TimeMachinerMany TV shows and movies have plots involving deadly asteroids plummeting straight for Earth. Us humans here on Earth have been as helpless as the dinosaurs. Now, we’re finally doing something about it and standing up to these Near Earth Objects. Earlier today NASA DART completed a nearly-year-long mission to deliberately slam a satellite into…Continue readingNASA Stands Up to Asteroid Bullying
In all the years of Star Wars movies and television shows, one thing has remained a constant: James Earl Jones. The actor who has appeared in countless movies throughout his career is the defining voice of Darth Vader. At age 91, Jones has agreed to call it quits. It makes sense that would want to…Continue readingDarth Vader is More Machine Than Man
Facebook Meta isn’t the only game in town when it comes to virtual reality. In an approach based in… reality, Sony is developing their second PSVR hardware for the application people would actually use: playing games. Sony released its first edition of the Playstation VR add-on to the PS4 back in 2016. While it was…Continue readingSony’s Coming for Meta with PSVR2
Smart home devices are great until they’re not. The earliest device to get smart and go mainstream is the thermostat, thanks to Nest. The device is sleek and easy to use. Over time many others have come to the market. But now we see the downside: a power company in Colorado locked out their customers…Continue readingI’m Sorry Dave, You Cannot Turn Your Air Conditioning On
Star Wars has always been a cash cow. However, in the Disney-ownership era, there’s been hits and misses. An early risk they took with their newly-purchased franchise was Rogue One. This was going to be a non-Skywalker side story. Nobody knew what to expect, but it turned out to be fantastic. On the heels of…Continue readingGiving Rogue One Its Due
AT&T plugging holes in its G5 network by placing winning bids on “mid-range” bandwidth. These frequencies allow faster-than-4G speed, but now they seem to have pulled a fast one. After confirming multiple times about phones that will support their 3.45 GHz spectrum, they’ve now come out and said JKLOL MY BAD! Only brand new phones…Continue readingScummy Cell Carrier Does Scummy Thing (Yet Again)
If I were to ask you “Remember the ‘S’ from school?” I bet more than a handful would answer “absolutely.” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it is an angular letter S that is drawn with six vertical lines and then connecting them with some diagonal lines. But where did it come from?…Continue readingThat S We All Drew in School
While we’re running head-first into a global climate crisis, we might as well unearth some interesting pieces of history. In Europe’s Danube River, the water level is so low, that WWII Nazi warships are resurfacing along with their thousands of onboard explosives. Dipo Faloyin at Vice has more. Twenty explosive-filled German warships have resurfaced after…Continue readingDrought Reveals Ships
You can’t keep a good classic down. Leave it to the Spielberg movie that made everyone afraid of the water to make big bucks in a limited return to theaters. Recently national theater chains held a National Cinema Day event and movie tickets were a cool $3 to see a movie. Jaws ended up being…Continue readingJaws Bites the Box Office
Stow, Massachusettes is in a bit of a crisis. The small town that sits about 30 miles east of Boston has had the most Massachusetts of slights committed against it: the closing of its Dunkin’ Donuts locations. WBZ’s Matt Shearer reports that where there were once two locations in the small town, there are now…Continue readingA mile and a Half for a Dunkin’
The border of the US and Mexico has a smuggling problem. One that causes hundreds of pounds of meat to illicitly flow into the US. This high-value item is definitely unexpected. It’s bologna. Madeleine Aggeler at Texas Monthly tells us more. The bologna arrives in darkness. Hundreds of pounds cross into the U.S. from Mexico…Continue readingBologna Smugglers
For all the hullabaloo in Apple’s announcements last week, one key item was also announced: the iPhone 14 in the US will not come with a spot for a physical SIM card. eSIM, a software-only equivalent, will be the only way to go from now on. Is this a smart move on Apple’s part? Eli…Continue readingDeath to the SIM
On the eve of the iPhone 14 announcement, I thought it would be good to pause and look back on this fantastic comparison the folks at Simple Ghar mocked up. The team over there went through and compared photos from Samsung, Apple, and other smartphones going back to 2000. To compare the capabilities of camera…Continue readingCamera Evolution
A new entry from the “we never asked for this” department. LG has announced its Arts Lab with this bonehead feature: you can display, buy, and sell NFTs directly on the television. Emma Roth at The Verge brings us this gem of an idea. For now, only users in the US with an LG TV…Continue readingI Want My NFT TV
The early days of the internet lasted a long time. Notably, the start of people getting online differed from childhood, to something teenagers tried out, to people only getting a computer in the home past 2000. It wasn’t like the iPhone where people all got it within a compressed timeframe. Because of that long time,…Continue readingInternet Power Explains the “World Wide Web” in 1995
Apple, like most companies, has most, if not all manufacturing taking place in China. While this has been debated hotly in the US for decades if it’s good to do, COVID and the inability to make things have hit the tech sector hard. Apple is now doing something about it. Arnold Zafra at The Mac…Continue readingDiversifying The Supply Chain
If there is one subset of PC hobbyists that can simultaneously become a rabbit hole and an obsession, it’s those who are enamored with mechanical keyboards. These fans create custom keyboards, cobbled together from bespoke keycaps and individually suited switches in order to make their perfect input device. It is a fun hobby and can…Continue readingDoes It Come In Elvish?
In an event that wasn’t leaked beforehand or tipped off to any insiders, T-Mobile made a big announcement last week. The company, which merged with Sprint recently, will partner with Starlink to fill in gaps within their coverage map. The coolest part? It will work with existing cell phones without the need to buy special…Continue readingT-Mobile Looks To The Stars
With the rise in remote learning, partially due to COVID, there have been a fair number of companies working to get in on this new way of education. Many colleges and universities have purchased service agreements with electronic proctoring companies in order to achieve some form of honesty amongst test-takers. However, the means by which…Continue readingSpying Proctors
Coffee that is brewed by laser beams. What better combination could there be? Well, fantasy is becoming a reality thanks to Anna Rosa Ziefuss. She is a German scientist who has invented a speedy way to make cold-brew coffee. Total time? Three minutes! Jesus Diaz at FastCompany has the scoop. Ziefuss and her colleagues used…Continue readingLaser Coffee
The phrase “OK, Boomer” is nearly played out, but still makes a point to an older generation about the way to do things. Playing on this, Bronwyn Petry at MoneyWise makes a list attempting to equate “old things” with “don’t do this anymore” or “this is a good skill to have”. The weirdness of Petry’s…Continue readingNot Quite Boomin’
Notable and famous people come from nearly every town in the world. Sure, you likely know some famous people in your area, but most people don’t know anyone just outside that area. Now, Topi Tjukanov has gone ahead and made an interactive map letting you zoom in and out to see all the famous people…Continue readingNotable Neighborhood
Google launched a new campaign two weeks ago that looks to do two things: The first is to tout how far RCS has come since Google began pushing it a few years ago. The second is to shame Apple into supporting it on iOS. Google will fail. That isn’t simply my opinion. While it is…Continue readingRCS Shame and Blame
Atari was a fascinating company, responsible for both the rise of home video game consoles in the US and also the market crash of the same industry. The legendary 2600 was everywhere in the early 80s and there was certainly no shortage of software. The company may be a shell of itself these days, but…Continue readingAn Atari Lookback
Weird Al is one of those national treasures of incredible talent. The man has been making parody music for over four decades and he hasn’t stopped. Most musical eras contain clever parodies of his and original music that easily gets stuck in your head. Recently, there’s a video has hit YouTube with an entire alternate…Continue readingAlternate Eating
There’s the saying “Better late than never” but this definitely takes it to a whole new level. At the Sheffield Cathedral, a building that is 800 years old, now has finally received back its 300-year book loan from a patron. David Kessen has more over at The Star. Now the book, The Faith and Practice…Continue readingWhat’s The Late Fee on 109,500 days?
Back in November, Netflix announced it was getting into the gaming business. A slate of five titles was rolling out to start, which is really nothing. However, there was no extra charge for it. Now here we are 3/4 of a year in the future and basically, nobody’s using it. Zack Zwiezen at Kotaku has…Continue readingAbout That Netflix Gaming Service
On this anniversary of TimeMachiner, I wanted to highlight a few of my favorite stories of the past year. There have been many random happenings I’ve written about that I think are still funny, insightful, and interesting today. The archive has filled up nicely since I started and I want to share with you the…Continue readingWe’ve Gotta Go Back
There are musicians and then there are musicians. Leave it to the Barcelona Guitar Trio to do something truly spectacular. This group of four men uses a single guitar to play Michael Jackson’s famous song, Billie Jean. It’s truly a sight to watch and listen to them play. The song sounds great and I could…Continue readingFour Guys and Billie Jean
In a world where there’s always enough money to spend and enough companies to buy, leave it to Amazon to buy one of the biggies. News broke late last week that the World’s Largest Bookstore has acquired iRobot, the company that makes the Roomba. The price tag? A cool $1.7 billion. Brian Heater at TechCrunch…Continue readingAmazon Adds More Robots