Technology news

Step right up, boys and girls: it's the cat with the creepy human face.
Meet Valkyrie, the two-month-old Maine Coon kitten that has surfaced on the internet to spook and bewilder you with her disturbingly human-like features. 
SEE ALSO: The Cat Art Show: 'It's no f*cking joke'
After a video of Valkyrie was shared on her breeder's Instagram, the internet quickly took notice of her resemblance to, well, a human.
It's hard to put a finger on what exactly makes Valkyrie look so much like a pers

What did we ever do to deserve the wonderful gift that is news bloopers?
News anchors and weather people are under constant pressure to deliver accurate news while countless souls watch from the comfort of their homes. 
Inevitably, sometimes stuff just doesn't go as planned — and this video by News Be Funny captures all of the news bloopers from June. Read more...
More about Watercooler, Viral Videos, News Bloopers, Culture, and Web Culture

Brazil's Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior has become a highlight of the 2018 World Cup — not for his skills, but for his time spent lying on the pitch.
A study released this week revealed that Neymar has spent an impressive 14 minutes on the ground during the 2018 World Cup. His dramatic falls, slips, fouls, and spills have prompted countless memes, and have even inspired children to act out his most ridiculous moments.
SEE ALSO: Neymar's World Cup dive gives us the top-notch memes we'

Strange clouds that glow in the night sky are getting easier to see — and it could be because of all the methane we’re pumping into the atmosphere, a new study says.The bad news is that methane is a greenhouse gas that’s contributing to global warming. But the good news is that more methane means that more of us might get a chance to see these stunning, night-shining — or noctilucent — clouds, according to the study, which was published this week in the journal Geo

Lemme just state the obvious real quick: Dating is a pain in the ass.
Blind dates are awkward, people become disinterested and ghost, and dating the hot coworker always ends awkwardly. This is probably a pessimistic outlook, but sometimes, it genuinely seems like your chances of finding a match dwindle by the day.
SEE ALSO: EliteSingles review: A dating site with curated matches for a more mature crowd
If you're one of those people who has simply succumbed to the idea of being a crazy cat person

TL;DR: Don't let the fact that it's nearly 25 years old fool you — Match continues to be one of the best dating sites for all ages. It's a great happy medium between marriage-centric eharmony and hookup-centric Tinder, and is constantly being bettered with new, modern features to grow with the market.Lemme just state the obvious real quick: Dating is a pain in the ass.
Lemme just state the obvious real quick: Dating is a pain in the ass.
Blind dates are awkward, people ghost or just want t

Twitter suspended 70 million accounts in in the past two months as part of a crackdown on malicious activity on its platform, according to a report in The Washington Post. The rate of suspensions for May and June is reportedly twice the company’s October 2017 suspension rate.
The company has faced increasing pressure
The company has been widely criticized for years over seemingly lax efforts to police bad actors, including abusive users. As the scope of Russian disinformation campaigns we

On Thursday, the European Parliament rejected a controversial proposal to overhaul the European Union's copyright laws that critics say would significantly damage internet freedom.
The legislation — dubbed the Copyright Directive — was rejected by a vote of 318-278. That means the proposed rules, which passed the European Parliament's legal branch last month, will now be debated in September.
The proposal is an attempt to modernize copyright laws for the digital age, and its proponen

Guild Wars 2 developer ArenaNet has fired two of its developers, following a disagreement with a streamer on Twitter. Narrative designer Jessica Price and Peter Fries, a writer who’d been with ArenaNet for more than 12 years, were dismissed for what ArenaNet is calling “a [failure] to uphold our standards of communicating” with the game’s players.On July 3rd, narrative designer Price tweeted a 29-tweet thread dissecting the challenges of writing player characters in an M

The Kepler Space Telescope is almost out of fuel, which means its life is coming to an end, NASA announced today. The space agency says it put the planet-hunting spacecraft into a “hibernation” safe mode this past Monday, and that a plan to reactivate Kepler next month could burn out whatever fuel remains.
NASA launched the Kepler Space Telescope in 2009 in an effort to learn more about the number and frequency of planets in our galaxy. To the delight of many, scientists using Keple

Today, US space tourism venture Virgin Galactic announced a new partnership with two of Italy’s biggest aerospace companies to someday launch people into space from the European country. The plan is to eventually conduct flights of Virgin Galactic’s passenger spaceplane from Italy’s future Grottaglie Spaceport, which will be located at an airport on the heel of the country’s famous boot. If this all pans out, Virgin Galactic could be the first group to launch someone int

The weekend after the Fourth of July is always kind of depressing — because once that peak summer holiday is over, time flies, baby. While winter seems to drag, you can blink once in summer and suddenly, it's September. 
No need to mope around, though: There are a ton of great smart 4K TV deals this weekend that are sure to cheer you up (and give you something to look forward to when the weather starts to get cold again). 
SEE ALSO: This is the best day to buy plane tickets
Let u

Sonos is preparing for an IPO, filing to go public with the SEC. The company set a placeholder value of $100 million, although that number could change before the IPO. The filing gives us our best look at Sonos sales so far. The company made nearly $1 billion in revenue in the past fiscal year, although it had a net loss of 14.2 million. Sonos cited its net losses and competition from the likes of Apple, Amazon, and Google as potential risk factors, noting how it depends on these companies for

Lucasfilm has kept things pretty quiet when it comes to J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode IX, but Variety is now reporting that the director has cast Keri Russell in the upcoming film. The character she’ll be playing isn’t named, but according to the report it calls for “action-heavy fight scenes.”
Russell first came to national attention as the star of Felicity back in 1998. That show, which was created by Abrams and Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Dawn of the Planet of t

If you're a big fan of The Americans, you're gonna love this. 
Variety is reporting that Keri Russell is in talks to join the cast of Star Wars: Episode IX—reuniting with director J.J. Abrams for the first time since Mission: Impossible III. They previously collaborated on the televised drama Felicity.
SEE ALSO: 'Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order' game is coming in 2019
According to Variety's sources, project leads (including Abrams) have been meeting with various actresses for several wee

Welcome to my nightmare: This GIF of a bug being expectorated out of a human mouth.
During the World Cup match between Uruguay and France on Friday, French goalie Hugo Lloris nearly swallowed a gigantic bug. Fortunately, he managed to quickly expel the insect invader from his body. 
The moment was captured during coverage of the game on multiple sports networks as the entire world watched. So, naturally, this brief bug encounter has been preserved as a GIF to haunt us forevermore.
SEE ALSO:

The valuable domain name Crypto.com, whose owner Matt Blaze has steadfastly refused to sell to cryptocurrency companies, is now owned by a cryptocurrency company. TechCrunch reported today that Monaco purchased the domain for an undisclosed amount. Monaco is known for its cryptocurrency token MCO and a Visa debit card backed by cryptocurrency; after the domain sale, the company is rebranding itself as “Crypto.com.”
Blaze, a prominent cryptology researcher and professor at the Univer

Daimlerhas been granted a license to test self-driving vehicles on public roads in Beijing, making it the first international automaker to receive such permission.
The owner of the Mercedes-Benz brand was given the test permit by the Chinese government after extensive closed-course testing, the company said in a statement, adding that it marks a milestone in its research and development efforts in China.
Daimler, which also has licenses in Germany and the U.S., said it will now begin road tests

Apple Music has reportedly surpassed Spotify in total number of U.S. subscribers.
According to an anonymous "major distributor" speaking to Digital Music News, Apple's streaming service has surpassed Spotify’s total number of U.S. subscribers. Both services are hovering around 20 million paid users in the U.S., but Apple Music has recently pulled ahead by a small margin, according to the industry source.
SEE ALSO: Apple may offer subscription bundles — and they sound a lot like Amazo

Researchers from Wayve, a company founded by a team from the Cambridge University engineering department, have developed a neural network sophisticated enough to learn how to drive a car in 15 to 20 minutes using nothing but a computer and a single camera. Start your engines: The company showed off its robust deep learning methods last week in a company blog post showcasing the no-frills approach to driverless car development. Where companies like Waymo and Uber are relying on a variety of sens

After a stunning World Cup victory against Colombia this week, all of England is more than ready to have a trophy under their belt.
From crowding around a stranger's window to watch the game to men taking off their shirts and swinging them around in celebration at the Liverpool Street Station, it's safe to say England is pretty chuffed.
If you've seen any of these triumphant videos, you may have noticed that there's some sort of song that can be heard. Despite being sung at different intervals,

The blockchain revolution is coming, but you might not see it. That’s the view of Brian Behlendorf, executive director of the Linux Foundation’s HyperledgerProject.
Speaking at the TC Sessions: Blockchain event in Zug, Switzerland, Behlendorf explained that much of the innovation that the introduction of blockchains are primed to happen behind this the scenes unbeknownst to most.
“For a lot of consumers, you’re not going to realize when the bank or a web fo

With long summer evenings comes the perfect opportunity to dust off your old boxes of circuits and wires and start to build something. If you’re short on inspiration, you might be interested in artist and engineer Dan Macnish’s how-to guide on building an AI-powered doodle camera using a thermal printer, Raspberry pi, a dash of Python and Google’s Quick Draw data set.
“Playing with neural networks for object recognition one day, I wondered if I could take the concept of a

We're in the peak era of superhero movies and superhero movie fatigue. 
Ant-Man and the Wasp is a welcome change of pace, just as Ant-Man was in 2015. Despite budget and scale, these movies work best with streamlined plots, astute characters, and a story that doesn't rely on superpowers and VFX.
SEE ALSO: Who's who in 'Ant-Man and the Wasp'
The reason Ant-Man was such a tight, successful film is because it wasn't a superhero movie so much as a heist. It belongs in the conversation with the

Seagate is a pretty familiar name when it comes to storage, but its primary focus has been on consumer hard drives and flash storage for the enterprise market. Now, the company has launched a new consumer SSD, signaling a renewed interest in making more storage for traditional PCs and laptops.
The specs on the new BarraCuda SSD position it as a relatively basic SATA drive, rather than the newer, faster NVMe ones. That means it won’t be hitting any crazy fast speeds, but it’s still a

Years ago – six years ago, to be exact – a toy called Buckyballs came under attack by government officials intent on destroying fun. The Consumer Product Safety Commission banned the toys, which we noted were tiny rare earth magnets that were good for play but bad for a snack, because a few overzealous children swallowed one or two and found themselves in gastrointestinal distress.
The lawsuit against ZenMagnets, creators of Buckyballs, began as a “recall prior to record of inj

Pixar’s Inside Out is a charming, creative film — that “provides a good example of many common but incorrect assumptions about emotion.” That’s according to Ralph Adolphs and David Anderson, both professors of neuroscience at Caltech and the authors of The Neuroscience of Emotion (Princeton University Press).Watching the film you’d think, for example, that there are just a few primary emotions, that emotions have mostly external causes, that they’re lik

Three Canadian social media celebrities died Tuesday after they were swept over a 100-foot waterfall at Shannon Falls, near Squamish, British Columbia, the CBC reports. Two of the three, Ryker Gamble and Alexey Lyakh, who were two of the creators behind the popular travel YouTube channel High On Life, dove into the pool above the falls in an attempt to save Megan “Mindy” Scraper, Lyakh’s longtime partner, who’d slipped into the water. None survived. Scraper was 29, Lyakh

In what amounted to one of the most far-reaching and interesting conversations at TC Sessions in Zug, Ethereum masterminds Vitalik Buterin, Justin Drake, and Karl Floersch spoke openly – and often candidly – about a bright future for Ethereum scaling and, more interestingly, their way to build teams that work.
“There’s definitely changes that we could have made into the protocol,” said Buterin when asked whether or not he would have changed anything if he could star

There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services, and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.
What to watch
The blood-soaked 2000 Japanese thriller Battle Royale. The film follows a group of

Back in February, when we were still recovering from the barrage of Android devices that had a notch cut out of their displays similar to the iPhone X, Vivo blew people’s minds with its Apex concept phone, which featured a truly bezel-less display. The company had figured out a way to hide sensors, the earpiece, and even the selfie camera with a bunch of innovations that we’d never seen before. Last month, it brought that concept to life with the launch of the NEX. It’s a rema

After mastering its rocket landings on the Florida coast, SpaceX wants to try the same trick in California. The company recently filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to land one of its Falcon 9 rockets on ground at Vandenberg Air Force Base in southern California, following a launch from the facility there. If that happens, it’ll be the first time that SpaceX has done a land landing on the West Coast.
SpaceX has two options for landing its rockets following a la

Earlier today, I got an email about Swedish AI startup, Avionero. As a frequent traveler, the company’s product is pretty intriguing: it’s a bit like Skyscanner, but with a greater emphasis on data visualization and artificial intelligence, allowing you to find the cheapest flights with the least amount of pain. Avionero is currently available in beta, and, from what I can tell, only in Swedish. But the tech behind it seems promising. Avionero reckons it has a larger inventory of fl

In a series of late night/early morning tweets, Elon Musk offered up engineers from Space X and the Boring Company to help the soccer team trapped in a Thailand cave.Musk began by suggesting a potential solution to help rescue the team and their coach who went missing late last month. As he noted, the Boring Company in particular has quite a bit of experience digging holes and working with ground penetrating radar. He then announced that he would be offer up help in the form of engineers from tw

Have you felt a disconnect with your Alexa and wished she could share more of your sense of humor or tell you an actually scary ghost story? Startup Storyline makes designing your own Alexa skills as easy and dragging and dropping speech blocks, and has just raised $770,000 in a funding round led by Boost VC to help grow its skill builder API.
The company launched in 2017 to help bridge the gap between creators and the tricky voice recognition software powering smart speakers like Alex

The Australian government has announced it has awarded IBM with an impressively lucrative $750 million (AUD$1 billion) contract to develop blockchain and other related solutions, despite their bungling of the country’s national census in 2016. IBM‘s second chance comes in the form of a five-year deal that the Australian government hopes will save taxpayers $74 million. The agreement will see IBM develop AI, blockchain and quantum technology solutions geared for cybersecurity, data m

Felicity Conrad and Kristen Sonday were on very different paths until three years ago. Conrad was an associate at the powerhouse law firm Skadden Arps. Meanwhile, Sonday, a Princeton grad and the first person in her family to go to college, was reflecting on the several years she’d spent with the U.S. Department of Justice in Mexico City, working to extradite fugitives.
As it happens, both were coming to similar conclusions about the U.S. legal system, including that it’s especi