Technology news

Razer has revealed the first official wireless keyboard and mouse duo for the Xbox One, an announcement that’s sure to excite Xbox One players and intrigue PC gamers. (Technically, the company revealed it last month, but the image seems to have mostly flown under the radar.)Pegged for a full announcement on January 8th, the currently unnamed wireless mouse and keyboard duo will be a first for the Xbox One console, which added wired keyboard and mouse support back in November.We’ve k

The Xbox One’s first official wireless mouse and keyboard are in the works, and Razer is clearly teasing what the two products will look like — and when we’ll get to learn more.
The full reveal image was actually released late last month, but it seems to have mostly flown under the radar. Now the company is prominently advertising the pair as it promotes their announcement, which coincide with the first day of CES: January 8th.
We’ve known for half a year that Razer had

Sphero’s hinted that it’s getting out of the licensed product game, but today CEO Paul Berberian confirmed to The Verge that the company is clearing out its remaining licensed inventory and won’t be restocking the supply. That means the company won’t be producing any more BB-8s, R2-D2s, Lightning McQueen cars, or talking Spider-Mans. The listings for all the toys list them as “legacy products” that are no longer in production. App support will continue for &l

Hyundai announced late last week that the Kona Electric, the company’s second fully electric vehicle, will start at $36,450 in the US when it goes on sale in early 2019 — basically dead even with the current average sale price of a new car in the United States, according to Kelley Blue Book.On one hand, that’s amazing. It’s a sign that automakers are now able to ship what is still pretty radical new technology — an entirely electric drivetrain — at a cost tha

Teens are better-behaved than ever when it comes to alcohol and drugs, but seem to have turned to vaping as their vice of choice, according to results from a nationally representative survey of adolescent drug use.First, the good news. Teen smoking is still at the lowest point since the Monitoring the Future survey began 44 years ago. Only 3.6 percent of high schoolers are smoking daily, down from more than 22 percent a couple decades ago. Binge drinking is down, adolescents are using drugs lik

The second half of 2018 was an eventful few months for animation. This summer, Cartoon Network and HowStuffWorks released Drawn, a miniseries dedicated to cartoon history; meanwhile, as expected, The Incredibles 2 broke records at the box office. Fall yielded Netflix’s The Dragon Prince, a new series from the head writer of the beloved Avatar: The Last Airbender, as well as news that the head writer of Rick and Morty would be developing a new Star Trek animated series in conjunction with

T-Mobile is now supporting eSIMs on Apple’s latest iPhones, letting them use two different phone numbers on one device, which is ideal for traveling abroad or balancing work and personal numbers.
You’ll have to install a new T-Mobile app in order to use the carrier on the eSIM inside the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR. Once you’re set up, you can select from one of three available plans:T-Mobile ONE Prepaid with unlimited voice, text, and data for $70 for 30 days
Simp

During casual conversations with Uber drivers and new acquaintances on flights across the country, it sometimes comes up that I’m a chemist. The reactions run the gamut, most latching onto the baggage associated with ‘chemicals‘ in today’s society. The most common sentiments being along these lines: “Chemical companies are making the environment and people less healthy.” “We should avoid chemicals in foods, cosmetics, and other consumer products.”

Google has halted a data collection project in China and struck a major blow to the controversial Dragonfly project, according to a new report from The Intercept. According to the report, Google is still researching Chinese web searches in an effort to launch a search engine that complies with the country’s censorship regime, although an official launch seems to have been indefinitely postponed. But in the face of widespread opposition within the company, Google executives shuttered one o

Discord announced a few days ago it would be offering a new revenue split for indie developers who want to debut their games on the Discord store — and it’s hard not to take the numbers as a thumb in the eye of both Steam and Epic Games. Discord’s revenue number was revealed in a blog post rather pointedly titled “Why not 90/10?” In it, Discord says its discovered that it can offer indie developers a 90/10 revenue split, besting Steam’s 70/30 and the new Epic

PewDiePie fans hacked the Wall Street Journal earlier today, claiming to offer an apology on behalf of the paper in an apparent attempt to get back at one of the YouTube creator’s longstanding opponents.A sponsored post on the Journal’s affiliated site was edited to say that the publication would “like to apologize to pewdiepie” and that he had been “misrepresented” by the paper’s journalists. The hacked note also said that the Journal would be sponsori

TCL’s 6-Series 4K HDR televisions with Roku software built in are an incredible value even at their usual asking price. You can spend thousands on a big 4K TV, but if your eyes are set on something cheaper, The Verge calls TCL’s latest “the best 4K TV under $1,000.” And today, you’ll be able to find it for far less than that at Best Buy.Normally $599.99, you’ll be able to check out with a $100 discount on the 55-inch model, which brings the final price down t

Developments in artificial intelligence move at a startling pace — so much so that it’s often difficult to keep track. But one area where progress is as plain as the nose on your AI-generated face is the use of neural networks to create fake images. In brief: we’re getting scarily good at it.In the image above you can see what four years of progress in AI image generation looks like. The crude black-and-white faces on the left are from 2014, published as part of a landmark pap

The Russia-linked Internet Research Agency (IRA) may have tried to blackmail potential American recruits by setting up a fake anti-masturbation hotline, according to a new report prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee. The IRA reportedly advertised its hotline on a fake Christian Facebook page, encouraging readers to reach out if they were “struggling with the addiction to masturbation.”
This bizarre detail was part of a larger analysis of ongoing Russian political influence

Italian authorities have moved to protect local investors by temporarily banning the sale of two particularly dodgy cryptocurrency investments within the country for 90 days. In a special bulletin, the Commissione Nazionale per la Società e la Borsa (CONSOB) revealed a string of websites and Facebook pages it has restricted from selling potentially fake cryptocurrency projects, Bitsurge Tokens and Green Energy Certificates. CONSOB is much akin to the US Securities and Exchange

The Microsoft Surface Pro 6 is a versatile and capable Windows 10 computer, and the upgraded version donned in a matte black finish is on sale today at Best Buy. Normally $1,199 for the 256GB version in black (sans Type Cover keyboard), this deal loops the computer in along with a matching Type Cover for $999. That’s about $300 off of the usual price if you were to purchase these two items together.
Comparing this midtier machine to the low-end model that usually sells for $899 (though yo

Hopefully you’ve already got most of your Christmas shopping done already (if not, check out our ultimate guide, one we created for parents, and another for partners). But you know what you might’ve forgotten? Games. Red hot fiery games. Remember, it’s not all about the Christmas day and gift giving. Some of the best memories of the season are made sitting around a table on days around the holiday. Oh, and whooping your loved ones at some games. To help you out on this quest,

Google’s planning to roll out a new feature for the Google Assistant that’ll give users a better idea of whether their flight might be delayed — a nice thing to know during the holidays. The company already shares these predictions through Google Flights, but soon, Assistant users can ask, “Hey Google, is my flight on time” or “what’s the status of the American Airlines flight from Philadelphia to Denver?”Google uses a combination of machine learn

Google is expanding its New York City presence by announcing a $1 billion investment in a new Google Hudson Square campus, which is slated to open 2020. The new offices will be located at 315 and 345 Hudson Street, with an additional area planned for 550 Washington Street to open in 2022.Like Amazon and Apple, Google is expanding
Google is the latest tech firm to announce a big expansion, hot on the heels of Apple’s new Austin campus and the controversial Amazon HQ2 campuses that planned

Tumblr’s ban on adult content is now in effect and users will begin to see explicit posts disappear from public view. Media showing sex acts, exposed genitals, and “female-presenting” nipples will be hidden.
All posts that are currently flagged as explicit are now being hidden from view, according to Tumblr, and that includes posts that users are in the process of appealing. In addition to what’s already gone, more adult content is going to be flagged in coming weeks, Tu

It’s hard to top a year like 2017. Last year saw some of the biggest names in video games reinvented and rejuvenated, from the lush open world of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to the heart-pounding Resident Evil 7 to the manic wackiness of Super Mario Odyssey. Meanwhile, we were surprised and delighted by brand-new names like PUBG, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Cuphead. There was even a great Sonic the Hedgehog game, which doesn’t happen very often.
But this year was also surprisi

B-Social, a London fintech that currently offers a “social finance” app and beta debit Mastercard, has raised £3.2 million in seed-round funding from undisclosed high-net-worth individuals. However, the fundraise is just the first step in a journey in which B-Socialwants to eventually become a fully licensed bank that reimagines banking around everyday social interactions.
As it exists today, the B-Social app and accompanying card enables users to have control over everyday spe

Fitbit is updating its Ionic and Versa watches today with the latest version of Fitbit OS, which adds support for a handful of new third-party apps. Fitbit OS 3.0 will also let users quickly log their water intake, sleep, and weight straight from the watch instead of through the mobile app.
Of the new third-party apps, some of the more notable are Couch to 5K and Achu Health. Couch to 5K is a popular training program that coaches beginning runners toward completing a long-distance race, and the

Facebook today announced a host of new camera features for its Messenger app. As well as native support for looping Boomerang videos, there’s also a Selfie mode that automatically blurs out the background, and an augmented reality feature that lets you place Messenger’s stickers in your photos and videos.These new additions mean that Facebook Messenger now has five different camera modes — normal, video, text, boomerang, and selfie — just two months after Facebook announ

Andrew Kim, the designer who first rose to prominence with a fan-made reimagining of Microsoft’s design language, has left his role as a senior designer at Tesla to join Apple. His LinkedIn profile says that he joined the company in December of this year, while his Instagram confirms that his first day working at Apple Park was last Tuesday. Along with the recent news of Tesla’s chief vehicle engineer returning to Apple, Kim’s move will certainly stoke speculation that Apple i

LG has announced a new 32-inch UHD display, the 32QK500-W, which offers an impressive mix of features for a midrange monitor for $349.99, via Engadget.
While not quite a full 4K display, the 32QK500-W should get you decent pixel density with a 2560 x 1440 IPS panel. There’s also support for AMD FreeSync, a 75Hz refresh rate, and an 8ms response time. It might not be the fastest display out there, but it’s certainly something that’ll hold up for less demanding gaming.No USB-C o

A notorious Chinese cryptocurrency figure has been arrested after throwing stacks of HK $100 ($12) bills from the rooftop of a building in one of Hong Kong’s poorest districts. Self-styled Bitcoin millionaire Wong Ching-Kit announced the bizarre stunt via Facebook. In the post, he declared money would soon be “falling from the sky.” Sure enough, Wong proceeded to rain cash on Kowloon streets on Saturday, causing havoc as citizens reportedly became frenzied in th

North, the company behind the Focals AR glasses, has acquired the “technology portfolio” behind another set of AR glasses, the cancelled Intel Vaunt glasses. The company wouldn’t disclose the terms of the deal, but Intel Capital is a major investor in North and led its last financing round in 2016.
Both Focals and Vaunt had the same basic idea: use a tiny laser embedded in the stem of your glasses to project a reflected image directly into your retina. Unlike other AR and VR e

K Health, the startup providing consumers with an AI-powered primary care platform, has raised $25 million in Series B funding. The round was led by 14W, Comcast Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners, with participation from Lerer Hippeau, BoxGroup and Max Ventures — all previous investors from the company’s seed or Series A rounds. Other previous investors include Primary Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners.
Co-founded and led by former Vroom CEO an

While loneliness is experienced by all ages, it’s especially pronounced in older people. In the UK, 51 percent of all people aged 75 and over live alone and approximately 6 percent of older adults leave their house once a week or less. An increasing proportion of these older adults live in rural areas. In an age when services and information are increasingly available online, might technology play a role in addressing loneliness and social isolation? Our research was conducted i