‘Assassin’s Creed’ to get an animated adaptation

Ubisoft

Following the disappointing release of the Assassin’s Creed movie with Michael Fassbender, Ubisoft is trying another approach to adapt the game franchise into another medium. This time, they’re trying for an animation and it looks like it might be in good hands. According to producer Adi Shankar, he’ll be working on the animated version of Assassin’s Creed after he finishes work with Netflix’s Castlevania. It’s said to be an “original story” but he does have a tons of material to choose from if he takes inspiration from the game franchise itself. We don’t know what to expect with the series but we want to be cautiously optimistic about it.

Source: Engadget

Chinese company behind the ‘Straddling Bus’ concept is being investigated by authorities

China Xinhua News

You might have seen around the internet before photos of the Transit Elevated Bus (TEB), a concept that came from China where the “straddling bus” looked a lot like a moving tunnel. It was being developed with the end goal of reducing the fuel consumption and carbon emissions of the country. But it looks like the entire thing was a scam. Beijing police is investigating the company behind TEB for alleged illegal fundraising. Over 30 people associated with Huaying Kailai, an online financing platform that was selling an investment product to help raise money from individual investors to help develop the bus, are being held by authorities. The police are looking to recover the money taken from the individual investors, which is estimated to be around US$1.3 billion. It’s said that 72 of those investors have already filed suits against the company.

TEB did its first road test run back in August on a 300-meter track in the northeastern port of Qinghuangdao city. But after that it’s just become a giant roadblock. Local authorities already plan to remove the tracks by the end of the month.

Source: Quartz + Digital Trends

Photobucket-hosted images will now cost you US$400 a year to share on third-party sites

 

If you’re one of the many users of the internet in the early 2000s, you were probably reliant on Photobucket. The image hosting service used to have free, ad-supported accounts that will let you share those images around the web. It was attractive to small retailers because of that feature. Now, though, the service seems to have “taken hostage” the images of its users as the service quietly changed its terms of service. The change has affected some images put up on shopping sites like Amazon, EBay, and Etsy, as well as many forums and blogs.

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This might be what the Moto X4 will look like

We’ve gotten a whiff of what the upcoming Moto X4 is supposedly going to be packing when it is rumoured comes out late this year. Evan Blass (@evleaks) claims it’ll run on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 chip, 4GB of RAM, 64GB internal storage with microSD expansion, and a 3,000mAh battery. It’ll also reportedly have a Full HD display (no word yet on size), IP68 certification, and a dual-camera setup at the rear with 8-megapixel and 12-megapixel sensors as well as a 16-megapixel front-facing camera. On top of that there will also be a fingerprint sensor that is capable of recognizing gestures.

Now, Blass updates his story on the Moto X4 to add a photo of what it looks like. All gold and supposedly an aluminum-wrapped device, you can see the dual-camera setup at the back and minimal bezels to the side of the device. If this is the only color the phone will be available in, it’s certainly a flashy one. What do you think? Is this a device you’d want to get?