Technology news

Matthew Inman has a considerable audience with his webcomic The Oatmeal, and he’s put those masses to use with projects such as his Exploding Kittens card game, or to raise money for a museum dedicated to Nikola Tesla. This weekend, he launched a new campaign to help convince the National Parks service to consider a particular course of action for a grizzly bear reintroduction campaign in the North Cascades National Park.In a new comic, Inman noted that he partnered with a pair of nonprofi

As you may have heard, The Vergecast is live this week at South by Southwest! We have one episode down and another one to go on Tuesday.On this special episode, Nilay and Dieter welcome Lauren Goode and Casey Newton on to talk the news outside of SXSW; in the tech world.And the show wouldn’t be complete without the weekly gadget segment, so Paul — relaxing at home in New York — sent the gang a letter to keep the tradition alive.You can listen here, or watch the video on our Fac

This year at SXSW, Sony opened up what it calls the “Wow Factory” in a converted warehouse on Trinity Street in Austin, where members of its Future Lab program have set up some of the coolest and weirdest hardware concepts out there. The Future Lab program is a research and development initiative that urges Sony employees to think more about human interaction and creativity, and not just bigger screens and faster processors.Sony is using SXSW to demo wild prototype projector tech
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In moments of downtime or in anticipation of a big debut, the Verge Transportation Slack room transforms into a fan forum of sorts, where passionate Top Gear fans come to square off.With the 24th season of the show airing at 8pm ET on BBC America, the Verge staff answers the question: Is the new Top Gear worth watching?
Jordan: The Clarkson / Hammond / May Top Gear was a fun show with three having a good time, and the backdrop just happened to be about cars. This new one is close. Top Gear wasn'

Stacks of papers are a staple at any regular Dungeons & Dragons game, but Wizards of the Coast is finally offering a digital client to help gamers manage their characters. Today at PAX East, the company revealed a new “Digital Toolset” that works with Fifth Edition called D&D Beyond.Billed as a game management tool, D&D Beyond has an official rules compendium, a character builder and character sheet. From the looks of it, it’s designed to make it easier for players

Wearable technology once promised to take us away from our phones and to improve our lives in subtle but powerful ways. The reality, however, has been a bit less exciting. More often than not, devices have been hampered by clunky design and bad taste, resulting in products that are expensive, unnecessary, and ugly. Yet it’s these drawbacks that highlight just how interesting Levi’s new connected smart jacket is — and why it’s a bolder and perhaps more promising form of we

Time will tell if the remake of Stephen King’s IT will scare a new generation of horror fans. But already, its menacing star, the “clown” Pennywise, has successfully spooked one group: the movie’s cast.Director Andrés Muschietti brought a few clips of IT to SXSW 2017, as well as a few tidbits about what to expect. Early press images of Pennywise have already done the legwork of visually separating Bill Skarsgard’s version of the character from that of Tim Cur

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a movie from director Edgar Wright. He was supposed to helm Ant-Man in 2015, but after dropping out of that project, we knew he was working on a crime comedy known as Baby Driver. Four years later, a couple of trailers have now given us our first look at the film.Baby Driver follows a kid named Baby (Ansel Elgort) who works as a getaway driver for Doc (Kevin Spacey), a local crime boss, and his crew. We learn that Baby was in an car accident as a ki

I Know You From Somewhere, a comedic short film written and directed by Andrew Fitzgerald, is an authentic example of the internet’s worst tendencies. The trouble starts offline: A young woman named Katherene gets in a screaming match with a friend a cheating boyfriend. A stranger captures video of the dustup, including a moment in which Katherene accuses her friend of having a “black heart.” When the video is uploaded to YouTube, viewers mistake Katherene’s words for rac

Last year, Google opened a startup incubator called Area 120, which was designed to let employees us some of their discretionary time to start up their own companies. The incubator has just released Uptime, a group video messaging app that lets you watch and share videos with your friends.Say hello to #Uptime! Share and watch videos together. Download now from the App Store https://t.co/Bwo7e4xCgy.Use invite code: PIZZA pic.twitter.com/w9MzqwCibi— Uptime (@uptimeApp) March 11, 2017Right no

Chinese-backed car manufacturer NIO showcased its EP9 electric supercar last November in London, but this weekend at SXSW, the company unveiled its concept consumer autonomous vehicle, the NIO EVE.NIO used to be known as NextEV, and is backed by a number of Chinese venture capital firms, and has hired people from companies such as Tesla, Ford, and Lyft. Just a concept at this stage, the EVE is a look at what the company feels will be future of autonomous vehicles. Designed for regular commuting

When Neil Gaiman’s American Gods comes to television next month, it’s going to look a little different than fans of the book remember — and its creators hope they’ll take away a subtle political message alongside the myths and magic.
“Our first task of adapting is to make the show that we wanted to see as an audience member,” said Bryan Fuller, one of the showrunners. But “it’s definitely a different show than we set out to make, because the politi

I’ve seen quite a few amazing videos using light projection, but I’ve never seen someone combine light projection with gesture control and use a cloud of fine water droplets as a 3D, volumetric display. But that’s what designer Joanie Lemercier has done in his experimental video above.Speaking to The Verge, Lemercier says his combination of mist and light allows him to create “true volumetric projections” while adding gesture control lets someone transform the displ

I am not a rich person, nor do I hold rich people in particularly high regard. That said, I do occasionally enjoy examining and critiquing the things that rich people choose to buy. It helps put things in perspective, like giving the top 1 percent a $275 billion tax cut and calling it healthcare reform.Take the Bugatti Chiron, a $2.6 million masterpiece in design and luxury. Only in the world of the super rich would a supercar this fast and this beautiful be an inadequate means of transportation

Over the past year, a company named Retro Computers Limited promised to ship its Indiegogo backers a portable gaming device modeled off the original ZX Spectrum. Called the ZX Spectrum Vega Plus, it raised more than 367 percent of its initial goal, totaling £513,650, or $625,000. Now, Indiegogo is blocking the company from raising any additional money after it failed to ship their product to backers.
This story almost sounds run of the mill for crowdfunding. We all back and observe these c

While the throngs were attending the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, we had our own GamesBeat event nearby at a breakfast sponsored by Akamai.
We invited 25 CEOs and executives at virtual reality startups to discuss how to survive a possible drought of funding and slow consumer growth in VR. Our speakers were Greg Castle of Anorak Ventures and Tipatat Chennavasin of The Venture Reality Fund. Nelson Rodriguez of Akamai introduced us.
Castle was one of the early investors in Oculus VR

Euclidean Lands, which launches today on iOS, looks like what would happen if you crossed the beautiful, impossible architecture of Monument Valley with the turn-based action of Hitman Go… and then you set the game on a Rubik’s Cube. It’s a seemingly strange combination, but it works, offering an experience that’s somehow relaxing and challenging at the same time.
Euclidean Lands stars a tiny, spear-wielding warrior who’s plopped down in a colorful world made up of

GUEST: A major professional sports league will operate an esports league, a first for the esports industry, with the National Basketball Association and Take-Two Interactive Software’s early endeavor for gamers to compete while representing NBA teams. This partnership represents a watershed moment for the burgeoning esports industry with implications for both fans of long-established sports leagues and gamers around the world.
Why now for the NBA
Television viewership drives the majority o

 Jennifer Doudna, co-inventor of CRISPR Cas9 technology, or the ability to program genes using a special enzyme, spoke about the promises of this technology on stage at SXSW this afternoon. In a keynote today, Doudna noted that while this technology is very young (less than five years old), “it’s been deployed very rapidly for existing applications,” she said. For example,… Read More

GUEST: It’s a total understatement to say that the growing presence of machine learning in games is big news. The technology promises to turn the industry topsy-turvy by changing our perception of what’s possible in a gaming experience.
Game studios are ground zero.
They’re applying machine learning to first address long-standing challenges in game development and design, like accelerating the process of building out art and levels and balancing the backend infrastructure.
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A new trailer for DC’s Wonder Woman has hit the web, showing off Diana Prince’s training as an Amazon warrior on Themyscira.We’ve seen Diana taking part in the First World War in earlier glimpses of the film, but in this new trailer, her training and growing powers are front and center. We see her as a young girl learning about the world around her, discovering her powers when she’s older, and her journey to London to help save the world. Directed by Patty Jenkins, Wonder

The Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio is a unique sports sedan. While most of the exciting features are related to performance — 505 horsepower, 0-60 in 3.8 seconds, a top speed of 191 MPH — I’m more impressed by the tech features, which are normally found only in luxury cars like the BMW 7 or the Audi A8. They are preparing us for a day when cars are fully autonomous and connected to each other, yet still provide a manual hands-on-the-wheel driving experience when you want to get

For many years, the auto industry has hinted at a distant future in which cars would connect to each other in real time. If there’s an ambulance up ahead, the car could alert you and even start braking. If there’s a red light and you aren’t responding to it, the car might send a vibration through the steering column. As a journalist, I’ve been hearing about proprietary signals that use the 5.9 GHz spectrum for decades. The technology is called Dedicated Short-Ra

GUEST: Machine learning is a trending topic today and for good reason. It has enormous potential to transform entire markets and industries. But there’s also a lot of hype surrounding the technology. As an investor, I look for four key characteristics that I believe distinguish winners who are successfully leveraging machine learning:
1. Specific use cases in large markets. Successful machine-learning startups will be the ones targeting vertical applications with a clear need for the techn

GUEST: Amazon’s voice-controlled Echo Dot was a popular gift over the holidays. If you have one, you know it can make your life easier in any number of ways, letting you do everything from playing a song to turning off the kitchen lights using only your voice. While most people know that the Echo Dot does a nice job handling basic tasks, the device is capable of doing so much more.
I like learning new things. So, I set out to learn how I could use my Echo Dot to, well, keep learning. I fou