Welcome to The Verge: Weekender edition. Every Saturday, we'll bring you some of the best and most important reads of the past seven days, from original reports, to in-depth features, to reviews and interviews. Think of it as a collection of some of our favorite pieces that you may have missed — or that you may just want to read again. You can follow along below, or keep up to date on Flipboard.
Courtsiding, or the simple practice of sitting on the sidelines of tennis matches and relaying scores via phone to hungry gamblers, can be an incredibly lucrative business. For instance, Sporting Data Ltd, a UK-based private betting company, managed to rake in millions on the speedy fingertips of its young employees. The work, to hear the young men tell it, is good, too. You get to travel around the world following the major tennis tours, watch exciting matches, and make money just enjoying the game. But to call the business controversial would be to put it lightly, as it represents a shadow industry tennis officials are trying to shut down. Just ask Daniel Dobson: back in January, the 22-year-old courtsider was arrested at the...
There are few things more depressing than losing your beloved electronics to a spill or short fall. Fortunately, devices are starting to trickle out with the ability to survive such dangers. But what if you need something even more resilient to life's little accidents? Rugged phones are nothing new, but now they're becoming more widely available and — more importantly — beginning to look like something you'd actually want to use.
These phones each meet the two most common industry standards for toughness, IP-67 and MIL-810G. That first certification means no dust or liquid will be able to get inside your phone. MIL-810G, on the other hand, is a set of specifications set up by the US military to ensure a device works after hard impacts...
Sherlock fans, clear your schedule: according to Vulture , its third season is heading online next Monday, and it'll be available to stream exclusively at Netflix. While it's certainly one of Netflix's smaller exclusives — after all, the season has already aired — the show has a passionate fanbase and has seen plenty of accolades. It also appears that Netflix may have locked up Sherlock's first two seasons as well, adding another big series to its roster. Netflix has been in a heated battle with Amazon and Hulu to lock up exlcusive content lately — some original, others just popular — and Sherlock serves as only a further piece of ammunition in the battle.
Monday is going to be big. Apple will be showing the next versions of iOS and OS X at its Worldwide Developers Conference, and The Verge is going to be there live with up-to-the-minute coverage of all the new features, apps, updates and everything else on show. The conference kicks off with a big presentation from CEO Tim Cook and other top Apple executives on Monday at 1PM ET (10AM PT). You'll be able to follow along with all the news right as it happens through our liveblog, and afterward, stay tuned for commentary and in-depth analysis from The Verge Live.
Apple’s 25th annual developers conference kicks off next week, and as usual, the company’s spent the past week putting up large, colorful banners all over the Moscone West building in San Francisco. That includes large Apple logos to the two sides of the three story building, as well as product banners on the inside of the building. One of those is a banner with a large 8 on it, the first indication of iOS 8, which is expected at the show.
The conference opens to developers and members of...
For 100 years, Leica has stood for both photographic precision and overpriced extravagance. The company has been revered by working photographers for its rock-solid cameras that take tremendous photos in virtually any environment, yet it’s also been panned by critics for building cameras that cost far more than the sum of their parts. A prime example is the Leica M, the company’s flagship digital camera. It costs nearly $7,000, and that’s before you add a lens to the equation. Yet there are...
Halfway through the first episode of AMC’s new drama Halt and Catch Fire, two characters reverse-engineer an IBM PC. Hardware whiz Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy, Argo) and his partner, a slick salesman named Joe McMillan (Pushing Daisies’ Lee Pace) de-solder chips, check pin voltages, and transcribe memory locations, eventually ending up with the assembly-language code that makes the computer tick. It may not sound like compelling television unto itself, but like the meth cooks of Walter White...
Virtual 3D models of cities are nothing new, but bringing one into the physical world is a bit more challenging. AutoCAD maker Autodesk and creative marketing agency Steelblue did just that, however, with this massive, incredibly detailed 3D print of San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood. All told, it encompases more than 115 city blocks, mainly in the northeast part of San Francisco’s 7-by-7 mile footprint.
The map covers a number of the city’s landmarks, including AT&T Park (home of the...
Do you love news? Do you love letters? Do you love The Verge? If you answered "yes" to those questions, then you're in luck, because The Verge now has its very own newsletter!
We're starting up daily emails to let readers know about the most important, exciting, and interesting articles of the day. These items will be handpicked and curated by our editors to give you a convenient list of the day's must-read stories, delivered right to your inbox. Because let's be honest: your inbox is lonely and it's looking for some special company.
If you're a forum member or have started a commenter account here at The Verge, you'll start receiving these emails immediately (the first one will go out on Monday). If you're not completely satisfied...
The meeting, officially, didn't have anything to do with Atari.
It was a "meet and greet" in 2011 between members of marketing agency Fuel Industries and a group of consultants. Fuel CEO Mike Burns does a lot of these. Small talk. Pressing the flesh.
When Burns heard that one of the consultants worked for Universal in the 80s and helped license E.T. to Atari, he had a flashback. He remembered playing E.T. on the 2600 as a 12-year-old. "My god it was shitty," he says. "It was horrible." And he remembered hearing an urban legend of how Atari had buried millions of copies of the game in the desert because it couldn't sell them in stores.
In 1980, there were 857 million overweight and obese people on the planet. Today that number is 2.1 billion, which means that nearly 30 percent of the world's population is obese or overweight, concludes a study published in The Lancet yesterday. And what's more worrisome is that no nation has managed to significantly decrease its obesity rates in the last 33 years.
Last night I plopped on the couch, watched the Rangers eliminate the Canadiens from the playoffs, and then caught up on a few episodes of Doctor Who. At the exact same time, I defeated dozens of tiny blue slimes and leveled up my sword fighting skills while playing Dragon Quest VIII on my iPad. As an old-school, lengthy role-playing game, the PS2 classic might not initially seem like the best fit for mobile — but it turns out that a portable version of a 10-year-old Japanese RPG is just about the best Netflix companion you can ask for.
As great as these games can be, they can also be incredibly repetitive. Exploring towns and dungeons is fun, and there's a lot of satisfaction that comes from building up your character, but the...
Some people build sci-fi landscapes — John Harris dreams them.
The iconic artist has been crafting his unique brand of science fiction imagery for decades, and it's all based on physical sensations he's experienced, whether through lucid dreaming or meditation. It's the feeling of weightlessness, of floating, in particular that gives way to his art, which has been collected into a new volume dubbed Beyond the Horizon . "The images arise with the sensation, which, I have to say, quickly...
Before iOS 7, the weather icon on the iPhone's home screen always read 73 degrees and sunny, and none of the app icons sprung to life at all. Not much changed with the redesigned iOS 7, with the exception of an animated clock icon, but designer Jay Machalani has created a concept that overhauls this static experience and transforms the app icons that fill the iPhone’s home screen.
Machalani’s vision for fixing Windows 8 turned out to be remarkably similar to what Microsoft eventually said...
On January 2nd, 2013, David Eckart lived through a nightmare. After being stopped in a Walmart parking lot, New Mexico police asked Eckart to step out of his car, and patted him down. They searched his car without his consent. He was handcuffed, arrested, and eventually a search warrant was issued that allowed police to search his body for drugs, even though nothing had been found in his vehicle. He was taken by police to two emergency rooms where, despite his protests, he was humiliated and coerced into intrusive medical procedures. Hospital staff X-rayed him, searched his cavities for drugs several times, gave him three enemas in the presence of police, and finally an invasive colonoscopy. No drugs were ever found.
What happened to...
Beleaguered by financial trouble and high crime rates, Detroit slumps under the weight of its problems. The GooBing Detroit Tumblr offers a poignant glimpse of how the once-thriving city has been affected by its multi-billion dollar debts. Created by a developer named Alex Alsup, the site uses historic images from Google Street View and Bing Maps to depict the changes that have occurred in Detroit over recent years.
Most of the entries are depressing. Alsup's first post shows a house in the...
Seven weeks after the bug put the web on high alert, Heartbleed is still causing problems. A new report from Portuguese security researcher Luis Grangeia describes how the same bug could be used over Wi-Fi to enable new kinds of attacks that build on the same vulnerability.
Despite all of Tuesday night's excitement, even Sergey Brin was quick to admit that Google's self-driving cars are years away from hitting roads in any significant volume. The company is still feeling out the technology and trying to ascertain how it can take such a thrilling concept — complete with working prototypes — and make it real for people around the world. But automakers are already paying attention to the grand experiment. General Motors is keenly aware of the road Google is trying to go down and the serious competitive threat that Brin's dream represents.
Mark Reuss, GM's product development chief, told reporters yesterday that Google may evolve into a "serious competitive threat" if it continues dedicating time, research,...
The Wii U offers plenty of different control options, from the Gamepad to a Wii Remote, and with the upcoming release of Super Smash Bros. that list is getting even bigger. Nintendo just announced that you'll be able to play the game with a GameCube controller — a favorite among hardcore fans — thanks to a new adapter. The company didn't provide any other details, like when the adapter will be available or how much it'll cost, but you'll be able to see it in action very soon; GameCube controllers will be used in the upcoming Smash Bros. invitational tournament taking place at E3 next month. The Wii U version of the game, meanwhile, isn't expected to launch until the end of this year.
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference starts Monday, and all indications are that it’s going to be a big one. WWDC has long been the place to be if you want to get an early glimpse at the future of iOS and OS X, and already iTunes chief Eddy Cue has teased that Apple’s product lineup this year is the best one that it’s had in over two decades.
The first fruits of that labor should arrive next week, though you won’t necessarily see it in new hardware. WWDC has become a show that’s all...
Last night, NBC's Brian Williams conducted the first US TV interview with Edward Snowden. You won't find any new NSA programs or Silicon Valley secrets, but it's an excellent summary of who Snowden is, what he's done, and why he did it, in his own words. The roughly 40-minute interview is split into six segments, but you can watch them sequentially starting with Part 1 below.
Four years ago, a virus called Stuxnet, strongly suspected to come from the US or Israel, was found in Iranian nuclear facilities. Now, a group of Iranian hackers may have spent years running a convoluted plan to steal government credentials through social media. A report from cybersecurity consulting group iSight Partners claims that since 2011, a phony news agency called NewsOnAir has been building online ties with senior military and diplomatic officials, personnel from ten or more US and Israeli defense contractors, and bureaucrats with a "particular concentration" around North Carolina (home of Fort Bragg and several other military bases.)
NewsOnAir uses existing phishing and social engineering tactics to gain their targets' trust....
"The American dream, the entrepreneurship, the passion, all those things, the hope that I got, I’d like to pay back. It is a bet in my heart that I have to pay back," Masayoshi Son said before an audience gathered at the US Chamber of Commerce in March. "I think America deserves the No. 1 position… because America is the best role model."
You could almost hear America the Beautiful playing in the background while bald eagles majestically landed on Son’s shoulders, tears of patriotic pride running down their feathered faces.
Just months into his ownership of America’s third-largest wireless company, Sprint, Son had to be feeling good about the stake he’d claimed. But his stirring words weren’t really about his own American success story...
In March, as tensions between Russia and Ukraine reached a level not seen since the Cold War, a separate battle was playing out on the two nations' computer networks.
Bob Worsley’s first run for elected office might as well have been rigged. As the founder of SkyMall — the catalog tucked into airline passenger-seat pockets — he was wealthy enough to loan nearly $200,000 to his Republican primary campaign. He also had the advantage of an unpopular foe: his opponent, former Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce, had passed one of the most controversial (and, according to the ACLU, racially motivated) immigration laws in United States history.
So when...
In the early part of the last decade, a young developer named Andy Baio organized a series of dinners with his fellow geeks whenever they were in Los Angeles. Baio later became known for his link blog, Waxy; for his conference, XOXO; for popularizing the art form that would later become known as the supercut; for producing an 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis, Kind of Bloop , and for becoming an early adviser and chief technical officer for Kickstarter. But at the turn of the century he was working...
The sensual, porcelain-skinned vampires that have dominated the media of late will soon be joined by something repulsive. A new trailer for Guillermo del Toro's The Strain has been released, and it sets the tone for the upcoming apocalyptic vampire thriller. Based on the horror novel series of the same name, the show follows Dr. Ephraim Goodweather as he and others confront a viral outbreak of vampirism within the city.
Jim Bachor is on a mission. For over a year, the artist has been using Chicago's fractured streets as a canvas, replacing potholes with unique mosaics. Bachor's city is crippled by potholes; between January and March Chicago filled over 350,000, but estimated 60,000 still needed attention. "The problem with fixing potholes is that it's always temporary," Bachor tells The Verge, "they get filled sometimes more than once a winter. There was a stubborn pothole in front of our house and I decided...
The 1995 anime film Ghost in the Shell is still widely heralded as a modern sci-fi classic, helping define the look, feel and themes of the cyberpunk movement. But few fans are as devoted as the group of artists behind Project 2501 , a 4K, live-action recreation of still 39 frames from Ghost in the Shell's title sequence that was released this week.
The resulting series of still images took over a year to produce and involved the talents of over 30 artists, according to the creator of the...
What was once the the All Things Digital "D" conference series is now the Code Conference, an annual gathering of top executives from technology companies and other fields, put on by tech site Recode. The three-day-long event takes place from Tuesday, May 27th to Thursday, May 29th, and includes interviews with leaders from Apple, Microsoft, Google, Twitter, and others. Read all our coverage right here.
"Alright, I got it. I'm gonna make a 3D printer, no bigger than a bread box, and it's gonna be able to 3D print exact replicas of itself — fully functional! And they can lock in together to make even bigger 3D things."
"Dude... I think that's how The Matrix happened."
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Hosted by David Pierce. Written by Ross Miller, Nathan Cykiert, and David Pierce. Video production by Christian Mazza.
TV and radio personality and Twitter CEO Dick Costolo are on stage for an unusual conversation at the Code Conference.
Contrary to what researchers reported 50 years ago, today's average first-time heroin user isn't a 16-year-old male of color. She's actually much more likely to be a 23-year-old white woman. This, researchers conclude in a study published today in JAMA Psychiatry, represents "a marked shift in the demographics of heroin users seeking treatment over the past several decades."
HBO is keeping Danny McBride with the network — it just announced that the comedian will star in the new series Vice Principals, which McBride created alongside Jody Hill. The pair was also responsible for the HBO show Eastbound and Down, which ended its run last November. There's very little detail about the show beyond its title and HBO's note that the pair will bring their "smart, rowdy, and unpredictable style of comedy" to the high school setting. HBO says the show is currently slated for 18 episodes, though how those will break down into seasons remains to be seen. There's also no word yet on when it'll begin airing.
Ubisoft Montreal is a massive studio that's home to more than 2,000 game developers. It's known for sprawling blockbusters like the Assassin's Creed series and Far Cry — games that take hundreds of people years to build, and cost millions of dollars to produce. But this year the studio tried something different with the release of the role playing game Child of Light . Creative director Patrick Plourde, who previously worked on some of the studio's biggest releases, put together a relatively small team of around 40 people to build a game he was really excited about, and one that wasn't part of an existing franchise.
"I was given the opportunity to pitch a game concept, so I used it to scratch an item off my bucket list: to make a...
Emoji.zone is the internet that could have been. Should have been. An endless virtual vortex of magical emoji, a world without text, an entirely symbolic digital domain. This magical tunnel comes from OKFocus, the creative agency founded by Ryder Ripps, Jules Laplace, and Jonathan Vingiano that has worked with Kanye West and Virgil Abloh, and created the branding for food replacement Soylent.
Don't question the flow. Embrace it. Command, shift, U. Emoji gang three hunna.
Pocket, which lets you save articles and videos to view later, is introducing a paid option. Pocket Premium, which offers power users new features for archiving, searching, and tagging their saves, launches today for $5 a month or $42 a year. Seven years after the company began as a bookmarklet, and two years after making its apps free to build its base of customers, the save-for-later service says it's now big enough for a "freemium" business model to make sense. At a time when webpages...
Battlecry sounds like yet another generic shooter, but it has the potential to be something much more interesting — a multiplayer action game without any guns. Developed by Bethesda studio Battlecry, the game takes place in an alternate reality where gun powder has been banned, and warring factions are forced to do battle using swords, shields, and crazy-looking bows. There's even a brawler with a mechanical arm. It features many of the aspects you've come to expect from multiplayer shooters like Team Fortress 2, including different factions and multiple units to play as, but the lack of firearms could give it a very different flavor. It will support battles of up to 32 players at a time.
In addition to the unique setting, Battlecry a...
Google began the 21st century as a small but growing search engine. 14 years later, the California-based company has built smartphones, mapped the globe, purchased a firm that makes advanced smoke detectors, and obtained a veritable army of robots. It's sometimes tempting to still think of Google as a search engine, but the strides the company has made into a huge range of hardware markets show that Google's search history won't define its future.
At yesterday's Code Conference, co-founder...
Ed Drew is a photographer, fine arts student, and staff sergeant in the California Air National Guard. He was deployed to Afghanistan for three months in 2013 and decided to commemorate the time by taking photos of his fellow service members using tintype, a Civil War-era technique. The resulting photos are emotional and gritty. President Barack Obama recently announced plans to pull all troops from Afghanistan by 2016. All photos are copyright Ed Drew courtesy of Robert Koch Gallery, San...
Speaking about self-driving cars last September, Elon Musk preached caution. The man who wants to send us all to space and shuttle us between cities at outrageous speeds told the FT that "my opinion is it's a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars."
Somewhere deep inside the secret labs at Google X, Sergey Brin must have read that and smiled. And then climbed into his tiny car — the one with a strange smiley face for a front and a noticeably missing steering wheel — and with a...
There’s a host of reasons why 3D printing hasn’t exactly broken through to the mainstream yet, despite a number of attempts from companies big and small. High cost and complexity have long been concerns, but perhaps more importantly, no company has yet made a strong case for why you should have a 3D printer in your home — it has remained a niche hobby that requires expensive and ugly hardware.
A startup called New Matter thinks its Mod T printer can bring 3D printing to the mainstream by...
Netflix's take on the blind Marvel superhero Daredevil has cast its leading role. Charlie Cox, known for playing Owen Sleater, the Irish enforcer with IRA ties in HBO's Boardwalk Empire, is set to don the suit of lawyer Matt Murdock and the costume of his crime-fighting alter-ego. Cox also starred as Tristan Thorn in the 2007 movie adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Stardust.
Next up on the Code stage is Sergey Brin, the man in charge of some of Google's most audacious projects.
Status Thoughts: How many monkeys can really fit in a barrel? Do squirrels have nut allergies? Why does it say 91 seconds when you watch this on YouTube? If a tree falls in the woods, does it scare the smaller animals? Also where do mules come from?
Lomography has been making vintage-inspired toy film cameras for decades, but today the company announced its first camera to use instant film. The Lomo'Instant uses Fujifilm's Instax Mini film (just like Fujifilm's own instax mini 90 camera) and has a playful, customizable retro look. There is a built-in wide-angle lens and Lomography is also offering fisheye and portrait lens attachments. The camera also offers automatic and manual shooting modes, support for multiple exposures and long exposures, color gels for the flash, a tripod mount, and cable release thread.
H. Jon Benjamin does a lot of voice work, though these days his time is largely spent deadpanning on Archer and Bob's Burgers. However, the comedian did recently manage to record his voice for one of the most iconic scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here, as a jerkier, more playful HAL 9000, he sentences Dave to death in the airlock. There's nothing sinister here at all. Instead, Benjamin's delivery makes the whole thing hilarious. We only wish Jessica Walter was around to add to it.
Designer Massimo Vignelli, known for his iconic New York City subway map and American Airlines logo, among many other designs, died today at the age of 83. It was reported earlier this month that he was very ill and would remain at home during his final weeks.
Vignelli co-founded the design firm Unimark International in 1964, which specialized in corporate identities until its closure the following decade, according to AIGA. In that time, it worked with Ford, JCPenney, and IBM — among other...
Hector Xavier Monsegur, better known as former top LulzSec leader "Sabu," will now go free. US District Court Judge Loretta Preska sentenced Monsegur to time served plus one year of supervised released, praising his work with the FBI to disrupt hundreds of cyberattacks orchestrated by LulzSec and Anonymous over the past three years.
Last week, Facebook made a small but very important change to Instagram. When you like a photo in the updated Instagram app, "Ellis liked a photo on Instagram" will no longer be automatically shared back to Facebook. The same goes for photos you post on Instagram, which won't be automatically shared on Facebook unless you deliberately tap the Facebook button in the app's sharing screen. The update effectively removes Instagram's ability to automatically share anything back to Facebook, and today, Facebook is announcing its plans to take the idea much further. Automatically posted stories from apps like Pinterest, Farmville, Spotify, and RunKeeper are going to show up less and less in the News Feed, and Facebook will discourage developers...
If it were a laptop, its Quad HD resolution would be impressive. If it were a camera, its laser autofocus would be an advantage. But the LG G3 is a smartphone, and as such, it's the most advanced one we've seen yet.
Like the G2 before it, the G3's front is almost all screen. Thanks to thin bezels on all sides, almost 77 percent of the device's footprint is occupied by its 5.5-inch IPS display. With a resolution of 2560 x 1440 and such an aggressively minimal design, the G3 fits a lot of...
