Technology news

Yesterday, apropos of seemingly nothing, a tiny voice deep in the folds of my brain squeaked at me: “Pika-pi,” it said. “Pika, pika-chu.” Well-conditioned late-’90s child that I am, I was compelled to answer the call: I had to consume some Pokémon.It was only after I was eight episodes into the original series that I realized (no, really, I am not making this up for dramatic effect): the next day — today — was the 20th anniversary of the Pok&eacu

Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, China’s richest person and the most instrumental builder of one of the country’s most successful businesses, is planning to step away from the company, and plans to unveil a succession plan next week, according to the South China Morning Post (via TechCrunch).In an interview with the Morning Post, Ma says that he met with the company’s senior officials a decade ago, and “asked what Alibaba would do without me,” putting into place a syste

President Donald Trump suggested this morning that Apple should move its manufacturing plants to America as a way to avoid tariffs in the ongoing trade dispute between the US and China, following reports that the company’s products could become more expensive.The Trump administration began imposing a series of tariffs on goods from China this summer, but up until now, consumer electronics have been left off the list. That could soon change, as the latest proposed round of tariffs could in

One of 1998’s biggest tech stories was the massive antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. It’s Monopoly Week on The Verge, so I wrote a bit about that lawsuit’s place in the ‘90s legal landscape. I also reviewed Antitrust, the 2001 thriller about a fictionalized Microsoft that murders software developers to steal their code.But today’s big news involves another incredibly important, potentially monopolistic tech company: Google, which was founded on September 4th, 19

In July 2008, science fiction publisher Tor launched a new website called Tor.com to promote its upcoming releases. But the site was designed to go beyond Tor’s books. It was meant to provide coverage for books from other publishers as well as original fiction chosen by Tor editors.Since its founding, Tor.com has gone from a simple website to a full-fledged publishing operation. In addition to publishing shorter works of fiction, it also publishes a range of novelettes, novellas, and even

In July 2008, science fiction publisher Tor launched a new website called Tor.com to promote its upcoming releases. But the site was designed to go beyond Tor’s books. It was meant to provide coverage for books from other publishers as well as original fiction chosen by Tor editors.Since its founding, Tor.com has gone from a simple website to a full-fledged publishing operation. In addition to publishing shorter works of fiction, it also publishes a range of novelettes, novellas, and even

Summer is coming to an end, which means that soon we’ll all be retreating to our living rooms and getting cozy for the winter. Whether you’re looking forward to football season or pilot season, now is the perfect time to upgrade your TV setup. Walmart and Amazon are both running discounts on 4K TVs in several price ranges. TCL’s Roku Smart TVs are always a good budget pick; if you’re going to splurge, Sony’s $6,000 75-inch Smart LED TV is half off at Amazon.
If you

Ever have one of those weeks where you feel like everything is going wrong in the world? Us too. The planet is melting. There are powerful idiots all over the world with their greasy fingers hovered over big red doom buttons. Our favorite celebrities have dumb opinions we don’t agree with and choose to share them. And again someone finds a severed toe in their Big Mac. This week seemed especially long, which a lot of people saying stupid things we disagree with, so we decided to roun

If NASA truly wants to get serious in the search for life off of Earth, scientists argue that the space agency should launch a new, large telescope into space — one capable of directly capturing the images of planets outside our Solar System. Such technology doesn’t fully exist at the moment. But astronomers say it’s our best bet to find another Earth, one that could host biological organisms.
This mission concept is the top recommendation in a new report compiled by members o

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. Warning: mild spoilers ahead.
Movie series often take strange twists and turns over their lifetimes, but the Predator franchise has always been its own uniquely bizarre case. John McTiernan’s 1987 original was an Arnold Schwarzenegger action vehicle that pitted a group of military commandos against

The time has come: Summer's over and Apple is holding a bonanza of a launch event to announce new products, headlined by what will likely be three new iPhones.
After months of rumors and speculation, Tim Cook and company will make Apple's fall product lineup official on Sept. 12 at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, CA.
Ready or not, here's everything we expect Apple to announce in just a few days.
SEE ALSO: Everything we know about the upcoming low-cost 'iPhone 9'
From new iPhones, to new App

Earth's Northern Hemisphere experienced a scorching summer, with 90-degree temperatures in Arctic reindeer country and heat waves toppling records around the globe. 
In Canada's Kluane National Park, the massive Lowell Glacier felt the heat this summer, too. 
Both NASA and European Space Agency satellites captured bounties of snow from the previous winter melting from the glacier over just four days in July. 
SEE ALSO: New islands are being left behind by rapidly retreating Arctic

Dash cams have become practically invaluable tools to have on the road. In the event of an accident or an altercation with another driver, a dash cam can be your best and only witness, and the Black Box 1080p Dash Cam is an excellent choice for only $25.
SEE ALSO: Volvo's 360c autonomous concept car is for sleeping, working, and hanging out
The Black Box features a built-in G sensor and motion detector, so it will automatically start recording in the event of a crash. It captures both video and

The Defense Department’s cutting-edge research arm has promised to make the military’s largest investment to date in artificial intelligence (AI) systems for U.S. weaponry, committing to spend up to $2 billion over the next five years in what it depicted as a new effort to make such systems more trusted and accepted by military commanders.
The director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced the spending spree on the final day of a conference in Washington

If you’re a drone hobbyist, someone who enjoys building and programming cool gadgets, or dare we say both, you need to check out the Flexbot Hexacopter Kit. This tinkerer-friendly kit gives you all the tools you need to build virtually any flying machine you can think up.
SEE ALSO: Uber Eats wants to deliver your food with drones
The Flexbot Hexacopter is a DIY drone with endless customization possibilities. It’s fully compatible with Arduino, giving you the ability to program t

Picture yourself sailing over the ocean blue and coming across a patch of plastic garbage that is twice the size of Texas. No, this is not the setting of some post-apocalyptic thriller. Discovered in the early 80s and now referred to as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, this 600,000 square mile stretch of ocean between Hawaii and California is the world’s largest accumulation of ocean plastic. When you consider the vastness of the ocean — all 140 million square miles of it — it

Only a day after Alex Jones was permanently banned from Twitter, the Infowars app — the final straw for Jones’ platform — has been permanently kicked off the App Store, also permanently.Apple confirmed the removal with Buzzfeed by citing the App Store guidelines, which forbids “content that is offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, or in exceptionally poor taste.” Searching for the app within the App Store right now only brings up other apps unrela

Apple is making a play at the publishing business. In March, the company acquired Texture, a subscription-based magazine reader that charges a flat fee to read all the included content you’d like. Texture already features some of The who’s-who in publishing, including National Geographic, People, Wired, and The New Yorker. Now, it’s trying to woo traditional newspapers like The New York Times, according to a report byRecode. Have we learned nothing from Facebook Instant Articl

There are a few reasons to recommend Outlaw King, David Mackenzie's medieval movie starring Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce.
SEE ALSO: Fall movie preview: What to watch if you're ready for awards season
For one, it's pretty. Like, really pretty. Mackenzie never misses an opportunity to showcase the pristine beauty of the Scottish countryside, with its rolling hills and soft mists. There's one particular shot of a rainbow that nearly made me gasp. 
It's also got plenty of fighting, if you're

Twitter's website is about to get a big makeover.
The company's currently testing a redesigned version of its website, which will bring bookmarks, the explore tab, and a new "data-saver" mode to its desktop website. It's also really, really, white.
SEE ALSO: Twitter’s relationship with third-party apps is messy — but it’s not over
Officially, the redesign won't roll out to everyone for some time, though the company showed off a brief preview in a tweet Thursday. But Twitter's a

Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, China’s richest person and the most instrumental builder of one of the country’s most successful businesses, will retire from the company next week to focus on philanthropy, The New York Times reported Friday evening. Ma, who is 53 years old, started Alibaba in 1999 and helped grow it into a $420 billion business that has been instrumental in shaping how Chinese citizens purchase and pay for online goods. He owns a 6.4 percent stake in the company, giving

The future of Coinbaselooks something like the New York Stock Exchange. That’s according a vision laid out by CEO Brian Amstrong who was interviewed on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco today.
Coinbase is known for being the most popular exchange for converting fiat currency into crypto — most of the largest traded exchanges are crypto-to-crypto — but he foresees a future in which the total number of cryptocurrencies swells massively as most companies create their ow

Brian Armstrong, the CEO of cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase, wants to take his company public — maybe on the blockchain.
Onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018, Armstrong dished on his ambitions for the future of Coinbase.“We are self-sustaining,” Armstrong said. “You know, we’ve been profitable for quite a while. We don’t have any plans to raise additional capital at this point, but never say never … Someday I’d love to run a public compa

At the very beginning, there were 21 startups. After three days of incredibly fierce competition, we now have a winner.
Startups participating in the Startup Battlefield have all been hand-picked to participate in our highly competitive startup competition. They all presented in front of multiple groups of VCs and tech leaders serving as judges for a chance to win $50,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup.
After hours of deliberations, TechCruncheditors pored over the judges’ notes and narrowed

Circumventing the Google Play store wasn’t exactly a gamble for Epic, given the fact that Fortnite is essentially a license to print money. But even by its own standards, the game is posting some impressive numbers three weeks after hitting Android.In a blog post this week, Epic noted that the wildly popular sandbox survival game hit 23 million players on Google’s mobile operating system, spread out across 15 million APK installs. Those numbers are arriving 21 days after the title la

By now, we’re all used to Nintendo marching to the beat of its own drum. Other game studios drop their prices over time, in response to diminishing demand, or oversaturation. Nintendo doesn’t. And given it’s working so well for the company at the moment, we don’t bother to remember when it didn’t — even though that was only one generation ago. You know the drill: You go to buy a game for a Switch- or 3DS-owning family member for their birthday, and you decide

At a symposium in Washington DC on Friday, DARPA  href="https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2018-09-07" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced plans to invest $2 billion in artificial intelligence research over the next five years.
In a program called “AI Next,” the agency now has over 20 programs currently in the works and will focus on “enhancing the security and resiliency of machine learning and AI technologies, reducing power, data, performance inefficiencies