Month: March 2019

It may be a cliché, but drone photography really does offer a new perspective on the world.

Winners of the 2018 Aerial Photo and Video Contest from SkyPixel (an online photo-sharing community owned by Chinese drone maker DJI) show how. The pictures and videos put architecture, nature, and humanity on display from unexpected heights and angles. The resulting imagery is stunning, and might make you rethink your place in the world.

Just consider it for a second. Where are you standing or sitting right now? What would it look like if you could see yourself from a distance? What surrounds you?

This year’s winning photo in SkyPixel’s contest was taken by Deryk Baumgärtner using a Mavic Pro (above). It’s typically beautiful, showing the…

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As if there weren’t enough VR headsets out there, the game maker Valve is throwing a hat into the ring. More to come in May.

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.

Before I started playing Vignettes, I was expecting it to be a lot like Gnog, a puzzle game that turned puzzle boxes into toy-like dioramas. Maybe it was because the two games share the same brightly colored aesthetic, centered on an object floating in space. But where Gnog adds a lot to the enjoyment of its puzzles by turning them into toys you can fiddle with, Vignettes goes in the opposite direction: it starts as a toy before turning into a puzzle.

Most of Vignettes is predicated on a visual trick. You are presented with…

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CEO Jon Von Tetzchner also calls for privacy regulation to block companies from tracking us online. Also coming soon: Vivaldi’s email software.

Commentary: I was crushed when Apple cancelled its smart wireless charging pad. Now it’s time to move on.

Warmer weather is finally peeking through for parts of the US — and for some reason, that’s bringing more opportunities to watch horror films. Jordan Peele’s newest horror film, Us, is still in theaters, while Netflix will start showing rebooted classics like Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D. It’s also made its own zombie apocalypse series, Black Summer, about survivors finding each other at the beginning of an outbreak. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is returning for season 2, with tensions brewing at an all-time high, as Sabrina bounces between her human friends and her magical enemies.

That said, even if horror is your least favorite genre, Netflix still has new content for all kinds of moods. Fans of Aggretsuko, a…

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Self-driving cars are trained to be overly cautious, but there may be situations where they need to make high-speed maneuvers to avoid a collision. Can these vehicles, festooned with tens of thousands of dollars worth of high-tech sensors and programmed to drive at grandma-speeds, handle these split-second decisions like a human?

Engineers at Stanford University may have the answer. They created a neural network that can enable driverless cars to perform high-speed, low-friction maneuvers just as well as race car drivers. When they eventually arrive, driverless cars will need capabilities beyond those of humans, as 94 percent of crashes are attributable to human error. Researchers say this is an important step in improving autonomous…

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The report is done, but the debate rages on.

Plus, we ride the Jeep Gladiator and ponder the future of electric vehicles, courtesy of battery-swapping rickshaws.