Google already has someone running the technical side of its self-driving car project, but what about making sure the spreadsheets and such match up? That's a job for a serious business type, which is why the firm has hired auto industry veteran John Krafcik to become CEO of its autonomous vehicles division. Krafcik comes with some pedigree, having previously worked at Ford and ran Hyundai's US car business for five years. Those with long memories will recall that Krafcik was responsible for replacing owners manuals with a tablet in the Hyundai Equus, before reversing that decision a year later.

Virtual reality has officially become mainstream, as an Emmy has been awarded to a work created for an VR headset (the Oculus Rift DK2) for the first time. The Sleepy Hollow Virtual Reality Experience (below), co-produced by Fox and Toronto-based Secret Location, won in the "Interactive Media, User Experience and Visual Design" category. It first debuted at Comic-Con, and gave thousands of Oculus Rift users the unique gift of seeing what it would be like to have their heads cut off and waved in front of them by the Headless Horseman. You can view it for yourself on Oculus Share if you have a Rift DK2.

DARPA promised prosthetic limbs that produce realistic sensations, and it's making good on its word. The agency's researchers have successfully tested an artificial hand that gave a man a "near-natural" level of touch. The patient could tell when scientists were pressing against specific fingers, even when they tried to 'trick' the man by touching two digits at once. The key was to augment the thought-controlled hand with a set of pressure-sensitive torque motors wired directly to the brain -- any time the hand touched something, it sent electrical signals that felt much like flesh-and-bone contact.

You probably know that the display on your computer or phone can display millions of colors, if not more. However, have you wondered what it would look like if you tried to represent all of those colors in a single piece of art? Well, you're looking at it. Qubit researcher and math guru Mike Swarbrick Jones has posted a code-driven animation that shows all the colors in a 24-bit RGB palette exactly once in every frame. The technique (which relies on mapping colors to voxels, or 3D pixels) produces a kind of "rainbow smoke" that, as you can see in the clip below, is rather hypnotic -- it's tempting to watch it on a loop and meditate. While this won't produce a masterpiece, it's proof that a good idea and the right calculations can lead to some truly eye-catching (not to mention mind-bending) visuals.

It's more than a little late to choose which college to attend this fall, but the White House might have the tools you need to make an informed decision next year. It just launched a redesigned College Scorecard website that relies on open data (a big deal in government these days) to help you evaluate schools, whether you're a future student or a researcher. You can not only find out which colleges produce the most successful graduates, but also the typical debt loads, average SAT scores for newcomers and other factors that aren't always easy to track down. You can even drill down to very specific criteria, such as students who received Pell grants.

It's possible to stabilize your phone videos through Hyperlapse, and dedicated video editors can smooth out other shaky clips with enough time and effort. But what if you want a simple way to eliminate jitters no matter which camera you're using? SteadXP believes it can help. It's crowdfunding a namesake device that brings three-axis video stabilization to virtually any camera, whether it's an action cam, a DSLR or a pro-grade cinema cam. While many of these shooters have some kind of stabilization, SteadXP's device uses motion tracking with after-the-fact software analysis to deliver the kind of graceful, movie-like stabilization that would normally require a gimbal or steadicam.

It's been a long time coming, but the second StarCraft II expansion is nearly here: Blizzard has announced that Legacy of the Void will arrive on November 10th. As with both the original game (Wings of Liberty) and Heart of the Swarm, this latest title will focus primarily on one species. In this case, you're reuniting the mysterious Protoss so that they can confront a dire threat and reclaim their homeworld. You'll also get new units for all factions, and there are fresh multiplayer modes that include shared bases and objective-based co-op. It's not really a revolution, then. However, this also represents the end of the StarCraft II story line -- if you're determined to see the conclusion to Blizzard's five-year sci-fi saga, you'll want to check this out.

Some day you could be flipping through your vacation photos while wearing a VR headset. At the XOXO Festival taking place in Portland, Oregon this weekend, Flickr is showing off an early preview of a virtual reality experience that it hopes to integrate with its photo service. The demo at the festival was with an Oculus DK 2 hooked up to a PC and the idea is that you'll be able to use the headset specifically with 360-degree panoramic photos. I tried it on and indeed I was able to look all around me in 360 degrees to view an entire scene. To flip through the slides, I looked down at a pair of pink and blue balls for a couple of seconds, which triggers the next photo to load.

Many will tell you that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain comes across as rushed at times. While there's a lot to do, it's light on story -- a sharp contrast with earlier Metal Gear games, which are notorious for their epic-length cutscenes. However, there's now evidence suggesting that the original plan was for a much larger, more substantial game. Players on the Facepunch forums have discovered files in the PC version of MGSV which show that the title was supposed to have not only more prominent characters (such as The Boss), but an entire third chapter. It's not clear exactly how much is missing, but the released game's abrupt end hints that the third section was going to bring the story to a proper conclusion.

Apple kept HopStop's mass transit directions and guides running (with notable exceptions) long after it bought the company back in 2013, but you won't get to rely on them for much longer: Cupertino has revealed that it's shutting down HopStop come October. There's no explanation, but it doesn't take much effort to understand what's up. Apple had already discontinued all but the iOS and web versions of HopStop's apps, and you'll find much of HopStop's technology in iOS 9's mass transit directions. Simply put, there's not much incentive to keep the older tech running. This won't make you very happy if you still lean on HopStop to get around town, but you have at least a few alternatives if Apple Maps isn't your cup of tea.

[Image credit: Shutterstock]

On this week's After Math we look at a galaxy barely newer than the universe that spawned it. We also check out an imaging sensor that makes Apple's iSight like like a tintype, 360-degrees of GoPro and a whole bunch of other stuff you didn't know you wanted to learn about.

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green.

Researchers at the University of Michigan are making waves in solar panels -- literally. It turns out that their undulating photovoltaic strips can collect up to 30 percent more energy than flat arrays. In other energy news, China and Pakistan just announced plans to build the world's largest solar farm in the Punjabi desert, and Aspen, Colorado, just became the third city in the US to be powered entirely by renewable energy. Heads up students -- we're giving away three solar energy-generating Voltaic backpacks and you can win one here. Voltaic also just launched a new solar-powered light that shines for 30-plus hours on a single charge. And designer Pauline van Dongen debuted a solar parka that keeps you charged when you journey off the grid.

The longstanding battle for compensation following the death of Curt Schilling's state-backed game studio, 38 Studios, is one step closer to winding down. A Rhode Island Superior Court judge has approved a $12.5 million partial settlement with four of the defendants in the case, helping recoup some of the $75 million poured into the failed Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning creator. This definitely isn't the end -- Schilling is still fighting the lawsuit, for one thing. Between this and an earlier $4.4 million settlement, though, the tide appears to be turning against the former baseball star.

[Image credit: Tony Avelar/Bloomberg via Getty Images]

Regulators have already started clamping down on crowdfunding fraud, but they're now getting those project creators to pay up when they leave backers hanging. Washington state has ordered Ed Polchlopek III to pay a total of $54,841 in fines and restitution after he dropped his Kickstarter project, Asylum Playing Cards, without offering refunds. That's a hefty payout when the entire project raised just $25,146, only a small amount of which ($668) came from Washington-based contributors. Clearly, the state is as much interested in sending a message as compensating those who were left high and dry.

You probably wouldn't bat an eyelash if you see a self-destructing computer chip in a Mission Impossible movie, but what if one actually exists in real life? Xerox PARC engineers have developed a chip that can explode into teensy little pieces as part of DARPA's Vanishing Programmable Resources project. To make that possible, they used Gorilla Glass instead of plastic and metal. Yes, it's the same tough glass used on many available smartphones, but the engineers told IDG News Service's Martyn Williams that they "ion-exchange temper[ed] it to build in stress." A piece of glass that's heavily stressed will easily shatter and disintegrate when triggered.

Ask some media server users why they don't use an Apple TV, and they'll issue a common refrain: "because it doesn't officially run Plex." Well, that shouldn't be an issue with the new Apple TV. Plex tells ITWorld that it plans to bring its media streaming front end to Apple's latest set-top box through an app. The move should give you access to all of your home's compatible music, photos and videos, not just what you can see from internet streaming services or iTunes clients. That's a big deal when you previously had to jailbreak or otherwise rely on clever workarounds to make Plex work.

Whenever a device ships with a feature that involves always-on listening or watching, privacy concerns invariably come up -- and the iPhone 6s is no exception. In an attempt to address controversies before the 6s even ships, Apple has told TechCrunch that neither the always-on Siri voice commands nor Live Photos (which records a brief burst of video before and after your photo) are eavesdropping on you. Ultimately, Siri works like the technology you've seen on the Moto X -- it's merely waiting for a keyword, not recording whatever you say. What little memory buffer exists (for audio patterns, not sound clips) is automatically erased after a few seconds, and the feature is strictly opt-in.

If you're the outdoorsy type, you might have already seen petrified sand dunes in person (in Utah, for instance) -- the photo above, however, isn't of a desert here on Earth. It's an image stitched together using several shots captured on August 27th by Curiosity rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam) on Mars. This sandstone formation originated as sand dunes formed by the wind, which eventually hardened and turned into rock. It's part of an area called the Stimson unit on Mount Sharp, which lies over a mudstone layer in what used to be a lake. The rover is investigating the location to determine how it changed from ancient times. This close-up image shows just a small part of the place, however: you can see the whole panorama NASA created on its website.

Honda just took a big step toward getting its self-driving car technology on to American roads. The automaker has quietly received the approval needed to test its autonomous cars on California streets, letting these robotic rides venture beyond a closed-off facility in Concord. The company is relatively late to the party -- Audi, Lexus and other brands have had the state's A-OK for a while. Still, we're not going to knock Honda when this will eventually lead to more variety in hands-off vehicles.