Technology news

One of the main knocks against Nest’s comprehensive smart home security system, the Nest Secure, has been its high cost. Today, that price is dropping by $100 from $499 to $399. It’s still not cheap by any means, but Nest is taking a nice chunk off of the original list price. The lower MSRP is now available from Nest, Best Buy, B&H, and other retailers.The Secure bundle includes a Nest Guard keypad and two Nest Detect units that can be placed on windows or doors so the system ca

Starlink: Battle for Atlas takes place in a large sci-fi universe, which spans seven explorable planets that you can seamlessly travel between. Each world has its own wildlife and ecosystem, and there are different factions battling among themselves, vying for control. The game is being helmed by some of the key artists and designers who have worked on Ubisoft’s biggest open-world games, like Splinter Cell, Far Cry, and Assassin’s Creed.
Starlink is massive and complex, and it&rsquo

Following a day of jam-packed press conferences from Microsoft and Bethesda yesterday, Ubisoft’s E3 2018 keynote this afternoon focused heavily on Assassin’s Creed and The Division 2, as well as a slew of announcements about upcoming games like Beyond Good & Evil 2, The Crew 2, and Starlink. Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of all the biggest news and new trailers you might’ve missed if you didn’t catch the event live.Jade makes an ominous return in Beyond Good

One of the biggest changes coming in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is the newly added interactive dialogue system. Now, the game is introducing what might be the most important addition in the decade-plus history of the franchise: romance.Yes, you will now be able to take a break from your busy day job of murdering your way through a Who’s Who of historical figures and sleep with some of them instead.
The news comes at a desperate time for gaming’s thirstiest fans, who learned thi

Ubisoft dropped a release date and confirmed setting yesterday for its upcoming sequel to online-only shooter-RPG hybrid The Division, with launch for The Division 2 slated for March 15th, 2019 and an open-world game environment set in Washington, DC. Beyond the few trailers for the game we’ve seen thus far, and yesterday’s extensive gameplay demo, we haven’t been told too much about how the game will differ from its predecessor and what fans of the first should expect.Luckily

Assassin’s Creed is going full RPG. In the past, the long-running historical stabbing simulator has flirted with player choice systems, most notably in last year’s Assassin’s Creed: Origins. But with Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, the series is diving headfirst into role-playing. The game features fully voice-acted interactive dialogue, branching story paths, and — in a series first — multiple endings.
Play as one of Leonidas’ descendants
Developed by Ubiso

Right now, NASA’s Opportunity rover is doing its best to weather an intense dust storm on the surface of Mars — one that could prevent the robot from ever phoning Earth again. The storm is so bad that the dust is blotting out the Sun, making it hard for Opportunity to get the light it needs on its solar panels, which generate power and charge the robot’s internal battery. Engineers at NASA are waiting to see if the rover can make it through the storm and still function once th

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is here and as teased last week, Ubisoft is taking players on a journey to ancient Greece in the next installment of the historically accurate stabbing simulator.
Odyssey looks to be drawing on the revamped RPG systems of last year’s Assassin’s Creed: Origins, with the overhauled, Dark Souls-like combat, Destiny-esque loot system, and eagle companion all looking to make a return. Also back is the series’ naval combat, first introduced back with

Ubisoft took to the stage at E3 to show off more of it’s open-world, toy-based space game Starlink: Battle for Atlas, and revealed that the Switch version of the game will have an exclusive addition: Fox McCloud from Nintendo’s Star Fox series will be a playable character.Switch players of the game will be able to play as Fox McCloud (and his Arwing fighter) in Starlink, as well as get access to Switch-exclusive “Star Wolf” missions. Ubisoft also showed off a new Arwing

Every once in a while, you meet an entrepreneur who is both fully present, but also has a head full of dreams. That was my experience meeting and hosting Alex Zhavoronkov, the founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, a few weeks ago in Vienna at the Pioneers conference. There, he gave a presentation on how he is going to defeat aging using a set of deep learning AI tools, and also told me that I am going to live forever because I am young enough to benefit from the tech he is developing.
I am a hug

Fitbit’s first fitness band designed just for kids, the Fitbit Ace, is now available. The Ace, meant for kids eight and up, was first announced in March and is essentially an adaptation of the Fitbit Alta.
The Ace tracks many of the same activities as Fitbit’s other models for adults, like steps, active minutes, and hours slept. It will also send push notifications to encourage children to get moving if it senses a sustained period of inactivity. Some information, like calories burn

During a news cycle where headline after headline covers the political, social, and emotional turmoil at the United States-Mexico border, departed Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey is proposing a blanket solution involving virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and a few very tall towers. This “virtual border wall” was revealed last year, but Wired has now reported more details about Luckey’s venture Anduril Industries. The company is touting a surveillance system called Latt

Chances are you will never be able to afford one of Swedish designer Love Hultén’s gorgeous, handmade wooden retro consoles or arcade cabinets. I’m in the same boat. But that doesn’t mean we all can’t appreciate the design work that goes into making them, like his latest piece, the OriginX wall-mounted arcade cabinet.Inspired by the original Pong arcade cabinet, Hultén’s spin is built from a walnut housing with an aluminum control panel and facade (pa

The Federal Communications Commission recently approved the Nokia 5.1, a mid-range phone that’s a refreshed version of the Nokia 5. The FCC approval indicates the phone will launch soon in the US, as spotted by Android Police.
We got an early look at the Nokia 5.1 at the end of May, after HMD Global, which now manufactures Nokia smartphones through a licensing deal, confirmed the device’s existence and promised a July release.There are four variants that the FCC approved and it look

Fallout may be one of the biggest AAA gaming franchises around, but over the last few years the post-apocalyptic series has found itself in turmoil. What started out as a gritty narrative-driven role-playing game has, with the release of 2016’s Fallout 4, transformed into more of a silly action game. And with the reveal of Fallout 76 at E3 this year, some fans are convinced the series has fully lost its way.As Bethesda announced last night, Fallout 76 is an online survival game where you

It’s PlayStation time. Sony has already given an early preview of what to expect from its conference this year, with promised appearances of some highly anticipated PS4 exclusives: Death Stranding from Kojima Productions, Ghost of Tsushima from Sucker Punch, Marvel’s Spider-Man from Insomniac Games, and The Last of Us Part II from Naughty Dog.We’re also expecting to see something from Days Gone, the upcoming zombie-survival game that Sony’s shown off for a few years at i

Snapchat will now let users delete sent messages before they’re opened, as reported by 9to5Mac. The company plans to roll the feature out to some people starting today, and everyone should have it within the next few weeks.To delete a sent message, simply press and hold on the media (text, audio, photo, etc.) you’d like to get rid of and a pop-up will appear asking if you’d like to delete. Just tap, and the content in question will disappear. The person you sent the message to

For having only been in office a little over a year, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, has certainly had an eventful tenure. Hardly one day goes by that the news isn’t awash with some new scandal he’s gotten himself into.First, it was the unnecessary $43,000 soundproof phone booth he got installed at his office. Then, it was the $50 a night condo deal tied to an energy lobbyist. Lately, however, the scandals have gotten more and more ridiculous — t

Square Enix was content to show off a number of its E3 games ahead of its big showcase. We already knew about Just Cause 4, the Life is Strange spinoff the Adventures of Captain Spirit, and the long-awaited Kingdom Hearts III release date before the event kicked off. Because of that, there wasn’t much in the way of news — but there were lots of trailers. Sadly, there was no glimpse of the Avengers project, but here’s everything else you might have missed during the 30-minute e

Apple has explicitly banned apps that mine cryptocurrency on its devices, according to newly updated Review Guidelines for the App Store. The new ban extends to all Apple platforms.In March, Apple removed Calendar 2 from the Mac App Store after the app began mining cryptocurrency on people’s devices in exchange for premium features. It was Apple’s first move against cryptocurrency mining apps. Previously, the company had never done anything about them. At the time, Calendar 2’

Over the weekend, avid Twitter user Elon Musk said that Tesla’s “long awaited” Version 9 of Autopilot would begin rolling out this August. “To date, Autopilot resources have rightly focused entirely on safety,” Musk tweeted. “With V9, we will begin to enable full self-driving features.”
This would appear to put Musk on track to achieve the promise he made two years ago to offer “full self-driving” capabilities to Tesla owners by 2019. At the

PlatinumGames, the studio best known for action heavy adventure games like Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Nier: Automata,announced a new game called Babylon’s Fall at the Square Enix E3 press conference today.
The reveal trailer focuses on a historical timeline before kicking into a battle between two mysterious, armored beings. For now, we don’t have many other details, only that the game is expected to launch next year on PlayStation 4 and Steam. Continue reading&h

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age was a hit in Japan last year. On September 4th, the game will be released on the PlayStation 4 and the PC via Steam. And in the run-up to the release, Square Enix has released a new trailer showing off the fanciful RPG.
The latest installment in the long-running Dragon Quest series takes place in the fantasy world of Lotozetasia. The coming-of-age story finds the hero discovering his true identity while battling monsters in turn-based combat.
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