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We've said a few times now that Google's virtual reality initiative is too big for the company to just be working on Google Cardboard, and now the Financial Times has published a report detailing what seems to be the next phase of Google's VR push. The report says that Google is working on "a successor to Cardboard," creating a higher-quality headset and building VR software directly into Android.

The device sounds like a Google version of Samsung's Gear VR. Like Cardboard, the headset will be powered by your existing smartphone, with a "more solid plastic casing" along with better lenses and sensors. Also like Cardboard, this won't be limited to just a handful of devices, with the report saying that the headset "will be compatible with a much broader range of Android devices than Gear VR."

Such a device sounds like it would occupy a compelling spot in the market. The Gear VR is a great device—the $100 headset is a powerful entry-level VR experience—but it only works with Samsung phones. Cardboard has much wider phone compatibility, but it comes with a huge list of compromises that lead to a subpar experience. Taking the Gear VR model and expanding it to accept most popular smartphones sounds like a solid idea.

As tensions mount over civilian usage of drones in the UK, London's Metropolitan Police is considering using eagles to snatch illicit quadcopters out of the sky.

Last week, a Dutch security company—Guard From Above—released a video (embedded below) of an eagle easily grabbing a flying drone with its talons. The country's national police, who partnered with Guard From Above to train the eagles, is looking at the feasibility of using the birds in real-life aircraft-intercept scenarios. Seemingly, the Met Police saw the video and decided that it wanted in on the action as well.

Looking at the video it's hard to believe that the eagle's talons aren't damaged by the quad's propellers—but that isn't the case, according to the security company's CEO. "These birds are used to meeting resistance from animals they hunt in the wild, and they don't seem to have much trouble with the drones," Sjoerd Hoogendoorn told Reuters. Their talons are strong enough and tough enough to grab most consumer-grade drones, he added.

I'm not a big fan of getting lost... mainly because I do it so often. In the real world, if I'm not being actively guided by a GPS voice or a human navigator, I generally end up hopelessly off course. In games (especially first-person games), I usually need a detailed mini-map or a big, flashing arrow pointing me in precisely the direction I need to go. Otherwise, I tend to meander around the game world, trying in vain to remember which paths I've already tried and which landmarks I've already seen.

Yet I didn't really mind getting lost in Firewatch. In fact, by the time I made it to the game's somewhat abrupt end, I found myself wishing I'd had more opportunities to get lost in its detailed, well-built wilderness.

Getting lost is incredibly easy in Firewatch's intimate sliver of national forest. Instead of a mini-map or a bright flashing arrow, protagonist Henry gets a compass and a less-than-detailed paper map that he has to physically hold in front of him to even see where he is (you can turn off the flashing red dot that pinpoints your location on the map if you want to really test your navigation abilities).

Competition is a significant part of social interaction in the workplace, on the sports field, and in recreational settings. How we respond to that competition is often portrayed as saying a lot about our character. Being branded as a sore loser at a company picnic or after a game night among friends can carry over into relationships. Children are encouraged to play sports as a way to teach them to work in teams and get experience with winning and losing.

A new study published in PNAS, however, suggests that winning a competition may end up making us behave dishonestly, adding further nuance to the paradigm of the “good sport” and the “sore loser.” The work indicates that winners were more likely to steal money from peers during subsequent interactions, perhaps due to feelings of entitlement. While previous studies have shown that honesty and dishonesty can influence the odds of winning a competition, this study presents new data suggesting that these influences go both ways.

The work started by having some participants play in an object recall contest against other people. Afterward, the winners were more likely to dishonestly claim money from their peers in a dice-rolling, money-focused task. The same held true for participants who were simply asked to recall a time when they had won a competition with other people.

A Florida appeals court has upheld a $350,000 damages award to a divorce attorney whose client posted defamatory reviews about the lawyer on Yelp and online legal site Avvo.

The divorcing couple, Copia Blake and Peter Birzon, strangely teamed up to write the reviews about the wife's attorney, Ann-Marie Giustibelli, according to the appellate opinion. In a lesson that all online reviewers should heed, the appeals panel said that the Internet is not a forum with carte blanche freedom to say whatever irks you. In this instance, the divorcing couple accused the wife's attorney of dramatically inflating fees.

Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal, in a ruling noted Friday by Law.com, upheld a trial court's award of $350,000 in punitive damages for the couple's online falsehoods. The court wrote:

SpaceX will make its next launch attempt on February 24th when it attempts to put a SES-9 satellite into orbit 35,000km above the equator. The Luxembourg based-owner of the satellite announced the launch date on a Falcon 9 rocket Monday. It did not provide a launch window.

Because the rocket will expend nearly all of its fuel to reach this higher orbit, it will not have enough left to return to a landing site on the Florida coast as a similar launch did in December. Therefore SpaceX is expected to attempt a fourth sea-based landing on an autonomous drone ship.

The company's previous tries have failed, but the last attempt in January came close. One of the rocket's four landing legs failed to lock out, even as the Falcon 9 booster made a feathery touchdown on the drone ship in high seas. "We stuck the landing, and then we unstuck it," said Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer of SpaceX at a Federal Aviation Administration conference last week.