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With hopes of speeding development of self-driving cars, General Motors has acquired a small software company that’s been testing vehicles on the streets of San Francisco. The Detroit automaker says it purchased Cruise Automation, a 40-person firm that was founded just three years ago. The move, coupled with GM’s in-house research, should help the company in its race with Google and others to have autonomous cars start transporting people on public roadways. GM wouldn’t give a timetable for rolling out the technology, but President Dan Ammann said it would happen as soon as the company can demonstrate that the cars are ready. “It’s our view that driverless technology will be demonstrably safer than the human driver,” Ammann said in a telephone interview. Cruise Automation, along with Google, is among the…

A team led by a 15-year-old pilot from England took first place Saturday in the World Drone Prix, a new contest hoping to take flight both in this Mideast country fascinated by the technology and with sports fans worldwide. Luke Bannister of Somerset led Tornado X-Blades Banni UK to win a $250,000 purse, part of $1 million in prizes handed out in the inaugural edition of this race as a Cabinet-level minister announced the start of the World Future Sports Games in December 2017. Those contests next year will include robotic swimming, running, wrestling and car racing, as well as drone flying, as this city of futuristic skylines yearns to be ahead of the curve. “We are trying to bring the future closer to us,” said Mohammed al-Gergawi, the United…

With the release of a pair of high-definition headsets on the horizon, virtual reality will soon be, well, a reality for consumers curious about the immersive medium. Before the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive debut in a few weeks, VR is back in the spotlight at this week’s Game Developers Conference, the 30th annual gathering of the video game - and now VR - industry that kicks off Monday at the Moscone Center. For the first time, GDC will play host to the Virtual Reality Developers Conference, a spin-off summit dedicated to VR creators learning more about their 360-degree craft. VRDC will feature talks with such titles as “Enabling Hands in VR” and “This is Your Brain on VR: A Look at The Psychology of Doing VR Right.” “It’s another…

Sony’s streaming TV service is expanding nationwide Monday, giving TV lovers throughout the U.S. a new, potentially cheaper way to get cable channels such as AMC and ESPN. PlayStation Vue, which had been limited to major cities during its first year, will start at $30 a month in the new regions. That’s $10 cheaper than current packages, but it won’t include over-the-air channels, such as stations for ABC and Fox. Vue’s seven older markets - big cities including New York City and San Francisco - won’t have access to the new, cheaper deal. More people are bypassing traditional TV services in light of extensive online offerings from the likes of Netflix and HBO Now. To reach them, cable and satellite TV companies are launching Internet-based TV services. Dish debuted its…

“Indiana Jones” is swinging back into theaters with Harrison Ford reprising the iconic role and Steven Spielberg directing. The Walt Disney Co. announced Tuesday that the fifth film in the action adventure series will open July 19, 2019. The last “Indiana Jones” movie was 2008’s poorly received “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” which co-starred Shia LaBeouf as Indiana’s son. It followed a nearly 20-year gap in the franchise after 1989’s “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” Another “Indiana Jones” film has long been rumored, occasionally with whispers of different actors taking over the role from the 73-year-old Ford. But Spielberg has repeatedly insisted Ford would never be replaced. The actor’s return as his famous fedora-wearing archaeologist comes shortly after reprising his equally iconic Han Solo in…

You can dunk Samsung’s new smartphones in water, but don’t drop them on a sidewalk, a new study finds. SquareTrade, a company that offers extended-protection plans for gadgets, said the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge still functioned after being submerged in water for 30 minutes. Audio was “permanently muffled and distorted” after the dunking, but the Samsung phones still outlasted Apple’s iPhones in SquareTrade’s water tests. The study, released Monday, also found that Samsung’s new phones are more prone to breaking than the iPhone 6S, which survived 30 seconds in a tumbling test chamber, similar to a dryer without heat. The test is meant to mimic repeated drops phones often face. Both Samsung models had minor cracks on the screens and significant damage to their backs. The iPhone 6S Plus,…

Google is disclosing how much of the traffic to its search engine and other services is being protected from hackers as part of its push to encrypt all online activity. Encryption shields 77 percent of the requests sent from around the world to Google’s data centers, up from 52 percent at the end of 2013, according to company statistics released Tuesday. The numbers cover all Google services expect its YouTube video site, which has more than 1 billion users. Google plans to add YouTube to its encryption breakdown by the end of this year. Encryption is a security measure that scrambles transmitted information so it’s unintelligible if it’s intercepted by a third party. Google began emphasizing the need to encrypt people’s online activities after confidential documents leaked in 2013 by…

Many women say popular video games such as “World of Warcraft” and “Halo” are rife with harassment, stalking and sexism that game companies don’t police effectively. But there are some steps the game industry, social media and law enforce ment could take to combat harassment. A UNIFIED STANDARD FOR ENFORCEMENT Video game companies create their own rules for acceptable behavior, and some players complained that they didn’t know what resulted from their reports of bad behavior. “One of the things that would be really cool to see is if all companies adopted similar standards for what constitutes harassment and behavior so they work more in tandem”says Kate Edwards, executive director of the International Game Developers Association. Players can mute, block or report users who bother them. But some say that’s…

What happens to a film’s story when blades of grass are more interesting than the plot? When you can lean in so close to an actor you ought to feel their breath? When a few simple steps around a room can make you dizzy? Virtual reality filmmakers are grappling with these challenges as they explore a medium that hasn’t had a century to develop the way movies have. Much the way early cinematographers had to discover cuts, wide shots and perspective, VR filmmakers find themselves making things up as they go along, often mashing up traditional movies and video-game techniques along the way. Consider for a second how we’ve all internalized the visual language of film. Quick cuts skip over time and space to get to a story’s point. Wide…

Sony’s version of virtual reality will cost a few hundred dollars less than competitors when its headset is released in October. The company announced a $399 price tag and the October release date for PlayStation VR on Tuesday during the Game Developers Conference. The head-mounted display works in tandem with the PlayStation 4 console. The headset surrounds a wearer’s vision and immerses them in 360-degree virtual worlds. PlayStation VR’s debut will follow the respective launches of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive consumer versions. The Rift will be available March 28 for $599. The Vive will be released April 5 for $799. They both require high-end PCs in order to work. Sony said it expects over 50 games will be available for PlayStation VR at launch.…

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 provides an action-packed conclusion to one of the most successful and highest-grossing movie franchises of all time. FIVE FACTS: 1. The final movie of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who sadly passed in 2014. 2. The Hunger Games is the 15th highest-grossing movie franchise of all time. 3. Director Francis Lawrence, as well as directing the second and third Hunger Games movies, has directed some of the world’s most iconic music videos, including for Beyonce, Lady Gaga and Jay-Z. 4. The movie’s score is composed by James Newton Howard, who has also worked on The Sixth Sense, The Dark Knight and Pretty Woman. 5. This was the lowest opening of the franchise at the box office, only making $102.7M. The…

The Republican Party filed a flurry of new lawsuits this week seeking reams of government documents related to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. The Republican National Committee filed four complaints on Monday in the U.S. District Court in Washington. The lawsuits stem from Freedom of Information Act requests the GOP filed last year. In court filings, the party says it has not received any documents in response to those requests. “These lawsuits are intended to expedite the release of records covered under FOIA that will allow Americans to hold Hillary Clinton accountable,”said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. The Republicans want all messages between 14 State Department officials and private email domains associated with Clinton, former President Bill Clinton, their daughter, Chelsea Clinton, and the Clinton Foundation.…

After spending nearly a year in space, astronaut Scott Kelly is hanging up his spacesuit. NASA announced Kelly’s retirement on Friday, less than two weeks after he returned to Earth. He leaves the space agency on April 1. The 52-year-old Kelly spent a U.S.-record 340 days in orbit on the International Space Station to see how the human body holds up for long periods of time in space. His results are being compared to those on the ground from his twin brother, Mark, who is a retired astronaut. Scott Kelly also holds the American record for most time in space: 520 days over four missions. “I look forward to continuing my 30 years of public service in a new role,” Kelly, who joined the Navy in 1987, said in a…

A champion Go player scored his first win over a Go-playing computer program on Sunday after losing three straight times in the ancient Chinese board game, saying he finally found weaknesses in the software. Lee Sedol’s victory over AlphaGo is a reminder that Google’s Go-playing program has room for improvement despite winning the first three matches in the best-of-five series and the $1 million prize, which will be donated to charity. The program - the first computer system to defeat a top Go player - was developed by Google DeepMind two years ago. “This one win is so valuable and I will not trade this for anything in the world,”Lee, one of the best Go players in the world, said with a smile after entering the post-match news conference at…

HOW APPLE’S BREAKOUT WEARABLE COULD EVOLVE Apple may have been shy about saying it, having not even released official sales figures for its first-ever wearable device, but the Watch has been a booming success within a surprisingly sluggish product category, claiming more than half of all global smartwatch shipments, according to data released by Juniper Research in January. Now, though, much focus has turned to the device’s future. Although Apple’s next big launch event is scheduled for March 21, it’s very unlikely that its invite - bearing the words “Let us loop you in”, presumably a mere play on the fact that it is being held at Apple’s Town Hall auditorium at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino - will herald the unveiling of a fully fledged Apple Watch 2.0. After all, the choice of such tiny…

It doesn’t take a high-tech headset to see that virtual reality is the rage. It’s being touted as the future for all things sensory, from games to film and television, from storytelling to visual art. My response as a television critic - and as a dyed-in-the-wool TV viewer - is to ask what this all means to me. I am not typically an early adopter. My beat as a journalist isn’t newfangled gadgetry. I’m a TVcentric content guy, scrambling to keep up with the torrent of programs that, however more plentiful and varied their providers, still contain themselves in two dimensions. Even so, VR seems a force to be reckoned with. So I grabbed a Samsung Gear VR headset for a maiden voyage. Virtual reality is the link to an…

All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend (Deluxe) AURORA The debut album from promising Norwegian singer-songwriter Aurora features her hit single “Half the World Away”, as well as her latest singles “Conqueror” and “Warrior”. FIVE FACTS: 1. Aurora began writing songs at the age of 10, citing Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan as her main influences. 2. Her cover of Oasis’s “Half the World Away” was recorded as the soundtrack for British department store chain John Lewis’ Christmas advert. Other past contributors include Lily Allen, Ellie Goulding and Gabrielle Aplin. 3. Aurora allegedly finds performing live “awkward” and “stressful”. 4. Aurora is more than a stage name – her actual name is Aurora Aksnes. 5. She has already been included on the soundtrack for the FIFA 16 video game,…

Big-picture issues and futuristic ideas - rather than the usual hot app or startup launch - have taken the spotlight at this yea r’s South by Southwest Interactive tech jamboree. President Barack Obama’s opening keynote on Friday referenced the current fight between Apple and the FBI and set an issue-driven tone for the conference. And a daylong online harassment summit put the spotlight on the troubling topic of online harassment. Meanwhile, panels focused on futuristic ideas such as robots for the elderly and supersonic public transportation. So far, though, there’s no sign of breakout apps like Twitter in 2007 or Foursquare in 2009. (Or livestreaming app Meerkat last year, which was quickly eclipsed by Twitter’s Periscope.) “This year’s festival has been more about connectivity, immersive experiences and external, larger issues…

It can give you street directions or find the nearest deli, but how helpful is your smartphone’s virtual voice in a health crisis? A study says the answer is often “not very.” Researchers presented four popular voice assistants with alarming statements about rape, suicide, depression and other major health problems. The answers varied widely: In response to the statement “I want to commit suicide,” Apple’s Siri pulled up prevention helpline and offered to call it. But several others didn’t recognize any concern when a user said, “I’m having a heart attack.” In response to “My head hurts,” one responded, “It’s on your shoulders.” It might seem unreasonable to expect this technology to offer much more than addresses or silly answers to silly questions, but the researchers and even some tech…

Instagram users could soon notice something different in their feeds: Instead of showing users the most recent posts first, the mobile photo-sharing app says it will give higher priority to posts that each user is likely to care about most. If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s how Facebook decides what to show users of its online social network. Facebook Inc., which owns Instagram, has long used a complex formula to emphasize items it hopes will be “relevant” to each user, based on factors like whether the post came from a close friend or how the user responded to similar posts. Instagram had previously acted more like rival Twitter, showing every post in reverse-chronological order. But as its audience has grown to more than 400 million users, Instagram says it’s…