A fun gem I found where musician Tony Ann has taken the iconic ringtone we all know from the iPhone and turned it into a complete song. It’s not the first time I’ve seen a massive amount of musical talent to write about, but this one is surely up there with the greats. The video is below and this is a direct link to view it as well.
Arcades, dominant in the 80s are something of a bygone era. While there is a resurgence in places to play video games in the modern era, no 80s arcade is as unique as this one in Los Angeles. Because its location is quite unexpected: Torrence High School. The Electronics Club of the school did something unique and opened a “pinball room”, which ironically also had arcade cabinets too. The club is the subject of the All American High documentary that was released in 1987. A piece of the footage is below which shows the pinball room in action. It’s an…
The future of delivery trucks should be electric. The USPS is finally going to head into this direction. Amazon has been part of this change too. Their 2019 deal with Rivian created an electric delivery van that looks amazing and is great for the environment. But in typical Amazon style, they’re barely living up to their end of the agreement. And as-such, Rivian wants out. Emma Roth at The Verge has more. …with Amazon reportedly only meeting the bare minimum of ordering 10,000 vehicles this year, the two are renegotiating. In 2021, The Verge reported that the terms of the original deal gave…
Read to the end for a post about dog irony. 👋🏻 Welcome to this week’s edition of TimeMachiner. Thanks for subscribing and checking out my work. I’m so happy you’re here. As a fan of The Legend of Zelda series, I was thrilled to hear about the release of the Tears of the Kingdom collector’s edition. When Nintendo announced it, I eagerly waited for various stores to put up their pre-orders. Instead, I found myself caught up in the frustrating world of online shopping. I knew the game would be in high demand, but I didn’t expect the level of…
Over the years we’ve grown skeptical about text messages and unknown callers. Unsolicited calls informing us our car’s warranties are expiring are a joke now and it is becoming well known that Amazon and the like will not contact you to refund your money. But the scammers are always one step ahead and voice AI muddies the waters. In essence, scammers are cloning the voice of someone you know, then contacting you saying they need money. And people are falling for it. Pranshu Verma at the Washington Post has more of this fascinating way scammers are working their new angle.…
Disney has learned the hard way that milking Star Wars for everything it is worth is not a good strategy. They’ve blamed the wrong people for movie failures and generally missed the mark with the launch of the Galactic Starcruiser. Natalie Sim at Theme Park Tourist now reveals that Disney is cutting back “sailings” for the Starcruiser. The first sign that the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser was in trouble was at the end of 2022 when the first discount was offered of 30% off original Points Chart values on select 2-night Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser adventures for Disney Vacation Club (DVC) members. In January, Disney…
Many, many gadgets may seem like a good idea, but never make it to market. Then, some do. And in even rare occasions, they never should have. Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook know that all too well. One device that needed a crowd to say “No!” was the Twitter Peek. Back in the infancy of the iPhone and the modern smartphone era, the Peek was a small single-purpose device that allowed you to access your Twitter feed without a smartphone or computer. It was one of the first standalone devices made specifically for social media, and it was supposed to be…
Read to the end for the end of a decades-long childhood manhunt. 👋🏻 Welcome to this week’s edition of TimeMachiner. Thanks for subscribing and checking out my work. I’m so happy you’re here. It’s the end of March and the next quarterly bonus item has dropped for my Time Traveler members: a crossword puzzle! It’s something a bit different but I think you’ll like it. You can download the PDF here. The solution is in your membership home page. If you want it but aren’t a Time Traveler, you can unlock this and all other bonus content instantly when you…
Last week was an… interesting one in regard to TikTok. The massively-successful social network app with 50 million daily active users is in the sights of the US House of Representatives. They feel the app should be banned but that is a real slippery slope and one that could backfire drastically. Let’s rewind a bit to see how we got here. A Chinese company called ByteDance owns TikTok. For a while the app floundered as a network that never caught on in its original incarnation Music.ly. They rebranded into TikTok and shifted from a music lipsyncing app into the video-focused…
As a music lover and record collector since the late 90s, I have loved the fact that records have made an incredible comeback. What was once thought to be a dead format has had a resurgence like no other. More exciting to me is the news that vinyl records have officially outsold CDs in the US. Jess Weatherbed from The Verge has more about this great news. According to the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) annual revenue report, vinyl records outsold CDs in the US last year for the first time since 1987, selling 41 million units against 33…
Google Glass is one of the higher-profile flops from Google. The augmented-reality frames were meant to be something lightweight you wore to get information at a glance. It never got out of the “limited early adopter” stage for the general public. But quietly in the business realm, Glass succeeded. Until today. Because Google is killing off the Enterprise Edition of Glass. Samuel Axon at Ars Technica has more on this product you likely didn’t even know still existed. An updated version called Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2 was announced in 2019, and that’s the one that was discontinued. Sales ceased…
Read to the end for 56k. 👋🏻 Welcome to this week’s edition of TimeMachiner. Thanks for subscribing and checking out my work. I’m so happy you’re here. The internet is a fickle place. We hear a lot right now about Twitter and ChatGPT and NFTs and crypto. Are those fads or the “next big thing”? Hard to tell right now, but one fun thing to do is to look back at what things heralded as the future of something and fizzled real quick. Path is an interesting one. The defunct social network was founded on a simple premise: you could…
As a lover of all things sweet, I’ve always been intrigued by the Twinkie. Known for their yellow cake and creamy filling, Twinkies have been a go-to snack for generations. One rumor that has persisted since I was a kid is that Twinkies don’t expire. Is this really true? According to Shea Simmons over at Lifesavvy, the answer is sort of yes and no. In general, Twinkies are shelf-stable for up to 25 days. That’s markedly longer than many other snack cakes but way shorter than the infinite date cited by many. The thing that makes Twinkies last longer than others is…
It’s no secret that Facebook lacks original ideas. Their features are mostly copied from others in an attempt to elbow out the competition. Instagram was a purchase along with WhatsApp. Reels was them stealing Snapchat’s idea. Copying bad ideas is a new one for them. It has come to light thanks to Ben Mayo at 9to5Mac. Facebook will look to copy Twitter’s paid verification feature in the near future. A quick reminder: this is the paid feature that was a disastrous failure for Twitter. The subscription plan called Meta Verified will cost $11.99/month if bought on the web, and $14.99…
The roots of rap and hip hop are intertwined with past music. From the earliest releases to the latest hits, so many songs use samples of prior music. Puff Daddy made mega-hits of songs in the 90s based off 80s samples. So have Dr. Dre, The Fugees, and Eminem. The list goes on and on. Now, with the release of De La Soul’s 3 Feet High And Rising on streaming, we learn more of what needs to be addressed: the legality of sampling. Dan Charnas at Slate discusses the struggle of the legendary hip-hop group to legally release their music…
Read to the end for A Great Typo. 👋🏻 Welcome to this week’s edition of TimeMachiner. Thanks for subscribing and checking out my work. I’m so happy you’re here. I hate Daylight Saving Time. I hate Standard Time. To be more specific, I hate the change between the two. One hour of change to the structure of our days is something that messes with our body clocks. In the words of The Doctor: I don’t like it. It was last year that I was somewhat hopeful there would be an end to this stupidity. Here in the US our elected…
We can joke around that modern movies using 80s pop culture properties have not usually worked out: Battleship and GI Joe are two examples. If it hadn’t been milked to death, Transformers would’ve broken that trend. Now we get a drama coming soon that looks to actually do what Transformers could not. And that property is Tetris. It may sound laughable, but the story behind Tetris is fascinating for many reasons. First, the Soviet Union owned all intellectual property and that meant Tetris never belonged to creator Alexey Pajitnov. Second, Atari was thought to own the rights to the game…
Slowly but surely, electric vehicles (EVs) are breaking through into the mainstream. As much as I hate to give credit to Lord Manchild, his company has been a difference-maker in this area. Now we’re seeing the government get involved here in the US. The United States Postal Service (USPS) is making strides toward electrifying its fleet of delivery vehicles, and it’s turning to Oshkosh and Ford to help make it happen. It announced plans to purchase over 100,000 electric delivery vehicles over the next decade. Mitchell Clark at The Verge has more. In an announcement post on Tuesday, the agency said it…
We’ve learned real quick due to COVID and supply chain breakdowns that computer chips are in EVERYTHING. It stops cars from being delivered with all their features and delays products from shipping. One place with too many (as in more than zero) chips is appliances. They may be “smart” and have interesting features, but does anyone really want that? Apparently not according to Kevin Purdy at Ars Technica. Appliance makers like Whirlpool and LG just can’t understand. They added Wi-Fi antennae to their latest dishwashers, ovens, and refrigerators and built apps for them—and yet only 50 percent or fewer of…
Today I’m talking about ChatGPT. But not in the “OMG it’s going to replace writers” sense or even the “It’s a sentient AI” way (because it’s not), but today I need to address the elephant in the room: AI’s reliability and trustworthiness. A friend on Mastodon shared this article from The Register wherein the author explored the AI’s knowledge about himself. What struck him as concerning was the final paragraph of what the AI system said: he was dead. Obviously, it wasn’t true. Then something weird happened: the system doubled down on the claim. Let me explain. Lost in all…
When a pet runs away it can be a traumatic experience. A small neighborhood instantly transforms into a vast landscape of places they could go. Sometimes there are happy endings. For the Manuela family and their lost tortoise, theirs did too. However, it took 30 years. Stephen Messenger at The Dodo has more. Flash forward 30 years to 2013. Almeida’s grandfather had recently passed away, and her family gathered at her mom’s childhood home to sort through his possessions. Almeida’s grandfather had left behind a very cluttered attic, and as the the room was cleared and his things moved out…
Video game music is an art form. Composers finally have their own category at the Grammy awards. But watching the music get composed for pinball in the 80s is where some real magic happens. Composer Suzanne Ciani is the main composer in this documentary video showing how she creates music and digitizes speech for Xenon. The table features her voice and original music for all aspects of play. It’s an incredible piece of archival footage; mainly because Ciani talks you through the process every step of the way. From drawings of how the table will look to enthusiastic talk about…
The collection of our personal data to then be packaged and sold is nothing new. TVs do it, websites do it, and companies all over the world do it. It’s why GDPR and CCPA exist. But what do you do if you live elsewhere? That’s where Consumer Reports comes in. A new service + app called Permission Slip is a free offering from the long-trusted review site. In a nutshell it sends data deletion requests to companies on your behalf. Those requests demand those companies comply with the law. And it is pretty seamless. For someone like me who takes…
Read to the end for a post about all the boxes. 👋🏻 Welcome to this week’s edition of TimeMachiner. Thanks for subscribing and checking out my work. I’m so happy you’re here. I’ve been enamored with creature comforts lately. You know, the small things we see or experience from time to time that make life easier. Our lives can fall into a monotinous cycle that repeats daily. However there are innovations that add a small level of relief. I was thinking about this when I went to hand over my email, yet again, to an app I was checking out…