There’s more than a little bit of Apple in The Force Awakens, and that’s why it works.
The new Star Wars movie is good. But it’s not revolutionary. Its plot is a loose beat-by-beat remake of A New Hope, with a little bit of Empire thrown in at the end. There’s a planet-sized star base, the Millennium Falcon, and a cute, round droid on a mission to find the last remaining Jedi. It even starts on a desert planet.
Find out how to be creative, on-demand.
You’ve been invited to a brainstorming session, but you’re not feeling particularly creative. Find out brainstorming hacks such as whether you should come with ideas or wing it in the room, whether you should share your ideas openly or filter some out, and what frame of mind you should be in as you begin. Do any of these work for you? Let us know at #WorkSmart.
These were the biggest stories of the year on Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat.
This year saw a number of events—the terrorist attacks in Paris, earthquakes in Nepal, and continued police brutality—taking over the conversation across social media. Here’s our roundup of the news moments that dominated Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat in 2015:
Google is reportedly planning to launch a new messaging service with Siri-style assistants just a text away.
Google is planning a new messaging app and a host of artificial intelligence-powered services that will be accessible through it, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Indian telecom regulators have halted Facebook’s Free Basics program while net neutrality issues are sorted out.
Indian telecom regulators have reportedly halted Facebook’s “Free Basics” mobile Internet service, formerly known as Internet.org, over net neutrality concerns.
The federal government has reportedly joined the investigation of the hack—which experts say could be the work of spies here or abroad.
As researchers uncover more about two vulnerabilities recently patched in some Juniper Networks firewalls, the security community continues to speculate about who inserted what Juniper called “unauthorized code” into the company’s firewall operating system ScreenOS.
Elon Musk’s reusable rockets are paving the way for potentially affordable space travel some day.
Outside the realm of Star Wars and other science fiction, landing a rocket is tricky business. Lots can go wrong between launch and landing—anything from missing the target to exploding midair. Just ask Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX went through four failed attempts before finally landing its Falcon 9 intact on Monday.
Either that, or the nightmare before Christmas.
The Google-owned robotics company Boston Dynamics delivered a unique holiday greeting this week: a video of the company’s robots pulling a (human) Santa in a sleigh.
Smartphones and a profusion of connected gadgets will be prime hunting ground for hackers. And Apple products are not immune.
It’s hard to know what the future will bring—unless you’re talking about online security. “We rarely see things that just sort of appear out of nowhere,” says Ryan Olson, intelligence director at enterprise security company Palo Alto Networks.
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