Technology

Gucci is making its presence inside of Roblox a little more permanent. The fashion brand previously collaborated with the virtual world for more short-lived experiences, like the surreal Gucci Garden from last year, and is now releasing a more persistent space called Gucci Town. The space features a central garden that links together various areas, including a space for mini-games, a cafe, and a virtual store where players can, of course, purchase virtual Gucci gear for their Roblox avatar. (The company says the virtual outfits make use of Roblox’s new “layered clothing” tech.) Gucci says that more than 20 million players visited the garden last year, despite it only being available for two weeks, and it expects the new space to steadily evolve over time. “The starting point when designing...

Accessory-maker Shargeek has launched an Indiegogo to fund a 35W USB-C charger shaped like a tiny Apple Macintosh computer. The page for the Retro 35’s crowdfunding campaign is very careful not to mention the name of Apple’s classic computer, but it’s drawn some very obvious inspiration, from the beige color scheme down to the placement of the disk drive. The device is eventually set to retail for $49, with Indiegogo “early bird” pricing starting at $25. As increasing numbers of phone manufacturers have stopped shipping charging bricks with their devices, aftermarket chargers are becoming more popular. Often, these bricks offer additional ports or higher charging speeds compared to their first-party equivalents, but it’s fun to see Shargeek go in a different direction and focus on looks ra...

Gucci has announced a new collaboration with Oura, remodeling the Oura Generation 3 health-monitoring ring into a luxurious accessory. The Generation 3 ring was introduced late last year, offering a host of calibrations and updates with features that include live heart rate, sleep quality, and activity monitoring. Additionally, the device is water-resistant up to 100 meters, has a battery life of 4 to 7 days and can connect to Apple Health and Google Fit. The Gucci redesign arrives in a black synthetic corundum band lined in interlocking G logos and braided trim in 18-carat gold. “This first-of-its-kind innovation celebrates your individuality from the inside out,” writes Gucci. “The special-edition Gucci x Oura Ring brings together Oura’s personalized health insights with Gucci’s legendar...

Japanese robotics company GROOVE X has announced that it has appointed Hiroshi Fujiwara as CCO (Chief Creative Officer) of the company effective from Thursday, May 26. On the same day, GROOVE X launched its new LOVOT 2.0 family robot which exhibits mimics the characteristics of a small pet. As the CCO of GROOVE X, Fujiwara will be in charge of creative and branding for the LOVOT business in Japan and overseas, as well as new ventures. LOVOTs are small 1-foot robots that were conceptualized by the company’s founder after his visit to a nursing home, in which the elders expressed their desires for robot hands to be warmer. Deploying a complex array of sensors including four mics, haptic sensors, and a 360-degree camera, the LOVOTs are able to recognize their owner’s faces, detect brightness ...

Disney announced at Star Wars Celebration that The Mandalorian’s third season will debut in February 2023 on Disney Plus. The third season of The Mandalorian has been a long time coming — season two debuted all the way back in October 2020. Thankfully, we’ve seen Mando and Grogu a bit more recently than that, as they starred in some of the later episodes of The Book of Boba Fett, but it still feels like it’s been quite a while since the last dedicated season of The Mandalorian. At Star Wars Celebration, executive producer Jon Favreau announced that Mando will finally be headed to Mandalore, the home planet of the Mandalorians, in search for forgiveness. Favreau also shared that fans should expect to see some familiar faces in the new season, with Carl Weathers and Katee Sackhoff returning ...

The Star Wars universe on Disney Plus continues to expand with the official reveal of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, which stars Jude Law and is coming to the streaming service in 2023. Announced during Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, the series is a coming-of-age tale set in the sci-fi universe. In addition to Law, it will also star “kids,” though we don’t know who they will be just yet. It’s led by director Jon Watts and writer Chris Ford, who previously collaborated on Spider-Man: Homecoming, and produced by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni. The series was teased in a Vanity Fair article last week. During today’s event, Filoni said that the show is “as much for kids as The Clone Wars.” Earlier in the event, Lucasfilm released the first trailer for Andor, a Rogue One spinoff series coming to Dis...

Once upon a time, Ron Howard and George Lucas wanted to try and replicate the success of Star Wars by creating a whole new fantasy, Willow. The film came out in 1988, and while I personally have very important and fond memories of the movie, I am a rarity. The film only did okay at the box office, and any nascent plans for a sequel were put on ice. Now, 34 years later, we’re getting an entire series dedicated to Warwick Davis’ titular wizard. No longer a wizard in training, Willow now has a staff — and can apparently do magic beyond poorly turning people into a wide variety of animals. The trailer for the new show features a few returning characters, including Joanne Whalley’s Sorsha and at least one of the brownies (played by Kevin Pollak and Rick Overton in the film). The rest of the cas...

Disney is hosting Star Wars Celebration, its big Star Wars conference, and there have already been a lot of notable announcements from the show. The Mandalorian will be returning to Disney Plus in February. Andor, starring Diego Luna, hits the streaming service in August. And did you hear about the new Star Wars show starring Jude Law? The company is also sharing updates about some other big Lucasfilm franchises, including an early image from the upcoming Indiana Jones movie. You can read our coverage of the event right here.

Valve’s latest SteamOS update is a big one for Steam Deck fans — and I am literally talking about the fan in the handheld gaming PC. One frequent complaint about the Steam Deck is its at-times loud and high-pitched fan whine even while playing lightweight games. Some, including my colleague Sean Hollister, have tried a DIY solution to fix the whine, and iFixit’s replacement Steam Deck fans are already sold out despite being on sale for less than a week. With SteamOS 3.2, though, Valve introduced a new OS-controlled fan curve that’s intended to make things better. “This means that overall it’s smarter, more responsive to what’s happening on and inside Steam Deck, and quieter — especially in low usage situations,” the company said in a blog post (emphasis Valve’s). To see if I could notice a...

OpenSea, one of the largest NFT marketplaces, has redesigned its profile and collections pages with the goal of making the site easier to navigate and making the actual NFTs themselves the center of attention. In an announcement post on Thursday, the company says these redesigns are “just the start” of the company’s work to refine how its site works. In my opinion, OpenSea’s refreshed profile pages look a bit like Twitter and Etsy’s. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. The old version could be a bit tricky to navigate at times, and it seems like the marketplace has smoothed out some of the edges. The newly-designed Profile and Collection pages make it easier than ever to navigate OpenSea. Our goal is to make it easier to highlight your favorite content, find new stuff from creators...

Sony is continuing to go all in on turning its flagship video games into TV shows and movies — according to Variety, the company announced that it’s making a show based on Horizon Zero Dawn with Netflix at an event for investors. Sony is also working on a movie based on the Gran Turismo series, according to Deadline, but hasn’t found a distributor for it yet, and could feature Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Chappie) as its director. (I’m very curious as to what the plan for this series is — Variety just says it’ll be about “racing.”) Both projects are reported to be in “early development,” so we likely won’t be streaming them for quite a while. However, the fact that Sony’s continuing to introduce new TV and movie projects shows that the company is pretty committed to expanding the PlayStatio...