Technology news

It’s easy to pick up habits from romantic partners. People who are attracted to each other often engage in mirroring, or subconsciously copying each other’s gestures and patterns of speech. It’s also common for people in relationships to adopt each other’s attitudes, behaviors, and hobbies. Personally, it’s how I learned to sail, rock climb and develop an appreciation for the finer points of noise music and puppetry.Since the musician Grimes started dating tech mog

I trust by now we’ve all seen and been at least a little disturbed by The Selfish Ledger, the nearly 9-minute-long concept video from inside Google’s “moonshot factory” X labs. In the wake of it becoming public this week, Google quickly disavowed the video, claiming it was just a thought experiment “not related to any current or future products.” And yet, the company’s patent applications exhibit a mode of thinking that runs at least in parallel, if not

With the season of graduations underway, the new grads in your life are preparing for life in the real world. If you’re looking for a gift for a new grad, The Verge put together a convenient Graduation Gift Guide with ideas ranging from practical (a financial planner) to fun (a Nintendo Switch). If you’re looking for something in between, a nice pair of wireless headphones or a new laptop is sure to make both the graduate and their parents happy.
Best Buy is running an Apple Shoppin

China celebrated the country’s first rocket launch by a private spaceflight company this week. OneSpace Technologies, based out of Beijing, launched its OS-X rocket from an undisclosed location on a suborbital trajectory on Wednesday, reaching a reported altitude of 25 miles and traveling about 170 miles before falling back to Earth. It’s the first demonstration of what the company says will become a scalable business built around sending small satellites into space.Until now, China

Dystopian stories are often described as warnings, but they can also be Rorschach blots. Readers dive in with specific fears — about technology, society, or the future — and find an allegory to validate them. And Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s classic 1953 novel, is a perfectly adaptable cautionary tale. It’s an elegant high-concept story backed by a complicated web of broad social complaints, critiquing everything from social justice to the zipper. This might be why it&

Your addiction to bean bag toss — or "cornhole," as it's often called — doesn't need to be relegated to backyards or sandy beaches. You can now take this game of tossing bean bags into a small hole wherever you go.
SEE ALSO: Your selfie game is about to get a major boost from this motorized smartphone mount
A company called Scienz created the Mini Bean Bag Toss to play in the comfort of your home, at your desk at work, or even in the backseat of the car during a long road trip.
Signi

It was always going to be a wedding like no other. But, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's big day is shaping up to be a royal wedding like no other. 
Notably absent from the usual guest lists are heads of states and politicians. In their stead, Meghan and Harry have chosen to send their invites to celebrity A-listers. Like, Oprah Winfrey, Serena Williams, Idris Elba, George and Amal Clooney, Elton John, David and Victoria Beckham and many more.
SEE ALSO: How guests will be expected to behave

Digital marketers have their work cut out for them these days. With the onslaught of content flowing in and out of everyone's news feeds, it has become increasingly hard to capture the attention of users. Marketers need to find a way to make their content stand out amongst earth-shattering TV cancellation (and resurrection) news, royal wedding updates, and adorable puppy videos. And they need to do it fast.
SEE ALSO: Master digital marketing with this $39 mega training bundle
They're expected to

This post is part of Mashable's You're Old Week. Break through the haze of nostalgia with us and see what holds up, what disappoints, and what got better with time.
Asylums for the psychotic emerged in the 1800s, when it was deemed immoral to simply throw insane people into jails. And among the most serious afflictions in these wards was nostalgia. 
"It was once a medical disease that could end fatally," Edward Shorter, a professor of the history of medicine and psychiatry at the University

All eyes are on the royal bride and groom today, as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle get ready to walk down the aisle. 
And, it wouldn't be a day of celebration without a Google Doodle to mark the occasion. 
If you venture to Google's homepage on this special day, you'll spot this truly beautiful illustration by San Fransisco-based artist and animator Vrinda V Zaveri. 
SEE ALSO: This is not a drill. Oprah just rocked up to Harry and Meghan's wedding
"Today’s Doodle depicts the

OK, deep breaths everyone. Deep, deep breaths. This is not a drill. 
Oprah Winfrey — a.k.a. queen of the whole damn world— just rocked up at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding. And, yes, nothing in life will ever measure up to this moment. 
SEE ALSO: How guests will be expected to behave at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding
As guests begin to arrive at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, one or two familiar faces could be spotted among the throng of attendees

Pittsburgh was hit with heavy rain on Wednesday night, causing severe flooding on a local highway. 
Unlike typical rainfall in the area, the thunderstorm didn't just pass through. Instead, it stayed over the city, dumping half an inch of rain over Pittsburgh every hour. 
The storm gave us one bright spot during the downpour: this video of a dumpster jauntily floating down the river that used to be Route 51. Local news anchor Ken Rice captured it on the move on Wednesday night. Read mor

China has banned the most popular rage comics website in the country for poking fun at a communist hero. Under the “Heroes and Martyrs Protection Act,” passed by the National People’s Congress and enacted on May 1st, it’s now illegal to make jokes at the expense of communist heroes or martyrs, those distinctions belonging of course to the state.The comics site Baozou, which had more than 10 million followers on the Chinese social media site Weibo and over 245,000 subscri

Following the Santa Fe High School shooting in Texas that left ten victims dead, Netflix announced that it would cancel the 13 Reasons Why Season 2 premiere event set to take place later that day in Los Angeles on Friday, May 13.
SEE ALSO: Worried about ’13 Reasons Why?’ Mental health experts are here to help.
In a statement, the company wrote, "Our hearts are with the victims of the Santa Fe High School shooting, and with all victims of gun violence. In light of today's tragedy, we

TESS, the satellite launched by NASA last month that will search thousands of stars for Earth-like exoplanets, has just sent back its first test image. It’s just a quick one, not “science-quality,” but it does give you an idea of the scale of the mission: the area TESS will eventually document is 400 times the area covered by this shot.
What you see above is the star field around the constellation Centaurus; this 2-second exposure captured more than 200,000 stars. That’s

Tidal says it’s investigating how an internal data breach of sensitive company data resulted in a hard drive falling into the hands of a Norwegian newspaper, according to Variety. The paper, Norwegian business publication Dagens Næringsliv, accused the music streaming service last week of inflating both its subscriber growth numbers and streaming numbers for popular exclusive releases, including Beyonce’s Lemonade and Kanye West’s Life of Pablo. Allegeledy, data proving

Sprint is offering free unlimited 4G LTE to people who own specific Snapdragon-powered PCs for the rest of the year. The promotion will help out users who have one of the first “Always Connected” Windows PCs, which normally require paid data plans, as spotted by Engadget.People who buy either the HP Envy x2, the Lenovo Miix 630, or the Asus NovaGo can get free LTE from Sprint, which lasts until December 31st this year. After this year, the data plan will cost either $5 (with auto pa

Google’sDuplex, which calls businesses on your behalf and imitates a real human, ums and ahs included, has sparked a bit of controversy among privacy advocates. Doesn’t Google recording a person’s voice and sending it to a data center for analysis violate two-party consent law, which requires everyone in a conversation to agree to being recorded? The answer isn’t immediately clear, and Google’s silence isn’t helping.
Let’s take California’s law as

Another season of Gotham has come and gone, and after the Season 4 finale, “No Man’s Land,” the question of when Bruce Wayne will finally become Batman seems to finally have a clear answer: soon, or else. 
The events of “No Man’s Land” necessitate the appearance of the long-awaited Dark Knight in a way that no finale has done before, by essentially transforming the entire premise of Gotham from a cheeky bat-prequel to...the plot of every single game in th

Google Assistant will identify itself at the beginning of conversations when it starts making phone calls on behalf of real users later this year using Google’s human-sounding Duplex AI technology. It will also alert those on the other end of the conversation “in certain jurisdictions” that calls are being recorded, according to Bloomberg, which reported on the details that were shared at a company meeting Thursday. Certain jurisdictions?! Many states require consent from both