Civil War breaks out in Marvel Avengers Academy
To coincide with the release of Captain America: Civil War in theaters, a limited-time event has kicked off in Marvel’s Avengers Academy mobile game. Like the movie, this event sees a civil war of sorts breaking out on the Avengers Academy campus.
As the conflict kicks off, players will have to pick a side: Captain America or Iron Man. Both iconic heroes have opposing views on how to best defend the Academy, and you’ll get to choose who to side with. During the event, you’ll get a chance to unlock more bits of the Civil War story as you battle former friends and prepare to face Hydra.
Interested? If so, you can grab Avengers Academy on Google Play and pick your side now. Oh, and if you’re up for even more Avengers fun, be sure to check out our Civil Ware theme guides as well.
Disney platformer Castle of Illusion discounted to just 99 cents on Google Play
Disney fans, heads up: Castle of Illusion, an updated take on the Sega classic starring Mickey Mouse, is currently discounted to just 99 cents on Google Play. If you’re keeping track, that’s a massive drop from the game’s usual price of $9.99.
Throughout the game, you’ll take control of Mickey Mouse as you puzzle and platform your way through the Castle of Illusion in search of Minnie Mouse’s kidnapper Mizrabel. Here’s a look all the game offers:
- Play as Mickey Mouse in this reimagining of the classic Sega Genesis/Mega Drive game!
- Experience a world of wonder, brought to life with all-new graphics and magical adventures!
- Journey across five magical worlds filled with Mizrabel’s powerful minions!
- Complete hidden challenges to customize Mickey with classic costumes!
If you’re interested in snagging this deal, you can grab the game for 99 cents on Google Play now. It looks like this discount also applies to those in the UK as well, dropping the price to just 50 pence.
Here’s the first 360-degree footage from GoPro’s six-camera Omni VR rig
GoPro announced its first quarter earnings today, revealed it will delay the release of its highly-anticipated drone until winter, and published a 360-degree video recorded with its Omni virtual reality camera rig.
The 4-minute clip marks the first time we’ve seen what Omni can do, though GoPro warned that the footage was produced using prototype Omni units, and we should therefore expect “significant improvements to the overall output quality upon the product release”. The Omni is expected to ship later this year. GoPro started taking pre-orders for the rig last month, charging $5,000 for six Hero 4 Black cameras, the frame, and software.
If you just want the frame, you can pay $1,500. Also, GoPro built a more expensive version of the Omni with Google. It features 16 GoPro action cameras and costs $15,000. No matter which option you choose, one thing is clear: recording virtual reality footage isn’t cheap. However, if you’re seriously considering buying the Omni, its frame, or the Google’s Odyssey, watch the video below to see exactly what your money will get you.
The 360-degree clip shows skiers and snowboarders having fun in the Austrian Alps: “Shot on the backdrop of gorgeous Serfaus – Fiss – Ladis in the Tyrolean Alps of Austria, the GoPro Media team showcases Omni, GoPro’s newest 6-camera spherical array. Jesper Tjader, Halldor Helgason, and friends take to the Suzuki Nine Queens course to demonstrate what Omni has to offer,” GoPro explained in the video’s description.
You can navigate around the video using YouTube’s built-in arrow tool. We watched it and noticed some hiccups and visible stitches, but again, GoPro said this is sample footage from a prototype. It’ll definitely be interesting to see what the final product can do when it releases.
Free Windows 10 downloads finishing soon: How to get it before you pay
All good things must come to an end.
Microsoft launched Windows 10 last summer, and when it did, the company made Windows users an offer they couldn’t refuse: reserve a free copy of the software for your PC, and upgrade from Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1 at no cost. Well, that was a limited-time offer. Microsoft has confirmed that Windows users who haven’t upgraded yet will soon have to pay up.
“The free upgrade offer to Windows 10 was a first for Microsoft, helping people upgrade faster than ever before. And time is running out. The free upgrade offer will end on 29 July and we want to make sure you don’t miss out. After 29 July, you’ll be able to continue to get Windows 10 on a new device, or purchase a full version of Windows 10 Home for $119,” said Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi.
Keep in mind if you’ve already grabbed your free copy of Windows 10, you will still get the Windows 10 Anniversary Update that is due to arrive this summer. But if you haven’t upgraded yet, you will need to pay for Windows 10 and future updates. There’s plenty of time to upgrade at no cost, however. Pocket-lint has detailed exactly how to do update below.
Windows 10 free upgrade: When does the offer end?
Microsoft announced that its free Windows 10 upgrade offer will end 29 July 2016. After that date, Windows 10 Home will cost $119.
Windows 10 free upgrade: How can you update now?
In order to take advantage of the free Windows 10 upgrade offer, ensure Windows Updates is enabled from inside the Control Panel on your device.
From there, watch for your notification to upgrade. You can always check your upgrade status in the Get Windows 10 app. Alternatively, you can manually start the Windows 10 update process from here. Pocket-lint also offers this post with more details about the free Windows 10 upgrade, or you can check out Microsoft’s FAQ page for help with upgrading to Windows 10.
Windows 10 free upgrade: Why should you update?
Microsoft’s Bryan Roper published the video below to warn Windows users that the free Windows 10 upgrade offer is ending soon – and to share the top 10 reasons why he thinks you should upgrade to Windows 10 before 29 July:
Style, simplicity and sound perfection: XTC In-Ear Genuine Wood headphones
Despite all the bells and whistles of today’s headphones market, one technology has been in use for centuries from fine instruments to the acoustics-enhancing architecture of concert halls: high-quality wood.
The XTC In-Ear Genuine Wood Headphones fluidly combine premium sound reproduction and top-notch noise isolation for a superior, distortion-free sound in high-fidelity audio, as artists intended for you to hear it. For a limited time, you can grab a pair for just £16.42 ($23.99) from Pocket-lint Deals.
Skip the bulky brand-obsessed compromise on sound, and embrace the sleek style and durability of XTC In-Ear’s finely-crafted wood. The organic materials help to promote rich, natural acoustics. And unlike bulky over-ear headphones, in-ears typically cut corners on looks and sound quality — this is not the case with XTC. The XTC tips have a smooth wooden finish, giving them a mature sense of style while a sleek black nylon cable relieves the easily-tangled cheap plastic feel of most competitors.
A gold-plated 3.5mm audio jack provides uninterrupted, smooth sound while you enjoy XTC’s high-level noise isolation. You’ll love the clarity of sound and simple, elegant style of the XTC In-Ear Genuine Wood Headphones. Take 52 per cent off the retail cost for a limited time, and pay just £16.42 ($23.99) on Pocket-lint Deals.
The second ‘XCOM 2’ DLC pack arrives May 12th
The second DLC pack for XCOM 2 is set to drop on May 12th and will come bursting at the seams with new content like a Xenomorph cub desperately chewing its way to freedom. The new pack will cost $10 unless you’ve already picked up the Reinforcements Pack, in which case save your money because the new content is already on its way.
The biggest addition are the expansion’s three new Ruler aliens. These bosses will randomly hunt your team during campaigns (assuming you’ve cleared the new narrative sections already) and offer unique powers and tactics — they’ll even retreat if you don’t blast them fast enough. Luckily, players will have access to four new “prototype” weapons including a single shot rifle, a throwable axe, a pistol that automatically hides dead bodies and a freeze grenade to better battle these badass bosses. Additionally, players can pick up three new armor sets — each forged from the carcass of Ruler-class alien — that will send their extraterrestrial minions scurrying. The DLC will also include a smattering of bug fixes and gameplay rebalances.
Source: XCOM
‘Deadpool’ downloads are setting sales records early
Fox’s Digital HD plan to sell movies online ahead of their disc release appears to be paying off, as it just announced that CGI-heavy Deadpool is the fastest selling superhero digital HD movie. Of course, it being incredibly well-received doesn’t hurt, but racking up a million sales before the Ultra HD Blu-ray / Blu-ray / DVD debut next week is pretty nice. According to Fox, it’s the studio’s “best performing” movie ever under the program, which saw it go on sale via the likes of iTunes and Vudu on April 25th.
Another positive is that fans have a legit way to get the movie instead of trying to hold out while Blu-ray rips bounce around on torrents (cough — Star Wars: The Force Awakens). Of course, the Digital HD program could get better if it worked out a way for people to get the movie early and on disc later if they want it, but that’s just one more hiccup to solve.
Fox:
DEADPOOL SELLS 1 MILLION DIGITAL HD UNITS IN ITS FIRST WEEK, FASTER THAN ANY SUPERHERO MOVIE
Fox’s Best Performing Digital HD Title Ever
#1 R-Rated Title Through 1 Week
Fox’s Fastest Title to 1 Million
LOS ANGELES, Calif. (May 5, 2016) – DEADPOOL, the pop culture sensation and one of the highest grossing films of the year, is now the fastest selling superhero title on Digital HD, selling 1 million units its first week. It also now holds the record as Fox’s best performing Digital HD title ever, and the fastest to 1 million units.
Amazon offers NBC’s Seeso comedy service as a streaming add-on
NBC’s Seeso comedy streaming service has been available to all since January, and now Amazon Prime members are getting easy access. The online retailer added NBC’s lineup of comedy TV shows and movies, which includes new episodes of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Myers the day after they air. You’ll have to shell out an extra $4/month for Seeso on top of that Prime subscription, but doing so puts the comedy library alongside your other Amazon videos.
This isn’t the first time Amazon has allowed Prime customers to tack on other video services to the subscription. It also lets users add Showtime, Comedy Central and others for folks who are willing to pay extra for those. If you’ll recall, Hulu is doing something similar by offering Showtime as an add-on to the regular streaming options. Putting all of those things in one spot certainly seems convenient, but Amazon will need to make that one-stop shop easier to use if it really wants to compete with the likes of Netflix and Hulu. But hey, at least there’s Saved by the Bell.
Source: Amazon
Russian provider casts doubt on email hacking claims
Yesterday, Reuters reported that tens of millions of email addresses and account passwords were stolen in an apparent data breach — but as is often the case, there’s more to this story than meets the eye. According to Motherboard, which spoke with both Hold Security (the company that received the data in question) and security expert Troy Hunt, it’s not at all clear that the email providers were hacked. It’s even possible this data isn’t legitimate.
For starters, Motherboard received a statement from Russian email provider Mail.ru, which accounted for 57 million accounts in the data release. The provider claims that after doing a sample check of the data, none of the email and password combinations work. This casts plenty of doubt on the legitimacy of the entire data set.
Furthermore, Alex Holden (CEO and founder of Hold Security) admitted that the data appeared to come from “a collection of different breaches.” Between this and the doubt that Mail.ru has cast on the legitimacy of the data, it’s entirely possible that the data in this “hack” is either quite old or didn’t come from the email providers directly — or both. Troy Hunt of “Have I Been Pwned” (a site that maintains a repository of data breeches) said to Motherboard: “You know how much effort we go to in trying to figure out if breaches are legit or not, it feels like that hasn’t happened here.”
As always, it’s good to practice good password hygiene and change them up frequently (and seriously, two-factor authentication!), but it’s also worth maintaining some perspective — if a company has large as Microsoft, Google or Yahoo was hit with a data breach affecting tens of millions of its customers, it would likely have made that knowledge publicly available. Absent any firm confirmation from those companies — as well as Mail.ru’s statement — it seems most users should be safe at the moment.
Source: Motherboard
Lyft and GM will test self-driving fleet within a year
General Motors and Lyft’s planned network of on-demand, self-driving taxis will begin testing in one undisclosed city sometime in the next year, the Wall Street Journal reports today. While the details of the plan are still scarce, the accelerated timeline will put a fleet of publicly available autonomous vehicles on the road ahead of either company’s major rivals in Silicon Valley.
Earlier this year, the Detroit automaker invested $500 million and secured a seat on the board of the ride-sharing service, with the goal of rapidly implementing their vision of a driverless taxi network. Back in March, GM also acquired San Francisco-based Cruise Automation to further speed up that goal. Prior to the acquisition, Cruise built aftermarket self-driving kits that could be added to several Audi vehicles for around $10,000.
The forthcoming fleet will use Chevy Bolt electric vehicles paired with Cruise’s self-driving technology. As a low-cost, long-range electric vehicle, the Bolt actually makes an ideal taxi platform with plenty of backseat legroom built into a compact profile. According to one Lyft executive quoted by the Journal, customers in the test market will be able to choose between a human driver or an autonomous vehicle when hailing a ride through Lyft’s app.
One major roadblock that remains for Lyft, GM and their competitors is the “patchwork” of rules governing autonomous vehicles at the state level. To head off any potential regulatory headaches, Ford, Google, Lyft, Uber and Volvo formed the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets last month to advocate for one set of federal laws and regulations around autonomous vehicles.
AIVAnet 