Technology news

Out of all the faces to put on Doc Brown and Marty McFly in Back to the Future, I never knew how bad I needed it to be Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Holland.
This deepfake clip superimposes the faces of Downey Jr. and Holland over the original actors Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox, giving us an incredibly convincing glimpse at what it would be like if the Avengers themselves rebooted the 1985 classic Back to the Future. YouTuber EZRyderX47 did a very good job with this one.
Given the two actor

New iterations of the Tesla Model S and Model X are boasting some pretty impressive new travel ranges, Tesla revealed on Friday.
The pages for the Model S and Model X claim that the Long Range Plus versions of these two electric vehicles can now hit ranges of 390 and 351 miles respectively, which is a healthy bump up from the previous estimated ranges of 373 and 328 miles.Tesla Model S estimated EPA range is now above 390 miles or ~630 km https://t.co/sNFzIkuJpC
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Feb

As the U.S. election season trudges forward, Facebook announced it will allow politicians and political groups to pay for sponsored content on the platform, Reuters reported Friday.
This means that politicians can pay users, groups, or pages to post content in partnership with the politicians, which is a separate beast from standard advertising. The decision form Facebook comes after Mike Bloomberg, who is vying to be the Democratic candidate in 2020's presidential election, began a campaign of

After three months of digging, Elon Musk's Boring Company has completed its excavation of a transportation tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center, the company tweeted Friday.Breakthrough! https://t.co/vJ7Jmz2nNb
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) February 14, 2020The Boring Company retweeted a video from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority account that shows an excavator breaking through the ground at the end of tunnel, which will ferry people around the sprawling co

This year Mashable is celebrating the season of love with Horny on Main, an exploration of the many ways that thirsting for sex affects our lives.Is there anything more delightfully horny than reality television? 
I used to call reality TV my guilty pleasure, but I don't pretend that I'm ashamed anymore. I'm a proud defendant of overproduced, alcohol-drenched trash shows. They're loud, dramatic for no good reason, and rarely follow a cohesive storyline. Still, they're so much fun to watch.

Just like that, rickrolling is an official piece of the Fortnite experience.
There's a new emote in the Fortnite item shop called "Never Gonna." If the name wasn't enough of a giveaway, the $5 buy is indeed Rick Astley's dorky white dude dance from his seminal (for internet trolling, at least) 1987 hit single, "Never Gonna Give You Up."
The British pop star even gave the emote his personal seal of approval in the only place that really matters, Twitter. (Sound up, folks. It's not a rickroll if y

Popular messaging app ToTok has been pulled from the Google Play Store ... again. According to 9to5Google, Google removed the app as of Friday afternoon after reinstating it in January.
ToTok originally launched in July and took off rather quickly in the Unite Arab Emirates. With messaging apps like WhatsApp and Skype being blocked in the Middle Eastern country, ToTok seemed like the next best option. Eventually, it even became popular around the world.
But only a few months later it was removed

Greg Epstein ContributorShare on Twitter Greg M. Epstein is the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT, and the author of The New York Times bestselling book "Good Without God." Described as a “godfather to the [humanist] movement” by The New York Times Magazine in recognition of his efforts to build inclusive, inspiring and ethical communities for the nonreligious and allies, Greg was also named “one of the top faith and moral leaders in the United States” by Faithful Inte

Photo by Avery White for The Verge Presidents’ Day is a US holiday that takes place on Monday, February 17th, this year. And like most US holidays, it has been co-opted by retailers as a shopping holiday. We’ve been tallying up the best deals on a variety of tech products in the lead-up to Presidents’ Day; you’ll find them below. Most will last through the holiday, and in some cases, will extend past Monday.
Compared to the lead-up to the Super Bowl in late January, ther

This year Mashable is celebrating the season of love with Horny on Main, an exploration of the many ways that thirsting for sex affects our lives.  If we hear the word "horny" one more time...
We don't know about you, reader, but we get tired of saying the word horny. No, not tired of being horny. We're just tired of using the same term over and over again. There's gotta be more than just "horny."
Luckily, there are at least 69 other ways to get the same message across. We compiled a list,

In our Love App-tually series, Mashable shines a light into the foggy world of online dating. It is cuffing season after all.It's almost become unusual for people to not meet their partner online. That wasn't always the case. 
Twenty-nine percent of heterosexual and 65 percent of same-sex couples meet online. Over 20 billion matches have been made since Tinder launched in 2012.
But when Match.com, one of the first mainstream dating sites, was founded in 1993, it was taboo to talk about onli

Warning: Contains spoilers for Bojack Horseman's final season.
Bojack Horseman is a show that goes all in on the details.
Each frame is packed full of so many tiny in-jokes and background puns that it feels like you could watch the entire series several times over, and still keep seeing things you missed.
The Season 6 whiteboard sequence is the perfect example of this. 
To recap, in Season 6, Episode 11, Diane, Todd, and Princess Carolyn attempt to work out why Bojack is being investigated

TL;DR: Finally get the comfort and sound you've been looking for with HyperSonic Lite True Wireless Earphones for just $50.99, a $29 savings. Face it, earbuds aren't usually very comfortable. Take Apple's AirPods, for example. Ask basically anyone with a pair: they've got a lot going for them, but comfort is not one of those things. That doesn't have to be the case, though.
These HyperSonic Lite True Wireless Earphones do things a bit differently. They combine the pillowy softness of over-e

Sadly, it can't always be golf season. Even if you live in a place with the same climate year-round, Mother Nature likes to throw curveballs. So at some point, you'll be sitting (im)patiently indoors, awaiting another warm, sunny day.
Rather than letting your time go to waste, you might as well work on improving your game. That way, you can take on the green with more confidence come spring.
We've got a few different tools on sale for President's Day that will help you step up your golf game. So

With your busy lifestyle, we're sure it can be pretty challenging to cook a decent meal for yourself on the regular.
But maybe the sole reason why it's hard to prep meals is that you lack the tools and devices to make good food in the first place. And it's time to change that.
In honor of Presidents Day, below are 30 different kitchen tools and gadgets on sale, each designed to upgrade your kitchen (and your life). Use the code PRESIDENT15 at checkout to enjoy an extra 15% off coupon.
Kitchen to

When it comes to keeping your information private on the web, you're going to need more than just a strong password (although it couldn't hurt). Whether you're at home, a coffee shop, the college library, or on an airplane, if you're using the internet, you should arm yourself with a VPN.
Not only will a virtual private network shield your precious private information from hackers, trackers, and thieves online, but it can also help you download at full speed, bypass regional content blocks, and

Image: Nvidia When we learned that Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service was losing access to every Activision Blizzard game only one week after leaving beta, I’ll admit my first thought was that maybe a short-sighted, money-grubbing corporation had decided to take its ball and go home.
That may still be what happened, but it turns out there was a more pressing problem: Nvidia didn’t actually get permission to keep its games on GeForce Now after launch.
Nvidia overreached,

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Google has removed the chat app ToTok, which is allegedly an espionage tool for the United Arab Emirates, from the Play Store for a second time. The app was previously pulled from Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store in December, shortly before The New York Times published a report about it. Google quietly reinstated the app in January. The app appears to have remained unavailable on the App Store.
9to5Google noted the news of ToTok’s t

In a wonderful Valentine’s Day surprise, Fortnite has introduced a new emote inspired by the Rickrolling meme, and it’s incredible. It plays part of the actual song by Rick Astley, “Never Gonna Give You Up,” and your in-game character dances just like Astley does in the music video.
The emote, called “Never Gonna,” is available in Fortnite’s in-game shop right now for 500 V-bucks, which approximates to about $5. You can get a taste of what it looks and s

This week, Apple began rolling out a new update to its Quick Look augmented reality tool, letting iPhone and iPad users check out products in AR and then buy them directly.
Quick Look already let retailers offer an AR preview of their products by uploading a flat sticker or 3D product model so shoppers could see how a product might look in a real-world space. Now, TechCrunch says that retailers can add a new button into that AR preview, which could let a customer immediately buy that product usi

The Galaxy Z Flip ships with the same “Care Instructions” as the Fold. It’s a five-item list with the following basic points:Don’t scratch the screen with a pen or fingernail
Don’t stick stuff between the screens when folding
Don’t get it dusty, wet or feed it after midnight
Don’t stick stickers to the screen
Don’t get it near credit cards or your pacemakerUnlike the last time around, however, these warnings seem to have been included out of an (un

It's Valentine's Day and Jack Dorsey is tweeting about wine. 
Or, more precisely, he tweeted a screenshot of a WikiHow article telling people how to properly hold a wine glass. Whatever you do, insists the article with an accompanying picture of a solitary hand holding a glass of wine, "Never hold the bowl." It's real depressing shit. 
The Twitter CEO shared the image late Friday afternoon after, we're assuming, his date told him to stop being such a pretentious jerk and just enjoy the

Smart speakers are creepy recording devices that eavesdrop on unsuspecting people. A new piece of custom technology offers the chance to fight back. 
Stylized as a cyberpunk bracelet, a "wearable jammer" was developed by a trio of professors at the University of Chicago. In addition to looking punk rock as all hell, the device emits ultrasonic noise that interferes with microphones' ability to record yet is inaudible to humans. 
Oh, and the professors — Ben Zhao, Heather Zheng, a

HQ Trivia, the live trivia gameshow app created by two of Vine's cofounders, is shutting down less than three years after launching. 
The abrupt shutdown, which was first reported by CNN, was announced Friday after a planned acquisition fell through, HQ Trivia CEO Rus Yusupov told employees. 
"With HQ we showed the world the future of TV," Yusupov said in a tweet. "We didn’t get to where we hoped but we did stretch the world’s imagination for what’s possible on our sm

This week, DVD kiosk company Redbox quietly launched an ad-supported online video streaming service. It’s still in a limited release, but you can check it out right now in your web browser or through the Redbox Android and iOS mobile apps.
Free Live TV’s layout is similar to other ad-supported live TV services like Xumo. It offers specific channels like Film Rise and The Pet Collective as well as general categories like Comedy, Epic Viral Videos, and Celebrity & Entertainment New

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook has canceled its upcoming global marketing conference out of caution for the coronavirus outbreak, according to Reuters. The conference was set to take place in March at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, and 4,000 people were expected to attend.“Out of an abundance of caution, we canceled our global marketing summit due to evolving public health risks related to coronavirus,” a Facebook spokesman said to Reuters.
Facebook cancelin

Saying "I love you" can be hard. But sending a heart emoji? No problemo!
On Valentine's Day, heart emoji have their work cut out for them as our emotionally burdened fingers send pictographs of love 'round the globe. 
Not all of these emoji staples are created equal, though. According to Emojipedia's Jeremy Burge, the red heart was Emojipedia's most searched emoji on Valentine's Day. At any given time on V-Day, the red heart emoji was looked up twice as much as all the other hearts. People

I love dumb stuff: corgis with long legs, cheese that looks like people, my idiot boyfriend (hi, honey!) In Table Manners, dumb stuff abounds. For a gamer like me, that is a match made in heaven.
The "physics-based dating simulator," available on PC this Valentine's Day, tasks players with helping a disembodied hand impress a dinner date. How did this hand come to be severed? I don't know. Can the hand even eat dinner? No clue. Why is this charmer still single? You tell me! 
The game opens