It’s 2018 and Quartz wants us to entertain the notion that astrology might be real, we’re just doing it wrong. Writer Ida C. Benedetto claims that the ancient practice of astrology was based on rigorous data providing insight on real-world events, but modern psychology turned it … | Continue reading
Once more, it’s time to remind everyone that you should never take anything you see online — a screenshot, a picture, a piece of text — at face value. Today’s lesson comes to us via @pixelatedboat, better known as cartoonist Ben Ward, better known as the man who gifted us with th … | Continue reading
Apple has given a series order to an unscripted show called Home, Variety reports. Each hour-long episode of the docu-series will look at an “extraordinary” home and the person who built it. Apple has reportedly ordered 10 episodes.This series feels pretty different from the rest … | Continue reading
Belkin is taking the wraps off its 2018 slate of products, and between the fast-charging USB-C chargers and no less than four different wireless charging pads, it feels like the company’s new gear is tailor-made for Apple’s newest phones.Now that Apple has finally gone and embrac … | Continue reading
One year after its announcement, Amazon is canceling Anime Strike, its anime streaming service. The dozens of anime shows and films it offered will now be included on its Amazon Prime subscription service instead. Today, Anime Strike’s Twitter page shut down and the exclusives se … | Continue reading
Fitbit has invested $6 million in a glucose-monitoring startup called Sano, in what appears to be part of Fitbit’s larger plans to make its fitness devices more valuable for overall health. The investment was first reported by CNBC earlier today; The Verge independently confirmed … | Continue reading
Snap’s unusual structure led to a series of breakthroughs — but could it break the company? Continue reading… | Continue reading
For the next 10 years, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the US Geological Survey (USGS) should focus their space-based observations of Earth on answering key questions about our planet: How much will sea level rise in the future? Why do certai … | Continue reading
GoPro is laying off 200–300 employees this week, mostly from the part of the company that works on the Karma drone, according to TechCrunch. A letter was reportedly sent to these employees this week which stated that the company is restructuring “to better align our resources wit … | Continue reading
Your favorite Twitter show about gadgets will be live at CES this year. Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn will be hosting the show, with Ashley Carman, Lauren Goode, and Paul Miller presenting all manner of gadgets from the Las Vegas trade show. We also have Verge alumni Sam Sheffer jo … | Continue reading
The fourth season of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, a Twilight Zone-esque anthology TV series about technological anxieties and possible futures, was released on Netflix on December 29th, 2017. In this series, six writers will look at each of the fourth season’s six episodes to … | Continue reading
After roughly three years, David Letterman is exiting retirement to host a new Netflix show premiering Friday, January 12th. My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman will air one episode a month. His first guest? Former President Barack Obama. Future guests will i … | Continue reading
Ex-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, who once boasted about never selling a share of the company he helped found, is divesting himself of a big chunk of Uber stock, according to Bloomberg and Reuters. A week after Softbank acquired one-fifth of Uber, Kalanick is selling around 29 percent … | Continue reading
CES is next week, and we’ll get to that, but first we need to talk to security expert Russell Brandom to make sure we won’t all be dead from CPU security vulnerabilities before then. Also, stay tuned for Paul Miller’s excellent and enlightening sci-fi short story allegory for how … | Continue reading
With a new year comes the promise of new books hitting bookstores. 2018 is shaping up to have plenty of adventures to delve into — taking readers to distant planets, fantastical realms, and beyond. We’ll meet some authors publishing their first-ever novels, and we’ll become reacq … | Continue reading
Every week, a slew of new music videos hits the web. Watching them at your desk is not time theft because you deserve it; think of it as a nice reward for surviving another work week. But what if you don’t have time to watch every video — maybe you have a deadline, a hungry pet, … | Continue reading
The second generation of the Nokia 6 has been revealed, featuring a better processor, USB-C (instead of Micro USB), and more RAM at 4GB (up from 3GB). The updated version also features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 processor, whereas the original had a Snapdragon 430 processor. The c … | Continue reading
Intel is facing at least three class action lawsuits over a recently revealed security flaw. The complaints, published by Gizmodo, were filed in Oregon, California, and Indiana by owners of Intel CPU-based computers. They allege that the vulnerability, which Intel learned about s … | Continue reading
Once, this boy mummy was thought to have died of smallpox, but a new analysis of his now 450-year-old DNA reveals signs of hepatitis B, instead — the oldest known infection of the virus. The puzzling new diagnosis is made stranger still by the similarity between the mummy’s hepat … | Continue reading
Amazon wants to see Alexa inside the next generation of smart watches and headphones. To make that happen, the company announced plans this morning for a “mobile accessory” development kit, which is supposed to make it easy for hardware companies to build Alexa into their wearabl … | Continue reading
Whether or not you think superintelligent AI poses a credible threat to humanity in the near future, you have to admit it’s a problem at least worth thinking about — or hey, maybe even playing a game about it. That’s why Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential … | Continue reading
If you’re a millennial, you probably grew up trying to catch ‘em all, but now one illustrator has drawn them all, as spotted by Kotaku. Christopher Cayco has uploaded a 96-minute time-lapse video that shows him outlining each of the 802-plus monsters before painstakingly coloring … | Continue reading
Samsung released the original Notebook 7 Spin back in 2016, and while it didn’t exactly make waves when it came to design, it at least offered plenty of power at an affordable price. And ahead of CES this year, Samsung is announcing an updated version of the Notebook 7 Spin that … | Continue reading
Kohler is adding more voice-based and touchless interactions into the bathroom and kitchen with a new smart product line called Kohler Konnect. Under its new lineup, everything from the faucet to the toilet to the bathtub can be controlled via voice commands, using a smart mirror … | Continue reading
If you followed The Verge’s earlier coverage of Apple Watch Series 3 LTE, then you know that I encountered a connectivity bug during my initial tests of the watch (one that was later fixed in a software update), and that the watch launched without its promised music streaming fea … | Continue reading
For the last 12 hours, the house has been empty. I check in regularly, spending time collecting clovers and sifting through the mail, but the stillness of the rustic cottage is unsettling. Earlier that day, I had packed a bag with sandwiches and some simple supplies, helping my l … | Continue reading
Johnson & Johnson-owned Neutrogena knows you buy a lot of its skincare products – it’s the number one facial skincare brand in the US, and at least $1 billion of J&J’s quarterly sales came from its beauty segment in the third quarter reported last fall. Now it wants you to buy ev … | Continue reading
The rights clearance startup Dubset announced today it will begin streaming DJ sets and remixes on Tidal. Spotify and Apple Music partnered with Dubset back in 2016, which expanded their catalogs to include remixes and bootlegs that were previously excluded.By partnering with lab … | Continue reading
Remember Spectacles, Snapchat’s video-recording sunglasses that debuted to great fanfare only for the company to lose $40 million after sales cratered? Well, another company is taking a chance on the concept with a pair of smart sunglasses called ACE Eyewear. While Spectacles cou … | Continue reading
LG isn’t waiting until CES to reveal one of its high-end living room gadgets for 2018: it’s a 4K HDR projector. LG claims the new UHD projector is roughly half the size of competing 4K options on the market, many of which are “heavy, expensive, and difficult to install” according … | Continue reading
Apple confirmed on Thursday that all Mac and iOS devices are affected by the Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws that have roiled the computing industry for the past 24 hours, resulting in a race to patch operating systems and cloud computing infrastructure at the highest levels. “‘Al … | Continue reading
The fourth season of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, a Twilight Zone-esque anthology TV series about technological anxieties and possible futures, was released on Netflix on December 29th, 2017. In this series, six writers will look at each of the fourth season’s six episodes to … | Continue reading
Apple just released its end-of-year App Store numbers for 2017 and the first day of the new year, and the holiday season was once again a boon in terms of app purchases. During the week-long period of December 24 to December 31, 2017, Apple customers spent over $890 million on ap … | Continue reading
Jimmy Iovine may depart his post as head of Apple’s music streaming service in August of this year, according to a report from Billboard today. The timing coincides with Iovine’s Apple shares fully vesting, the report says, following Iovine and Dr. Dre’s sale of headphone maker B … | Continue reading
Today, internet service provider Starry announced it would be rolling out its wireless broadband service to Los Angeles and Washington, DC, with the two cities joining Boston as the first to support the service, according to Multichannel. Like the initial Boston rollout, Starry’s … | Continue reading
Microsoft just released several updates aimed at helping protect Surface devices from the two security vulnerabilities exposed by CPU bugs. The two bugs, nicknamed Meltdown and Spectre, affect almost every device made in the past 20 years, including AMD, ARM, and Intel systems an … | Continue reading
Sony appears close to refreshing three phones from its lower and mid-range lines, the Xperia XA, XA Ultra, and L1. The biggest change will be the Xperia XA and XA Ultra’s apparent switch to Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 processors instead of MediaTek processors, as spotted by VentureBe … | Continue reading
Animaniacs, the animated kids’ show starring three toon siblings who are possibly cats, possibly dogs, or possibly a nightmare combination of both, is coming to Hulu with brand-new episodes. Steven Spielberg will reprise his role as an executive producer for the series, which kic … | Continue reading
Google just gave chipmakers some much needed good news. In a post on the company’s Online Security Blog, two Google engineers described a novel chip-level patch that has been deployed across the company’s entire infrastructure, resulting in only minor declines in performance in m … | Continue reading
An NSA contractor who was arrested in October 2016 plans to plead guilty to stealing classified information, according to Reuters. The former contractor, Harold Martin, apparently hasn’t struck a plea deal, so it’s not clear that the case ends here. Reuters reports that there are … | Continue reading
The ethics of online speech are contextual, and it’s time to act like it Continue reading… | Continue reading
Intel says it and its partners have “made significant progress” in rolling out security patches and firmware updates to protect against two major CPU bugs. The flaws were disclosed by Google’s Project Zero team this week, and the industry is scrambling to issue fixes and secure m … | Continue reading
Spotify just announced on Twitter that it now has 70 million subscribers. Before today, the company’s most recent subscriber count was at more than 60 million back in July. Spotify hasn’t given any new details on its total number of active users, but in June it claimed to be up t … | Continue reading
Two major computer processor security bugs, dubbed Meltdown and Spectre, affect nearly every device made in the last 20 years. The ramifications of how much these bugs will impact computing is still playing out, but it could lead to compromised servers for cloud platforms and oth … | Continue reading
HBO has confirmed that the final season of Game of Thrones won’t premiere until sometime in 2019. It’s a decision that has been rumored since last June and is characterized as a strategic move that gives the network more time to work on its numerous proposed spinoff series. The n … | Continue reading
Awards season is up and running this weekend with the 75th Golden Globe Awards, which will kick things off with Hollywood’s least serious award show. But even if winning a Golden Globe isn’t considered as much of an accomplishment as winning an Oscar, the Globes can often indicat … | Continue reading
Apple has agreed to join the Open Media Alliance, a consortium of tech companies including Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft that is working on a new compression technology to make online video streaming and downloading use less data. The group was formed back in 2015 aroun … | Continue reading
Corals are bleaching more and more often around the world because of warming ocean waters, a new study shows. Since bleaching can cause corals to die, this means that coral reefs — which provide food and profits for thousands of people — risk disappearing in the future if we don’ … | Continue reading