There’s nothing I hate more than people doing the wrong thing “just because” they’ve always done it. In this case, blasting movies, games or music on their smartphones to eat up all the battery until the device shuts off, because that’s the only “safe” way to charge it.

Recently, sentiment has been growing that smartphones aren’t as exciting. To a certain extent, that’s true. Smartphones have been getting faster, their cameras have gotten sharper, and their displays have gotten bigger, but at the same time, they are more or less the same rectangular pocket computers we’ve been using for the last four or five years.

For years, the Sharknado film series has offered some of the most ridiculous nonsense to ever grace television. A one-off attempt at B-movie glory that struck apparent gold for Syfy, the series is now six movies deep and well, there's only so much left to do.

Mark Ruffalo wasn't joking. Back in July 2017, the Hulk actor was on Good Morning America talking about the exciting, first ever footage from Avengers: Infinity War along with co-star Don Cheadle.

Mums and dads have thanked Pokemon GO for getting their kids to explore the great outdoors — even if it means they’re taking their screens with them. Now, parents will be better able to manage their children’s privacy in the game.

Do you love science fiction and/or Disney theme parks? Well, you may want to hold your breath. Next week in Los Angeles, there’s an auction of vintage Disneyland memorabilia.

Welcome to the Gaming Shelf, our new roundup of tabletop gaming news, releases, updates and interesting Kickstarter campaigns — focusing on sci-fi and fantasy games, with the occasional exception of course (Machi Koro is too cute to ignore!).

Seeing as we’re on the heels of GenCon, board game companies have been showing off some of their best and brightest stuff over the past few weeks. Even as we head into mid-August, there’s still a lot of great scoops and news. Here’s a few of the highlights we spotted for this week.

Great news for anyone doing crimes with bitcoin.

The future of Star Wars is very busy right now. Rumours have been swirling for months that Disney and Lucasfilm stopped production on some or all of the Star Wars Story spinoff films as they focus on the new franchises from Rian Johnson and the guys behind Game of Thrones.

Lucasfilm insiders have denied this, but a Star Wars production designer confirmed that he was working on a project that’s been put on hold. A spinoff that included Luke Skywalker’s home planet Tatooine.

A Melbourne teenager is facing criminal charges after he reportedly hacked Apple’s secure computer network multiple times.

Using the kulap seed (also known as the matchbox bean or QLD Bean), Kulap is a game that has been played forever on the Torres Strait Islands. Now, Kulap is being used to teach kids how to code.

This is a first for an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander game, but it won't be the last - with the first Indigenous Game Jam set to be held in November.

I won’t lie, when AMD’s new 16-core monster CPU, the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X, arrived, I ran around the office showing off it and its accompanying air cooler to anyone who would make eye contact with me. The thing is enormous—easily twice as large as a standard desktop CPU from Intel.

The air cooler, saddled with the goofy name Wraith Ripper and festooned with LED lighting, is larger than most power supplies, and if dropped, it could do damage to floors, feet, and small woodland creatures. Even people who know nothing about computers were suitably impressed by these enormous pieces of PC. Then they’d ask how much the Threadripper 2950X cost.

And that’s where I’d lose them.

Running a game of Dungeons & Dragons, or any tabletop role-playing game, involves telling your players what they see.

Telstra just announced that it has turned on 5G through selected regions of the Gold Coast, making it the first mobile network in the country to start rolling out 5G.

There are currently over 100,000 board games listed on Board Game Geek, the tabletop world's equivalent of IMDB. That's a lot to choose from. Wandering into your local department store is going to give your some truly disappointing choices and browsing your friendly local game store can be overwhelming. Here are some great board games that anyone from veteran to rookie can enjoy.

Disney just announced production has begun on Niki Caro’s highly-anticipated live-action version of Mulan, and released the first photo of actress Liu Yifei as the title character. That’s her above, obviously, looking as fierce and badarse as one would have hoped.

Fortnite Battle Royale, one of the most popular battle royale games around, is finally on Android. And you get first dibs with the beta if you own a Samsung device — a list that includes its flagship Galaxy S9 / S9 Plus (and its predecessors, the S8 / S8 Plus); the Note8 (and the just-announced Galaxy Note9, when it arrives later this month); as well as the Galaxy S7, S7 Edge and Tab S3.

For the past month, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts has been on a mission: Spread a deluge of gorgeous Metal Gear Solid art on the internet to celebrate the franchise’s 31-year anniversary, and also show the world a small taste of the movie he wants to make.

The Final Frontier is about to get a lot cuddlier — and this is coming from a world where swaths of reproducing fluff balls exist. Perfect World and Cryptic Studios has announced that they’re adding Star Trek: Discovery’s beloved Ripper the Tardigrade to Star Trek Online’s Age of Discovery expansion.