Technology news

After a monster “bomb cyclone” and frigid Arctic blasts that set some new records on the US East Coast, temperatures have been a bit more merciful this week. And that’s setting the stage for some pretty cool phenomena — like this ice jam on the Ausable River in Au Sable Forks, located in upstate New York.
In a time lapse video posted on Twitter by the National Weather Service office in Burlington, Vermont, you can see the frozen river very quickly rise up, and then break

When David Letterman left the Late Show in 2015, it felt like a generational changing of the guard. After over three decades as a late-night host, the comedian was stepping away, letting Stephen Colbert reinvent the show while Letterman enjoyed the free time to do, well, nothing — other than grow a really serious beard. So when Netflix announced last year that he would be coming out of retirement to host a talk show, it raised a couple of questions. What could Letterman do outside the lim

The Verge crew is on our way back home after a week at the Consumer Electronics Show 2018. This week, we did a ton of reporting, a ton of videos, and four live Circuit Breaker shows, so we did not have a lot of time to sit down and tape a full-length Vergecast. But what we did do was collect a bunch of audio recorded throughout the show — including clips from Circuit Breaker Live — to give you an idea of what it’s like to be at CES, and what kinds of things we saw this year.En

One brave soul went ahead and distilled the United States’ new national pastime into a simple web game in which you slam dunk over President Donald Trump over and over again until you simply lose interest in the activity. Created by artist Jayson Musson, Dunk on Trump is about as simple as a game can get: you simply tap the space bar of your keyboard while a green-clad baller approaches the president, leaps up high, and scores two while posterizing Trump, who’s sent sideways offscre

LXORY isn’t exactly a major company in the wireless charging business, but they’ve managed to become the first to release a wireless charger with an input for Apple’s Lightning cables, via 9to5Mac.Almost every other charger out there uses either MicroUSB, USB-C, or a proprietary port to pass power from a wall plug to a charging pad. But LXORY’s new pad — officially, the “LXORY Dual Wireless Charging Pad” — offers an input for Apple’s own pro

David Gudeman, one of two ex-Google engineers suing the company for alleged discrimination against conservative white men, says the company is dominated by a “hate group” illegally promoting “racism and misandry.” Gudeman and his co-plaintiff James Damore filed the lawsuit earlier this week, but he expanded on his motivations in a blog post, illuminating the reasoning behind the suit.
“I don’t hate Google, and I certainly don’t hate the people who work

Hulu is doubling down on the dystopian adaptation business. With the streaming service’s The Handmaid’s Tale continuing to rack up award wins, Hulu is adding another adaptation of a literary classic to its library: Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22, which George Clooney will co-write, direct, produce, and star in.First published in 1961, Catch-22 recounts the story of a US B-52 bombardier named Capt. John Yossarian, who is caught in a frustrating position. He must fulfill a set n

2016 might have been Star Trek’s 50th anniversary, but 2017 was the year when no less than three shows reinterpreted, reimagined, or paid homage to Gene Roddenberry’s classic science fiction series. Each one follows the show’s familiar blueprint, joining the diverse crew of a starship as they zip around the universe. But each show also has their own new take on what Star Trek means, taking the classic form of the franchise and molding it in some new ways.Star Trek: Discovery,

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear the state of South Dakota’s argument that a 26-year-old tax-related ruling be overturned, which could free state and local governments to collect billions in internet sales tax, according to a report today from Bloomberg. The 1992 ruling, from Quill v. North Dakota, centered on a mail-order business and inadvertently set a far-reaching precedent for e-commerce companies by only allowing states to collect sales tax from businesses with a &

Mechanical keyboards are awesome, and they’ve had something of a renaissance in recent years as people realize their superiority to the flimsy membrane keyboards we’re used to. But you know what’s even better than a mechanical keyboard? A really frikkin big mechanical keyboard, like the one Razer had at its CES booth. The keyboard was fully functional, with a tactile click and realistic actuation. It even had full Chroma RGB lighting. Props to Razer for thoroughness. Just imag

 Planetary Resources, the space mining company backed by Google’s Larry Page and Braintree founder Bryan Johnson, has taken another step in its quest to actually mine resources from asteroids and other planetary bodies. The company successfully launched its Akryd-6 cubesat, which is holding an experimental technology designed to detect water resources in space. Planetary Resources is… Read More

Security firm Check Point today revealed it had discovered malware on the Google Play store disguised as children’s games — malware that gives kids ads not suited for their age group. Checkpoint’s report on the malware warns it shows pornographic ads which would obscure the actual game, including one featuring a picture of Kim Kardashian — fittingly, the code is called AdultSwine. In some cases, the virus would prompt users to download fake anti-virus software. In others

Intel is running into problems protecting its chips from the major Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities that became public last week. The company has been warning customers of three specific flaws in a recent firmware update and recommending that customers hold off installing the patch, according to emails first reported by The Wall Street Journal. According to a follow-up announcement by Intel, the issue may cause reboot issues in systems running older Haswell chips.
Intel has been aware of th

Publicly, Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google parent Alphabet, says the vast majority of its autonomous vehicle testing is taking place in five cities: Mountain View, California; Austin, Texas; Kirkland, Washington; Phoenix, Arizona; and most recently, Detroit, Michigan. But it would seem the company neglected to tell us about a crucial sixth city: its home base of San Francisco.TechCrunch obtained pictures of a Waymo autonomous minivan on the fog-soaked streets of San Francisco, forcing the

Visa has announced that starting in April, it will get rid of the requirement for signatures on credit card purchases in North America. Now that Visa is on board, all four of the major credit card companies are removing signature requirements. (American Express, Discover, and Mastercard already announced that they’re doing away with signatures as well.)
Like the other companies, Visa claims that the improved security brought about by the recent addition of EMV chips, along with other secu

The market for PCs grew during the holiday season last year, which is a first in six years of declining demand for computers, according to a report by IDC. The market, which includes desktops, notebooks, and workstations, grew by 0.7 percent over the holiday season last year. IDC had initially predicted demand would decline by 1.7 percent.
The overall year’s shipments were down by 0.2 percent, which was still better than 2016’s decline of 1.5 percent. The Asia-Pacific region and Lat

At CES 2018, TiVo announced that it will be adding support for Alexa and Google Assistant to its DVRs, letting users control their TVs using voice commands, along with additional smart home integrations through IFTTT.According to PCMag, the integrations will work a little differently, depending on whether you’re using Alexa or Assistant. The Alexa skill is said to be a little more basic, duplicating functions on a remote like “play,” “pause,” or “select.&rdqu

HBO has released the first teaser for its upcoming adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, revealing that the film will air sometime this spring.The teaser highlights the most vivid part of the novel, showing a burning copy of Crime and Punishment that’s dropped onto a pile of other controversial books, which is set on fire by a firefighter yielding a flamethrower.Bradbury’s novel is a classic work of science fiction. He originally wrote a series o

In the spirit of Pokémon Go’s early days, Niantic is encouraging players to come together with official monthly meetups in a new initiative it’s calling Pokémon Go Community Day. The first Community Day kicks off on January 20th, and will feature double XP for trainers and unique items as well as special pokémon with unique abilities for trainers to hunt down.The event will last for three hours across the world at local parks; players in the US should expect the

 Netflix has delivered another six glimpses into Black Mirror‘s often-bleak view of technology and humanity.
On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Original Content podcast, one of your regular hosts, Anthony Ha, is joined by Jordan Crook to discuss the fourth season of the science fiction anthology series. While we liked it — in fact, we both thought it might be Black… Read More

Google has deleted 60 games from its Play Store after security firm Check Point uncovered a malicious bug that displayed porn ads in game apps, many of which are aimed at children. Some of the apps include those that have been downloaded over 1 million times, like Five Nights Survival Craft and McQueen Car Racing Game, which is based on the Disney Pixar character from the film Cars.The malicious app is named Adult Swine, and Check Point says the bug displays inappropriate and pornographic ads,

Following a launch on Friday local time, a Chinese rocket booster fell near a small town in southwest China, where it exploded and caught fire, GBTimes reports. It was one of four strap-on boosters used on China’s Long March 3B rocket, which had lofted two satellites into orbit before the crash. People living in the town Xiangdu, located in China’s Guangxi region, caught video of the booster as it fell perilously close to buildings and then erupted in flames.
The Long March 3B takes