Technology news

For months, the WikiLeaks Twitter account has carried on a secret correspondence with Donald Trump Jr., according to messages published today by The Atlantic. The messages, which have also been provided to congressional investigators, show WikiLeaks pushing President Trump’s son to share a variety of messages, ranging from anti-Clinton news to data stolen directly from the campaign. In one case, WikiLeaks even shared the password to an anti-Trump PAC’s website, a potential violation

 Touted as the iPhone X’s new flagship form of device security, Face ID is a natural target for hackers. Just a week after the device’s release, Vietnamese research team Bkav claims to have cracked Apple’s facial recognition system using a replica face mask that combines printed 2D images with three-dimensional features. No one really knows how legitimate this purported hack is. Read More

Early in the first episode of Hulu’s new tongue-in-cheek time-travel adventure Future Man, the show’s slacker hero, Josh Futturman (played by Josh Hutcherson), drops by his local video game store, where he and the employees have a long conversation about Ms. Pac-Man’s sexual appetites. Later, back in his bedroom, Josh defeats the final boss in his favorite game, Biotic Wars. He celebrates his victory by masturbating to an image of the game’s sexy warrior character, Tiger.

Robot maker Boston Dynamics, now owned by Japanese telecom and tech giant SoftBank, just published a short YouTube clip featuring a new, more advanced version of its SpotMini robot. SpotMini, first unveiled in June 2016, started out as a giraffe-looking chore bot that was pretty terrible at performing tasks around the house, and, in one short clip, hilariously ate it on a cluster of banana peels like a character straight out of a slapstick cartoon.The new SpotMini looks much more polished and le

The Walking Dead is back, and for us here at The Verge that’s an opportunity to examine just how effective the show can be in creating a complex villain. As played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, big bad Negan has always been violent. But thanks to his man-baby antics, he’s stubbornly remained a comic book thug, never becoming the nuanced character the show so sorely needs.
Each week, I’ll be analyzing the show through its presentation of Negan: how he acts, how he delivers his jokes a

It’s been a long time since a Star Trek television show felt like it was really going where no one had gone before — or even to relatively infrequently visited places. Although the original 1966 series dared to feature an interracial kiss, the franchise as a whole missed the boat on LGBT representation until it was already mainstream. And between Star Trek: Enterprise and the reboot films, the Trek series has spent the last decade flailing around in lackluster retreads of its own tro

Protesters disrupted a US-sponsored presentation about fossil fuels as solutions to climate change at a United Nations global warming conference today. Singing and chanting, they registered their disdain for the official US message on climate.
Shortly after an introduction by White House energy policy adviser George David Banks, demonstrators began singing a version of “God Bless the USA,” with the lyrics changed to convey an anti-coal message, according to The Washington Post. &ldqu

Facebook Stories is getting quite the revamp today. According to TechCrunch, not only will Stories between Messenger Day and Facebook be consolidated as of today, but Facebook is also getting rid of Direct, an ephemeral messaging feature.
Previously, disappearing posts on Messenger Day and Facebook Stories existed separately. Now, Facebook Stories will be synced across both platforms, although camera filters will still remain separate. Along with this change, Facebook is also killing private eph

T-Mobile is making another branded budget phone called the Revvl Plus as a sequel to the Revvl, which the carrier launched in August.Some of the Revvl Plus remains the same as the original Revvl: it sports the same 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Like the first Revvl, the Plus has a fingerprint sensor and runs Android Nougat.
But the Revvl Plus boasts a slightly bigger 3,380mAh battery, six-inch screen, and a higher price tag at $200 up front (or $9 a month for 18 months) through T-Mobile’

Nike announced today that it’s releasing a limited edition Midnight Fog Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE that’s designed to match its upcoming Air VaporMax running shoes. The Watch will be available tomorrow at nike.com and in retail stores for $399, while the Air VaporMax will sell for $190 starting on November 24th.
It’s the second time Nike’s released a special line of Apple Watch products alongside corresponding sneakers. Earlier this year, Nike released the Day to Night

Earlier this month, news broke that Amazon was trying to close a deal to bring J.R.R. Tokien’s The Lord of the Rings to life as a television series, and now it looks like it’s actually going to happen. Amazon has announced that it has acquired the TV rights for the book series, with a multi-season commitment. But the twist is that this will apparently be a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, rather than the story audiences already know so well.“The Lord of the Rings is a cultural

The first generation of HomePods, Apple’s intelligent speaker, isn’t shipping until December, but according to a report by Nikkei, Apple supplier Inventec Appliances is already making projections that future models might have facial and image recognition.
David Ho, the president of the Taiwanese company, recently told reporters, "We see trends that engineers are designing smart speakers that will not only come with voice recognition but also incorporate features such as facial and im

Last month, Google announced that users with Google Assistant would be able to broadcast messages via Google Home devices, and now that time is here. Google has begun rolling out an update that will allow you to use your Home devices as an intercom system within your apartment or house (or office, if you hate your co-workers).
You can use Assistant on your smartphone to send messages to all Assistant-enabled speakers within your home, and with certain commands, like announcing it’s time fo

The internet is filled with articles and Redditors pointing out the anachronisms of Netflix’s 1980s science fiction throwback series Stranger Things — from Barb’s Volkswagen car to the Demogorgon figurine. Now, scientists are joining the ranks of nitpicking nerdy fans.
Stranger Things season 2 spoilers ahead.
In Stranger Things’ second season, Dustin adopts a tadpole-like pet that loves nougat that is actually the baby version of a flesh-eating monster from The Upside Dow

eBay is trying to one-up other major retailers in an attempt to win over consumers on Black Friday by offering to price-match competitors’ deals that have already been announced ahead of the shopping event. From November 13th to the 17th, eBay will match prices on select deals from Walmart, Kohl’s, Macy’s, and JCPenney. eBay is also offering a coupon code PSHOPEARLY for 20 percent off your purchase from now through November 20th, including on computers and cell phones.Then, fro

Lyft has officially gone international. The ride-hail company announced on Monday that, starting in December, it will begin operations in Toronto, marking the first time Lyft will be available outside the US. The news follows an earlier report that Lyft was poised to grab a third of the ride-hailing market in the US in the latest sign that the company was continuing to profit off Uber’s stumbles earlier in the year.To be sure, Lyft has been talking about pushing into international markets

Amazon is working on a free, ad-supported version of its Prime video streaming service, according to sources that spoke with AdAge. Currently, Prime members pay $99 to access a variety of video streaming content, which is usually ad-free.
This alternate version would be available to non-Prime members and would be supported by the advertisers. AdAge says Amazon may also share audience information and ad revenue in order to bolster its initial efforts with the project. One unnamed executive told A

Now that the iPhone X has been out for a week, it’s time to get started on rumors for next year’s iPhones. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, whose iPhone predictions have been fairly reliable over the last several years, says that he expects to see two new full-screen iPhones next year: one will have a 6.5-inch OLED display, essentially making it a Plus version of the iPhone X; and the other will have a 6.1-inch LCD display, likely making it more like a full-screen version of the

AT&T and Verizon have partnered with a third company to build hundreds of cell towers, Verizon announced today. The third company, Tillman Infrastructure, is a private company that makes and owns towers, and it will construct the towers to suit AT&T and Verizon.The new towers are going to be added in locations in need of more coverage. AT&T and Verizon may also relocate equipment from current towers to serve these new ones.
It’s notable that the two carrier giants chose Tillman

If you’re the owner of one of Google’s Pixel 2 XL devices, there’s more bad news: some users are reporting that the touchscreen is not responding to touches along the edge of the device, as reported by Phandroid. Users reported the issue on the Pixel User Community, and one user posted a video that showed the screen not responding when being tapped on the edge of the right-hand side. There was also some unresponsiveness on the left-hand side in the video.One user further states

In another huge confidence boost for the nascent “flying car” industry, Volvo’s Chinese parent company announced today that it has completed its acquisition of Terrafugia, a startup founded by MIT engineers and MBA students.News of the purchase first leaked back in July, when the South China Morning Post reported that China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. was considering adding the 11-year-old Terrafugia to its portfolio. Neither company confirmed the acquisition until

Tesla’s big year (the good and the bad) isn’t over yet. The company is set to unveil its Class 8 semi truck prototype Thursday night at its Hawthorne, California facility. While perhaps not as critical to the automaker as its new mass-market Model 3, the Tesla semi truck announcement will mark yet another turning point and big test for the company.
But why is Tesla’s next act a semi truck? That question has become more important as the second half of 2017 for Tesla has appeared

On Saturday, private spaceflight company Sierra Nevada announced that its Dream Chaser spaceplane had successfully glided and landed on a runway after being released from a helicopter. The stunt, done at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California, is known as a free-flight test and is meant to test out the vehicle’s landing capabilities. It’s an important milestone in the Dream Chaser’s development, as Sierra Nevada readies the plane for spaceflight.Resembling a mini Space S

Women who are having a heart attack are less likely to get bystander CPR and more likely to die, according to a new study — and it may be because people are reluctant to touch women’s chests.A new study looked at 20,000 cases of cardiac arrest and found that 39 percent of women who had heart attacks in a public place received CPR, compared to 45 percent of men. Possibly as a result, men were 23 percent more likely to survive. The results were discussed at the American Heart Associati

One of my favorite things about the tech industry is how quickly innovations from the big companies and premium products trickle down into more affordable devices. The rampant stealing of ideas isn't so awesome when it happens between small companies — or, as in the case of Facebook treating Snapchat like its incubation lab, when a big company copies a smaller one. But I don’t have a problem with the general flow of good ideas from giants like Apple and Google to more budget-friendly

Microsoft is unveiling its Black Friday discounts today, and there’s a number of deals if you’re interested in an Xbox, Windows laptop, or a Windows Mixed Reality headset. Microsoft is discounting the Xbox One S 500GB model down to just $189 with a free game. That’s $10 cheaper than Sony’s 1TB PS4 Slim deal (without a game), which isn’t a big gap but Microsoft’s console does include a 4K Blu-ray player if you’re interested in watching movies. Other deals

Airbus is making progress on its new electric-powered vertical take-off and landing aircraft — colloquially (and incorrectly) known as a “flying car.” The European aerospace giant posted a series of photos today from its Vahana project, showing its team working on a pair of single-seat, tilt-rotor vehicles with a paint job that would make a Stormtrooper envious.Airbus has said it wants to build a fleet of electric, autonomous, multirotor VTOL aircraft that can be used to fly fr

In an otherwise boring conversation about some press release or another, a Spotify PR person mentioned to me that an artist who had a big hit on the platform’s Fresh Finds playlist was discovered when one of the curators just happened to see them play a show in Bushwick. I was as surprised as anyone really can be by an email from corporate PR.Fresh Finds is one of Spotify’s prized products, a weekly playlist crafted from a combination of two different data inputs: it identifies new,

Faced with the tidal wave of fake news and phony propaganda unleashed by social media, the European Union has launched an effort to define the problem and identify strategies to address it.
In an announcement today, the EU unveiled a process through which the public can submit comments about their experience with fake news. In addition, the EU is requesting nominations for a panel of “experts” from academia and the media to conduct an in-depth study around the issue and offer an atta