Technology news

Ford is recalling just over 50,000 charging cables for its plug-in electric and hybrid vehicles out of concern that they could lead to a fire, the company announced today. The 120-volt cables being recalled — which allow the cars to be plugged into a standard home outlet — were sold with certain Ford Focus Electrics, Fusion Energis, and C-Max Energis from the following years and assembly plants:
2012-15 Ford Focus Electric vehicles built at Michigan Assembly Plant, Sept. 15th, 2011

Puppets, murder, Sesame Street lawsuits—that's what summer blockbusters are made of... right? Well, according to critics, not so much.
SEE ALSO: 'Crazy Rich Asians' is getting its sequel – and it's great news for one fan-favorite character
Reviews for The Happytime Murders aren't looking so happy. Despite its star-studded cast — led by Melissa McCarthy — the puppet-heavy film noir/comedy isn't doing so well in the court of public opinion. 
Directed by Brian Henson (s

In most games, “training mode” is a blank canvas without much to see or do — that is, if there’s an educational feature at all. Next month, PUBG will introduce its own training mode that does more than just give you stuff to shoot. The entire map has been constructed to give you playgrounds to improve your skills across various specific areas.
This is all coming as a part of Battlegrounds’ larger “Fix PUBG” initiative, where the developers of the game l

Hurricane scientist Lisa Bucci took a jarring ride through the strengthening Hurricane Lane Tuesday evening. Eventually, her plane emerged from the swirling clouds into the vast, stadium-like eye of the storm.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hurricane hunter plane comes out of the clouds at about the 20-second mark in the video. At around 45 seconds, Bucci points the camera down, at the churning Pacific Ocean below.
SEE ALSO: Why Trump's EPA wants to kill the nation's

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Here are two things that are both true. Neuroplasticity is real — that is, the brain really can change and learn and improve based on experience. And there’s little evidence that brain-training games are any better than placebo.
“So,” wondered science journalist Caroline Williams, “if brain training isn’t the way to apply it, what should we be doing?” Williams is the author of My Plastic Brain: One Woman’s Yearlong Journey to Discover if Science C

Apple and Simply Mac, a third-party Apple reseller and service provider, have reached a deal that will see the iPhone maker provide the necessary hardware to let Simply Mac conduct authorized screen repairs, according to a report from 9to5Mac.Prior to the deal, Simply Mac was subsiding on a limited number of Touch ID and Face ID-related repair machines and had begun conducting unofficial screen repairs for customers as a result (a move that reportedly did not please Apple, as it raises the risk

The people of Twitter read their horoscopes religiously and map their birth charts meticulously, so it's no wonder that zodiac memes are having a moment right now. 
The fascination with astrology prompted the recent "fuck your zodiac sign" meme, and now it's birthed another one.
It's pretty simple: the meme posits that whoever won the Academy Award for best actress the year you were born is your true zodiac sign — and people can't stop sharing their results. 
SEE ALSO: Yes, your

Your Android smartphone is collecting a lot of data on you. 
Specifically, almost 10 times more than Apple's iOS, claims a study by Vanderbilt University professor Douglas C. Schmidt. The report, published August 15, isn't a great look for the company, which was recently shown to be gathering location data on its users even after they elected to turn off the Location History setting on their devices. 
The study specifically notes that "[a] major part of Google’s data collection o

Your Android smartphone is collecting a lot of data on you. 
Specifically, almost 10 times more than Apple's iOS, claims a study by Vanderbilt University professor Douglas C. Schmidt. The report, published August 15, isn't a great look for the company, which was recently shown to be gathering location data on its users even after they elected to turn off the Location History setting on their devices. 
The study specifically notes that "[a] major part of Google’s data collection o

Michelle Obama teamed up with When We All Vote to share some of her earliest memories of voting. 
In the clip, Obama talks about watching her father vote as a young girl. In the story, she says his level of effort and consistency in making sure his voice was heard in every election was instilled in her over the years, and taught her about what a "special responsibility" voting can be. 
"Voting in every election is the only way you can have your voice heard. It's not just important to v

The Hawaiian islands are battening down the hatches as they prepare for Hurricane Lane, a powerful, Category 4 storm barreling toward the state at 155 mph. 
And now, photos taken from space show the extreme power of that storm as it makes its way toward possible landfall.
SEE ALSO: Powerful hurricanes usually steer clear of Hawaii, but Hurricane Lane is coming
NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold highlighted Hurricane Lane's size with photos tweeted from his post on the International Space Station.#

Lying is contagious, and it appears the White House is suffering an outbreak. 
Look at Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who's in charge of spinning the president's bald-faced falsehoods to the American peopleOn Wednesday, a stone-faced Sanders said a reporter's question was "ridiculous" when she asked if Trump ever lied to the American people.Asked if she could say Pres. Trump has never lied to the public, press secretary Sarah Sanders tells @CeciliaVega, "I think that's a ridiculous accusation. The

Batteries power the devices that keep us all connected, so it’s annoying when they die right when you need them the most. As part of The Battery Issue, The Verge’s week-long dive into the past, present, and future of the lithium-ion battery, we handpicked our favorite portable chargers that will keep your tech going.The best portable charger that you can stow anywhere is the Anker PowerCore Slim 5,000, and for Verge readers, it’s now $23.99 on Amazon with offer code VERGESL5.

Getting your finances in order is not easy. Not at all. Between a mortgage/rent, car payments, student loans, credit card debt, and impulsive purchases here and there, merely looking at your bank account may make you want to curl up in a corner, cry, and pray for the money gods to make it rain.
SEE ALSO: 9 ways to save money while you're a broke college student
But wiping out your debt and getting good with money is not a pipe dream, so don't think of yourself as a lost cause. The How To Fix You

John Schnatter, the disgraced founder and former CEO of Papa John's, is asking for help.
After resigning as chairman of the board in July and being ousted from the company following reports that he used a racial slur during a May conference call, Schnatter is trying very, very hard to salvage his reputation, business, and personal brand.
It seems the former face of the pizza place has created a website called SavePapaJohns.com, which he's now using to bypass the board and directly communicate wi

Imagine carrying around an animated Lite-Brite screen on your back. Now you can, with Pix, the “first smart animative backpack,” which is currently funding on Kickstarter. The backpack can display pictures, animations, and playable 8-bit games like Tetris and Snake, all synced through an iOS and Android app.Early-bird backers can get the backpack for $299, which seems a little on the expensive side. But how important is a customizable illuminated screen to you? You can’t put a

It used to be that there was one thing you could count on in this unpredictable media landscape, and that was that CBS' The Big Bang Theory would continue on until the end of time.
As of today, however, that's no longer the case. 
SEE ALSO: When Hollywood Turns Asperger's Into a Joke
Warner Bros. TV announced Wednesday that the upcoming twelfth season of The Big Bang Theory will be the last. By the end of its run, The Big Bang Theory will have clocked 279 episodes, setting the record for th

Airmail has issued an update today to patch a vulnerability that security researchers said could let malicious third parties access email databases and read a user’s messages.Security consulting firm Versprite outlined the issue in a blog post this morning, noting how Airmail 3 uses both a custom URL scheme and a so-called “deterministic” file system location for email messages for any given account. Using those two pieces of information, a hacker could theoretically retrieve

An attempt has just been made, once again, to hack the Democratic National Committee. This time, the target: the Democratic Party’s voter database.
CNN is reporting that on Tuesday, the DNC reached out to the FBI to inform them of the attempted hack after a cybersecurity firm discovered a website that faked the look of VoteBuilder, the party’s voter database login page.
SEE ALSO: Russian hackers target Republican think tanks critical of Moscow, Microsoft says
The cybersecurity firm t

Nvidia unveiled its new RTX 2080 earlier this week, but the company primarily focused on performance improvements for its new ray tracing support. That left many wondering just how big the performance gains will be for the vast majority of existing games that won’t be updated to support ray tracing. With preorders already live, Nvidia is now revealing that there will be some noticeable gains from a GTX 1080 to the new RTX 2080.
Games like PUBG, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Hitman 2, Wolfens

Facebook gave an update yesterday on its efforts to expand Express Wi-Fi, an app that lets unserved communities pay for internet service. The company is still working on efforts to reach the 3.8 billion people in the world who don’t have internet access, in order to grow its potential market.
Facebook says it’s developing software in Boston to manage networks more easily and enable operators to deploy mesh Wi-Fi networks. It’s also working on a new routing framework at its Cal

By now, we use Venmo so much that its name has secured a place in our cultural rolodex of new verbs. 
While we most commonly use Venmo to send cash for everything from last night's dinner to this month's rent, there's plenty of behavior on the app that's led me to raise an eyebrow from time to time. 
SEE ALSO: Venmo fare-splitting is coming to the Uber app
Sure, sometimes I catch myself attempting to decipher the meaning behind the emojis sent from one acquaintance to another, but in t

The tumultuous 2017 Atlantic hurricane season proved to be one of the most active years on record, with 17 named storms and six major hurricanes. 
But it can get quite a bit stormier than that. 
In a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, researchers looked at hurricane seasons dating back to 1851 and found that it's quite unlikely any Atlantic hurricane season will surpass the 28 named storms and 15 hurricanes produced during the 2005 season, infamous for the deadl

Stories about princesses used to exclusively be stories about romance. Today, they’re more likely to be stories about adventure. Disenchantment, the new Matt Groening princess cartoon on Netflix, wants to be about both. The hard-drinking, disobedient, buck-toothed princess Bean has a love interest and a narrative that pushes her into action and excitement. But the show doesn’t make her a fully realized character: the conflict between the romance and adventure plots leaves her uncomm

Walmart and its online redesign are stepping up their game in so many ways this year, y'all, and we can barely keep upKohl's, Target, and Macy's should be worried.
SEE ALSO: 8 of the best subscription boxes for beauty addicts
First, Walmart introduced free two-day shipping (and returns) on orders over $35 without requiring a membership fee, which is something not even Amazon offers. Now they've set their scopes on a section most customers look elsewhere for: Fashion. 
Walmart has partnered

The Hamilton Beach 49950C Coffee Maker is currently $86.66 on Amazon, saving you 21% on the listed $109.99 price. And considering the flexibility, it will make for the perfect addition to any coffee drinker's life.
The beauty of Hamilton Beach's brewer is that it offers the choice of brewing a fresh pot or using K-cups. If you live alone or are the only one drinking coffee, that K-cup option is clutch. But if there are multiple coffee drinkers in the house, brewing a whole pot might be easier. A

When major smartphone manufacturers talk about growth, they generally target three different markets: China, which is the biggest; the United States, which is highly influential and profitable; and the rest. India will soon rise from the latter pile, but until it does, Europe might be the most interesting battleground for the respective companies dominating the US and Chinese spheres. Until very recently, Western Europe looked a lot like the United States, with Samsung commanding more than a th

The New York Public Library is taking classic novels and transforming them into animated Instagram Stories, as reported by Engadget. Through a partnership with New York ad agency Mother, it’s created “Insta Novels,” converting books into a fun, more eye candy-driven format that could draw in a generation of younger readers.
The first book the library has made available to read is Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and the first part can be found in t

We’ve been seeing a steady stream of Pixel 3 leaks since June, and even more photos and videos have surfaced today, including purported sample photos taken with the Pixel 3 XL camera. The images appeared on Russian tech blog Rozetked, which reveals basically everything about the phone before the Pixel’s official launch. The leaks show everything presumably included in the box, including USB-C Pixel Buds, a charger, and a USB-C headphone dongle.There’s also multiple shots of th

Walmart’s latest move to stay competitive with Amazon as the two retailers expand aggressively into new markets is an ebook and audiobook store with its Japan partner Rakuten. Rakuten, which has owned Canadian e-reader brand Kobo since 2011, partnered with Walmart back in January to distribute Kobo e-readers in the US with preloaded and co-branded software for buying digital books. Now, the two companies are taking the partnership one step further with the launch of Walmart eBooks.The sto

So you want to start a blog and carve out a little corner of the internet to call your own — that’s a pretty brilliant and popular impulse. We as humans are literally creating a whole cyber-dimension, skinned right on top of our own; having your own square inch of a brand new world is exciting! Highly recommend! 
SEE ALSO: 10 of the best WordPress hosting providers for starting your own blog
I’ve been blogging since 2012 in some form or another, and starting a blog way-bac

eBay is hosting a sale that takes 10 percent off select items that cost over $25 with the promo code “justsave10” used at checkout. The maximum discount is $50, but that’s good enough to save on a few notable tech products until the sale expires Sunday night.Microsoft Surface Go Type Cover (burgundy, platinum) is $116 (usually $129)TCL 55-inch 4K HDR Roku TV is $599 (usually $649)Samsung Galaxy Note 8 for use with AT&T is $519 (usually $569)You can find all the products el

Hurricane Lane, which is currently bearing down on Hawaii, is "not a well behaved storm," according to the state's governor David Ige.
Spinning in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the hurricane has grown into a monstrous Category 5 storm, the most powerful type of hurricane with winds now reaching 160 mph. 
Tuesday evening, the National Hurricane Center called the cyclone "an impressive hurricane," and forecast that the storm will "move dangerously close to the main Hawaiian Islands as a hu

Two years ago, when No Man’s Sky first launched, I wrote a journal that chronicled my adventures in the game’s sprawling, procedurally generated universe. Since then, the game has changed considerably, most recently with the No Man’s Sky Next expansion, which is the biggest update yet. It adds new styles of planets, proper multiplayer, and a third-person perspective, among other things. So it seemed like a great chance to dive back in and start the diary again. You can catch up

Earth Class Mail, a company that digitizes your physical mail so you don’t have to go to the mailbox every day, today announced that it has acquired receipt scanning and expense tracking service Shoeboxed.
The reason Earth Class Mailwould be interested in Shoeboxed is pretty obvious, given that both companies focus on taking the pain out of dealing with paper. Both services will continue to operate as usual, though we’ll likely see some deep integrations between the two over time.
Sh

This post is part of Hard Refresh, a soothing weekly column where we try to cleanse your brain of whatever terrible thing you just witnessed on Twitter.
After hours looking at a screen and dealing with whatever trash the internet has to throw at me, my brain is frazzled.
When I need to stitch my mind back together, there's a panacea I often rely on: The oddly calming combination of police radio and ambient music. 
SEE ALSO: Rolled ice cream videos are the mental summer vacation you need
you

After years of exclusion, people with non-traditional work histories are finding new job opportunities thanks to businesses that are embracing more inclusive hiring practices. That approach means that applicants who have experienced homelessness, incarceration, addiction, as well as refugees and those with a pending immigration status, can have a much better shot at meaningful employment.
The trend arguably began decades ago with Open Hiring, a business model pioneered by Greyston Bakery. The co

TorrentFreak's most pirated movies list is an excellent gauge of popular movies as well as the Hollywood zeitgeist.
The new additions to the top 10 most pirated this week include the comedy Tag, the weird body-horror future of Upgrade, and the harrowing tale of two people Adrift. Sounds like a relaxing time in front of the computer screen. The rest of the list is the usual super-heroics, with Deadpool 2 still the most downloaded of the week.
The Meg didn't have the staying power of some blockbus