Star Wars TV show had more than 40 episodes written before it was scrapped

Before The Mandalorian, there was another Star Wars TV show in the works: the fabled Underworld, which was in various stages of development for years before vanishing when Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012. Now, Battlestar Galactica creator Ronald D Moore has discussed what it was like to work on the show, and explained that around 40-48 episodes had been completely written before George Lucas went off to figure out how to make it.

Moore told Collider that a team of writers, including some outside the US, met up at Skywalker Ranch every six to eight weeks with Lucas to break story ideas. Lucas would then offer feedback on the scripts before writers went off for another draft. “It didn’t happen ultimately, we wrote I’d say somewhere in the 40-something, 48 scripts, something like that… the theory was George wanted to write all the scripts and get ‘em all done and then he was gonna go off and figure out how to produce them, because he wanted to do a lot of cutting edge technological stuff with CG and virtual sets and so on. And so he had a whole new thing he wanted to accomplish.”

Lucas ultimately ended up selling Lucasfilm “a year or something after” the writing was complete, according to Moore. 

Ambitious plans

Lucas instructed the writers to be ambitious with how they work. 

“It was an extraordinary undertaking for someone to do. I don’t know anyone else that would really take that on… At the time, George just said ‘write them as big as you want, and we’ll figure it out later.’ So we really had no [budget] constraints. We were all experienced television and feature writers, so we all kind of new what was theoretically possible on a production budget.” The show was heavy on action and big set pieces, way outside of the league of TV at the time.

Sadly, it wasn’t to be, but it’s not impossible it could resurface down the line as Disney tries to get the most out of the Star Wars universe. Underworld was due to be set between Episodes III and IV.

The Mandalorian does indeed pioneer one thing that Lucas was particularly interested in: virtual sets. The various locations in the show are brought to life in Unreal Engine, rather than via on-location shoots. The series still isn’t cheap to make, though: a THR report says The Mandalorian costs $15 million an episode. That would’ve been astronomical 10 years ago, around the time Underworld was still in the works. 

What happened to Star Wars Underworld?

Test footage for Star Wars Underworld was discovered a few months ago, and gave a flavor of what to expect (what if Star Wars had Blade Runner cars and suicide bombers?). 

After Disney purchased Lucasfilm, the idea of revisiting Star Wars Underworld was at least explored. Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy said in 2015 that they still had the scripts, and that “[they’ve] spent a lot of time, reading through the material that he developed is something we very much would like to explore”. Nothing much has really been said about it in the meantime. 

This was long before Disney Plus, though, which has instead favored shorter eight or ten-episode bursts of Star Wars-themed TV shows rather than longer seasons. US TV itself, too, has moved further away from 22-episode seasons in the meantime.

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XRSpace VR headset wants to make Ready Player One’s virtual world a reality

XRSpace is aiming to revolutionize the virtual reality space this year with its new state of the art self-contained VR headset, which harnesses the power of 5G. Introducing the XRSpace Mova.

Speaking at the XRSpace global announcement event, former HTC head Peter Chou explained that he believes smartphones are limited in the way the devices allow humans to interact with one another. Emojis, pictures, text and even video aren’t enough to capture how we truly feel. So Chou set out to create a social reality where people can interact physically and virtually, in a way that is more similar to normal human interactions. 

Chou also touched on the problems with VR in general, claiming that most regular consumers haven’t tried VR due to the many barriers that are preventing widespread adoption. He believes that people think the technology is gimmicky, complicated and that the perception is that VR is only relevant to gamers and B2B applications.

XRSpace hopes to solve these issues by making VR a more day-to-day experience, much like how we use our phones. With this in mind, the $599 XRSpace Mova VR headset (about £480/AU$890) was designed to be small, light and powerful with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 inside. It has a refresh rate of 90Hz to help reduce dizziness and users can use their hands to navigate, a rare occurrence in the VR space. With no controller necessary, the XRSpace Mova headset lets users virtually handshake, high-five and play basketball. It picks up the same types of hand gestures you’d use in the real world, so should be very intuitive. 

A virtual playground

XRSpace Manova

Taking a page from the film Ready Player One, Mova will also support an exclusive virtual world that reminds us of Sony’s failed social experiment, PlayStation Home. The space known as ‘Manova’ will feature all sorts of public and private locations for users to explore, such as a cinema where you can watch films. There will also be fitness classes, a place to meet friends and plenty of commercial opportunities for companies to take advantage of, such as Rovia’s Angry Birds VR game. 

In Manova, consumers will embody virtual avatars, which can be made by simply taking a selfie. You can then customize your avatar’s appearance, although they’re not exactly the most original-looking design we’ve seen. 

Noticeably, we never saw a live demonstration of the headset in action. Instead, the audience was treated to a number of videos that merely seemed like concept trailers and a lot of grand promises. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the XRSpace headset won’t deliver when it launches in the third quarter of 2020, but it’s best to remain skeptical for now.

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Billions of Thai internet records leak online

Thailand’s large mobile network has taken down one of its databases following an alleged data breach.

The leaky database was thought to be revealing the internet records of millions of Thai citizens online in real time, with around 8.3 billion records thought to be compromised.

The breach was uncovered on May 7 by security researcher Justin Paine, who discovered an open ElasticSearch database online which appeared to be controlled by AWN, a subsidiary of Thailand’s largest GSM mobile phone operator, Advanced Info Service (AIS). The database contained DNS queries and Netflow data, using which it would be all too easy to map a user’s internet activity. 

Paine reported the open database to AIS , but after a week passed with no response, he alerted ThaiCERT, Thailand’s national computer emergency response team, which in turn contacted AIS. By May 22, the database was inaccessible.

Paine told TechCrunch that the kind of records present in the database can only come from an entity that can monitor internet traffic as it flows across the network. However, it is difficult to ascertain whether the database belongs to the internet provider or one of its subsidiaries, or to an enterprise customer on AIS’s network.

 Thai data breach

The affected ElasticSearch database is now secure, but billions of internet usage records of the Thai public were publicly accessible from around May 1, six days before Paine discovered it, and 21 days before the database was secured again. 

As of May 21,  8,336,189,132 documents were stored in the database, amounting to over 4TB of internet usage data.

AIS confirmed it owned the data in a statement apologising for the breach.

“We can confirm that a small amount of non-personal, non-critical information was exposed for a limited period in May during a scheduled test,” AIS spokesperson Sudaporn Watcharanisakorn said.

“All of the data related to Internet usage patterns and did not contain personal information that could be used to identify any customer. On this occasion we acknowledge that our procedures fell short, for which we sincerely apologise.” 

While DNS queries do not carry private or sensitive data like passwords or messages, they can identify the user’s websites or apps. Exposing this data can pose a serious security risk to individuals in high-risk professions, such as journalists, politicians and police workers.

Thailand, which has some of the strictest censorship laws in Asia, has also passed internet laws granting authorities wide-ranging access to the internet data of its citizens.

  • Keep your online privacy secure with the best VPN services of 2020

Via: TechCrunch

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Google Chrome’s dark mode is getting even darker – here’s how to try it now

Google is planning a major update to Chrome for mobile devices, which will apply a dark theme to search results when the browser is in dark mode.

Chrome’s dark mode gives your eyes a welcome break, particularly when you’re browsing the web at night, but there’s a problem: it only changes the color of the browser interface itself. When you use Google Search (which is how most Chrome users interact with the web), the results page is still dazzling white.

Now, as Android Police reports, Google is preparing an update that will rectify that problem, changing the color of search results to match your preferred browser theme.

This is a welcome development, and one that comes as little surprise since Google made the same update to its standalone Google Search app last week. If you have your phone’s system-wide dark mode enabled, the app will automatically switch to a matching design to stop you squinting.

The power of the dark side

If you have an Android device, you can try the new, darker search results for yourself by installing Chrome Canary and activating a flag to enable the feature.

The flag (a control that allows you to activate new or experimental options) has been visible for some time, but it’s only just become functional. To enable it, go to chrome://flags in Chrome Canary and search for the flag ‘Show darkened search pages on Android’. Click the switch to enable the option, then restart the browser. 

It’s worth noting that the new design might go through a few changes before it’s added to the release version of Chrome, so don’t worry if a few elements look a little strange or hard to read at the moment. We expect the dark results page will arrive on iOS soon as well. We’ll keep you updated once it does.

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Nintendo Switch’s long-awaited Metroid Prime Trilogy re-release rumored for June

Despite now being over three years old, the Nintendo Switch still hasn’t got a new Metroid game, with the franchise currently only represented by Nintendo Switch Online versions of the classics Metroid and Super Metroid. Could three more classic Metroid games be joining their ranks?

That’s the word from persistent rumors suggesting that the Metroid Prime Trilogy is coming to Nintendo Switch.

First releasing on the Nintendo GameCube, followed up by a motion-controlled Wii remastered trilogy package, VG247 has spotted a Swedish listing for a Switch port of the trilogy, with a tentative release date of June 19 stated. The listing has since been removed.

Metroid mania

It’s just the latest in a series of retailer leaks pointing to a port of the Wii version of the trilogy headed to Switch, and given Nintendo’s recent moves, it seems more legitimate than ever before.

This month also saw Nintendo make a surprise drop of a new Paper Mario game, revealing it mere months before its release date. With E3 2020 cancelled, and with it a rumored Nintendo Direct, it’s possible that Nintendo is now planning to make more surprise game drop announcements, the Metroid Prime Trilogy for Switch potentially being one of them.

With the long-awaited, much-troubled Metroid Prime 4 seemingly no closer to completion, releasing the Metroid Prime Trilogy on Switch would go some way to calming fans still waiting for a true sequel.

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AirPods 3 could use the power of light to monitor your health

AirPods 3 rumors are streaming in, with the latest tip to reach us suggesting that Apple is planning to fit ambient light sensors to future versions of the AirPods – sensors which could make them much more useful as health monitoring devices, akin to the best fitness headphones in the world.

A report in DigiTimes (via MacRumors) passes on information from the Apple supply chain that production of these ambient light sensors is being ramped up, quite possibly to get ready for some brand new wireless earbuds.

There are a lot of dots to join here, and there isn’t necessarily just one way to join them – but that said, it would make a lot of sense for Apple to want to boost the fitness tracking capabilities of future AirPod models, much as it did with the Apple Watch.

Indeed, we’ve heard several rumors along these lines before. Health and fitness is a big focus for Apple, with the aforementioned Apple Watch featuring all kinds of sensors and features to make your life a wholesome and well-balanced one.

We’ll have to wait and see whether these light sensors will come with the rumored AirPods 3, the AirPods Pro Lite, or the over-ear AirPods Studio – in any case, the next big Apple event will take place on June 22 with WWDC 2020, so we might not be waiting long.

Light up, light up

Apple analysts have also previously weighed in with predictions that the Apple AirPods would gradually get extra fitness-related sensors over time. The more data the Apple Health app can get the better, from Apple’s perspective.

Light can be shone through blood vessels to gauge heart rate and pulse rate, and to measure blood oxygen levels – the amount of light that passes through can be interpreted to determine these and other measurements.

As MacRumors points out though, the AirPods might need something of a redesign for this to work. It’s possible that the technology will have to wait until a new version of the PowerBeats Pro, with their attached ear clips, reach the market.

This is perhaps something to look out for in the 3rd-gen AirPods, tipped to be arriving this year or in 2021. Don’t be surprised if enhanced health and fitness tracking are among the key features included to tempt people to upgrade.

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Huawei might soon have a new top-end smartwatch to rival the Apple Watch 6

Huawei has plenty of smartwatch lines, with its Watch GT series and the Magic Watch line of its Honor sub-brand, but it seems the company might be about to add another range to that roster with a new top-end smartwatch.

This is according to Chinese trademarks spotted by MyFixGuide, which show Huawei is considering a product called the ‘Huawei Mate Watch’. This seems to be based on the Mate name which houses the company’s top-end products, such as the Huawei Mate 30 Pro smartphone.

‘Huawei Mate Watch’ then could be a new top-end smartwatch (not a scheme whereby it studies your friends). Huawei’s current wearables like the Huawei Watch GT 2 are reasonably affordable devices, and going by this new name it’s possible the company wants to rival the upcoming Apple Watch 6 with a truly premium device.

What makes a premium watch?

A criticism we frequently level at Huawei and Honor watches is the lack of third-party apps, and a deficit of lifestyle apps and customization options. The addition of some of these features would help elevate the Huawei Mate Watch.

However, beyond that and a few obvious features like NFC it’s not clear how the Huawei Mate Watch will build on the Watch GT formula to make for a device that’s much more premium.

If such a wearable is in the works though then we might find out soon. The most likely release date is around September or October – that’s when we’re expecting to see the Huawei Mate 40 smartphone, and it would make sense for the company to launch its Mate smartwatch along with the similarly-named smartphones.

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