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Uber users in the UK can reserve a premium ride a month in advance
Uber Reserve is initially available in London, Manchester, Bristol and Bath.
'Fortnite' gets soccer skins from major clubs and a Pelé emote
American football has been part of the Fortnite experience for years. On January 23rd, however the ludicrously-successful battle royale will be embracing club soccer, too. Here’s the full list of compatible teams: Manchester City, Juventus, AC Milan, Inter Milan, AS Roma, Seattle Sounders FC, Atlanta United, Los Angeles FC, Santos FC, Wolverhampton Wanderers, West Ham United, Sevilla, Sporting CP, Borussia Mönchengladbach, FC Schalke 04, VFL Wolfsburg, Rangers, Celtic, Cerezo Osaka, Melbourne City FC, Sydney FC, Western Sydney Wanderers and EC Bahia.
The UK is testing its first full-sized autonomous bus
The UK unleashed its first full-sized autonomous bus today -- albeit in limited fashion. For now, the single-deck bus will navigate around a Manchester bus depot, where it will park and maneuver itself into a bus wash. But the technology onboard could soon make all buses safer, and it will be used again in 2020, when five autonomous buses carry passengers across Scotland's Forth Road Bridge Corridor, once the largest suspension bridge outside of the US.
Amazon’s Manchester City soccer docu-series debuts August 17th
Now that the World Cup is over, the football world can settle back to obsessing over the Premier League. And just in time, Amazon's documentary series All or Nothing: Manchester City is arriving on Prime Video worldwide on August 17th.
Manchester City signs second FIFA pro as 'dedicated PS4 player'
Sports teams the world over are adding gamers to their rosters, but it's particularly common in football. Manchester City FC signed its first eSports pro, Kieran "Kez" Brown, last summer, and today the club's announced Marcus "ExpectSporting" Jorgensen (aka Marcuzo) has become the second pad warrior to join the squad. Jorgensen previously competed for Danish football club Brøndby IF, with his biggest win to date being the FIFA Interactive Club World Cup held this past August.
Lost Alan Turing letters found in university filing cabinet
A huge batch of letters penned by British cryptographer Alan Turing has been found at the University of Manchester. Professor Jim Miles was tidying a storeroom when he discovered the correspondence in an old filing cabinet. At first he assumed the orange folder, which had Turing's name on the front, had been emptied and re-used by another member of staff. But a closer look revealed 148 documents, including a letter sent by GCHQ, a draft version of a BBC radio programme about artificial intelligence, and invitations to lecture at some top universities in America.
Chinese bike rental giants eye the UK as next battleground
London's for-hire 'Boris bikes' have been cruising the capital's streets for nearly seven years now, while similar projects operate in other parts of the country. Two Chinese companies believe there's still room for more innovative bike rental schemes, however, and both are expanding outside of Asia to compete anew in the UK. One of these is Mobike, which today announced that its plans to move into Europe begin in Manchester and Salford, where 1,000 bikes will be available to hire starting on June 29th. The launch comes after rival Ofo began a UK pilot of its own in Cambridge two months ago, though it's a much more modest trial with only tens of bikes dotted around town.
Watch Ariana Grande's benefit concert live on Twitter and YouTube
Pop star Ariana Grande is hosting a benefit concert on June 4th to help victims of the Manchester terrorist attack, and you'll have plenty of ways to both watch and contribute online. The gig will livestream at 2PM Eastern (7PM local time) on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and iHeartRadio. If you want to pitch in, Twitter will have a dedicated donation tab alongside the concert feed. You can also contribute directly to the British Red Cross' Manchester fund if you'd prefer to skip the concert altogether.
UberEats now lets Brits schedule food deliveries
UberEats, like Deliveroo and Amazon Prime Now, can be useful if you don't have the time, supplies or energy to rustle up some grub. When you're really in a rush, however -- the morning 'I must not be late for work again' dash, for instance -- it can be a nuisance to open the app, complete an order and then wait for the courier to arrive at your front door. Now, in London, Birmingham and Manchester, it's possible to schedule an UberEats delivery. It's a small addition, but one that could prove useful if you're time poor or like to have your meals organised in advance.
UberEats is now available in Manchester
Uber is taking on Deliveroo, slowly. The company's food delivery service, UberEats, is now available in Manchester, following a gradual expansion in London that now includes a breakfast service. The northwest city is an obvious target for the company, given its large population size and the number of big-name restaurants and cafes nearby. The service will be live seven days a week, from 11am to 11pm (so no brekkie option just yet) in "city centre hotspots" such as the Northern Quarter and Spinningfields. Deliveroo is already active in the city, so Uber will need to fight hard to win over customers. Good thing hyper-aggressive expansions are its forte. Hello Manchester! The new UberEATS app has arrived. Explore local menus: https://t.co/8fU2eW7u51 #UberEATS pic.twitter.com/rCSdvgZmqv — Uber UK (@UberUK) February 9, 2017
Nintendo is taking the Switch on a UK tour this month
Are the Joy-Cons too small? What is ARMS really like to play? If you have these or any other Switch-related questions, there's only way to get some definitive answers: Try the system yourself. Following its US preview tour, Nintendo is taking its latest console to Great Britain. From February 10th to 12th, the system will be available to play at the Boxxed warehouse in Birmingham. The console-portable hybrid will then appear at the Cobden Rooms in Manchester for three days starting on February 17th. Finally, it'll stop by the Tanner Warehouse in London from February 24th to 26th.
Manchester City signs its first FIFA eSports player
At this rate the Premier League will need its own dedicated eSports division. Following West Ham United, which signed Sean "Dragonn" Allen back in May, Manchester City has recruited its own FIFA star. Kieran "Kez" Brown is the club's first eSports signing and will represent the team at both major tournaments and fan events. He's not the biggest name -- his YouTube channel has less than 12,000 subscribers -- but he is a competent player. Prolific YouTuber Spencer Owen held a competition earlier this year to recruit a FIFA fanatic into his professional "Hashtag United" team; Brown narrowly missed out, losing to Harry Hesketh in the final.
Amazon UK brings one-hour Prime Now deliveries to Manchester
With Christmas less than two weeks away, Amazon wants to be there for UK customers who are likely to leave their festive shopping until the very last minute. After its recent expansion in Newcastle, the online retailer has rolled out its Prime Now service in Manchester and surrounding areas, allowing Prime subscribers to get one-hour deliveries for £6.99 or two-hour shipments for no extra cost.
Virgin Media's superfast UK broadband expansion kicks off in Manchester
Despite recent growth, Virgin Media has work to do if it's to make inroads into BT's broadband dominance. The company knows this, so in February it launched "Project Lightning," a £3 billion investment to bring cable broadband to 4 million additional UK homes over the next five years. Today, Virgin Media announced that the expansion has begun, with 150,000 homes and businesses in Manchester set to become the lucky recipients of Virgin Media's 152Mbps internet and other associated services.
PlayStation is recruiting for a VR-exclusive studio in the UK
It's getting real for Sony's Project Morpheus. The electronics giant has posted job listings (eight, all told) for veteran animators, level designers and a few others to fill out a studio dedicated entirely to making virtual reality games. "Based in the North West of England, we aim to build a small but highly experienced team who want to build great games to showcase this exciting new immersive technology," the postings say. As Eurogamer reports, the Morpheus-exclusive studio should wind up in Manchester, and staff that formerly worked at Driveclub's Evolution Studios are involved here. Perhaps that's why the available positions are somewhat limited in number. Regardless, if you were questioning how serious Sony's push into VR was, this might sate your curiosity a bit.
Uber now offers fancier cars for trips in Manchester and Leeds
Sometimes you really want to make a good impression. Uber already offers two luxury transport options in London, UberExec and UberLux, and now the former is available in Manchester and Leeds too. Before now, these cities had access to just two Uber services: Uber X and Uber XL. Both are designed to be as affordable as possible, with Uber X offering a Toyota Prius (or similar) and Uber XL supplying minivans. UberExec, meanwhile, is a premium option that lets you hail a Mercedes E-class, or an alternative but equally stylish vehicle for your next meeting. Uber is currently available in four UK cities -- London, Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham -- but a host of others are mentioned in its online job listings, so we suspect it won't be long before the company expands once more.
Uber launches in Leeds, its third UK city
Uber's UK footprint might be small, but it's already come in for some heavy criticism, especially in London. As competitors ready new services in an attempt to leverage more custom, Uber has decided its ready to expand beyond London and Manchester by heading to Yorkshire, or more specifically, Leeds. As of now, city residents will be able to pull out their smartphone to hail an UberX ride (the company's lowest-priced service) to move about the city. Hailo already operates in the area, but only offers traditional taxi pickups, giving Uber the opportunity to steal a march its rivals with its popular private hire service.
Hailo launches in Manchester a month later than Uber
App-based taxi services are the subject of anger and frustration over in London, but Manchester looks set to become the next major battleground for two of the UK's biggest. Hailo, which has served around 12,000 of London's black cabs since 2011, today went live in the north west (its first city outside of the capital), just a month after Uber officially opened its (virtual) doors to customers there. While Hailo's app currently books registered taxis for customers, the company recently announced that it was becoming a fully-featured Uber rival, which saw disgruntled London black cab drivers vandalise the company's headquarters and leave the service in their droves. According to the Manchester Evening News, 300 drivers have already signed up, but the company expects that number to grow rapidly. Nothing like a fresh competitor, it seems, to stop you resting on your laurels.
British researchers design a million-chip neural network 1/100 as complex as your brain
If you want some idea of the complexity of the human brain, consider this: a group of British universities plans to link as many as a million ARM processors in order to simulate just a small fraction of it. The resulting model, called SpiNNaker (Spiking Neural Network architecture), will represent less than one percent of a human's gray matter, which contains 100 billion neurons. (Take that, mice brains!) Yet even this small scale representation, researchers believe, will yield insight into how the brain functions, perhaps enabling new treatments for cognitive disorders, similar to previous models that increased our understanding of schizophrenia. As these neural networks increase in complexity, they come closer to mimicking human brains -- perhaps even developing the ability to make their own Skynet references.
British airports now beaming holographic security agents (video)
They've brought you presidential election coverage and promoted worldwide access to PCs, and now they're telling you to take off your belt and throw out your hairspray. Starting today, London Luton and Manchester airports will beam in images of holographic agents to prep passengers for the security line. Holly and Graham -- you heard right -- and Manchester's Julie and John are meant to cut queues, as well as human inconsistency. According to Luton's Glyn Jones, "Holly and Graham are not going to have a hangover; they're not going to have a row with their partner the night before." Just what we need: an army of holographic squares taking our jobs and making us all look a drunken mess in comparison. Thanks, technology. Update: So it appears these aren't traditional holograms -- they're actually huge sheets of glass that are cut out in the shape of people, with the projection beamed on them. It's the same tech that Gorillaz use on stage, made by a company called Musion. Check out another video where the camera moves around the side.
