Technology news

In this life, there are two things that are very important to me: space and the A Song of Ice and Fire series. And earlier this year, I made a fun discovery that these two subjects share a similar problem. I’ve been waiting the same amount of time for The Winds of Winter to come out as I have been waiting for NASA astronauts to launch from US soil again.
Since this realization, I’ve been truly torn over which event I thought would happen first. But with the news that The Winds of Wi

In 1989, a man armed with a hunting rifle and a knife entered a Montreal university and systematically killed 14 women, before killing himself. “I have decided to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker … I have decided to put an end to those viragos,” he wrote in his suicide note. One female student shouted during the massacre that she was not a feminist and did not hate men. He murdered her anyway.
Twenty-five years later, a self-proclaimed &ldquo

Earlier this month, a report said that YouTube was planning on releasing a non-algorithmic, whitelisted version of its YouTube Kids app in the near future. Today, Google confirmed this, announcing new parental controls for YouTube Kids. These new controls can restrict YouTube Kids to only display handpicked videos instead of ones algorithmically curated, as reported by TechCrunch.
Now, when parents disable search on a child’s profile, a new option for “approved content only” c

Fresh off a massive cascading series of fiascos that has thrown the future of Qualcomminto doubt, the company managed to report a mostly positive first quarter and keep the stock from going into a further tailspin.
Qualcomm has been under considerable pressure for a wide variety of reasons, the most obvious one of which is a massive takeover attempt by Broadcom falling apart. But beyond that, Qualcomm is facing issues trying to close its acquisition of NXP, faces a continued public spat with App

For hundreds of years, new materials were discovered through trial and error, or luck and serendipity. Now, scientists are using artificial intelligence to speed up the process.
Recently, researchers at Northwestern University used AI to figure out how to make new metal-glass hybrids 200 times faster than they would have doing experiments in the lab. Other scientists are building databases of thousands of compounds so that algorithms can predict which ones combine to form interesting new materi

The eleventh-hour investment that saved Faraday Future from running out of cash at the end of 2017 came at a steep price. While CEO and founder Jia Yueting has secured enough cash to keep his electric car efforts alive, The Verge has learned that Faraday Future’s fate now lies in the hands of a twisting series of offshore holding companies that trace back to Hong Kong and mainland China. And the entity at the top of this new structure now holds Faraday Future’s cards — includi

George R.R. Martin has announced that he’ll be releasing a new book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series this fall — sort of. No, it’s not the long awaited The Winds of Winter, which promises to finally continue the saga that Martin begin back in 1996 and which fans have been waiting almost seven years to read. Rather, fans will be able to enjoy 640 pages of Fire and Blood, a collection of short stories that tell “the definitive history of the Targaryens in Westeros.&rdq

Facebook has increasingly been reckoning with the many problems its network has, and today, the company released an ad acknowledging the issues and promising to get back to “what made Facebook good in the first place.”
The minute-long spot starts with a look back at Facebook’s older interface and tries to humanize what we do on the network by connecting posts back to real people, all with sad piano music playing overtop.
When it gets to addressing Facebook’s problems, th

The Belgian Gaming Commission has ruled after a preliminary investigation that loot boxes in several games — Overwatch, FIFA 18, and Counter Strike: Global Offensive — are considered games of chance that are subject to Belgian gaming law, via Ars Technica.According to a statement from Belgian Minister of Justice Koen Geens, the games currently constitute criminal violations of Belgium’s gaming legislation, and developers could be subject to prison sentences of up to five years

Google launched the new version of Gmail today, and some of the features from Google’s other email client, Inbox, have come with it. As noted by Android Police, the snooze function has been carried over for web and is now making its way to the Gmail app on Android.
If you have snooze available on mobile, it won’t have its own icon in the top bar the way it did in Inbox. Instead, you can access snooze by tapping the overflow icon in the top right corner when viewing an email. Once sn

The US Food and Drug Administration is cracking down on electronic cigarette use among teens. The agency announced a new, five-point initiative this week that it says should stop vape companies from marketing to teens and prevent retailers from selling to underage kids. It’s also investigating Juul, the company that’s become synonymous with the cool teens vaping image.As part of its crackdown, the FDA has been carrying out an undercover operation to identify retailers selling e-ciga

This morning, the European Space Agency unveiled a new, highly detailed sky map of the Milky Way Galaxy that showcases the brightness and positions of nearly 1.7 billion stars. It’s the most comprehensive catalog of stars to date, and it includes precise details about many of the stars’ distances, movements, and colors as well. With the map’s release, astronomers are hoping to use this information to learn more about the structure of our galactic home and how it first formed b

BMW kicked off this week’s Beijing Motor Show with two announcements today. The company unveiled a concept version of the forthcoming iX3 SUV, which is arguably going to be the company’s first serious effort at a mass-produced fully electric car meant for the global market. The other announcement is that the iX3 will be made in China.The iX3, due out in 2020, is not all that differently styled from the X3 compact SUV that it’s based on (though BMW has toyed with its famous kid

A new, updated version of Snap’s wearable Spectacles glasses is coming this week, according to a report from Wired. However, there’s almost no actual information as to what the second-generation smart glasses might look like or how they’ll be different from the original model.
Last month, Cheddar reported that Snap was working on two new versions of the Spectacles wearable cameras: a more modest upgrade that would offer bug fixes, improved performance, and new colors, and a mo

Snap wants its users to play games with their friends in Snapchat. The company’s launching new lenses today, called “Snappables,” that let users play games through touch, motion, or facial expressions.
The games sound similar to Snapchat’s Cuphead lens, which let you treat your friends as bosses to destroy. Wired reports that users can add friends to a rock band, challenge them to an emoji dance-off, or play basketball. You can see some of them in the video above. One pe

Netflix is expanding its streaming video reach further into journalism programming with a new series from BuzzFeed called Follow This.Follow This, according to The Hollywood Reporter, will be a 20-episode, weekly short-form documentary series that will feature a number of BuzzFeed’s journalists reporting on a range of topics. Netflix revealed a clip from the first episode of the upcoming show, following Scaachi Koul as she covers the world of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) vi

Automatic savings mobile app Digit is expanding its services, adding the option to let users pay off credit card debt with money in their Digit account, as reported by TechCrunch.
To try out the new feature, called Digit Pay, users create a “credit card debt” goal in the Digit app settings, then activate the service. Once Digit Pay is enabled, the app will begin to use funds saved within the account to pay off your credit card balances. There’s also a new feature called &ldquo

The Justice Department is reportedly investigating Chinese electronics company Huawei over possible violations of sanctions against Iran, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.Details of the investigation are unclear
Details of the investigation are unclear, including what, specifically, the company is suspected of doing, but the probe is a new front in ongoing US scrutiny of Chinese manufacturers looking for a bigger slice of the American market.Huawei has faced severe hurdles to

Google just updated Gmail with one of its biggest redesigns in a long time. The update brings several security features like confidential mode, which allows you to add two-factor authentication and / or set expiration dates for individual emails. Phishing alerts are also now highlighted in a much clearer way, with bold red boxes that are harder to overlook. There’s also a new Tasks integration to make your to-do lists easier to manage alongside your emails.
So, if you’re here, readi

Back in February, Ron Amadeo wrote an excellent piece at Ars Technica that pointed out an obvious fact: Google’s Wear OS is in serious trouble. Of course, back in February, Wear OS wasn’t called Wear OS; it was called Android Wear. The renaming happened mainly because Google wanted to emphasize that watches based on the OS could work with iPhones as well as Android phones. Though, in this context, “as well” doesn’t exactly apply: Wear OS is a much better experience

Nintendo’s DIY cardboard Labo construction kits for the Switch were released last week, offering multitudes of projects to build and play with. But the beauty of the Labo is that you can turn cardboard and the Switch into anything. For example, the variety kit comes with a piano, but The Verge’s Dami Lee and Meg Toth decided to make their own cardboard guitar for a one-woman band.Since the launch last Friday, many people have come up experimental and offbeat uses for the Labo, inclu

Kuberneteshas gained in popularity quickly over the last 18 months, but like many highly technical solutions it requires a level of expertise many companies are lacking. A Bangalore/San Francisco startup called Hasura hopes to simplify all of that with a managed Kubernetes solution built with developers in mind.
Today, the company announced a $1.6 million seed round led by Nexus Venture Partners with participation from GREE Ventures.
Kubernetes is a tool that helps companies running containers j

Dell has announced a slew of updates to its business laptops, including a new 15-inch Precision 5530, which is essentially a professional, business-oriented version of the XPS 15. Like the XPS 15, the new Precision 5530 comes in two models: a standard clamshell and a 2-in-1 version that converts into a tablet.
The 2-in-1 option is a little more interesting because it takes the XPS 15 2-in-1 and tweaks it with some enhancements for professional graphics users. Specifically, it swaps the hybrid I

Eric Lundgren, an e-waste recycler and inventor, will have to serve a 15-month prison sentence for selling Microsoft restore disks. Lundgren received his sentence months ago, but a federal appeals court confirmed it earlier this month. He’ll also have to pay a $50,000 fine.Although restore disks are given to everyone who buys a computer with a licensed version of Windows (and can be downloaded for free), Microsoft decided to press criminal charges against Lundgren for distributing the dis

Riding high on the growing consumer demand for podcasts, a startup called Castbox this morning announced the close of $13.5 million in Series B funding for its technology-fueled podcast app. The round was led by SIG China, and includes participation from existing investors IDG Capital, Qiming Venture Partners and GSR Ventures.
To date, Castbox has raised $29.5 million.
While there are a number of podcast applications on the market today, what makes Castbox interesting is the proprietar

A startup that uses artificial intelligence to help emergency dispatchers identify signs of cardiac arrest over the phone will begin testing its software across Europe this summer.Danish firm Corti says its algorithms can recognize out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (those that occur in the home or public) more quickly and accurately than humans. The software has already been deployed in Copenhagen, but this year, it will start four new pilots in as-yet-unnamed European cities in partnership with

In honor of our new wallpaper page, we are excited to announce a phone wallpaper design contest! The winning wallpaper will be featured on a phone in an upcoming phone video review on The Verge.
Judging criteriaOriginality — we will do a Google image search...
Creativity — make The Verge’s art director jealousSomething that echoes The Verge’s artistic aesthetic
Here’s our color palette, but you can definitely diverge from this color scheme:Throughout the duration o

Last night on The Late Show, Hank Azaria addressed the controversy surrounding The Simpsons’ Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, a character he voices that has been accused of being a racist caricature. In response to Stephen Colbert’s question about what should happen to the character, Azaria mentioned the need for more diversity in the writers’ room, and said he was “perfectly willing to step aside or help transition it to something new.”
“The most important thing is,

There are many reasons why the new God of War is good: the revamped combat, the closer camera, the astonishing single-shot perspective, or the more mature story all jump to mind. But what escalates God of War is not just nailing the big stuff, but the smaller things, too, like Kratos’s new axe. It might just be my favorite video game weapon in recent memory.
The Leviathan Axe might be my favorite video game weapon in recent memory
Officially dubbed the Leviathan Axe, the new blade is the

The 2018 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition is currently running in China, and Mercedes has unveiled a new concept high-end luxury SUV at the event. The Vision Mercedes-Maybach Ultimate Luxury SUV features a spacious interior, and there’s even a bespoke tea set hidden in the car’s console. The car is sleek, cherry red, and aimed at the Chinese market, where the color red symbolizes happiness, luck, and joy.
The model is conceived as being fully electric, with all-wheel driv