2016 might have been Star Trek’s 50th anniversary, but 2017 was the year when no less than three shows reinterpreted, reimagined, or paid homage to Gene Roddenberry’s classic science fiction series. Each one follows the show’s familiar blueprint, joining the diverse crew of a sta … | Continue reading
The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear the state of South Dakota’s argument that a 26-year-old tax-related ruling be overturned, which could free state and local governments to collect billions in internet sales tax, according to a report today from Bloomberg. The 199 … | Continue reading
Another CES has come and gone, we finally made it everyone. We had a blast scouring for all the crazy gadgets from the show floor, and showing the best of what we found on Circuit Breaker Live. For our last episode, we gave out The Verge Awards for categories like “Best Robot” an … | Continue reading
Some of the most interesting glimpses into superhero universes have taken place from less conventional perspectives, from the gumshoe detectives of Gotham Central to the blue-collar construction workers of Damage Control. This winter, 12 Years a Slave screenwriter John Ridley wil … | Continue reading
Amid the daily cacophony of news and announcements about self-driving cars — Have you heard? They’re coming! — it’s easy to lose sight of a fundamental truth: most people still don’t know what to think about this new technology. What they do feel, however, is that Congress and th … | Continue reading
For those who want to test out an app before making a purchase, Apple is now promoting a new section in the App Store, “Try it for Free,” that highlights apps that offer a free trial period before you have to pay for a subscription. The introduction of the new feature makes sense … | Continue reading
Tucked in a corner on a shelf at Canon’s booth are the two most exciting cameras the company has brought to CES in years. They’re not wholly unique ideas (and one of them doesn’t even work yet), but compared to the iterative releases and myriad of camcorders that usually make up … | Continue reading
Intel is running into problems protecting its chips from the major Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities that became public last week. The company has been warning customers of three specific flaws in a recent firmware update and recommending that customers hold off installing the … | Continue reading
Publicly, Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google parent Alphabet, says the vast majority of its autonomous vehicle testing is taking place in five cities: Mountain View, California; Austin, Texas; Kirkland, Washington; Phoenix, Arizona; and most recently, Detroit, Michigan. But i … | Continue reading
Visa has announced that starting in April, it will get rid of the requirement for signatures on credit card purchases in North America. Now that Visa is on board, all four of the major credit card companies are removing signature requirements. (American Express, Discover, and Mas … | Continue reading
The market for PCs grew during the holiday season last year, which is a first in six years of declining demand for computers, according to a report by IDC. The market, which includes desktops, notebooks, and workstations, grew by 0.7 percent over the holiday season last year. IDC … | Continue reading
At CES 2018, TiVo announced that it will be adding support for Alexa and Google Assistant to its DVRs, letting users control their TVs using voice commands, along with additional smart home integrations through IFTTT. According to PCMag, the integrations will work a little differ … | Continue reading
HBO has released the first teaser for its upcoming adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, revealing that the film will air sometime this spring. The teaser highlights the most vivid part of the novel, showing a burning copy of Crime and Punishment th … | Continue reading
Barra thinks “standalone” VR is the future. Now he has to help Facebook ship it Continue reading… | Continue reading
In the spirit of Pokémon Go’s early days, Niantic is encouraging players to come together with official monthly meetups in a new initiative it’s calling Pokémon Go Community Day. The first Community Day kicks off on January 20th, and will feature double XP for trainers and unique … | Continue reading
Following a launch on Friday local time, a Chinese rocket booster fell near a small town in southwest China, where it exploded and caught fire, GBTimes reports. It was one of four strap-on boosters used on China’s Long March 3B rocket, which had lofted two satellites into orbit b … | Continue reading
HTC’s newest phone, the U11 EYEs, has been a rumored addition to the U11 family, and we now know a few more details about its specs, thanks to details leaked by Venture Beat’s Evan Blass on Twitter.The U11 EYEs has a 6-inch screen with a 1080 x 2160 Super LCD3 display. The phone … | Continue reading
The action adventure game Detective Pikachu is heading worldwide with a launch on the Nintendo 3DS March 23rd, The Pokémon Company announced today. As its title suggests, it features an oddly talkative Pikachu who also happens to be a detective. This coffee-slurping, gun-shooting … | Continue reading
Back in 2015, software engineer Jacky Alciné pointed out that the image recognition algorithms in Google Photos were classifying his black friends as “gorillas.” Google said it was “appalled” at the mistake, apologized to Alciné, and promised to fix the problem. But, as a new rep … | Continue reading
If CES is a car show disguised as a tech show, then where does that leave the Detroit Auto Show that begins next week? That’s a question plenty in the auto and transportation industry would like to know. But if the glimpse into the distant future was the mobility theme this year … | 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
This dishwasher called Tetra from Heatworks and design firm frog is most likely a godsend for those who live in tiny apartments and would love a dishwasher. Tetra is an internet-connected countertop dishwasher (because everything is connected these days) that doesn’t require plum … | Continue reading
If you prefer your J-pop bands to be a little bit more blockchain-y, we’ve got some great news! A new J-pop girl group from Japan is capitalizing on the recent hype surrounding bitcoin and singing about cryptocurrencies, as spotted by Quartz. The group’s name is Kasotsuka Shojo, … | Continue reading
A memo written by a former Google engineer claims that senior executives at the company intervened to stop employees discussing matters involving diversity and hiring policies.The memo, written in 2016 and shared publicly this week on Google Docs, is the work of former Google sec … | Continue reading
General Motors plans to mass-produce self-driving cars that lack traditional controls like steering wheels and pedals by 2019, the company announced today. Its a bold declaration for the future of driving from one of the country’s Big Three automakers, and one that is sure to sha … | Continue reading
Bungie today released the first substantial Destiny 2 update roadmap for the new year, after pledging in late November to communicate more with the game’s community and fix longstanding issues that have riled fans since the title’s launch in September. Contained in the blog post … | Continue reading
Facebook plans major changes to the News Feed in 2018 designed to promote more “meaningful” interactions, the company said Thursday. Facebook plans to promote posts that generate discussions over those that are passively consumed, it said. Company executives say they hope the cha … | Continue reading
Hey Google, make me a believer Continue reading… | Continue reading
AMD’s initial response to the Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws made it clear “there is a near zero risk to AMD processors.” That zero risk doesn’t mean zero impact, as we’re starting to discover today. “We have defined additional steps through a combination of processor microcode u … | Continue reading
Electric scooters are basically a dime a dozen these days. But few companies have been able to scoop up all the things that people like about them — solid range, fun to ride, smart features — and put them all together in a well-built package like California company Ojo Electric. … | Continue reading
On Twitter this morning, comedy writer Megan Ganz told Dan Harmon that she is willing to forgive him for the harassment and abuse she suffered while working for him on NBC’s Community. Ganz responding after listening to episode of Harmon’s podcast Harmontown, where he confessed t … | Continue reading
If you see a monkey in Florida, don’t touch it. It seems like pretty basic advice, especially now that scientists have found that more than a quarter of these adorable, feral invaders carry the deadly herpes B virus.Though at least 25 percent of the population carries the virus — … | Continue reading
Deadpool fans won’t have to wait as long as expected to see the film’s sequel. According to The Hollywood Reporter, 20th Century Fox is shuffling the release dates for its slate of X-Men films, moving Deadpool 2 to May 18th, two weeks earlier than its original June 1st release da … | Continue reading
The CES crowd seems to be dwindling every year as more tech companies wait until events like Mobile World Congress or their own developer shows to announce new products. But at CES 2018, even though we saw fewer things, they were also more interesting than previous years. We also … | Continue reading
Spoilers for Marvel’s Runaways follow.Hulu’s 10-episode opening season of Runaways has been a bit of a drag. In the original Marvel Runaways comic, launched by writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Adrian Alphona in 2003, six kids learn that their parents are secretly supervillains … | Continue reading
Google will reportedly start more strictly vetting YouTube channels that are part of its Google Preferred premium advertising program, reports Bloomberg Technology. Anonymous sources tell Bloomberg that the company will use both human moderators and machine learning to identify v … | Continue reading
GoPro’s announcement this week that it would exit the drone business was greeted by many observers as a foregone conclusion. Karma, the company’s first foray into drones, had sold poorly after an embarrassing recall in 2016. Under pressure to cut costs amid slowing sales in its c … | Continue reading
We’re almost nearing the end of CES, which can’t come soon enough. Just kidding! We love CES, despite the flooding and power outages. We’re in it for the gadgets, baby. Yesterday’s episode of Circuit Breaker Live had a very HighQuality guest, none other than HQ’s Scott Rogowsky! … | Continue reading
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has penned an open letter to the rest of the technology industry, addressing concerns over the two major CPU security flaws. Intel has been issuing cleverly-worded statements, and altering its guidance on performance issues related to security fixes, but … | Continue reading
If you’re worried about leaving your house or apartment unattended for long stretches of time, you might set your lights on a timer or leave your TV on. But now there’s a new smart speaker that wants to do all of that for you — by flashing lights and playing TV sounds and other n … | Continue reading
After failing to launch last month, US spaceflight startup Rocket Lab will try again at the end of January to get its experimental rocket to orbit. The company plans to launch the vehicle, called the Electron, from its New Zealand facility sometime during a nine-day window that b … | Continue reading
Directly adjacent to the Las Vegas Convention Center is a Renaissance hotel with a pair of special staff members: robots. Savioke’s Relay robots have been on the job for three months, helping out the concierge by delivering items to guests during peak hours. The two robots, named … | Continue reading
The #MeToo movement that started with accusations against Harvey Weinstein in Hollywood has finally spread to China, although it’s facing different obstacles there, thanks to China’s sociopolitical landscape of patriarchal Confucian values and repressive politics. One of the cata … | Continue reading
Facebook Messenger Kids is coming to Amazon Fire tablets and the Amazon Appstore in the US, as spotted by TechCrunch. The messaging app for kids under the age of 13 was originally only available on iPads, iPhones, and iPod touch in early December.Facebook’s children messaging app … | Continue reading
Good news! The first F-52 fighter aircrafts have made it safely to Norway, President Trump announced today. Bad news! F-52s aren’t... real. They’re advanced fighter aircrafts that exist only in the game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. The Washington Post pointed out the blunder f … | Continue reading
Startup Dreamlight debuted a new sleep mask at CES that makes a number of promises, including the ability to lessen the effects of jet lag, recommend adjustments to your sleep habits based on your 23andMe profile, and, um, project infrared light to supposedly help with under eye … | Continue reading
Netflix has released a new, full-length trailer for its upcoming show Altered Carbon, a tech noir mystery about solving a murder in a world where death has lost all meaning.Based off of Richard K. Morgan’s novel by the same name, Altered Carbon is set three centuries in the futur … | Continue reading
The Associated Press reports that Ecuador has granted citizenship to Julian Assange. The Wikileaks founder has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, when he was faced with extradition to Sweden for allegedly sexually assaulting two women. The New York Times … | Continue reading