Fully Charged: Google details self-driving car collisions, and The X-Files return dated

Google shares self-driving car accident data

Self-driving cars might be the wave of the future, helping to seriously reduce traffic accidents, injuries, and deaths – but for now, they’re large targets on the road, just like every other car. And Google says that its self-driving car has been in 11 accidents over the past six years of testing.

Granted, Google says they were all minor, and more notably that "not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident." Instead, the collisions were the fault of other drivers who rear-ended, side-swiped, and rolled through a stop sign into the Google cars. In a lengthy post on Medium, Google detailed some of the tricky situations the car has encountered thus far, and what they’re still doing to move the project along.

"We’ll continue to drive thousands of miles so we can all better understand the all too common incidents that cause many of us to dislike day to day driving  –  and we’ll continue to work hard on developing a self-driving car that can shoulder this burden for us," writes project director Chris Urmson.

[Source: Backchannel via The Verge]

The X-Files dates its return

As revealed in March, The X-Files will return with a six-episode limited series featuring original stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson and more, as well as creator Chris Carter – and now we know just when.

In the States, the first episode will air on Fox on Sunday, 24 January 2016 following the National Football League’s NFC Championship game. The next episode will air in the regular time slot the following evening. No word yet on international airings, but now that Fox has planted its flag in next January, it’ll surely be shortly thereafter.

[Source: Fox]

Xbox One voice messages are here

Play

Some weeks back, we heard that voice messages would finally hit Xbox One – first to Preview users, and eventually to everyone else. Well, the latter has finally happened, and voice messages are part of the May system update rolling out now. The video above shows the extent of the update, which also lets you turn your console on via the SmartGlass phone/tablet app.

[Source: Xbox Wire]

Archie Comics launches a Kickstarter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kEhAxCCymo

Recently, Archie Comics revealed that comic legend Archie would be rebooted with an all-star creative team headed by writer Mark Waid and artist Fiona Staples. The news was well-received, and now the small company wants to launch a trio of refreshed related books – and it needs your help.

Archie Comics is seeking US$350,000 to start up three more books: Jughead (with writer Chip Zdarsky), Betty and Veronica (from writer/artist Adam Hughes), and Life with Kevin (from writer/artist Dan Parent). So far, the start seems modest, but there’s still about a month left for the campaign to build momentum. Archie #1 is due out in July, with the others planned for later this year.

[Source: Kickstarter]