Solo sequel? A Boba Fett Star Wars movie is in the works

It's been rumored for as long as Disney has had the rights to the Star Wars franchise, but we may be finally about to see a standalone Boba Fett film from the sci-fi galaxy far, far away.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, James Mangold, director of the fantastic X-Men spin-off movie Logan, is set to helm. It's also expected that he'll be joined by Simon Kinberg, who worked to co-write the Logan script with Mangold, in a both a writing and producing role. Simon Kinberg also wrote and created the superb Star Wars: Rebels animated series.

Logan, telling the story of an ageing Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), was a fantastic action film, earning Mangold an Oscar nod for best adapted screenplay. 

Solo in his sights?

The news comes as Lucasfilm and Disney prepare to launch Solo: A Star Wars Story this week, the first of the current wave of Star Wars films to focus in on just one character for George Lucas's universe.

Could it be that the Boba Fett film would be a sequel to Solo? In the original trilogy (to which Solo is a prequel of sorts) the bounty hunter Boba Fett was Solo's nemesis, with Fett constantly looking to hunt down the owner of the Millennium Falcon. With Solo star Alden Ehrenreich reportedly contracted for two more movies, it'd make sense to see the two characters face off at some point.

Fett, originally played by British actor Jeremy Bulloch, originally appeared in 1980's Empire Strikes Back, and quickly became a fan favorite thanks to his cool composure and array of gadgets. The less said about his revival in Episodes I through III, however, the better.

• Star Wars Battlefront 2 review: shooting a galaxy far, far away to pieces

source http://www.techradar.com/news/solo-sequel-a-boba-fett-star-wars-movie-is-in-the-works

Your next drone might need a license plate

Drone fliers in the US are already encouraged to register their craft with the FAA, after which they're assigned an ID-number for their UAV that can be tucked discreetly into the chassis. But, going forward, that may not be enough.

According to a report by Bloomberg, a new plan would see small unmanned aircraft owners become required to "display the unique identifier assigned by the FAA upon completion of the registration process on an external surface of the aircraft."

Drone plates

You'd essentially therefore have a license plate for your drone, allowing regulators to more quickly identify any miscreants flying their craft in a dangerous or illegal manner.

Drone regulation across the world has become a growing concern, due to the potential for the machines to be co-opted by terrorists, or for unskilled pilots to use them inappropriately. 

There have previously been calls from the White House to allow police officers to shoot down civilian drones causing trouble, while it's not uncommon for their use to be restricted to designated airspace following many a close call with other larger aircraft. In the UK for instance, their use near airports and within London's Royal Parks is restricted.

Visible drone plates sounds like a sensible idea then – another means to remind their users to treat them with care. But for the manufacturers of drones, it's another round of paperwork that could put off a potential new flier from making their purchase.

• Best drones: from beginners to pros and beyond

source http://www.techradar.com/news/your-next-drone-might-need-a-license-plate

Tesco Direct to close taking supermarket's online electrical gear with it

Tesco Direct, the supermarket's online destination for electrical goods, software and homeware, is set to close.

In a statement from the grocery giant, Tesco stated the the online store had "no route to profitability" and was a "small, loss-making part of the business."

Tesco Direct will close on July 9, with 500 staff managing the website and distribution center facing redundancy.

'Significant challenges'

"Tesco Direct has faced a number of significant challenges, including high costs for fulfilment and online marketing, which have prevented it from delivering a sustainable offer as a standalone non-food business," continues the press release.

The website was always a bit of a strange proposition. Though a mainstay for online shoppers during the Black Friday and Christmas rush, Tesco's online business was unusually split across two destinations: Tesco.com, which handled groceries, and Tesco.com/direct, which handled essentially everything else. 

Baskets couldn't be shared, meaning anyone shopping through Tesco Direct would have to, for instance, make two separate orders for their lemons and their PS4 games. So from a pure user journey point of view, the decision makes sense.

"We want to offer our customers the ability to buy groceries and non-food products in one place and that's why we are focusing our investment into one online platform," said Tesco UK head Charles Wilson.

"This decision has been a very difficult one to make, but it is an essential step towards establishing a more sustainable non-food offer and growing our business for the future."

Raise a glass to Tesco Direct, and wish the best to its staff in limbo. But it's safe to assume much of its business will soon become part of the core Tesco.com proposition.

• Find more tech deals here

source http://www.techradar.com/news/tesco-direct-to-close-taking-supermarkets-online-electrical-gear-with-it

Should we go to Venus instead of Mars?

Here's a closer look at the new LEGO sets you can buy later this year

Researchers develop a way for robots to learn by watching humans

Our robot future is approaching, but there's a lot that still stands in the way of a complete machine takeover.

One issue is in how humans currently communicate with robots; a lot of data and energy goes into a robot recognizing and properly executing real-world tasks, often of the simplest nature. 

But, researchers from Nvidia may have come up with a solution: have robots learn by watching humans. 

Essentially, the researchers made it so its neural networks can infer what's being done in a video-fed stream of a human performing a task (in the researchers' demonstration, stacking blocks). 

The robot then produces a step-by-step description of how it would execute the task, which a human can read to verify the robot will perform the task correctly. Then, the robot carries out the task.

You can watch a full breakdown of how the researchers pulled off their achievement below. This is a promising step forward in how robots and humans will work together, but let's just hope the robots don't get too smart. 

Via Engadget

• Driverless cars explained: everything you need to know about the futuristic tech

source http://www.techradar.com/news/researchers-develop-a-way-for-robots-to-learn-by-watching-humans

Microsoft’s Cortana could soon be more ‘human’

Microsoft’s Cortana voice assistant could soon a lot more human thanks to the acquisition of Semantic Machines, a California-based company that specialises in conversational human-machine interactions. 

Semantic sets itself apart from Alexa, Google Assistant, and other voice assistants thanks to a multi-faceted approach to the intelligence at work behind the vocal interaction. Up until recently, voice assistants have worked primarily from responding to the task at hand, and only the task at hand, lacking the context of prior conversations, which makes them feel far from intelligent. 

While Assistant and Alexa both have the ability to respond to immediate prior conversation points – for example, you can ask about a song, and then give another command of 'play it', and the song will play – these contextual responses are limited.

In an interview with TechCrunch, co-founder and chief scientist of Semantic, Dan Klein said: "Today’s dialog technology is mostly orthogonal. You want a conversational system to be contextual so when you interpret a sentence things don’t stand in isolation."

Getting to know you

This means that when you want to book a hotel (the example used in the TC interview), your voice assistant would benefit from knowing whether you’ve booked a car or are planning on using public transport, knowing where your meetings are, and what your career is, so that it can tailor a recommendation based on TripAdvisor reviews by people in a similar field.

While this level of contextual intelligence obviously leads to a far better user experience (and is far more like a conversation with a human assistant), it makes it overt how much information that company truly knows about you. 

There are already services like TripIt that collate your travel plans from harvesting your emails, so the technology is nothing new, and frankly it doesn’t change the amount of your personal data that companies actually have, it just makes it clear, and repurposes it so that it’s actually useful for you. 

The improvements in Cortana would tie into Microsoft's aims that Cortana will be a "situationally appropriate" assistant that moves with you from work to home, and everywhere in-between, acting proactively to assist you.

Of course, we’re in an interesting time for digital-human interactions, with Google’s Duplex making headlines as a robot voice that imitates a human assistant, able to make calls on your behalf. It’s raised the question of whether we actually want our voice assistants to be more human.  

• Want to know where the upgraded Cortana would end up helping you? Check out: Microsoft's first smart thermostat is called GLAS, and it's gorgeous

Via The Next Web

source http://www.techradar.com/news/microsofts-cortana-could-soon-be-more-human