Technology news

The US Customs and Border Protection agency has updated its guidelines for electronicborder searches, clarifying what remain broad and potentially invasive procedures. The directive was published today, and it adds new detail to border search rules that were last officially updated in 2009.
Officers can still request that people unlock electronic devices for inspection when they’re entering the US, and they can still look through any files or apps on those devices. But consistent with a s

Google decided to brag a little bit about the success of its Home speakers today with a blog post claiming it sold “more than one ... every second since Google Home Mini started shipping in October.” That means, from October 19th through the end of yesterday, Google sold at least 6.73 million speakers.
What Google doesn’t say is how those sales were split between the Home, the Home Mini, and the Home Max. It seems fairly safe to guess that the Home Mini was by far the most pop

Amid vocal calls for the company to act, Twitter today offered its first explanation for why it hasn’t banned President Donald Trump — without ever saying the man’s name. “Elected world leaders play a critical role in that conversation because of their outsized impact on our society,” the company said in a blog post. “Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets, would hide important information people should be able to see and

A recent Inc article reporting that MailChimp would integrate the newsletter platform TinyLetter into its primary email marketing service sent the online writing community into a small tizzy, with headlines reading “What We Know About MailChimp’s Plan to End TinyLetter” and “Rest in Peace, TinyLetter.”In reality, all the Inc article said — beyond its misleading headline — was “TinyLetter’s functionality will be enhanced in its migration to M

A YouTube content creator recently found his video the subject of multiple content claims, meaning several people are trying to claim ownership of white noise. Sebastian Tomczak a.k.a “littlescale”, a music technologist based in Australia, told TorrentFreak he received several complaints on his video, which he created via a noise generator. My ten hour white noise video now has five copyright claims! :) pic.twitter.com/dX9PCM1qGx — Sebastian Tomczak (@littlescale) January 4, 2

The US Army and the Department of Homeland Security are designing a simulation of school shooting situations for teachers. Multiple players take the role of a teacher trying to keep students safe during a shooting; a law enforcement officer trying to apprehend the shooter; and the shooter, whose avatar may be that of an adult or a child. It’s a grim project, but one that the creators hope will help teachers stay calm in a real emergency.
The project is based on a multipurpose Homeland Sec

It’s 2018 and Quartz wants us to entertain the notion that astrology might be real, we’re just doing it wrong. Writer Ida C. Benedetto claims that the ancient practice of astrology was based on rigorous data providing insight on real-world events, but modern psychology turned it into a reductive, woo-woo construct that focuses on our personalities and internal life. If we turn back to ancient wisdom, she argues, there are still “lost insights” to be found.Though the arti

Technological innovation tends to unfold exponentially and ruthlessly; whenever a new technology takes over, an old one falls out of popular usage and becomes obsolete. For example, once email became adopted by the vast majority of the working world, snail mail became a nostalgic relic of the past (for most individual communications). By the time Blu-ray discs gave us a platform for high-definition video, VHS tapes were long dead. It’s hard to predict what technology will next go obsolete

Once more, it’s time to remind everyone that you should never take anything you see online — a screenshot, a picture, a piece of text — at face value. Today’s lesson comes to us via @pixelatedboat, better known as cartoonist Ben Ward, better known as the man who gifted us with the ubiquitous term “milkshake duck.” In response to the many circulating excerpts of Michael Wolff’s spicy new book about the Trump presidency, Fire and Fury, Ward posted a scree

Apple has given a series order to an unscripted show called Home, Variety reports. Each hour-long episode of the docu-series will look at an “extraordinary” home and the person who built it. Apple has reportedly ordered 10 episodes.
This series feels pretty different from the rest of Apple’s original slate. After experimenting with largely unsuccessful unscripted series like Planet of the Apps and Carpool Karaoke, Apple has been bulking up its catalog of original shows. Back i

Belkin is taking the wraps off its 2018 slate of products, and between the fast-charging USB-C chargers and no less than four different wireless charging pads, it feels like the company’s new gear is tailor-made for Apple’s newest phones.
Now that Apple has finally gone and embraced things like wireless and fast-charging in the iPhone X and iPhone 8, we’re starting to see a whole new wave of accessories out there that support those features. Sure, things like wireless chargers

The question is no longer “when are driverless cars coming,” but where. While the US and China are locked in a head-to-head showdown to see which will flood its roads with safe AI-driven vehicles, a dark horse emerges. The UK may be playing tortoise to their hares. Before we can talk about the Queen’s plans, however, we’ll need to bring up last year’s most improved player in the space: China. The People’s Republic is again revving its engines with state-spons

One year after its announcement, Amazon is canceling Anime Strike, its anime streaming service. The dozens of anime shows and films it offered will now be included on its Amazon Prime subscription service instead. Today, Anime Strike’s Twitter page shut down and the exclusives section on its website is now empty, as first spotted by Kotaku.
The news is a boon for anime fans in the US — or at least those who subscribe to Amazon Prime. Those users will no longer have to pay for the se

Fitbit has invested $6 million in a glucose-monitoring startup called Sano, in what appears to be part of Fitbit’s larger plans to make its fitness devices more valuable for overall health.The investment was first reported by CNBC earlier today; The Verge independently confirmed the investment.Sano, founded in 2011, is a San Francisco-based company that has been working on what it describes as a minimally invasive, continuous glucose monitor that you’d wear on your skin like a patch

For the next 10 years, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the US Geological Survey (USGS) should focus their space-based observations of Earth on answering key questions about our planet: How much will sea level rise in the future? Why do certain storms and clouds occur exactly when and where they do? And how is the diversity of life changing?
These are among the science priorities recommended in a new report released today by the National Academies of Science

GoPro is laying off 200–300 employees this week, mostly from the part of the company that works on the Karma drone, according to TechCrunch. A letter was reportedly sent to these employees this week which stated that the company is restructuring “to better align our resources with business requirements,” though they will remain on the payroll until the middle of February.This would be the fourth round of layoffs at GoPro since 2016. CEO Nick Woodman reported that the company h

Awards season is up and running this weekend with the 75th Golden Globe Awards, which will kick things off with Hollywood’s least serious award show. But even if winning a Golden Globe isn’t considered as much of an accomplishment as winning an Oscar, the Globes can often indicate which way the Hollywood winds are blowing. Here’s everything you need to know to enjoy the red carpet.Who’s the host?
Seth Meyers, who you may know from his NBC late-night show, the aptly named

Your favorite Twitter show about gadgets will be live at CES this year. Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn will be hosting the show, with Ashley Carman, Lauren Goode, and Paul Miller presenting all manner of gadgets from the Las Vegas trade show. We also have Verge alumni Sam Sheffer joining us at the Hypedesk.
The show will be streamed live on Twitter January 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th at 2PM PT (5PM ET) each day. That’s four episodes in four days! Just tune in over at live.twitter.com/CES to wat

Ex-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, who once boasted about never selling a share of the company he helped found, is divesting himself of a big chunk of Uber stock, according to Bloomberg and Reuters. A week after Softbank acquired one-fifth of Uber, Kalanick is selling around 29 percent of his shares to the Japanese tech giant and its partners who have agreed to buy equity in the company.an actual billionaire for the first time
It’s a bit of a silver lining after a year of rolling disasters for

CES is next week, and we’ll get to that, but first we need to talk to security expert Russell Brandom to make sure we won’t all be dead from CPU security vulnerabilities before then. Also, stay tuned for Paul Miller’s excellent and enlightening sci-fi short story allegory for how Meltdown actually works. He did a great job.
Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn, the world’s foremost experts on what to expect from the world’s most important technology trade show, make their C

With a new year comes the promise of new books hitting bookstores. 2018 is shaping up to have plenty of adventures to delve into — taking readers to distant planets, fantastical realms, and beyond. We’ll meet some authors publishing their first-ever novels, and we’ll become reacquainted with familiar writers well into their careers.And who knows? We might even get the long awaited and overdue tomes from George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss, The Winds of Winter and The Doors

Every week, a slew of new music videos hits the web. Watching them at your desk is not time theft because you deserve it; think of it as a nice reward for surviving another work week. But what if you don’t have time to watch every video — maybe you have a deadline, a hungry pet, or other grown-up concerns. In consideration of your schedule, Lizzie and Kaitlyn bring you a series called One Video. Each week we’ll tell you “one video” you need to watch, why, and for h

Following a brigade of spooked Redditors reporting hacked accounts and missing Bitcoin Cash tips, Reddit has now revealed the results of its internal investigation – and it doesn’t look good. A hacker purportedly breached the platform’s third-party password reset system, forcing access to the accounts of multiple victims. While the malicious agent was able to access the password recovery emails distributed by Reddit’s third-party software provider, Mailgun, the individua

The second generation of the Nokia 6 has been revealed, featuring a better processor, USB-C (instead of Micro USB), and more RAM at 4GB (up from 3GB). The updated version also features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 processor, whereas the original had a Snapdragon 430 processor. The changes bring it from more of a low-end to a midrange device, while the price is still the same (around $230), so it’s a nice upgrade.
The overall design remains mostly similar, though the fingerprint scanner has b

Intel is facing at least three class action lawsuits over a recently revealed security flaw. The complaints, published by Gizmodo, were filed in Oregon, California, and Indiana by owners of Intel CPU-based computers. They allege that the vulnerability, which Intel learned about several months ago, makes its chips inherently faulty. Intel has helped provide security patches, but the complaints raise concerns that these patches will hurt computer performance, and aren’t an adequate response

Once, this boy mummy was thought to have died of smallpox, but a new analysis of his now 450-year-old DNA reveals signs of hepatitis B, instead — the oldest known infection of the virus. The puzzling new diagnosis is made stranger still by the similarity between the mummy’s hepatitis B virus and modern-day strains, suggesting this virus has been infecting people for thousands of years.This tiny mummy was exhumed from an Italian church in the 1980s, and scientists have studied it eve

Amazon wants to see Alexa inside the next generation of smart watches and headphones. To make that happen, the company announced plans this morning for a “mobile accessory” development kit, which is supposed to make it easy for hardware companies to build Alexa into their wearable products. Amazon says it will allow them to “add Alexa to their devices with minimum investment in hardware or integration efforts.”
This won’t mark the first time Alexa has made it to he

Whether or not you think superintelligent AI poses a credible threat to humanity in the near future, you have to admit it’s a problem at least worth thinking about — or hey, maybe even playing a game about it. That’s why Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) has released a mod for popular strategy title Civilization V that’s all about mitigating the threat from superintelligent AI.
CSER isn’t usually known for its gaming produ

If you’re a millennial, you probably grew up trying to catch ‘em all, but now one illustrator has drawn them all, as spotted by Kotaku. Christopher Cayco has uploaded a 96-minute time-lapse video that shows him outlining each of the 802-plus monsters before painstakingly coloring them in.It took Cayco a total of 350 hours over 42 days to draw each of the 802 monsters and their variants. The variations include 24 different Pikachus, gender variations for some species of the monsters,

 Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This episode, the first of 2018, saw our own Katie Roof and your humble servant (Alex) joined by Atish Davda, CEO and founder of EquityZen. Matthew Lynley is off this week.
(Davda’s firm put together a landing page for Equity, which we thought was… Read More

Kohler is adding more voice-based and touchless interactions into the bathroom and kitchen with a new smart product line called Kohler Konnect. Under its new lineup, everything from the faucet to the toilet to the bathtub can be controlled via voice commands, using a smart mirror as the main control center.
The Verdera mirror, like a lot of smart products you’ll see at CES, has Amazon’s Alexa built in so you can ask it to read the news, adjust mirror lighting, or control other paire

Samsung released the original Notebook 7 Spin back in 2016, and while it didn’t exactly make waves when it came to design, it at least offered plenty of power at an affordable price. And ahead of CES this year, Samsung is announcing an updated version of the Notebook 7 Spin that adds a quad-core eight-gen Intel Core i5 processor and support for an Active Pen stylus, while also cutting down on the weight for a lighter design.Like the first generation Notebook 7 Spin, the updated model also