Stephen Spielberg’s long-awaited Ready Player One finally lands in theaters on March 29, and we’ve got everything you need to know about the sci-fi blockbuster. The South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) has the world premiere of the film, and the entire festival has been turned into a virtual reality spectacle to promote it.
HTC Vive, the official VR partner of the film, has created no less than eight immersive VR adaptations that festival attendees can experience the OASIS for themselves. As Road to VR reports, the promotion has taken over a full two-story block in Austin, recreating the Stacks in the dystopian future envisioned by Ernest Cline’s novel.
Here’s a summary of the eight VR adaptations, which will also be showcased at VR arcades across the U.S. and available to download free from Viveport later this month:
Longtime VR fan Charlie Fink, writing for Forbes, caught up with producer Donald DeLine at the festival. “You can’t launch a movie like Ready Player One without giving fans a chance to step into the world of the Oasis,” he said. “Even Steven Spielberg got into the VR games, battling the IOI and making it to the final level of Planet Doom on his first try.”
“Recreating the Distracted Globe nightclub scene is the essence of what we’ve been working on in bringing TheWaveVR to market,” said co-founder Aaron Lemke. “Just like the film, we want to create a place where people can come and experience something beyond magical.”
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Two residents of Chicago have filed a lawsuit in the US over claims that robots run by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics captured their facial and hand measurements without consent, bringing renewed attention to the food delivery robots. The cases raise a troubling question: If a robot delivers food to your door, can it also be gathering sensitive information about you?
According to a report by The Associated Press, the proposed class-action lawsuits were filed in Cook County on Oct. 9 and allege violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The complaints claim that the robots’ cameras and LiDAR sensors captured information on customers’ faces and hands as they approached the machines to pick up their orders. Both have denied the allegations.