Star Wars: Episode VIII production is underway and the spoilers just keep coming. After we found out that Great Britain’s princes may have put on Stormtrooper suits to shoot a few scenes for the upcoming new Star Wars movie, we now hear that Tom Hardy might also be in the film.
In case you don’t want the surprise ruined, then you’d best stop here because spoilers follow below.
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Police are investigating the death of a 19-year-old woman in Arpajon, France, who appears to have thrown herself in front of a train while livestreaming on Periscope yesterday. As the latest (and most graphic) in a series of disturbing incidents livestreamed using the app, it shines a dark light on the service.
The video now appears to have been pulled from Periscope, but the New York Times reports some snippets are still on YouTube. The woman appears on a couch, talking to viewers in a “sober” fashion as she lays out her plans. Other users asked questions and appeared to goad her on, saying things like “We’re waiting” and “Give us a hint.” Police also said that the woman sent a text to one of her relatives a few minutes before her death, stating her intentions. It’s unclear whether any Periscope users made an effort to contact police after realizing her plans.
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We always try to include a good amount of variety in our daily deals compilations, but today is all about tech. We’ve got a ridiculously cheap top-selling smartphone, a $150 smart TV that’s perfect for your kitchen, a 15.6-inch laptop with a 2.2GHz processor and 6GB of RAM for $400, a killer deal on the iPad 3, a $15 Bluetooth mouse that lasts for a full year on a single battery, and plenty more.
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Surprise: Instagram just released a major update to its iPhone app that completely changes the look of the world’s most popular photo-sharing app. We saw some hints that the Facebook-owned app was testing a pretty dramatic redesign, and early peeks at the new layout were universally praised by users. It looks like the redesign was so well-received that Instagram decided to move forward, and the new design is now available to all iPhone users.
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With consumer electronics products becoming smaller and increasingly more powerful over the years, students have started to come up with any number of clever ways to discreetly cheat on exams. You might recall, for instance, that a group of 50 students at an elite High School in New York were caught up in a massive cheating ring that centered on slyly taking photos of exams ahead of time.
In the most recent instance of technology creatively being used for cheating purposes, a group of students taking an entrance exam for medical school in Thailand were caught using an elaborate system that relied upon smartwatches and hidden cameras embedded in eyeglasses.
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For the second consecutive quarter, a study has determined that Apple’s line of iPhones is far more stable than Android handsets. Mobile diagnostics company Blancco Technology Group on Wednesday released the results of an updated study that looks to determine which phones stand up best to the test of time and continue to function without failing.
As was the case with the firm’s last study, Blancco found a huge disparity in reliability when comparing the two platforms.
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George R.R. Martin is nowhere near done writing his next Song of Ice and Fire novel, on which Game of Thrones has been based. In fact, he’s so far from being done that the current has little to no influence on the direction of HBO’s Game of Thrones show. However, Martin has released a new chapter of his book, and you can read it right now for free.
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If you live in a huge home you’re probably going to have to part ways with a decent amount of cash if you hope to blanket it thoroughly with Wi-Fi signal. You’ll need a premium router and several range extenders, and it could end up costing you $500 or even more. But if you live in an apartment or an average-sized home, you’ll be surprised at how well a lower-cost router will work.
Check out the D-Link DIR-813 AC750 Wi-Fi Router, a $25 wireless router that will outperform some units that cost four times as much.
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A group of researchers have created the groundwork for a new type of interface that could someday change the way we interact with devices.
Developed by engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Tangible Media Group, “Materiable” is an array of physical pixels mounted on motors that respond in very specific ways when manipulated. Using a computer to control the interface, it can be programmed with different algorithms in order to trigger responses that mimic different materials.
Coupled with a projector that can beam different colors onto the pixels, the possibilities are endless and exciting.
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BlackBerry is not quite dead yet. And while it’s not able to put up a real fight against Apple and the other Android smartphone makers, the company’s software seems to be inspiring Samsung. A new report says that the BlackBerry Hub software suite is going to be replicated on an upcoming Samsung smartphone, the Galaxy Note 6 that’s due this summer.
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