Uber event service makes sure you get home from the party
If you’re hosting a big shindig, you frequently need to find ways to get people home at the end of the night — and a shuttle bus may be a waste if only some of your guests actually need it. This is where Uber might come to the rescue. It just announced the US rollout of UberEvents, a service that lets organizers pay for bulk rides to and from their venues. All you do is create an event and hand out codes to your attendees. You only pay when someone uses the code, and you can specify just when and where those codes apply so that there’s no room for abuse. If you’re determined to host the biggest party you can and don’t want friends either paying for their own rides or crashing at your place, this might hit the spot.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Uber Newsroom
New strain of Android malware is ‘virtually impossible’ to remove
Do you remember the bad old days of computer viruses so invasive that it was easier to nuke your software and start over than fix the problem? They’re back… in mobile form. Lookout has noticed a trend toward Android malware that masquerades as a popular app, but quietly gets root-level access to your phone and buries itself deep in the operating system. If that happens, you’re in serious trouble. Unless you can walk through loading a fresh ROM or carefully modify system files over ADB, it may be easier to just replace the device, or have your phone company reflash it — a simple factory reset won’t get the job done. Some of the bogus apps are little more than shells for ads, but others will work properly while they compromise your device.
Via: Ars Technica
Source: Lookout
‘The Witcher’ will be a movie in 2017
The Witcher is perhaps best known as a video game series, but its roots travel deeper than the digital realm. The Witcher games are based on a long-running series of novels and short stories by Andrzej Sapkowski, and these tales are being turned into a film, due to premiere in 2017. The movie will pull from themes in The Witcher and Lesser Evil, two stories in Sapkowski’s collection The Last Wish, which was originally published in 1993; an English version hit the market in 2007. The Sean Daniel Company (the studio that produced The Mummy franchise) is teaming up with Platige Films on the project, alongside Oscar-nominated director of The Cathedral, Tomasz Bagiński. It’s planned to be a series, assuming audiences are appropriately charmed by the leading, supernaturally powered man, Geralt. He’s fairly bewitching, or so we’ve heard.
Source: Platige
SNK ditches slot machines to focus more on video games
Call SNK the anti-Konami. Rather than back away from video games, the legendary Japanese studio has announced that it’s dropping its pachinko slot machine business to concentrate its efforts on both conventional video games (like the upcoming King of Fighters XIV, above) and mobile titles. There just isn’t as much money in those machines as there is consoles and smartphones, SNK says. To that end, it’s hiring more staff and planning more titles.
Via: Anime News Network
Source: SNK (PDF, translated)
‘Overwatch Origins Edition’ will be on PC, PS4 and XB1 next year
Until now only a PC version had been announced for Blizzard’s first all-new game in years, but today a splash page on its Battle.net website promises it will come to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Overwatch Origins Edition is expected to arrive “on or before” June 21st, 2016, although the link to BuyOverwatch.com isn’t working yet. The listing itself has very little information other than promising “all digital content included with Origins Edition will be available by launch,” but an eagle-eyed Reddit poster spotted what may be a full listing of items on a videogame retailer’s website. The shooter has generated hype with a public beta and many Twitch streaming sessions, but for now it’s just one more reason (besides that Warcraft movie trailer) to keep an eye on BlizzCon over the next few days.
Via: Wario64 (Twitter)
Source: Battle.net
NASA’s closer to knowing why Mars’ surface is cold and dead
It looks like NASA’s figured out one of the reasons why Mars isn’t fit for human — or any other kind — of life. The space agency held another press conference to discuss why Mars has turned from what was thought to be a wet, lush planet (that might have contained surface life) into a cold, desolate place. The likely culprit? Solar winds. With a little help from the MAVEN probe (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution), researchers were able to figure out how much of the planet’s atmosphere is being stripped away by solar winds — around 1/4 pound of gas every second. Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN’s principal investigator at the University of Colorado, likened the atmospheric loss to taking a small amount of coins out of a cash register every day — at first it’s insignificant, but over time can have a big impact.
Source: NASA
PC makers’ tech support asks customers to avoid Windows 10
You may have upgraded to Windows 10 as soon as humanly possible, but don’t tell that to your PC manufacturer. As part of its tech support research, Laptop has learned that at least Dell and HP are discouraging customers from updating to Windows 10, or even recommending that people roll back to older versions. When asked, both companies defend the practice. They’re committed to Windows 10, but their ultimate goal on a support line is to fix your PC… even if that means reverting to old software.
Source: Laptop
New Horizons is now on track to explore the outer solar system
After snapping beautiful images of Pluto, New Horizons has set its sights on an ancient body in the Kuiper Belt. The space probe has completed the last of four maneuvers and is now on course for “2014 MU69” with an expected interception date of January 2019 (if the project gets NASA’s seal of approval). As glorious as a trip into the unknown would be, even just executing these targeting burns is an impressive effort considering how far away from Earth the probe is. “This is another milestone in the life of an already successful mission that’s returning exciting new data every day,” said Curt Niebur, New Horizons program scientist at NASA Headquarters. “These course adjustments preserve the option of studying an even more distant object in the future, as New Horizons continues its remarkable journey.”
Source: NASA, Twitter (Alex Parker)
Researchers 3D print ‘Lego bricks’ of functional stem cells
A team of scientists from Beijing’s Tsinghua University have reportedly devised a means of producing uniform embryonic stem cells with a 3D printer. These cells stack like organic Lego bricks and could form the structural basis for future lab-grown organs. “It was really exciting to see that we could grow embryoid body in such a controlled manner,” lead author Wei Sun said in a statement. “The grown embryoid body is uniform and homogenous, and serves as a much better starting point for further tissue growth.” The study published yesterday in the journal Biofabrication.
Via: Eureka Alert
Source: IOP
Turn any watch into a smartwatch (kinda)
Have you been eyeing your friend’s Apple Watch and wishing you had one of your very own? Well, tech startup Trivoly has developed a way to squash that burning jealousy. The company launched a crowdfunding campaign for a newly developed disc of the same name which promises to turn any watch into a smartwatch. It is made out of a thin plastic and basically acts as a notification hub, vibrating when you receive a message…or set an alarm…or add an event to your calendar. You can control your smartphone camera and music by tapping all sides of the disc and it contains a heart rate monitor that syncs to native fitness apps.
Source: Kickstarter
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