Technology news

Microsoft is trying to make it simpler and cheaper — up front, at least — for customers to buy into its Surface lineup. It’s launching a new payment option called Surface All Access that, for a monthly fee, will give customers a Surface device and access to Office 365.
But while this sounds like a subscription service, it’s not. In reality, Surface All Access is just a well branded payment plan. So unlike a phone upgrade program, you don’t trade in the Surface devi

Microsoft has just announced the first refresh of its Surface Laptop since it was originally launched and along with all new processing components, it now comes in a matte black finish. The new Surface Laptop 2 starts at $999 and is available to order starting today, with shipments expected later this month.
The matte black finish on the Surface Laptop 2 is rather striking — it’s deep, dark, and well saturated, giving the machine a stealthy finish. That is until you touch it, where

At an event in New York, Microsoft today showed off its new line of Surface products, including updates to the existing laptop line and a new product: the Surface Headphones. The laptops also come in an additional new color that should please fans of all things dark mode.
Surface Pro 6 and Surface Laptop 2 now in all-black finish
Confirming the leaks just hours before the event, Microsoft kicked off the event with the announcement of the Surface Pro 6, a refresh of the company’s laptop /

Advanced Micro Devices Incshares have been the S&P 500’s rock star gainer this year, but a recent slide signals some investors are hedging their bets that it can make major inroads in the server computer chip market dominated by Intel Corp .On Tuesday, AMD was the top decliner and Intel the top gainer on the S&P 500. The company has a steep hill to climb to live up to the hopes that had pushed its shares up as much as 228 percent last month from las

Microsoft has just announced its latest Surface Pro 6 at a media event in New York City. The latest tablet / laptop hybrid has a familiar design, but updated internals. Microsoft has refreshed the Surface Pro 6 with Intel’s 8th Gen processors, and a new matte black finish.
While there’s support for quad-core processors thanks to new internal cooling changes, it’s the matte black that’s really the striking change here. The entire Surface Pro 6 is covered in the finish, an

“Right now we’re in this Empire Strikes Back moment,” says Initialized Capital’sGarry Tan, referring to tech giants ruthlessly copying and competing with fresh ideas. “We think the startups represent the Return Of The Jedi.” It’s that willingness to stand up against incumbents and give founders their best shot at disrupting them that’s won Initialized a place on the cap tables of some of today’s fastest-rising companies. Instacart, Coinbase,

Microsoft’s Surface event didn’t come without some surprises: after announcing its latest Surface Pro, Laptop, and Studio devices, the company also revealed the brand-new $350 Surface Headphones. They’re shipping “in time for the holidays” — but only in the United States at launch. Unlike all the black gear that Microsoft showed today, these only come in light gray.The over-ear, wireless Surface Headphones feature premium sound and adjustable noise cancellati

Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system is now running on more than 700 million devices, and the company is marking the occasion by releasing the second major Windows 10 update this year. Windows 10 October 2018 Update will be available to all Windows 10 users today, and to update you’ll simply have to check for the new updates on Windows Update. Otherwise, Microsoft will start pushing this to existing machines next week with its monthly Patch Tuesday.
Windows 10 October 2018 Update

Microsoft first unveiled its all-in-one Surface Studio PC almost two years ago at a press event in New York City. Today, Microsoft is returning to New York to unveil the second generation of the Surface Studio. The Surface Studio 2 has the same 28-inch display as the original, but Microsoft has tweaked the display and boosted the internals to make this the “fastest Surface ever.”
The new display is 38 percent brighter than the previous model, and it has 22 percent more contrast. All

Forza Horizon 4 released today, October 2nd, and Newegg has already discounted the season-spanning racing game, which works on both Xbox One and a Windows 10 PC. Using the offer code EMCEPPR28 at checkout will take the price down to $53.99 — a small, but decent discount from its usual $59.99 retail price. Note that this code works only for the standard edition of the game.
If you’re new to Xbox and are looking to play online, Newegg also has you covered with an Xbox Live deal. It&rs

Apple is releasing more than 70 new emoji with the release of iOS 12.1, which arrives today for the public and developer and public beta channels, and will hit everyone else’s iPhones in the coming weeks.In the new collection are some much-needed additions, including a bagel emoji, a llama one, and a skateboard option, all of which are in accordance with the Unicode Consortium’s 11.0 set standardized back in February. (Unicode establishes standards for emoji to be used across device

New details of Huawei’s upcoming smartwatch have emerged, and a leaked photo of the watch has been obtained by WinFuture, seen above. The Watch GT is Huawei’s successor to last year’s disappointing Watch 2. An FCC filing shows that the watch is supposedly equipped with a 420mAh battery that lets the smartwatch run for a full week. The new watch is also expected to be in the €190 to €229 price range, or about $220 to $265 USD.The Huawei Watch GT will come in two model

Kobo has announced its new Forma e-reader, which will be available for preorders beginning October 16th. An image of the Forma first appeared last month when Kobo’s Spanish Twitter account tweeted and then deleted a rendered photo of the e-reader.
The new Kobo Forma sports an eight-inch display and weighs about 15 percent less than the Kobo Aura ONE. It might be a little lighter, but there are a lot of similarities between the Forma and Aura ONE. Like the Aura ONE, the Forma meets IPX8 st

Last week marked the fifth anniversary of Oculus Connect, a virtual reality developer conference held by the Facebook-owned headset maker. In 2016 and 2017, Oculus used Connect to tease a self-contained, high-end VR headset that it called Santa Cruz. And in 2018, it finally put a lot of questions around Santa Cruz to rest. We know the headset’s final name (the “Oculus Quest”), its price (a surprisingly cheap $399), and its approximate shipping date (spring of next year).
But t

Robert Jordan’s sprawling epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time is headed to television via Amazon Studios. The studio has greenlit an adaptation of the series, which is likely to be yet another attempt to follow HBO’s sprawling epic fantasy series Game of Thrones.
Rafe Judkins, who produced ABC’s Agents of SHIELD and Netflix’s Hemlock Grove, is set to write and act as showrunner for the series. There’s no indication of how many episodes or when the show might be r

Microsoft’s annual October hardware event is here, and the company is expected to reveal new Surface laptops and updates to Windows 10. Microsoft just released the smaller Surface Go earlier this year, and there were also leaks of an even tinier dual-screen device, but the event today appears to be focused on refreshes of the current full-sized Surface laptops. Will there be surprises in the HoloLens division? Find out here as we cover the event live from New York City.Continue reading&he

Microsoft is holding a press event in New York City today, and a leaked image appears to have revealed exactly what’s coming. WalkingCat has posted an image of black versions of Microsoft’s Surface Pro, Surface Laptop, and Surface Studio. The devices appear to all come in a new black variant, and follow Microsoft’s own accidental confirmation that Surface is going “back to black.”
Microsoft’s event starts at 4PM ET / 1PM PT today, and we’re expecting to

Audi executive Rupert Stadler has been forced out of the company as a result of his alleged role in the Dieselgate scandal. Stadler was fully removed from his post as CEO on Tuesday, as well as his position on the boards of Audi and Volkswagen Group, according to the German automakers. Stadler was suspended from the CEO role earlier this summer after he was arrested by German authorities on suspicion that he knew about the company-wide effort to cheat emissions tests.
Stadler was CEO of Audi wh

The Food and Drug Administration is tightening its leash on e-cigarette giant Juul Labs. On Friday, the FDA conducted a surprise inspection of the company’s headquarters, and took thousands of pages of documents in the process, CNBC reports.The inspection was part of the FDA’s efforts to curb youth vaping, the agency says in an email to The Verge. “The new and highly disturbing data we have on youth use demonstrates plainly that e-cigarettes are creating an epidemic of regular

Verizon became the first major ISP to launch 5G home internet service yesterday. It’s a major step on the road to making 5G a reality, but if you’ve ever in your life interacted with an internet provider, you’re probably at least a little bit skeptical: is this really 5G?
The answer is sort of. In a phone call yesterday, Verizon’s chief technology architect, Ed Chan, said that the newly launched home 5G service uses a number of technologies that have been deemed a part o

Walmartis expanding further into apparel with today’s announcement of its plans to acquire the digitally native, women’s plus-size clothing brand ELOQUII for an undisclosed amount. The all-cash deal includes ELOQUII CEO Mariah Chase, her executive team and its 100 employees, who will continue to be based in Long Island City, NY and Columbus, OH. They’ll join Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce organization, reporting to Andy Dunn, SVP of Digital Consumer Brands, Walmart U.S. eComme

Back in June, we got the first look at Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the upcoming Spidey film that’s already shaping up to be one of the most visually ambitious animated movies of the year. We learned it would feature a seasoned Peter Parker (voiced by Jake Johnson) crossing over into the universe of Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) to mentor the younger Spidey. Gwen Stacy’s Ghost Spider (formerly Spider-Gwen) also made a brief appearance.
Now that the second full-len

The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is already seeing some serious discounts a few months after its release. Down from its regular $999 price for the 128GB model, Amazon has knocked $70 off of the price for the unlocked phone. Both the purple and blue color options are available for $929.In addition to selling the Note 9 for less than its regular price, Amazon is bundling it with an official Samsung wireless charging stand and a set of the 2018 Gear Icon X true wireless earbuds at no extra charge. This c

Congress recently passed the Music Modernization Act, which is a rare bill in modern American politics: everyone seems to like it! The MMA, as it’s called, was celebrated by musicians, streaming services, record labels, and consumer groups alike. It simplifies how streaming services pay songwriters, changes how the law deals with music recorded before 1972, and helps producers collect more royalties.
I’m naturally distrustful of something everyone agrees is a good thing, so I called

Rakuten is hosting another one of its site-wide sales today, and you can knock 15 percent off of your total at checkout with the offer code SAVE15. The promotion will end tonight at 3AM ET / 12AM PT, October 3rd, and basically everything offered on Rakuten is eligible. Strangely, the only products excluded are Kobo e-readers.
If you plan on taking advantage of the savings, keep in mind that you can only net up to $60 off of your total purchase. In other words, your savings will drop if you&rsqu

The annual parade of the world’s biggest auto shows is about to start this week in Paris, and for what really feels like the first time, a number of carmakers are finalizing, building, selling, or even nearing the delivery of their first flagship electric cars. And these aren’t just concepts, or camouflaged pre-production cars like we’ve seen in the past. EVs from big-name luxury brands like Audi, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW are on the way, meaning incumbents in the space,

Maybe you’ve never heard about Tiny, but chances are, you’ve used its products. Tinyis the company behind the text editors you’ve likely used in WordPress, Marketo, Zendesk, Atlassian and other products. The company is actually the result of the merger of Moxiecode, the two-person team behind the open source TinyMCE editor, and Ephox, the company behind the Textbox.io editor. Ephox was the larger company in this deal, but TinyMCE had a significantly larger user base, so Tiny&rs

When it arrived in theaters last year, writer-director Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi was greeted with an immediate backlash from a specific corner of its audience. As Vox’s Todd VanDerWerff pointed out in December, the criticism seemed to come from a few different angles: some felt the film was too progressive, that it was too jokey, that it was not interested in the elaborate universe of fan theories that has accreted since the original trilogy’s release, or that th