Technology

Intel moved deeper into the world of smart mobility and autonomous driving by announcing Monday its plan to acquire Israel-based urban transit data startup Moovit for $900 million. Moovit’s principle product is an urban mobility app with a particular focus on public transportation, which is used by hundreds of millions of customers. It uses public transit data to provide route planning in the vein of Google’s and Apple’s mapping apps, as well as scooter- and bike-sharing services and ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft. But because it relies partly on crowdsourced data, Moovit can also provide routing for areas where no publicly released data is available. The app is used by 800 million customers and services 3,100 cities across 102 countries, Intel said. “a complete mobility provide...

Vader Immortal — the formerly Oculus-exclusive VR Star Wars experience from ILMxLAB — is coming to PlayStation VR this summer. The three episodes of the series are set to be bundled together into a single collected purchase for the port. Designed as an episodic narrative virtual reality experience, Vader Immortal puts players into the digital shoes of a smuggler who gets drawn into a larger scheme from the infamous villain. The story sees players work with — and, eventually, face off against — the Dark Lord of the Sith himself. The story, which was written by screenwriter David S. Goyer, is considered to be part of the sprawling Star Wars canon, and it plays out like a personal Star Wars theme park, according to a review from The Verge’s Adi Robertson. Until now, though, the only way to ex...

With today’s announcement of a new 13-inch MacBook Pro, Apple has finally stopped trying to fix one of the most controversial and problematic hardware designs in its history: the butterfly switch mechanism on its laptop keyboards. After five years of applying bandages to the butterfly keyboard, Apple has switched over its entire laptop line to the scissor-switch-based Magic Keyboard in the span of six months. Switching the entire product lineup over to a new keyboard in the span of six months is impressive, but the decision to finally do so came far too late. Apple obstinately stuck with this keyboard design for much too long, hurting its image and causing wholly unnecessary hassle and cost for its customers. I would say good riddance, but I am typing this on a MacBook Pro with a butterfly...

In a move that seems utterly obvious as soon as it was announced, Nicholas Cage will be playing the eccentric zookeeper Joe Exotic in a new TV series, via Variety. Look, this was bound to happen. As soon as Netflix’s Tiger King true-crime documentary series exploded into popularity, Hollywood began turning the almost impossibly outlandish story of the bombastic Joe Exotic, Carole Baskin, and their tiger-fueled feuding into a scripted series. And now Cage himself — Hollywood’s most over-the-top actor whose work has endlessly spanned the gray area between good, bad, and just plain weird — is set to take on the role of the eccentric Tiger King himself. The currently unnamed show will also mark Cage’s first TV role. If you think about it, there really wasn’t any other choice Like the Netflix s...