Technology news

Amazon has just responded to Google’s decision to remove YouTube from all Fire TV products and the Echo Show. “Google is setting a disappointing precedent by selectively blocking customer access to an open website,” a spokesperson told The Verge by email. “We hope to resolve this with Google as soon as possible.” YouTube is being pulled from the Show effective immediately, and Fire TV owners will lose out on the popular, essential video streaming app on January 1st.

Today, Apple started selling an unlocked, SIM-free model of the iPhone X through its website, Apple Store app, and retail locations. The unlocked version of the handset, which starts at $999, was previously only available if you bought it through Verizon or Best Buy, which charged a $100 premium over financed carrier versions of the phone until consumer backlash pushed the retailer to pull the product entirely.Now, if you find the iPhone X on Apple’s website, you’ll have the option t

The Securities and Exchange Commission has frozen the assets of a cryptocurrency startup accused of fraudulently selling up to $15 million in tokens. Yesterday, the SEC announced charges against PlexCorps, an embattled initial coin offering (ICO) company that advertises an ostensibly stable and approachable cryptocurrency called PlexCoin. The complaint alleges that PlexCorps promised massive returns it was unlikely to deliver, while advertising a nonexistent team of experts and obscuring the pas

Robots are going to take your job and there’s nothing you can do about it. You need look no further than the trucking industry to find the writing on the wall, but what do we do when robots are better at the jobs we need? One solution is to give them the work and us the paychecks. A universal basic income (UBI), wherein government provides a monthly stipend so citizens can afford a home and basic necessities, is something experts believe would directly address the issue of unemployme

Earlier today, Qualcomm and Microsoft announced the first Windows 10 devices with ARM-based processors will be arriving early next year. HP, Asus, and Lenovo will all be launching laptops and convertibles with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 processor in them, with prices expected to range from $600 to $800.
Windows 10 on ARM is a reboot of Microsoft’s earlier attempts to marry mobile processors with full laptop experiences. It promises to provide better power efficiencies, reliable perfor

The Winklevoss twins are officially Bitcoin billionaires. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (hereafter: Winklevi), are perhaps most famous for suing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg after he allegedly stole their idea and turned it into the social media goliath now known as Facebook. It’s a shame, really. From the outside, it seems the Winklevi have lived a charmed life. While the two aren’t conjoined twins to the best of our knowledge, they certainly seem to be attached at the hip. Both sho

Anyone who’s interviewed David Lynch knows he doesn’t like to talk about what his work means. In one-on-one conversations, the writer-director (and sculptor, painter, musician, and occasional weatherman) behind the singular movie masterpieces Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Dr. comes across as affable, even gregarious. He’ll share memories from his past, and happily talk about some of the practical aspects of movie-making, like sound design or running a set. But he stop

At Qualcomm’s conference on Tuesday, AMD’s corporate vice president and GM Kevin Lensing made a surprise guest appearance, announcing that the two companies were working together to power a new line of HP and Asus PCs, powered by Snapdragon 835. The Always Connected PCs are powered by gigabit LTE, to stay connected without relying on Wi-Fi.
AMD has had a lot of new releases this year, including the launch of the flagship desktop AMD Ryzen ThreadRipper in the summer and the Ryzen mobi

Like any professional sports league, the upcoming Overwatch League is gearing up to sell plenty of merchandise. But unlike, say, the NFL or NBA, you’ll be able to buy both real-world and virtual versions of each team’s uniform.
Today, Blizzard announced some of the merchandise that it will start selling tomorrow, and it includes the usual suspects, like New Era caps and a range of apparel including league-branded sweaters and jackets. Fans will also be able to support each of the lea

Qualcomm today announced that its next flagship processor will be called the Snapdragon 845, the company said at its Snapdragon Tech Summit. The 845 is a direct successor to last year’s very popular Snapdragon 835, and it will likely bring improved performance, better power efficiency, and improved image processing. The Snapdragon 845 will likely be found in many high-end Android phones in 2018, though it is also expected to make its way to Windows 10 laptops as well.
Last year’s Sna

Venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar has taken a leave of absence from Sherpa Capital and Virgin Hyperloop One in the wake of multiple sexual misconduct allegations, saying he plans to focus on pursuing a defamation lawsuit that he filed last month against a political opposition research group. Pishevar says that the decision is meant to “eliminate any potential distraction to the great and important work being done at these companies.”
Pishevar’s lawsuit claims that he was targ

Microsoft and Qualcomm are officially unveiling the first ARM-powered Windows 10 laptops today. As expected, HP, Lenovo, and Asus are the manufacturers creating these new laptops that include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. The first devices are similar to 2-in-1 tablet / laptops we’ve seen with Intel-based processors in them, but they differ primarily because of the version of Windows 10 and Qualcomm processor that’s powering them.
Microsoft has previously shown Photoshop runni

If you’ve been on the internet recently you might have come across the above tweet, showing a robot with a CCTV camera for a head doing some half-hearted pole-dancing. It’s a good tweet! It captures a bunch of extremely 2017 feelings, including dystopia, fear of job automation, and the general mood of absurdity that’s going around a lot. Plus, you know, it’s a pole-dancing robot.
But, as a famous philosopher once asked: why is this robot pole dancing? To what end? Well it

In today’s Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm announced it’s partnering with Microsoft and ASUS to build an Always On, Always Connected PC. The device will be the world’s first 1st Gigabit LTE PC. Ditch the 🔌 ! New PCs powered by #Snapdragon have a battery life so long you won’t need one. #SnapdragonSummit pic.twitter.com/QoQwbepwwb — Qualcomm (@Qualcomm) December 5, 2017 The first device of its kind shown at the conference is the ASUS NovaGo 2-in-1. The NovaGo is

Three months ago, YouTube pulled its programming from Amazon’s Echo Show device — the first skirmish in what is apparently an ongoing war. Shortly after, Amazon stopped selling the Nest E Thermostat, Nest’s Camera IQ, and the Nest Secure alarm system. Two weeks ago, Amazon got YouTube back on the Echo Show by simply directing users to the web version, a workaround that left a lot to be desired. But even that version won’t be available after today.
In a statement this afte

Getting stranded during a spacewalk is a terrifying scenario for any astronaut to imagine — but what if space station crew members could simply press a button during such an event and be immediately transported back to safety?
That’s the idea behind new technology in development dubbed the “Take Me Home” button. It’s a complex system of hardware and software that could be incorporated into a space suit and can automatically guide an astronaut home during an emergenc

In 1998, as the internet began to spread across the country, Congress passed the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA. Among the act’s most consequential provisions was a rule that children under the age of 13 could not give out their personal information without a parent’s permission. Because of the cost of complying with that law, most internet companies have simply forbidden anyone younger than 13 from signing up.
But in practice, a decent number of children un

Netflix announced today that the company will write actor Danny Masterson out of its original series The Ranch, following allegations from multiple women who say Masterson raped them in the early 2000s. A Netflix statement says Monday was Masterson’s last day on set, and that the comedy series will continue in 2018 without him.
The announcement comes one day after the Huffington Post reported that one of Masterson’s alleged victims approached Netflix executive Andy Yeatman at a child

Microsoft first unveiled its Whiteboard app earlier this year, promising to make it available to all Surface devices by the end of 2017. Microsoft is releasing a preview version of Whiteboard today to all Windows 10 devices, allowing multiple people to share and collaborate using digital ink.The app lets Windows 10 users ink on images, create mockups, or use notes on a virtual whiteboard. Anyone can use the app, but the collaborative multi-party support will require someone in the group to have

Instagram today announced two new features which change its popular Stories for the better. The first new feature is a Story Archive. As it sounds, the archive lets you save your past Stories beyond their traditional 24-hour expiration date. This was one of the features spotted by our own Matt Navarra among other beta features. Only you can see your archive, and you can turn off the feature if you want your Story to disappear as usual. To access the archive, click the clock icon in the top

Every day seems to bring a new headline about sexual harassment. It’s crucial to talk about how commonplace this abuse is, but it’s becoming more difficult to do so without becoming exhausted or desensitized. It’s what makes Saturday Night Live’s recent exploration of harassment — a visually soft, musical number from Cecily Strong, Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Leslie Jones, and Melissa Villaseñor, with guest Saoirse Ronan — feel like a warm shower after

This week, Lamborghini unveiled its all-new Urus super-SUV. This outrageously fast, 650-horsepower, $200,000 off-roading four-door is not the first sport utility vehicle from the famed Italian exotic automaker. That was the Hummer-esque, Countach-powered LM002 of the ‘80s and ‘90s. But that was a long time ago, well before a desire for high-riding vehicles — trucks, sport utes, and crossovers — transitioned from a niche market to a common one to one that has surpassed pas

Most of us view stress as that wicked ‘thing’ that has a habit of appearing at the wrong place at the wrong time — like any sane person would. However, one Dutch startup begs to differ. Stressjam wants to change people’s mindset about stress and help them reap the positive benefits stress can bring. They’ve developed a fun and engaging VR game that uses real-time biofeedback from your personal stress response as the “joystick” to control your adventure.

Back at IFA, Philips announced a pair of new high-end monitors focused for professional use: the 328P6AU and 328P6VU. They are 32-inch displays that offer 2560 x 1440 QHD resolution and 3840 x 2160 4K resolutions, respectively, as reported by Anandtech. Earlier this week, the company announced that the lower-resolution 328P6AU will be hitting stores in January, but only in Europe for now.The displays tout the ability to display 100 percent of the sRGB color profile, and 99 percent of the Adobe R

Car2Go, the car-sharing service owned by Daimler, made the decision recently to expand its fleet to include larger sedans, assuming the customers who typically use the tiny, two-seat smart cars would appreciate a little more legroom. Now, the company is bringing its Mercedes-Benz luxury CLA and GLA sedans to its largest market yet: New York City.Car2Go operates in just two boroughs of the city, Brooklyn and Queens. With the addition of the four-door Mercedes sedans to its core fleet of Smart For

Netflix is bringing interactive storytelling to more of its original programming, Bloomberg reports. The streaming service is apparently producing a choose-your-own-adventure-style TV show for adults, similar to its already-available interactive children’s programming.
This past June, Netflix premiered Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale, an animated series that allowed viewers to make decisions about where the story would go and how it would end. The animated Netflix original Buddy Thun

Fitbit is releasing the first major update to the Fitbit OS software on its flagship Ionic smartwatch today, bringing a host of new apps and watchfaces to the fledging smartwatch platform.Leading the charge are 14 new apps from major companies that have been designed specifically for Fitbit’s platform: Surfline, Clue, Game Golf,Hue Lights, Walgreens, Nest, Yelp, Flipboard, The New York Times, TripAdvisor, Uber, United Airlines, British Airways, and Lyft. Some of those apps (like The New Yo

DirecTV Now has surpassed the 1 million subscriber mark, AT&T announced today. The over-the-top service, which picked up 200,000 subscribers in its first month earlier this year, has continued its growth and is on pace to catch the industry leader Sling TV, which has 1.7 million subscribers according to Bloomberg.
While DirecTV Now’s growth is impressive, the company will miss its self-imposed deadline to release its cloud DVR and live TV pausing, both of which were scheduled to be ava

Instagram is rolling out a private archive of the ephemeral stories you have posted in the app. Starting today, Instagram will begin to add your expired stories to the archive feature, which until now has been used only to house photos and videos you no longer want to display on your public profile. The stories archive, which you will be able to opt out of, is being introduced globally on Android and iOS.
The stories archive represents another feature copied from Snapchat, which introduced its o

Another Tuesday is upon us, and yes, another episode of Circuit Breaker Live is here, too. We'll be live today at 4PM ET at our usual spot on Twitter with your hosts Paul Miller and Ashley Carman (that's me!), who is subbing in for Nilay Patel.Today's show has everything you could want from a live gadget show on Twitter. DJ and tech reporter Dani Deahl will teach me and Paul how to DJ. She'll maybe even make a beat on air with her DJ gadgets. I'm deeply untalented at playing music, so this segme

Last night, Unicode announced the beta version of 2018’s emoji list, and there’s one proposed update that has nothing to do with adding new candidates: emoji direction.
Emojipedia says the ability to switch the direction of emoji has been a long-requested feature and might not affect all emoji, but only the ones that would “benefit from it most.” Consider the blog’s unfortunate sample graphic below, that uses the train, runner, and gun emoji.Images: Apple / Emojiped

Should Elon Musk’s Boring Company ever get the technology and the regulatory approvals in shape to move forward with building a network of tunnels underneath Los Angeles, now we know what that system might look like.The company recently published a map on its website detailing the first proposed routes. The longest artery stretches about 40 miles from the Sherman Oaks neighborhood, located north of downtown Los Angeles, to Long Beach Airport, which is in the southeastern corner of LA count

So you just spent $1,000 on an iPhone X. Once you’ve had your fill of that new screen, the notch, and Face ID, it’s time to master what’s truly the most important feature of Apple’s latest phone: Animoji. Sending a voice message to a friend is a lot more fun when an animated unicorn, robot, or poop emoji is doing the talking and mimicking your facial expressions. That part’s easy, but it didn’t take long for people to come up with another creative way of using