Technology news

Disney’s remake of the 1994 classic The Lion King just got its very first trailer, in the form of a quick minute and a half teaser aired during the NFL’s traditional Thanksgiving primetime game.The film, produced by Walt Disney Pictures and helmed by Iron Man director Jon Favreau, is a photorealistic, computer animated movie featuring a staggering number of high-profile voice actors, including Donald Glover as Simba, Beyoncé as Nala, and James Earl Jones reprising his role as

I’m not even American, but I just spat out a turkey dinner. Apple’s Siri digital assistant thinks that President Donald Trump is a penis. If you use an iPhone to ask Siri how old Donald Trump is, you’ll be greeted with a picture of a penis instead of a photo of the President. At the time of writing, the penis picture keeps coming and going. Presumably, someone is editing the Wikipedia page associated with Donald Trump, or gaming the algorithm that Siri uses to source images.
E

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has just announced the newest version of the Range Rover Evoque, the company’s stout little SUV first unveiled in 2010. For the most part, the new 2020 Evoque features the kinds of upgrades you’d expect from a yearly refresh. But one new optional feature sticks out: the rear view mirror, which doubles as a screen for a backup camera.
The “ClearSight Rear View Mirror,” as JLR calls it, changes at the flip of a switch between an actual rear view mir

Not all Black Friday deals are doorbusters that cost hundreds of dollars — many are for a few bucks (literally). If you’ve been stalling on purchasing something, here’s a list of goodies that are all under $40.From games to smart speakers to streaming devices and even a pair of wireless headphones, these are some of the best deals that won’t break the bank.
SMART SPEAKERS
Amazon Echo Dot 3rd generation is $24 (usually $49.99)Google Home Mini is $25 (usually $49)GAMING
So

Although we may be doing an increasing amount of shopping online, a vast majority of retail still occurs in the real world — and no event better emphasizes that fact than Black Friday, the annual holiday shopping extravaganza that consumes US retailers every Thanksgiving. Last year, Black Friday generated nearly $8 billion in sales, according to Adobe Analytics. It remains the best time of the year to get discounts on expensive electronics like 4K TVs, video game consoles, and laptops, wh

Racist Instagram exchanges have gone viral in China, despite the platform being blocked. A Dolce & Gabbana fashion show has been apparently canceled in China as hordes of online users accuse the brand of racism. First denounced by famous actors including Zhang Ziyi (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), the brand pulled its Shanghai fashion show last night after a dozen models left, and now, online platforms like Net-A-Porter and Alibaba’s Taobao have swiftly stopped carrying its wares in

Amazon users who tuned into stream Doctor Who’s latest episode, “Kerblam!” experienced a little more time traveling than they bargained for. Rather than airing the correct episode, Amazon Prime Video apparently skipped ahead to “The Witchfinders,” an episode set to air this coming Sunday.The mistake was spotted by io9, who also notes that the closed captions for “Kerblam!” curiously aired as part of “The Witchfinders” — surely a jarrin

The 2018 holiday season is predicted to be a bumper year for e-commerce, helped by economic forces like lower unemployment and underlying trends like an ever-growing proportion of shoppers opting to spend their money online, and specifically on mobile devices. Thanksgiving, a day when brick-and-mortar stores tend to be closed, is a big one for online spending, and so far it’s off to a flying start.
Adobe, which puts out real-time analytics tracking e-commerce sales, said that as of 10am &n

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re:Pretty good at tech stuff
Spending time with your family for Thanksgiving
Bored because you’re reading this article right nowYou may not celebrate Thanksgiving where you live, but most of our readers are American. So let’s use this opportunity to review the tech setup of your family. You don’t want to get a call in a few months because your aunt’s computer caught a nasty ransomware and she can’t find her photos

Berlin-based Zizoo — a startup which self describes as booking.com for boats — has nabbed a €6.5 million (~$7.4M) Series A to help more millennials find holiday yachts to mess about taking selfies in.
Zizoosays its Series A — which was led by Revo Capital,with participation from new investors including Coparion, Check24 Ventures and PUSH Ventures — was “significantly oversubscribed”.
Existing investors including MairDumont Ventures, aws Founders

The US Postal Service says it’s fixed a security weakness on usps.com that let anyone see the personal account info of its users, including usernames and street addresses. The open vulnerability was reportedly identified over a year ago by an independent researcher but USPS never patched it until this week, when Krebs on Security flagged the issue.
The vulnerability included all 60 million user accounts on the website. It was caused by an authentication weakness in the site’s applic

Ah, wonderful to see you again, sir. The usual? Kool-Aid Grain Alcohol Martini with a twisty straw. Of course. And I see you’re wearing a new watch. The MQT Essential Mirror. Quite striking.
I see the watch has a quartz ETA movement – an acceptable movement by any standard – and a very elegant face and hands combination. What’s that? It has a quickset date? Of course, no watch over $200 would skimp on that simple complication. $251 you say? On a silver mesh band, also kno

Googlehas announced its plan for combating election interference in the European Union,ahead of elections next May when up to 350 million voters across the region will vote to elect 705 Members of the European Parliament.
In a blog post laying out a narrow approach to democracy-denting disinformation, Google says it will introduce a verification system for “EU election advertisers to make sure they are who they say they are”, and require that any election ads disclose who is paying f

With the holidays upon us and the end of the year approaching fast, it’s a good time to take stock of the books you might have been meaning to read all year. Black Friday is an ideal time to add to your reading list, whether you listen to audiobooks or read eBooks or physical ones.Most booksellers are offering up some sort of deal, no matter what your tastes. Here’s what you can find online.
Amazon
Amazon, of course, has a number of Black Friday deals this holiday season, but don&rs

Give the gift of organization this year. Bags are often ignored but are a critical part of anyone’s mobile gear. They’re the outward representations of our techie styles, and we put far too little thought into where we keep our most prized possessions. Here’s a collection of bags TechCrunch reviewed over the last year. You’ll find waxed canvas bags, camera backpacks, trail-ready commuter bags and bags designed with women in mind.
 
WP Standard built th

The International Space Station is apparently in need of a garage sale. European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, currently in residence up in, well, space, discovered a treasure trove of floppy disks tucked away in one of the lockers on-board.The ISS recently celebrated its 20th anniversary on November 20th. As spotted by CNET, Gerst tweeted a picture of his ancient tech find, adding “I found a locker on the @Space_Station that probably hasn’t been opened for a while.”

China’s facial recognition systems are used to catch all types of criminals, from thieves to jaywalkers, in real time. This week, one facial recognition camera publicly shamed a famous business woman for jaywalking after its systems caught her face crossing an intersection. The problem? She was never physically there.
As first reported by Abacus, it all took place in the Zhejiang province, south of Shanghai. The face of Dong Mingzhu, a president of China’s top air-conditioning compa

Black Friday 2018 is here, meaning now is the best time to find a discount for mostly everything on your wish list. That goes for tech, too. Every big box retailer, both online and in-store, is offering doorbuster savings that start today, and many of the best deals will last throughout the weekend leading up to Cyber Monday.If you want the best Black Friday shopping experience, check out The Verge’s guide to Black Friday. That’s your destination for finding the best deals from each

For those celebrating Thanksgiving today, at some point there will come a time where you is simply too full to move. At this point, the sensible action is to sleep it off before rising later in the day, groggy and disorientated, for a second gorging. But what if technology could help? What if, instead of succumbing to your turkey stupor, some sort of chest-mounted robot arm could lob sweet treats into your open mouth? What a world that would be.
We’ve not reached this gravy-soaked utopia

If it’s time to upgrade your gaming PC, there’s no better time of the year than Black Friday. It’s the season when manufacturers throw out deep discounts on laptops, desktops, components, and peripherals; and when stores like Amazon, Best Buy and Newegg sometimes compete to make those discounts even deeper.Every year’s different — Black Friday 2018 doesn’t have amazing deals on processors or PC memory — but this year, the solid state drive (SSD) sales a

The Verge’s Why’d You Push That Button podcast is all about stirring the pot. We love a little controversy and drama, which, coincidentally, also contributes to a great Thanksgiving meal. Avoid talking about politics, religion, and whatever else your random uncle wants to go off about, and, instead, try these topics. We’ve already tested them for you as conversation starters, and we don’t mind if you steal them. Here are five questions from the show that you can drop at

Black Friday is one of the best times of the year to pick up a new pair of headphones, with everything from in-ear buds to noise-cancelling headphones getting price cuts. And best of all, we’ve already done all the heavy lifting for you, putting together all the best deals from across the internet for your next pair of headphones.
The best headphones to buy on Black Friday
Sony’s 1000X M2 wireless noise-canceling headphones are some of the best around — sure, the newer, M3 ver

Amazonhas reversed a decision it made six months ago to shut off its US ecommerce site to Australian shoppers. Reuters reports that the U-turn comes after a customer backlash.
Since July shoppers in Australia trying to browse stuff to buy on Amazon.com have been redirected to the local site, Amazon.com.au.
Shipping to Australia from Amazon.com was also shut off at the same time. So shoppers were limited to buying goods sold by local sellers.
But from today the block has gone.
The

One of the most immediate — and already live — applications for robotics and artificial intelligence in general has been in using unmanned robots in warehouses and other environments, where they replace humans in repetitive jobs such as sorting and moving objects from A to B. Now, Beijing-based robotics startup Geek Plus (aka Geek+) says that it has raised $150 million to seize that growing opportunity by investing in product development, sales and customer service. Geek Plus sa

Wluper, the London-based tech startup building a conversational AI to power domain specific voice assistants, has raised $1.3 million in seed funding. Leading the round is “deep tech” VC IQ Capital, with participation from Seedcamp, Aster, and Magic Pony co-founder Dr Zehan Wang.
Founded in 2016 and originally backed by Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures, Wluper’s “conversational AI” is initially targeting navigation products with what it describes as &ldqu

Apple has resumed production of the iPhone X due to weaker than expected demand for its latest XS and XS Max models, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. The move is allegedly due to an agreement made with Samsung to purchase a certain quantity of OLED screens. With this year’s OLED-equipped models failing to sell in the quantities needed to fulfill the terms of the deal, the report suggests that Apple is turning to last year’s model for a solution. Apple ceased selling

It may have been eight years since the last Toy Story film came out, but frankly eight years isn't long enough to forget just how crushingly poignant the third chapter's conclusion was.
If you have managed to get over it, though, be warned: Toy Story 4 looks set to be just as emotional as the franchise's last outing.
Tim Allen certainly thinks so, anyway. Appearing on The Tonight Show, he described the film as deep and moving, with a wonderful plot. And he said the final moments had him choked u

Happy Thanksgiving, now you'll be forced to spend time with your family. 
While you may be excited by the prospect of enjoying some quality time with your family, you may also have some concerns and reservations about dinner. There are — as we have all learned this year — so many ways that things can quickly shift from joyous to horrifying. 
SEE ALSO: 9 videos proving turkeys are creepy as hell
But don't worry, we've come up with a couple of unique and effective ways for yo

Researchers at MIT have developed a plane capable of flying without any moving parts, reports MIT Technology Review. The feat was achieved using electroaerodynamic propulsion, which uses a pair of electrodes to push around ions and create ionic wind. The phenomenon has been known about since the 1960s (in fact, Apple even considered using it to cool its laptops back in 2012), but this is the first time it’s been used to propel a plane.
That said, this ‘plane’ is an uncrewed mo