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Image: Ubisoft

There was a moment in Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws when I was scouring the depths of a creepy cave, just after finishing a dogfight in space and winning a card game in a boozy cantina, that the game clicked for me. The usual Ubisoft drudgery, where icons on maps become weights on the brain, was gone. Instead, there was an organic, self-determined flow as to why I chose to leave the frozen wastes of one planet to dig beneath the surface of another.
Here was a game reacting to my actions: it was an open-world experience I’d never encountered before.
I felt elated at this realization, with things happening as a result of the consequences of my own gameplay decisions. The game was organically adjusting to my moment-to-moment play. It works because of two clever systems: Outlaws’ faction system where you either grow or destroy your reputation with various criminal syndicates, and Outlaws’ unique approach to ability upgrades.

Kay Vess, the protagonist, forms relationships with all sorts of shady syndicates, all with their own constantly conflicting agendas. As a freelancer, Kay can do missions for any and all of them, but sometimes stealing documents for one faction means undermining an ongoing scheme for another. This raises Kay’s reputation for one and lowers it for the other.
Higher reputation nets you discounts, access to syndicate-controlled areas, special gifts, and so on. Lower results in the opposite, primarily restricted access to areas and antagonistic reactions from members of the syndicate.

Image: Ubisoft

As an example, the result of a recent mission for the Hutt syndicate meant that if I wanted access to the Pyke syndicate area, I’d have to sneak in. Or, I could find ways to raise my reputation with the Pykes. A new mission centered around stealing or buying an item in the currently restricted Pyke area on the jungle planet of Akiva. Before embarking on the Akiva mission, I decided to improve my reputation with the Pykes. This took me to the underground caves on a distant moon of Toshara because the Pykes wanted an item there.
The reason I wanted access to the Pykes in the first place was related to Kay’s abilities. Outlaws ties ability upgrades to collecting specific rare gear and performing certain actions; there is no XP to speak of. I was trying to upgrade Kay’s silent takedown, allowing her to stealthily take out harder enemies instantly. Upgrading that skill required stealing or purchasing that item in Pyke territory. And since my reputation was so bad, I was now on a moon doing a mission for the Pykes to improve things.
This push-and-pull meant that I was traveling to distant planets and choosing missions based on what would improve my moment-to-moment play. I wasn’t following a preordained path, or filling out a checklist, but approaching the world on my own terms.

Image: Ubisoft

The game is structured like this: open-ended but with clear trajectories depending on your goals, cleanly doing away with the usual Ubisoft open-world bloat. Whereas so many of the developer’s other big games, like Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed, often felt like ticking boxes, Outlaws provides a slicker but meatier canvas of play due to this depth and variety while allowing player choice to dictate action.
The game seems to speak directly to so many players’ frustration at the size and drudgery in Ubisoft games, as seen in, most recently, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Outlaws really does feel as if my experience and choices not only matter but are part of the system. The world reacts, alignments shift, my choice of task changes. While there are legitimate complaints about its stealth system feeling underbaked and missions effectively repeating themselves, my own experience was one of constant joy, due precisely to the ebb and flow of the systems I could play with.
I didn’t realize how badly I wanted an open world that was actually this reactive until I played Outlaws. Yes, there’s some jank and instability, but by Picard’s beard, it is a blast to play with these systems, with the freedom ripe for manipulation of a gunslinging outlaw like Kay.

Image: Ubisoft

There was a moment in Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws when I was scouring the depths of a creepy cave, just after finishing a dogfight in space and winning a card game in a boozy cantina, that the game clicked for me. The usual Ubisoft drudgery, where icons on maps become weights on the brain, was gone. Instead, there was an organic, self-determined flow as to why I chose to leave the frozen wastes of one planet to dig beneath the surface of another.

Here was a game reacting to my actions: it was an open-world experience I’d never encountered before.

I felt elated at this realization, with things happening as a result of the consequences of my own gameplay decisions. The game was organically adjusting to my moment-to-moment play. It works because of two clever systems: Outlaws’ faction system where you either grow or destroy your reputation with various criminal syndicates, and Outlaws’ unique approach to ability upgrades.

Kay Vess, the protagonist, forms relationships with all sorts of shady syndicates, all with their own constantly conflicting agendas. As a freelancer, Kay can do missions for any and all of them, but sometimes stealing documents for one faction means undermining an ongoing scheme for another. This raises Kay’s reputation for one and lowers it for the other.

Higher reputation nets you discounts, access to syndicate-controlled areas, special gifts, and so on. Lower results in the opposite, primarily restricted access to areas and antagonistic reactions from members of the syndicate.

As an example, the result of a recent mission for the Hutt syndicate meant that if I wanted access to the Pyke syndicate area, I’d have to sneak in. Or, I could find ways to raise my reputation with the Pykes. A new mission centered around stealing or buying an item in the currently restricted Pyke area on the jungle planet of Akiva. Before embarking on the Akiva mission, I decided to improve my reputation with the Pykes. This took me to the underground caves on a distant moon of Toshara because the Pykes wanted an item there.

The reason I wanted access to the Pykes in the first place was related to Kay’s abilities. Outlaws ties ability upgrades to collecting specific rare gear and performing certain actions; there is no XP to speak of. I was trying to upgrade Kay’s silent takedown, allowing her to stealthily take out harder enemies instantly. Upgrading that skill required stealing or purchasing that item in Pyke territory. And since my reputation was so bad, I was now on a moon doing a mission for the Pykes to improve things.

This push-and-pull meant that I was traveling to distant planets and choosing missions based on what would improve my moment-to-moment play. I wasn’t following a preordained path, or filling out a checklist, but approaching the world on my own terms.

The game is structured like this: open-ended but with clear trajectories depending on your goals, cleanly doing away with the usual Ubisoft open-world bloat. Whereas so many of the developer’s other big games, like Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed, often felt like ticking boxes, Outlaws provides a slicker but meatier canvas of play due to this depth and variety while allowing player choice to dictate action.

The game seems to speak directly to so many players’ frustration at the size and drudgery in Ubisoft games, as seen in, most recently, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Outlaws really does feel as if my experience and choices not only matter but are part of the system. The world reacts, alignments shift, my choice of task changes. While there are legitimate complaints about its stealth system feeling underbaked and missions effectively repeating themselves, my own experience was one of constant joy, due precisely to the ebb and flow of the systems I could play with.

I didn’t realize how badly I wanted an open world that was actually this reactive until I played Outlaws. Yes, there’s some jank and instability, but by Picard’s beard, it is a blast to play with these systems, with the freedom ripe for manipulation of a gunslinging outlaw like Kay.

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Samsung Food Plus can create tailored meal plans based on your nutritional needs and the food in your fridge and pantry. | Image: Samsung

New features on Samsung’s AI-powered food and recipe app could make your meal planning and food management chores much easier. With Samsung Food, you can now add items to a Food List just by taking a picture. The app can then suggest recipes based on the food you have, automatically remove them when you cook a recipe using anything on the list, then add food items back to the list when you tick them off your shopping list.
The Food List was previously only accessible via the SmartThings app and the built-in tablet on Samsung’s Family Hub smart fridges, limiting its usefulness. Now, as part of the cross-platform Samsung Food app, it could turn the service into a really useful all-in-one shopping, food management, meal planning, and cooking app.

But it will cost you. These new features are part of Samsung Food Plus, a paid tier of the free food management app. The service is $6.99 a month ($59.99 a year) and, in addition to the Food List feature, removes ads from the app, offers a tailored seven-day meal plan, allows users to personalize recipes using AI, and tracks nutrition goals. The app works on both iOS and Android and on the web, it requires a Samsung Account.
I tested Samsung Food last year, and while I liked how easy it was to import recipes from anywhere and how it tailored a meal plan for me every week, adding items to the food list and the fact that the meal plan didn’t suggest recipes based on the list were frustrating. With this update, both of those complaints have been addressed.

Image: Samsung
With Samsung Food Plus you can take a picture of ingredients you have to add them to your food list.

Samsung says the service now creates meal plans based on your food list and prioritizes items “nearing use-by date” (this has to be set manually). Plus, a new “Search with Your Food List” feature lets you easily find a recipe based on what you have. All this should make meal planning and shopping much easier, as long as you’re willing to do it all in Samsung’s app.
The headline feature of the new updates is Vision AI. This leverages your phone’s camera to identify items to add to your Food List. Just snap a picture of whatever is in your pantry or fridge, and the ingredients will be added to the list.
Vision AI is also in the latest Family Hub fridge, where its in-unit AI-powered cameras can automatically add certain foods to the Food List. However, Samsung says the app version can identify over 40,000 types of ingredients using your smartphone’s camera, compared to just 33 the fridge can spot. This is because the fridge processes the images locally, whereas the app can leverage cloud processing.
Samsung Food also features AI-guided cooking steps that integrate with compatible Samsung ovens to preheat, set timers, and adjust the temperature according to the recipe you’re cooking — right from the app.

Image: Samsung
While you don’t need Samsung appliances to use the Samsung Food app, it does integrate with appliances, including the Family Hub smart fridge and Samsung’s connected ovens.

Samsung Food debuted at IFA 2023 last year, and these new features are being announced ahead of the tech show in Berlin next week (think Europe’s version of CES). These new food management features help complete the app’s focus on being an ultimate meal planning tool, allowing you to collate recipes from anywhere, more easily input the food in your fridge and pantry, and then plan meals based on what you have on hand.
In addition to making adding food items to the list easier, several new automated features should simplify maintaining that list. Once you’ve cooked something, the app can automatically remove it from the food list and add it to the shopping list in the Samsung Food app. When you shop using the list, the app can automatically add items purchased to your food list — organizational nirvana!
The benefit of a food list that knows what’s in your fridge and pantry and can keep that knowledge up to date is a more tailored meal plan that uses items you have. This can help cut down on food waste and grocery bills. While $7 a month is expensive, it could save you that much on monthly grocery bills if it works as advertised.
Samsung Food Plus is rolling out now, and in addition to the features mentioned above, it includes a full week of tailored meal plans with recipes based on your nutritional needs, chosen diets, and previous recipe preferences. The free version offers three days of recommendations.

Samsung Food Plus can create tailored meal plans based on your nutritional needs and the food in your fridge and pantry. | Image: Samsung

New features on Samsung’s AI-powered food and recipe app could make your meal planning and food management chores much easier. With Samsung Food, you can now add items to a Food List just by taking a picture. The app can then suggest recipes based on the food you have, automatically remove them when you cook a recipe using anything on the list, then add food items back to the list when you tick them off your shopping list.

The Food List was previously only accessible via the SmartThings app and the built-in tablet on Samsung’s Family Hub smart fridges, limiting its usefulness. Now, as part of the cross-platform Samsung Food app, it could turn the service into a really useful all-in-one shopping, food management, meal planning, and cooking app.

But it will cost you. These new features are part of Samsung Food Plus, a paid tier of the free food management app. The service is $6.99 a month ($59.99 a year) and, in addition to the Food List feature, removes ads from the app, offers a tailored seven-day meal plan, allows users to personalize recipes using AI, and tracks nutrition goals. The app works on both iOS and Android and on the web, it requires a Samsung Account.

I tested Samsung Food last year, and while I liked how easy it was to import recipes from anywhere and how it tailored a meal plan for me every week, adding items to the food list and the fact that the meal plan didn’t suggest recipes based on the list were frustrating. With this update, both of those complaints have been addressed.

Image: Samsung
With Samsung Food Plus you can take a picture of ingredients you have to add them to your food list.

Samsung says the service now creates meal plans based on your food list and prioritizes items “nearing use-by date” (this has to be set manually). Plus, a new “Search with Your Food List” feature lets you easily find a recipe based on what you have. All this should make meal planning and shopping much easier, as long as you’re willing to do it all in Samsung’s app.

The headline feature of the new updates is Vision AI. This leverages your phone’s camera to identify items to add to your Food List. Just snap a picture of whatever is in your pantry or fridge, and the ingredients will be added to the list.

Vision AI is also in the latest Family Hub fridge, where its in-unit AI-powered cameras can automatically add certain foods to the Food List. However, Samsung says the app version can identify over 40,000 types of ingredients using your smartphone’s camera, compared to just 33 the fridge can spot. This is because the fridge processes the images locally, whereas the app can leverage cloud processing.

Samsung Food also features AI-guided cooking steps that integrate with compatible Samsung ovens to preheat, set timers, and adjust the temperature according to the recipe you’re cooking — right from the app.

Image: Samsung
While you don’t need Samsung appliances to use the Samsung Food app, it does integrate with appliances, including the Family Hub smart fridge and Samsung’s connected ovens.

Samsung Food debuted at IFA 2023 last year, and these new features are being announced ahead of the tech show in Berlin next week (think Europe’s version of CES). These new food management features help complete the app’s focus on being an ultimate meal planning tool, allowing you to collate recipes from anywhere, more easily input the food in your fridge and pantry, and then plan meals based on what you have on hand.

In addition to making adding food items to the list easier, several new automated features should simplify maintaining that list. Once you’ve cooked something, the app can automatically remove it from the food list and add it to the shopping list in the Samsung Food app. When you shop using the list, the app can automatically add items purchased to your food list — organizational nirvana!

The benefit of a food list that knows what’s in your fridge and pantry and can keep that knowledge up to date is a more tailored meal plan that uses items you have. This can help cut down on food waste and grocery bills. While $7 a month is expensive, it could save you that much on monthly grocery bills if it works as advertised.

Samsung Food Plus is rolling out now, and in addition to the features mentioned above, it includes a full week of tailored meal plans with recipes based on your nutritional needs, chosen diets, and previous recipe preferences. The free version offers three days of recommendations.

Read More 

Thank Goodness You’re Here! | Image: Panic

Outside of some notable exceptions, there haven’t been many blockbuster games this summer — but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been much to play. In fact, at times, it has felt like a never-ending flood of fascinating indie releases, thanks to games like Arranger, Animal Well, Crow Country, and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes.
It’s been nearly impossible to keep up, but we’ve been playing through most of these games and settled on a handful of recommendations that offer a range of experiences. There’s everything from shadow-hopping puzzles to comedic platformers to a game that might help fill the Silksong-shaped hole in your heart.
Here are some of our favorites.

The Crush House
PC
The Crush House is one of the rare games that capitalize on the tomfoolery potential of running a reality TV show. Part of the game is a kind of resource management sim. Ads make my bosses happy but make my audience tune out. The other part is like a first-person shooter requiring me to sprint around the house with a camera trying to capture the juiciest moments. But I’ve always hated the manufactured drama of reality TV, so I’m having the most fun making the most boring show possible. I haven’t been fired yet, but I feel it’s coming. —AP

Flock
PlayStation, PC, Xbox
It’s the creature-collecting of Pokémon but without all of the battles. Also, you can fly. Flock is all about, well, gathering a flock of cute little creatures. You do that by soaring around an idyllic landscape on the back of a giant bird and searching out every animal you can (all of which can similarly fly). Each time you find something new, you’ll have to help figure out exactly what it is, and while the game gives you some light goals, you’re mostly free to explore on your own. Even better: while it’s very serene to fly solo, you can also go exploring with friends. —AW

Minishoot’ Adventures
PC
Minishoot’ Adventures mixes a twin-stick bullet hell shooter with top-down Legend of Zelda-style adventuring. Seriously: as a cute spaceship, you’ll explore dungeons and collect small keys and pieces of heart. It sounds strange, but it’s a genre mashup that totally works. —JP

Nine Sols
PC
Nine Sols will feel familiar to Hollow Knight fans: it’s a beautifully styled Metroidvania with tough combat. Nine Sols’ action rewards patience and parrying, which is a fun challenge; it’s incredibly satisfying to expertly parry an attack and follow up with a finishing move. The game’s copious amount of text, while interesting, can get in the way of the excellent action, but if you’ve still got your clown makeup on for Silksong, Nine Sols will probably scratch the itch. —JP

Schim
PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch
Schim is essentially “The Floor is Lava” translated into a video game. But instead of your mother’s loveseat, you hop between the shadows of people and objects to navigate the world. It’s a clever game that makes use of simple things like perspective to create complicated platforming puzzles that are satisfying to solve. Once while stuck, I had a great “aha!” moment when I realized I could create the shadows I needed by possessing a traffic light and changing the signal to free up a gaggle of patient bikers. Schim has the kind of strategic thinking I live for. —AP

SteamWorld Heist 2
PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch
It’s been a decade since the original SteamWorld Heist expanded the robotic franchise with some delicious turn-based pirate action. In the original, you’d recruit a team of robots and go on missions gathering loot and battling all kinds of enemies. Whereas the first game took place in space, the sequel goes nautical, with a huge sea to explore and lots of machines to battle and shipwrecks to plunder. The action is similar — which means you’ll be carefully plotting every move and attack as you strategically explore levels — but feels more polished this time around, buoyed by beautiful 2D visuals and a surprisingly deep storyline.—AW

Thank Goodness You’re Here!
PC, PlayStation, and Switch
This might be the strangest game I have ever played. You play as a little fella with a big head who only has two actions: jump and slap. It’s a little like Untitled Goose Game, but also much weirder. You’re tasked with helping folks in a quaint English village (who all exclaim “Thank goodness you’re here!” when you arrive), but things almost always devolve into some odd mess. You’ll be collecting bird soldiers, exploring a tiny grocery store for rats, and navigating everything from underground pipes to a premium cut of ham. Along the way, you’ll slap a lot of bums and be charmed by the dulcet tones of Matt Berry. —AW

Thank Goodness You’re Here! | Image: Panic

Outside of some notable exceptions, there haven’t been many blockbuster games this summer — but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been much to play. In fact, at times, it has felt like a never-ending flood of fascinating indie releases, thanks to games like Arranger, Animal Well, Crow Country, and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes.

It’s been nearly impossible to keep up, but we’ve been playing through most of these games and settled on a handful of recommendations that offer a range of experiences. There’s everything from shadow-hopping puzzles to comedic platformers to a game that might help fill the Silksong-shaped hole in your heart.

Here are some of our favorites.

The Crush House

PC

The Crush House is one of the rare games that capitalize on the tomfoolery potential of running a reality TV show. Part of the game is a kind of resource management sim. Ads make my bosses happy but make my audience tune out. The other part is like a first-person shooter requiring me to sprint around the house with a camera trying to capture the juiciest moments. But I’ve always hated the manufactured drama of reality TV, so I’m having the most fun making the most boring show possible. I haven’t been fired yet, but I feel it’s coming. —AP

Flock

PlayStation, PC, Xbox

It’s the creature-collecting of Pokémon but without all of the battles. Also, you can fly. Flock is all about, well, gathering a flock of cute little creatures. You do that by soaring around an idyllic landscape on the back of a giant bird and searching out every animal you can (all of which can similarly fly). Each time you find something new, you’ll have to help figure out exactly what it is, and while the game gives you some light goals, you’re mostly free to explore on your own. Even better: while it’s very serene to fly solo, you can also go exploring with friends. —AW

Minishoot’ Adventures

PC

Minishoot’ Adventures mixes a twin-stick bullet hell shooter with top-down Legend of Zelda-style adventuring. Seriously: as a cute spaceship, you’ll explore dungeons and collect small keys and pieces of heart. It sounds strange, but it’s a genre mashup that totally works. —JP

Nine Sols

PC

Nine Sols will feel familiar to Hollow Knight fans: it’s a beautifully styled Metroidvania with tough combat. Nine Sols’ action rewards patience and parrying, which is a fun challenge; it’s incredibly satisfying to expertly parry an attack and follow up with a finishing move. The game’s copious amount of text, while interesting, can get in the way of the excellent action, but if you’ve still got your clown makeup on for Silksong, Nine Sols will probably scratch the itch. —JP

Schim

PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch

Schim is essentially “The Floor is Lava” translated into a video game. But instead of your mother’s loveseat, you hop between the shadows of people and objects to navigate the world. It’s a clever game that makes use of simple things like perspective to create complicated platforming puzzles that are satisfying to solve. Once while stuck, I had a great “aha!” moment when I realized I could create the shadows I needed by possessing a traffic light and changing the signal to free up a gaggle of patient bikers. Schim has the kind of strategic thinking I live for. —AP

SteamWorld Heist 2

PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch

It’s been a decade since the original SteamWorld Heist expanded the robotic franchise with some delicious turn-based pirate action. In the original, you’d recruit a team of robots and go on missions gathering loot and battling all kinds of enemies. Whereas the first game took place in space, the sequel goes nautical, with a huge sea to explore and lots of machines to battle and shipwrecks to plunder. The action is similar — which means you’ll be carefully plotting every move and attack as you strategically explore levels — but feels more polished this time around, buoyed by beautiful 2D visuals and a surprisingly deep storyline.—AW

Thank Goodness You’re Here!

PC, PlayStation, and Switch

This might be the strangest game I have ever played. You play as a little fella with a big head who only has two actions: jump and slap. It’s a little like Untitled Goose Game, but also much weirder. You’re tasked with helping folks in a quaint English village (who all exclaim “Thank goodness you’re here!” when you arrive), but things almost always devolve into some odd mess. You’ll be collecting bird soldiers, exploring a tiny grocery store for rats, and navigating everything from underground pipes to a premium cut of ham. Along the way, you’ll slap a lot of bums and be charmed by the dulcet tones of Matt Berry. —AW

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Goliath’s Power Saber, in red and green. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

It would have been a Star Wars product — but Hasbro whiffed. Hasbro turned down the holy grail of lightsaber toys, and it won’t say why.
The Star Wars toymaker spent two years secretly working on a kids lightsaber that can automatically extend and retract its blade — the very first of its kind. Hasbro acquired all rights to the idea from a previously unknown Israeli inventor and patented it around the world.
But instead of finishing the product, Hasbro walked away without explanation. It let the inventor claw back the rights. Today, with the help of a different manufacturer, you can finally buy it at Target and Walmart — as the Goliath Power Saber.
The $60 toy doesn’t have official Star Wars sounds or authentic Jedi or Sith hilts. The blade isn’t as long as the movie sabers, and it doesn’t have the build quality or sophistication of pricier props.

But a simple yet ingenious mechanism means we finally have a lightsaber toy that can actually retract its own blade. Slide the golden switch, and a noisy motor sends each of its glowing blade segments smoothly in and out of the handle. Poke someone with the saber, and its blade will safely collapse without damage. You can even safely point it at your own face — see that in my video below.
Three years after Disney jazzed the world with a self-retracting lightsaber prop that you’ll never get to touch, one that was exclusively used by a paid actor in its shuttered $6,000-per-stay Star Wars hotel, you can now buy a toy that captures some of the same magic.
And its Israeli inventor claims that the Power Saber is just the start.

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Yair Shilo tells The Verge it took five years just to figure out the right formula for a safely collapsing automatic blade, starting with prototypes made of paper and tin foil. He says he sold newspapers, trimmed lawns, and cleaned swimming pools while he worked on his Star Wars childhood dream, eventually rallying a cousin and an investment group behind a provisional patent in 2019.
Fundamentally, the new Power Saber isn’t that complicated inside. Just like the kiddie saber I proudly carried to the premiere of Star Wars: Episode I in 1999, the blade consists of telescoping tubes that stick together when fully extended. With those kiddie sabers, you flick your arm to propel the whole set of tubes; with the Power Saber, each segment is pushed upward and pulled downward by a long screw.

Image: USPTO
The screw raises each segment in turn. The actual product functions almost identically to these patent images — I opened one up to check.

But that’s not the clever part. The simple genius of Shilo’s patent is that each blade segment isn’t married to that screw, so you can safely collapse them without sticking a screw into your hand. As the saber extends, each segment lifts up off the screw, carried into the air by the segment behind it. Once the tip of the saber extends far enough, it pulls the next blade segment up into the air, and the next, and the next, until they’re all fully extended, held together by friction alone.
And, each blade segment has flexible tabs where they meet the smooth screw, letting them slip down their track when you apply pressure. Even if you roughly shove the whole blade back into its casing — which I’ve done plenty of times in tests — it doesn’t hurt or damage the internal mechanism, claims Shilo.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
The screw is clearly visible through the transparent lightsaber shell — if you look down.

That’s something its inventor says other designs never cracked. “99 percent of them, something needs to push the smallest segment from inside,” he says. “With this mechanism, nothing pushes it.” Hasbro tried for years, says Nextoy founder Robert Fuhrer, and it did create spring-loaded auto-extending blades, but there were always potential safety issues when auto-retracting a toy lightsaber’s blade. Shilo ran into some of them himself with an earlier model that relied on traditional gears.
The “biggest toy ever”?
But Shilo didn’t just want to build an auto-retractable blade; he wanted to build an official Star Wars lightsaber with Hasbro, the company with Disney’s exclusive blessing to mass-produce genuine Star Wars toys. “He was asking around the toy industry if anybody was tied up with Hasbro and knew them well,” recalls Fuhrer, who successfully connected him to the company and remains his agent today.
In 2020, Shilo shipped Hasbro a wooden wine box containing a white plastic prototype with a red motorized blade. He says Hasbro was more than happy — they told him he’d finally cracked the code. They told him it’d be the “biggest toy ever.”
Two years later, it fell apart.
“They say to us, hey bye bye, we’re not going to do it, we have a problem inside, we have a lot of things going on, you need to go,” says Shilo.

No one’s willing to tell The Verge what actually happened. Shilo, Fuhrer, even Power Saber manufacturer Goliath all suggest they want to maintain a positive relationship with Hasbro instead of speaking out of turn.
Hasbro won’t say, either. “We greatly value our partnerships with inventors who bring us their ideas for toys and games. For a variety of reasons, we were unable to move forward with this particular concept,” reads a statement from Hasbro senior publicity manager Whitney Spencer to The Verge.

Fuhrer strongly suggested I speak to Angus Walker, Hasbro’s head of inventor relations, but the company declined to make him available for an interview.
It makes me wonder: could there still be some fundamental issue with the design? (I did note that sometimes the saber’s tip falls in after a handful of whacks.) But Fuhrer says no, Hasbro didn’t cite any specific concerns. “There was no hard reason,” he says. “There was nothing like ‘there’s a safety issue’ or a cost issue or anything like that.”
He also downplays the possibility that Hasbro might sue over the patent. “I don’t think there’s any feeling of animosity,” says Fuhrer.
He speculates that Hasbro was just under a lot of pressure at the time. Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner had just died; it was the early pandemic; some projects fell by the wayside. Cost might have been a factor, too: he says Target and Walmart were pressuring toy companies to keep the price under $50. And, he says, an early prototype did fail one of Hasbro’s very early safety tests.
But he points to Goliath’s successfully shipping $60 saber at Target and Walmart as proof that neither cost nor safety were sticking points — and says Hasbro is going to regret missing out because the Power Saber will cannibalize their toy sales.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

We were able to figure out why Hasbro would give the idea back to Shilo and his investors: Hasbro was contractually obligated to return the rights if it didn’t move forward, Fuhrer confirms. So they found a new partner in Goliath instead, a company previously mostly known for its board games, and the “Power Saber” was born.
I would’ve been blown away by this toy as a kid, but I wouldn’t have been completely satisfied by its knockoff feeling — and I gather Shilo might feel the same way. Earlier in our conversation, he’d spoken about the Star Wars lightsaber almost religiously, about how it’s “the only weapon that brings light to the world,” how he always wanted to be a Jedi, and how building a lightsaber was a childhood dream. How important is that official Star Wars part to him now, I ask?
He says that like the Force, he believes his lightsaber will eventually find his way to Star Wars. He says it’s meant to be.

Goliath’s Power Saber, in red and green. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

It would have been a Star Wars product — but Hasbro whiffed.

Hasbro turned down the holy grail of lightsaber toys, and it won’t say why.

The Star Wars toymaker spent two years secretly working on a kids lightsaber that can automatically extend and retract its blade — the very first of its kind. Hasbro acquired all rights to the idea from a previously unknown Israeli inventor and patented it around the world.

But instead of finishing the product, Hasbro walked away without explanation. It let the inventor claw back the rights. Today, with the help of a different manufacturer, you can finally buy it at Target and Walmart — as the Goliath Power Saber.

The $60 toy doesn’t have official Star Wars sounds or authentic Jedi or Sith hilts. The blade isn’t as long as the movie sabers, and it doesn’t have the build quality or sophistication of pricier props.

But a simple yet ingenious mechanism means we finally have a lightsaber toy that can actually retract its own blade. Slide the golden switch, and a noisy motor sends each of its glowing blade segments smoothly in and out of the handle. Poke someone with the saber, and its blade will safely collapse without damage. You can even safely point it at your own face — see that in my video below.

Three years after Disney jazzed the world with a self-retracting lightsaber prop that you’ll never get to touch, one that was exclusively used by a paid actor in its shuttered $6,000-per-stay Star Wars hotel, you can now buy a toy that captures some of the same magic.

And its Israeli inventor claims that the Power Saber is just the start.

Yair Shilo tells The Verge it took five years just to figure out the right formula for a safely collapsing automatic blade, starting with prototypes made of paper and tin foil. He says he sold newspapers, trimmed lawns, and cleaned swimming pools while he worked on his Star Wars childhood dream, eventually rallying a cousin and an investment group behind a provisional patent in 2019.

Fundamentally, the new Power Saber isn’t that complicated inside. Just like the kiddie saber I proudly carried to the premiere of Star Wars: Episode I in 1999, the blade consists of telescoping tubes that stick together when fully extended. With those kiddie sabers, you flick your arm to propel the whole set of tubes; with the Power Saber, each segment is pushed upward and pulled downward by a long screw.

Image: USPTO
The screw raises each segment in turn. The actual product functions almost identically to these patent images — I opened one up to check.

But that’s not the clever part. The simple genius of Shilo’s patent is that each blade segment isn’t married to that screw, so you can safely collapse them without sticking a screw into your hand. As the saber extends, each segment lifts up off the screw, carried into the air by the segment behind it. Once the tip of the saber extends far enough, it pulls the next blade segment up into the air, and the next, and the next, until they’re all fully extended, held together by friction alone.

And, each blade segment has flexible tabs where they meet the smooth screw, letting them slip down their track when you apply pressure. Even if you roughly shove the whole blade back into its casing — which I’ve done plenty of times in tests — it doesn’t hurt or damage the internal mechanism, claims Shilo.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
The screw is clearly visible through the transparent lightsaber shell — if you look down.

That’s something its inventor says other designs never cracked. “99 percent of them, something needs to push the smallest segment from inside,” he says. “With this mechanism, nothing pushes it.” Hasbro tried for years, says Nextoy founder Robert Fuhrer, and it did create spring-loaded auto-extending blades, but there were always potential safety issues when auto-retracting a toy lightsaber’s blade. Shilo ran into some of them himself with an earlier model that relied on traditional gears.

But Shilo didn’t just want to build an auto-retractable blade; he wanted to build an official Star Wars lightsaber with Hasbro, the company with Disney’s exclusive blessing to mass-produce genuine Star Wars toys. “He was asking around the toy industry if anybody was tied up with Hasbro and knew them well,” recalls Fuhrer, who successfully connected him to the company and remains his agent today.

In 2020, Shilo shipped Hasbro a wooden wine box containing a white plastic prototype with a red motorized blade. He says Hasbro was more than happy — they told him he’d finally cracked the code. They told him it’d be the “biggest toy ever.”

Two years later, it fell apart.

“They say to us, hey bye bye, we’re not going to do it, we have a problem inside, we have a lot of things going on, you need to go,” says Shilo.

No one’s willing to tell The Verge what actually happened. Shilo, Fuhrer, even Power Saber manufacturer Goliath all suggest they want to maintain a positive relationship with Hasbro instead of speaking out of turn.

Hasbro won’t say, either. “We greatly value our partnerships with inventors who bring us their ideas for toys and games. For a variety of reasons, we were unable to move forward with this particular concept,” reads a statement from Hasbro senior publicity manager Whitney Spencer to The Verge.

Fuhrer strongly suggested I speak to Angus Walker, Hasbro’s head of inventor relations, but the company declined to make him available for an interview.

It makes me wonder: could there still be some fundamental issue with the design? (I did note that sometimes the saber’s tip falls in after a handful of whacks.) But Fuhrer says no, Hasbro didn’t cite any specific concerns. “There was no hard reason,” he says. “There was nothing like ‘there’s a safety issue’ or a cost issue or anything like that.”

He also downplays the possibility that Hasbro might sue over the patent. “I don’t think there’s any feeling of animosity,” says Fuhrer.

He speculates that Hasbro was just under a lot of pressure at the time. Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner had just died; it was the early pandemic; some projects fell by the wayside. Cost might have been a factor, too: he says Target and Walmart were pressuring toy companies to keep the price under $50. And, he says, an early prototype did fail one of Hasbro’s very early safety tests.

But he points to Goliath’s successfully shipping $60 saber at Target and Walmart as proof that neither cost nor safety were sticking points — and says Hasbro is going to regret missing out because the Power Saber will cannibalize their toy sales.

We were able to figure out why Hasbro would give the idea back to Shilo and his investors: Hasbro was contractually obligated to return the rights if it didn’t move forward, Fuhrer confirms. So they found a new partner in Goliath instead, a company previously mostly known for its board games, and the “Power Saber” was born.

I would’ve been blown away by this toy as a kid, but I wouldn’t have been completely satisfied by its knockoff feeling — and I gather Shilo might feel the same way. Earlier in our conversation, he’d spoken about the Star Wars lightsaber almost religiously, about how it’s “the only weapon that brings light to the world,” how he always wanted to be a Jedi, and how building a lightsaber was a childhood dream. How important is that official Star Wars part to him now, I ask?

He says that like the Force, he believes his lightsaber will eventually find his way to Star Wars. He says it’s meant to be.

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Image: The Verge

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered a shutdown for X after Elon Musk didn’t appoint a new Brazilian legal representative. A Brazilian judge has officially banned X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, bringing the monthslong conflict between Elon Musk and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes to a head. On August 30th, Justice de Moraes handed down the order and notified the country’s communications agency to limit access to the platform within 24 hours.
The Brazilian justice, who has led the country’s efforts against misinformation, opened an investigation into X in April after Musk said he reactivated accounts the platform was ordered to block.
Musk later closed X’s offices in Brazil over claims de Moraes threatened to arrest the company’s local legal representative if the platform didn’t follow “censorship orders.” Despite Justice de Moraes warning that Brazil would ban X if it didn’t appoint a new legal representative, Musk still hasn’t complied, leading to the platform’s suspension.
If you’re interested in keeping up with this story, check out all the latest news below.

Image: The Verge

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered a shutdown for X after Elon Musk didn’t appoint a new Brazilian legal representative.

A Brazilian judge has officially banned X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, bringing the monthslong conflict between Elon Musk and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes to a head. On August 30th, Justice de Moraes handed down the order and notified the country’s communications agency to limit access to the platform within 24 hours.

The Brazilian justice, who has led the country’s efforts against misinformation, opened an investigation into X in April after Musk said he reactivated accounts the platform was ordered to block.

Musk later closed X’s offices in Brazil over claims de Moraes threatened to arrest the company’s local legal representative if the platform didn’t follow “censorship orders.” Despite Justice de Moraes warning that Brazil would ban X if it didn’t appoint a new legal representative, Musk still hasn’t complied, leading to the platform’s suspension.

If you’re interested in keeping up with this story, check out all the latest news below.

Read More 

The Verge

A judge in Brazil has ordered the suspension of X after owner Elon Musk failed to designate a new legal representative for the country, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Earlier this month, Musk closed X’s offices in Brazil, saying Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes threatened to arrest the company’s legal representative for not complying with “censorship orders.” Brazil’s Supreme Court notified X on Wednesday that if it didn’t appoint a new legal representative within 24 hours, it would be banned.
Musk and Moraes have been feuding for months. The Brazilian justice opened an investigation into X in April after Musk said he reactivated accounts that X was ordered to block over the spread of misinformation. As reported by The New York Times, many of the accounts Moraes ordered X to block are linked to supporters of the right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro.
“We are absolutely not insisting that other countries have the same free speech laws as the United States,” X said in a Thursday evening post from its global government affairs account. “The fundamental issue at stake here is that Judge de Moraes demands we break Brazil’s own laws. We simply won’t do that.” In that post, X also said it would publish “all of Judge de Moraes’ illegal demands and all related court filings.”
Brazil requires major platforms to have a legal representative in the country. It has briefly banned other major social platforms in the past as well, including Telegram and WhatsApp.
Starlink, part of another Elon Musk-affiliated company, SpaceX, said Thursday that Moraes also gave an order that froze Starlink’s finances. “This order is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines levied — unconstitutionally — against X,” according to Starlink.

The Verge

A judge in Brazil has ordered the suspension of X after owner Elon Musk failed to designate a new legal representative for the country, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Earlier this month, Musk closed X’s offices in Brazil, saying Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes threatened to arrest the company’s legal representative for not complying with “censorship orders.” Brazil’s Supreme Court notified X on Wednesday that if it didn’t appoint a new legal representative within 24 hours, it would be banned.

Musk and Moraes have been feuding for months. The Brazilian justice opened an investigation into X in April after Musk said he reactivated accounts that X was ordered to block over the spread of misinformation. As reported by The New York Times, many of the accounts Moraes ordered X to block are linked to supporters of the right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro.

“We are absolutely not insisting that other countries have the same free speech laws as the United States,” X said in a Thursday evening post from its global government affairs account. “The fundamental issue at stake here is that Judge de Moraes demands we break Brazil’s own laws. We simply won’t do that.” In that post, X also said it would publish “all of Judge de Moraes’ illegal demands and all related court filings.”

Brazil requires major platforms to have a legal representative in the country. It has briefly banned other major social platforms in the past as well, including Telegram and WhatsApp.

Starlink, part of another Elon Musk-affiliated company, SpaceX, said Thursday that Moraes also gave an order that froze Starlink’s finances. “This order is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines levied — unconstitutionally — against X,” according to Starlink.

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Image: Lionsgate

And now you can watch it at home. The Borderlands movie, which released in theaters all of 21 days ago, is already available to watch at home through video on demand. This three-week turnaround could be indicative of the movie’s poor box office performance coupled with its poor critical reception. After seeing it for myself, I agree it’s not the best example of a video game movie. However, I also saw moments where the movie took its source material and remixed it into something entertaining. Whether you watch this movie in theaters, at home, or not at all, Borderlands deserves your respect.
Part of that is because honestly, the movie isn’t that bad. It’s visually impressive, with gorgeous styling and action sequences that were actually intelligible instead of greasy-looking smears of CG. It has a bog standard found family / magical MacGuffin plot that manages to say something interesting about the whole “chosen one” trope.

Cate Blanchett stars as Lilith, a bounty hunter who travels to the planet Pandora to rescue a girl named Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) from the clutches of Roland, a Crimson Lance soldier gone rogue (Kevin Hart) and his psycho accomplice — movie’s description, not mine — Krieg (Florian Munteanu). Lilith discovers that Tina went willingly with her captors and with the unhelpful help of the robot Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black) and the expertise of Dr. Patricia Tanis (Jamie Lee Curtis), Lilith decides to help Tina acquire a powerful artifact to keep it out of the hands of her disgustingly wealthy father, Deukalian Atlas (Edgar Ramírez), CEO of the Atlas Corporation.
“[Borderlands] isn’t a video game movie.”
Pandora is a harsh desert planet marred by prodigious amounts of waste from both its human and natural inhabitants. If the movie followed the trends currently dominating television and film, the planet would look dark even in the daytime, and everything would be cast in the sickly orange filter Hollywood trots out every time there’s a movie set in a desert — looking at you, Dune. Instead, locations and characters are thoughtfully designed — and adequately lit, imagine that! — making for a movie that is visually pleasing to watch.
I was thoroughly taken aback by how good Cate Blanchett looked as Lilith. With her bright orange hair and deep blue sparkly jacket, Blanchett looked like she had been ripped directly out of the first Borderlands game. When Lilith made her first appearance, I turned to my husband and remarked that this is the most video game looking-ass video game movie I’ve ever seen (affectionate!). Everything else, from the rest of the cast to the props and sets, matched that visual energy without looking cartoonish or fake.

Photo: Lionsgate
Blanchett looks great and performs even better as Lilith.

Borderlands, for good or ill, eschewed some of the typical conventions for making a video game movie. Usually, there’s some moment in these kinds of films that functions as a nod to its progenitor. The first-person action sequence in Doom or the Rainbow Road race in The Super Mario Bros. Movie come to mind.
In an interview with Randy Pitchford, creator of the Borderlands games and the film’s executive producer, I asked how he blurred the line between game and film. “We didn’t do any of that,” Pitchford answered. “I hate that shit.”
According to Pitchford, originally there were plans to make him the movie’s Easter egg for fans of the game, but seeing another video game movie made him change his mind.
“We didn’t do any of that. I hate that shit.”
“I voice a character in the games named Crazy Earl, and I did five hours of makeup to become Crazy Earl,” he said. Pitchford said that he shot scenes for the movie but had a change of heart after seeing the moment in Uncharted when Mark Wahlberg and Tom Holland randomly run into Nolan North, the voice actor who plays Nathan Drake in the games.
“There were two problems with that,” he said. “If you know who that is, you’re immediately pulled out of the universe. And if you don’t know, none of that makes any sense. It’s a complete non-sequitur to the storyline, so I asked them to cut me from the movie.”
According to Pitchford, Borderlands “isn’t a video game movie.” Rather, he says, it’s a movie that incorporates the characters, themes, and storylines from the first game, which have been greatly enhanced by stand-out performances from Blanchett and Greenblatt.
Lilith and Tina play well off each other. Neither has a loving family to speak of and is so desperate for one that they latch on to anyone and anything that comes within their orbit. Tina immediately adopts Kreig as her older brother / bodyguard. And despite the fact that Claptrap and Lilith hate each other, they still worked well together.

Image: Lionsgate
The infamous pee scene.

The dialogue, though, didn’t work so well. Make no mistake: Borderlands isn’t funny. Its style of irreverent humor and stream-of-consciousness dialogue stopped being entertaining around the time Tales for the Borderlands came out in 2014. Hearing Kevin Hart deadpan, “It’s pee. Now I got pee all in the middle of my truck,” made me white knuckle my armrests to keep me from scratching out my eyes.
The movie also didn’t make good use of its ensemble cast. Take Dr. Patricia Tanis, for example. In the movie, she’s just a plot exposition vehicle, but she could have been much more. According to Tanis’ actress, Jamie Lee Curtis, she brought herself into the role of the reclusive, socially awkward doctor and her attraction to inanimate objects — but that didn’t make it into the final film.
“The whole idea of objective sexuality — the idea of an isolated person falling in love with inanimate objects — I find it a fascinating character trait and played the shit out of it,” Curtis said. “And they cut it all because, I think, people just wouldn’t understand it.”
Lilith and Tina are the main drivers of the film, but the rest of the cast did absolutely nothing until the plot gave them something to shoot, smash, or exposit. I don’t understand how a movie that has both Jack Black and Kevin Hart — two of the most successful comedians in Hollywood — didn’t make me laugh. On top of being woefully miscast as the stoic soldier Roland, Hart was simply window dressing. The movie gave him a big hero moment similar to the one in Borderlands 2, but since he had no personality beyond “There’s pee in my truck,” I didn’t care. Meanwhile, it seemed like the only direction Black got was to be as annoying as possible. Fitting for his character, sure, but ultimately a waste of Black’s manifold talents.
Paying $20–25 to watch Borderlands at home is a tough sell but ultimately worth it. For all the bad decisions in Borderlands, putting Lilith at its center was by far its smartest. Characters like her — cranky, jaded, childless, older women — do not lead action films. And in real life, women like that are all but invisible. But Borderlands, in its styling and storytelling, made Lilith pop off the screen. You couldn’t miss her if you tried. Borderlands earned its poor reception, but for what it does with Lilith, it’s also earned my respect.

Image: Lionsgate

And now you can watch it at home.

The Borderlands movie, which released in theaters all of 21 days ago, is already available to watch at home through video on demand. This three-week turnaround could be indicative of the movie’s poor box office performance coupled with its poor critical reception. After seeing it for myself, I agree it’s not the best example of a video game movie. However, I also saw moments where the movie took its source material and remixed it into something entertaining. Whether you watch this movie in theaters, at home, or not at all, Borderlands deserves your respect.

Part of that is because honestly, the movie isn’t that bad. It’s visually impressive, with gorgeous styling and action sequences that were actually intelligible instead of greasy-looking smears of CG. It has a bog standard found family / magical MacGuffin plot that manages to say something interesting about the whole “chosen one” trope.

Cate Blanchett stars as Lilith, a bounty hunter who travels to the planet Pandora to rescue a girl named Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) from the clutches of Roland, a Crimson Lance soldier gone rogue (Kevin Hart) and his psycho accomplice — movie’s description, not mine — Krieg (Florian Munteanu). Lilith discovers that Tina went willingly with her captors and with the unhelpful help of the robot Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black) and the expertise of Dr. Patricia Tanis (Jamie Lee Curtis), Lilith decides to help Tina acquire a powerful artifact to keep it out of the hands of her disgustingly wealthy father, Deukalian Atlas (Edgar Ramírez), CEO of the Atlas Corporation.

Pandora is a harsh desert planet marred by prodigious amounts of waste from both its human and natural inhabitants. If the movie followed the trends currently dominating television and film, the planet would look dark even in the daytime, and everything would be cast in the sickly orange filter Hollywood trots out every time there’s a movie set in a desert — looking at you, Dune. Instead, locations and characters are thoughtfully designed — and adequately lit, imagine that! — making for a movie that is visually pleasing to watch.

I was thoroughly taken aback by how good Cate Blanchett looked as Lilith. With her bright orange hair and deep blue sparkly jacket, Blanchett looked like she had been ripped directly out of the first Borderlands game. When Lilith made her first appearance, I turned to my husband and remarked that this is the most video game looking-ass video game movie I’ve ever seen (affectionate!). Everything else, from the rest of the cast to the props and sets, matched that visual energy without looking cartoonish or fake.

Photo: Lionsgate
Blanchett looks great and performs even better as Lilith.

Borderlands, for good or ill, eschewed some of the typical conventions for making a video game movie. Usually, there’s some moment in these kinds of films that functions as a nod to its progenitor. The first-person action sequence in Doom or the Rainbow Road race in The Super Mario Bros. Movie come to mind.

In an interview with Randy Pitchford, creator of the Borderlands games and the film’s executive producer, I asked how he blurred the line between game and film. “We didn’t do any of that,” Pitchford answered. “I hate that shit.”

According to Pitchford, originally there were plans to make him the movie’s Easter egg for fans of the game, but seeing another video game movie made him change his mind.

“I voice a character in the games named Crazy Earl, and I did five hours of makeup to become Crazy Earl,” he said. Pitchford said that he shot scenes for the movie but had a change of heart after seeing the moment in Uncharted when Mark Wahlberg and Tom Holland randomly run into Nolan North, the voice actor who plays Nathan Drake in the games.

“There were two problems with that,” he said. “If you know who that is, you’re immediately pulled out of the universe. And if you don’t know, none of that makes any sense. It’s a complete non-sequitur to the storyline, so I asked them to cut me from the movie.”

According to Pitchford, Borderlands “isn’t a video game movie.” Rather, he says, it’s a movie that incorporates the characters, themes, and storylines from the first game, which have been greatly enhanced by stand-out performances from Blanchett and Greenblatt.

Lilith and Tina play well off each other. Neither has a loving family to speak of and is so desperate for one that they latch on to anyone and anything that comes within their orbit. Tina immediately adopts Kreig as her older brother / bodyguard. And despite the fact that Claptrap and Lilith hate each other, they still worked well together.

Image: Lionsgate
The infamous pee scene.

The dialogue, though, didn’t work so well. Make no mistake: Borderlands isn’t funny. Its style of irreverent humor and stream-of-consciousness dialogue stopped being entertaining around the time Tales for the Borderlands came out in 2014. Hearing Kevin Hart deadpan, “It’s pee. Now I got pee all in the middle of my truck,” made me white knuckle my armrests to keep me from scratching out my eyes.

The movie also didn’t make good use of its ensemble cast. Take Dr. Patricia Tanis, for example. In the movie, she’s just a plot exposition vehicle, but she could have been much more. According to Tanis’ actress, Jamie Lee Curtis, she brought herself into the role of the reclusive, socially awkward doctor and her attraction to inanimate objects — but that didn’t make it into the final film.

“The whole idea of objective sexuality — the idea of an isolated person falling in love with inanimate objects — I find it a fascinating character trait and played the shit out of it,” Curtis said. “And they cut it all because, I think, people just wouldn’t understand it.”

Lilith and Tina are the main drivers of the film, but the rest of the cast did absolutely nothing until the plot gave them something to shoot, smash, or exposit. I don’t understand how a movie that has both Jack Black and Kevin Hart — two of the most successful comedians in Hollywood — didn’t make me laugh. On top of being woefully miscast as the stoic soldier Roland, Hart was simply window dressing. The movie gave him a big hero moment similar to the one in Borderlands 2, but since he had no personality beyond “There’s pee in my truck,” I didn’t care. Meanwhile, it seemed like the only direction Black got was to be as annoying as possible. Fitting for his character, sure, but ultimately a waste of Black’s manifold talents.

Paying $20–25 to watch Borderlands at home is a tough sell but ultimately worth it. For all the bad decisions in Borderlands, putting Lilith at its center was by far its smartest. Characters like her — cranky, jaded, childless, older women — do not lead action films. And in real life, women like that are all but invisible. But Borderlands, in its styling and storytelling, made Lilith pop off the screen. You couldn’t miss her if you tried. Borderlands earned its poor reception, but for what it does with Lilith, it’s also earned my respect.

Read More 

Image: NASA

SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission will launch to the International Space Station with only NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Aleksandr Gorbunov on board, according to an update on Friday. Crew-9 will launch “no earlier” than September 24th, with plans to bring delayed Starliner astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams back to Earth next February.
Wilmore and Williams arrived at the ISS in June and were only supposed to stay for about a week while conducting tests. However, helium leaks and valve issues on Boeing’s Starliner delayed their return, and NASA gave up on sending them back on the spacecraft altogether. The agency decided to bring Wilmore and Williams home on SpaceX’s Dragon capsule with the Crew-9 mission instead.
NASA says the other two US astronauts initially chosen for the mission, Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, will be eligible for reassignment. The agency doesn’t specify why it split the crew up. Despite serving as a ride for Starliner’s astronauts, the two Crew-9 members will carry out their original goal of performing research at the ISS during their stay.

Image: NASA
Now only Nick Hague (middle right) and Aleksandr Gorbunov (middle left) will be on Crew 9.

“While we’ve changed crew before for a variety of reasons, downsizing crew for this flight was another tough decision to adjust to given that the crew has trained as a crew of four,” NASA chief astronaut Joe Acaba said in a statement. “I have the utmost confidence in all our crew, who have been excellent throughout training for the mission.”
Meanwhile, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will autonomously undock from the ISS on September 6th at 6:04PM. It won’t have anyone onboard, but teams on the ground will be ready to “remotely command the spacecraft” if needed. The spacecraft is set to land in New Mexico’s White Sands Space Harbor around six hours later.

Image: NASA

SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission will launch to the International Space Station with only NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Aleksandr Gorbunov on board, according to an update on Friday. Crew-9 will launch “no earlier” than September 24th, with plans to bring delayed Starliner astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams back to Earth next February.

Wilmore and Williams arrived at the ISS in June and were only supposed to stay for about a week while conducting tests. However, helium leaks and valve issues on Boeing’s Starliner delayed their return, and NASA gave up on sending them back on the spacecraft altogether. The agency decided to bring Wilmore and Williams home on SpaceX’s Dragon capsule with the Crew-9 mission instead.

NASA says the other two US astronauts initially chosen for the mission, Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, will be eligible for reassignment. The agency doesn’t specify why it split the crew up. Despite serving as a ride for Starliner’s astronauts, the two Crew-9 members will carry out their original goal of performing research at the ISS during their stay.

Image: NASA
Now only Nick Hague (middle right) and Aleksandr Gorbunov (middle left) will be on Crew 9.

“While we’ve changed crew before for a variety of reasons, downsizing crew for this flight was another tough decision to adjust to given that the crew has trained as a crew of four,” NASA chief astronaut Joe Acaba said in a statement. “I have the utmost confidence in all our crew, who have been excellent throughout training for the mission.”

Meanwhile, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will autonomously undock from the ISS on September 6th at 6:04PM. It won’t have anyone onboard, but teams on the ground will be ready to “remotely command the spacecraft” if needed. The spacecraft is set to land in New Mexico’s White Sands Space Harbor around six hours later.

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Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Grzegorz Wajda, Getty Images

A lawsuit aimed at punishing critics of Elon Musk’s X will go forward, thanks to a ruling from a judge with a financial interest in Musk’s success.
On Thursday, Judge Reed O’Connor denied a motion to dismiss X’s lawsuit against Media Matters For America. The suit was filed in Texas last year and alleges that MMFA should be held legally liable for negative reporting that caused companies to pull ads from X. O’Connor dismissed objections that it was filed in a state where neither X nor MMFA is headquartered, saying the fact that MMFA “targeted” two X Texas-based advertisers — Oracle and AT&T — by mentioning them in articles and interviews is sufficient. (X is based in California, though its current San Francisco office will soon close and Musk has discussed moving to Texas.)
O’Connor also determined that X’s claims had enough merit to proceed in court. Which is, to put it gently, concerning.
X wants to make being too negative about a company illegal, and a judge apparently sees nothing wrong with that
Unlike your standard libel lawsuit, X doesn’t say MMFA made a factually incorrect claim; it outright admits that X served ads against racist or otherwise offensive content. Instead, it argues that this situation is rare and the authors “deliberately misused the X platform to induce the algorithm to pair racist content with popular advertisers’ brands.” What constitutes misuse of a platform? Using accounts that had been active for more than a month, following the accounts of racists and major brands, and “endlessly scrolling and refreshing” to get new ads. In other words, X isn’t suing MMFA for lying — it’s suing them for seeking out bad things about a business and not reporting those things in a sufficiently positive light.
This is a painfully tortured argument aimed at establishing that private citizens pushing private businesses to avoid buying ads on a website is illegal censorship. Contra numerous promises that Musk is a “free speech absolutist,” it’s leaning on the legal system to shut down criticism instead of simply answering it with more facts. The ruling doesn’t technically agree with X’s claims; it says MMFA presents a “compelling alternative version” of events by pointing out it’s not lying. But O’Connor says it’s not his job to “choose among competing inferences,” so both versions can get argued at a later stage. MMFA declined to comment on the ruling.
Drawing a weak case out is an unmitigated win for X and Musk, who have effectively infinite legal resources. It’s a win for the Musk-favored strategy of forum shopping. It’s a loss for MMFA, which laid off staffers in the wake of this suit and two equally specious investigations by Republican state attorneys general sympathetic to Musk, both of which have been blocked by other judges.
It’s also coming a few weeks after NPR reported that O’Connor holds between $15,001 and $50,000 worth of stock in Tesla, one of Musk’s other companies. The judge recused himself from a lawsuit Musk filed against advertisers who stopped placing ads on X, but apparently because he owned stock in one of those advertisers. O’Connor (who benefits when Musk’s famously intertwined network of companies prospers) flatly dismissed the argument that Musk (who owns X) or Tesla (which according to a separate lawsuit sent “volunteers” to moonlight at X) has any meaningful legal connection to X.
It’s a striking contrast with the outcome of yet another lawsuit that X filed against its critics. In California, Judge Charles Breyer dismissed a complaint against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, where X used different but equally tortured legal reasoning to attack claims that it wasn’t addressing hateful conduct. “Although X Corp accuses CCDH of trying ‘to censor viewpoints’ … it is X Corp that demands ‘at least tens of millions of dollars’ in damages — presumably enough to torpedo the operations of a small nonprofit — because of the views expressed in the nonprofit’s publications,” it reads, in an observation that could apply equally to MMFA. Elsewhere, the judge is even blunter: “this case is about punishing the defendants for their speech.”

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Grzegorz Wajda, Getty Images

A lawsuit aimed at punishing critics of Elon Musk’s X will go forward, thanks to a ruling from a judge with a financial interest in Musk’s success.

On Thursday, Judge Reed O’Connor denied a motion to dismiss X’s lawsuit against Media Matters For America. The suit was filed in Texas last year and alleges that MMFA should be held legally liable for negative reporting that caused companies to pull ads from X. O’Connor dismissed objections that it was filed in a state where neither X nor MMFA is headquartered, saying the fact that MMFA “targeted” two X Texas-based advertisers — Oracle and AT&T — by mentioning them in articles and interviews is sufficient. (X is based in California, though its current San Francisco office will soon close and Musk has discussed moving to Texas.)

O’Connor also determined that X’s claims had enough merit to proceed in court. Which is, to put it gently, concerning.

Unlike your standard libel lawsuit, X doesn’t say MMFA made a factually incorrect claim; it outright admits that X served ads against racist or otherwise offensive content. Instead, it argues that this situation is rare and the authors “deliberately misused the X platform to induce the algorithm to pair racist content with popular advertisers’ brands.” What constitutes misuse of a platform? Using accounts that had been active for more than a month, following the accounts of racists and major brands, and “endlessly scrolling and refreshing” to get new ads. In other words, X isn’t suing MMFA for lying — it’s suing them for seeking out bad things about a business and not reporting those things in a sufficiently positive light.

This is a painfully tortured argument aimed at establishing that private citizens pushing private businesses to avoid buying ads on a website is illegal censorship. Contra numerous promises that Musk is a “free speech absolutist,” it’s leaning on the legal system to shut down criticism instead of simply answering it with more facts. The ruling doesn’t technically agree with X’s claims; it says MMFA presents a “compelling alternative version” of events by pointing out it’s not lying. But O’Connor says it’s not his job to “choose among competing inferences,” so both versions can get argued at a later stage. MMFA declined to comment on the ruling.

Drawing a weak case out is an unmitigated win for X and Musk, who have effectively infinite legal resources. It’s a win for the Musk-favored strategy of forum shopping. It’s a loss for MMFA, which laid off staffers in the wake of this suit and two equally specious investigations by Republican state attorneys general sympathetic to Musk, both of which have been blocked by other judges.

It’s also coming a few weeks after NPR reported that O’Connor holds between $15,001 and $50,000 worth of stock in Tesla, one of Musk’s other companies. The judge recused himself from a lawsuit Musk filed against advertisers who stopped placing ads on X, but apparently because he owned stock in one of those advertisers. O’Connor (who benefits when Musk’s famously intertwined network of companies prospers) flatly dismissed the argument that Musk (who owns X) or Tesla (which according to a separate lawsuit sent “volunteers” to moonlight at X) has any meaningful legal connection to X.

It’s a striking contrast with the outcome of yet another lawsuit that X filed against its critics. In California, Judge Charles Breyer dismissed a complaint against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, where X used different but equally tortured legal reasoning to attack claims that it wasn’t addressing hateful conduct. “Although X Corp accuses CCDH of trying ‘to censor viewpoints’ … it is X Corp that demands ‘at least tens of millions of dollars’ in damages — presumably enough to torpedo the operations of a small nonprofit — because of the views expressed in the nonprofit’s publications,” it reads, in an observation that could apply equally to MMFA. Elsewhere, the judge is even blunter: “this case is about punishing the defendants for their speech.”

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Image: The Verge

A senior CrowdStrike executive will testify before the House Homeland Security Committee next month about the IT outage that grounded planes and workplaces to a halt globally on July 19th.
Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike’s senior vice president of counter adversary operations, has agreed to appear before the panel on September 24th at 2PM ET, the committee announced. Committee leaders had previously called on CEO George Kurtz to testify, but he’s not currently listed as a witness.
In a statement, Committee Chair Mark Green (R-TN) said that while he’d hoped Kurtz could attend, “I look forward to hearing testimony from Mr. Meyers, who CrowdStrike assured was the appropriate witness to discuss the details of the outage. Americans deserve to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation CrowdStrike is taking to avoid the cascading impacts of outages like this across sectors.”

Green said in a separate statement that the flawed software update that impacted 8.5 million Windows machines “…demonstrates the urgency of promoting cyber hygiene and resiliency amid increased threats,” and that the “growing reliance on interconnected IT systems has expanded the risk surface.”
Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), who chairs the subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection, said in a statement that the hearing will be “an important opportunity to learn more about what steps the company has taken in the aftermath of the outage to ensure it doesn’t happen again.” Though the outage wasn’t the result of a cyberattack, Garbarino said adversaries likely watched the event and “learned how a faulty software update can trigger cascading effects on our critical infrastructure.”

Image: The Verge

A senior CrowdStrike executive will testify before the House Homeland Security Committee next month about the IT outage that grounded planes and workplaces to a halt globally on July 19th.

Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike’s senior vice president of counter adversary operations, has agreed to appear before the panel on September 24th at 2PM ET, the committee announced. Committee leaders had previously called on CEO George Kurtz to testify, but he’s not currently listed as a witness.

In a statement, Committee Chair Mark Green (R-TN) said that while he’d hoped Kurtz could attend, “I look forward to hearing testimony from Mr. Meyers, who CrowdStrike assured was the appropriate witness to discuss the details of the outage. Americans deserve to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation CrowdStrike is taking to avoid the cascading impacts of outages like this across sectors.”

Green said in a separate statement that the flawed software update that impacted 8.5 million Windows machines “…demonstrates the urgency of promoting cyber hygiene and resiliency amid increased threats,” and that the “growing reliance on interconnected IT systems has expanded the risk surface.”

Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), who chairs the subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection, said in a statement that the hearing will be “an important opportunity to learn more about what steps the company has taken in the aftermath of the outage to ensure it doesn’t happen again.” Though the outage wasn’t the result of a cyberattack, Garbarino said adversaries likely watched the event and “learned how a faulty software update can trigger cascading effects on our critical infrastructure.”

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