Geek News

A Normal Lost Phone is the kind of indie game that seizes a tricky niche (mobile gaming) and leans into the form factor for a unique experience -- a Gone Home or Life Is Strange that takes place entirely within a mock phone interface. The game will lose that skeuomorphic novelty when it arrives on Nintendo Switch on March 1st, but will be able to reach players on a console increasingly known for indie titles. Like other character-driven games, A Normal Lost Phone is best explored without spoilers. But some critics felt the central conceit -- picking up a stranger's phone, poking around their texts and photos and then sending personal information to other characters -- presented ethical challenges. The game aims to deliver a unique LGBTQ narrative, and the team received developmental input from members of that community. But it was criticized for forcing the player to expose details about its queer central character without their permission, a serious breach of privacy d...

The zero-fee stock trading app, Robinhood, announced its plan to enable users to buy and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum last month. Now the company is making good on its promises. Starting today, Robinhood is rolling out access to trade the two cryptocurrencies in California, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana and New Hampshire, with plans to expand to many more states later. If you're not in one of the states covered, you can still monitor and track market data for all 16 cryptocurrencies in the Robinhood app. You'll also have access to a new feed, which gives users a way to talk about cryptocurrency, news and market swings in real time with other folks on the system. Robinhood Feed is only available to a limited number of people, however, so you'll need to update the app to see if you're one of them. Source: Robinhood via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2CDlERY"

Major League Baseball has gotten into VR lately with a host of initiatives, including partnerships with Google for At Bat VR , Intel for "Game of the Week" live streams and Samsung for immersive highlights of the 2017 season. Now MLB is bringing a VR Home Run Derby that debuted at the All-Star Game and select ballparks to your home via PlayStation VR and HTC Vive. The game should be available this spring on both platforms, though there are no details on pricing or a specific release date at this time. The game will put you at the plate in three different MLB stadiums -- Marlins Park in Miami, Nationals Park in Washington, DC and Progressive Field in Cleveland -- to hit as many home runs as you can. MLB plans to expand the number of stadiums you can virtually visit to at least 10 over the course of the 2018 season. Source: Yahoo Sports , Polygon via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2okfAJY"

A day after Sling TV revealed that it counts 2.2 million subscribers, the over-the-top internet service announced that it's added new add-on options to watch NBA games. Users can access NBA League Pass today to watch out-of-market games, and in the coming weeks they'll be able to subscribe to Team Pass to follow a single club. Sling Orange, Sling Blue, Spanish-language and Sling International subscribers can get NBA League Pass for an additional $29 per month. That includes nearly 1,000 live out-of-market NBA games, along with access to NBA TV. Users with those package options will also be able to add Team Pass for $18 per month when it launches, allowing them to follow any one of the league's 30 teams for all of its regular-season games. Of course, if you don't want one of those packages, you can still watch NBA games on Sling TV packages that include NBA TV, TNT, ABC, ESPN3, ESPN and regional networks for Fox Sports and NBC Sports. Source: Sling TV via Engad...

The FCC's order to overturn net neutrality protections was officially published in the Federal Register today and soon thereafter, the attorneys general of 22 states and Washington DC filed a lawsuit challenging the FCC's order. The coalition filed a suit earlier this year , but agreed last week to withdraw it until the FCC published the order, Reuters reports. "Today, the FCC made official its illegal rollback of net neutrality -- and, as promised, our coalition of attorneys general is filing suit," New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement . "Consumers and businesses in New York and across the country have the right to a free and open internet, and our coalition of attorneys general won't stop fighting to protect that right." Other efforts aimed at blocking the FCC's decision include a Senate challenge to the order that is currently one vote shy as well as a Day of Action aimed at convincing one more Senator to join th...

Amazon may be producing more and more of its own shows, but it's also playing catch-up trying to follow industry trends in the fantasy and sci-fi genres. To shore up its dearth of Spanish-language content, the company just signed a deal with Televisa to license several of its upcoming scripted series. It's unclear how many different series will be included, or what they will be about, aside from "with a focus on multicultural characters and storytelling," according to Variety . We only know they will average eight to ten episodes each and will be developed, produced and distributed by the media company's subdivision Televisa Alternative Originals. As Variety points out, this deal is likely Amazon's attempt to compete with Netflix's Spanish-language content, which includes global hits like Narcos . But this is also an about-face for Televisa, which took its content off of Netflix in 2016 to stream on its own service, Blim. But the Mexican multimedi...

This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter . When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read their continuously updated list of deals here . Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB SSD Street Price: $230; Deal Price: $200 If you have a need for speed where your storage is concerned, this is a nice opportunity to save. The Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB SSD is down to $200, around $30 off the recent street price and the lowest price we've seen for it. At this price, it's well worth considering versus other storage options out there. The Samsung 960 Evo M.2 SSD is our upgrade pick in our guide to the best SSDs . Andrew Cunningham, Ben Keough, and Nathan Edwards wrote, "If you have a legitimate need for faster storage, you should buy the PCIe Samsung 960 Evo, which can quadruple the read speeds of the fastest SATA drives and more than double the write speeds. It's more expensive—$...

Out of nowhere, Blizzard introduced a public test realm (PTR) last fall for its 15-year-old game Warcraft III . PC fans of its current best-sellers like Overwatch play on PTRs to try out new features before they're released to everyone, so creating one for an old title clearly implies greater plans. Today, as was rumored , we know what those are: A new gameplay patch and a tournament at the end of February featuring top players from the game's heydey to the present. Announcing the Warcraft III Invitational! See the latest PTR changes in action with @followgrubby , @Back2Warcraft and more! Learn more: https://t.co/NWhZ6IjO9x pic.twitter.com/rdAxYVFSkf — Blizzard Entertainment (@Blizzard_Ent) February 22, 2018 Blizzard will host 'the first Warcraft III Invitational' at their Irvine HQ on February 27th and 28th, with Twitch streams hosted by two casters from Back2Warcraft, the site and community helping to keep the game's competitive scene alive. The exh...

UPS announced today that it will soon deploy 50 electric delivery trucks designed by Workhorse Group Inc. that will cost about the same as traditional, conventionally fueled trucks. They'll have a between-charge range of around 100 miles, will be zero-emission and the first vehicles will be tested in a handful of cities this year. "Electric vehicle technology is rapidly improving with battery, charging and smart grid advances that allow us to specify our delivery vehicles to eliminate emissions, noise and dependence on diesel and gasoline," Carlton Rose, UPS' president of global fleet maintenance and engineering, said in a statement . "With our scale and real-world duty cycles, these new electric trucks will be a quantum leap forward for the purpose-built UPS delivery fleet. The all electric trucks will deliver by day and re-charge overnight." The first batch of trucks will be tested in Atlanta, Dallas and Los Angeles and based on their performance, the v...

Google has supported Rich Communication Services (RCS) for a while now, hoping to bring features like group chat, high-res photo sharing and read receipts to all Android users. The company made a big push to expand RCS support on Android last year, and carriers have been slowly adopting the standard and preloading Android Messages to the standard app load out. Now, Google says that it's convinced 43 carriers and device makers to add native support for the messaging protocol. The widespread adoption of RCS will likely help Google compete with Apple's iMessage, which has had similar features for a long time. As TechCrunch notes, Google is now pushing the business uses of RCS, which enables companies to send messages with things like boarding passes, financial fraud alerts and package notifications. The RCS standard can also allow suggested response buttons, like "Open in Maps" to find a nearby Walgreens or "View station map" from Virgin Trains. Goog...

Today, the FCC voted to move forward with a proposal to open up communications spectrum beyond 95 GHz . In a statement, it said that spectrum above this range has been thought to be at the edge of what's usable, but now it wants to provide different levels of authorization to use the spectrum to, as Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement, "promote innovation and help put this spectrum to its best use." Pai noted that some might skeptical as to whether spectrum above 95 GHz can actually be used, but he added, "The point is that we must be open to new technologies that haven't even been developed. And while we don't know precisely how far the laws of physics will permit us to go, we do know there's potential and interest. Engineers and entrepreneurs need to have the ability to push the envelope." Today the @FCC is "Moving On Up" by taking steps to more efficiently use #spectrum above 95 GHz. It has my support. #OpenMtgFCC — Mignon Cl...

Arecibo Observatory, which is the second-largest radio telescope in the world, is under new management . A group led by the University of Central Florida will take over the operations of the telescope from the National Science Foundation, which was considering shutting down the observatory. The telescope's fate had previously been uncertain . Back in 2016, the National Science Foundation announced that it was exploring different options in regard to Arecibo. There wasn't enough funding to continue supporting the telescope, so the NSF was looking at partnering with other organizations, scaling back or shutting down Arecibo entirely. That same year, the observatory was the first to capture repeating cosmic radio bursts , which have helped us understand the nature of our galaxy and the universe around it. This murky situation was made much worse by the events of Hurricane Maria . The hurricane decimated the region of Puerto Rico in which the telescope is located, also called A...

By the mid-90s, Saturday morning cartoons were a blur of occasionally brilliant animated comedy and a ton of trash made to sell toys. One rose above the rest for sheer novelty: ReBoot was one of the first shows anywhere to be completely computer-generated, and it was set within a computer, turning programs and viruses into heroes and villains. It was kinda wild, a futurist TRON-for-kids that pushed young viewers to think about technology. Revival - happy Netflix just released a trailer for a new ReBoot television show...and it looks like a far cry from the original. Reboot: The Guardian Code starts off in live-action at a high school where a few teens get thrown together in a secret room, while elsewhere a hooded hacker stereotype plucked from a stock photo cackles gleefully in front of a slew of bargain-bin keyboards and computer parts. It quickly becomes clear that the show follows a sucked-into-the-video-game premise, looking much like a Disney channel series riffing on last...

Airbnb is once again shaking up how its customers find and book accommodations. At a press conference in San Francisco's Masonic Auditorium on Thursday, the company unveiled a slew of new reservation and website features including new property types, new rental tiers, and "Airbnb Collections" for large groups. The company also announced its commitment to reinvest within local communities through its revamped Superhost program which will launch later this year. Currently, Airbnb users can still only search for places to stay under the same three property types they've been able to over the past decade: Shard Space, Private Room and Entire Home. Those options are a bit dated given the wide variety of places the service now offers. As such, Airbnb is updating its property listings to also include Vacation Home, Unique Space (think treehouses), B&B, and Boutique for hotels. This should allow hosts to better differentiate their offerings from others while enabling u...

As a somewhat regular flyer, I had always been intrigued by the concept of wearing a head-mounted display for some immersive in-flight entertainment. However, I never really found the "cinema" part of existing " personal cinema " headsets pervasive at all. Watching a tiny video through those headsets is like sitting in the last row of an empty theater. I'm not going to pay $800 for that. Then came the smartphone-powered VR headsets, but their 3-degree-of-freedom (3DoF) tracking for just the head was never precise enough for prolonged usage. It wasn't until the Vive Focus , HTC's $630 standalone 6DoF VR device, when I finally decided to give virtual reality a chance to prove itself as a worthy alternative to those in-flight touchscreens. Luckily for me, my wife didn't forbid me from bringing this bright blue headset to our vacation, so long as it would fit into my carry-on. Thankfully, the device isn't as bulky as it looks. With the back suppo...

Google fired James Damore last year, in part, because of a leaked memo alleging that the company culture unfairly targeted white males and political conservatives. Now Google is being sued by a former employee who claims he was targeted for speaking out against Damore on internal message boards , according to The Guardian . Tim Chevalier, a site reliability engineer who identifies as queer, transgender and disabled filed a lawsuit saying, in part, that he was ousted for "calling out discrimination and harassment for what it was." "It is a cruel irony that Google attempted to justify firing me by claiming that my social networking posts showed bias against my harassers," Chevalier said via a prepared statement. His suit claims that he was singled out for frittering away too much of his day on social activism and for referring to Damore's memo as misogynistic, among other reasons. For its part, Google said that "lively debate" was an important pill...

Discord has become something of a gaming chat-app phenomenon lately, partnering with Spotify for in-chat soundtracks, adding video chat and screensharing and bringing verified official game channels to its service. Now the company plans to expand into the eSports realm by partnering with quite a few teams, including Team Liquid, DreamHack, and almost every Overwatch League team out there. The program launches February 22nd on the company's verified servers and will let team members and fans chat, share news and discuss upcoming matches. Team Liquid , the eSports powerhouse from the Netherlands, already uses Discord for its official communications. "When it came to making a decision on what voice communication software Team Liquid would use to communicate and create community with our fans," the team wrote in a statement, "there was no question that Discord was the obvious choice. There's simply nothing that rivals the quality of the product." via Eng...

Lighthouse's intelligent 3D security camera was supposed to ship in September , but now it's finally available for purchase. The camera is priced at $299. At checkout, you can choose either a $10/month AI service plan (with a 90-day free trial) or a lifetime plan of $200, with no further payments required. The camera is powered by AI and a 3D sensor that can supposedly distinguish people from pets and recognize faces. Its onboard laser (similar to the 3D sensing devices used by self-driving cars) can measure the structure of what it sees and therefore differentiate objects and people from one another. Because of this capability, Lighthouse promises that you won't be bothered by false security alerts from shadows or pets because the camera can tell small objects from large ones. The AI also understands normal speech patterns, so you can ask the camera questions like, "Did anyone walk the dog between 10 and 11 am?" The different types of tech within the camera w...