After suffering its first defeat in the Google DeepMind Challenge Match on Sunday, the Go-playing AI AlphaGo has beaten world-class player Lee Se-dol for a fourth time to win the five-game series 4-1 overall. The final game proved to be a close one, with both sides fighting hard … | Continue reading
For the first time, a senior NFL official has acknowledged that there is a connection between football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative disease discovered in the brains of several former professional players. Jeff Miller, the NFL's senior vice president for he … | Continue reading
Finally there’s a use for dog drool: this spring, a new startup called Embark plans to launch a DNA testing kit for dogs that will tell owners about their canine’s ancestry, and disease risk. That’s not all the founders have in mind though; they may be aiming at human diseases by … | Continue reading
A beautiful friendship is blossoming between ex-Microsoft head Steve Ballmer and self-proclaimed greatest artist ever Kanye West. The two men are scheduled to meet this week, after they bonded yesterday over Chuck the Condor, the mascot for the Ballmer-owned LA Clippers. Chuck is … | Continue reading
Most people know iRobot for its line of Roomba vacuums, but the Massachusetts-based company offers a whole array of robotic cleaners, from gutter cleaners to pool cleaners to floor scrubbers. Today it's expanding its line of floor cleaners, to include a cheaper, simplified model. … | Continue reading
General Motors and Lyft are ready to take their two-month-old relationship to the next level, jointly announcing the launch of a short-term vehicle rental for people who want to drive for the ride-hail service but lack the wheels to do so. But this is not your typical car rental … | Continue reading
Twitch doesn't just want you watching games on its streaming service: it wants you interacting with them too. Building off of the success of internet sensations like "Twitch Plays Pokemon," today Twitch is announcing a new initiative called "stream first" that it hopes will encou … | Continue reading
Apple is adding sponsored posts to Apple News, allowing advertisers to place their own articles right alongside the editorial stories people open up the app to find. Sponsored stories will appear in the news feed like any other article, the only difference being a small label ben … | Continue reading
British Gas wants to text its customers the second it detects a problem with their heating system. To do that, it's starting a program called Boiler IQ. Customers who sign up will essentially have their boiler retrofitted with smart home tech that's capable of reporting many issu … | Continue reading
A Russian court seconded a prior decision today when it determined that Google violated anti-trust laws by forcing Android phone manufacturers to include its apps on devices by default. The suit claimed that the company broke Russian law by requiring the country's manufacturers t … | Continue reading
If you're building a new social network likely to get battered in the marketplace, you may as well call it Waffle. The latest entry in the ever-expanding category of Weird Samsung Things allows you to post a photo that your friends can annotate by adding their own photos or drawi … | Continue reading
Bitcoin was almost dealt a major blow today when it seemed Microsoft would stop accepting the cryptocurrency for digital purchases through customer accounts. But the company now says an update to a support page was posted erroneously and contained "inaccurate" information. Bitcoi … | Continue reading
Last year, Verizon began offering an annual upgrade option for customers who purchased an iPhone 6S or 6S Plus. Now it's expanding the offering to customers who pick up a Samsung Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 Edge. Every Verizon customer who utilizes its device installment option to pic … | Continue reading
Kanye West made his first update to The Life of Pablo today, a change reflected only on Tidal, where Kanye says the album will live forever. As Reddit user JayElect points out, the album track "Famous" has gotten a few new lyrics and some minor production changes. It's not a big … | Continue reading
Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of the embattled blood-testing startup Theranos, has lost commercial partners, board members and a lot of credibility over the last few months. Prize-winning reporting from the Wall Street Journal indicates that her multibillion dollar startup’s highly publi … | Continue reading
I was beginning to have the itch, a low-level anxiety that occurs on the third or fourth day of a film festival when you haven't seen anything you feel terribly strongly about one way or another. SXSW, in addition to being a premiere showcase for brands, bands and media outlets, … | Continue reading
The sci-fi adventure set to follow up indie-hit Gone Home has been delayed until next year. Game studio Fullbright announced this morning that development on Tacoma has taken longer than expected, requiring it to push the game's release date from "mid-to-late 2016" to spring of 2 … | Continue reading
Since the dawn of music, mankind has wished to turn their laziest vocal expressions into song. And since roughly 2011, when Smule introduced the Songify app, that's been totally possible. But what if you just wanted to hum? That was the ambitious question that Samsung began to as … | Continue reading
A surprisingly smart tyrannosaur has been uncovered — and this dinosaur may have hunted smarter, not harder, evidence suggests. Once thought to have grown large while acquiring intelligence, this new specimen suggests something new: tyrannosaurs didn't have to be big to be smart. … | Continue reading
This morning we posted a 360-degree interview with Michelle Obama. It was an incredibly ambitious project, and we learned a lot. One of my favorite parts of shooting in 360 degrees is the ability to see the whole production (even me in the corner), including everything that went … | Continue reading
Google is announcing a slew of new features for Play Games today, and the coolest might actually be a new type of ad. It might not sound particularly exciting — Google has given the new ad format the drab title "search trial run ads" — but the feature now makes it possible to try … | Continue reading
On Feb. 14, one of the company’s several dozen test vehicles struck a bus, the first accident where the autonomous system was at fault. On March 8, a pair of Google researchers filed a patent entitled “Bus Detection for an Autonomous Vehicle.” The patent details specific image re … | Continue reading
A former Volkswagen employee says the company destroyed documents that were required to be preserved because of an EPA lawsuit, reports the Courthouse News Service.The allegation comes in a wrongful termination lawsuit against Volkswagen filed earlier this month by Daniel Donovan … | Continue reading
Microsoft is announcing a big new feature for Xbox owners today: cross-network play. It's something the software giant has hinted at for years, and now it seems the reality of PS4, Xbox One, and PC players playing the same game together might finally happen. Developers building g … | Continue reading
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’s second season comes to Netflix on April 15th, and it looks like things are about the same for the freed captive. She’s still in New York City, living bunker-free, and figuring out how the "real world" works. This season will apparently involve Kimmy wo … | Continue reading
The company behind San Diego Comic-Con is trying to expand its control of geekdom beyond a single weekend in July. It's teaming up with Lionsgate to launch a streaming service with classic sci-fi and fantasy titles, live streams of select SDCC panels, and original programming, in … | Continue reading
It's all about timing, say the researchers from Stanford University responsible for creating the incredibly strong microrobots above. If you want to move large weights with tiny bots, they say, it's better to concentrate on precise movements executed in perfect harmony, than powe … | Continue reading
Sony's internet TV service, PlayStation Vue, has been a bit slow to roll out since launching a year ago. Before today, it was only available in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, San Francisco, and Miami. A big part of why Vue has been expanding so slowly is be … | Continue reading
Samsung's Gear VR headset provides a great experience for its $99 price point, but it can't match up to some of the incredible stuff you can do with a motion tracking system, like the one available with HTC's Vive Pre. So last night at the SXSW festival in Texas Samsung introduce … | Continue reading
At SXSW this weekend, Jake Gyllenhaal charmed his way to raucous laughter and exuberant applause for a movie that was frankly awful.Demolition, written by Bryan Sipe and directed by Dallas Buyer's Club and Wild's Jean-Marc Vallée, tells the story of Davis Mitchell, a man who can' … | Continue reading
The Game Developers Conference doesn’t have the marketing of flashy video game conferences like E3, Gamescom, or Tokyo Game Show, but it’s no less important. For 27 years, the event has been a place for people and the games industry and the press to meet, mingle, and learn from o … | Continue reading
No show likes to troll its audience quite like The Walking Dead. Game of Thrones may kill off people you love, and Homeland may test your patience, but there’s something unique about The Walking Dead’s ability to get you invested, hold your hand through long stretches of dialogue … | Continue reading
Next week the first piece of downloadable content for Fallout 4 launches, and today Bethesda has released a new trailer showing just what's in store for those jumping back into the wasteland. Called "Automatron," the debut DLC features a character known only as the Mechanist, who … | Continue reading
As the battle between Apple and the FBI continues, The Guardian reports that other tech companies are close to announcing security improvements. Among them is Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp, which the publication says is set to expand encryption to voice calls "within … | Continue reading
The Seattle-based e-commerce company recently filed a patent application for a process that would allow shoppers to make a purchase by taking a photo and/or video of themselves rather than keying in their account password. The application is related to a separate patent Amazon ho … | Continue reading
Smartphones are connected computers that fit in our pockets — at this point, the "phone" part of them is virtually an afterthought. We use them for all kinds of communication that has nothing to do with a phone number: email, instant messaging, social networks, video calling, the … | Continue reading
AlphaGo’s victories against legendary Go player Lee Se-dol over the last few days mark a major milestone in AI research. The complex Chinese board game had long been considered impossible for computers to crack, but DeepMind used machine learning and neural networks to give its A … | Continue reading
"If you don't know who Slenderman is, you're living under a rock," remarks one of the dozens of teens appearing in YouTube videos that are excerpted in Beware the Slenderman. It's the first hint that the documentary is going to try to do the impossible:€” explain the internet, an … | Continue reading
Everything about 10 Cloverfield Lane has been a complete surprise: its out-of-left-field announcement, its tightly-held plot secrets, and the fact that it’s the first time audiences have been able to see what director Dan Trachtenberg can do with a feature film. The filmmaker has … | Continue reading
Twitter is cluttered with stray artifacts of fandom. There are countless fan accounts — some active, some long dormant — for Katy Perry, One Direction, and Taco Bell (@TacoBell_fanz bio: "the place for Taco Bell lovers"). There’s a fan account for DJ Khaled’s Snapchat and Donald … | Continue reading
Are you a light connoisseur? Can you tell the difference between "cool daylight" and "warm white"? If so, Philips has just announced what could be your next favorite lightbulb: the Philips Hue white ambiance. The company promises that the white ambiance delivers "every shade of w … | Continue reading
The First Lady needed a turnip.By the fall of 2014, “Turn Down for What,” Lil Jon and DJ Snake’s triple-platinum trap-meets-EDM single had swallowed pop culture whole. Jimmy Fallon and Robin Wright were dancing to it on The Tonight Show; Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum posed while … | Continue reading
The first thing I see when I put on the HTC Vive virtual reality headset is a McDonald’s Happy Meal. It’s floating by itself against a blank white backdrop, gesturing toward me with its unmoving smile and a dog-like eagerness. With my two hands now firmly grasping the Vive’s mush … | Continue reading
You know the old saying: it's Pi Day, Pi Day, gotta get down on Pi Day. And what better way to celebrate the date that embodies everyone's favorite mathematical constant than with precisely 3.14 facts about pi. 1 — A Japanese memory master Claims he can recite pi to 111,700 digit … | Continue reading
Happy π day!It’s a big week for The Verge with four major events scheduled: the South by Southwest festival, the GDC gaming show, the Baselworld Swiss watch event, and the final Go match pitting man against machine. Continue reading… | Continue reading
An aging population and increased urbanization are set to dramatically change America's transport needs, and the government wants to do something about it. In 2015, the Department of Transportation unveiled its Smart City challenge, a competition for mid-sized cities to their ret … | Continue reading
Microsoft first started accepting Bitcoins as a payment method for Xbox games and Windows apps around a year ago. Bitcoins could be used to fund a Microsoft Account, allowing owners to purchase content from the Windows and Xbox games, music, and video stores. Microsoft has ended … | Continue reading
I've been in Seoul, South Korea for the past week covering the gripping Go face-off between human champion Lee Se-dol and DeepMind AI AlphaGo, and it's been endlessly fascinating. There wasn't a game today, though, so I headed on down to the arty student district of Hongdae to do … | Continue reading