Month: March 2019

Last year, author Michael Moreci released his debut novel, Black Star Renegades, about a young man named Cade Sura who finds himself chased by agents of an extremist galactic empire when he comes into possession of a powerful weapon. If that sounds a bit like the plot of a Star Wars film, that’s by design: the book is an admitted homage to George Lucas’ franchise.

Black Star Renegades is a fun, pulpy, familiar read: a dash across space with a lovable band of misfits trying to stay one step ahead of Queen Ga Halle of the Praxis, an evil empire with plans on total galactic domination. Cade and his brother Tristan are brought into a group of spiritual warriors known as the Rai, and after Tristan is killed, Cade discovers that he can wield…

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These decorative bowls add trendy designs to the classic countertop mixer.

Facebook has been overhauling its Messenger app recently, slimming it down to focus more on chat, and promised that it would eventually roll out a dark mode for users. That mode is now rolling out, but there’s a tongue-in-cheek trick you need to do in order to activate it: you have to moon someone.

The trick, spotted by Android Police, 9to5Mac, and others, is simple: send someone (or yourself) a crescent moon emoji ( ). Once you do so, a shower of moons appears in the chat window, and you’ll get a prompt to activate the mode in settings. Go to your profile page in the app, and it’ll present you with an option to turn the mode on.

Image: Andrew Liptak

Android Police notes that the mode has apparently not rolled out…

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It can be difficult to find time to finish a video game, especially if you only have a few hours a week to play. In our biweekly column Short Play we suggest video games that can be started and finished in a weekend.

Cities at night can be magical. There’s a turning point, after all the late night people have gone home, before the early morning risers head to work, when things start to feel weird. Familiar places don’t become unfamiliar, exactly. But they do feel off. You’ll walk through someplace like Times Square, lit up like it’s trying to artificially appear as though its still daytime, but with no one around to see it.

Bird of Passage doesn’t so much exist in this setting, but mine it for everything it’s worth. The game follows…

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In The Wandering Earth, the sun will soon expand and destroy the Earth, so engineers concoct an ambitious plan — move the planet to another solar system, using giant engines. China’s first big science fiction film is a goofy disaster movie, with some outstanding special effects that bring the world to life. One of the studios behind the special effects, Pixomondo, has released a VFX breakdown that shows how one of the special effects studios created the futuristic, frozen Earth and its massive Earth engines.

Since its release last month, the film has gone on to earn a staggering $641 million, and has become the second-largest Chinese film to date. That’s a good sign for China’s domestic film market, which has been growing in recent…

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Entrepreneur Marc Köhlbrugge has launched Expensive Chat, a web-based chat service where every character typed costs a penny. As spotted by Motherboard, Köhlbrugge announced the site in a tweet, calling it “a social experiment to see what happens to a chatroom when it’s not a free-for-all, but every message cost you cold, hard cash.” And where does all that cash go? Directly to Köhlbrugge.

The site shows a leaderboard, with those who have spent the most at the top, and then the chat room itself. There are a few friendly messages, but in the short time Expensive Chat has been operational, it’s become mostly littered with ads for companies and services. There’s a box at the bottom of the page if you want to compose your own message to…

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Elon Musk hits a milestone and gets in trouble with the SEC, Lyft files for its IPO, cities investigate congestion pricing, and more.

In other headlines: Michael Cohen went to Washington and some people said things they (probably) shouldn’t on Twitter.