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…
Category: Stream
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…
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.…
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.
Musical mastermind Danny Elfman performed at Coachella this year. And boy did he go all in with some amazing pieces. Bill Pearis at Brooklyn Vegan has more about his legendary set. On the Oingo Boingo front, Danny’s set included “Insects” (which he reimagined for his 2021 solo album Big Mess), “Nothing to Fear,” “Just Another Day,” “Insanity,” “Only a Lad,” “Dead Man’s Party,” and “Who Do You Want to Be?” which closed out his Coachella set. He and the orchestra also performed a medley of The Nightmare Before Christmas songs, the themes from Batman, Spider-Man, and The Simpson’s, as well…
It’s a tale as old as time: books being banned for Reason X that Group Y feels threatened by its contents. However, an idea is something that cannot be contained. Books are one of the oldest forms of communication and to censor books goes against human knowledge. Fighting the good fight, The New York Public Library has announced four banned books are available nationwide to anyone without any wait times. A. Khalid has the details. The New York Public Library made four banned books available nationwide on SimplyE, its free-reader app. The titles include Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, King and the Dragonflies by…
For all the pomp and circumstance film franchises get, nothing is ever a sure bet. Many films that had humongous budgets flopped while other movies were sleeper hits. Then you get into an interesting realm: movies that were supposed to become franchises but did not pan out. The Divergent film is a good example where a movie studio worked to bring a book series to the big screen and burned a ton of money in the process. In the end, even with a massive budget and marketing push, it became nothing. A breakdown of some of the more-promoted fizzled franchises…
There are so many gadgets and ecosystems and companies providing services these days and it’s inevitable that some (or many) will fail. Going out of business is part of doing business. Most companies don’t last forever. However, there is a glaring problem with this: companies that make products that depend on the company still operating. Enter Insteon, one of many home automation platforms out there. Stacey Higginbotham over at Stacey on IOT provides details on how the Insteon automation platform may have been permanently shut down. I’m getting reports from dozens of Insteon users that as of Friday their smart…
Twitter. Elon Musk. Insert sigh. Yeah, it’s been a lot over the past two weeks with these two. It’s difficult to go into the entire Elon / Twitter fiasco because I simply can’t gauge how much this affects or even is on the radar of people who aren’t fully in tune with social media. The true TL;DR is Elon bought a ton of Twitter stock. Twitter, knowing this could be bad, offered him a board seat in exchange for not buying more. Elon said yes. Celebrate. Elon says no a few days later. Elon offers to buy Twitter. Twitter begins…
A funny thing happened this past week with Bandai / Namco re-releasing the classic game Pac-Land onto the Nintendo Switch. Pac superstar Miss Pac-Man was nowhere to be found. Instead she was replaced with a character named Pac-Mom and, yeah, there was confusion as to what is going on here. Kyle Orland at Ars Technica goes down the rabbit hole that is Pac-Man, the reason such an incredible sequel exists, and the convoluted copyright situation that’s come along with it all since the 80’s. While the original Pac-Man is a wholly owned Namco creation, the Ms. Pac-Man arcade cabinet started life as a “speed-up kit”…
Once again we dive into the world of NFTs. As I’ve talked about, these tokens are a huge deal in crypto circles with many using them as investments, get-rich-quick schemes, and complete rip-offs. Now we get to see the flip-side of this with the video game F1 Delta Time. This game, which bears the official F1 licence, used NFTs to sell players unique cars within the game. But now, the studio has lost its licence to F1 and the game has shut down. Players, who were spending a lot of money on these tokens, were given a whopping one day…
The HBO program Last Week Tonight with John Oliver covers a wide range of topics. Some are deadly serious while others are quite lighthearted. But regardless of what he talks about every Sunday evening, it’s thorough and interesting. This past Sunday he took a stab at data collection and privacy, something I’m actually bringing to you on Thursday’s edition of The Longform. So there is no better time to bring this to you. Oliver and his team go into data privacy in this long video. Many of the ideas are ones we’ve heard many times such as “if the thing…
You know you truly live in the future when robots are having encounters with police. Recently a Cruise driverless car was stopped by San Francisco police during the evening. Cue lots of walking around, trying to figure out what to do, and… the car driving off for a short distance to then stop again. Surely that’s something a driver IN the car would’ve been arrested for! Alexander Stoklosa at Motor Trend has more. The Cruise vehicle, which is based on a Chevrolet Bolt electric hatchback, initially stops for the officers attempting the traffic stop. Amusingly, not long after one of…
It’s no secret we all hate cable companies. They are deceitful, money-hungry monopolies that have no interest in serving their customers. So it’s no wonder that every time they try to get away with something, there is tons of blowback. Cue Jon Brodkin’s reporting about how a massive amount of Cox customers are forcing arbitration cases because of undisclosed fees. Cable TV provider Cox is facing hundreds of arbitration demands alleging that it failed to adequately disclose its “Broadcast Surcharge” and “Regional Sports Surcharge” and that it used these fees to raise prices on customers who were promised fixed rates.…
One staple of the mid-nineties is Mortal Kombat. The arcade game took the world by storm due to its digitized fighters recorded from real actors. Oh, and there was violence galore. So it came as no surprise when a sequel came out soon thereafter. Mortal Kombat II was a phenomenon and (in my opinion) the best of the series. Midway took everything great about the first one, dialed it up to the extreme, and improved it in so many ways. Now, YouTuber Modern Vintage Gamer goes over the AI of Mortal Kombat II and how it looks like the game…
As mentioned in the previous issue of The Stream, there is a lot of positivity and momentum when it comes to Right to Repair. And sure enough, this past week both Samsung and Google have come aboard. Both companies have partnered with iFixIt, which sells parts and tools for people to perform DIY repairs. Even more important are the walkthroughs they post to their site on HOW to actually do those jobs. The great thing about the guides is you can see in full detail what it takes to do the job before buying anything. They rank the difficulty and…
Perennial awesome dude Tony Hawk posted a video back in 2019 of him driving around town. Sounds boring, right? Well in fact he was hauling a bunch of skateboard decks he’d autographed and went looking for kids skateboarding around town. This is when the magic happened. Hawk repeatedly rolled down the window of his Tesla and shouted “do a kickflip!” to which the skater responded with the trick. Then Hawk simply handed them a board or other swag for doing it. The surprise and joy of people randomly having one of the best skaters on the planet roll on by…
A weird story coming out of Ars Technica this past week involves a Washington state man and the lengths to which he went to get Comcast internet at his house. Jonathan Rowny moved to Washington and thought he could get Comcast internet. Unbeknownst to him, their address checker was wrong. It said he could get service but then he was told no. Insert Benny Hill music and a huge song & dance routine. Rowny went down the rabbit hole of what needed to be done. It started with a $19k estimate from Comcast to run lines to his house. Then…
Prince is one of the greatest modern musicians. His influence was huge and certainly, he left this planet way too early. But something that can bring a smile to music-lovers faces is this happy accident courtesy of WCCO’s archives. While viewing archive material to find teacher strike footage, a reporter’s eye was caught at the sight of a boy interviewed. It only takes a moment to know who this boy is. And then the magic happens. I can say more, but the story is so heartwarming that I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. Just sit back and enjoy.
Leave it to SNL to more succinctly get their point across than I can. You may remember back in February when I talked about movies being too long. It’s a problem that isn’t getting talked about nearly enough. Movies are easily coming in at two and a half hours, three hours, or even longer. Pete Davidson, with the help of some others, put up a fun skit on the latest episode of SNL. He just wants to watch a short movie. Plain and simple. It’s a humorous way to explain that movies are too damn long! One great thing about…
The Right To Repair movement is gaining steam, but it’s been a longstanding problem to overcome. The idea that if you buy something, you should be able to repair it seems simple. Of course, Apple and many other companies don’t want you to do that. This CBC investigation from 2018 explains exactly why it’s vital to allow someone to be able to fix their stuff. Louis Rossman and the people at iFixIt feature prominently in this investigation. It’s intriguing to watch this and see where things were and where they stand now. As someone who’s cracked open a few MacBooks…
Years ago, I don’t even know how, I learned about a weird treasure hunting game. Something called “Geocaching” was a game wherein you printed some GPS coordinates out and put them into your Garmin device. Then you worked to get to that location. Once there, you would find a cache that held items for trade and a logbook to sign. Diving deep into the well of nostalgia is this video. On October 5, 2008 Dave Ulmer uploaded a recording of the first geocache which he hid on May 3, 2000 in Portland, Oregon. His “GPS Stash” was a bucket filled…
If you’re worried about your job getting taken over by the robot uprising, then today is your day. Over on The Takeout, Dennis Lee reports on how White Castle is gearing up to use a robot named Flippy to work its fry stations. Specifically, the Flippy 2 is a second-generation robot that will be able to handle working a fry station in a more consistent way than a person can. The Flippy 2 can recognize different types of food such as fries, onion rings, and chicken fingers. More importantly, it frees up employees to handle other tasks instead of losing…
Pour one out for the death of another long-standing event that is likely never to return. This week it was announced that the E3 video game expo was officially canceled. The in-person and virtual portions were all scrapped. While E3 was surely a victim of COVID and the inability for people to go to conferences, it seems that companies discovered they simply didn’t need E3 to make a splash. Sam Machkovech at ArsTechnica has more. Many gaming companies, including formal members of the ESA, have gotten along just fine for years without formal E3 presentations. Sony, EA, Activision Blizzard, and…