Technology news

Last month, newly filed FCC documents suggested that Google may release an “Interactive Video Streaming Device” called the Home Hub. Now, a photo tweeted by YouTuber Jon Prosser appears to confirm the product with additional details about its capabilities.
The photo gives some broad details about what the Home Hub can do. Its basic functions are similar to a Google Home speaker: you can voice-control compatible smart home components, like lights, security cameras, TVs, and speakers.

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from Austin’s Fantastic Fest.
Feature films have been inspired by an awful lot of random things — theme park rides, online fetish ads, plotless rhythm video games — but the horror-comedy You Might Be the Killer is likely the first film to directly adapt a viral Twitter thread. Back in July 2017, authors Chuck Wendig and Sam Sykes riffed

Bird’s dockless, electric scooters are now available in Latin America. The startup announced Friday that its rolling into Mexico City, and will soon be launching in Brazil.To start out, Bird will drop 100 scooters in Mexico City’s La Condesa, Nápoles, Polanco, and Reforma neighborhoods. But the scooters won’t be geofenced to those neighborhoods. Like it does in its other markets, Bird’s staff of independent contractors will collect all scooters each evening for ch

Apple is launching the new Apple Watch Nike+ Series 4 today, with the device available in stores and early preorders delivered to customers, as reported by Mac Rumors. However, for those who want to buy a Watch at an Apple Store, there might be a wait as only limited quantities are available.
This version of the new Apple Watch has a few changes that separate it from the primary Series 4 model. There are new Nike watchfaces and sport bands, including three molded bands (all black, white with a

Apple is launching the new Apple Watch Nike+ Series 4 today, with the device available in stores and early preorders delivered to customers, as reported by Mac Rumors. However, for those who want to buy a Watch at an Apple Store, there might be a wait as only limited quantities are available.
This version of the new Apple Watch has a few changes that separate it from the primary Series 4 model. There are new Nike watchfaces and sport bands, including three molded bands (all black, white with a

Syfy will screen the first episode of its upcoming space horror show Nightflyers later today at New York Comic Con. Ahead of the premiere, it announced that the 10-episode series will series will debut on December 2nd; the first five episodes will air between Sunday and Thursday starting December 2nd, while the second half of the series will air the week starting on December 9th. Each episode will be available online as soon as it premieres on television through on demand and via the network&rs

Syfy will screen the first episode of its upcoming space horror show Nightflyers later today at New York Comic Con. Ahead of the premiere, it announced that the 10-episode series will series will debut on December 2nd; the first five episodes will air between Sunday and Thursday starting December 2nd, while the second half of the series will air the week starting on December 9th. But if you don’t want to wait for the broadcasts, all you’ll have to do is go online. All ten episodes w

Today at New York Comic Con, Starz hosted a panel for the upcoming second season of its fantasy show American Gods, and showed off our first look at what’s to come in the show when it returns in 2019.
The trailer shows off the continuing story of Gaiman’s novel, which looks to be picking up even more fantastic elements — and gods, old and new —as Shadow (Ricky Whittle) and Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane) continue their road trip across America. Also teased is the pending cla

Smart helmets seem like one of those great ideas that just haven’t really taken off yet, but that doesn’t mean that companies aren’t still trying. Jarvish — the latest to try to claim the crown — has an interesting take on the idea with its upcoming Jarvish X and Jarvish X-AR motorcycle helmets (via Engadget).
The Jarvish X is the more basic of the two models. It offers integrated microphones and speakers for Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa support so wearers hav

There’s no game that gets my friends and I more riled up than Mario Party. A decade’s worth of games across many Nintendo consoles has never left us with a shortage of board game-fueled vendettas. There’s something even more infuriating about losing when the person who beats you does it as a dinosaur wearing shoes. The new Super Mario Party on the Nintendo Switch may not fix the friend feuds, but it at least makes the journey a little nicer.Like previous Mario Party games, Sup

The UK’s top national cybersecurity agency GCHQ told Reuters on Friday that it didn’t see any reason to question the validity of Apple and Amazon’s denials that their servers were compromised following a meteoric report from Bloomberg on Thursday. The report claimed that Chinese spies were able to place microchips in the companies’ servers, allegedly giving the Chinese government backdoor access to some of the largest cloud platforms in the world.
The GCHQ, which is the

Every horror anthology needs a hook, and Hulu’s new series Into the Dark has a good one. Beginning this Friday, October 5th, and once a month for the next year, Hulu and the production and distribution company Blumhouse will release a feature-length film — 12 in all — tied to a seasonally appropriate holiday. The premise is loose enough to allow Into the Dark’s roster of writers and directors room to tell a wide variety of stories, all united by a common fascination with

Photographer: Daro Sulakauri/Bloomberg
According to a new study conducted by the Center for American Entrepreneurship and NYU’s Shack Institute of Real Estate, the US may be losing its competitive advantage as the dominant nucleus of the startup and venture capital universe. 
The analysis, led by senior Brookings Institution fellow Ian Hathaway and “Rise of the Creative Class” author Richard Florida, examines the flow of venture capital over 100,00

For the last two years at New York Comic Con, Audible has been on a drive to demonstrate that audiobooks are an altogether different experience for readers than sitting down with a book. Last year, the company rolled out an impressive faux museum to support Andy Weir’s novel Artemis, complete with a lunar art installation. This year, the company is showcasing a familiar classic, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, with an installation designed to mimic the memories of the books&rsqu

We’re still a few months away from Aquaman hitting theaters, during New York Comic Con Warner Bros. has just given us our best look yet at the Jason Momoa-led film with a new extended trailer that’s packed with footage from the movie.
Clocking in at a hefty five minutes, the trailer gives us a general overview of what to expect in December, starting with the basic origin story. Aquaman — aka Arthur Curry — is the son of a human lighthouse keeper and the Atlantean queen (

In 2016, Nintendo started developing games designed specifically to be played on smartphones. Titles like Super Mario Run and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp have brought some of the world’s most lovable characters to our pockets without the tactical buttons or plastic, boxy devices we knew and loved. That might be changing, though, because Nintendo has submitted an application for a patent that would make your smartphone look and feel just like a Game Boy.
The patent application was filed t

Salesforce’sMarketing and Commerce Cloud is the company’s smallest division today, so to help beef it up, the company is making an acquisition to add in more features. Salesforce has acquired Rebel, a startup that develops interactive email services for businesses to enhance their direct marketing services: recipients of interactive emails can write reviews, shop and take other actions without leaving the messages to do so.
In an announcement on Rebel’s site, the star

Our smartphones are cold, passive devices that usually can’t move autonomously unless they’re falling onto our faces while we’re looking at them in bed. A research team in France is exploring ways to change that by giving our smartphones the ability to interact with us more (via New Scientist). MobiLimb is a robotic finger attachment that plugs in through a smartphone’s Micro USB port, moves using five servo motors, and is powered by an Arduino microcontroller. It can ta

Columbus Day is on Oct. 8 and the sales are here.
The name of the holiday itself is controversial for obvious reasons, but we won't get into that right now. Regardless of whether you recognize it as Columbus Day (please don't) or the more appropriate Indigenous People's Day, one thing's for sure: The sales are here and ready to save you some moolah.
Like Labor Day, Columbus Day sales have a lot of mattresses in the mix (Nectar, DreamCloud, the usual). Aside from that, we're seeing a ton of deals

Columbus Day is on Oct. 8 and the sales are here.
The name of the holiday itself is controversial for obvious reasons, but we won't get into that right now. Regardless of whether you recognize it as Columbus Day (please don't) or the more appropriate Indigenous People's Day, one thing's for sure: The sales are here and ready to save you some moolah.
Like Labor Day, Columbus Day sales have a lot of mattresses in the mix (Nectar, DreamCloud, the usual). Aside from that, we're seeing a ton of deals

The Magicians — Syfy’s TV show adaptation of the novels by Lev Grossman — is coming back for a fourth season. And at New York Comic Con, we finally got the exact date: January 23rd, 2019. We also got an ominous first look at the upcoming season, which teases just how much aspiring magician Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph) and his friends will have to go up against.
The events of last season saw our heroes succeed in their quest to bring back magic (which, all things considered,

Welcome to Fav’d For Later, a Friday roundup of our favorite memes, trends, and all-around good internet content. This week IS A TEST. NO ACTION IS NEEDED.
On October 3rd, aka Mean Girls Day, the first FEMA Presidential Alert lit up phones across the US. Right on time! By that, I mean the memes. The memes were right on time.The punchlines are pretty hit or miss, but what I love about this very predictable joke (if you text it, they will meme) is the unity, you know? We all got the text* s

This week on The Vergecast, Nilay, Dieter, and Paul bring in experts to report on the top stories on the site this week. Reporter and host of Why’d You Push That Button Ashley Carman stops by the studio to explain the Bloomberg report detailing “Chinese spy chips” that may have been planted on servers from companies like Apple and Amazon.After that bizarre piece of news, senior editor Dan Seifert comes on the show to talk about the Microsoft hardware event he attended this wee

“I myself am a victim to narrative,” says Alex Rosenberg, a Duke University philosophy professor whose new book hopes to convince readers that narratives — and especially narrative history — are flawed as tools of knowledge.Rosenberg is a philosopher of science and a writer of historical fiction. How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories, out this week from MIT Press, does not deny that stories can be wonderful as art and effective at el

Microsoft released its latest Windows 10 October 2018 Update earlier this week, but some users are reporting serious issues. Threads on Reddit, Microsoft’s own support site, and other forums show that some Windows 10 users are upgrading to the October 2018 Update and having their documents, photos, or even entire user profiles wiped out. While some have discovered a temporary fix for the issue, it’s not clear why exactly this is happening.
Microsoft has not started automatically pus

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
Venus, a 2006 British dramedy written by Hanif Kureishi and directed by Roger Michel

According to a recent Variety report, independent American movie studio Stampede (founded by former Warner Bros. president Greg Silverman) has recently struck a deal with video game company Konami to adapt the rhythm game Dance Dance Revolution into a feature film. DDR has no backstory, no storyline, no villains, and no built-in conflict, so that seems like an uphill battle, much like Peter Berg’s attempt to adapt the popular board game Battleship into a film.
But DDR certainly isn’