After the collapse of THQ in 2013, the fate of well-loved franchises like Darksiders was in peril. The company’s intellectual properties scattered to the winds, devs moved to other endeavors, and fans were heartbroken. But all these years later, Darksiders is back from the dead right alongside the name of its former publisher. Vigil Games developed the first two Darksiders games under THQ, and much of that team ended up at Crytek after the bankruptcy. The rights to Darksiders though, so regardless of interest, the original devs couldn’t simply deliver a follow-up whenever they felt like it.
Google’s inability to form a coherent messaging strategy is legendary at this point, and it doesn’t look like things are getting any better if a new rumor is accurate. According to a from 9to5Google, Hangouts will shut down in 2020. Despite Google’s claims otherwise, its messaging setup seems as disjointed and confusing as ever. Hangouts was Google’s flagship messaging platform starting back in 2013. It grew out of several chat platforms within Google including Google Talk and a feature built for the now-defunct Google+ social network called Messenger (originally Huddle). Hangouts became the default chat network across all of Google’s products, even Gmail.
Need something different from your comic book experience? Humble and Aspen Comics have come together to deliver hundreds of dollars worth of DRM-free digital comics for a limited time for just $15. • Spend $1, and you’ll get nine comics that are absolutely worth reading. Fathom, Soulfire, Psycho Bonkers, and the like will give you a good taste of what Aspen Comics has to offer. Spend at least $1Fathom Omnibus #1 (1 and 2) Soulfire Omnibus #1 (1 and 2) EA: Iris Omnibus #1 (1 and 2)Charismagic Vol.1Shrugged Vol.1No World Vol.1Psycho Bonkers Vol.1Aspen Universe: Revelations Vol.1Michael Turner’s Fathom: Killian’s TideAdd an additional $7, and you’ll also unlock superb books like Lola XOXO, Portal Bound, and BubbleGun.
A new book by Brad Sams, Beneath A Surface, details the history and development of Microsoft’s Surface product portfolio, starting from the early days when a massive Surface RT writedown nearly killed the product line altogether to the current era. It also contains some intriguing hints about what might be next for the family. Sams’ book details plans for a Surface Studio monitor with modular components — it’s not clear exactly how this would work — as well as a supposedly larger form factor for the small “Andromeda” device that’s been rumored for years now, to The Verge. But the most interesting news is a rumor of a new Surface system powered by AMD hardware instead of Intel.
Los Angeles is awash in hot new cars. The 2018 LA Auto Show brought forth a torrent of meaningful new vehicles at ground zero for car culture, automotive design, and trend-setting: Southern California. The LA show pushed all the hot buttons for cars heading into 2019: more SUVs and pickups, more models with hybrid powerplants, and enough high-end rides to entice the Golden State’s makers-not-takers. Even Tesla has a stand at the LA Civic Center; it has skipped most auto shows the past several years. Here are our favorite dozen cars of the LA auto show. There are so many good cars, we didn’t have room for the new Porsche 911.
Microsoft has won a $480M contract with the US military to provide its HoloLens technology as part of an augmented reality technology package that the Army intends to use for training as well as in combat missions. The contract calls for Microsoft to provide “Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) prototypes.” Microsoft’s HoloLens has always been a bit of an odd duck. First released in 2016, it’s an augmented reality headset Microsoft still sells for a cool $3,000. Unlike Google and its ill-fated Google Glass, Microsoft has kept HoloLens firmly positioned as a developer and business option as opposed to quickly pushing the product into the hands of consumers.
After years of working on its foldable display prototypes, Samsung is now stuck facing an ugly fact — the technology behind those screens may have already been sold to a Chinese competitor by one of Samsung’s own suppliers. That’s the claim made by South Korean prosecutors today in charges levied against 9 unnamed individuals and two companies. A CEO of one of Samsung’s suppliers and eight of his employees received $13.8M in payments after conspiring with an unnamed Chinese company to transfer information related to OLED production to the latter in direct violation of the company’s agreements with Samsung, to Bloomberg.
As self-driving vehicles become more common, the question of how much data they gather and who has access to it is going to become a significant topic of debate. A new bombshell from the AP makes clear just how much privacy drivers have to lose and what the stakes are in this fight. China has been requiring all electric vehicles to report a great deal of information directly to the government, which presumably logs it as part of China’s effort to deploy its social credit system, the report said. Over the last few years, China has aggressively deployed a pervasive surveillance metric that it claims will be ubiquitous and all-encompassing by 2020.
Sony’s Playstation Classic has officially launched at its $99 MSRP, and reviews of the device have started to come in. We’ve rounded up reports from , , and to get a sense of whether you ought to buy the platform in the first place. Whether the PSC appeals to you may depend in large part on what you’re hoping to get out of it. According to everyone, the presentation is incredibly bare-bones. Where Nintendo added features like backgrounds and four save slots for each game, Sony has only opted for a single save slot for each title and lacks the SNES Classic’s Rewind function.
