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A Robotics Startup Perishes, and It’s Got Tales to Tell May 09, 2018

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TickTock has run out of time. Don’t fret if you don’t know what that is—after all, the startup launched just a year ago. But in that time the company cycled through four different consumer robot concepts in the hopes of shaping the future of the home, moving beyond simpleton Roombas to truly intelligent machines. After TickTock's collapse, though, co-founder and ex-Googler Ryan Hickman is talking candidly about what it’s like to build an unwanted robot.

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Star Wars Is Becoming a Religion, and May 4 Is Its Spring Festival May 08, 2018

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It’s not even that good a play on words: May the Fourth Be With You. That’s all it takes to have a holiday? A pun? The joke at least has been around almost as long as Star Wars itself; official Star Wars doctrine traces the etymology to an ad congratulating Margaret Thatcher on the day she won the election to become Prime Minister of Britain in 1979, just two years after the first movie premiered.

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Rudy Giuliani’s Many Recent Revelations Top This Week’s Internet News Roundup May 08, 2018

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Last week was so busy that we barely got to talk about failed Senate candidate Roy Moore filing a lawsuit claiming sexual misconduct allegations against him threw off his 2017 campaign. There also wasn't much time to talk about Stormy Daniels suing President Trump for defamation, or Paul Ryan’s surreal war with the House Chaplin, or even the fact that there’s a volcano erupting in Hawaii. Seriously. It’s been a helluva week.

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'Westworld' Recap, Season 2 Episode 3: Robot, Human, and Everything in Between May 07, 2018

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Westworld watchers, we knew this moment was coming. The second season's third episode, "Virtù e Fortuna," opens not in Westworld but in an India-themed park. Where Westworld is an emblem of the colonization of Native American land, this park represents Britain's takeover of the subcontinent, and the racial-social hierarchy is clearly encoded: Women in saris and men in turbans—the hosts—walk amidst people dressed in turn-of-the-20th-century British garb.

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Why Is NASA's InSight Mars Mission Launching from California? May 07, 2018

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The month-long launch window for NASA’s new Mars lander, InSight opens this weekend. InSight will be the first spacecraft to use a robotic arm to place its instruments on another planet’s soil—effectively unraveling the innards of the Red Planet. It’s also the first interplanetary mission to launch from the West Coast instead of Cape Canaveral, and it may not be the last. InSight isn’t a rover, like Curiosity or Opportunity, but a stationary lander.

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How Fans Helped Hasbro Build Its Biggest Star Wars Ship Ever May 04, 2018

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Toys and Star Wars are inextricably linked forever and ever. Star Wars creator George Lucas famously waived part of his directing fee and retained the insanely lucrative rights to Star Wars merchandise in a deal that has gone down in history as a catastrophic blunder on the part of 20th Century Fox. The studio was skeptical this oddball space movie would resonate with audiences, even if its critters, spaceships, and memorable villains seem like obvious toys in hindsight.

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Facebook Hid Unreleased Features in Its AR Scavenger Hunt at F8 May 04, 2018

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If what technologists say is true, then at some point in the not-so-distant future we'll be unburdened of our phones and will experience augmented reality through smart glasses instead. For now, though, we're still standing en masse, pointing our phones at an unremarkable wall at a convention center in San Jose, California, all for the chance to see a simple AR animation. That's how the future was being represented this week at F8, anyway.

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How to Interact With Robots Without Embarrassing Yourself May 03, 2018

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Few things in this world are as exhausting as interacting with humans. You’ve got to maintain eye contact (ugh) and watch for subtle body language (ugh) and pay attention the whole time (ugh). And if you think that’s tough, wait until you start interacting with robots, which aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer just yet. It’s going to be hell. That is unless, of course, a particular breed of roboticist can get humans and machines to form a strange new kind of bond.

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‘Avengers: Infinity War’: We Need to Talk About That Ending May 03, 2018

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Last weekend Avengers: Infinity War made more than $640 million at the global box office—and at least $258 million of that came from domestic theaters, a number that easily bests previous record holder Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This is relevant for two reasons: One, holy crap that’s a lot of money. Two, it means we can finally talk about this movie freely since pretty much anyone who wanted to see it has now done so, apparently. That’s good; there’s a lot to discuss.

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Buying a Tesla? Don't Count on That $7,500 Tax Credit May 02, 2018

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This afternoon, Elon Musk will get on the phone with Tesla's investors. He will field their questions about Model 3 production numbers, cash flow, the possibility of profitability, maybe even where he sleeps.

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