Technology news

Drake’s new album Scorpion is all over YouTube and Instagram right now, in part thanks to a challenge issued by Instagrammer TheShiggyShow, which has people dancing to “In My Feelings.” The song mentions a character named Keke, and the “Keke Challenge” meme has become a viral sensation. While it can be performed anywhere, some of the biggest videos have people stepping out of moving cars to boogie in the streets. That particular version of the meme — an echo

Researchers have figured out how to see through flames: it just takes blue LED theater lights, a camera filter, and a research facility where you can light test buildings on fire.The scientists tasked with understanding how fire destroys structures and devours our possessions need to watch these things burn — in the laboratory, that is. This research is key for keeping people safe, but it’s not easy: there’s soot, there’s smoke, and there are the flames to contend with.

The next big Star Wars movie will begin production on Wednesday, August 1st in London, and Lucasfilm has formally announced the cast for the film. While there are no surprises regarding the actors playing the roles of the characters introduced in the sequel trilogy, there are a few major reveals: Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill will be back, and so will Billy Dee Williams, now officially confirmed to be reprising his role as Lando Calrissian, after rumors earlier this year.Other actors reprising

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
“Sarah,” a third-season episode of the supernatural drama Haven. Based

It’s hot in Europe right now. Like, really hot. It’s so hot that every time I stand up from sitting down, I leave another puddle, exposing my perpetual swamp ass to the world. I’ve taken four cold showers today, yet I still stink. Every time I accidentally come into contact with other human flesh, I instantly recoil in disgust. The boiling temperature is turning me into a kind of moist vampire. Pretty much all of Europe is sweating its balls off right now. At the time of writi

Verizon introduced its own mobile VPN today called Safe Wi-Fi, which will hide your IP address when you use public networks. Safe Wi-Fi only works for Verizon customers on iOS and Android and it costs $3.99 monthly per account to cover up to 10 devices. Currently, Verizon is offering the first 30 days as a free trial.
To get the VPN, just log into your My Verizon app and head to “Products and Devices.” Then scroll down to Safe Wi-Fi. As of this writing, the feature has not appeared

Discovery is considering launching its own direct-to-consumer streaming service, according to statements made by the company’s CEO, David Zaslav, at an industry event yesterday. The bundle, which would charge customers between $5 to $8 dollars per month, would encompass all of Discovery’s networks — including the Food Network, HGTV, TLC, and more.
It’s an idea that’s still in the earliest of stages, according to a report in Adweek. Whether the service will be based

The social network yesterday filed a report with the SEC, which disclosed CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s security allowance. All those extra trips to testify in front of Congress this year must have taken their toll, because he’s now allotted $10 million. That’s a significant increase over last year’s budgeted $7.3 million. Zuckerberg may be a billionaire, but he doesn’t pay his own private jet expenses. The filing, which you can read here, indicates the $10 million allowan

New York is officially kicking internet and cable provider Spectrum, aka Charter, out of the state after the company failed to deliver on its fast internet promises. The state required Spectrum to roll out high-speed internet across underserved rural areas when it merged with Time Warner Cable in 2016.The company failed to do so after two years, and now the state is not only forcing the company to cease operations by revoking its approval of the 2016 merger (the approval was contingent on Chart

This week, Amazon launched Alexa Cast for its Echo line of smart speakers. Alexa Cast allows you to cast audio from the Amazon Music app on your phone to the Echo and Alexa-connected speakers, like the Sonos One, without having to use your voice.It’s not a particularly new feature in the world of smart assistant home speakers — for example, Google Cast is essentially the same feature, but for Google services — however despite its late arrival, Amazon is pledging to increase Al

Smart speakers like the Amazon Echo, Google Home, or the Apple HomePod remain a good fit for most homes if you enjoy listening to music above all else. But some of the smart assistants that power them have found their way into smart displays, a new form factor that brings about some exciting changes.
Whether you’re tied up in Amazon or Google’s ecosystem of apps, smart displays let you do more hands-free than any smart speaker can. Boiled down, they are equipped to take on tasks usu

In the latest big acquisition move by Netflix, the streaming platform has acquired the worldwide rights to Mowgli, Warner Bros.’ completed live-action movie about the young hero of the Jungle Book stories. Motion-capture star Andy Serkis (Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings) directed the film, which is distinct from the 2016 live-action Disney Jungle Book remake. The film was slated for a theatrical release in October 2018 before Warner Bros. sold it to Netflix.
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Between all the discussions of whether Bungie’s Destiny 2 can reclaim the glory of the original or how the game developer is trying to course correct with its upcoming Forsaken expansion, it’s easy to forget that the Halo creator’s sci-fi series has some excellent world-building.Now, I’m not talking about Bungie’s silly penchant for generic proper nouns like The Guardians and The Darkness. I mean the subtle, background information hidden away for players to unearth

Netflix’s adaptation of Richard K. Morgan’s cyberpunk novel Altered Carbon is getting a eight-episode, second season. But when it returns, it’ll have a new actor playing the lead role of Takeshi Kovacs — Joel Kinnaman will be replaced by Anthony Mackie, currently best known for playing Falcon in the Captain America and Avengers Marvel Cinematic Universe films.
Altered Carbon is set centuries in the future, in a world where humanity has overcome mortality via a technology

Virgin Galactic’s passenger space plane, the VSS Unity, yesterday completed its third rocket-powered flight. Craft and crew returned safely after reaching a stunning new height of more than 32 miles above the surface. “Oh that is a million dollar view out the window Dave” says co-pilot Mike “Sooch” Masucci. That must not be counting the cost of the craft, which is nearly half a billion. This latest test flight is the Unity’s 14th, ahead of what Virgin Group f

The writing has been on MoviePass’s wall for a long while now, but nothing has really rocked the service’s financial boat — until last night, when service was disrupted because the company ran out of money, and its parent company borrowed an emergency $5 million from the hedge fund Hudson Bay.
The last widespread MoviePass outage happened earlier this month
In corporate speak: “The $5.0 million cash proceeds received from the Demand Note will be used by the Company to pa

Following Discovery Communications $14.6 acquisition of Scripps Networks Interactive in March, the company is now toying with the idea of launching its own direct-to-consumer service. According to remarks made by Discovery CEO David Zaslav at an industry event, AdWeek reports [paywalled], the company is considering a service with all of Discovery’s networks at a price point of $5 to $8 per month.
Whether the service would be U.S.-only has not been determined, nor did the CEO hint at any ki

Philips continues to expand its Hue smart lighting system across the home, and the next stop is the bathroom with the company’s new Adore Bathroom lighted mirror.The Adore Bathroom mirror will theoretically work as a standalone light-up mirror, but like Hue’s other products, you’ll be able to connect it to the Hue Bridge hub and integrate it into your smart home setup with services like Amazon’ Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple HomeKit.A smarter bathroom mirror
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Even as the Argentine government was announcing the biggest slide in the country’s economic output in nearly a decade, technology investors in the nation’s capital are all gearing up for record fundraising years.
Three of the country’s biggest firms (which are still small by international standards) are raising new, exponentially larger, funds in a sign that technology companies are showing promise despite the bleak picture painted by the broader economy in Latin America.
Leadi

Blockchain is being explored by a wider and wider audience everyday, and traditional centralized bodies like banks and governments are starting to take interest into what the tech can do for them. But there is a new term that is starting to crop up more frequently in the cryptocurrency space: distributed ledger technology (or DLT as most call it). And somewhat ironically, it is precisely the bodies that Bitcoin and blockchain aim to subvert that seem to use it the most – banks, government

With the big cloud companies reporting recently, we can be sure of a couple of things: the market continues to expand rapidly and AWS is going to be hard to catch. Depending on whose numbers you look at, the market grew around 50 percent as it continues its unprecedented expansion.
Let’s start with market leader, AmazonWeb Services. Canalys has them with 31 percent of the market while Synergy Research puts them at 34 percent. That’s close enough to be considered a dead heat. As Syner