The First Webpage

Tons of things online are lost to time, but one of the most important things ever continues to live on: The first webpage. Even better, the announcement of said webpage by Sir Tim Berners-Lee continues to be available online. To me, it’s the ultimate nostalgia trip. Before the web, there was Usenet and Listserv message boards and mailing lists. The idea of a graphical way to “visit” a place was a far-out idea but on August 6, 1991 the announcement was made from CERN. In part it reads as follows: WorldWideWeb – Executive Summary The WWW project merges the techniques…

Surprising Nobody, A Zelda Movie Is Coming

Nintendo has learned a thing or two about making movies. Its first outing back in 1993 was somewhat absolutely a disaster. A confusing live-action flick starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo was so, so bad. But thirty year later in 2023, Nintendo tried again. And boy did they have success. So much so that its other tentpole franchise is heading toward the big screen. Yuri Kageyama at the AP has more. Nintendo is developing a live-action film based on its hit video game “The Legend of Zelda.” The film, with financing from Sony Pictures Entertainment as well as its own…

Inhumane Pin

I continue to be skeptical about AI and that skepticism extends to the “AI-focused” products that are coming out this year. Case-in-point: a pin from an unknown company called Humane. They’d like you to think of it as a sort of wearable thing that you can interact with using AI. What it looks like is a very expensive product, spewing confidently-wrong-AI bullshit-filled-responses that will likely sell in tiny quantities. Ron Amadeo at Ars Technica has more. As far as we can tell, it’s a $700 screenless voice assistant box and, like all smartphone-ish devices released in the last 10 years,…

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TimeMachiner in 2024

Read to the end for a post about ironic paywalls. January is, to me, one of the quickest months of the year. It’s a weird recovery period from the December holiday season, many get two days off and before you know it, February is here. The month is already half over, which is crazy. I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. Personally I don’t think they work for me. I try to have general goals I set whenever I need for whenever I feel like I want to accomplish something. Everyone is different, so I don’t judge anyone who starts something…

Mercedes + Buc-ee’s = EV Love

Mercedes is getting serious with electric cars and, even more important for those on road trips, public charging where it’s needed. Late last year the automaker opened a flagship charging location in Georgia. To say it’s gorgeous is an understatement. But now it plans to expand these ‘premium charging hubs’ to one of my favorite chains: Buc-ee’s. Peter Johnson at Electrek has more. Buc-ee’s operates the “world’s largest convenience store,” that’s 74,000 square feet (because everything is bigger from Texas). In comparison, the average convenience store in the US is about 2,600 square feet. Where better than to build premium EV charging…

Selling AI Nonsense

It’s been pretty obvious for a few years that Amazon’s marketplace is filled with no-name products from no-name brands peddling questionable quality. Buying on Amazon is a roll of the dice even more than eBay these days. This stems from sellers looking to mass-list and mass-sell items with minimal effort. With ChatGPT and other “AI” tools hitting the scene, people’s ‘cheats’ to do less work are being exposed in listing titles. Kyle Orland at Ars Technica has more. Amazon users are at this point used to search results filled with products that are fraudulent, scams, or quite literally garbage. These days, though, they…

Amazon Ditching Android

Amazon pushes its physical products all the time on its website. Fire sticks, Fire TV, Echo, etc. The list of hardware it offers is pretty extensive. Amazon takes the approach of “cheap and replaceable” tech in order to make money with services and convincing you to buy stuff. But now Amazon is doing something unexpected: bringing the operating system of its products in-house. Jeff Parsons at Tom’s Guide has more. At present, the company uses its Fire OS, a fork of open source Android that sits inside the likes of the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, Fire Tablet series and Echo Show speakers. But…

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Substack’s Nonsense

Read to the end for a post about Email Roadblocks. Editor’s Note: Thanks to everyone who completed the TimeMachiner reader survey. I’d like to announce that “JKresh” is the winner! Please check your inbox or spam folder for an email I sent last week so I can send you your prize! 2024 is upon us and I’m excited to get a new year of TimeMachiner underway. One thing that I’ve been quite happy about are some key past decisions I’ve made about how I’ve set up this newsletter. Mainly, I decided at the beginning that I would not use Substack.…

Airport Squirrels

Squirrels may be just another part of nature walks or excitement out a window, but here’s something quite fascinating: a group is dedicated to helping the European Ground Squirrel population thrive. And one of its most thriving and last spots is at Bratislava Airport in Slovakia. An airport may sound like an odd place to have a thriving colony of squirrels. But the video from Mossy Earth goes into many details as to why this is. Mainly the land around an airport is clear but untouched by people due to the nature of how an airfield needs to operate. Because…

Kid Defeats Tetris

Tetris news, like the game itself, never seems to end. The classic puzzle game returned to the news last week because something new with the game had been accomplished for the first time: beating it. Thought Tetris has no ending? Think again. A 13-year old boy who goes by the name of Blue Scuti was live streaming an attempt to reach what’s called a “kill screen”; a part of a game where the whole thing glitches and it’s impossible to continue. And sure enough he was able to achieve this feat for the first time ever. You can watch as…

Bidding on The Enterprise

eBay is always filled with various bits and bobs of movie and TV memorabilia. Scripts, set pieces, small trinkets from the entertainment industry always find their way to the ‘world’s biggest yard sale’. But late last year something odd hit the marketplace: a model of the USS Enterprise used to film the opening credits of the original Star Trek. Samuel Axon at Ars Technica has more. The first model of the USS Enterprise ever used in shooting the original Star Trek series may have surfaced after going missing decades ago. An eBay listing of a 3-foot model of the Enterprise appeared early last week and named a starting…

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TimeMachiner’s Year In Review

Read to the end for a post about 90’s Power Switches. Editor’s Note: The TimeMachiner reader survey CLOSES TODAY. Every qualifying person who completes it can be entered in a raffle to win a YETI Hotshot or Tumbler! It’s my #1 way to know what is important to you and how to make TimeMachiner better. Please take a few minutes to fill it out. Thank you! It’s been quite the year here at TimeMachiner. In total I’ve written 203 posts and that totals over 64k words! While this is a dip from last year (344 posts / 107k words) I…

Half-Life at 25

Late last week, I had the pleasure of immersing myself in Valve’s 25th anniversary hour-long documentary, which focuses on the remarkable journey behind the creation of Half-Life. The game turns 25 and Valve felt it was worth a celebration. If you aren’t familiar with Half-Life, this may sound odd. So, let’s rewind. Half-Life was the first game by Valve, the company behind Steam and the Steam Deck. Released in 1998, the game was a first person shooter but unlike anything that had come before it. Half-Life (HL) was designed to tell a narrative story that immersed you in the environment.…

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White Elephants Everywhere

Read to the end for a post about keeping grandma. Editor’s Note: The TimeMachiner reader survey closes in two weeks. Every qualifying person who completes it can be entered in a raffle to win a YETI Hotshot or Tumbler! It’s my #1 way to know what is important to you and how to make TimeMachiner better. Please take a few minutes to fill it out. Thank you! 👋🏻 A big hello to everyone who’s joined TimeMachiner via The Hustle. Thanks for subscribing and checking out my work. Thanksgiving here in America is now behind us. For me, this is when…

Florida Man: The Sport

Imagine this: You’re being chased by the police. There’s fences you must jump in order to evade capture. Or you’re in a booth with money being blown all around you that you must catch. Or you are ready for hand-to-hand combat… with beer bellies. I’m not tossing out random competitions. I’m talking about the “Florida Man Games.” Organizers of the “Florida Man Games” describe the competition as “the most insane athletic showdown on Earth.” The games will poke fun at Florida’s reputation for producing strange news stories involving guns, drugs, booze and reptiles — or some combination of the four.…

Rivian Delivers Expansion

Rivian, the automaker who makes the quite-cool-looking fully-electric delivery vans for Amazon, has gotten its wish. The company has ended its exclusivity with Amazon and is ready to expand its van business to other customers. Now any company in the delivery business can nab one of these snazzy vehicles. Jameson Dow at Electrek has more. Amazon ordered 100,000 of these vans in 2019, and Rivian has steadily been fulfilling that order, which goes through 2030. They’re starting to appear out and about, but the order will take years for the company to fulfill as it ramps up production. So far, Rivian has…

AI Scrolling

I may be very skeptical of all the buzz surrounding AI right now, but there are practical uses for the technology. Ancient scrolls dating back to A.D. 79 were burned in a volcanic eruption. Unrolling them is impossible and over the years scanning technology has tried to see anything inside. But using some AI, a college student assisted with deciphering the ancient text. Kyle Melnick at The Washington Post has more. The text message he received at the party included an image from one of the scrolls. [Luke] Farritor sat down in a corner to review the picture and uploaded…

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Snoopy on Apple Watch

Read to the end for a post about chicken soup. Editor’s Note: The TimeMachiner reader survey is open. Every qualifying person who completes it can be entered in a raffle to win a YETI Hotshot or Tumbler! It’s my #1 way to know what is important to you and how to make TimeMachiner better. Please take a few minutes to fill it out. Thank you! I was an early adopter of smart watches. The original Pebble watch on Kickstarter was an amazing product and revolutionary at the time. It had an eInk display (like the Kobo reader and Amazon Kindle)…

The Full Starcruiser Story

Disney finally called Uncle on its immersive Galactic Starcruiser experience. For those unaware, it was a 3-day stay on a “starship” in Florida with a visit to Baatu (AKA Galaxy’s Edge) but cost about $5,000. It looked amazing but ultimately it closed. So what was it like to be on board? YouTube channel Ordinary Adventures has you covered. Over the course of four visits, channel hosts Kitra and Peter filmed and cut together the entire experience. This spans across the 4 storylines you could participate in: Jedi, Resistance, First Order, or Smuggler. The complete video is four hours but immensely…

Apple Adopts RCS

Color me more than surprised about this out-of-nowhere announcement from Apple. Let’s cut to the chase: late next year Apple will replace SMS with RCS on iPhone later next year. I have thoughts. Firstly, this is not replacing iMessage. There will still be green bubbles. iMessage will still be the default when messaging another person with an Apple ID. However, the fallback messaging with Android phones will now be via RCS. Back in August I declared “I would never bet Apple adopts RCS. They won’t. The only way is if SMS becomes deprecated and no longer supported by carriers in a few…

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Read to the end for a post about catching all the Taylor. Editor’s Note: I’m always looking to make this newsletter better. That’s why I’m inviting you to participate in the TimeMachiner reader survey. Every qualifying person who completes it can be entered in a raffle to win a YETI Hotshot or Tumbler! This survey is really important. It’s my #1 way to know what is important to you and how to make TimeMachiner better. Please take a few minutes to fill it out. Thank you! We’re officially in the ‘fast-forward’ part of the year. In some ways it’s nice…

East Coast vs West Coast Butter

Generally, we think of coastal rivalries involving sports teams or rappers, but in a twist, there is also a difference in the world of butter. That’s right, butter, which I have never thought about in any way except when I need to use it or buy more, has a whole different look on depending on where you live in the US. Luckily, the butter itself is basically the same. The biggest difference is whether you want salted or unsalted, which is the same choice in New York and California. The size, weight, and shape are what sets it all apart.…

The WhyMac

Apple’s transition to their own in-house chips, Apple Silicon, has been a humongous boon for the Mac. For years the Intel-powered computers were good but Apple was at the mercy of Intel’s roadmap. And many times it was underwhelming. The first M1 computers were stellar in every way, none more striking than the redesigned iMac. But lost in all the excitement was a simple observation: Apple seems disinterested in the iMac altogether. The M-series iMac was released in May of 2021. Apple redesigned the whole thing. They went back to a set of colors, invoking the whimsy of the original.…

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