'Community' getting sixth season on Yahoo

Community is getting its sixth season. This fall, it'll head to Yahoo Screen for a 13-episode run, saving the show after it was canceled by NBC in May. "I am very pleased that Community will be returning for its predestined sixth season on Yahoo," series creator Dan Harmon says in a statement. "I look forward to bringing our beloved NBC sitcom to a larger audience by moving it online." It appears as though the show will retain its half-hour format, and stars Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie, Ken Jeong, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Jim Rash will all return.

Community has been a cult hit since its debut in 2009, but it's never seen particularly big viewership numbers, making it surprising that it's even made it this far....

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GE takes on Philips' Hue with a lower-priced connected light bulb

GE has been stepping into the smart home market, and its newest entry is a connected LED light bulb called Link. Link bulbs are basic, single-color lights primarily meant to allow homeowners to control lighting straight through a smartphone app. But more importantly, Link bulbs are also some of the least expensive connected options out there. The bulbs will sell through Home Depot and are available from just below $15 to just below $25, depending on the type. Because of its lower pricing, GE is calling Link the "first commercially viable connected bulb."

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David Cronenberg returns with a very scary, very NSFW short film

David Cronenberg has released an unsettling short film as part of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, approaching his usual themes from a surprising new angle. The film, available on YouTube through September, concerns a young woman who believes her right breast has been infested by a nest of wasps. But as the interview progresses, everything is called into question. Are the wasps real, or just a manifestation of a kind of amputation fetish? Is her interrogator, played off-screen by Cronenberg, a real surgeon or a psychiatrist using the exam as an front to plumb her psyche? The film offers few answers, but for Cronenberg fans, it's an unusually pure dose of the director's signature body horror.

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LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live review: the first Google watches

I’ve been looking at my phone a lot less recently. Normally, no buzz in my pocket can go un-checked, no news alert or Snapchat unseen. But thanks to these watches I’ve been wearing, my phone spends a lot more time in my bag. I can just flick my wrist to see what’s going on.

Smartwatches have become a thing. They’re a thing because Google says so, because it just released Android Wear and unleashed a torrent of wrist-bound devices. As a result, we’re being forced to consider an important...

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Android Wear review: the everything inbox

Pretty much everybody I know hates their inbox.

It's not just email either, though it tends to take the brunt of everybody's anger. There are dozens of apps sending us hundreds of notifications; managing all that incoming information is a genuine hassle. Looking at the notification center on our phones, it's hard not to imagine some harried, 1930s office worker. His tie is loosened, sleeves rolled up, sweat beading on his forehead underneath a green visor as he looks at the metal tray...

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Close Up: ‘Halt and Catch Fire’ and the smallest TV in the world

We love TV and we love recaps, but a lot of times it’s not the big-picture plot developments that make a show great. It’s the little things; the details in the dialogue, set design, props, and performance. With Close Up, we’ll be taking a look at the coolest moments and most interesting details in some of our favorite shows. Today we’re looking at the latest episode of AMC’s period drama Halt and Catch Fire: “Adventure.”

After the near-meltdown that Joe caused last week, things are humming at...

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Banned beans: can Keurig kill coffee pirates with DRM?

No company has done more to change the way Americans drink coffee in the last several years than Keurig Green Mountain. Its method of brewing coffee by injecting hot water into prepackaged plastic pods has quickly grown to rival drip coffee as the preferred means of getting a quick hit of caffeine. "It was slow to start, but now it’s growing by leaps and bounds," says Joe DeRupo, communications director at the National Coffee Association. "It’s the biggest change in coffee-brewing technology since Mr. Coffee was introduced in the 1970s."

One of every four dollars Americans spend on coffee to be brewed at home is now spent on pods, and Keurig, which pioneered the process in the US, dominates the market. But Keurig’s hold on the industry...

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Lollapalooza is launching a cashless payment system

Chicago's Lollapalooza Music Festival is launching a new cashless system, allowing attendees to buy food and drink with a personal RFID bracelet distributed on entrance. To pay a vendor, concertgoers will simply tap their bracelet against a vendor's point-of-sale system, wirelessly transmitting their credit card information. The system requires users to opt-in in advance, so no one will be forced to load their credit cards onto the bracelet, but organizers even partial adoption to speed up often chaotic food and drink lines.

Bonnaroo and Coachella both use RFID bracelets as ticket substitutes, but neither has taken the leap to a full RFID-enabled payment system. For large festivals, the bracelets can also be used to create a record of...

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2014-15 Free Agency Breakdown

DETROIT – Throughout the years, the Detroit Red Wings have made big splashes in free agency that have helped the club remain one of the most consistent franchises in all of sports. During Ken Holland’s tenure as general manager, the Wings have b...



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Ken Holland’s free agency acquisitions

DETROIT – Since July 18, 1997, Ken Holland has been at the helm of one of the most successful franchises in the world of sports. In 16 seasons as general manager, Holland has guided the Detroit Red Wings to three Stanley Cup championships and h...



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Blackwater mercenary chief threatened to kill a State Department investigator in Iraq

The mercenary group Blackwater has long been a target for criticism — but when a investigator from the State Department started looking into reports of fraud and abuse, Blackwater's top manager threatened to have him killed. A deep investigation by the New York Times' James Risen has turned up evidence of widespread wrongdoing by the company, including systematic fraud and abuse of power against the local population. Even more troubling is how powerless the government was to stop the company, paralyzed by embassy connections and administrative secrecy. Read the full report here.

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Play this: 'The Last Night' is two minutes of dark cyberpunk fun

The rain-drenched, neon-lit city has been a staple of cyberpunk from the very beginning, and it turns out that the aesthetic looks even better when rendered in gorgeous pixels. The Last Night is a short browser game created by brothers Tim and Adrien Soret, and though it lasts just a few minutes, it's absolutely dripping with style — playing feels like walking around a 16-bit Blade Runner.

The game puts you in the role of an apparent hit man, and you'll be wandering through the streets of a bustling futuristic city before making your way into a dance club to find your mark. The gameplay is simple: you'll need to shoot some pesky drones and body guards along the way, but other than that it's mostly just walking. But The Last Night is...

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OK Go's long history of viral music videos

You don't need to like OK Go's brand of alternative rock to appreciate their off-beat yet ingenious music videos. Their recent "The Writing's On The Wall" would be a fun watch even without an audio track. But this isn't the Los Angeles-based band's first brush with viral fame. Their initial taste of stardom came after rehearsal footage for "A Million Ways" was published on YouTube. The quirky choreography became an immediate hit, and over two million people have watched it since.

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Microsoft's Cortana World Cup predictions rival Paul the octopus

Paul the octopus might have been the star of the 2010 World Cup with his accurate predictions, but Microsoft’s Cortana assistant is proving a worthy digital replacement for the now-deceased cephalopod. Microsoft started adding World Cup predictions to Cortana over the weekend, and she has successfully predicted four results, backing Brazil, Columbia, The Netherlands, and Costa Rica in their final 16 games. The new prediction functionality is part of regular updates that Microsoft makes to Cortana every two weeks, bringing simple improvements and new data to the service.

Cortana is currently predicting France and Germany to progress to the quarter-final stages today, both of whom are favorites in their games. The results will further...

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By The Numbers: Jakub Kindl

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By The Numbers will highlight the Red Wings on-ice accomplishments in the 2013-14 season. Each week durin...



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Designers recreate stone age tools with space age technology

For more than a million years, the simple stone hand axe was one of our most important tools, but in the age of smartphones and virtual reality it can be hard to understand how revolutionary it really was. In their design series "Man Made," Dov Ganchrow and Ami Drach use 3D printing to make the tool's importance a little more clear.

With help from Dr. Leore Grosman from the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the design duo started out by collecting rocks of just...

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This creepy isopod case keeps your iPhone warm and strangers at bay

Worried about getting mugged for your gold 64GB iPhone 5S? This Japanese-made isopod case should calm your nerves and keep thieves away. A silver version will cost you $80 and a gold version will cost you $120, but you better act soon. The case's manufacturer is only making 500 of the creepy cases.

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Wings drafted for added depth up the middle

PHILADELPHIA – The Red Wings have shown a recent affinity for athletic lineage when it comes to compiling their amateur draft list. Following up Friday’s first-round selection of Dylan Larkin – who’s dad and uncles played collegiate soccer in t...



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Is this procedure the first step toward genetic engineering?

A new piece in The New York Times Magazine looks at the growing controversy surrounding three-parent fertilization. The procedure introduces a donor's cytoplasm into the mother's egg, potentially adding a third parent's genetic data to the child, but effectively treating mitochondrial disorders and a range of infertility issues. As the science develops, it's also become the center of a heated battle around genetic ethics. Three-parent IVF is the first technique to alters the germ line, disrupting the natural flow of genetic information from parent to child. As a result, many are already casting it as the first step towards genetic engineering. Three-parent fertilization already works as medicine, and could make a huge difference for the...

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Pebble, Ouya, and Veronica Mars join the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter

The Reading Rainbow fandom is a force to be reckoned with. With $4.4 million and counting, the Reading Rainbow reboot is now one of the five largest Kickstarters of all time. To celebrate, the project is adding rewards donated by the other four top projects, including the Pebble smartwatch, the Ouya game console, and the Veronica Mars movie. And of course, Seth MacFarlane will still be matching every donation up to $1 million.

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The 'Star Wars' prequels get the 'Guardians of the Galaxy' treatment

Once you've struck gold with a successful YouTube mashup, there's only one way to follow it up: a prequel with more CGI, more pod racing, and a hyperactive rastafarian lizard used as comic relief. So naturally, after YouTube critic The Unusual Suspect had a hit mashing up the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer with clips for the original Star Wars trilogy, it was only a matter of time before he moved on to the prequels. The result leans on the same swashbuckling musical cues — Blue Sweat's "Hooked on a Feeling" and Steve Miller's "Spirit in the Sky" — but swaps Han for a computerized Yoda and Leia for Padme. Naturally, Jar Jar is sentenced to death within the first minute.

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Wings prepare for Day 2 on draft floor

PHILADELPHIA – It was back to the draft table for the Red Wings’ brass late Friday night. After the team made Dylan Larkin just the second Michigan-born Red Wings’ first-round draftee, the amateur scouting staff was preparing for the final six ...



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The Weekender: revamping Android and remembering Bobby Womack

Welcome back to The Weekender. Every Saturday morning, The Verge will give you something to do. This is where you'll get the best of what we’ve written this week, but also a reason to get up and actually do something with your life — even if that something is dreaming of the far off places you might go.

Here's a collection of some of our favorite pieces that you may have missed, along with a snapshot of the things you should be doing with your days off. Have a look.

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Is software superstar Hatsune Miku a better pop icon than Justin Bieber?

Let's hope Hatsune Miku is the future of pop.

Last year on a trip to Japan, the character bombarded me. Arcades, shopping complexes, subways, television programs and convenience stores were polka-dotted with her glowing face. If you wanted something, chances were it came emblazoned with Miku branding, be it a toy figurine or a hyper-sexualized pastry.

How had someone, or something, become so popular across the world, and yet my colleagues and I had hardly heard of it? My curiosity led, as I suspect it does with many Miku fans, to a bit of obsession. The littlest bit of investigation reveals Miku isn't just a pop star; she's a bold improvement on the way we engage with intellectual property. She's what Justin Bieber, Mickey Mouse and...

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Is software superstar Hatsune Miku a better pop icon than Justin Bieber?

Let's hope Hatsune Miku is the future of pop.

Last year on a trip to Japan, the character bombarded me. Arcades, shopping complexes, subways, television programs and convenience stores were polka-dotted with her glowing face. If you wanted something, chances were it came emblazoned with Miku branding, be it a toy figurine or a hyper-sexualized pastry.

How had someone, or something, become so popular across the world, and yet my colleagues and I had hardly heard of it? My curiosity led, as I suspect it does with many Miku fans, to a bit of obsession. The littlest bit of investigation reveals Miku isn't just a pop star; she's a bold improvement on the way we engage with intellectual property. She's what Justin Bieber, Mickey Mouse and...

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The Red Wings get their 'Michigan' man

PHILADELPHIA – Draft day was made extra special for a soon-to-be Michigan man. With the No. 15 pick in the NHL draft Friday night, the Red Wings selected Waterford native Dylan Larkin, who played the past two seasons with the U.S. National Team...



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Babcock ends whirlwind week at draft

PHILADELPHIA – It’s been a whirlwind week for Mike Babcock. The Red Wings coach began the week in Vancouver where he received his Olympic ring from Team Canada for coaching the gold-medal team in Sochi, Russia earlier this year. He also made a...



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Always #LikeAGirl

The new season of 'Doctor Who' premieres on August 23rd

The eighth season of Doctor Who finally has a premiere date. The Twelfth Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi, will officially land on August 23rd. The feature-length premiere, titled Deep Breath, will be Capaldi's first full appearance as the Doctor since last year's Christmas special. Stakes will be especially high in this outing, since, after his last regeneration, the Doctor is either suffering from another bout of partial amnesia or something more serious. We'll find out later this summer.

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Material world: how Google discovered what software is made of

“It is a sufficiently advanced form of paper as to be indistinguishable from magic.”

Matias Duarte, vice president of design at Google, is telling me about the central principle of Material Design. It’s the unifying metaphor behind Google’s new design direction, providing a unified set of physics and rules for how software should look and act. It’s also a little weird.

The design team at Google felt the need to come up with a more coherent look and feel that could be applied across all of its...

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Gustavsson agrees to one-year deal

DETROIT – The Red Wings have agreed on a one-year contract with Jonas Gustavsson, who will be expected to back up starting goalie Jimmy Howard for the 2014-15 season. Coming off his best season in the NHL, Gustavsson posted a 16-5-4 record with...



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The NSA just posted its first full transparency report

The National Security Agency has posted its first full transparency report. Posted on the official agency Tumblr, the report breaks out the total number of orders for 2013, broken out into FISA orders, National Security Letters, and government requests for business records. The office of the Director of National Intelligence said the report was part of a larger push for transparency within the agency, and would continue in the future. "We are releasing information related to the use of these important tools," the office said, "and will do so in the future on an annual basis."

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What’s in your bag, Josh Lowensohn?

What’s in your bag? is a recurring feature where we ask people to tell us a bit more about their everyday gadgets by opening their bags and hearts to us. Show us your bag in this forum post. This week, we’re featuring Josh Lowensohn.

This is the contents of my typical daily work bag, plus a few additions for a frigid New York City. If I’m at a news event, or a longer trip, there’s usually more stuff in here. I deem most of these things essential to life, liberty, and the pursuit of...

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Etsy just poached one of Pandora's most important employees to lead its move into mobile

The online arts and crafts marketplace Etsy has built a massive e-commerce empire, yet it rarely comes up in conversations about the next wave of startups that are making it big. Perhaps that’s because the Brooklyn-based company, despite doing billions in sales, focuses on selling artisanal and handmade goods in a sustainable fashion, giving it a distinctly offline feel.

Today, however, the quiet giant is putting the Silicon Valley tech set on notice. It’s announcing the hire of Mike Grishaver as its head of product, a high-profile poach from Pandora, where Grishaver was a top executive. "You get a lot of the hype cycle here on the West Coast" he tells The Verge. "It's cool to be part of a company where the results speak for...

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CDC recommends testing procedure that can detect HIV four weeks earlier

Today is National HIV testing day, so it’s only fitting that the CDC announced on Thursday that it was recommending a new HIV testing approach that can diagnose HIV three to four weeks earlier than the previous recommended testing procedure.

Currently, most tests can only detect HIV about one or two months after the initial infection, because detectable levels of antibodies take time to build in the body. But with this new, more sensitive procedure, individuals who test positive for HIV will finally become aware of their status at a time when they are most likely to pass it on. "Today, CDC is recommending a new approach for HIV testing in laboratories that capitalizes on the latest technology to improve diagnosis" during the "earliest...

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'The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz' review

In the months after Aaron Swartz’s suicide in January 2013, members of the media spent hundreds of hours meditating on how a 26-year-old programmer, hacker, and political organizer could have accomplished so much so quickly, and then suddenly and unexpectedly taken his own life. Here at The Verge, Tim Carmody documented Swartz’s accomplishments, confronting myth with facts. Larissa MacFarquhar penned a devastating, complex, and beautiful 11,000-word profile of the young man for The New Yorker. The Atlantic, New York magazine, Slate, Rolling Stone and others weighed in, to various degrees of success.

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'Transformers: Age of Extinction' review

There was a time — and it really wasn’t that long ago — when you could say that Michael Bay made good movies with a straight face. Action flicks like The Rock, Bad Boys, and Armageddon were never seen as capital-c Cinema, but they were incredibly entertaining and bombastic summer rides, packed with an attention to visual detail and style that were uniquely the director’s own. In many ways, he was the second coming of Tony Scott, reinventing the action movie for a generation that wanted...

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This shrew only weighs an ounce but it's more like an elephant than a mouse

Scientists have discovered a new mammal in a remote desert in Namibia — and its name is Macroscelidea micus. One of 17 elephant shrew species, the newly discovered mammal weighs up to an ounce and measures about 7.5 inches from snout to tail, Reuters reports. And, although it’s smaller than other elephant shrews, Macroscelides micus has a lot to offer by way of its genetics because, as it turns out, it’s actually more closely related to elephants, and other large mammals, than its closest relatives are.

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The robot apocalypse will look a lot like this game

We all know that killer robots are coming. In World War Machine , they're already here.

Set after a mass extinction has wiped out the entirely of humanity, the game takes place in a world where sentient robots now rule. They roam the ruins of Earth's crumbling cities, waging an endless war against one another. Given the crazy machines in development by the likes of DARPA, it's a scenario many of us have thought about, and it's one WWM will let you experience firsthand when it eventually launches. "I've always had this kind of sick fantasy to live in a busted world," says creative director Jeff Hattem.

The game itself is a bit like Diablo, an action role-playing experience where you're fighting off waves of foes and constantly upgrading...

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I turned Google Glass into opera glasses

In 1983, at a showing of Strauss’ Elektra, the Canadian Opera Company changed opera forever. It introduced a concept that its creator termed surtitles, which projected translated lyrics alongside the performers. It allowed viewers to read the dialogue as they heard it sung in German, rather than having to read the plot beforehand or buy a paper libretto with the text. It also launched a veritable culture war.

To some, projections allowed audiences to appreciate operas on a new level. To others, they were a pointless, tasteless, even "pathetic" distraction. Metropolitan Opera music director James Levine was quoted in 1985 saying that the Met would show surtitles (often known as supertitles) "over my dead body." But today, supertitles are...

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New trailers: ‘Frank,’ ‘Fury,’ ‘The Prince,’ and ‘The Battered Bastards of Baseball’

If you’ve been sitting around, anxiously waiting for somebody to make a nearly three-hour movie about robots and metallic dinosaurs, then this is the weekend for you. Transformers: Age of Extinction is hitting theaters, with Mark Wahlberg stepping in to take the franchise over from the recently-arrested Shia LaBeouf. Thankfully, there's also the long-awaited US release of director Bong Joon-ho's dystopian sci-fi train ride Snowpiercer to balance things out. But if you’re looking for something...

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Nissan builds a real-life version of its stunning 'Gran Turismo' supercar

At the UK's Goodwood Festival of Speed, Nissan today took the wraps off a full-scale model of its new virtual supercar. The Nissan Concept 2020 Vision GT was created for Gran Turismo 6's "Vision Gran Turismo festival," which invites car makers to present their vision of the near automotive future as downloadable content for the game. Mercedes Benz, BMW, Mitsubishi, and Volkswagen have all contributed to the in-game festival so far, and Nissan's will be available for download in July.

The...

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German government cancels Verizon contract over NSA concerns

Verizon just suffered a major setback at the hands of the NSA. Bloomberg is reporting that the German government is declining to renew its contracts with the telecom giant, primarily because of concerns over the company's collusion with NSA surveillance. "There are indications that Verizon is legally required to provide certain things to the NSA," German Interior Ministry spokesman Tobias Plate told Bloomberg, "and that's one of the reasons the cooperation with Verizon won't continue." The new contracts will require firms to confirm that they're not legally obligated to share data with foreign governments, a promise that Verizon might not be able to make.

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Silicon Valley works to fix its diversity problem

Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and LinkedIn have each published diversity reports in recent weeks that outline gender and ethnicity statistics within their workforce ranks. The lopsided data shows that Silicon Valley mostly employs white and Asian workers, with men holding far more jobs than women — particularly in the tech field. Those trends are nothing new; but these companies and others say that's no excuse.

With the diversity reports and increased transparency, they're hoping to reverse the status quo. Many are also working to create a more diverse pool of candidates to someday hire through various initiatives at the education level. We'll be tracking the latest developments regarding Silicon Valley's push to diversify with this...

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What will the Red Wings do at No. 15?

DETROIT – Right-handed shooting defensemen are high commodities around the National Hockey League these days. They’ve become hockey’s version of left-handed pitching in baseball – teams can never have enough. There was a time that league genera...



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Your car might be screwing with pollination

The ability to respond quickly to odors is important for virtually all animals. But for pollinating insects that travel at high speeds, being able to react quickly to odor molecules is crucial. A moth’s sense of smell, for instance, is comparable to that of a dog — which means it vastly outperforms humans. But as our own innovation continues to introduce novel scents into the atmosphere, some scientists have started to wonder how our machines, and their pollutants, are affecting these insects’ abilities to located nectar-rich flowers. Now, a new study, published today in Science, demonstrates that fumes from cars not only compete with flowers, but also alter the way moths decode a flower’s scent. And this effect may be powerful enough to...

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Mike Daisey is feeling himself

I was a little worried last night when I arrived for Mike Daisey’s one-man show at Joe’s Pub, a chic, midsized venue in the East Village. It was crazy, but I was worried Daisey was going to recognize me and scream at me, like he did when I interviewed him by phone last week. "You don’t know anything about the theater," he had said in the middle of a meandering, expletive-laced monologue.

Daisey’s show was originally titled "Yes All Women," a reference to the hashtag women used to tell their stories of inequality after the devoted misogynist Elliot Rodger went on a shooting spree in California late last month. Daisey says he read the stories linked through the hashtag, thought they were "beautiful," and meditated deeply on them....

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Monty Python's classic 'Silly Walks' sketch is now an iPhone game

"The Ministry of Silly Walks" sketch first aired on Monty Python's Flying Circus all the way back in 1970, but now it's been adapted for a new audience: iPhone gamers. For a total of 99 cents, fans of the troupe can take control of John Cleese and guide him through the streets of London while jumping, gliding, and sliding to avoid endless obstacles along his path. The entire time, Cleese's character walks with the same bizarre and hilarious gait seen in the beloved sketch.

Besides doing your best to keep Cleese from smashing into random boxes, flying birds, and other hazards, you can also collect coins to spend on new attire (i.e. a Union Jack or '70s chic suit) and power-ups. And that's really it. The Ministry of Silly Walks is...

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iPhone or Android: it's time to choose your religion

It’s impossible for Google or Apple to introduce a new feature, let alone a whole new revision, to their mobile operating systems without it instantly being compared to the other’s alternative. The sparks that inflame heated discussions about who’s got the better notifications or smarter multitasking come right from the top of both companies. While unveiling Android L yesterday, Google’s Sundar Pichai took a subtle dig at Apple’s new iOS 8 by saying that custom keyboards and widgets "happened in Android four to five years ago." Three weeks earlier, Apple CEO Tim Cook was more direct in his critique:

Many of [our new] customers were switchers from Android. They had bought an Android phone — by mistake — and then had sought a better...

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With Android One, Google is poised to own the entire world

In the developed world, smartphones are ubiquitous. They’re so common, many device makers have given up on selling non-smartphones entirely. But that’s not the case in the developing world, where consumers are still in transition. This market opportunity has often been referred to as "the next billion," and many companies have made it their priority to focus on it. Research firm IDC reports that in India, smartphone sales have exploded 186 percent in growth in just the last year, with 78 percent of sales coming from devices priced below $200.

Nokia has made the next billion a big part of its business for years, first with the Asha line of phones, and now with its Android-powered Nokia X series. Nokia’s new parent, Microsoft, has also...

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Top Shelf: Tabletop gaming in the digital age

The world of video games and virtual reality is ever-evolving. Developers are continuing to discover new ways to connect people from around the world, but what happened the classic game night? Are people still shuffling cards and passing out paper money to players around the board? In this week's episode of Top Shelf, T.C Sottek explores the world of games, both big and small, and discovers that family game night is far from over.



This is our last episode of Top Shelf for now, but don't worry, we'll be back. In the meantime, check out our most recent episodes like I, Spy, Good Vibrations, and Living the Dream.

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Android Wear preview: this is how Google makes a smartwatch

After months of teases and previews, including yesterday's demo-mode units at Google's I/O developer conference, we've finally gotten the chance to try out Android Wear for ourselves. It's Google's take on the smartwatch, and that's more than just a way of saying it's an Android smartwatch. Instead, Android Wear is Google through and through, from the look and feel that foreshadows the coming "Material Design" aesthetic of Android to the deep integration with Google Search.

After just a...

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'Shovel Knight' is a long-lost NES classic without the cartridge

Shovel Knight feels the way you remember the classics on NES.

It has slick pixel-art visuals and a soundtrack ripped straight out of a Mega Man game, with 2D gameplay reminiscent of Capcom's DuckTales. It's a combination of platforming, combat, and devilishly tricky level design that will make you want to throw your controller against a wall — but in a good way. It's the kind of experience that influenced an entire generation of gamers, and despite being released a few decades after the heyday...

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Android Auto doesn't do much, and that's a good thing

The theme of this year's Google developer conference was putting Android everywhere, so it ought to be in the thing that takes people everywhere: the car. Android Auto works by plugging in an Android phone running the L operating system. The phone displays an "A" on the screen and you can no longer operate it. Instead, the phone sends up its information to your car's display. Google calls it "casting," but the key thing to know is that very little of the smarts of Android Auto live in the...

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'Get a warrant': the Supreme Court's huge new rule for digital privacy

If you had asked a legal scholar yesterday, they would have told you the Fourth Amendment was in trouble. Historically, it's been the main force protecting your privacy — it's the reason police need a warrant to search your home, and can't arrest you without a charge — but a lot of those rights haven't survived the shift to digital media. There are a lot of laws about searching a person’s home or office, but as files have moved to cloud accounts and mobile devices, many of those rights haven’t held true. Bit by bit, the right to privacy has been slipping away.

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Researchers devise a zero-knowledge proof for nuke inspection

Nuclear weapons inspection poses a dilemma: how do you train inspectors to identify nukes without revealing top-secret information about how to build them? Spreading detailed nuclear weapons knowledge goes against the principle of non-proliferation, and many countries would object to letting inspectors from a body like the United Nations dig around inside their war technology.

As James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace writes:

The problem seems as imponderable as Bilbo’s riddle to Gollum in The Hobbit: "What have I got in my pocket?" A state has a concealed object that it claims is a nuclear weapon. It wishes to provide proof, but the object’s design is largely secret and inspectors are forbidden from making...

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Up close with the Moto 360, the best-looking smartwatch yet

The Moto 360 isn't actually that big. It's solid and high-end, and it's definitely in the larger end of the smartwatch spectrum, but it quickly felt natural on my wrist. Light, round, and comfortable. We've just had our first chance to spend some real time with the device after Google's keynote at I/O, and after seeing all the available options it's easy to say the 360 is my favorite of the bunch so far.

It comes in a couple of different colors, each with a unique band, but the...

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A first look at the LG G Watch

On the third floor of the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA, Android Wear devices are starting to come out of the woodwork. The latest: the LG G Watch, perhaps the default Google-powered smartwatch for the moment. We've had a few minutes to test one out and do everything but put it on our wrists (which was strictly forbidden by a shockingly stern blonde man), and one thing seems already clear: the first batch of Android Wear smartwatches is as good as it is uniform.

The G Watch is an...

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Aereo is dead, so what's next for television?

The broadcast industry can breathe again: Aereo — the startup that streamed broadcast TV over the internet for cheap — is dead. Or at least, the incarnation of Aereo that wasn’t paying copyright fees is dead, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling this morning. So what happens now?

A decision in favor of Aereo would have changed things quite a bit for the television industry, but today’s ruling means back to business as usual. While some have raised fears that the opinion will impact cloud computing services, the Court intended for the ruling to apply narrowly to Aereo.

"It just means you can expect more of the same," says Michael Greeson, president of The Diffusion Group, a research firm focused on the future of TV. "The broadcasters won...

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This is the Gear Live, Samsung's $199 Android Wear smartwatch

Wearables were everywhere today at Google I/O, but there was only one truly new product announced: the Galaxy Live, Samsung's Android Wear-running smartwatch. And we've had a chance to spend a few minutes playing with a demo unit — it's only able to do a few things right now, but we have our best sense yet of what Android Wear hardware and software will look like. This is one of the key devices for Android Wear, one of the watches being given to all attendees of the conference, and at first...

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