If you’re an Apple Music user, you might have felt a bit left out a few weeks ago when people started sharing their ‘Wrapped’ year in review from Spotify. Now a new app can help make the magic happen for you as well.
In 2018, Tesla turned its biggest ever quarterly profit, and its first profit in two years. The company shipped some 100,000 Model 3s in the first full year of production of the most affordable vehicle it makes. SpaceX, one of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s other companies, successfully launched its brand new Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time ever — and Musk used it to send one of the original Tesla Roadsters into space. By those measures, 2018 was a wild success for Tesla.
Of course, there’s more to the story: a failed plan to go private, announced by Musk on Twitter; a beef with the SEC; difficulty retaining top executives not named Elon Musk; and a close call with death. There were questions about the safety of Tesla’s cars, the safety...
Google just got an important lawsuit over facial recognition dismissed. As first reported by Bloomberg, the lawsuit has been dismissed by a state judge who found that the plaintiffs didn’t suffer “concrete injuries.” The Google lawsuit is one of three cases aimed at prominent tech companies that have allegedly violated the United States’ toughest biometric privacy law and it’s the first one to get dismissed.
The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act has long been a huge obstacle for tech companies working on facial recognition initiatives. The law requires companies to obtain people’s explicit permission before they can make biometric scans of their bodies. Illinois citizens who feel their rights have been violated can file...
Lady Gaga has been teasing a new animated character on social media as part of her Las Vegas residency show. It looks to be a cyborg with long blue hair and the ability to fly through space, a character that Gaga was also dressed as on Friday. In a short, mysterious clip posted to YouTube and Instagram, the character looks around at a shining star before making contact with it and absorbing its powers.
The anime-like character charges up, while crying, “What’s happening to me?” before hurtling through space with the newfound energy. The video ends with the appearance of “PetGa,” an alien being first seen during the release and promotion of Lady Gaga’s 2013 album ArtPop. PetGa says fondly, “Hello Gaga,” and then the word “Enigma” flashes...
After a banner 2017, SpaceX decided to one-up itself in 2018 by launching the world’s most powerful rocket, which flung a sports car beyond the orbit of Mars.
Just two months into the year, SpaceX finally made good on its long held promise to launch the coveted Falcon Heavy — an upgraded version of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket. Consisting of three Falcon 9 cores strapped together, the Falcon Heavy is capable of putting more weight into low Earth orbit than any other rocket currently in operation. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk first announced the concept for the rocket in 2011, with the goal of launching it in 2013 or 2014. Obviously, it took longer than that, and Musk even admitted that the program grew so complicated he tried to cancel it a few...
A couple of perfect bedroom TVs, leather journals, and an extra discount on Eddie Bauer clearance items are some of the best deals on the web today.
We’re heading into the last days of 2018, and by extension, the last days of our look back at 1998 — where the dot-com bubble was steadily inflating, cyberspace was transforming everything from crime to horoscopes, and the end of the internet (or maybe civilization itself) was just a year away with Y2K. And that means one thing in the media world: time for some retrospectives!
I’ll be deviating slightly from the normal format by accepting a few pieces from both earlier in December and later in January, so I can offer a spread of analysis looking back at the year.
It’s generally acknowledged that 1998 was a fantastic year for video games. In October, GameSpot published a list of the year’s best and most...
China just lifted its ban on new video games after nearly a year of keeping games from getting released. Its regulatory arm approved 80 new games today, as first reported by Reuters. But curiously enough, none of them are from the country’s biggest gaming company, Tencent.
Tencent is best known as the company that owns WeChat, China’s pervasive app that can make payments, host mini-apps, and connect people through messages and emojis. But its main source of revenue is video games it owns like Arena of Valor (also known as Honor of Kings), League of Legends, and ones that it’s invested heavily in such as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite. But as China tightened its video game rules this year and Tencent has struggled to adapt,...
With the advent of affordable monitor risers, it’s never been easier to become a part-time or full-time standing desk user, but it’s important not to skimp on the anti-fatigue mat when you decide to make the transition.
The holidays are here, and it looks like you got a new Kindle (or a device with a Kindle app). You now have before you a fun task: to build a portable library of all the books that you have on your reading list — or to create a new list for the coming year.
If you’re looking for recommendations, here are 14 science fiction books that stand on their own (or are loosely part of a bigger world) to start off with. (If you’re interested in trying a series, you can also check out some of last year’s recommendations.)
We’ve rounded up our favorite and most-used apps, games, and utilities. Look for our picks for iPhones, PCs, and Mac; our favorite games for iOS and Android, and our top choices for the PS4, Xbox One, and the Nintendo Switch.
A lens into some of The Verge’s biggest stories of the year
2018 was supposed to be a recovery year for Uber. Sandwiched in between the disaster that was 2017, and the expectation that the company will go public in 2019, this was a year for Uber to put its sordid past behind it and stride confidently into the future.
Except it didn’t quite achieve it. Dara Khosrowshahi has certainly succeeded in putting a more grown-up face on Uber, but that wasn’t too hard given predecessor Travis Kalanick’s reputation for brogrammer shenanigans and the toxic workplace culture at the company’s San Francisco headquarters. All Khosrowshahi had to do was look apologetic when asked about Uber’s past scandals, and then quickly pivot to the company’s new ethos, which was safety and corporate responsibility. Easy,...
Early in the morning on Friday, December 28th, Netflix slipped its viewers a late Christmas present: a new episode of Charlie Brooker’s technological-dystopia anthology series Black Mirror, in the form of an interactive movie called Bandersnatch. Its arrival didn’t entirely come as a secret — as far back as October, there were rumors it was on the way — but Netflix has been secretive about the storyline and the scope of the project. Just as Netflix seems to be experimenting with high-profile ad campaigns and wide-scale theatrical releases for award-courting movies like Roma, it’s also experimenting with releasing films like Tau or The Cloverfield Project with little to no advance notice, apparently to test what its subscribers will watch...
Bandersnatch, the new, Choose Your Own Adventure-style installment of Black Mirror out today, is (as you might expect) a twisty bit of interactive fiction. And Netflix has further tied the metatextual knot by building out a real website for the episode’s fictional games studio Tuckersoft, where several of the…
The Essential Phone, from Android co-founder Andy Rubin, had so much potential — but its journey may be coming to an end. Today, the company has announced (via 9to5Google) that it’s discontinuing the device. It’s sold out, says Essential, and the company isn’t making any more.
But as part of that announcement, the company is also confirming something that fans had long hoped to be true: Essential is officially working on a second “mobile product,” presumably this rumored tiny phone that uses AI to answer emails and text messages for you. An Essential spokeswoman wouldn’t straight-up confirm to me that its “next mobile product” is a phone, but that’s what “mobile product” generally means.
Here’s the statement:
We are sold out of...
Anker’s newest compact power strip can stick to your wall or the underside of your desk thanks to the included adhesive, and has every power connection you could need. We’re talking two AC outlets, two 12W USB ports with Anker’s PowerIQ tech, and even a USB-C port with 30W Power Delivery for laptops, Nintendo…
It doesn’t happen often, but 911 services can go down. Currently, 911 service is down across several states in the U.S. after a massive outage at a CenturyLink data center. While some of the initially-out-of-service cities are already up and running again, others are still down.
Frustrated with Bumble, Tinder, Hinge, OKCupid and Her, I complained to a friend in September about how dating apps had become tedious to me. They asked me if I’d heard of Feeld. Somehow, I hadn’t.
Call me basic if you must, but I love New Year’s eve. Whether you’re dancing yourself clean or just hanging at a house party, getting dressed up in shiny, sparkly garments and drinking shiny, sparkly drinks is fun, damn it. Not only is the Kir Péttilant as fancy and festive as they come, it’s extremely easy to make,…
Bandersnatch is Netflix’s new interactive, choose-your-own-adventure-style movie that ties into the Black Mirror universe. However, it won’t play on every Netflix-enabled device.
Bandersnatch was written using Twine, an open-source platform that allows for interactive fiction and narrative-heavy games, but that requires devices with a level of technological sophistication in order to deliver a proper interactive experience. An email from Netflix confirms that Bandersnatch isn’t supported on Chromecast, Apple TV, and “some legacy devices.” Outdated hardware devices that don’t support Netflix software updates — like the PlayStation Vita or Nintendo Wii U — are also unlikely to support Bandersnatch. And it’s unlikely your smart microwave...
Some leaves taste like nothing, but then there are other leaves that taste very, very good. Using leaves that taste good to flavor spirits is smart and correct but, unless you have an immersion circulator or fancy siphon, it can take days, which is too long. Luckily, you can speed up the process significantly with a…
If you want a tablet to basically use as a portable TV (that’s basically what my iPad is at this point), a big screen is important, and you’d be hard pressed to find a better deal right now than Amazon’s Fire HD 10 for $100 today, a $50 discount.
The elephant in the room has been, for a very long time, Moore’s Law—or really, its eventual end game. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted in a 1965 paper that the number of transistors on a chip would double each year. More transistors mean more speed, and that steady increase has fueled decades of computer…
Netflix is no longer allowing new customers on iOS to pay for the streaming service directly through an in-app subscription. It’s the latest example of a company with a high-profile, essential mobile app ditching Apple’s payment system to retain more profits for itself and stop handing the iPhone and iPad maker a cut of every subscription activated within the Netflix app. VentureBeat first reported the change, which Netflix confirmed with a short “we no longer support iTunes as a method of payment for new members” statement.
Now, customers will have to begin a subscription through a web browser such as Safari. People who already have an in-app Netflix subscription will be able to continue paying that way — for now — but returning...
If you live in a relatively urban area, before you head out for a late night, order yourself breakfast. Seamless lets you order several days ahead from most restaurants; you could also call. Make a simple hangover order—bacon egg and cheese bagel, or breakfast tacos, or corned beef and hash browns—either takeout or…
Gaming gear, love letters, and a half-eaten sandwich
Dell returned to the public market on Friday, ending a long saga that began when CEO and founder Michael Dell took the declining company private in 2013 through a $25 billion buyout with Silver Lake. The next five years saw Dell make gains in cloud computing and the enterprise, and the company’s gaming PC division is also a strong performer. Dell opened at $46 on Friday under the NYSE symbol DELL and quickly started trading up.
Earlier this year, Dell announced it would become a public company again through a complex arrangement that involved buying back tracking shares for VMware, the software business that Dells own an 80 percent chunk of. Those shares “were born as part of Dell’s complicated deal to buy EMC a few years ago” according...
Making New Year’s Eve extra special with your kids can take a bit of work. You’ve got your sparkling cider, a game night planned with silly gifts for the winners, maybe a movie marathon or a hot chocolate station.
If you own external monitors and they can be VESA mounted, there’s really no reason not to. It raises them to an ergonomic height, gives you lots of positioning options, and most importantly, clears up some valuable real estate on your desk. This mount can hold two screens up to 32" each, and it’s just $24 today with…
Our last fitness challenge of 2018 is drawing to a close. Did you manage to keep up with your yoga practice during the holiday chaos?
If you’re looking for a way to fill the time between Christmas and New Years, Gog has a deal for you: a highly-rated game for free.
Right now, there’s a new Will Ferrell comedy playing on more than 2,000 screens, and yet it’s barely attracted any attention or commentary. Trailers for Holmes & Watson, a comic take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, starring Ferrell and John C. Reilly, were relatively scant. And pre-release buzz was nonexistent, due in part to Sony refusing to screen the movie for critics. The few critics who dutifully slogged out to theaters to cover the movie’s Christmas Day release have no words of encouragement that suggest Holmes & Watson is some overlooked gem. And the box-office take has been dire, with the film earning a bare $9 million in its opening week. Some broad studio comedies flop in their original releases, but later earn an...
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is Netflix’s new choose-your-own-adventure interactive special and, in traditional Black Mirror fashion, is full of fun Easter eggs — including giving people the chance to play one of the games featured in the film.
Bandersnatch introduces viewers to a fictional game development studio, run by an ambitious leader who wants to turn the company, Tuckersoft, into the “Motown of games.” The goal is to produce a series of hit titles that will reward its developers with fame and fortune. One of those games, Nohzdyve, is available to play right now — but there’s a twist.
Nohzdyve was developed for the ZX Spectrum, a personal computer that was released in Britain in the early 1980s. It’s the same time period that B...
iOS / Android: Get excited. The classic Lemmings experience is finally (and officially) available for your smartphone. Having spent many an hour cursing out the stupidity of the these digital creatures, I can’t wait to tackle their many logistical challenges while commuting, standing around, or sitting in bed.
I could dance around what makes this underwear unique, but it’s easier to just say it: It has a separate compartment for your penis to keep it away from your balls. I’m not sure that’s totally necessary this time of year, but come summer, it can certainly help keep you out of some, uh, sticky situations. Try out a …
A nationwide CenturyLink outage has knocked out 911 voice calls in parts of the US and affected everything from Verizon mobile data to ATM withdrawals, lottery drawings, and hospital patient records. The downtime, which also impacts CenturyLink’s residential internet customers, began Thursday and has now stretched on for more than 24 hours.
FCC chairman Ajit Pai announced Friday that such a delay is “unacceptable” and said the commission is investigating the ongoing outage after reports of people getting busy signals when dialing 911. “When an emergency strikes, it’s critical that Americans are able to use 911 to reach those who can help,” Pai said. “The CenturyLink service outage is therefore completely unacceptable, and its breadth...
Chemical engineer Cynthia Kartey is all about turning biomass—from leftover crop stalks to fallen trees—into something valuable. So Christmas sparked a lightbulb moment for Kartey, a Ph.D. student in the University of Sheffield, when she began to wonder what happens to peoples’ trees after the holiday season.
The saddest meal of the year is always the one you eat right after visiting family for the holidays. Mine is usually more of a free-range fridge scrounge than an actual meal, and I always have a lot of questions: Is that leftover curry too old to eat, or am I just a coward? Who ate all my cheese? Why didn’t I stuff my…
Chinese schools are now tracking the exact location of their students using chip-equipped “smart uniforms” in order to encourage better attendance rates, according to a report from state-run newspaper The Global Times (via The Telegraph).
The implementation is just about as unsettling as “using smart technology to track students’ whereabouts” sounds. Each uniform has two chips in the shoulders which are used to track when and where the students enter or exit the school, with an added dose of facial recognition software at the entrances to make sure that the right student is wearing the right outfit (so you can’t just have your friend, say, wear an extra shirt while you go off and play hooky). Try to leave during school hours? An alarm...
Whether it was about tipping, the stock market or savings habits, people had a lot of bad opinions in 2018. And rather than keep our bad opinions to ourselves, we took to the web to fan the flames of internet outrage.
There are so many streaming options available these days, and so many conflicting recommendations, that it’s hard to see through all the crap you could be watching. Each Friday, The Verge’s Cut the Crap column simplifies the choice by sorting through the overwhelming multitude of movies and TV shows on subscription services, and recommending a single perfect thing to watch this weekend.
“Her Only Living Son,” the final segment of the 2017 horror anthology XX. Written and directed by Karyn Kusama, the short stars Christina Kirk as Cora, a stressed-out single mother whose charismatic, malevolent teenage son Andy (Kyle Allen) has been stirring up trouble at school with his violent behavior — and even more disturbingly, with...
For the last several years, Amazon’s marked the halfway point between Christmas and New Year’s with a massive Digital Day sale, and it’s back again in 2018 for your downloading pleasure.
It’s that time of year again, where I take a break from the prudent car buying advice to give you all a rundown of all the times I said “No. Just no.” Here’s all the cars I convinced people not to buy in 2018, including a few Jalopnik favorites.
You folks all rocked 2018, so I can’t wait to hear what’s next. Are you going to run more? Lift more? Eat better?
A Google Home Hub, Cuisinart cookware, and one-day movie, comics and software deals thanks to Amazon Digital Day lead off Friday’s best deals.
Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson made a name for himself on YouTube by giving away more than a million dollars to strangers and friends in bouts of random donations. Now, a new video on his channel is answering the question he receives most often from fans: where does all the money come from?
The majority of Donaldson’s $1 million donations came from brand deals, which many fans may have guessed, but he also relies on going viral to boost his own personal revenue. The more viral he becomes, the more brands want to work with him, and the bigger his own AdSense earnings get. He can then entice viewers with even bigger giveaway videos. It’s a never ending cycle.
It started with incrementally sponsored deals from companies like Quid, working with...
New Year’s is almost upon us, and that means that the annual cycle of folks making resolutions to get in shape in almost upon us. And T-Mobile wants to help, with some deals on the Apple Watch and Galaxy Watch that might help you actually keep those goals.
The deals go live on January 2nd, and aren’t too shabby: for the Apple Watch, if you buy either Apple’s latest Series 4 model or last year’s Series 3, T-Mobile will give you a $200 discount on the second one. And fans of Samsung’s platform have an even better deal: buy one Samsung Galaxy Watch, and T-Mobile will give you the second one for free.
As always, there’s a catch for both deals: you’ll need to sign up for a T-Mobile plan for both your full price and discounted LTE watch, and o...
Billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison and former Kellogg executive Kathleen Wilson-Thompson are joining the company’s board of directors, Tesla announced Friday.
Tesla is Ellison’s second-largest investment as of October, Ellison said then. Ellison owns three million shares in the company, according to the announcement. He also said that he and Musk are close friends. Wilson-Thompson spent 17 years as an executive at the Kellogg Company, and currently serves as the executive vice president and global chief human resources officer of the Walgreens Boots Alliance, the holding company that sits above Walgreens.
Tesla was required to add two new independent board members as part of the settlement Elon Musk and the company signed with the...
