If you want in on the connected car action but your vehicle is older than the internet itself, Verizon's new Hum service may help. It's a $15 per month plan that includes an iOS or Android smartphone app and CDMA-enabled hardware that plugs into an OBD-II port, something all 1996 and newer vehicles have. (The port is also used by Automatic Link and other apps.) The device gathers engine diagnostic data and relays warnings to a visor-mounted speaker device and the smartphone app. If something's wrong, the app can provide more info and even an estimated cost for any repairs.

We know what the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 looks like, but what about the important stuff? Namely, when we'll be able to get our paws on it and how much it'll cost? Well, boy howdy the Korean electronics juggernaut's answered both of those questions this morning. You can pre-order the slate starting today and the device hits "select" US retailers and carriers come September 3rd. A WiFi model packed with 32GB of storage and a 9.7-inch screen will set you back a cool $499.99 while the 8-inch model with the same capacity is $100 less.

Today on In Case You Missed It, we showcase a double-barreled fireworks cannon that's just slightly less dangerous than that personal flamethrower you've had your eye on. We've also got Sony's first drone prototype -- it's a little remote controlled Harrier! And if you thought that explainer video from Snapchat's CEO was terrible, just wait until you see this Alienware unboxing. Finally, an enterprising noodle shop owner in China got his hands on a refurbished Ultraman assembly robot and converted it into, what else, an automated noodle slicer.

If you come across any interesting videos, we'd love to see them. Just tweet us with the #ICYMI hashtag @engadget or @mskerryd. And if you just want to heap praise on your handsome guest host, feel free to hit him up @mr_trout.

We love Sony's penchant for crazy products like the P clamshell Android tablet, and who can forget the Rolly music player slash robotic, LED flashing... thing? Judging by a new speaker, the company still has a whimsical side despite falling profits. The SRS-LSR100 pairs a TV remote with a wireless speaker, which receives a 2.4GHz signal from dongle attached to your TV or stereo. The idea is to bring the TV sound closer to you, whether you're in the living room, exercise room or kitchen. And since you're there, why not have a channel-changer?

The firm behind Angry Birds has announced that it's laying off a further 260 employees as it attempts to become a smaller and more profitable company. CEO Pekka Rantala admits that Rovio was too eager to "explore new business opportunities," which it did by doing "too many things." Unfortunately, with profits tumbling, the outfit is going to have to go back to being a stripped-down games maker. The lay-offs will come from all areas of the business except those working on the Sony-backed Angry Birds Movie in the US and Canada. It's not much of a surprise since it looked as if the company's day in the sun had ended a while ago. After all, Angry Birds 2 is the thirteenth title in the series, so it's clearly been flogging a seriously-injured horse for quite some time.

LG is finally ready to sell the OLED 4K TVs it revealed in January, including the first ever flat models. The Korean company has invested huge sums in OLED tech, believing that consumers will be drawn in by the improved black levels, better off-axis viewing angles and more saturated colors. We're pleasantly surprised to learn that the two flat UltraHD models (in 65- and 55-inch sizes) also have HDR capability with improved color range -- provided you have content that supports it. If you're more into curved 4K OLEDs, there's a new 55-inch model, bringing the total number of LG OLED 4K TVs to nine.

Things are clearly tough over at Disney headquarters. Having only grossed $2 billion from Avengers: Age of Ultron and Inside Out, the company needs your help to stay afloat. It has something called Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens coming out this December, and to help raise funds it's planning an 18-hour marketing marathon to push products related to the little-known movie. This September 3rd, the company will unveil merchandise in "the world's first-ever global live toy unboxing event," which will apparently play out like a "New Year's Eve style celebration" across 12 countries.

There's a reason this guy's so popular. Bjorn Nyland might be familiar to readers because he just earned himself a free Tesla Model X by successfully getting ten people to buy a Model S. He was able to promote the all-electric car so well because he's been doing it for ages. He's proven the capability of the S by taking it 233 miles on a charge even in the deepest, darkest Norwegian winter. He also knows how to wring a lot more miles out of an electric car when the weather's warm. A little over 452 miles, to be exact.

Autonomous trucks will soon be used at highway construction sites in Florida, and unlike Daimler's big rig that still needs someone behind the wheel, these ones are completely driverless. The truck was developed by Pennsylvania company Royal Truck & Equipment under a Department of Transportation pilot program. According to the company, there are three ways to control it: via GPS Waypoint navigation, through a remote control and via leader/follower programming. Since it's pretty common for motorists to slam into trucks used for highway construction, the rigs will be equipped with a special crash barrier called attenuators, which you can see in the image above.

It's not unusual to see patients in hospitals with wires sticking out of their bodies -- it's just something you expect, especially in ICUs. A group of South Korean researchers, however, believe there's a better alternative: lights. The team from Pukyong National University in Busan is suggesting the use of visible light-based communications or LiFi for some machines, according to IEEE. For instance, it could be used to transmit signals from an EEG, so a patient's head doesn't have to be tethered to an obscene number of wires.

Researchers from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) want to pinpoint the factors that lead to the mass death of honey bees everywhere, in what's being called as colony collapse disorder. In order to do so, it teamed up with Intel earlier this year to outfit healthy bees with an RFID "backpack" that's a third of their weight and has a battery that can generate power from vibration. CSIRO uses a Intel Edison-based system to monitor every 50 tags, comprised of an Atom processor, 1GB of memory, 5GB of storage, dual-band wireless WiFi and Bluetooth. They've already managed to tag around 10,000 bees in Tasmania, and the research is now ongoing.

Xbox Preview Programs have long been popular. They're easy ways to get sneak peeks at features that won't reach the masses for weeks, if not longer. Unfortunately, though, they're now proving to be too popular -- Microsoft is warning that it's "slowing" the number of people it lets into the Xbox One Preview Program now that it's "near-capacity." The tech giant needs to "optimize" its pre-release user base for testing, according to a forum note. The timing of this move isn't all that surprising, mind you. This year represents the first time that Microsoft will overhaul the Xbox One interface, rolling in big features like backwards compatibility and the Cortana voice assistant. It's only logical that gamers would want an early look at these upgrades, especially when this portal could stick around for a good, long while.

Parallels may have been the first to bring Windows 10 virtualization to the Mac, but its rival VMware isn't far behind. Its newly released VMware Fusion 8 has full support for Microsoft's latest platform, including Cortana -- you can ask it questions whenever the virtual machine is open, even if it's in the background. Graphics also get a big helping hand this year, with faster overall performance, support for DirectX 10-only software (read: some games) and compatibility with super high-resolution 5K iMacs.

As a CDMA-based carrier (until LTE takes over), Verizon isn't nearly as friendly to the bring-your-own-phone trend as the likes of AT&T or T-Mobile. You can't usually swap SIM cards and expect your unlocked phone to work. Thankfully, the carrier recently made the process a whole lot easier... provided you have the right device, that is. It'll now activate compatible, unlocked versions of the iPhone 6 and Nexus 6. So long as you can find your device's ID and pick up a Verizon SIM, you can jump over to Big Red without having to ditch your existing hardware. You'll likely be stuck if you own another device, but that's more due to technology (few unlocked phones have full Verizon CDMA and LTE support at present) than anything else.

If you've even had a small taste of Splatoon, you know that the inky shooter is defined as much by its upbeat, irreverent music as its bright, Nickelodeon-circa-1995 visuals. Nintendo clearly knows this, too -- it's planning to release Splatune, a whopping 61-song original soundtrack. Most of it (37 tracks) will be straight-up music, but there will also be 10 jingles and 14 pieces based on sound effects. That's a lot, especially when you consider that many big-name movies don't get such a lavish treatment. Be prepared to pay a pretty penny to an importer if you want a copy, though. Nintendo is releasing Splatune as a ¥3,200 ($27) two-disc album in Japan (where CDs are still huge) on October 21st, and there's no word yet on a release elsewhere.

Etsy may be an online marketplace first and foremost, but the company has long had a "shop local" feature to let you find craftspeople and products made near you. Strangely, though, this feature only existed on the desktop -- Etsy's mobile app didn't have its local feature, despite the fact that your smartphone pretty much always knows where you are. The situation has now been corrected: Etsy Local is now included in the company's iOS and Android app. Users can now find items and sellers near them, whether they're selling at a pop-up shop or through a local retailer, and Etsy sellers can add real-life locations to find their work.

Aside from their abnormal growth rates, cancerous cells aren't that much different from normal healthy tissue. That's why radiation and chemo treatments can't effectively target just tumors. However, a team of researchers from the Mayo Clinic believe they've discovered a mechanism that can rein in cancer's uninhibited growth by retraining these wayward cells to die like they're supposed to.

This week we have the return of Gears of War, uprez'd and made prettier on the Xbox One. It's not the only big game release however, as the Dishonored and Mega Man are also getting re-released, and PS4 gamers should check out Until Dawn, even if they've never heard of it before. On Blu-ray, The Last Dragon is back with a special 30th anniversary edition, along with season five of The Walking Dead. Last but not least, on TV football season creeps ever closer, while comedian Rodney Carmichael debuts his new show on NBC, Falling Skies comes to an end and Mr. Robot wraps up its excellent first season. Netflix has a new series too, as Narcos debuts its look at Pablo Escobar this week. Look after the break to check out each day's highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed).

Virtual Reality is often characterized as a solitary experience, but it doesn't have to be. Games like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, a multiplayer bomb-defusal game, demonstrate VR's ability to entertain entire groups of people in wonderful new ways. Today, it's time to add one more multi-entertaining VR game to that list: Fantastic Contraption, a widely beloved game about building weird structures in an attempt to reach specific points on a small map. Fantastic Contraption launched in 2008 as a non-VR game and has since attracted millions of players and 12 million saved contraptions. In a new video, it gets a super polished update for the Vive, Valve and HTC's impressive room-scale VR headset, and creator Colin Northway discusses the merits of multiplayer VR.