The first trailer for Luc Besson’s Valerian promises a dazzling space opera romp

A teaser trailer for Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets has arrived, and it looks as though it’ll be 2017’s most amazing-looking thrill ride through space.

Based on a series of French graphic novels Valérian and Laureline, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is the latest film from Luc Besson, who’s best known for The Fifth Elementand Lucy. The film will follow Valerian and Laureline, a pair of government operatives who are sent to the city of Alpha on a mission that will help save the human race.

Set to the Beatles’ "Because," we’re treated to a montage of busy and fantastic scenes. There’s spaceships approaching bustling cities, flying robots etching walls with lasers, amazing-looking aliens, and some great looking moments as the two characters escape from danger all around. It’s an eye-bursting trailer, and it looks absolutely incredible. Let's hope the film is just as good.

It certainly looks as though this is a movie that Fifth Element fans will really love, and the visuals recall other spectacular-looking films like James Cameron’s Avatar and The Wachowskis siblings’ Jupiter Ascending.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets will hit theaters on July 21st, 2017.

Instagram confirms that it’s working on live video

Instagram has confirmed that it’s working on adding a live video feature to its app. CEO Kevin Systrom discussed the company’s live video ambitions in an interview with the Financial Times today. This comes just a few weeks after we got our first glimpse of the feature being tested thanks to Russian news site T Journal.

“Live is really exciting for us. I think it can enhance what we’re doing,” Systrom is quoted as saying. “If I’m trying to strengthen relationships with someone I love, them streaming video to me live would be an amazing way to be closer to them.”

ANOTHER PLAYER IN THE LIVE VIDEO ARMS RACE

Systrom didn’t offer any details on when the live video feature might be available, or exactly how it will work. Based on the screenshots in the T Journal report, though, it appears that live streams from people you follow on Instagram will appear highlighted in red at the top of the app in the “stories” carousel.

Instagram added those 24-hour Snapchat-style stories back in August, and at the time it was a big moment in the ongoing arms race of features that’s happening between visual media apps like Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and YouTube. But live video figures to play an increasingly important role in that arms race going forward. Facebook is extremely bullish on the concept, and the company boasts that its users watch live videos more often and for longer periods of time than non-live videos. So it’s no surprise that Instagram — which was bought by Facebook in 2012 — will soon offer live video as well.

You can now scan and measure your entire home with an iPad attachment

Augmented reality startup Occipital first burst on the scene in 2013 with a successful Kickstarter campaign for the Structure Sensor — a strip of cameras and sensors you strap to your iPad that can be used to scan, measure, and project things into the world around you. Today the company is pushing that tech forward by releasing its first iOS app called Canvas. It’s an app that is capable of capturing and processing 3D scans of entire rooms, and it will even let you take accurate measurements inside that scan. Think of it like digital measuring tape, only more powerful.

“One of the examples that we showed in our Kickstarter video back in the day was a person scanning and measuring our entire house,” Occipital cofounder Jeff Powers tells The Verge. While the original Structure Sensor was technically capable of this, Powers says that the dozens of apps developers have made for Structure Sensor using the software development kit have dealt more with small-scale interactions. “Making the jump from object-level things to entire spaces like rooms or homes has proven to be a pretty big leap, especially for a third-party developer to pull off.”

CANVAS MAKES THOUSANDS OF MEASUREMENTS PER SECOND WITH SUB-MILLIMETER ACCURACY

So Occipital went ahead and made the room-scale app themselves. Canvas, Powers says, is “all about letting a consumer or professional digitize a space.” You can use it to create a three-dimensional scan of an entire room, or even your whole home if you want. Canvas will also let you make measurements within that scan, so you could theoretically measure for an entire room’s worth of furniture or construction without ever picking up a measuring tape or a pencil.

The app does this by performing tens of thousands of measurements on your iPad, and it leans on the Structure Sensor’s sub-millimeter accuracy to create this scale 3D model. The scans can even be converted into CAD formats, allowing professionals to separate out layers like walls, windows, and ceilings for more complex redesign projects. (That process involves a mix of algorithms and Occipital employees working with the data, and happens over the course of 48 hours, but the company says the goal is to eventually automate everything.)

Powers says the company has sold about 50,000 Structure Sensors since its debut, and he expects Canvas to be used less by general consumers and more by professionals like contractors or interior designers. But Occipital hopes that Structure Sensor owners will find more casual uses for canvas, like measuring a piece of furniture at a store.

Canvas is available on iOS today for free, and Occipital is also selling a new wide angle lens attachment for the $379 Structure Sensor that will improve the motion tracking for room-scale scans. The lens costs $39 on its own, but Occipital will also sell it in a bundle with the Structure Sensor for $399.

Periscope will let you broadcast directly to your biggest fans

Periscope may have helped jumpstart the live video trend, but until now it’s been difficult to specify which audience direct your content toward without blindly going live for everyone to see, or manually inviting users to a particular stream. Today’s update will give you a more informed look at who to share your broadcast with and creating Groups to accommodate that.

If you’re looking to target your biggest followers, Periscope now shows you a list of “Superfans,” or 10 of your most engaged viewers based on whether they follow your account, and how often they watch and comment on your videos You can even see a ranking of your Superfans from numbers one to 10.

In addition to seeing who their Superfans are, you can also see which account has you as their Superfan... so don’t get creepy, because Periscope knows.

Building from this, Periscope now lets you create your own Groups so you can reach communities with specific interests, such as your online fans, Superfans, or in-real-life friends. The idea is you can broadcast directly to a group of your most loyal followers to build relationships with them or share something exclusively to a specific subset. For reporters and bloggers, that’ll be helpful to cut down feed clutter between work-related broadcasts and personal ones.

Periscope is also adding a small update to its web viewer with the ability to browse suggested through videos and comment or send hearts. Previously, you were only able to watch the streams.

The Superfan and Group update is live now on both Android and iOS.

You can actually order this MSI VR backpack if you have $1,999

My vigil has been long and lonely, but finally there's a VR backback that can be acquired for cold hard cash. MSI's VR One PC-as-a-backpack, announced back in May and refined in September, just went up for sale on Newegg. The PC, which includes an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 card, a 2.7GHz Core i7 processor, 256GB SSD, and 16GB of RAM, has a November 30th ship date and costs $1,999.Dual, hot-swappable batteries (and, of course, the backpack straps) make the machine portable, though obviously you'll need something like the HTC Vive to live the truly untethered room-scale VR life you were always promised. If you have an extra $300 to spend, a GTX 1070 version with a 512GB SSD for $2,299 is also available, with the same ship date.

Of course, MSI isn't the only manufacturer building a VR backpack. Zotac and HP are also supposed to (hopefully) ship something soon.

The Russian DNC hackers are now targeting think tanks and NGOs

The same group that hacked and leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee during the campaign is focusing on a new set of targets, according to new research from security firm Volexity reported by Brian Krebs and Motherboard. The group, dubbed “The Dukes” by Volexity researchers, has been sending malware-laced emails to think tanks and non-governmental organizations throughout Washington, presumably in an effort to steal and publish email archives. According to Volexity, two of the emails were dummied to look like forwards from the Clinton Foundation, with one offering a PDF on “Why American Elections Are Flawed.” Targets included Radio Liberty, the Atlantic Council, the RAND Corporation, and the State Department.

The attacks began before the election, growing most active during August of 2016, but they have continued even after Election Day. The most recent set of emails were sent just six hours after election results named Trump the presumptive winner. According to Volexity, the attacks are considered to be ongoing.

Earlier this year, the US Intelligence Community formally blamed the Russian government for the attacks on the DNC email system, an attribution that raises the stakes for Volexity’s findings. President-elect Trump has publicly questioned that attribution, saying the culprit could just as easily be “someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.” At the same time, Russian officials today confirmed that they have been in contact with members of Trump’s staff throughout the campaign.

Notably, the attackers did not employ any previously undisclosed vulnerabilities in the attack, relying instead on malicious macros that typically pass through anti-virus systems undetected.

“This is a well-funded and in some respects professional organization,” Volexity CEO Steven Adair told Krebs. “What they’re doing takes time and effort, and for eight plus years now they’ve been in continuous development of new backdoors. They’re continually targeting different verticals — universities, NGOs and governments — and they learn from others, retool and modify their attacks constantly.

Star Wars: Rogue One’s international trailer gives us a better look at Vader

An international trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has hit the web, giving us our best look yet at the franchise’s iconic villain, while also providing a bit more of a glimpse into Jyn Erso’s backstory.

The new trailer includes new footage from the upcoming film, giving us some additional details about the Erso family, from their separation to Jyn's desire to try and find her father as they're working to locate the plans for the space station.

While this film is supposed to stand alone from the rest of the franchise’s Saga storyline, it’s interesting to see just what major connections it has to the larger story. Case in point is Darth Vader, whom we’ve already seen in previous trailers, whose presence seems to loom over the story, even as he doesn't appear to have a major role in the film. There's also an interesting reference to the Force, as Jyn's mother hands her a crystal as a child.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits theaters on December 16th.