Technology news

On Saturday, the USS Colorado, the US Navy’s latest Virginia-class attack submarine, went into service from the Naval Submarine Base New London in Connecticut. It comes with an unconventional piece of equipment: an XBox controller, according to USA Today.
The Navy said in September that the new submarines would come equipped with a pair of photonics masts, which replace the previously-used periscope. The masts feature high-resolution cameras that can rotate 360 degrees and feeds their ima

Each year, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer honors a new writer in the science fiction and fantasy field: an author who has professionally published a short story or novel in the past two years. Last year, Too Like The Lightning author Ada Palmer took home the award.Last year, author Jake Kerr compiled The Event Horizon 2017 anthology, a massive two-volume, 400,000 word ebook which collected stories from 75 authors. This year’s anthology contains 59 stories, and like last ye

The giant panda has a complicated reputation. It is known as an adorable animal, a symbol of Chinese diplomacy, the poster child for endangered animals, the poster child for charismatic megafauna who get too much attention for being endangered, and a creature that’s really bad at sex (with exceptions).
So it’s unsurprising that pandas are seen as bumbling animals, but in actuality, they do have one very impressive skill: their bodies neutralize cyanide. Yes, the poisonous chemical t

Following Facebook and Google’s footsteps, Twitter is reportedly planning to ban advertisements for cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings (ICOs), according Sky News.In January, Facebook prohibited ads for currencies such as Bitcoin in an effort to combat deceptive marketers, while Google followed suit last week. Sky News says (via Engadget) that the new advertising policies would ban worldwide ads for ICOs, token sales, and cryptocurrency wallets. The site might also ban ads for cry

Match Group, the company that holds a large portfolio of dating services, such as Tinder, Match.com, OkCupid, PlentyOfFish, to name a few, and was in talks last year to purchase dating and professional networking service Bumble. According to Recode, Match is still looking to acquire the service, but it’s going about it in an unconventional way: by suing it for patent infringement.On Friday, Match filed a lawsuit that accuses Bumble of infringing on a pair of patents held by Tinder: one ca

If you sleep on your Apple Watch the wrong way, you might get a wake-up call from the police. That’s what happened to Jason Rowley, who tweeted about the incident earlier this week. Using his watch as a sleep tracker, he ended up holding down the crown button to trigger an emergency call to the police, who showed up in his bedroom at 1AM. Rowley told us the police were friendly and helpful, and accustomed to WatchOS misdials like this one.
Public service announcement: If you sleep with an

While it’s still not clear what internet service providers will do after Ajit Pai’s FCC voted to repeal net neutrality rules, it’s certain that many online business models will be facing major upheavals. Of special concern is online marketing, which is largely dependent on fast and reliable access to content publishers and consumers, a requirement that was fairly met under net neutrality rules. Online advertisers will now be at the mercy of internet service providers (ISPs), w

I’ve never been much of a gadget blogger. My entries on The Verge’s Circuit Breaker have been met with sentiments ranging from “is this a joke?” to “I have difficulties getting your writing style” to “this is why I swiped left on you on Tinder,” which was deleted by the moderators.But that doesn’t mean I haven’t loved any gadgets in my time. For example, I love the PneuHound, a tiny robot dog built in the Hosoda Laboratory at Osaka Uni

It can be difficult to find time to finish a video game, especially if you only have a few hours a week to play. In our biweekly column Short Play we suggest video games that can be started and finished in a weekend.
It doesn’t take much to evoke the sense of a place. The right sound or the right look can be transportive, putting you in a location you’ve maybe never even been before, yet still intuitively understand. A Case of Distrust does this not by calling on cultural touchstone

There are a ton of podcasts out there, but finding the right one can be difficult. In our new column Pod Hunters, we cover what we’ve been listening to that we can’t stop thinking about.
LeVar Burton made his name as an actor on shows like Roots and Star Trek: The Next Generation, but many remember him best as the host of PBS’s Reading Rainbow, where he spent 21 seasons recommending books to children. After the show ended, he launched an iPad app and later a Kickstarter (which

Marketing firm Dot Com Infoway determined more than half the time we all spend digging through digital media online in 2018 is spent on mobile apps. Meanwhile, about three quarters of those apps are running on an Android-based operating system. So it stands to reason that those looking to give their career prospects a jolt should take a serious look at learning to build useful, stable, engaging Android apps. Obviously, that’s easier said than done. However, you can take a big step toward

This column is part of a series called "Voices of Women in Tech," created in collaboration with AnitaB.org, a global enterprise that supports women in technical fields, as well as the organizations that employ them and the academic institutions training the next generation.
As a chief human resources officer in the tech industry, I know firsthand that the talent gap is real. In the cybersecurity segment alone, experts predict some 2 million roles will go unfilled by 2019. And in an ultracompetit

Phone Case of the Month is a monthly series in which we live with, and subsequently review, our time with a phone case. Phone cases are one of our only ways to express individuality with our smartphones, so what do our phone case choices say about us?
Most of my phones cases are a feast for the eyes.This month’s is a treat for the ears — it literally makes bubble wrap popping sounds. You’re welcome. I found this case at Urban Outfitters, and I won’t apologize for that. T

It's always a gift when the live sketch comedy gets so intense on Saturday Night Live that someone "breaks" — which is to say, they break character and laugh.
The latest SNL, featuring guest host (and former cast member) Bill Hader, took breaks to a new level: Everyone laughed.
In the sketch, a group of friends (Heidi Gardner, Aidy Bryant, Melissa Villaseñor) watch in horror as a fourth friend (Cecily Strong) commits a grave social faux pas in bringing her geriatric new husband alon

It’s safe to say that nearly everyone in business today has at some point has heard the acronym GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Many in the digital industries and services arena are either preparing for the changes on the horizon, or are dreading the work that still needs to be done to prepare. In the United States, we’ve already seen the implementation of the email regulations for Can-Spam, but GDPR is something else entirely. In my presentations to marketers, I often re

There's nothing more beautiful to re-watch on a Sunday morning than a Saturday Night Live skit with the actors breaking character. 
Bill Hader returned to the show this weekend to host, and with him he brought the infamous and beloved Stefon, who joined Colin Jost and Michael Che's Weekend Update to give viewers some St. Patrick's Day tips. 
As per usual, Stefon dishes on New York's hottest clubs that have everything. These days, it's a CVS that turned into a Chase Bank and then back i

Last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former FBI director Andrew McCabe were fired. The former happened at the behest of Donald Trump and the latter came at the end of an independent investigation that was in no way influenced by Trump's frequent social media lashings of McCabe.
Saturday Night Live seized on the White House upheaval in an Anderson Cooper-led (Alex Moffat) cold open featuring interviews with Tillerson (John Goodman); Attorney General Jeff Sessions (Kate McKinnon), who f

On Friday, Facebook announced that it had suspended Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) and its political data analytics company, Cambridge Analytica, for violating its Terms of Service, by collecting and sharing the personal information of up to 50 million users without their consent. The incident is demonstrative of ways that Facebook’s core business model — delivering individualized ads to users — can be exploited, while raising uncomfortable questions about how such

Facebook is reportedly planning to launch its Oculus Go standalone virtual reality (VR) headset at the company’s F8 developer conference this year. Variety reports that the VR headset is likely to make its debut at F8 in May, alongside Facebook’s promise of “the biggest AR / VR news from Facebook to date.”
Oculus first unveiled its new standalone VR headset back in October, which will be priced at $199 once it ships. The Go is designed to be a standalone headset that wil

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Happy Sleep Awareness Week! Are you patting yourself on the back for hitting the sheets early? Or are you one of the millions of Americans who bank on less than seven hours and lots of coffee to keep them going? If the latter, you deserve better. A good night's sleep comes with a slew of benefits that coffe

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How many times have you accidentally tripped over your laptop cord, only to tear the entire thing out of your computer? Or even worse, have your laptop come plummeting down with it? Yeah, it's not pretty.
Chargers offer an easy way to power up any device — be it a laptop, tablet, or phone — but

Online service marketplaces are relatively new, and there are few ways for their operators to regularly monitor the entirety of services and transactions. Unfortunately, this creates an open environment for electronic money laundering, known as ‘transaction laundering,’ to occur. Last November, we all discovered that no one is immune to cyber crime, when The Daily Beast published an article showing that Airbnb had been exposed to online payment system exploitation. The scam is simpl

The tracking of people’s location is becoming an increasingly useful tool for many businesses, whether they want to use it to connect customers with their special offers, monitor footfall, or provide other location-based services. However, a snag is coming in the shape of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, which introduces much tougher rules around the collection and use of personal data. And location data can most certainly qualify as personal data, anytime it relates to

Facebook’slate Friday disclosure that a data analytics company with ties to the Trump campaign improperly obtained — and then failed to destroy — the private data of 50 million users is generating more unwanted attention from politicians, some of whom were already beating the drums of regulation in the company’s direction.
On Saturday morning, Facebook dove into the semantics of its disclosure, arguing against wording in the New York Times story the company was attempting

Light-field display and “mixed reality” startup Avegant laid off a significant portion of its staff in recent weeks, and also replaced its CEO with one of the company founders, according to people familiar with the company’s operations.Avegant’s headcount was reduced last month to fewer than 20 people, and those who remain work largely in R&D or on the technology partnership side. Prior to the layoffs, there had been somewhere between 40 and 50 employees, one person