60 Minutes has a great interview with a young fellow named Peter McIndoe. On a whim, during a protest he saw, he decided to start his own movement: Birds Aren’t Real. Sounds crazy? Think again. Birds Aren’t Real is a fun way for McIndoe to show the absurdity of many of the conspiracy theories raging through the world today. From vaccines to QAnon to election fraud to 5G, all these cockamamie theories rile up real people to act on real ambitions and beliefs to advance their cause. But McIndoe is different. His goal is to hold up a mirror to…
In a world of Apples, Google wants to be… a Google-type of Apple. That’s my takeaway from the annual Google I/O conference last week. In typical Google fashion, they debuted new hardware, Android updates, and sorta-near-future mind-blowing tech. Let’s dive in. Pixel Watch was not only leaked but something that had been rumored for a while. It’s round, has proprietary bands, and runs Wear OS. It’s hard to leave much to surprise when Google let the cat out of the bag a while back. So far, it looks nice, and honestly, Android users deserve a tightly-integrated wearable experience like Apple…
Scammy call centers in parts of India are notorious for bilking people out of millions of dollars. It’s no secret that people fall victim to these schemes all the time. It makes scammers a lot of money. So it’s not hard to see why they keep doing it. Well, glitter bomb builder Mark Rober decided to have his way with them. Rober, whose YouTube channel boasts 21.8 million subscribers, teamed up with two other channels to exact revenge. The scammers’ locations were revealed with the help of scam-baiter Jim Browning. Armed with this information, the Trinity Media folks flew over…
It’s hard to imagine Apple without the iPod. In the Steve Jobs era, the iPod was the device that took them from “doing okay” to becoming a monumental success of a company. Even if you weren’t (or aren’t) an Apple fan, you had or were surrounded by iPods in the early aughts. And now that era is over. On May 10th Apple put out a press release stating what we all knew was coming at some point: the iPod Touch was being fully discontinued. Since its introduction over 20 years ago, iPod has captivated users all over the world who love the…
The same news comes around every few years: Friends, the TV show that shows no slowing down in popularity, moves to another streaming service. From Netflix to HBO Go Max, this is one show that always makes headlines when it moves. Plenty of others makes the rounds too: Seinfeld, classic Disney films, etc. But there are those who are immune to this Where’s Waldo of programming. People who look to own their media and have it always available at the press of a button, regardless of where it’s available for streaming. In their cases, they may not even have a…
👋🏻 Hello and welcome to the Tuesday edition of TimeMachiner. I hope the past weekend was a good one for you. I was able to take my time machine out for a meetup this past Saturday. The weather was terrible, so I didn’t get many photos (hence the stock photo on today’s issue). Cold / rainy weather stinks, but getting out to do something enjoyable was certainly great. In the past few days, I’ve finished the second season of Star Trek Picard while giving Strange New Worlds a try. I have… thoughts. Picard seemed a bit forced while SNW seems…
Autocorrect is both an amazing invention and a royal pain in the ass. Since the original iPhone, users have struggled against the “smart” system meant to fix misspellings and tapping on virtual keys much smaller than our fingers. But what does the inventor of Autocorrect think about the system? Luckily Joanna Stern at WSJ interviewed Ken Kocienda, the person himself. One thing that strikes me the most is how open Kocienda is to improving the system. I personally run into the “We’ll” and “Well” assumptions all the time. Most of the time my phone gets it wrong. Further, her tip…
Apple, who has historically been anti-remote work, has made a lot of headlines in the past months. Their policy has shifted in this COVID reality to one where they will move to a hybrid model. It ramps up with 2-days a week and then to 3-days a week in the office. Many are not happy about it. And how, Apple’s refusal to all fully-remote work has compelled their Director of AI to resign. The story by S. Dent at Engadget has the details. Now, Apple has lost director of machine learning Ian Goodfellow over the policy, according to a tweet…
Bargain hunters should be on the lookout when rummaging through Goodwill or any other thrift store. You may end up with a rare piece of world history in your living room. Sounds crazy, right? Well that’s exactly what happened to Laura Young who purchased a genuine Roman bust from Goodwill. Her cost? $35. Chantal Da Silva at NBC News has more. Laura Young, a Texas antiques dealer, thought she had found a steal when she came across a stunning statue at a Goodwill store in 2018 for just under $35. And while she suspected she had come across something “very…
Good afternoon! It’s been nearly nonstop rain here in NY and I’m still waiting for this supposed “spring” to arrive. Maybe next week. In the meantime, I’ve brought you some new happenings I’ve pulled up from the depths of the internet. From a retro-cool truck to small-town shenanigans, I’m excited for you to read today’s issue. 😳 The TimeMachiner Reader Survey ends soon. 5 min is all you need. 📤 If you’re enjoying TimeMachiner, please forward this to a friend. 🙌🏻 You can support my work by becoming a member or sending a one-time tip. Learn more. Onto today’s factoid: The…
Passwords are one of the worst inventions in the modern computing age. They’re impossible to remember, places make us change them on a constant basis, and and the requirements get harder and harder. The idea of getting rid of the password has been tossed about for years, but there’s a new effort from the major players to make it happen. Ron Amadeo at Ars Technica has more. The standard is being called either a “multi-device FIDO credential” or just a “passkey.” Instead of a long string of characters, this new scheme would have the app or website you’re logging in…
Ford’s F-100 pickup truck is pretty iconic. The design was one that was around for a long time. It was popular and has a retro-cool look to it that only few vehicles can achieve. Now, Ford is doing something awesome: putting a Mach-E motor into it. Umar Shakir at The Verge tells us more. Ford Performance, the automaker’s motorsports division, designed and commissioned the F-100 Eluminator and was built by MLe Racecars in Washington. And like many of Ford Performance’s other one-off projects, this F-100 won’t be available for purchase. It exists solely as an auto show car that displays…
Some friendly competition is happening with multiple stores over in Christiansburg, Virginia. In recent weeks many local shops have begun flinging lighthearted and funny “insults” toward one another. Jen Cardone over at WHSV has more. The Christiansburg Sign War started as a friendly business sign competition. The first two businesses to fire the first shots were a music and shoe store that inspired others to get into the game. Now, more than 13,000 people on Facebook are sitting on the edge of their seats to see what businesses will post next. The war began when Jim Bohon, a guitar and…
A good Tuesday to everyone! It’s been a somewhat quiet few days here but that’s been a nice way to get a bunch of reading done. I’m about 1/3 through The Midnight Library and it’s still a great read. The further I get through it, the more I want to recommend it. Additionally, I’m a bit further into Severance and yeah, this is surely an interesting TV show. Speaking of discovering new and interesting things, I suggest you check out The Sample. Every day (or less often, it’s your choice!) they forward you a newsletter to discover. You rate what…
The Kindle is one of the best single-use products on the market. To me, it’s everything a dedicated device should be. It does one thing and excels at it. In fact, anything else the Kindle tries to do (audio, web browsing, etc) is laughably bad. One part of the Kindle that’s been different than other eReaders out there was the lack of support for the common ePub file format. Now, Amazon seems to be finally adopting it. In an Amazon kind of way. Alex Cranz has more. What this has meant in practice is that, for the last 15 years,…
Hotels across the globe provide soap and shampoo to their guests. It’s been a mainstay of hotels since the beginning. For years there was an effort to move away from single-use items. I’ve been to a few hotels with pump bottles in the showers in order to reduce waste. Of course, COVID changed things and single-use items are back in fuller force. But, where does all that unfinished, but used, soap go? Zachary Crockett at The Hustle tells us. Shawn Seipler launched Clean the World and set out on a mission of getting those millions of bars of wasted soap to children…
Yet again we are seeing a car company look to the world of recurring revenue to help boost sales. A GM subscription looks to be on the horizon. I hope like other attempts at a car subscription, it dies in a very large fire. Rob Stumpf at The Drive has more. General Motors expects consumers to fork over as much as $135 per month on top of their car note in the coming years just to pay for subscription features. Previously, General Motors’ Senior Vice President of innovation and growth, Alan Wexler, said that the company’s research indicated that consumers…
Happy end of April, all! I hope you’re enjoying the warm weather while here in NY, it’s gusty and chilly as if winter simply refuses to leave. Go figure. This week I’ve begun reading The Midnight Library which seems to be a near-death / roads not taken type of book. I’m only 60-pages into it, but it’s a fascinating read so far. I hear it’s quite popular, so if this sounds like it’s for you, get in line at your library! Additionally, I’ve begun watching the Apple TV+ show Severence. This is a mind-bender and so far I really like…
Breakfast cereal has been a staple in homes for decades. The marketing for it has been quite clever. Cereal was positioned as something integral for breakfast and by doing this, companies like Kellog’s and Post have become morning empires. Now Tropicana, yes THAT Tropicana has decided they want a piece of the action. Orange juice on cereal.Some call it weird. Some call it breakfast. We . . . didn’t even know it was a thing. But turns out, there are totally normal people amongst us juicing up their cereal bowls. You might be one of them! So for those who…
Leave it to Snap, the makers of SnapChat to do something actually interesting with products. Sure, they started the app with disappearing photos, but they branched out with the viral camera glasses Spectacles a few years ago. They want to be more than an app, and now it looks like they’ve come up with something whimsical. The Snap Pixy is a $229 lightweight drone that is now on sale. The flying yellow square has a few preset modes wherein it can follow a person, fly away slowly for a ‘reveal’ effect, and even do an ‘orbit’ around someone. It doesn’t…
Google is finally having their own iPhone 4 moment. The search company, notorious for leaking a lot of their products on their own on purpose is finding themselves in the position of a true leak. A report from Ars Technica reveals that an upcoming Pixel Watch was lost at a restaurant, with a full slate of photos appearing on Android Central. Ron Amadeo has more. Sadly, the device doesn’t actually work. No one knows how to charge it, and it might be remotely wiped anyway. Keep in mind that these are pictures of a prototype, not the final model, and…
When it comes to music in the “before times” prior to the iPod, there was a huge boon when Sony introduced its Walkman portable cassette player. It was the first time someone could go anywhere and hear their music without carrying a giant boombox. It was the first time you could use headphones on the go to listen to whatever you wanted. Technology carried on and soon the Discman, and products like it came to replace the Walkman. And that is where things became… difficult. The idea of the Discman was insanely basic: do what the Walkman / portable cassette…
A good Tuesday to everyone. Well, it’s only the second day of the week and surely nothing newsworthy has happened yet, right? 🙃 As much as I don’t want to give you-know-who even more mindshare, the big Twitter news is impossible to ignore. However, it has given me a jump to explore other social platforms such as Mastodon. If you’re over there, look me up. I would appreciate it if you can take 5-minutes and participate in the TimeMachiner Reader Survey. I’m looking to make TimeMachiner even better. I never include any tracking or spy analytics stuff in anything I do,…
It seems the dam has broken when it comes to retail and warehouse workers for major companies. Not long after Amazon’s JFK warehouse location and Starbucks’ Buffalo store both successfully unionized, efforts are now underway elsewhere to unionize as well. Apple is the latest company to see its employees band together to work for better pay, protections, and fair working conditions. It’s no surprise, given the tough work their store employees must do in a retail environment that can be unforgiving. Rachel Kraus at Mashable has more on one store’s mission to unionize. Workers at the Apple Store in the…
It’s difficult to fully process the landmark news that Elon Musk has successfully purchased Twitter. Was this something we all should’ve seen coming? Maybe it was naïve of me to believe it was someone trolling a company who’d invited him to come aboard and then the entire deal fell through. It’s hard to say. But what is easy to say is this is big news. Huge. In the social media space, there has traditionally been two places. For a while, it was MySpace and Facebook. Then it was Facebook and Twitter. There was a span of time where Google was…
Get ready Xennials and older folks because I’m about to say something that will make you shudder: Gen Z has deemed Grunge music as Oldies. 😱 I know, right? But there is a big plus to this admission of age: rediscovery. When it comes to Nirvana, songs the band put out are reaching 20 years old. But, because of TikTok and videos talking about “songs you should know”, these tracks are making some big moves. Richie Assaly at the Toronto Star has more. As of this week, “Something In The Way” has been used to soundtrack nearly 200,000 TikTok videos.…
Hello and happy Record Store Day, fellow readers. For those unaware, RSD is a designated day where independent record stores get special releases of new and re-released albums. They’re always in special variants and are wonderful to find. It’s also a great way to support local music stores. Yes, I was up at 6:30 this morning to head out and buy my vinyl. A big welcome to everyone who’s new here from Pearl Runner. I appreciate you coming to check out TimeMachiner. Please know if you have any feedback or even want to say hello, simply reply to this email.…
For all the whiz-bang features Tesla keeps pumping into its cars via software updates, there are many that do not live up to the hype. Full self driving with AutoPilot has been shown to still be in its infancy regardless of what Elon Musk promises. Another feature that is quite rough around the edges is the Smart Summon feature. This is supposed to summon your car to you automatically without anyone driving. The idea is if you want to get into your car but not walk to it, your car will come to you. Well, what everyone failed to realize…
Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has been inching closer over time to do more than be a great search. In their newest move, the company has released the first preview version of their own web browser for the Mac. José Adorno at 9to5Mac has more details. The browser uses built-in privacy protections like private search, tracker blocking, website encryption, and email protection. Downloaded over 150 million times since 2018, the team behind DuckDuckGo decided it was time to bring the “privacy, simplified” experience to desktops and laptops. DuckDuckGo for Mac is an all-in-one privacy solution for everyday browsing with no complicated…
One of the greatest things to come out of the TV show Ted Lasso is the character of Roy Kent. The brash, unfiltered, and ornery soccer player is so wonderfully written that it’s hard not to like him. In a nod to how much viewers have enjoyed Brett Goldstein’s work playing Kent, he achieved a fantastic new role: guest-starring on Sesame Street. They talk about Brett’s favorite letter of the alphabet and a word that begins with that letter. I’ll give you one guess as to what it can be.