👋🏻 Hello. It’s Tuesday and that means a new edition of TimeMachiner is here. This past week I’ve been reading a lot of Stephen King’s book The Institute. I mentioned it a few weeks ago and now I’m officially at the halfway point. I can confirm there are some great Stranger Things vibes with this book. It’s given my Kindle a good workout and I love where the story is going. A big recommendation, for sure. We finally got the digital release of a brand new Ninja Turtles game. I go into more detail a bit further down. But, spoiler…

Wave G’bye to HoJo

It’s 2022 and incredibly it is only this year that we see the closure of the final location of Howard Johnson’s restaurants. Once sporting a thousand locations, “HoJo’s” as many called it, is really gone for good. The final location resided in Lake George, NY which is a popular summer destination. Many visit the area to camp, fish, and boat along the massive lake. With a captive group of vacationers, it makes sense that this location was able to stay open well past the years of all the other HoJo’s. Ed Mazza at HuffPo has more on this and how…

Bitcoin’s $2T Loss

Imaginary “currency” that has no intrinsic value, is wildly manipulated, speculated like crazy, that uses more electricity than many nations, turns out to be a bad idea. Shocker, right? But that’s what is going on in the cryptocurrency world right now. And it’s not just Bitcoin either. For nearly a month, the bottom has fallen out from under the imaginary coins floating around. Bitcoin alone has lost over $2 TRILLION in value since Nov 2021. Being the biggest player in the space, of course, this brought down the value of every other “coin”. It’s losses for everyone who’s involved. Corrie…

Cowabunga! TMNT Shredder’s Revenge Is Finally Here

Fresh from the sewer and re-emerging from any late-80’s / early 90’s kid’s heart, comes the long-awaited TMNT game for modern game systems. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is a modern-day take on the classic TMNT video games we saw in the arcade and on home consoles back in the day. Game publisher Dotemu announced the game all the way back in March of 2001. A trailer and some gameplay hit the internet in August and it showed how much effort was going into this game. Emulating a 16-bit style, Shredder’s Revenge takes pieces from all the different Turtles…

Windows 95 Launch Video Reminds Us How 90s the 90’s Were

Tech events unveiling new software, gadgets, and services are pretty common nowadays. However, back in the earlier times of computers, it was still a nerd’s paradise. Computers were a niche product, existing mostly in professional settings or schools. The Internet was still in its infancy. So, to say that Microsoft’s Windows 95 was a big deal, it’s all true. The Blue OS Museum YouTube account has unearthed and posted the full 90-minute video showing Microsoft’s event. It has everything you could ever want from a company flexing its semi-might at a pivotal point in computing history. From the clothes, to…

Sharcano, Yes, Sharcanos Are Real

Sharks in ridiculous situations have been a thing for a long time. From B-list films, to Sharknado, to the ever-lovable Blahaj Ikea Shark. Now, we get the real deal holyfield: friggin sharks in a friggin (underwater) volcano. AJ Dellinger over at Mic has more. The Kavachi Volcano, an underwater volcano located in the Pacific Ocean’s Solomon Islands, erupted on May 14, according to images captured by NASA’s extensive monitoring equipment. That’s not a huge surprise — Kavachi is one of the most active submarine volcanoes in the Pacific, according to the agency, and has been in an eruptive phase since…

👋🏻 Hello. It’s great to bring you a new edition of TimeMachiner this Tuesday. A big welcome to Angelo, Matt, and the 6 newest subscribers to TimeMachiner. A shout out to those of you coming from Pearl Runner. Thank you for giving me space in your inbox. 🙏🏻 It’s been a good week of interesting stories I’ve gathered from around the unexplored corners of the internet. Today I’ve broken down the announcements from Apple’s annual WWDC while also remaining quite skeptical about what Barnes & Noble is up to in the eBook space. If you haven’t had a chance yet…

That’s Not My Dog In My Bed

Imagine waking up and feeling your dog in your bed. You roll around a little but when you sit up, you see something really weird: the dog laying next to you isn’t yours. Sounds crazy, right? Well, that’s exactly what happened to the Johnsons over in Benton, TN. Here’s more from the CBC. The interloper was “big, brown and furry,” Johnson said, and most importantly, “absolutely not my dog.” “I rolled over and I stared [at my husband] and he stared at me, and we were like, is this going to hurt us? You know, what do we do? Where…

iPod Saves The Office

For fans of The Office (a show I’m just now watching for the first time), there’s a great interview with Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. Appearing on Seth Meyer’s talkshow, the duo from our favorite paper company talks about how the show was saved by an unsuspecting device. The episode from 2005 revolves around an iPod as a Secret Santa gift. Apple shortly thereafter announces its 5th generation iPod, which can now play video. Part of this enhancement was a new offering to sell individual episodes of TV shows on the iTunes Store. Sure enough, The Office was one of…

B&N Remembers eBooks Exist

Books are in a weird resurgence right now. Barnes & Noble, once the villain of the bookseller world, is seen now as a refuge where books can be given space. Let’s face it, they’re the only bookseller with space large enough to house all these books. Finally, B&N has decided to give the old Nook eReader another try. But they mean it for real this time. Alex Cranz at The Verge has more. The Nook GlowLight 4e charges via USB-C and has 8GB of built-in storage, which is standard for an e-reader at this price. It also has a 6-inch…

WWDC 2022

With little surprise, Apple held its annual developer conference. Everything we knew was coming was announced: iOS 16, iPadOS 16, watchOS9, and macOS 13 (Ventura). There’s a bunch to break down, including some hardware. I have thoughts. Let’s dive in. If I were to distill iOS 16 to core updates, this version brings improvements to the lock screen and Messages. Basically you get to “un-send” and edit a sent message. You get a 15-minute window to do those things. To me, that’s too long. The other cool thing is the ability to hold on the subject of an image and…

Perpetually Updating

Later, later, later. That’s what we always say to those annoying popups. They hound us. They implore us to act on them. In the end, we find them supremely intrusive and frustrating. But it’s the world we now live in. It’s a place where nothing is produced in a Final version and we constantly have to live with those decisions. We live in a world of the software update. It Ships When It’s Done Before the internet was ubiquitous, it was commonplace to purchase software of any sort in one form. That was it. Whether you were purchasing a copy…

👋🏻 Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of TimeMachiner. I know it’s been a little longer than anticipated to get an issue to you, but I feel a bit rejuvenated after sending my last edition out. Also, the current interim schedule of going Tuesday-only for The Stream has given me a bit of breathing room to avoid burnout. I also have completed the next issue of The Longform. Time Traveler members will see it tomorrow in your inboxes! Everyone else will get it on Thursday. Today’s issue has a great video for all you music lovers out there along…

This Sucker’s Electrical

It’s impossible to write TimeMachiner and not talk about the reveal of the “New Delorean”. For a few months the Delorean Motor Company (no relation to the original DMC) has been teasing something new. A couple of silhouettes were put onto their homepage and that was it. Some rumors were floating around on whether it would be stainless steel, how powerful it would be, and what it would price at. Now we have our answers. This new “delorean” is dubbed the Alpha5. It’s a fully-electric car sporting a 100kWh battery pack, a 2.99 second 0-60 and a $175,000 price. From…

Man Absolutely Kills It Playing Everlong On Piano

Pianist Glaucio Cristelo, who goes by the name “Piano Rock” worked some magic on a piano at a Brazilian shopping mall. With over half a million views, his rendition of the Foo Fighters song Everlong is amazing to hear and watch. His channel is chock full of great songs. I highly recommend checking them out!

Don’t Mess With The Apple

Straight from the “How Stupid Can You Be” department is reporting about Chinese company BOE. This supplier for Apple manufactures OLED screens for the iPhone 13. In a massively-dumb move, BOE decided on their own to change the specs of how the displays were made and didn’t tell Apple. Gijong Lee at The Elec has the not-so-shocking consequence of BOE’s stupidity. The company was caught having changed the circuit width of the thin film transistors on the OLED panels it made for iPhone 13 earlier this year, people familiar with the matter said. This was done without Apple’s approval in…

Hey Everyone. Welcome to Saturday’s issue of TimeMachiner. Not long after Tuesday’s edition went out, yet another act of senseless violence took place. In my home country (and home to many of you too) I’ve found that we live in a constant Rinse And Repeat cycle of horror. It’s hard to concentrate on the corners of the internet I love to explore for myself and my readers when a fundamental part of our world is in peril. I cannot fathom the pain so many people have suffered day after day, year after year. And yet again, here we are. There…

NYC Removes Final Payphone

The march of time and technology never stops. The latest item to be reduced to the trash is the final payphone in New York City. In a place where payphones were on every single corner, the city that never sleeps now relies on wireless technology to keep New Yorkers connected. The bank of two phones was on 7th Avenue and 50th Street in Midtown Manhattan. And, as you might expect in Manhattan, graffiti was scrawled on it. The city began removing payphones in 2015 and replacing them with public Wi-Fi hotspots. The removal marks the end of the payphone era…

Google’s RCS Spam Failure

Google, whose failure to get people to use its various chat apps is well known, has been pushing an SMS alternative for years. RCS was to bring parity to Apple’s iMessage system for non-iPhone users. Google worked tirelessly to get carriers on board with RCS because it’s supposed to be better. And yes it’s better: for spammers. Jon Porter over at The Verge goes over how Android users in India are being flooded with RCS spam that is coming from legit companies. It’s unclear how widespread the issue currently is, but Indian-based Ishan Agarwal — whose recent tweets have drawn…

Excel’s Debut Commercial Is Everything We Love About the 90’s

Microsoft Excel is everywhere these days. It lives on the web via Office 365, in a standalone application since 1992, and has been replicated tons of times. Excel will always be a thing and a commonplace product. But back in 1992, Microsoft tried to wow everyone with what it could do. One elevator, two businessmen, one report they’re trying to complete. It’s a great trip down memory lane.

A good Tuesday and welcome to another week of TimeMachiner. There’s been a bunch going on in the past few days and I’m working on some great issues to come in the following days. I can’t say much else, but I think you’ll quite enjoy Thursday’s edition of the Longform. Stay tuned. I recently finished Severance’s first season and wow! I am thoroughly impressed with this show. It really messes with your mind and makes you think a ton. I highly recommend it. I’m glad I finished it because this Friday finally brings us the return of Stranger Things. Great…

Netflix Reaps What it Sows

Last week was a rough week for Netflix. The company that basically invented modern-day streaming, binge-watching, and kicked off the endless rebooting of shows, is in a world of hurt. Last week Netflix officially let go 150 employees. On the surface, this may seem like no big deal. Netflix is a giant company with many thousands of employees. The company is losing hundreds of thousands of subscribers. They’re seeing their stock slide on all this news. However, there’s more to it than that. This is the culmination of a company whose MO led them to catch lightning in a bottle…

Apple’s Malicious Compliance with Self Repair

Apple has made some big announcements about providing the parts, tools, and manuals to repair their products. This has been due to pressure from governments and Right To Repair making progress on bills in the works. But, Apple never said they had to be nice about it. In a lengthy write-up for The Verge, Sean Hollister goes over the insane process Apple puts a person through in order to repair their iPhone. I expected Apple would send me a small box of screwdrivers, spudgers, and pliers; I own a mini iPhone, after all. Instead, I found two giant Pelican cases…

Man Can’t Fly, Lands Plane Anyway

Straight out of “My Time To Shine” or “Oh Crap” depending on your comfort level comes this story about a passenger turned instant pilot. Darren Harrison was on a small plane when the pilot become unresponsive. Harrison, taking control of the situation, hopped into the pilot seat and got down to business. After leveling out the airplane he radioed Palm Beach Airport for assistance. It was in that tower that one of the controllers walked him through the entire landing procedure. Controller Bobby Morgan is a flight instructor and was able to verbally guide the plane to the airport and…

👋🏻 Happy Saturday and welcome to the weekend edition of TimeMachiner. A big thanks to those of you who subscribed in recent weeks. I see you! This past week has me making some good progress on Severence, which is truly turning into a mind-bender with each passing episode. It’s fantastic and I can’t wait to see how this season ends. It’s so weird but so great. Today’s issue has a real funny video mashup. If you enjoy 80’s cartoons and also grew up with Beavis & Butt-Head, you’ll get a kick out of someone’s incredibly fun work. I also have…

Entire Maine Town Closed After Clerk Walks Out

From the “hell yeah” department, things are looking pretty dire for the town of Passadumkeag, Maine. This small town has had a clerk working in the town’s offices. It’s now in the past tense because she walked off the job over denied vacation. Jhanvi Mehtalia has more of how a single person literally shut a town down. Christen Bouchard was the town clerk in Passadumkeag, Maine, since 2020. She requested a two-week vacation about a month and a half ago. Her plea was denied by the board of selectmen. They claimed that no one was available to step in for…

Crypto Is Crashing

In an unstable market comes very unstable times. For the past few weeks, everything in the cryptocurrency world is plummeting back down to earth. People who have been heavily invested in coins like Bitcoin and Etherium are taking a bath in losses. Things that claim to be “investments” like NFTs are also being realized as worthless. Over on the trading side, K. Holt at Endgaget writes about how Coinbase has paused hiring. For the record, Coinbase is one of the largest exchanges to trade in crypto and is probably one of the best-known sites out there for it. The company…

The Legend of Beavis

The internet is an amazing place to mix two separate things together and create comedy. Over on YouTube, someone took a Legend of Zelda animated short and overlaid it with audio from Beavis and Butt Head. Not only does it work, but it’s quite funny. Back in the 80’s the Super Mario Bros Super Show was a massive hit. Part live action and part animated shorts, the show was a quick pulling-together of work in order to get something related to Nintendo on the small screen. One great part of the show was that on Fridays, the animated short changed…

Alden Ehrenreich Was Not Solo’s Problem

Vanity Fair’s Anthony Breznican has a huge writeup about the current state of Star Wars, Lucasfilm, and the upcoming Obi Wan Kenobi show on Disney+. It’s a lengthy writeup featuring interviews with many castmembers of various shows. However, this quote from Kathleen Kennedy of Lucasfilm misses the mark. The 2018 movie Solo explored Han Solo’s younger years, with Alden Ehrenreich taking on the role of the smuggler originated by Harrison Ford. The film has its admirers, but it made less at the box office than any other live-action Star Wars movie. Solo’s swagger may be too singular for another actor to replicate. “There should…

👋🏻 Hello and welcome to the Tuesday edition of TimeMachiner. I’ve worked up a couple of medium-sized posts for this issue and that’s because two big things happened last week. Apple officially declared the iPod dead and then Google held its annual I/O conference. It’s a lot to go through, but I’ve got you. I’ve broken down the significance of both these events in true TimeMachiner style. It’s a little bit of a departure from other posts, so let me know what you thought by hitting reply to this email. Apple or Google not your thing? I have two great…