Technology

I Am Dead is a game about objects. It’s obsessed with them, really. The way they look, the way they feel, how they can change depending on your perspective — and, most importantly, what they mean to people. It’s a game where you play as a ghost, but it uses that conceit as an excuse to let you freely explore a quaint island full of charming residents, searching through memories that are anchored by specific objects. It’s heartfelt and charming — and not at all as dark as the name I Am Dead implies. The premise is, admittedly, quite strange. You play as Morris, the recently deceased curator of a museum on a small island who has two particular ghostly powers: he can venture into the memories of the living and peer inside of objects with a strange sort of X-ray vision. The island, meanwhile, ...

Virgin Hyperloop One announced its plan to build a $500 million certification center to advance its vision of the future of high-speed transportation in West Virginia. The state will serve as a locus for testing, developing, and validating the technology that underpins the still-theoretical hyperloop system. There is no fully functional hyperloop in the world, and it has never been tested with human passengers. But the federal government has recently laid out the framework for regulating the hyperloop, giving hope to companies like Virgin Hyperloop One that it may eventually break ground on a full-sized operational hyperloop system. To do so, it will still need to raise millions of dollars in funding, acquire the enormous tracks of land, and certify that the hyperloop can be operated safel...

Ricky Desktop is one of the biggest hitmakers of 2020 — though there’s a good chance you’ve never heard his name. Ricky has made more than 20 beats destined for TikTok this year, and more than a half dozen of them have gone on to be huge viral hits. If you’ve spent any time using the app, you’ll probably recognize some of his sounds: “The Chicken Wing Beat,” “The Dice Beat,” “The Boat Beat,” and most recently “The Banjo Beat.” The latest beats were made from the garage of his parents’ house, where Ricky — not his real name — moved after graduating college last year. Ricky, now 22, is a multi-instrumentalist who’s been playing music since he was 14. Before he shifted to TikTok, he was creating short raps about modern tech, like Venmo, Wikipedia, and LinkedIn. “I had zero traction,” he told ...

It’s going to be your best look at Middle Earth yet — The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies are finally getting a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release, with preorders now available and shipping starting from December 1st in the US. That’s just in time for the holidays. The news was shared by none other than Samwise Gamgee himself via fansite TheOneRing, with actor Sean Astin announcing the remaster in the video below. “Now, because it’s in 4K UHD you know it’s going to be the most incredible home-viewing experience possible,” said Astin. “Peter Jackson oversaw the remastering himself, and I can say that working with Peter was the adventure of a lifetime, and the friendships that I made will last forever. Enjoy.” The Lord of the Rings is going to be particularly delightful to see in 4K UHD,...

Global TV shipments hit a “historical high” in the third quarter of this year, according to a new report from TrendForce. 62.05 million units were shipped over the course of the quarter, a 12.9 percent increase over the same period last year, and 38.8 percent increase from the previous quarter. Both Samsung and LG, the two largest TV manufacturers, said today that they’re expecting profits to increase this quarter compared to last year. TrendForce gave a couple of different factors for the historic high. It said that in North America, TV demand increased by 20 percent as people spent more time at home due to the pandemic. The quarterly spike also accounts for TV shipment that were delayed from the first half of the year, according to the supply-chain analytics company. TrendForce’s report ...

Einride, the Swedish autonomous trucking startup, unveiled a new vehicle type that the company hopes to have on the road delivering freight starting in 2021. The vehicles, dubbed Autonomous Electric Transport (AET), came in four different variations. And much like Einride’s previous prototypes, they come without steering wheels, pedals, windshields, and, in general, no cab at all. Einride has been in the business of releasing interesting, eye-catching prototype vehicles since it was founded in 2016. There was the cab-less T-Pod, released in 2017, four of which are operating on public roads hauling freight for Oatly, the Swedish food producer. A year later, the company unveiled the T-Log, built to be more powerful than its predecessor for the job of (you guessed it) hauling tons of giant tr...

Netflix has been indicted in Texas on charges that the film Cuties contains lewd depictions of children. The indictment follows controversial backlash from conservative groups over certain scenes in the film where young girls dance provocatively. A grand jury in Tyler County, Texas, is charging Netflix with “Promotion Of Lewd Visual Material Depicting A Child,” a criminal act in Texas that was introduced into state law in 2018, Reuters reported. The charge alleges that Cuties, a movie about a group of young girls who form a dance troupe, “depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age at the time the visual material was created,” according to the indictment filing. The filing also states that said conte...

Fortnite creator Epic Games is partnering with carmakers, starting with General Motors, to use its Unreal Engine game development platform to build in-car software in what Epic is calling its “human-machine interface” (HMI) initiative. The first car to use Unreal Engine, which is the primary software toolset with which developers make Fortnite and countless other big-budget video games, will be GMC’s upcoming Hummer EV, set to be unveiled on October 20th. The logic is simple: modern cars are primarily designed using software, and assembled cars carry scores of onboard computers and rely on touchscreens and digital interfaces to power infotainment centers and other sources of information displayed to drivers. And Unreal Engine is a great platform for building software, which Epic thinks mak...

Three years after the computer industry promised to double the speed of the world’s computer memory with the DDR5 spec, it’s finally nearly almost here. SK Hynix has officially announced the world’s first DDR5 memory modules. The company tells The Verge it expected to start selling them in Q3 2021, but they’re ready whenever systems can support them. Here they are: Currently, we’re looking at 32 or 64GB to a stick.Image: SK Hynix SK Hynix claims this DRAM offers up to 5,600Mbps of raw bandwidth — not quite the maximum 6,400Mbps the DDR5 spec allows, but a full 1.8 times faster than standard DDR4, and all at a lower voltage of 1.1V instead of 1.2V, for what SK Hynix claims will be a 20 percent power savings. (Power consumption is measured in watts, not volts, in case you’re wondering about ...

If you’ve got pokémon on the brain with the imminent release of Pokémon Sword and Shield’s next expansion, Hori’s got lots of good-looking accessories on the way to help you deck out your Nintendo Switch with the beloved pocket monsters, including carrying cases, skins for your Switch Lite, and even themed versions of Hori’s Split Pad Pro grip controller. Here’s a picture of all of them in one place, as shared by Hori on Twitter: Unfortunately, if you’ve now set your heart on buying some of the new accessories, you can’t actually do that just yet. Hori’s tweet says that pre-orders are coming “holiday 2020,” so hopefully that means they’ll kick off soon. If you want to start planning which fit your budget now, Hori’s online storefront does at least list prices. If you absolutely must buy so...

With the proclamation that “a new journey begins,” AMD is announcing its new lineup of Ryzen 5000 processors for desktops, featuring its new Zen 3 architecture. The new chips are, if you go by AMD’s website, going to be focused specifically on gaming and content creation and could be a powerful new competitor to Intel’s 10th gen desktop lineup. (Intel’s 11th gen desktop chips won’t arrive till 2021.) While we can’t give you much more information about AMD’s new chips yet, gamers and creators can definitely look forward to an interesting look at what could be your next processor. Want to find out more? You can attend yourself: WHEN DOES AMD’s EVENT START? It starts tomorrow, October 8th, at 12PM ET / 9AM PT / 5PM BST. WHERE CAN I WATCH AMD’s EVENT? We will have the live stream video embedde...

Streamers seem to have flocked to Twitch from Mixer after the Microsoft-owned live-streaming service announced plans to shut down in June. A new report shows that Twitch’s share of hours broadcast on major live-streaming platforms jumped up by over 14 percentage points this quarter, taking away the nearly identical just over 14 percent market share that Mixer previously held. With Mixer out of the picture, Twitch ended up with 91.1 percent of all hours spent streaming on these platforms between July and September, according to a new report from Streamlabs & Stream Hatchet that looked at streaming activity on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook Gaming. Facebook Gaming grew slightly during that time period, to 3.4 percent from 2.4 percent, and YouTube shrunk slightly, to 5.5 percent from 6.7 p...