Technology news

GUEST: If you’re a founder, early employee, or investor of a growing SaaS startup, chances are that the word “Exit” has crossed your mind. Generally, you have two options: get acquired or go public. While the former has long been a viable option, the public market for SaaS businesses is relatively new. Salesforce.com was the first of its ilk to go public (in June 2004); the stock priced 30 percent above the initial filing range and ended its first day of trading up 56 percent.

The NES Classic is officially discontinued, and Nintendo has said that the final shipments of the mini-console are reaching stores this month. But April is nearing its end, and thus so are your chances of getting the Classic — even if there’s no good reason for this thing to be going away in the first place. Best Buy has announced that the NES Classic Edition will be available at its stores (not online) at start of business tomorrow. Some locations will be doing a ticketing process b

The NES Classic is officially discontinued, and Nintendo has said that the final shipments of the mini-console are reaching stores this month. But April is nearing its end, and thus so are your chances of getting the Classic — even if there’s no good reason for this thing to be going away in the first place. Best Buy has announced that the NES Classic Edition will be available at its stores (not online) at start of business tomorrow. Some locations will be doing a ticketing process b

(Reuters) – Netmarble Games, South Korea’s largest mobile games maker, has raised $2.3 billion in the country’s second-biggest share sale, just weeks after one of its domestic-only titles sold so well it was named the world’s best-selling mobile game.
The firm priced its initial public offering (IPO) at the top of an indicative range as largely expected, analysts said, due to its ability to consistently publish hit games in the highly competitive mobile sector.
Most recen

Even as Benjamin Costantini was helping organize the 2014 edition of the LeWeb conference in Paris, he had a hunch this was going to be the last edition of what had been one of Europe’s largest and most important tech events for more than a decade. Conferences tend to have a natural lifespan, and LeWeb had run its course.
Despite LeWeb’s demise, Costantini’s inbox was crammed full of invitations to tech conferences sprouting up across Europe. The startup scene was sur

Earlier this week, I left work a bit early, caught a bus, and headed to the grocery store to grab some diapers and milk. It was typical, mundane evening, something I’d experienced many times before. But it didn’t feel that mundane — my normal life seemed a lot more stylish while listening to the Persona 5 soundtrack.
Persona 5 is a sprawling, all-consuming role-playing game that has a particular and distinct focus on the day-to-day moments of young adult life. The game itself i

Nvidia is on a quest to find the best “social impact” artificial intelligence startups as part a program called Nvidia Inception, which is screening more than 600 entrants to cull the best AI startups in three big categories.
We wrote about the first four candidates for the hottest emerging startup on Friday and the five most-disruptive startups on Sunday morning. And now we’re focusing on the next five candidates in a category dubbed the “potential for soc

A few months back, Elago released its W3 Apple Watch stand, which took advantage of the wearable’s Nightstand mode to serve as a clever bedside stand to charge your watch while simultaneously making it look like the world’s most adorable original Macintosh. Now, the company is hoping to strike Lightning twice with a similarly retro styled iPhone stand, the M4. But somehow, it feels like the M4 fails at everything that made the original W3 great.First off is design — while both

GUEST: We can get rid of bad bosses once and for all. At least that’s the promise of a radically new type of organization based on blockchain technology.
It’s called a Decentralized Autonomous Organization and it has no CEO, CFO, or VPs.
In fact, there’s no hierarchy at all. Of course, any time you bring people together in a group, there are bound to be politics, but it won’t be the “command and control” structure that most of us are used to.
Admittedly, the c

Modern political dramas tend to be stressful. Consider how even the most bureaucratic scenes in House of Cards or Game of Thrones are emotionally taut — simply because their writers have establish that any character can be bludgeoned to death at a moment's notice. The model builds tension around the threat of violence or chaos. ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Department is the opposite. The political drama is less interested in tension than it is in food.
The show, available now on CrunchyRo

Apple CEO Tim Cook threatened to have Uber’s iPhone app removed from the App Store in 2015, when it learned that the ride-sharing company had secretly found a way to identify individual iPhones, even once the app was deleted from the phone, according to The New York Times.
The article is a wide-ranging profile of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, describing him as a leader who is willing to break and bend rules to get his way, even if it means running afoul of one of the world’s largest tech

Nvidia is on a quest to find the most disruptive artificial intelligence startups. This quest is part of a larger contest dubbed Nvidia Inception, which is screening more than 600 entrants to cull the best AI startups in three big categories.
We wrote about the first four candidates for the hottest emerging startup on Friday. And now we’re focusing on the next five candidates in the category dubbed the “most disruptive” startups.
Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia, hosted a Sha

Today is World Book Day, an annual observance designated by UNESCO to celebrate all things reading, from books themselves, to authors, illustrators, and bookstores. To mark the occasion, we wanted to see what the larger group of Verge staffers have on their night stands, in their bags, on their Kindles or phones, and on their “currently reading” list.Here’s what we’re currently reading:Tasha Robinson: I used to be one of those people who read one book at a time, period, o

OPINION: I’m standing on a beach at sunset, drawing a sword much in the same way I would with Google’s Tilt Brush. To the side of me, UploadVR’s David Jagneaux is writing his name in the air, talking to colleague Ian Hamilton, who is phoning in from outside of VR with the Facebook Messenger app. Meanwhile, I’m talking to my girlfriend, who’s in the same room as me but also looking into VR through her smartphone screen. I take a selfie of the scene with one hand as I

The car industry is in a delirious moment of change. Industry experts say more changes will happened in the next five years than have happened in the last fifty. As self-driving technology and ride-hailing companies circle, change is not only part of the pursuit of profit, but a matter of survival. But knowing when and how to double down on investment into new strategy is a tricky game. Despite the growing numbers of car companies manufacturing electric vehicles, consumers are still not lining u

In recent years, the reputation of horror author H.P. Lovecraft has come under fire. On one hand, he’s responsible for an entire branch of cosmic horror that remains extraordinarily influential with writers and filmmakers today. On the other hand, he was emphatically, vocally racist and anti-Semitic, which has given some contemporary fans pause when honoring his legacy. Ruthanna Emrys found a different way to draw on Lovecraft’s legacy: in her debut novel, Winter Tide, she makes huma

Scientists aren’t usually known for taking to the streets, but that’s just what they did in New York yesterday as part of the March for Science. It was one of more than 600 rallies yesterday for scientists and their supporters.Donald Trump has threatened many federal agencies that fund scientific research with budget cuts; more than 10 percent of the science budget is scheduled to be slashed in 2018. (The EPA is slated to lose nearly a third of its funding under the proposal.) His ca

GUEST: Despite Facebook’s blockbuster $3 billion Oculus acquisition in 2014, augmented and virtual reality has been too early stage for large scale mergers and acquisitions (M&A) so far. But that’s set to change in the next year to 18 months, so let’s look at what could drive M&A deals going forward.
Where Digi-Capital’s Augmented/Virtual Reality Report Q1 2017 and deals database tracked $1.5 billion investments in the last 12 months to Q1 2017, there was only $60

Birds look mean, you can’t pet them, and they shit on you. Maybe I loathe them because I’ve lived in cities my whole life, and my few interactions with birds consist of the following:
pigeons (aka rats with wings) clogging the pavement and flying in your face
seagulls pooping on my head (seagulls take massive dumps, in case you didn’t know)
cute birds that chirp too damn loud in the morning when I’m trying to sleep
I also find birds scary. There’s something ominous

Great Britain has gone an entire day without using electricity produced from coal for the first time since the industrial revolution says National Grid, the country’s energy utility.
The country has gone without coal-produced power numerous times before, but never for an entire day. Instead, the country used power produced from natural gas (50.3 percent), nuclear (21.2 percent), wind (12.2 percent), imports from other countries (8.3 percent), biomass (6.7 percent), and solar (3.6 percent)

GUEST: There’s been a lot of talk recently about Donald Trump’s lack of concern with artificial intelligence. Trump has ignored mentioning AI in any economic context, instead focusing on protecting American workers from foreign competition. Tactical decisions like this, in my opinion, could have far-reaching negative consequences for American innovation and the American economy in the long run. Here are a few reasons why Trump’s stance is troubling:
Self-driving cars: Trump get

Just inside the entrance to the Washington Monument, a handful of people hold black and white signs bearing the words ADA assistance. As one one man walks by, he briefly pauses to consider their message. “Americans with Disabilities Act, or Ada Lovelace?” he says. “She was a great mathematician.”It’s just shy of 9AM in Washington D.C., where thousands of scientists, researchers, academics, doctors, students, and concerned citizens are gathering on the damp grass sur

The 2017 Audi A4 Allroad talks to you. And it has something important to say.
During my recent test, the car sensed when my iPhone was still connected to the USB port. A voice reminded me to take my phone with me.
Admittedly, it’s a minor feature on a car that is equipped with multiple safety sensors, including one that adjusts your speed for the car in front of you and shows an alert if you get too close in traffic. Yet the surprise for me is that this is the first car I’ve tested t

GUEST: Facebook just moved even closer to the center of your digital ecosystem with the roll-out of a smarter, more connected version of its proprietary AI assistant, M.
Speaking at this week’s Facebook F8 conference, the company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, and head of Messenger, David Marcus, announced plans to turn Messenger into a sort of “social living room” — one where you can chat, make dinner reservations, hail a cab, order food, and share music direc