Geek News

As Disney announced its quarterly earnings results today, CEO Bob Iger told CNBC that the company plans to price its standalone streaming version of ESPN at $4.99 per month. We've already heard that ESPN Plus will include "10,000 live regional, national, and international games and events a year" including MLB, NHL and MLS action, and Iger said it will arrive along with a relaunch of the ESPN app this spring. The idea is to reach out to cord-cutters and cord-nevers, hoping they're into some sports you wouldn't catch on its cable broadcasts (other sports will include various college games, Grand Slam Tennis, Boxing, Golf, Rugby and Cricket), plus included access to its library of 30 for 30 documentaries. It will be available "iOS, Android, tvOS and Chromecast" at launch, with other platforms following. As far as the new ESPN app, we should expect even more personalization with the usual relevant scores and highlights next to streaming versions of ESP...

Shanghai Dragons is reportedly fixing a problem with Overwatch League: the lack of female players for a game with an impressively diverse cast of characters. According to ESPN , the team has signed South Korean player Kim "Geguri" Se-yeon, who's so good at playing Zarya (pictured above), she was once accused of using cheats. After Geguri livestreamed a game to prove her critics wrong, she played in the Overwatch Apex tournament in her home country last year. Now, she might be bringing her skills to an even bigger platform. As ESPN noted, Geguri won't only be the first female player to play in the League, she will also be making history as "one of only a few women competing professionally in e-Sports at the highest level of their respective game." Geguri and Shanghai Dragon's other Korean recruits will provide the team a much-needed boost after a poor debut at Overwatch League's inaugural season. Unfortunately, they haven't confirmed the rep...

We first heard about Marvel's Wolverine-starring 10-episode podcast series at the tail end of 2017, and it sure sounded sweet: Ten episodes following agents tracking the legendary mutant as he hunts down a serial killer in a fictional Alaskan town. Now we have a release date. Wolverine: The Long Night 's first episode airs on March 12th exclusively on Stitcher Premium, with a new one dropping every week. As the preview above indicates, Marvel's channeling some old-fashioned noir for its first scripted podcast. It has serious talent behind and in front of the microphone: Wolverine himself will be voiced by Richard Armitage ( Castlevania , The Hobbit films), Broadway veteran Celia Keenan-Bolger, Scott Adsit (30 Rock) and Ato Essandoh. The series is written by comics vet Ben Percy, directed by Brendan Baker ( Love and Radio podcast) with sound designer Chloe Prasinos ( Reply All podcast). If you're not keen on ponying up $5 per month (or $35 per year) to subscrib...

The Alphabet division behind Google Fiber finally has a replacement leader 5 months after its former chief left . The tech giant has hired Dinesh Jain, most recently Time Warner Cable's former chief operating officer, as the Access team's CEO. He'll watch over business in the nearly 20 markets where both Fiber and Webpass operate. There aren't any indications as to whether or not he'll usher in a change of direction, but his career may speak volumes about Alphabet's intentions. Jain has had over 20 years of experience working at telecoms. Before TWC, he had multiple leading roles at the American cable company Insight and the European provider NTL. Alphabet is picking someone who's intimately familiar with the telco world and a rock of stability, which it probably wants given the abrupt departure of former CEO Greg McCray. The Access unit could probably use the help. Access has been on shaky ground ever since Alphabet changed Google Fiber's directio...

SpaceX pulled off quite the feat today when it launched the Falcon Heavy rocket. What's more, it landed the two flanking boosters in perfect synchronized formation. But the fate of the core booster was unclear; now it appears that the center booster, which was supposed to land on a drone ship, was lost. Elon Musk said on a conference call with reporters that the launch "seems to have gone as well as one could have hoped with the exception of center core. The center core obviously didn't land on the drone ship" and he said that "we're looking at the issue." Musk says that the core ran out of propellant, which kept the core from being able to slow down as much as it needed for landing. Because of that, the core apparently hit the water at 300MPH, which should be worth seeing on video. "We have the video," Musk confirmed, "it sounds like some pretty fun footage... if the cameras didn't get blown up as well." It's been suspect...

Netgear's Arlo security cameras are apparently a hit -- so much so that the company is turning them into a separate business. The router maker has revealed that it's spinning out Arlo as a separate company, with the regulatory paperwork completed in the first half of 2018 and a public stock offering in the second. Senior strategy VP Matthew McRae (who used to be Vizio's chief technical officer) is expected to helm Arlo when all is said and done. Why this, and why now? Netgear didn't break down the specifics, but its latest financials tell the story. Where it saw just a $30 million boost in year-over-year revenue last fall and posted a $31 million loss, Arlo was surging -- its revenue was up a whopping 67 percent (to $128.5 million) even as Netgar's mainstay networking businesses struggled. Simply put, Netgear wants to capitalize on that success while it can. It's a hot market, too. There's fierce competition between Amazon , Nest , Ring and other big...

It's all well and good to drive your own electric car, but what about the companies delivering your mail or fixing your water heater? They could stand to benefit from EVs, too -- and Mercedes-Benz is happy to help out. It's launching a refreshed Sprinter van that will, for the first time, include an eSprinter electric version. Details on the range and performance aren't available, but that's likely to vary widely as Mercedes customizes the eSprinter based on individual companies' demands. It's mainly aimed at "city centers," so we wouldn't expect hundreds of miles of driving. The costs of running the EV are "on par" with those of running a diesel van, Mercedes said. This is more about reducing emissions than trimming costs. Having said that, there are situations where it could both save cash and the planet. As cities like London often have congestion charges in key areas, couriers could operate downtown without racking up charges. ...

In a letter to Senator John Thune , Apple confirmed that it would bring transparency to the way its iPhones handle CPU slowdowns due to aging lithium-ion batteries. If you have an Apple Developer account, you can check out the solution the company has baked right into its upcoming iOS 11.3 release. As first noticed by 9to5Mac , the iOS 11.3 beta has a new "Battery Health" system preference screen, with a "Performance Management" section. In the new "Peak Performance Capability" section of the Battery Health screen, you can now see the maximum capacity of your battery (as compared to when it was new), and you can also see if the operating system has applied a performance management tweak due to an "unexpected shutdown because the battery was unable to deliver the necessary peak power," as the explanation reads. Image Credit: 9to5Mac 9to5Mac notes that all devices that upgrade to the new iOS will start with this management system disabled. ...

Arnold Schwarzenegger is set to appear in yet another Terminator film next year, but soon he'll branch out into a new genre for the veteran action hero: Westerns. Amazon is developing a new series called Outrider , with the former California Governor set to play a ruthless Federal Marshall helping a deputy hunt down a legendary outlaw. The show doesn't have a release date yet. Schwarzenegger will executive produce, as will Mace Neufeld, who's performing the same function for Amazon's upcoming Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series. While it'll be fun to see the Austrian film legend take on television, it's a shame he hasn't been attached to the just-announced Conan the Barbarian show on the same streaming network. Via: Variety Source: Deadline via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2BfpljB"

It's been a year since Snap Inc filed for its IPO , and all told, it's been a tepid 12 months for the company. Despite launching its own TV shows as well as those in collaboration with big-name companies like NBC , ESPN and MGM Television , Snap has struggled to win over new users, and even saw a major partner like CNN end its daily Snapchat show . But according to its fourth quarter earnings report , the company has finally managed to add new daily active users (DAU) at a record high rate of 5 percent, which represents "the highest net adds since Q3 2016." That's still measly compared to Instagram's 100 million new users in the third quarter of 2017, but at least Snap is making some progress. At the company's last earnings call, CEO Evan Spiegel admitted that user growth had been slower than he would have liked. To encourage more people to use its service, Snap launched a big redesign , continued to add more features to its filters and brought its ...

If you were excited for Rian Johnson's upcoming trilogy of Star Wars films, there's even nerdier news incoming. Another film series in a galaxy far, far away has just been announced -- and they will be written and produced by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the showrunners of HBO's Game of Thrones . The only thing we know about the new series is that it will be from both the main Skywalker saga and Johnson's trilogy. Otherwise, nothing has been announced regarding their focus or release dates, though Weiss and Benioff noted they won't start work on the films until Game of Thrones ' final season wraps. But at least this suggests a broader Star Wars universe beyond the stories we grew up watching. "David and Dan are some of the best storytellers working today," Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm, said in a statement according to Variety . "Their command of complex characters, depth of story and richness of mythology will break new ground...

Google Flights is already a great place to search when you're headed out on vacation or business trips. It uses AI to predict possible flight delays , too, and helps you find rate information on hotels and airline tickets based on peak travel times . Now some new updates will help you find and book hotels and flights right in a Google search. The company says that it also added improved price filtering, easier to find information on amenities, along with the new booking feature. There are some new interface features that help you check travel options on your mobile phone, too. Over the next few days, you'll see a "Hotels" option to tap at the top of a Google Flight search page. That way, you can see hotel availability and prices for whatever destination city you've already chosen. If you'd rather search for hotels first, you can flip over to the Flights tab as well to check prices and book your air travel. In addition, you can search by destination, then l...

Today, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket successfully lifted off from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This was the first flight of the 27-engine rocket; so far, the mission appears to be going well. The rocket made it through the the moment of maximum stress and released the two outer cores, which have now successfully landed back at Kennedy Space Center. However, it will be some time before we know whether the Falcon Heavy's demo flight was a full success. After liftoff, the rocket will coast for six hours before a trans-Mars injection burn. Elon Musk revealed the details of the Falcon Heavy mission in a conference call with the press earlier this week and emphasized the risks at every stage of the flight. The successful launch of the Falcon Heavy signals a giant step forward in spaceflight; it is the most powerful operational rocket in the world. The rocket has a few more launches scheduled, but now that SpaceX has demonstrated that it works (and assuming the miss...

Last year, autonomous trucking company Embark announced that it would begin using its Level 2 autonomous semis to deliver refrigerators from Texas to California . Now, TechCrunch reports, the company has taken it a step further as one of its trucks has now completed a 2,400 mile trip from Los Angeles to Jacksonville, Florida. The trip took five days, which included scheduled rest breaks for the driver that was on board, and TechCrunch says that Embark's team is now assessing all of the trip's data. While there's no word yet on just how often the system required the driver to step in, those on board said that the truck went "hours at a time with no disengagements, and when they did occur they were usually only a few seconds," according to Embark CEO Alex Rodrigues. Embark's autonomous systems don't use high-resolution maps. They instead use sensor data and machine learning and the success of this long-distance trip demonstrates that this sort of setu...

Google is the latest company to borrow Snapchat's augmented reality features , although this time it's not grafting them on to a social app . The company has released a new version of Motion Stills for Android that brings AR objects to your animated GIFs and videos. You can add chickens, dinosaurs and other objects to any horizontal surface in your shot, whether it's your hand, a plant or a table. And importantly, you don't have to be finicky when capturing your footage to make the result seem 'natural' -- it's using instant motion tracking tech that avoids the jarring visual anomalies you sometimes get in AR. The moment you tap the viewfinder to place an object, Motion Stills plunks an object in that scene with the assumption that the surface in question is parallel to the ground, using the phone's accelerometer as a reference point. It then separates the camera's rotation and translation estimates to create a 3D translation, and combines that ...

Back in mid-2015, Turing Robotics Industries unveiled its delightfully quirky debut smartphone, an encrypted Android device encased in colorful chrome. Though we cautioned that it could be delayed for a myriad of reasons that often plague small companies, we looked forward to their release in December ...then delayed until early 2016...and long story short, it didn't ship at all. Now the company is filing for bankruptcy in Salo, Finland where it had rented a warehouse for manufacturing. But not to worry, Turing Robotics CEO Steve Chao assured customers in a Facebook post : That doesn't mean the company is actually bankrupt. Finnish publication Salon Seudon Sanomat broke the news of the company's financial issues, reporting that creditors had filed a claim with Turing Robotics last year leading to the seizure of its movable property. Whether that's true or not, the company has strung along customers for years, pivoting the phone to Sailfish OS in early 2016 and...

In early January, Senator John Thune's office sent Apple a letter regarding the company's practice of slowing down iPhones when batteries start showing their age. The letter asked if Apple had thought about replacing batteries for free (instead of the company's plan to offer reduceprice $29 replacements). The senator also asked if Apple had notified customers of the slowdown "feature," and if older iPhones had seen similar strategies. Apple has responded to Thune with its own letter, thanking him for his inquiry. The five-page letter, dated February 2nd and sent to Engadget this morning, pretty much rehashes the same information that Apple's been talking about since this whole thing went down, including Apple's timeline for dealing with the problem and the way lithium-ion batteries degrade over time. What's new, however, is the company's response to Thune's final question about whether customers who've paid full price for battery repl...

While Discovery Communications and Scripps Networks got good news from the European Commission today, Apple and Shazam weren't so lucky. In December, Apple confirmed that it purchased Shazam for an undisclosed amount believed to be in the range of $400 million. But today the European Commission said that upon request by a number of European nations, it would be assessing the deal. The proposed acquisition wasn't large enough to require evaluation by the EC directly, but Austrian laws required the companies to seek regulatory clearance there. A European Union provision allows EU countries to ask the EC to look at proposed mergers, and Austria did just that. Iceland, Italy, France, Norway, Spain and Sweden then signed onto that request. In a statement, the EC said, "The European Commission has accepted a request from Austria, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Spain and Sweden to assess under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed acquisition of Shazam by Apple. The Comm...

Amazon's Prime Exclusive phones are decent bargains over their regular counterparts, but there has always been a catch: your lock screen becomes a billboard . It doesn't really feel like your phone with those ads and offers. You won't have to put up with that marketing for much longer, however. Amazon will sell its Prime-only phones without lock screen ads as of February 7th, and it's pushing an update this week that will strip the promos from existing phones. Amazon's app shortcuts will still be front and center once you've unlocked your phone, but you can always remove those if you don't care for Kindle books or Prime Video. Those who paid to remove ads can get refunds. The company explains this as a reflection of technological reality. Now that many phones have face recognition and fingerprint readers, Amazon wants to be sure those features work well. Ads that hijack your lock screen can sometimes preclude that. The company also touts the ability to ...

Discovery Communications Inc. announced today that the European Commission has approved its acquisition of Scripps Networks Interactive . The merger was announced last July and both companies' shareholders voted to approve the $14.6 billion deal in November. Discovery, which owns TLC, Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel will gain Scripps holdings such as HGTV, Food Network and the Travel Channel and once combined, the company will control around 20 percent of ad-supported, pay-TV audiences in the US. Discovery agreed to some concessions in order to get the EC's approval. It will allow third-parties to distribute two Polish TV channels -- TVN24 and/or TVN24 BiS -- on a non-exclusive, unbundled basis as part of the agreement. Discovery says the acquisition is expected to close during the first quarter of this year, though it stills needs approval from US regulators. While it certainly hasn't attracted as much regulatory attention as the AT&T/Time Warner deal , Dis...