Technology news

Square Enix has brought its King Arthur-inspired digital card battler to virtual reality with Million Arthur VR: Character Command RPG. The publisher released Million Arthur VR in partnership with Vive Studios for the HTC Vive. It launched in Japan and China earlier this year, and it’s now available for $40 on Steam in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia.
From developers at Square Enix and Gree, Inc., Million Arthur VR is a role-playing game where players do battle using a deck of cards

Russia’s far-ranging campaign to promote dissension in the United States reportedly included an effort to weaponize Pokémon Go. CNN reported today that in July 2016, a Tumblr page linked to Russia’s now-notorious Internet Research Agency promoted a contest encouraging people sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter movement to play the game near famous sites of police brutality. Players were told to change their characters’ names to the victims of those incidents — an

 Magic Leap may be raising as much as $1 billion to fund their vision of a future filled with augmented reality glasses.
A Delaware filing dated Wednesday was provided to us by CB Insights, confirming that the secretive startup has authorized about $1 billion in new funding.  The filing authorizes over 37 million shares of Series D preferred stock at $27 per share. No details on investors yet. Read More

The world of science fiction literature includes some truly out-of-this-world stories, which are often accompanied by astonishing, beautiful, and flat-out bizarre covers. Now, a pair of leading science fiction critics are working to crowdfund a new book that chronicles the fantastic covers that have graced science fiction novels throughout the genre’s history.Wonders and Visions: A Visual History of Science Fiction will include more than 350 images and accompanying explanations that delve

Lyft announced today that it will update its app for drivers to replace its old navigation system with Google Maps, in the hopes of saving drivers the hassle of switching back and forth between apps. Drivers who prefer Waze, though, can opt out of the in-app navigation, Lyft says.Most drivers are already spending a lot of time swiping between multiple ride-hail apps like Uber, Lyft, Juno, and Gett, looking for the closest passenger or alerts of surging fares. On top of that, a lot of them depend

On Monday morning, I opened the door to the smell of campfires — the scent of other Californians’ homes going up in smoke. The air stung my eyes and burned my lungs. It felt like I was breathing through a straw. I rounded up my half-empty inhalers, hoping they hadn’t expired. The next day, the sky turned brown and rained ash on me.California is besieged by 22 wildfires that have incinerated more than 265 square miles and killed at least 21 people. Smoke and ash blanket the Bay

For the first time ever, astronomers have pinpointed the location of a luminous light source on the opposite side of the Milky Way Galaxy, far beyond the galactic center. The source — a region of space where massive stars are being born — is located in a distant spiral arm, one of the large tentacles of gas that swirl around the middle of our galaxy. Knowing its location has allowed astronomers to trace the arm as it wraps around the center of the Milky Way, telling us more about the

Thanks to a NASA satellite that’s been mapping the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in unprecedented detail, scientists are learning much more about how plants work, and how the land and oceans suck up and release CO2. This information could help us figure out how our world will respond to global warming.
New research shows that during the 2015–2016 El Niño, for instance, droughts, heat, and fires in tropical areas caused plants and soil on three continents to c

Delta just did away with the standard, antiquated flight check-in process that’s plagued modern flyers for years. Now, Delta passengers’ boarding passes will automatically be sent out 24 hours prior to a flight, so long as they use Delta’s mobile app. The change was noted in the iOS version of the Fly Delta app, and it’s sure to be a welcome one to those who hate having to go through the cumbersome online process. The Android app doesn’t yet appear to have the optio

We’re a couple weeks away from Razer unveiling its very first smartphone, but it looks like we may be getting some early details today. Phone Radar spotted a listing on GFXBench for a “Razer Phone” that lists a bunch of high-end but very plausible details on what may be inside the upcoming phone.
According to the listing, which has since been removed, the phone will have a 5.7-inch display with a 2560 x 1440 resolution — about the same as an LG G6. It’ll have a Snap

The time has come for you to turn your doors, walls, and cabinets into touchscreens. Sony unveiled its Xperia Touch projector at Mobile World Congress back in February, and now, it's bringing the device to the US. It's available through Amazon and costs $1,699.99. It'll also be available in select T-Mobile stores in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Miami, as well as in the Sony Square display room in New York City.Sony says it envisions the Xperia Touch serving as a family hub. Users can view calendar

The first season of The CW’s Riverdale was like being handed a surprise bowl of that oatmeal that hatches candy dinosaur eggs when you microwave it: disgusting, delightful, and a possibility so bizarre, most people’s brains would never arrive there without help.Archie Comics’ chief creative officer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa was heavily involved in the process that turned Archie from a beloved comics series into a swoony suburban teen drama. Now it’s equal parts Desperate Hou

Samsung has announced that the Gear Sport and its second-generation Gear IconX earbuds (also known as Gear IconX 2018) will be available for preorder starting October 13th.
Priced at $299.99, the Gear Sport comes in blue and black and will be available nationwide from October 27th through Samsung.com, Amazon, Best Buy, Macy’s, and U.S. Cellular.The Gear IconX 2018 will come in black, gray, and pink, for $199.99 and will also be released nationwide on the same day through Samsung.com, Amazo

As The Verge’s resident headphones obsessive, I hear a few questions quite often: what are the best Bluetooth headphones, where can I find those $1,000 cans for less than $100, and what music do you use for testing in your reviews? The first question will be answered in an upcoming This is my next feature, the second is daft, and the third forms the subject of this article.
The obvious thing to say here is that there’s no right or wrong answer, there aren’t distinct categories

We’ve been waiting a long time to see the “world’s first giant robot duel,” and next week we’ll finally get to watch the metal-on-metal action. If you’ve forgotten the background, all the way back in July 2015 a US team of engineers (MegaBots Inc.) challenged their Japanese rivals (Suidobashi Heavy Industry) to a fight, but the difficulty in finding a venue and upgrading the robots has delayed the bout. Well, next Tuesday, October 17th at 7PM PT, the duel will

Next year, developers will start playing with Oculus’ next-generation VR headset: a wireless system codenamed Santa Cruz. Facebook VR chief Hugo Barra stresses that Santa Cruz is a prototype, not a commercial product. But he tells The Verge it’s “very representative” of where the company is going, and “realizable” as a consumer headset. So in a few years, Oculus hopes to offer something that delivers a lot of high-end Rift features, but without any of the comp

During an in-depth conversation with Axios co-founder Mike Allen, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg took some responsibility for Facebook’s role in facilitating Russian misinformation, and pledged to include ad targeting information as part of the company’s disclosures on political interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Saying that the company owes Americans “not just” an apology but continued “determination,” Sandberg also admitted, “Things happened

Hyperloop One just got a major vote of confidence from one of the world’s most recognizable billionaire industrialists not named Elon Musk. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson is investing in the super fast transport system and will be joining Hyperloop One’s board of directors, the two companies announced today. As a result, the company is rebranding as “Virgin Hyperloop One.”#FindingMyVirginity is all about embarking on new challenges. Well, introducing @Virgin @Hyperl

Middle-earth: Shadow of War, the follow-up to 2014’s Shadow of Mordor, is in many ways a prototypical video game sequel. Its main goal is simply to give you more. A vastly larger world, a wider range of weapons and abilities, and more ways to interact with the dark realm of Mordor. It’s bigger in just about every sense of the word. At the same time, it retains much of what made the original so good, namely its tight stealth action and unique “nemesis” system, which turns

Next time you need an emergency order of LaCroix, you can just ask a Google Home to order a case from Target. Google announced today that Target will begin supporting its Google Express shopping service in the contiguous US. That also means Target will be supported through the Google Assistant’s voice ordering feature, which is so far only live on the Google Home and Android TV but is coming “soon” to iOS and Android as well.
Target has only been available through Google Expres

The compact camera market is essentially dead, as smartphones have supplanted traditional point-and-shoots for most people’s photography needs. Smartphones have also pioneered entirely new forms of photography, like selfies. None of this is news to anyone.
What might be news to you, however, is that there are still ways to sell compact cameras in 2017, if you can find the right product and the right market. You can sell them for quite a lot of money, in fact. And that’s what Casio ha

 When he was still at Google Ventures, Bill Maris led a round of funding into music royalty collecting startup Kobalt, to make one of the VC arms bigger bets in the world of digital music. Now that he’s moved on to start another firm, he’s taking a step to re-up his interests in the company. Today, Kobalt announced that Maris’ Section 32 has invested $14 million into Kobalt,… Read More

The Sound of Vinyl, a record store and delivery service created by Universal Music Group, is now available in the US. The service, which has been available in the UK and Australia for a couple years, features over 20,000 titles from every major label as well as indies.As part of its US launch, the Sound of Vinyl is debuting a pretty ingenious discovery and delivery service that will give incumbent online record stores like Discogs a run for their money.The setup is pretty simple: when you give S

I live with a six-month-old cat named Pretzel who likes to sprint from one side of my apartment to the other, and sometimes pounce on me with his claws out along the way. He’s the first pet I’ve ever had, and living with him is mostly a joy. But because he’s my first pet, I’ve often been really uncertain of what to do: am I feeding him too much or too little? Do I actually need to brush his teeth? And what do I need to do to make sure he stays healthy?
That last question

A concept version of Toyota’s hydrogen fuel cell truck is running short-haul drayage routes at the Port of Los Angeles as part of a feasibility study, which figures in to the port’s efforts to reduce harmful emissions.The truck will move goods from select Port of LA and Long Beach terminals to surrounding rail yards and warehouses for distribution. Toyota estimates the vehicle’s daily trips will total around 200 miles — short, frequent route patterns designed to test the

Plenty of companies are taking advantage of machine learning to tag and search visual content. Pinterest lets you find visually-similar images in order to track down that recipe or jacket you’re looking for, and Pornhub is using machine learning to automatically identify porn stars in videos. Stock image company Shutterstock, though, has developed one of the more novel implementations of this sort of technology: using machine learning to identify the layout of images.The new tool, launched