Blog

Netflix will adapt ‘Dragon’s Dogma’ as part of its big anime push

[ad_1]

While it’s perhaps not Capcom’s most recognizable title, the show’s announcement could drum up interest for the Switch version of the game coming out in April and for the franchise overall. Netflix has also teamed up with the studio behind Attack on Titan to create a new original entitled Vampire in the Garden, which revolves around the friendship between a human and a vampire girl.

The company is turning Mark Millar’s Supercrooks into an anime series, as well, no doubt as part of its deal with Millarworld. Supercrooks is about a team of super villains illustrated by artist Leinil Francis Yu, the creators of Kick Ass and Wanted. Finally, Netflix has confirmed that it’s working on Altered Carbon: Resleeved, a spin-off of the sci-fi series that will explore new elements of the universe’s mythology.



[ad_2]

Source link

Japan’s moon rover will be made by Toyota

[ad_1]

Toyota is going to the moon. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has teamed up with the carmaker to build a pressurized self-driving rover that will land on the lunar surface in 2029. The six-wheeled transporter will be able to carry two humans for a distance of 10,000 kilometers using solar power and Toyota‘s fuel cell technology. The rover will be about the size of two minibuses, with 13 square meters of habitable space, and the astronauts on board will be able to take their suits off inside the vehicle as they explore. It will land on the moon before the human expedition arrives, and travel independently to meet them.

[ad_2]

Source link

Annihilation’ trailer teases a pretty bland movie

[ad_1]

Written and directed by Tony Giglio (Death Race 2, Death Race 3), the movie follows a group of space marines responding to a distress call from a Martian moon base — the same basic premise as the original movie, so don’t feel like you need to watch the first one to get caught up. Evidently, things go south real quick and soon all of humanity is threatened by a bunch of demonic creatures.

The movie isn’t slated for cinematic release (it could easily end up on Netflix, though, given the streaming-giant’s propensity to snapping up difficult titles left, right and center), and obviously producers don’t want to give away the best bits in a trailer, which has to be age-appropriate. But if the brief trailer is anything to go by, the movie could be missing iconic Doom baddies such as the Hell Knights and Cacodemon.

This won’t sit well with classic Doom fans. Or anyone involved in the game, as evidenced by the tweet below. Still, its apocalyptic thriller premise might be enough to attract new fans to the franchise, and who knows, maybe there will be a proper sequel on the cards — if there’s money to be had in it.



[ad_2]

Source link

HTC resurfaces with info on Android Pie for U11, U11+ and U12+

[ad_1]

After selling some of its operations to Google, HTC isn’t quite the player in the phone business that we remember, but it still has some impressive hardware that could use a software update. Back in August the company announced several phones in line for an upgrade to Android 9 Pie, but since then things have been pretty quiet, even as other flagship phones slowly ticked themselves off of the list.

While its Android One U11 Life model is already operating on Google’s latest software, the company tweeted Monday that it “anticipates” updates for the U11, U11+ and U12+ in Q2. That could vary based on countries and operators, but there’s at least a chance users could see Pie before the likely reveal of Android Q at Google’s I/O developer event in early May.



[ad_2]

Source link

Facebook temporarily pulled Warren ads about breaking it up

[ad_1]

One of Warren’s ads is a video directing users to a petition on her campaign website, asking voters to support her plan. Others feature images and text with the the same message. In a tweet, the Senator said that the event demonstrates how much power Facebook wields.

The company, however, told Politico that it pulled the ads down because they violated its policies against the use of its corporate logo. When it removed three of the Senator’s advertisements — more than a dozen were apparently not affected — it replaced them with a message that said: “This ad was taken down because it goes against Facebook’s advertising policies.” The spokesperson explained that the social network has now restored them “in the interest of allowing robust debate.”



[ad_2]

Source link

‘The Division 2,’ ‘Arrested Development’ and ‘Triple Frontier’

[ad_1]

The Bluths are back. A new round of Arrested Development is appearing on Netflix this week, along with its star-filled action/heist flick Triple Frontier and another season of Queer Eye. For gamers The Division 2 tops the release list, and will be available in just a few hours if you bought one of the Early Access-eligible copies. On TV, Comedy Central’s excellent series Corporate wraps up its season run, and Formula 1 kicks the 2019 season off this weekend in Australia. Look after the break to check out each day’s highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed).

[ad_2]

Source link

Amazon lets third-party sellers offer lower prices on rival sites

[ad_1]

Senator Richard Blumenthal wrote to the FTC Commission Chairman in December arguing that Amazon’s policy could “stifle” competition and “artificially inflate prices” for shoppers. While it’s not certain that the FTC intended to investigate, Amazon’s relaxed approach could address potential criticism by allowing sellers more flexibility in where and how they pitch their goods — and, of course, lower prices for customers in the process.

The company has faced multiple investigations into the competitiveness of its sales over the years, including Kindle book pricing and its discount policy. Whether or not that history played a role in the policy shift, it likely wasn’t keen on drawing more attention to its behavior.

[ad_2]

Source link

Instagram founders on Snapchat and breaking up Facebook

[ad_1]

Of course, you can’t talk about Instagram without mentioning its Stories feature, which it introduced in 2016 and is now one of the staples of the app. There are now over 500 million people using Instagram Stories daily, and Facebook is confident that number is going to keep growing, since more users are leaning toward ephemeral (aka disappearing) posts. While Systrom and Krieger didn’t blatantly say that Instagram ripped the feature from Snapchat — a move allegedly ordered by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg — they did acknowledge that the competing app played a role in launching their own Stories.

“For a long time people’s profiles were filled with Snapchat links and it was clear people were trying to bridge the two products,” Systrom said. “By bringing them into one place we gave consumers what they wanted.” That’s not entirely shocking, because it makes sense that Instagram wouldn’t want a rival app taking user engagement away from it. It’s also not Instagram’s fault that people have decided to use its app instead of Snapchat’s, though the inspiration for Stories is rather obvious.

As for losing independence after being acquired by Facebook, which may have pushed Instagram to become more than just a simple photo-sharing app, Systrom said that he doesn’t see that a negative move. “In some ways, there being less autonomy is a function of Instagram winning,” he said “If Instagram had just been a niche app for photographers, we’d probably be working on that app for 20 years as a niche app. Instead, what happened was it got better and better and better, and it improved, and it got to a size where it was meaningfully important to this company.”

Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine - 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals

Kevin Systrom

Systrom added that, in some ways, the loss of autonomy could’ve been predicted from the beginning. But, of course, it all becomes real once you start getting access to resources from a multi-billion-dollar company like Facebook.”If this thing gets to this size that we want it to get to — which is why we’re doing this deal — the autonomy will eventually not be there as much because it’s so important,” he said. “It’s just an unavoidable thing if you’re successful. So you can choose: Do you want to be unsuccessful and small, and have all the autonomy in the world, or not? I think we got to that point.”

Naturally, Systrom was asked about proposals like the one introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), which aims to break up major technology companies such as Facebook, Google and Amazon. Systrom said that, as this becomes a big topic of conversation ahead of the 2020 US presidential elections, he would like politicians to be more specific about how they actually plan to solve problems. He seems to believe these proposals need to offer tangible solutions, rather than just be based on the idea that corporations need to be broken up because they are too powerful.

Systrom said any proposal has to be specific on what integrations and acquisitions they’re talking about. “Is it Amazon white labelling products and selling them on Amazon? Because that’s a very different problem than whether Facebook should also own Instagram, which is a really different problem than whether Apple has the right to be one App Store only,” he said. As we get closer to 2020, it’ll be interesting to see what other presidential candidates will propose, but it’s clear that Democrats aren’t going to let this die down anytime soon.

“The cliché that every company is a tech company is increasingly true,” Systrom continued. “So breaking up tech or having those kinds of conversations will get better and lead to better policy, if we’re really specific on the problems we’re trying to solve and what the implementation would be.” He ended saying that a “more nuanced proposal” than Warren’s is needed. “My fear is that a proposal to break up all tech is playing on everyone’s current feeling of anti-tech rather than doing what politicians should do, which is address real problems and give real solutions.”

Images: Chris Saucedo via Getty Images (Kevin Systrom)

[ad_2]

Source link

Trump’s 2020 budget proposal cuts the EV tax credit

[ad_1]

Before you rush out to buy a plug-in car to score the incentive before it disappears, know that it’s unlikely the proposed budget will pass through Congress. With the House of Representatives currently ruled by a Democratic majority, any Trump proposal is likely to face stiff opposition. Automakers have been lobbying Congress to extend the credit, which currently ends after a company hits 200,000 vehicles sold. Democrats are expected to make an effort to keep the credit alive, though they’ll face challenges in doing so. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), the chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has proposed legislation to end the tax credit.

While the tax credit is likely to cost the government money, that’s in part because it has been successful in incentivizing the purchase of electric vehicles. A congressional report claims more than 57,000 taxpayers claimed an EV credit in 2016 and it’s expected that $7.5 billion in subsidies will be given out to EV buyers between 2018 and 2022. Two car makers, Tesla and General Motors, have already hit the 200,000 vehicle cap but are still eligible for smaller credits.

[ad_2]

Source link

Jessica Brillhart seeks truth in immersive media

[ad_1]

Brillhart started out at Google’s creative filmmaking arm, crafting documentaries on topics like Instant Search, quantum computing and AI. But eventually, she was tapped to help the company’s early 360-degree video experiments, which led to other projects like her DeepDream VR experiment. And even though we’re several years into the rise of consumer VR, she thinks we still have a long way to go.

“So you have this radical tension between the systems that are there in technology, film and other mediums — particularly those two when it comes to my world,” she said. “They’re trying to sort of keep everything in this box. [I think] you can do that all you want, but that ain’t gonna work. I have to change it.”

Brillhart continued, “Audio folks have been creating amazing pieces for the longest time, and they’ve been brought to us in little, itty-bitty files. There’s this whole backlog … In ’69 they were doing multi-track. Which means with a platform for spatial content, you could just drop in the guitar, Elvis and the backup singers.”

Listening to high-resolution music on audiophile-grade speakers can already deliver a solid sense of presence, but it’s only in one direction, with the band directly facing you. Traverse’s pitch is all about immersing you in whichever direction you choose. And of course, it can also be used for more than just music. Another Traverse demo at SXSW lets you hear and see the Martian landscape on your phone as you walk around, relying on publicly available audio and imagery.

At this point, only owners of Bose’s QC35 Headphones II or Frames audio shades can use Traverse, since it relies on the company’s custom AR platform. But if you’re lucky enough to own either of those gadgets, you can try out a special edition of the app starting today.

[ad_2]

Source link