.
If you want to read about some pre