Technology news

At Lucasfilm’s publishing panel at New York City Comic Con today, Timothy Zahn announced that he will be writing a sequel to this year’s Star Wars Rebels tie-in novel, Thrawn.Zahn didn’t reveal much about the book. It has a working title of Thrawn: Alliances, and it will feature another iconic Star Wars villain: Darth Vader. The book will presumably pick up with where Thrawn left off, with the character now a Grand Admiral, and his loyal assistant headed off into the depths of

The PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X are a headache waiting to happen for people who capture a lot of gameplay footage off of consoles. That’s because those systems support Ultra HD 4K resolution, and that can cause errors for most of the recording equipment on the market right now. But AverMedia has stepped up with a product that solves this problem whether you’re recording at home or at an event.
The AverMedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus is the latest revision of the company’s

GUEST: In a 2015 interview, Elon Musk pointed out that recent advances in auto technology could lead to human-operated vehicles becoming illegal someday. While this may seem ludicrous to some, it could play out sooner than you think. By 2025 — just a few short years away — the auto industry’s autonomous segment is projected to reach a worth of $26 billion, according to insights from Bain & Company. Some estimates even project as many as 10 million self-driving cars will be

It’s amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do. Razer’s Blade Stealth recently received a new gunmetal color option, and after spending some time with the laptop, it makes all the difference to change the look from “classy gamer” to plain old “classy.” It’s been a long time coming. Razer was the first major company to show that gaming laptops didn’t have to be giant, heavy slabs of RGB gaudiness when it first introduced the Blade series. Over the

Tesla admittedly went into fall with a lot on the to-do list, but CEO Elon Musk, who also runs SpaceX and SolarCity, may be rearranging plans in order to keep everything in order. Musk tweeted Friday the Tesla Semi truck unveiling, once planned for October 26th, would now take place November 16th.The Semi timing was shuffled, Musk said, in part to get production of the Tesla Model 3 back on schedule. Last week, the company admitted “production bottlenecks” meant only 260 Model 3s had

When I moved to England at eight, I had no trouble learning fluent English. Turns out there’s a reason for that. A recent article published by Business Insider reveals “the age you peak at everything, according to science.” I bet you’ve wondered why you were really quick at math at 18, but have a hard time concentrating at 35 — nothing to worry about, at 43 you’ll peak at your ability to focus. The ages marked are averages, and not all have been don

Forza Motorsport 7 has drawn criticism since debuting earlier this week for an in-game economy that seems to put a throttle on your progression to encourage you to buy loot boxes. Forza developer Turn 10 Studios has not flipped the switch to enable players to purchase those crates with real money yet, but all the hooks are already in the game. Those include cosmetic items, but not for your vehicles — instead, this is the first Forza to put an emphasis on your driver.
As usual, the pus

Arizona-based company World View successfully pulled off a five-day test flight of its specialized high-altitude balloon, which is designed to carry Earth-observing instruments to the upper edges of the atmosphere. It’s the longest flight yet of the so-called “stratollite,” though eventually World View hopes to keep these vehicles flying for months, or even a year, at a time.
The stratollite is meant to act like a low-hanging satellite. But rather than rocket to space and then

OPINION: Like many small countries across the world, Israel punches well above its weight in the global startup ring.
Until my recent visit to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to find out why Israel was doing so well, I — like many before me — had assumed the Startup Nation‘s “per capita” success was due to just one reason, but I couldn’t have been wider of the mark.
My journey of discovery started with an invitation from the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who enco

It might be hard to remember, given how famous it is for streaming, but Netflix’s bread-and-butter used to be physical media. Today, Netflix DVDs are still around (even if they don’t get much fanfare), and I’m hoping the company keeps it that way for the foreseeable future. According to a report by Recode, nearly 4 million people still use Netflix’s DVD service. That might seem like a large number, but it pales in comparison to nearly 52 million people who stream, a

GUEST: Artificial intelligence is spreading around us. Be it targeted advertising on social media, filtering applicants for a job, determining air ticket prices, controlling your central heating through voice recognition, creating cultural output, or regulating traffic flow, AI is performing an increasing number of tasks in human life.
By the end of 2017, Elon Musk confidently predicts, a driverless Tesla car will be able to travel safely coast-to-coast across the United States with no human inp

In addition to announcing two new Pixel phones this week, Google released a new app called Pixel Ambient Services. I know, it's an exciting name. This is the description for the app: "Pixel Ambient Services provides features based on local context for Pixel devices." Today, Android Police spotted that Google's provided screenshots for the app featuring an automatic setting for when the phones detect a user when driving. You can see it below. GoogleThis screen suggests that the phone will automat

A staggering 37,461 people were killed on US roads in 2016, an increase of 5.6 percent from the previous year, according to just-released statistics from the US National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration. That’s less than the alarming 8.4 percent year-over-year increase we saw in 2015, but it’s still a pretty depressing statistic.But before you go blaming smartphones, texting while driving, or more attention-stealing in-car technology, incidents of distracted driving were dow

When Andy Weir published his first novel The Martian a couple of years ago, it went on to become a major best-seller and blockbuster film. His next novel is Artemis, a crime thriller set on the Moon, and New York Comic Con fans have the opportunity to step right into that story. It’s all part of an extensive exhibit put together by Audible to promote the book, entitled The Museum of Artemis: Life on the Moon.
The novel follows Jazz, a young woman who runs a smuggling operation out of the t

Earlier this week, Roku announced its refreshed line of media streaming sticks and boxes. The standouts of the pack are the new Streaming Stick+ and Ultra box, both of which support 4K HDR video and have a new voice-powered remote with buttons for controlling a TV’s power and volume. The new hardware should be shipping to customers next week, and we just got our demo devices in The Verge offices for review.
Naturally, as I do with most review devices that hit my desk, I immediately ripped

Dan Fornace, the independent game developer behind Rivals of Aether, asked his followers on Twitter today via a poll if they’d be interested in a Switch version of the game. Rivals of Aether is a fighting game that takes inspiration from Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. series.Would you purchase / repurchase Rivals of Aether for the Nintendo Switch if we could bring it to the platform?
— Dan Fornace (@danfornace) October 6, 2017Rivals of Aether came out earlier this year for Xbox O

Apple seems to have an iPhone 8 battery problem on its hands, and it’s not clear yet whether it’s occurring in just a handful of edge cases or in a larger batch of phones.
Over the past week, reports have been coming out about iPhone 8s that have split apart either on arrival or after several days of use. What appears to be happening is that the battery inside the phone is swelling, bending the front of the phone and separating it from the body of the device. So far, there haven&rsqu

Hello, and welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This time, we played some of the most anticipated games for the rest year: Middle-earth: Shadow of War (which has you killing things in an open-world Mordor) and Assassin’s Creed: Origins (which has you killing things in an open-world ancient Egypt). Also, Neill Blomkamp plans to make sci-fi short films with Unity, and the indie farming simulator Stardew Valley arrived on the Switch.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
Pieces o

At New York Comic Con, Amazon Studios unveiled a trailer for its upcoming anthology show, Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams. The series will be all about questioning what is real. The show shared the stage with the company’s other Philip K. Dick show, The Man in the High Castle, showing off their common ground.
The snippets from the upcoming season give fans a preview of what will arrive to US Amazon Prime subscribers at some point in 2018. The show is presently airing on the UK&rsquo

Of all the things Google announced at its Pixel 2 event – and there were plenty – perhaps the most useful one is the ability to find your phone using Google Home. That feature should now be live for everyone, as spotted by Android Police. It’s simple enough: say ‘ring my phone’ or ‘find my phone’ and it’ll start ringing. If it’s an Android device, it will make noise even if your volume is off. If it’s an iPhone, Google can only call it

A casual comment on Twitter by Tesla CEO Elon Musk about rebuilding Puerto Rico’s power grid using solar technology is being treated seriously by the storm-ravaged island’s top elected officials.On Twitter, Musk said that his technology, which powers several smaller islands, could be scaled up to work for Puerto Rico. The island’s governor promptly responded: “Let’s talk.”
The Tesla team has done this for many smaller islands around the world, but there is no

Earlier this summer at San Diego Comic-Con, we got our first, brief glimpse of Pacific Rim Uprising, in the form of a viral recruitment video for the Jager Corps. Now we have the movie’s first trailer, which shows off John Boyega’s new character, Jake Pentecost,and plenty of giant robot action.The trailer shows off a slew of new Jaegers mechs, as well as returning cast members like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Charlie Day (reprising his role as the uniquely enthusiastic