Mike Murphy

Of all the problems that 21st century life causes, getting into someone else’s Uber is up there with matching with a co-worker on Tinder, or accidentally opening someone’s Facebook message when you didn’t actually want to respond. Now Uber wants to help you avoid the awkwardness of getting into the wrong white Toyota Prius when you’re waiting for your ride—and prevent this kind of confusion from adding to wait times for everyone else.

The first Star Wars film in a decade is expected to be released in China in January—about a month after the film’s general release—and the country has gotten its own version of the film poster. Instead of just translating the text, some stylistic choices appear to have been made for the local audience.

In the near future, if analysts and media reports are to be believed, every object in our lives will be connected to the internet in some capacity. We’ll be in constant contact with our homes, clothing, cars, and offices, receiving information and giving out commands on the fly. Our ovens will start dinner when we’re on our way home, and our fridges will restock the milk when it’s running low. But even when the internet is everywhere, there are some places it probably doesn’t need to be. Some activities just don’t require the internet.

It always seems that the printer runs out of paper at the least opportune moment. Just when you need to print a boarding pass, or a presentation you’re giving in five minutes, there’s not a sheet of paper to be found anywhere. But Epson wants to change that with a new machine that can turn trash cans full of used paper back into new sheets.

Nearly six years after Steve Jobs called for its demise, and a year after YouTube put a nail in its coffin, Adobe announced Nov. 30 that Flash will be going away—although for now, in name only. The company will rebrand its animation-building tool as Adobe Animate next year to better reflect the types of projects its users create in what’s currently known as Adobe Flash Professional.

Indie artists love obsolete media. Vinyl record sales are at their highest level in years, hipsters are buying cassette tapes again, and people still seem to buy reel-to-reel players. Now, a new album from a Japanese company is on an even rarer medium: a Nintendo Famicom cartridge.

Sometimes you need a new pair of shoes right now, and Amazon wants to make sure you can get them. The online retailer, which has been working on a drone delivery service for roughly two years, announced a new drone design on Nov. 29.

What does the little green light above a camera mean to you? Does it mean your camera is on and recording? Does it mean that when the light is off, the camera is off? That’s the general rule, but it’s hard to know just what’s going on with the cameras in our laptops, webcams, and smart TVs when we’re not actively using them. A new report suggests that the Nest Cam could potentially still run even after users have switched them off.

Space: The final frontier for stuffing.

Wedding photographers, be warned. In 2014, a couple from Tennessee strapped a GoPro on their dog, Ryder, and used her as the de-facto wedding photographer. Ryder puttered around the couple as they prepared for the big day, doing things that dogs do, like shaking themselves off, looking at random things and following people around. It turns out that actually can make for a pretty great wedding video.

If there’s one thing humans fear more than the impending onslaught of drones, it’s sharks. Now, we’ve found a way to pit them against each other.

Blue Origin, the space company started by billionaire and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, is finally catching up to Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the next generation rockets business.

With the holidays round the corner, as many as 1 million people could receive drones as gifts. That’s going to be a lot of drones vying for their piece of airspace. In a bid to mitigate any potential disasters, the US government wants to have drone owners register their drones, and asked the Federal Aviation Administration to make recommendations on how to implement a registration system.

We may soon have categorical evidence that living in San Francisco is a terrible idea.

In the relentless push to ensure that you don’t go five minutes without seeing something Star Wars-related before The Force Awakens is released worldwide in December, Disney has teamed up with Google to allow users to infuse a Star Wars theme into Google’s apps. But, like all Jedi before them, users must choose whether they want to join the light or dark sides of the Force—the hokey religion that comes with ancient weapons that are no match for a good blaster.

There’s a buzz in the air: The mad rush for holiday shopping is just around the corner. According to the US government, Americans will give up to 1 million drones as presents this holiday season, making them one of the hottest gifts not made by Lego or Apple. Quartz has compiled a list of some of the best consumer drones on the market. Whether you or someone you know is looking to get into drone flying, or upgrade their current setup, Quartz has the drone for you:

Breaking up is hard to do, but if you’re struggling through the end of a relationship, Facebook will be there for you. The social network announced today (Nov. 19) that it will now let users “take a break” from seeing posts about their ex, which is probably the same phrase that started that conversation in the first place.

Driving in traffic is insufferable. The stop-starting, the stress, the other drivers trying to cut ahead for no reason. For many, it’s an unavoidable part of their daily commute. But Volvo wants us to embrace the commute. The company announced Nov. 18 that it’s planning to have an autonomous vehicle on the streets of Sweden by 2017.

Once a year, America becomes a nationwide battle royale, with parents literally fighting each other in the aisles of big-box stores to make sure they don’t miss out on the “it” toys for their children. But they no longer need to worry about that, thanks to IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence system.

The robots have learned how to kill. Thankfully, for now, that killing is confined to weeds in fields. A new robot from Bosch, the German company best known for making power tools and car parts, can travel through crop fields, learn what weeds look like, and crush them.

Reports of Google+’s demise are greatly exaggerated. Google today (Nov. 17) announced that it will be redesigning the social network that looked dead in the water earlier this year after it started stripping out key features into standalone products and removed the need to have a Google+ account to use the rest of Google’s services.

Apparently even mass transit systems do hand-me-downs. Some of London’s old Underground subway trains have been sold to a train company, Vivarail, that’s transforming them into diesel trains for use on train lines in towns in the north.

The company behind one of the most annoying crazes of the 90s and 00s—the Razor micro-scooter—has its sights set on annoying a new generation of parents, just in time for the holidays. Razor, according to BuzzFeed, has acquired the rights to Inventist’s Hovertrax—the company with the US patent for the two-wheeled, self-balancing scooter things that the internet has taken to calling hoverboards, even though they don’t hover.

He definitely remembers putting the keys by the front door when he got home last night. But they’re not there. So where could they be? He presses a button and all of the sudden he can see it clear as day—he never took them out of his jacket pocket, so they must be upstairs.