If you had free game gets bought by a prestigious newspaper on your 2022 BINGO card, then you win. Late news broke on Monday that the New York Times has purchased Wordle from Josh Wardle… for seven figures. The purchase, announced by The Times on Monday, reflects the growing importance of games, like crosswords and Spelling Bee, in the company’s quest to increase digital subscriptions to 10 million by 2025. Wordle was acquired from its creator, Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, for a price “in the low seven figures,” The Times said. The company said the game would…
Category: Stream
In all the years that Apple’s App Store has been in existence, apparently, they have never allowed a company to hide one’s app from the store. Doing so would make the app available only via a direct link. Why would a developer want to hide an app? Perhaps it’s for a one-off or annual event like Comic-Con. Or the app could be limited in use by employees of a singular company. Regardless of the use cases, Apple has finally implemented this obvious feature according to Amanda Yeo at Mashable. It will also help declutter the App Store, so you don’t…
Last week’s brouhaha of Neil Young vs Spotify / Joe Rogan went as predicted. Spotify didn’t budge and Young made good on his threat. Joni Mitchell joined the fray and removed her music from Spotify too. But lost in all of this are two critical decisions that have undermined critical cores to podcasting. The first is exclusivity. Podcasts were never envisioned or built to be exclusive. Sure, some outlets offer podcasts as members-only perks or private ways to access shows. However, podcasting’s lifeblood is RSS. That is an open standard and without it, podcasting would not exist. Spotify decided to…
When Apple introduced Face ID in 2017, they never could’ve predicted the world we live in today. Masks are mandatory in many places due to COVID. Many times when we are out and about, this super-fast way of unlocking an iPhone is rendered useless. Apple tried to fix this once. However, there are still tons of iPhone users who do not own an Apple Watch. Now, the upcoming iOS version 15.4 looks to do even more about this. Oliver Haslam at iMore gives more details. The change was first spotted by YouTuber Brandon Butch and comes with a text that…
When news broke about Life360 being one of the biggest data brokers as a side-hustle, the blowback was huge. This company, which people pay to use to see the location of friends & family, was not only collecting all this information but also selling it all to at least a dozen companies. Umar Shakir at The Verge has more. Life360, a safety and tracking service that helps its users to keep tabs on the whereabouts of family and friends who also use the app, is scaling back its user data sales business to just two partners: Allstate Arity and Placer.ai…
We’re seven years past 2015 and we still don’t have flying cars. It’s been predicted for decades. One company, Klein Vision, out of Slovakia has been building a car that literally transforms into a small aircraft in under 2-minutes. The “AirCar” was awarded an official Certificate of Airworthiness by the Slovak Transport Authority after completing 70 hours of “rigorous flight testing,” according to Klein Vision, the company behind the “dual-mode car-aircraft vehicle.” The test flights — which included more than 200 takeoffs and landings — were compatible with European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) standards. Klein Vision The videos they’ve posted of…
Years ago T-Mobile did something revolutionary: they ditched two-year contracts. A norm in the industry, they decided to let you finance your phone separately and separate it from the service billed monthly. That decision lead to a series of moves leading to people holding onto them for 3-5 years according to a 2019 report. Bundled with keeping your phone is the expectation of that phone getting updates. Apparently, one of the more popular Android phones, the Pixel 3, shouldn’t be used any further. Google has decided to stop updating it entirely. This phone is only three years old. Aaron Gordon…
In a country where internet service is awful in many areas and virtually no competition exists, AT&T decided it was time to offer more speed. Hot off the press release is the announcement of a five-gigabit plan available right now to customers. Juli Clover at MacRumors has the breakdown. According to AT&T, the new plans are available to nearly 5.2 million customers across 70 metro areas including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Raleigh, Miami, and Dallas, with a full list available on AT&T’s website. AT&T Fiber 2 GIG is priced at $110 per month plus taxes,…
Working from home has not only been a welcome reprieve for overworked employees. It has also brought much-needed recuperation of all the time people commuted to and from work. As someone who spent 11 years commuting 2-hrs daily, I can personally attest that it will slowly rot your soul. This found time due to COVID has been brutal for the NY Transit Authority. The MTA is the main commuting system for New Jersey, Long Island and Westchester NY employees who work in Manhattan. Reporting by Matthew Haag and Patrick McGeehan at the NYT found the MTA saw a 75% drop…
Generally, the super-wealthy are obsessed with their own pet projects. One who has a pretty-positive perception is Mark Cuban. Best known for owning the Dallas Mavericks along with being the wealthiest Shark on Shark Tank, Cuban has done something amazing. He’s opened an online pharmacy so people can actually get their medications for an affordable price. Chris Morris at Fortune has the details. To lower costs, Cuban cut out the middleman, setting up his own pharmaceutical wholesaler and negotiating directly with drug manufacturers and pharmacies for rebates and discounts. [There is an] added $3 pharmacist fee. Shipping is $5. Fortune…
Twitter’s Twitter Blue premium (and paid) service posted this head-scratcher about a new ‘perk’ to paying the company money to use Twitter: gm! You asked (a lot), so we made it. Now rolling out in Labs: NFT Profile Pictures on iOS I’m not sure why people would ‘need’ this feature when an NFT is literally an image you can screen shot and upload as your profile photo. Even worse is the growing fad of companies jumping into NFTs as if it’s some super-hot market. From what I can tell, most people have no clue what an NFT is nor can…
As of Monday, the ability to file taxes in the United States has begun. And the IRS has already stated there will be massive delays due to staff shortages and overload from working on COVID-related programs throughout 2021. More from the AP & NBCNews Agency officials are already warning filers that “in many areas, we are unable to deliver the amount of service and enforcement that our taxpayers and tax system deserves and needs,” as IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig put it earlier in the month. Delays in processing are to be expected — especially because the IRS says it still…
On Friday Paramount dropped the trailer for the second season of Star Trek: Picard. After streaming the first season last year, I have been looking forward to the next season for a while. Season 2 brings back many characters introduced the first time and we get some fun surprises for this second installment. Between who is returning and the storyline looking to be a time travel adventure, I’m ready to go! Season 2 begins on March 3rd on Paramount+. You can watch the full trailer below.
UPDATE: According to Mashable, Apple has removed the requirement. No statements have been made. It’s simply gone back to the way it used to be. Since the beginning of Apple’s production of computers, they have focused on education. It was a strategy to get their computers in front of people at a time when a computer seemed unnecessary. The educational market has always been important to Apple. Every year they run back-to-school promotions and they have always offered discounts for students and teachers. However, now you will have to prove you qualify as Apple has done away with the honor…
The past few weeks have been a culling of well-loved celebs. At the too-young age of 74, Meat Loaf passed away. He was in a ton of movies and wrote epic-level, theatric songs & albums. Born Marvin Lee Aday, the rock musician’s career spanned six decades across the music and film industries. He was beloved by fans and soared to unlikely rock stardom with theatrical, dark-hearted anthems and an iconic long-haired look. NBC News His best-known album, Bat Out of Hell, is one of the biggest-selling albums in US history. Talk about staying power. That album came out in 1977 and can…
Much has been made of The Great Resignation over the past year. This mass exodus of employees from their jobs has been of great concern to employers looking to retain a workforce. It is also indicitive of the fact that for the first time in decades, employees hold the upper hand in the workplace relationship between themselves and their employer. Generally, people dedicated themselves to a job at various levels and The Powers That Be would hire or fire as they pleased. Unspoken rules for the workplace cropped up over the years such as being undervalued or overworked was something…
If you’re not addicted to Wordle yet, it’s a surprise. The game has gone viral over the past month with players all over the world enjoying this one-a-day guessing game. What gets missed a ton in all of the reporting is that Wordle is not an app. Wordle exists solely on the web and it’s 100% free. However, Steven Cravotta who created an app called “Wordle!” 4 years ago noticed a ton of purchases of his old app. Cravotta’s app has been a big hit in the Wordle fever that’s been brewing. But what to do about this surprising newfound…
Gifs are apparently going out of fashion. That’s according to Vice and their interviews with twentysomethings about the image format used all over the internet. The story explains that the younger generation sees gif usage as something older people use. As such, that makes it quite uncool. Gen Z might think GIFs are beloved by millennials, but at the same time, many millennials are starting to see GIFs as a boomer plaything. And this is the first and easiest explanation as to why GIFs are losing their cultural cachet. Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor of communication at Syracuse University and author of multiple…
Depending on whom you speak to, cryptocurrency is either the second-coming of money or it’s a complete waste of time. Leave it to people who have too much time on their hands to come up with some Fyre Fest level ideas on what to do with the crypto ‘riches’. Two people who want to create a crypto utopia of sorts in Fiji have run into real-world roadblocks. Widely mocked plans to establish a tropical haven for cryptocurrency enthusiasts have run into trouble after a contract to buy an island in Fiji for US$12m fell through. A group of crypto-evangelists, led by Max…
A month ago on Reddit, a unique and quite funny story went viral. It is a tale of two cats at a workplace and their human owner asking if he’s in the wrong by how he talks about them. A user with a throwaway username (as is common to do on the site) posted to /r/AITA, which is a section to ask if “Am I the Asshole” in a situation. In this particular case, a person describes two cats at their workplace named Jorts and Jean. Jorts seems to be a bit silly but a co-worker feels she needs to…
Yes, a real story from NPR details how researchers in Israel are teaching goldfish to operate a fish tank on wheels. This team is looking to explore whether animals’ ability to navigate are present only in their native environments or if their abilities exist everywhere. Researchers created the “fish operated vehicle,” a set of wheels under the goldfish tank that uses an intricate camera system to record and translate a fish’s movements into navigational directions. The FOV changes its position based on the fish’s movement characteristics, location and orientation in the water tank. NPR While this sounds like a silly…
Leave it to the constant march of time to give CDs a nostalgic resurgence. News out of Pitchfork, like it’s 1999, shows that 2021 was the first time CD’s have increased in sales in 17 years. Madison Bloom has the scoop: The top-10 CD sales list also includes Taylor Swift’s Evermore (213,000 units sold), BTS’ Map of the Soul: 7 (210,000) and Be (187,000), Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour (195,000), and others. 2021 marked the first year that CD sales saw a gain since 2004, when revenue from the format was exponentially higher than it is today. Last month, vinyl saw its biggest sales week since at least 1991, with roughly 2.11…
From the slow-news pages of The Washington Post comes this tail of a Canadian couple whose cats have made a blender box their own. Back in November Jessica and Nikii Gerson-Neeves bought a blender and their cats claimed it. One is always perched on it and the blender remains in the box to this day. Treats, decoy boxes and toys have been used, all for naught. The Gerson-Neeveses moved the box to a less-central area of the kitchen, hoping the change in geography would end the stalemate. But a cat remained on the box, on guard at all times. Jessica…
Facebook can only dodge legal ramifications for the way they run their business for so long. The more they acquire companies, the more they try to hoover up people’s data, the more they think they can get away with anything, the bigger chances they’ll run afoul of the law. The FTC has been granted permission to force Facebook Meta to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. Judge James Boasberg ruled that the FTC can proceed with a bid to force Facebook, now Meta, to sell its subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram. Meta asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed in December, Reuters reported, but Boasberg rejected…
If there was a big eye-roll moment, it’s Google’s Android team bellyaching about iMessage. Apple’s advantage is obvious because it’s a form of lock-in for their ecosystem. When the iPhone debuted, it supported SMS and nothing more. Then with iOS 5 in 2011, Apple rolled out iMessage. It was a simple and secure messaging platform that was an alternative to SMS. It famously only works between Apple devices. What really set it apart though was it became the default messaging protocol when you first messaged someone. Google has been fighting this fight for a long time. However, due to Android’s…
Classic animation gets a modern take over on YouTube where user Xtremee_Ghost has done a phenomenal job with Thundercats. This person has hand drawn each frame of the original opening of the 80’s cartoon. It has a modern style and it’s super-crisp, which I suspect is due to modern tools that exceed what could be done in the 80’s. Thundercats Redrawn captures the essence of the original show while also showcasing how a modern take on drawing can revitalize a television show’s look. Xtremee_Ghost has really knocked it out of the park. You can watch Thundercats Redrawn directly on YouTube…
News broke late Sunday that Bob Saget had passed at the too-young-age of 65. It was a shock to me, and to most I’m sure. Of course Saget was known as the straight-laced dad on Full House but he also was a really funny stand-up comedian. And he was the host of America’s Funniest Home Videos, which was basically TikTok long before the internet was invented. The man never stopped working though. Variety has a nice list of the work Saget did in the years since his most-notable roles: Besides “Full House” and “AFHV,” Saget was also known for narrating…
It’s been fifteen years since Steve Jobs spoke those words. A lot of grand claims were made at MacWorld 2007 at the iPhone’s unveiling. Some were seen as laughable. Some were seen as revolutionary. Nearly all of it came true. I (among many others) believe this was Jobs’ pinnacle performance on stage. I remember watching it and being floored over and over with the (LIVE!!) demo. Something as simple as the Slide to Unlock feature garnered amazed reactions. If you didn’t experience the event, even remotely, at the time it is hard to put into words how important it felt.…
Canon makes printers. Printers suck. They have been awful for so long, as I’ve mentioned before. Every company who makes them tries to pull some nonsense regarding price, lock-in and ink levels. For years, ink and toner cartridges have shipped with chips in them. It was a form of security that forced customers to only buy their ink or toner. If a printer doesn’t see the chip (because you’ve chosen to buy 3rd party ink), it gives you a hard time or will stop printing. That’s worked fine and dandy… until we’ve hit a global chip shortage. Canon can’t source…
A full six months ahead of 2022’s E3 gaming convention, the Entertainment Software Association announced E3 will be virtual this year. “Due to the ongoing health risks surrounding COVID-19 and its potential impact on the safety of exhibitors and attendees, E3 will not be held in person in 2022. We remain incredibly excited about the future of E3 and look forward to announcing more details soon.” VentureBeat E3 was virtual last year too and they’re taking no chances with Omicron causing enormous spikes in cases everywhere. Contrast this with CES and their insistence that they conduct an in-person event in…