A sort-of curveball announcement from Netflix (if you didn't hear about their upcoming plans) is the launch of their new gaming service. Yes, Netflix who is known for streaming movies and TV shows, will now stream video games.

Now don't be confused with this launch. It is not a competitor to anything Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft are doing. This is a direct assault targeted at the likes of Apple's Arcade and Amazon's Prime Gaming. The games shown are more mobile-style than something you would see on a console. This is not stuff you'd want on your Xbox. Netflix's gaming service (aptly called Netflix Games) has a whopping five titles, two of which are Stranger Things games: Stranger Things: 1984, Stranger Things 3, Shooting Hoops, Card Blast, and Teeter Up.

Offhand you'd think a Netflix gaming service may be something you'd skip, they're going the Amazon Prime route. The gaming service is a free add-on to your existing subscription. No uncharge, no change in your subscription. No ads in the games, no in-app purchases, no BS. You get it for free and that's that. Currently the games are available inside their Android app. On Twitter they did say an iOS version is in the works.

Given that it's free, it's worth a look even to see if it's worthwhile. It won't be for everyone, but as we saw with House of Cards: Netflix starts small. They had only their single original show. Once that did well, the expansion of original content was swift and set the stage for how all streaming services function. I believe this is a coin-flip between it silently getting discontinued in a year or expanding out to be massive (and maybe become a paid add-on).

Nintendo's big Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct in October announced that two big updates would happen. The first being general updates to the game would bring it to version 2.0. This is to be the final update to the game.

Version 2.0 brings a LOT of things like the fan-demanded Brewster's Roost cafe, island ordnances, a shopping plaza on Harv's Island, and more. The full list is here on IGN. This update to bring the game to an official 2.0 version and Nintendo has added a bunch things. Nintendo stated this would be the final update to Animal Crossing: New Horizons and nothing further would be developed.

“The free update launching on Nov. 5 will be the last major free content update. We hope that players will continue enjoying their island life in real time and throughout the changing seasons.”

Nintendo Statement to Polygon

The second and more interesting item is the one and only DLC. Nintendo is releasing an add-on called Happy Home Paradise on November 5th. This basically lets you design an island other than your own for your villagers and others. The goal is to make it a vacation spot for any Animal Crossing characters to enjoy. In a way, it allows you to start from scratch without the need to reset your own island & start over.

I'm on the fence about this update. Does it allow you to demolish a vacation home and re-do it for a different character once they're "done" with their vacation? Do those characters ever leave? This is all unknown at this time. The Direct left out an important detail though: Pricing. Nintendo revealed the DLC could be obtained in one of two ways: A one-time purchase of $25 or by upgrading one's Nintendo Switch Online to include the "Expansion Pack". The expansion includes N64 and Sega Genesis games. However, this jumps the pricing from $20 a year to $50!

The more than double-price for this pack is frankly absurd. It makes much more sense to buy the DLC outright on the eShop than to subscribe to it. Remember if you stop or downgrade your subscription you lose access to that content. I don't know why Nintendo chose these prices. The other games included are so old and not nearly worth the asking price.

If you're still playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, this DLC looks to be fun and worth a one-time $25 purchase. For me, a person who's cooled on the game, I remain on the fence. I am sure the reviews will be out swiftly post-release to help influence my decision one way or another.

It's hard to believe, but The Verge is celebrating 10 years this week. They're posting a bunch of retrospectives that are great reads. One of them takes the cake. In "The Worst Gadgets We've Ever Touched" they lambast tech that should've been great but fell short in the worst ways.

Notable entries include the awful Red Hydrogen phone, Ouya, and Apple's butterfly keyboard debacle.

Apple inflicted the butterfly keyboard on millions of customers for years, giving it the dubious distinction of causing the most tangible badness of anything we’ve ever reviewed.

Some products on the Verge's list are obvious while others I had forgotten about. I'm sure the manufacturers of those gadgets wish they could forget them too. Either way, it's a fun story to read and one full of cringe you can't look away from.

Two things I never expected to find entertaining when put together are Microsoft Excel and TikTok. Those are two diametrically opposed things. One is fun and has whimsy, while the other is a Chinese-owned social network that's basically overtaken Facebook Meta. I kid, I kid. In actuality, Excel can be a wondrous tool in the hands of someone who knows even 25% of its power. I've seen colleagues work their magic on a spreadsheet in seconds simply because they knew a certain formula or function.

Enter Kat Norton, an Excel guru that Quartz has profiled. Norton found herself in similar circumstances as most of us in early 2020: stuck at home and pondering the next steps in life. Norton took her extensive Excel knowledge and put up some videos on TikTok. Now, she's doing some amazing things.

After two days of conflicting feelings about whether or not to post, Norton did her hair and makeup, watched an hour’s worth of video-editing instructional clips on YouTube, and made her first post. She posted new videos for four days straight. The fourth one—it’s about Excel’s XLOOKUP feature and set to DMX’s “X Gon’ Give It To Ya”—quickly accumulated 100,000 views.

By the sixth day, the CEO of a tech firm reached out and asked if she could create instructional videos for Google Workspace products. A few weeks later, one of Norton’s videos went truly viral, with more than 3 million views. “Now what do I do?” she asked herself. “I didn’t know how to do influencer-y things. I barely knew how to use TikTok!”

Quartz

Now, I don't personally have a TikTok account. It's a platform that doesn't interest me in the slightest and I am quite skeptical about their data collection practices. I don't trust them. However, I do appreciate that I can view a viral video on the web. I pair a visit with my PiHole and ad-blocker.

For Kat Norton, she's found an amazing niche. Her skills make fantastic videos. Now I know all about XLOOKUP! You can see her videos directly on the web.

On Wednesday Apple released version 15.1 of Safari. This is momentous because it finally puts the tab disaster officially in the past. Since WWDC back in June, people have been adamant that Apple does not need to mess with Safari's tabs. But Apple did, stuck with the design, and even shipped it out as full release-worthy software.

The revolt didn't stop. With this update, the Tabs section in Safari's Preferences now offers a "Separate" option. This is the classic style we all know and is the most usable. I'm happy, everyone else using Safari should be happy, and Apple will now probably pretend this never happened. For anyone out there who actually enjoyed this abomination, the "Compact" tab view still exists, minus the other options present on version 15.0 such as removing color matching or having the address bar be a separate item.

A sort-of curveball announcement from Netflix (if you didn't hear about their upcoming plans) is the launch of their new gaming service. Yes, Netflix who is known for streaming movies and TV shows, will now stream video games.

Now don't be confused with this launch. It is not a competitor to anything Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft are doing. This is a direct assault targeted at the likes of Apple's Arcade and Amazon's Prime Gaming. The games shown are more mobile-style than something you would see on a console. This is not stuff you'd want on your Xbox. Netflix's gaming service (aptly called Netflix Games) has a whopping five titles, two of which are Stranger Things games: Stranger Things: 1984, Stranger Things 3, Shooting Hoops, Card Blast, and Teeter Up.

Offhand you'd think a Netflix gaming service may be something you'd skip, they're going the Amazon Prime route. The gaming service is a free add-on to your existing subscription. No uncharge, no change in your subscription. No ads in the games, no in-app purchases, no BS. You get it for free and that's that. Currently the games are available inside their Android app. On Twitter they did say an iOS version is in the works.

Given that it's free, it's worth a look even to see if it's worthwhile. It won't be for everyone, but as we saw with House of Cards: Netflix starts small. They had only their single original show. Once that did well, the expansion of original content was swift and set the stage for how all streaming services function. I believe this is a coin-flip between it silently getting discontinued in a year or expanding out to be massive (and maybe become a paid add-on).

Nintendo's big Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct in October announced that two big updates would happen. The first being general updates to the game would bring it to version 2.0. This is to be the final update to the game.

Version 2.0 brings a LOT of things like the fan-demanded Brewster's Roost cafe, island ordnances, a shopping plaza on Harv's Island, and more. The full list is here on IGN. This update to bring the game to an official 2.0 version and Nintendo has added a bunch things. Nintendo stated this would be the final update to Animal Crossing: New Horizons and nothing further would be developed.

“The free update launching on Nov. 5 will be the last major free content update. We hope that players will continue enjoying their island life in real time and throughout the changing seasons.”

Nintendo Statement to Polygon

The second and more interesting item is the one and only DLC. Nintendo is releasing an add-on called Happy Home Paradise on November 5th. This basically lets you design an island other than your own for your villagers and others. The goal is to make it a vacation spot for any Animal Crossing characters to enjoy. In a way, it allows you to start from scratch without the need to reset your own island & start over.

I'm on the fence about this update. Does it allow you to demolish a vacation home and re-do it for a different character once they're "done" with their vacation? Do those characters ever leave? This is all unknown at this time. The Direct left out an important detail though: Pricing. Nintendo revealed the DLC could be obtained in one of two ways: A one-time purchase of $25 or by upgrading one's Nintendo Switch Online to include the "Expansion Pack". The expansion includes N64 and Sega Genesis games. However, this jumps the pricing from $20 a year to $50!

The more than double-price for this pack is frankly absurd. It makes much more sense to buy the DLC outright on the eShop than to subscribe to it. Remember if you stop or downgrade your subscription you lose access to that content. I don't know why Nintendo chose these prices. The other games included are so old and not nearly worth the asking price.

If you're still playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, this DLC looks to be fun and worth a one-time $25 purchase. For me, a person who's cooled on the game, I remain on the fence. I am sure the reviews will be out swiftly post-release to help influence my decision one way or another.

It's hard to believe, but The Verge is celebrating 10 years this week. They're posting a bunch of retrospectives that are great reads. One of them takes the cake. In "The Worst Gadgets We've Ever Touched" they lambast tech that should've been great but fell short in the worst ways.

Notable entries include the awful Red Hydrogen phone, Ouya, and Apple's butterfly keyboard debacle.

Apple inflicted the butterfly keyboard on millions of customers for years, giving it the dubious distinction of causing the most tangible badness of anything we’ve ever reviewed.

Some products on the Verge's list are obvious while others I had forgotten about. I'm sure the manufacturers of those gadgets wish they could forget them too. Either way, it's a fun story to read and one full of cringe you can't look away from.

Two things I never expected to find entertaining when put together are Microsoft Excel and TikTok. Those are two diametrically opposed things. One is fun and has whimsy, while the other is a Chinese-owned social network that's basically overtaken Facebook Meta. I kid, I kid. In actuality, Excel can be a wondrous tool in the hands of someone who knows even 25% of its power. I've seen colleagues work their magic on a spreadsheet in seconds simply because they knew a certain formula or function.

Enter Kat Norton, an Excel guru that Quartz has profiled. Norton found herself in similar circumstances as most of us in early 2020: stuck at home and pondering the next steps in life. Norton took her extensive Excel knowledge and put up some videos on TikTok. Now, she's doing some amazing things.

After two days of conflicting feelings about whether or not to post, Norton did her hair and makeup, watched an hour’s worth of video-editing instructional clips on YouTube, and made her first post. She posted new videos for four days straight. The fourth one—it’s about Excel’s XLOOKUP feature and set to DMX’s “X Gon’ Give It To Ya”—quickly accumulated 100,000 views.

By the sixth day, the CEO of a tech firm reached out and asked if she could create instructional videos for Google Workspace products. A few weeks later, one of Norton’s videos went truly viral, with more than 3 million views. “Now what do I do?” she asked herself. “I didn’t know how to do influencer-y things. I barely knew how to use TikTok!”

Quartz

Now, I don't personally have a TikTok account. It's a platform that doesn't interest me in the slightest and I am quite skeptical about their data collection practices. I don't trust them. However, I do appreciate that I can view a viral video on the web. I pair a visit with my PiHole and ad-blocker.

For Kat Norton, she's found an amazing niche. Her skills make fantastic videos. Now I know all about XLOOKUP! You can see her videos directly on the web.

On Wednesday Apple released version 15.1 of Safari. This is momentous because it finally puts the tab disaster officially in the past. Since WWDC back in June, people have been adamant that Apple does not need to mess with Safari's tabs. But Apple did, stuck with the design, and even shipped it out as full release-worthy software.

The revolt didn't stop. With this update, the Tabs section in Safari's Preferences now offers a "Separate" option. This is the classic style we all know and is the most usable. I'm happy, everyone else using Safari should be happy, and Apple will now probably pretend this never happened. For anyone out there who actually enjoyed this abomination, the "Compact" tab view still exists, minus the other options present on version 15.0 such as removing color matching or having the address bar be a separate item.