Someone at Google Maps clearly loves video games. In the past the company has snuck Pac-Man and Pokemon Easter eggs into its mapping service, and today The Legend of Zelda is joining in as well. It's a small change, but a tiny, pixelated Link now replaces the little peg typically … | Continue reading
Actors Matthew Goode and Matthew Rhys have mashed the fictional film The Trip and the reality television series Top Gear into a pulp, extracted the juices, mixed the fluids into a rich blend, stored the liquid in a temperature-controlled basement, and bottled the final product. I … | Continue reading
The Oscars are over and there isn't a new Star Wars movie for nearly a year, so it's probably time to start looking at all the other stuff heading to theaters. Only a few really high-profile movies had trailers come out this week, but those trailers really got people talking — Gh … | Continue reading
YouTube channel Burger Fiction is honing the art of the supercut. Videos like "Ever Best Visual Effects Winner. Ever." and "Every Jason Statham Punch. Ever," are goofy, viral fodder created with the TLC generally reserved for headier fare. Its latest video, "Cursing Without Cursi … | Continue reading
Look at this octopod. Just look at it. In theory, octopi are cute. In reality, octopi are like scary spiders-of-the-sea. But this guy — this guy’s an exception. He's different.The new octopod, discovered by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's Okeanos Pod, is a whole … | Continue reading
A $3 million vide game tournament is happening right now in Shanghai, China, pitting 16 of the best Dota 2 teams against each other. But what, pray tell, does any of that mean?Dota 2 is an immensely popular video game that mixes elements of many genres, from sports simulation to … | Continue reading
Snapchat is expanding its partnership with Major League Baseball to include new features that bring users even closer to the field. The campaign will kick off with a special Spring training event on March 11th. Snapchat says for that day, users will have "unprecedented access" to … | Continue reading
The biggest problem with Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is baked into the price of admission: It's a film about how the war in Afghanistan affects one middle-class white American. The film is based on the memoir The Taliban Shuffle, by former Chicago Tribune South Asia bureau chief Kim Ba … | Continue reading
France's lower house of parliament yesterday passed an amendment that would levy penalties against technology companies that do not provide access to encrypted data during terrorism investigations. The amendment, which has the support of right-wing politicians but is opposed by t … | Continue reading
Excited about the new LG G5 (and Friends) and Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge? Yeah, us too. By now you’ve probably seen all the specs, read all the hands-on articles, and seen the side-by-side comparisons. It’s going to be a tough choice.Buy the G5 in April and you’ll get what's … | Continue reading
In an op-ed for The Guardian this morning, Epic Games co-founder Tim Sweeney has launched a withering attack on Microsoft and its Universal Windows Platform (UWP) initiative in Windows 10. "Microsoft has built a closed platform-within-a-platform into Windows 10," says Sweeney, "a … | Continue reading
Facebook has overhauled its UK tax structure and is "set to pay millions of pounds more in tax in the UK" as a result, according to the BBC. Like Google, Facebook makes the majority of its revenues through the selling of ads, and also like Google, it is responding to increasing p … | Continue reading
Sony has a new R&D project called the Future Lab Program, an effort to involve customers in the design process for eventual products. The program will "share concept prototypes with users while still at the development stage, and look to them for inspiration, leveraging their fee … | Continue reading
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has poured water on the idea of his Rift virtual reality headset supporting the Mac by saying that Apple doesn't make any computers powerful enough to run it."That is up to Apple and if they ever release a good computer we will do it," Luckey tells Sh … | Continue reading
The iPhone at the center of the ongoing legal battle between Apple and the FBI may hold a "dormant cyber pathogen" that could cripple San Bernardino, according to the county's District Attorney. Michael Ramos' court filing ascertains that the iPhone, provided to San Bernardino sh … | Continue reading
Kendrick Lamar's new album, Untitled Unmastered, is available now on iTunes, and should be arriving on Apple Music, Tidal, and Spotify very soon. Spotify leaked information on the album earlier today, including its name and ambiguous eight-song track list, which features the word … | Continue reading
Grammy-winning artist Kendrick Lamar will release a new album tonight, according to Spotify. The streaming service leaked information about Lamar's new record earlier today, titled Untitled Unmastered, detailing its track listing and album art. Not to be left out, rival service T … | Continue reading
Donald Trump has reassured America about his alleged hand size. At an officially sanctioned Republican presidential debate tonight, Trump responded to provocative remarks made by Senator Marco Rubio earlier this week. Continue reading… | Continue reading
Tumblr is removing Crystal Castles from the lineup of its 79 Cents SXSW event after the band's history and suitability for the event was called into question. The feminism-themed event is named after the gender wage gap in the US, and it features an all-female lineup, feminist ar … | Continue reading
The US Chamber of Commerce plans to sue the city of Seattle over a law that allows Uber and Lyft drivers to unionize, according to a report today from Reuters. The Chamber, a pro-business and anti-labor American lobbying group, would be wading into the growing debate over the rig … | Continue reading
Nintendo detailed the American releases of a handful of Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs) during its Nintendo Direct presentation this afternoon, news that'll surely excite US fans who have been waiting for them with bated breath.Atlus' music-RPG fusion Tokyo Mirage Sessions #F … | Continue reading
Locally stored data on Amazon Fire devices is no longer encrypted. Anyone who upgrades their Kindle Fire, Fire Phone, Amazon Fire HD, or Amazon Fire TV Stick to Fire OS 5 will have local information left vulnerable to cyber attacks and stored in plain text. Amazon forum members f … | Continue reading
The fantastic rhythm action series Rhythm Heaven is getting the video game equivalent of a greatest hits album. Today Nintendo announced the next game in the series, called Rhythm Heaven Megamix, which brings together the best levels from each game in the series, including the Ga … | Continue reading
Nintendo's offbeat Paper Mario series is returning to home consoles later this year. As the name suggests, Paper Mario: Color Splash is about returning color to a monochrome world. How do you add color to the world, you ask? It's simple: hit things with a magic paint hammer. That … | Continue reading
Super Nintendo favorites Pilotwings, Super Mario World, and F-Zero will be available for download from the Nintendo eShop beginning today. The SNES downloads will be limited to New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL, meaning Nintendo 2DS and original Nintendo 3DS hardware won't … | Continue reading
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis are on track to sell roughly 50,000 copies of their new album This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, a total that seems unremarkable until you put it in the right context. Their first-week sales are being dwarfed by those of The 1975, the ambitious British pop band w … | Continue reading
Amazon’s Fire Phone may have been a surprisingly auspicious failure, I keep thinking as I watch the expansion of Alexa, the company’s cloud-based virtual assistant.Artificial intelligence is the future, specifically, voice-controlled AI that allows you to interact with a multitud … | Continue reading
Instagram has decided to block links in user profiles to private messaging apps Telegram and Snapchat. The change was made quietly and first publicly noted by Telegram's official Twitter account only yesterday. No other social networks appear to be affected, meaning you can still … | Continue reading
A 1970's Czechoslovakian sci-fi comedy imagined the selfie stick four decades before the accessory became the weapon of choice for chill parents on vacation. Reddit user ZaHuBa posted a GIF of the fictional gadget, which appears early in Zabil Jsem Einsteina, Panove. The tiny cam … | Continue reading
Today saw the deadline for amicus briefs in the heated iPhone security trial, and dozens of companies took the opportunity to file in support of Apple. Twitter, Reddit, Github, Ebay, and CloudFlare submitted a brief with 12 other startup companies, emphasizing the values of priva … | Continue reading
Scarlet Witch may be appearing in Captain America: Civil War on May 6th, but for some reason the new Avengers superhero is absent from the latest toy lineup. The first trailer for the Disney Infinity play set includes Black Panther, Ant-Man, Vision, an updated Captain America, an … | Continue reading
If you've ever sat around wishing you could hear what the deepest parts of the ocean sound like, then your strange but valid desires can finally be satisfied! Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, Oregon State University, and the US Coast Guard have c … | Continue reading
At his best, Kevin Spacey has always been a terrifying embodiment of all that is wrong with humanity. The actor's most iconic roles — Academy Award-winning turns as a slick criminal in The Usual Suspects and a pathetic shell of a man in American Beauty, and especially his chillin … | Continue reading
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly has returned to Earth a changed man: he's both taller and younger. Sure, those aren’t the health changes NASA is studying. The space agency is mostly concerned with how the fluids shifted inside Kelly's body, if his immune system is okay, and if he lost … | Continue reading
Smithsonian researchers and a photographer placed "biocubes" in a bunch of different locations around the world to document what creatures and general life passed through them in a typical day. They took photos of everything that came within the range of the one-cubic-foot area, … | Continue reading
Last month, the NFL sold off TV rights to its Thursday night games to CBS and NBC*.This month, the pro football league intends to sell digital rights to the same games, and it should be nearing a decision shortly on which company will buy them. The NFL’s annual owners meeting sta … | Continue reading
Facebook and Spotify are trying to make it easier to share music. They're launching a new integration inside of Facebook Messenger today that allows you to quickly jump into Spotify, choose a song or playlist, and then send it over to a friend. Continue reading… | Continue reading
There is a new Ghostbusters movie coming out this summer! As I'm sure I don't have to tell you, a lot of people are unhappy about this fact and have expressed their concerns with a tenor that's, let's just say... violently sexist?For some, the speed with which one can type a sent … | Continue reading
There's a clever workaround to ordering Amazon's new Echo Dot, a hockey puck-shaped gadget that imbues any speaker system with the Alexa voice assistant. Because Amazon is trying to limit demand, it's making the Echo Dot available "exclusively through Alexa," meaning only custome … | Continue reading
A Cornell University engineering team has created a new kind of flexible display based on a perennially popular inspiration for scientists: the cephalopod. A study published today in Science describes how researchers developed a highly flexible, color-changing "skin" that senses … | Continue reading
Scientists are duking it out over whether a study on reproducibility has a reproducible conclusion. The high-profile study reported last year that many psychology findings can’t be replicated, but a separate group of researchers now claim the finding is severely flawed. Today in … | Continue reading
One year after throwing a massive, multi-day party, Tumblr is returning to SXSW Music with a new focus. The 79 Cents event being held on March 16th — its name reflects the gender wage gap in the US in 2014 as per the Institute for Women’s Policy Research — will boast a lineup of … | Continue reading
Jaguar is trying to help Olympic skier Graham Bell become the world's fastest man on skis, the company announced at the Geneva Motor Show. Bell hopes to reach speeds upwards of 180 miles per hour next year, which would break the world downhill speed skiing record by more than 20 … | Continue reading
With Star Wars: The Force Awakens wrapping up its record-breaking theatrical run, it's about time for it to head to home release. Disney announced this morning that The Force Awakens will be available as a digital download and through its Disney Movies Anywhere streaming service … | Continue reading
You want to reach out to your crush, but what do you say? Do you start with "u up?", or go for something less thirsty? Who knows?! Messaging apps may be the most popular pieces of software in the world, but good luck getting them to do much work on your behalf. It's 2016 and we'r … | Continue reading
Nilay and Dieter are joined by senior reporter Adi Robertson to talk VR technology, DJI's new drone, and fan favorite: Amazon Echo. Racked style editor Nicola Fumo operates the hype matrix once again in this week's episode of Vergecast! We'll be live at our usual time today — 4: … | Continue reading
In the middle of Steam's winter sale, roughly 34,000 users had personal information exposed to other users. The breach was unusual. According to Valve, a partner tried to counter a denial-of-service attack by deploying new caching rules, hoping to distinguish the malicious traffi … | Continue reading
Last year, Jay Z and a cadre of music industry titans launched Tidal, a streaming service meant to take a stand against free streaming and give artists value again. Grammy Foundation president Neil Portnow has twice made a call for listeners to think about what makes music valuab … | Continue reading