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It became pretty clear last year that YouTube has a content problem. Last spring, companies like AT&T and Verizon pulled ads because they were found to be appearing alongside extremist videos . And it was hit with another round of ad-pulling later in the year when reports surfaced that a portion of the site's children's content turned out to be not so kid-friendly . Now, following the uproar over Logan Paul's Aokigahara forest video , YouTube may begin vetting the videos posted by its most popular channels, according to Bloomberg . Paul's channel was one of YouTube's Google Preferred accounts -- a group of top-tier, highly viewed channels that Google sells ad space on at a higher rate. YouTube pulled Paul's Preferred status yesterday as part of its response to his video, but for content creators that still have that status, those Preferred accounts will now reportedly be vetted in order to make sure their content is appropriate for the brands buying ad...

Finally, after long hours of debating about which of our finalists should win our Best of CES awards this year, we've made our decisions. Below is our list of winners for each category, as well as Best of the Best and People's Choice. Congratulations to all winners and finalists! Best Accessibility Tech: Xenoma e-skin pajamas Accessibility has become a major theme at CES, and it's one of the harder categories to judge because of all the potentially life-changing tech on the floor. But Xenoma's e-skin pajamas took the prize this year thanks to its innovative fabric sensors that can stand up to the abuse of a washing machine and don't need any sort of liquid or gel to keep conductivity with your skin. -- Terrence O'Brien, Managing Editor Best Startup: Black Box VR Black Box VR is building the gym of the future. Using the HTC Vive, motion-tracking controllers and specially designed workout equipment, Black Box turns exercise into a video game. The plan is...

We've been looking forward to Netflix's take on Blade Runner for a while now. Altered Carbon , based on the novel of the same name, even made an appearance at CES this year . Now there's a brand-new trailer to get us all excited for the upcoming sci-fi series, full of body horror, murder and (apparently) some funny moments. In the upcoming television show, a rich man 300 years in the future (played by Rome 's James Purefoy) needs his own murder solved. So he resurrects and hires Takeshi Kovacs, a soldier killed in action 250 years previously, to investigate. The show looks impressively large, with stunning environments and sets. It's a serious throwback to the cyberpunk vision of novels like William Gibson's Neuromancer and, of course, Blade Runner , itself based on a Philip K. Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep . Altered Carbon is set to debut on Netflix this Februrary 2nd. Via: The Verge Source: Netflix/YouTube via Engadget RSS Feed ...

Facebook just announced that it will make sweeping changes to the News Feed, the primary place where users find content on the social network. Over the next few months, users will see "more from your friends, family and groups" and " less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media," so says CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The company says that it has heard from users that the so-called "public content" is crowding out "personal moments" that the Facebook platform was built on. Zuckerberg notes that "it's easy to understand how we got here," saying that there's been an explosion of video and other types of public content that has "exploded" on Facebook in recent years. Because of that, he said that "the balance of what's in News Feed has shifted away from the most important thing Facebook can do -- help us connect with each other." As such, it's time to re-balance what people see when they v...

The female orgasm can be elusive, but at CES 2018 , sexual health startup Lioness managed to capture and immortalize them as works of art. It's based on information gleaned from volunteers who have used its $229 bio-sensing vibrator that started shipping in August. The mini exhibit is here in Las Vegas to drum up awareness for both the Lioness brand and women's sexual health issues , particularly how we orgasm. It was shown in a limited preview last year at the Mothership music festival, and Lioness hopes to eventually add more pieces and bring the exhibit to galleries all over the country. The Lioness vibrator has force sensors on the dildo end, which detects pelvic floor (and wall) contractions. That's one of the best ways to identify orgasms, according to Lioness founder Liz Klinger. There's also a sensor that recognizes when a session starts by measuring body temperature, which tends to rise as people get aroused. Like most rabbit vibrators, the Lioness also has ...

CES may have a complicated relationship with sex, but one company has made it its mission to destigmatize doing it at the world's largest technology conference. For the past seven years, the family-run sex toy manufacturer OhMiBod has made the trek to Las Vegas in an attempt to gain mainstream distribution for its line of tech-savvy pleasure products. This year, the company has partnered with one of the leaders in interactive sex toys, Kiiroo, to create an internet-connected vibrator that can communicate with the Fleshlight-branded Launch male masturbator. OhMiBod's Fuse claims to be the first of its kind to offer bi-directional control -- basically, allowing either the stroker or the vibrator to send sensations to the other device from long distances. Both devices also promise to sync with VR and traditional porn and can be used by webcam models to give their clients an extra-sensory experience. The Fuse can be purchased online for and you can see the devices for yourse...

Google Assistant's fingerprints are all over the CES 2018 show floor, but it's especially easy to see on a few new Android Things-powered devices. This LG ThinQ Google Assistant Touch Screen Speaker is one of them, and like Lenovo's Smart Display , it's built on a Qualcomm Home Hub Platform . On the show floor, it smoothly scrolled through demo applications popping up info in ways we're used to seeing on our phones or through Android Auto. So far all the demonstrations only include Google apps like Duo, Maps, Music, Photos and YouTube -- currently MIA on Amazon's Echo Show -- so we'll be watching carefully to see how the device's capabilities expand as developers dig into Android Things, which leans on existing tools to create new apps for these devices. According to Qualcomm, this more powerful version of its platform (SDA624) can drive a Full HD+ display, capture 4K video and support Tensor Flow for on-device machine learning. Also, like Lenov...

A smartphone app and recent FCC filing strongly hints that Louis Vuitton has a new tech product on the way: A luggage tracker that pairs with particular bags sold by the fashion company. Sources tell Engadget that it will be the first such device to work internationally, but there has been no official confirmation yet. According to a leaflet included in the documents filed to the FCC, the luggage tracker is called the Louis Vuitton Echo and will be built by French start-up Axible. It can operate for up to six months on a full battery and can be recharged via simple USB cable. Customers use the company's LV Pass smartphone app to pair with the tracker, which slides into a dedicated pocket in Louis Vuitton luggage. The Echo automatically switches to Airplane Mode in flight; After landing, customers can check the app for their bag's location and see if it was opened in the interim. The tracker only works within certain major international airports covered by Sigfox's mob...

There was, as expected, a thin scent of weed in Roger Volodarsky's 28th-floor Mirage hotel suite as the Puffco CEO and founder demonstrated his latest product. It was 11:30 PM the night before CES opened, and seven attendees gathered in the living room overlooking the Vegas strip. A welcoming, tattooed man with a groomed beard and shaved head, Volodarsky was showing off the Puffco Peak, a smart dabbing rig for consuming cannabis concentrates that he'd presented at the Pepcom media event just hours earlier. Away from the mainstream events around CES, he could show how it truly works. After all, this is the first CES since marijuana was legalized in the state of Nevada last year, and it's available for purchase all over Las Vegas. The irony is that in Sin City, you are prohibited from consuming cannabis products anywhere but in a private residence, including hotels, parks and even dispensaries. In practice, vaporized cannabis and edibles are easy to find and easier to c...

OnePlus released two great smartphones in 2017, but the smartphone startup is facing more and better competition than ever before. That's great for you and me, but much trickier for a startup still trying to carve out a notable niche for itself. What's a small company to do? In this case, OnePlus' answer is to keep making the best products it can and avoid looking at competitors simply as rivals to be crushed over time. Kyle Kiang, head of global marketing for OnePlus, joined us on our CES stage to discuss the team's strategy for building a successful mobile brand and the difficulties of developing a foundation of trust in through hardware. Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018. via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2Ey3TF2"

Over the past few years, we've been seeing more and more products at CES meant to assist the elderly and disabled. In fact, last year was the first year we added an accessibility category to the official Best of CES awards -- and the finalists in that category were indeed some of our favorite things we saw at the show. This year was no exception, with four finalists in the accessibility category, and a whole bunch of other products that we didn't have room for on our shortlist. When and how did accessibility tech come to be so prominent at the world's biggest consumer tech show? And where is the technology headed from here? To help make sense of the bigger picture, I sat down with KR Liu, who was diagnosed with severe hearing loss at age three and later went on to head up sales and marketing with audio pioneer Doppler Labs . Most recently, she teamed up with Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Grassley on the Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act of 2017, which passed with a...

Motorola's first great Android phone had a physical keyboard, and when I stuck Livermorium's keyboard Moto Mod onto a Moto Z2 Play, waves of nostalgia started washing over me. After I started using the keyboard, though, I suddenly remembered why the smartphone world had moved on from these designs. You'll be able to pick up one of these Mods for $99 before the winter ends, but it's going to be a hard sell for anyone who didn't grow up pounding out texts on actual buttons. To be clear, the version Livermorium and Lenovo showed off in Vegas isn't the final version that customers will be able to buy. That's a very good thing, too. The sliding mechanism in the model I played with didn't feel all that smooth, and because the combined package is top-heavy, you're liable to push the phone right off the weak magnets connecting it to the keyboard. And while the buttons are nice and clicky, they don't offer a particularly satisfying level of key trave...

The last week or so has seen a lot of activity around Meltdown and Spectre , two CPU flaws in modern chips from the likes of AMD and Intel. Apple, Microsoft and Google have provided interim fixes for their respective hardware, but it will take much more than simple patches (that can cause more harm than good ) to truly eradicate the issue. Just a few hours after Intel revealed that there may be more slowdowns from its Meltdown processor fix, the company's CEO Brian Krzanich has written an open letter to further detail the steps Intel is taking to deal with the issues. Krzanich promises that by January 15th, 90 percent of Intel CPUs made in the last five years will be updated, with the remaining 10 percent patched by the end of the month. The company will then start working on updates for older chips "as prioritized by (its) customers." The Intel CEO also notes that the impact of Meltdown and Spectre patches on performance can vary widely, but that Intel will provid...

This week, Samsung showed off everything from new laptops to a massive microLED wall to a chattier kind of refrigerator . The message couldn't be any clearer: Samsung would like nothing more than to be the center of your digital world. To dig deeper into this week's big news, we invited Shoneel Kolhatkar, Samsung's senior director for product marketing to our CES stage for some wide-ranging conversation. We touch on Samsung's new Notebook 9 Pen, the growing role of wearables and (most important) how Samsung plans to weave its products into together in a single intelligent ecosystem. Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018. via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2FoXnBM"

If you're looking for an electric vehicle but don't need the extra seats (or long delivery times) that a full-sized Tesla Model 3 demands, you could always take a shot with the Solo. This electric vehicle from Canadian startup ElectraMeccanica Vehicles Corp, boasts a 100 mile range and a $15,500 price tag. The Solo is designed specifically for the urban commuting crowd. In addition to the 100-mile range, the Solo cna hit 85 MPH, making it legal to drive on highways. What's more, since its fully-electric, the car qualifies for HOV lane access in number of states. The lithium ion battery pack requires a 6-hour charge on 110V to hit full capacity -- half that with 220V. It's modest interior offers basic amenities like a heated seat and radio, though it does boast a surprising amount of cargo space with a storage nook behind the driver and a carry-on luggage size compartment in the vehicle's front boot. ElectraMeccanica is asking $15,500 for the Solo, though qualif...