Technology news

The Logitech Harmony 650 has been our runner-up pick for the best universal remote control; at its typical $40-50 street price, we considered it the budget alternative to the far pricier Harmony Elite.But today, it’s not $40 or $50. The 8-device infrared remote is $25 at Best Buy, the lowest price we’ve ever seen. (We’ve seen it hit $30, but rarely.)
If you’re in the market for some smart light bulbs, I also have to admit I’m tempted by this 2-pack of TP-Link&rsquo

In November, we learned that Microsoft won a $479 million contract to supply the US Army with a version of its HoloLens augmented reality headset — a move that Microsoft’s own employees decried this February, prompting Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella himself to respond.
Now, for the first time, we’re seeing what those hundreds of millions of dollars actually bought.CNBC got an exclusive look at an early draft of the Army’s Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), which

The Global Positioning System time epoch is ending and another one is beginning, an event that could affect your devices or any equipment or legacy system that relies on GPS for time and location.
Most clocks obtain their time from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). But the atomic clocks on satellites are set to GPS time. The timing signals you can get from GPS satellites are very accurate and globally available. And so they’re often used by systems as the primary source of time and fr

Editor’s Note: refocused newsletters
It was another dizzying week here at Extra Crunch as you will shortly see in this newsletter.
One change that we are making: we are simplifying our newsletters to keep you better informed on what is happening on Extra Crunch. We are merging the daily, weekly, and article editions of this newsletter into a “roundup” format that will come out twice per week. The goal is to keep the signal high, and the noise in your inbox low.
To control which

With no warning and little explanation, Netflix has removed the easiest way to sling its shows from one Apple device to another: AirPlay.
Netflix confirmed to The Verge that it pulled the wireless casting feature this past week, due to what it’s calling a “technical limitation.” But it’s not the kind of technical limitation you’d think.You see, Apple recently partnered with most of the major TV brands to allow AirPlay 2 to send shows directly to their 2019 TV sets

Joanna Glasner Contributor More posts by this contributorCorporate biotech venture funding rises again 2019 US VC funds take a more boutique approach
Venture investment in space technology is hitting stratospheric heights in recent quarters. But investors in the sector are betting it will rocket higher still.
The latest example of high-velocity funding is satellite internet startup OneWeb,which recently announced a galactic-sized $1.25 billion venture funding round in the wake of a successful l

There are quite a few deals to check out this weekend, some of which are exclusive to readers of The Verge. Starting with arguably the best deal that we’ve come across this week: Daily Steals is offering readers an exclusive discount on refurbished Google Pixel 3 and Google Pixel 3 XL phones.The Pixel 3, the smaller of the two, usually starts at $799 brand-new, while the Pixel 3 XL starts at $899, but these refurbished models are over $300 off of their normal prices.The Pixel 3 with 64GB

Extra Crunch offers members the opportunity to tune into conference calls led and moderated by the TechCrunch writers you read every day. This week, TechCrunch’s Kirsten Korosec and Kate Clark led a deep-dive discussion into Lyft’s IPO and the outlook for the business going forward.
After skyrocketing nearly 10% on its first day hitting the public markets, Lyft stock has faded back down towards its IPO price as some investors grow more concerned over the company’s path to profi

North, the company behind the Focals smart glasses, announced this week that it’s updating its glasses to add new, much-needed functionality. Of most interest to me, and as I noted as a feature I’d like to see in my prior review, the company added support for Spotify controls. Users will be able to skip songs, see a track’s title/artist, and adjust the volume of their connected listening device from the glasses’ accompanying control ring, called the Loop.The company&rsqu

Mark Zuckerberg recently posted an article that got a great deal of attention entitled “A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking.” He said the platform would focus on simple, private interactions and blending functions for Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. He also wanted to “build more ways for people to interact on top of that, including calls, video chats, groups, stories, businesses, payments, commerce” and more. He also recently commented on an arti

One of the frustrations of my job is the difficulty of convincingly communicating differences in sound quality. If I want to inform you of a great new camera, such as the Huawei P30 Pro’s low-light heroics, I can post side-by-side photos and demonstrate exactly how much of an upgrade the latest tech is. A great new display can also be photographed to show off its strengths. New video game with awesome graphics? More visual evidence can be provided. But if I want to tell you about an amazi

Recently, a few of us at The Verge who use Google Assistant devices in our homes started complaining about the whole “Hey Google / OK Google” thing. We all had the same experience: you’d say something like, “Hey Google, set a timer for 12 minutes,” and the expected “Timer set” response would come from a device somewhere else in the house.
In my home, we have that problem all the time. We have three Google Assistant devices (not including our phones), an

Let’s start this week’s newsletter with some data. Nationally, startups pulled in $30.8 billion in the first quarter of 2019, up 22 percent year-on-year, according to Crunchbase’s latest deal round-up.
A closer look at the numbers shows a big drop in angel funding and a slight decrease in mega-rounds, or financings larger than $100 million. The number of mega-rounds fell to 57 deals in Q1 and deal value was down too. With that said, mega-rounds still accounted for $16.4 billion

Welcome to CHEAP, our series about things that are good, but most of all, cheap. CHEAP! Everyone needs an external hard drive – especially one that’s portable. So, when Seagate‘s 4TB external hard drive has 30 percent off and is down to only $84, you best take notice. Yes, this is the lowest price this particular hard drive has ever been sold at and is a full $16 cheaper than comparative products from competitors. In other words, it’s a great deal. So, why might you want

Weighted blankets have recently joined the pack as one more tool in our "sleep better" arsenal. We've explored which mattresses are best, have waded through the online reviews to source the best pillows, and have even tracked down the best sheets. It's time to top things off with a weighted blanket.
A weighted blanket is exactly what it sounds like: A comforter-style blanket that has a layer of heavy pellets (usually glass micro beads) sewn into it. 
One of the most recognized names in the

If there is one thing Twitter has taught us, it’s that the world loves a question that sounds stupid, but actually has a profound and interesting answer. For instance, what would happen if the world suddenly turned into blueberries, as answered by physics recently. Or what color is that dress? In a similar way, perception scientists have recently been fighting it out on Twitter to answer the seemingly trivial question of: “which is the best sense, and why?”. The debate has ope

These days, everybody seems to be jumping on the personalization bandwagon, which is great, but I’ve noticed that brands often struggle with exactly how to do it. That’s why I believe there is perhaps no marketing buzzword more important than “personalization.” Try Googling it: a search turns up nearly 100 million results. Brands are spending millions on “getting personal” with customers. A recent Gartner survey found that CMOs across industries spend over 14

For the second time in two weeks, Google’s website has seemingly confirmed the name of a new product — in this case, the long-rumored upcoming “lite” version of the company’s Pixel 3. It looks like the new phone will officially be called the “Pixel 3a,” according to screenshots we just captured of this Google Store page:
While Google has already taken down the page showing the “new” phone, the damage (if you can call additional hype for a th

In the early 2000s, the supply of adventure games had all but dried up after major studios like LucasArts and Sierra folded. But despite the shift in fans’ interest towards other genres, a few tenacious developers stood their ground and churned out some memorable point-and-click titles that are worth revisiting more than a decade later. Here are some of the seminal works from that dark age that you should check out. History Lesson The golden age of point-and-click adventure games was undo

When Amazon bought mesh Wi-Fi router company Eero, our first reactions were of exhaustion, consternation and concern: why couldn’t a tiny company with an excellent privacy-minded product be left to its own devices, instead of getting snapped up by the big data giant from Seattle?
Now, we know why. Mashable reports that Amazon paid just $97 million for Eero, far less money than the $148 million it reportedly raised as a startup. That’s something you don’t do unless your busines

Montero “Lil Nas X” Hill’s parents were concerned when their son dropped out of college eight months ago to pursue a career in rap; as the country trap star told Time Magazine, his parents succinctly pointed out there are millions of rappers already crowding the scene. Hill didn’t listen. He had to compete with up-and-coming rappers on streaming services like SoundCloud and Spotify, but Hill had a secret card up his sleeve — a meme and TikTok.
“I promoted the

HTC unveiled its long-anticipated Viveport Infinity VR gaming service this week. It comes with a $13 monthly ($99 annually) fee and more than 600 titles you can play with unlimited access. The selection, price, and experience are all pretty good – but we’re hoping HTC is just getting started. Viveport Infinity is a welcome addition to the VR scene. It’s the world’s first unlimited subscription service for VR experiences, and it comes with quite a few bells and whistles.