Every morning—just about—I write three pages, stream-of-consciousness, longhand in a notebook. I sit down, I write for three pages, I stop. And I wholeheartedly believe it’s one of the best things I do for myself and my mental wellbeing.
Amazon’s own sound bar, Reebok workout gear, and a patio heater sale lead off Saturday’s best deals from around the web.
To say that the current administration has been pushing extremely harsh immigration policies would be putting it mildly. Trump even went so far as to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was intended to protect undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children. The country has…
Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review originally appeared in conjunction with Give Me Future’s premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. It is being reposted to coincide with the film’s Apple Music release.
“There’s something young happening here,” DJ Walshy Fire says late in the sprawling, inspiring concert documentary Give Me Future. He’s sitting outdoors in Havana, Cuba with Diplo and Jillionaire, his partners in the genre-hopping electronic-music trio Major Lazer. They’re talking with reverent awe about Cuba’s music scene, and how rapidly it’s changing.
A little over a year after President Obama eased the 54-year trade sanction...
Getting a flu shot is like voting: most people know it’s a thing they’re supposed to do, and yet millions of Americans skip it. In both cases, there’s a lot of apathy involved, and more than a little skepticism: does my vote actually count? Does this flu shot actually do anything?
Well, yes and yes, but let’s focus on flu vaccines.
The path to your shot starts months before you ever see a needle. Twice a year, experts evaluate all the flu strains spreading across the Earth for the World Health Organization. The goal is to predict which strains will hit the population hardest during each hemisphere’s winter. It’s a tough goal, since flu viruses mutate quickly. Based on the WHO analysis, officials from each country decide which flu...
One night in 2013, artist Stephan Crawford was sitting in his studio in San Francisco, thinking of a way of expressing Earth’s carbon cycle through a moving sculpture. He had a metal rod in his hand, and he started tapping it against his workbench. And that’s when the eureka moment struck. “That tapping made me think of a rhythm,” Crawford says. “And then it went straight to the idea of music.”
Four years later, Crawford runs The ClimateMusic Project, a group of scientists, musicians, and composers who create music based on climate data — and then throw concerts to communicate the urgency of climate change to the public. The current piece they’re performing, by composer Erik Ian Walker, runs about 30 minutes long, and spans 500 years...
Nintendo is going to ramp up Switch console production even more next year, anonymous sources told the Wall Street Journal. The company reportedly plans to produce 25 to 30 million Nintendo Switch consoles starting in April, but the final number could be even higher depending on holiday sales. Incredibly strong reviews for Super Mario Odyssey have sparked another surge in demand for the take-anywhere console.
The company said at the end of October that it was doubling production and would produce at least 17 million units in its first year, but it looks like Nintendo now has even higher hopes for its smash hit console. The Switch had sold 7.63 million units between its March launch and the end of September, and at the price of $300 a...
Hello friends, and welcome back to Will It Sous Vide?, the column where I usually make whatever you want me to with my immersion circulator. This week’s episode finds us talking turkey (because that’s all us food writers can talk about right now), specifically turkey legs.
One of Apple’s big new features for the iPhone X (and the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus) is wireless charging, but if you care more about speed than convenience, there’s another perk you should know about. The company’s newest smartphones all support fast charging, too. Apple claims you can get from 0 to 50% charge in 30…
There’s no greater boogeyman in our modern society than the serial killer. They’re ruthless killers, they’re everywhere, and they’re after you—right? Not really. Serial killers are very real, and very dangerous, but the chances of you encountering one are next to nothing.
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, or other grown-up concerns. In consideration of your schedule, Lizzie and Kaitlyn bring you a series called One Video. Each week we’ll tell you “one video” you need to watch, why, and for how long.
Kaitlyn: Unfortunately for me, I appear to be the only person at The Verge who has purchased and listened to the new Taylor Swift album and watched the baffling House Hunters: Rhode Island episode she slotted into...
Face ID, the new face-scanning security camera introduced in the iPhone X, works pretty flawlessly most of the time. But there’s one place where Apple’s latest tech may be giving you trouble: in bed.
The lemon wedge in your drink has a bad reputation, and the evidence for it seems obvious: No one at a restaurant washes the outside of a lemon, but then they throw that wedge onto your glass, sometimes letting the rind soak right in the drink. And according to HuffPost, several studies found all kinds of germs on…
I have some news: the Internet of Things is a mess. A hacked refrigerator sounds slightly scary, but a vibrator-controlling app that records all your sex sounds and stores them on your phone without your knowledge? That's way worse.
Today, a Reddit user pointed out that Hong Kong-based sex toy company Lovense's remote control vibrator app (Lovense Remote) recorded a use session without their knowledge. An audio file lasting six minutes was stored in the app's local folder. The users says he or she gave the app access to the mic and camera but only to use with the in-app chat function and to send voice clips on command — not constant recording when in use. Other users confirmed this app behavior, too.
A user claiming to represent Lovense...
When we rounded up our staff’s Weekly Upgrades last Friday, our editors were introducing more plant life into our environments, cracking the code to Instagram-worthy Halloween costumes, quitting coffee, and clearing out browser clutter.
Holiday travel is a logistical nightmare for people who live far from family. I know the struggle. Until this summer, I’d lived clear across the country from my hometown for a decade.
Staying the right temperature may be less of a struggle now that scientists have created a reversible material that can either cool you down or help you get warm.
There’s a lot of potential in clothing that regulates heat. Not only is it convenient, but it’s good for the environment. If you can heat up your own body effectively, you won’t need to spend a lot of energy to heat up, or cool down, the room. Scientists at Stanford University created a material that controls how much heat is lost depending on how you wear it. It can one day be used in clothing that helps regulate temperature, or wearable electronics, the researchers claim. The results were published today in the journal Science Advances.
Traditional materials do the same...
Hello and welcome to Burning Questions, the column where we ask doctors to explain the weird things that your body does, or could do, or that you are afraid your body might do, but you probably don’t want in your search history. Let’s get started.
Even at today’s all-time low price, Bissell’s Big Green carpet cleaner isn’t a cheap piece of hardware. But it’s one of Amazon’s top sellers, and boasts an insane 4.7 star rating from over 3,000 reviewers, so you get what you pay for. If you have a lot of carpets and rugs in your house, it might be worth a splurge.
Earlier this year, I took my 14-month-old son Ezra to the local urgent care clinic, where I got confirmation of an ear infection. It made sense, based on his fever, but as we drove home, I thought he seemed ... disoriented. I tried to shake it off—I was still a new mom, probably overreacting.
Spotify’s curated playlists try to offer a little something for everyone. Are you looking for music that will help you sleep, run, or wallow in your own misery? There’s a Spotify-created playlist for that. So it’s not surprising that the service would suggest some music for people to turn on while they’re playing video games — but it is shocking just how bad those playlists are, and how hard they turn into the most boring, outdated cliches of what people who play video games like — or are like.
The company launched its musical portal for gaming last year. Among guest playlists from outlets like The Verge’s sister site Polygon, or music from actual video games, the section is filled thematic playlists like “Rage Quit,” “Heavy Gamer,” and...
At some point, we’ve all been contacted by a Nigerian prince, long-lost uncle, or some guy that just can’t manage to get a bank account with the promise that if we just make one small wire transfer we’ll have millions in our account by morning.
Beloved science fiction magazine Omni is rebooting from its reboot. The new, quarterly edition of Omni has quietly launched, after being announced over the summer. It’s the first new print issue since the 1990s, and the second attempt to revive the Omni name, after a confusing legal fight over an unrelated predecessor called Omni Reboot. Like the original Omni, it publishes a mix of fiction and nonfiction futurism: the first issue includes coverage of a space ark project and stories from Nancy Kress, Maureen McHugh, and Rich Larson.
Omni is being published by Penthouse Global Media, which returns it to its original home; the magazine was created by Penthouse publishers Bob Guccione and Kathy Keeton, who ran it in print from 1978 to 1995,...
There’s a proud tradition in genre films of using the supernatural as a metaphor for the horrors of adolescence. Traversing that strange no-man’s-land between childhood and adulthood is a real-world horror show in its own right, full of strange discoveries, odd awakenings, and the slow, dawning realization that our childhood identities may not be our final identities. There’s an inevitable loss of control plus the terror of the unknown wrapped up together. This is an almost irresistible target for a storyteller trying to get under an audience’s skin.
Those ideas are clearly on the mind of Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier with his latest film Thelma. The story of a young college student who begins to realize she has strange, telekinetic...
I never intended to become “the motorcycle guy” at the office and amongst my friends. But when you quit cars to become a bike-only person, you tend to stand out. And notice things.
In the summer of 2015, brothers Adam and Tom Vian spent eight hours building a prototype game about two cute pieces of paper who could snip each other into different shapes in order to solve puzzles. They called it Friendshapes. Two years later, the game — under the new moniker Snipperclips — was one of just a handful of Nintendo-published titles available at the launch of the Switch, alongside the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
For the small team at London-based SFB Games, it’s been a surreal journey, one that continues today with the launch of an enhanced version called Snipperclips Plus, which will see the previously digital-only game sold at retail for the first time. “[The game’s success] cemented in my mind that...
Many people love knocking back a few hop-tastic brews like Indian Pale Ales after a long week, but not supertasters. In fact, they can barely stand the taste of beer at all. If that sounds familiar, you might be a supertaster yourself.
The auto executive who was brought in to save Faraday Future has resigned. Stefan Krause, who came to the floundering automotive startup from BMW after spending years at Deutsche Bank, actually left the company in October, according to Jalopnik.
Krause is not alone. Ulrich Kranz, the company’s CTO and another former BMW executive who joined in July, is leaving or has already left the company, The Verge has learned. And the same goes for former Ford Fusion program leader Bill Strickland, who was in charge of running Faraday Future’s vehicle manufacturing line. Representatives for Faraday Future declined to comment.
Krause is a big loss as he was the one courting investors to save the company, which has struggled mightily in 2017. He was...
Sophia the robot was made a citizen of Saudi Arabia last month, but a lot of people weren’t happy about it.
Some noted the grim irony of a robot receiving ‘rights’ in a country where women were only recently allowed to drive. Others said it set a bad precedent for how we might treat robots in future. (AI ethicist Joanna Bryson told The Verge the stunt was “obviously bullshit.”) Some were annoyed about the perception of Sophia itself — a robot that’s also a media star, with magazine cover-shoots, talk show appearances, and even a speech to the UN. Experts in the field sometimes decry Sophia as emblematic of AI hype, and say that although the bot is presented as being a few software updates away from human-level consciousness, it’s more...
Newegg is usually associated with buying parts for building your own PC, but the site is actually a pretty good place to pick up plenty of other gear for low prices during Black Friday, too. Oh, and if you are looking to upgrade your rig, don’t worry — there are also plenty of deals on processors and graphics cards.
Newegg’s sale starts on November 20th at 10AM ET on its website, and the company says it’ll be announcing other deals on the 22nd and 24th, so make sure to check back for updates then.
You can check out Newegg’s full flyer here, but we’ve already done the heavy lifting for you and picked out the best of the best deals.
Happy Friday, my best babes, and welcome back to 3-Ingredient Happy Hour, the weekly drink column featuring super simple yet delicious libations. This week we’re embracing fall fruits while keeping it classy with a pear brandy-based martini.
Last weekend, in the hours after a deadly Texas church shooting, Google search promoted false reports about the suspect, suggesting that he was a radical communist affiliated with the antifa movement. The claims popped up in Google’s “Popular on Twitter” module, which made them prominently visible — although not the top results — in a search for the alleged killer’s name. Of course, the was just the latest instance of a long-standing problem: it was the latest of multiple similar missteps. As usual, Google promised to improve its search results, while the offending tweets disappeared. But telling Google to retrain its algorithms, as appropriate as that demand is, doesn’t solve the bigger issue: the search engine’s monopoly on truth.
S...
Happy Friday! Get set for the weekend with deals on rarely discounted coffee gear, front pocket wallets, an ultra-popular carpet cleaner, and more.
Hopefully you took advantage of Microsoft’s free upgrade offer that allowed consumers to update computers running Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10 (and if you didn’t, it’s not too late!). If you did, you should take advantage of one of the most convenient and downright pleasant features in Windows 10: the ability to login…
Film distribution company The Orchard has decided to cancel the release of Louis CK’s new movie I Love You, Daddy, following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct for the comedian. News about the cancellation came from Deadline. The Orchard also canceled the New York City premiere of the film yesterday, in advance of a lengthy New York Times report about the accusations against CK. The movie was originally set to open in limited release on November 17th.
The New York Times report yesterday detailed the stories of five women who said CK asked if he could masturbate in front of them, or just did so, either on the phone or in person, without their consent. A number of the women were younger and less established comedians who were...
The controversy around Twitter’s latest public relations crisis hangs on a single, perhaps unanswerable question: what does it mean to be verified? The little blue badge originated in response to worries that celebrities on the platform were being impersonated. In time, though, it came to mean more. So when Twitter granted the badge this week to a white supremacist, it was little wonder that outrage followed.
The story of the Twitter verification controversy is the story of many Twitter controversies before it. A series of deferred decisions all but guaranteed the issue would eventually blow up in the company’s face, and when that moment finally arrived, Twitter could do little but apologize and promise to work on a solution.
The current...
When I first heard the pitch for the Sony WF-1000X, I thought I was hearing it wrong. Sony made a new set of wireless earbuds that aren’t just completely wireless—they also employ active noise-cancelling tech. This is a first for the wireless earbud industry, and let me be the first to tell you: It’s kind of awesome.
When I upgraded from my Nexus 5X to a Pixel 2, I didn’t worry about living the headphone #donglelife. I figured I would just replace my current headphones with a cheap USB-C pair, because I usually buy my earbuds from airport kiosks for $20 or less. I had ruled out Bluetooth earbuds, because I loathe the idea of charging yet another gadget, and I tend to lose things. I thought finding earbuds for Google’s flagship phone would be easy. I thought wrong.
Here were my basic requirements: in-ear headphones with a microphone that cost less than $25 and that could plug directly into my Pixel 2 with no dongle. I lost Google’s included Pixel dongle about 18 hours into unboxing my phone, and found its huge size annoying and disruptive to the neat...
NASA’s decision to rely on private companies like SpaceX to resupply the International Space Station has possibly saved the space agency billions of dollars, according to a study done by an employee at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The study, first reported by Ars Technica, breaks down the numbers for NASA’s investments in various commercial spacecraft over the last decade, to give an “apples to apples” comparison of costs.
In 2006, NASA decided to change how it sends supplies to the orbiting lab: instead of using government-operated rockets like the Space Shuttle, the agency would get commercial companies to do it instead. NASA helped fund the vehicles’ development and today, the space agency contracts two companies — SpaceX and Orbital...
I know what you’re thinking, and I agree, so let’s just get this out of the way: “Having someone to take care of you when you get old” is a terrible reason to bear children. But since you may currently be in the trenches of wiping the bottom of a person who keeps calling you Squishy Belly Mommy and wondering, “So when…
There’s a lot of little tech news this week, and we’ve got the perfect podcast to sum it all up. This week on The Vergecast, Nilay, Paul, and Dieter run through topics like Samsung’s ad that mocks the iPhone, the update to Pixel 2 XL screens, and Logitech shutting down Harmony Link hub services.
Also, The Verge’s video series Next Level is back! Lauren Goode returns to talk about the season premiere, which deals with creating holographic videos, and how that can be used to preserve memories.
There’s a whole lot more in between that — like obviously Paul’s weekly segment “One 2 Won (One)” — so listen to this whole show to get everything you need.
02:23 - Samsung returns to mock iPhone X buyers in latest commercial
06:06 - An iOS bug...
With a 4.4 star rating from over 1,500 reviews, Travelambo’s front pocket wallet is one of the most popular wallets on Amazon, and you can grab one for just $10-$14 today, depending on the material (there are over a dozen to choose from). Leather is nice, but I’m very into the carbon fiber options.
There are a few programs everyone knows to add to a new computer: Chrome, Spotify, Dropbox, some work apps like Excel or Photoshop. But many of us also have our favorite helper apps and utilities to customize our workflow.
Deadspin Teen Girl Posed For 8 Years As Married Man To Write About Baseball And Harass Women | Jezebel Jeremy Piven Says Recent String of Sexual Assault Allegations Aren’t ‘Productive’ | Splinter Sean Hannity ‘Misspoke’ When He Suggested Roy Moore’s Sexual Predation Was ‘Consensual’ | The Grapevine Rahm Emanuel Walks…
Yesterday, the biggest US internet bill in years cleared a major hurdle on the path to becoming law. In a unanimous vote, the Senate Commerce Committee approved the Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act (or SESTA), clearing the way for a full vote by the House and Senate. As Congress wrestles over tax reform and the debt ceiling, it’s still unclear when SESTA will reach a larger vote, and it still faces stern opposition from tech policy organizations and even some anti-trafficking groups. But with more than 30 senators already signed on, the bill seems primed to pass whenever it reaches the floor.
The biggest twist has come from the industry itself. After weeks of debate, a string of tech companies and industry groups have come around to...
If you have a super long name or just want more room for all your seasonal-themed display names, Twitter now lets you use up to 50 characters in your name, up from the original 20. The new length means you can also add more emoji without hitting the limit. Many users embraced the change, though some also questioned why Twitter was adding somewhat gimmicky features when it could be working on tackling its more serious issues on the platform (particularly as it’s facing backlash for verifying Jason Kessler, the organizer behind the United the Right rally in Charlottesville, which resulted in the death of protester Heather Heyer). Twitter has continued to court controversy in recent times due to its enduring harassment problems.
Starting...
Magnetic knife holders are a great way to keep your knives at the ready, sure, but they’re also useful for keeping other household items organized and easy to grab. (That is, provided they’re a good amount of metal in them, such as drill bits or paperclips.) Below, other strategies for putting a magnetic knife strip…
Jezebel On Rumors | Deadspin Winning Is Logistics | Splinter Justice for Ivanka’s Chinese Nanny, XiXi | The Grapevine Thousands of Black Nerds Reportedly Deceased as Black Panther Character Posters Slay the Internet | Earther It’s La Niña Time for the Second Year in a Row |
If there’s one simple skill roboticists would love to steal from humans, it’s our ability to pick things up. Apples or eggs, pens or power drills; it doesn’t matter to us. Our hands are dextrous, able to grasp a range of shapes, and — more importantly — we can calculate how to handle any object we’ve not seen before in a flash.
Robots, by comparison, are slow and clumsy butterfingers. Their hardware is capable of doing the actual grasping, but they get confused by even tiny changes in size, shape, or position. This is a big a problem if we ever want robots to be helpful around the house, or if we want to improve their utility in warehouses, factories, and other industrial settings.
A startup named Embodied Intelligence is one of a crop...
Keurigs and drip coffee makers are convenient, sure, but the coffee they produce can’t hold a candle to what you’ll get from these discounted gadgets.
