‘Star Wars: Episode IX’ loses its director

Red Carpet Report on Mingle Media TV/Flickr

Trouble is brewing yet again at Disney and Lucasfilm. The upcoming last film to the current Star Wars trilogy just lost its director Colin Trevorrow. Disney issued a statement about the news saying, “Lucasfilm and Colin Trevorrow have mutually chosen to part ways on Star Wars: Episode IX. Colin has been a wonderful collaborator throughout the development process, but we have all come to the conclusion that our visions for the project differ. We wish Colin the best and will be sharing more information about the film soon.” The company has yet to name a replacement. According to Variety’s sources, the split was caused by differences regarding script treatment. The news comes out a month after Wonder screenwriter Jack Thorne was brought on by Disney to polish the film’s script. Trevorrow and his writing partner Derek Connolly were the ones who penned the most recent draft of the script.

Disney announced that Trevorrow was working on Episode IX back at the August 2015 D23 Expo. He was fresh off directing the hugely successful Jurassic World film. Episode IX is expected to hit theatres two years from now on May 24^th with filming expected to start early next year. Whether this news will affect the schedule, we can’t say yet. Trevorrow joins the likes of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who were booted from the Han Solo spinoff, and Fantastic Four director Josh Trank, who was supposed to direct a standalone Star Wars spinoff.

Samsung patent shows us nearly edge-to-edge display

Samsung isn’t a stranger to the bezel-less design trend sweeping the smartphone market. You could even say they’re one of the pioneers for it. But it looks like they’re not nearly done shrinking down those bezels, or at least this design patent makes us say they’re at least thinking about shrinking it down further. GalaxyClub.nl discovered a design patent the company filed with the Korea Intellectual Property Rights Information Service (KIPRIS) in May 2016. And as the diagram above shows, the bezels are almost non-existent with just a small notch on top that will most likely house things like the camera and speaker and whatever sensor is needed for the front panel.

However, we don’t know if this design patent will ever make it to a device. Companies will file different patents but these don’t exactly translate into actual product. But we can’t say we aren’t hoping they actually consider making this. What about you? Is this something you’d want?

Source: Android Authority

KFC restaurant concept in China lets you pay using your smile

There will come a day when you just need to smile at a camera and your meal will be paid for. At least it looks like we’re heading in that direction. A more health-conscious KFC concept restaurant called KPRO in Hangzhou, China has started to use Alipay facial recognition payment system that will let you pay for your meal with a smile and your mobile phone number. The kiosk that takes the orders will scan your face and require you to enter your mobile phone number to safeguard against fraud.

The system, which is aptly called Smile to Pay, is developed by Alibaba Group affiliate Ant Financial Services Group. According to the company, they’ve been improving the technology since the beta version was launched by Alibaba founder Jack Ma in 2015 at CEBIT in Germany. While it’s a first service of its kind, using facial recognition for payment services isn’t an exclusive to Ant. The likes of Samsung, PayPal, NEC, and MasterCard have also been testing out this technology.

Source: Alizila

Netflix brings HDR support to the Samsung Galaxy Note8 and Sony Xperia XZ1

It’s a very exclusive club. There were only three devices that supported Netflix HDR, namely the LG G6, LG V30, and Sony Xperia XZ Premium. Now the streaming service adds two more: the newly launched Samsung Galaxy Note8 and Sony Xperia XZ1. This feature promises to bring life-like images to your Netflix viewing. For mobile, it first became available on the LG G6 in May. This particular device is also the only one with Dolby Vision standard.

There isn’t anything you need to enable to get the feature to work. All you have to do is have a Netflix plan, one of these devices, and the latest version of the app and your phone’s latest firmware.