While weather and natural events can be unpredictable, modern meteorologists have done a good job of predicting storms and natural disasters. But the residents of Miramar Beach, Mexico don’t listen to the experts. Why should they? Natural disasters pass them by all the time. And for those who live there there’s a simple explanation: the aliens are protecting their base. Nathaniel Janowitz at Vice has more. Local legend has it that this area in Mexico has been protected from hurricanes and other dangerous storms for over 50 years by extraterrestrials who monitor Earth from an underwater base hidden a few…
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Autographs and original works of art are always collectible. For fans of Bob Dylan, his new book The Philosophy of Modern Song had a special edition: For $600 you could buy an autographed copy complete with a certificate of authenticity from the publisher Simon & Schuster. So imagine people’s ire when they found the autographs were not signed by Dylan but by an Autopen machine. Yeah, I’d be pissed too. Daniel Kreps at Rolling Stone has more. After initially rejecting requests for a refund, earlier this week, publishers Simon & Schuster said in a statement that they learned “the limited edition…
Over on “The Birdsite” there continues to be no end of apologists, seekers of Lord Manchild’s (as I’ve nicknamed Musk) attention, and defenders of Elon Musk’s every move. Twitter is Going Great chronicles so much, but this new nonsense takes the cake. Attention-Seeker Liz Wheeler jumped into the fray on Twitter basically challenging Musk to take action if the Twitter app is pulled from the App Store and Google Play. According to her, “Half the country would happily ditch the biased, snooping iPhone & Android. The man builds rockets to Mars, a silly little smartphone should be easy, right?” I…
In one of the most public about-faces in recent history, Disney is admitting they’ve screwed up. Late on Sunday night, they announced CEO Bob Chapek was out as head of the company to be replaced by Bob Iger. There wouldn’t even be a transition. Iger is back in control immediately. More from Mike Calia and Alex Sherman at CNBC. The dramatic upheaval comes 11 months after Iger left Disney, and days after Chapek said he planned to cut costs at the company, which had been burdened by swelling costs at its streaming service, Disney+. Earlier this month, the company’s earnings vastly underperformed…
Does anyone like Clippy? For anyone who’s initial response is “Who?” let’s rewind. Back in the mid 90’s, Microsoft introduced an assistant into Word named Clippy. It was an animated paperclip with eyes. It would monitor what you were doing and interrupt your work with suggestions. It was… annoying. Dipping into the nostalgia well, Microsoft is bringing Clippy to life in the most Everything-Old-Is-Cool-Again way: an ugly sweater. Tom Warren at The Verge has the story. This year, Microsoft has turned to Clippy, which is more Office-inspired than Windows itself. Born in Office 97, Clippy was resurrected in 2019 for Microsoft…
One of the longest-running and successful apps on iOS has been Evernote. This note-taking app was an amazing piece of software in the early days of the iPhone. From OCR to web syncing to a complete organizational method, Evernote (for a time) was *THE* note-taking app to use. That road seems to be over in its current form. Last week Evernote announced they’re being acquired by a company named Bending Spoons and the deal will close next year. Kyle Wiggers at TechCrunch has more. [Evernote CEO Ian] Small, the former CEO of platform-as-a-service company TokBox, came on in 2018. Under…
Sometimes art can be subtle and other times it is expressive. Then there are the statement pieces that become icons. One such art installation is over in Oxford in the UK where a house has a shark crashing through a roof. Yes, you read that right: a shark crashing through a roof. Prolific YouTuber Tom Scott takes us to this block where a piece of art was installed without permission, the decades of fighting to get it removed, and the eventual acceptance of the piece. I just have one question: what happens when it rains??
It only took fifteen years for e-ink to find another use besides the driving technology behind the Kindle and other eBook readers. A bill was signed into law recently in California allowing this tech to do something that will make life easier for everyone: be a license plate. Jonathan Gitlin at Ars Technica has more. Currently, there’s just a single approved digital license plate manufacturer, Reviver. The company’s product, called the RPlate, uses a monochromatic e-ink screen protected by a lens or cover that Reviver says is “six times stronger than glass.” The plate also includes Bluetooth low energy and…
It’s been… a week in the tech sphere. So much so that I felt the need to write about it all in a Lightning Round update because it stretches far and wide. For starters, there’s the trainwreck that is Twitter & Elon Musk. To call it a crisis is an understatement. A billionaire with thin skin is running his $44B company into the ground. From public firings to fights with advertisers to enduring shenanigans with their update to the paid “Blue” service that was incredibly foreseeable, Twitter is all over the place. I soooo want to write about it but…
There are few movie stars that have endured and worked as hard as Sylvester Stallone. The man we all know as Rocky and Rambo has never left the business of entertaining us. It also seems the man who seems like a tough-guy action star has a great sense of humor. This clip from the Jonathan Ross show where they interview Sly shows his good-natured way of handling show business. It’s a short clip, but a fun one to have a few laughs.
Leave it to a mega star like Janet Jackson to create a cyber security situation back in the mid-2000s. The pop singer of yesteryear released a song called Rhythm Nation which happened to emit some frequencies that would legit crash a nearby computer. Rob Thubron at Techspot has more of this odd tale. Jackson’s track would crash certain models of laptops when it was played within proximity of the device. It was discovered that the effect could be replicated on other laptops from multiple manufacturers, all of which shared a common feature; the same 5,400 RPM hard disk drive was…
Doom is one of the most well-known and earliest entries into successful PC gaming. Id practically invented the FPS (First Person Shooter) genre with Wolfenstein and then Doom. For years, the joke is asking if a piece of technology runs Doom. Now, we get the ultimate Doom: running in Notepad. Chris Kerr at Game Developer has more of this incredible feat. In a video uploaded to YouTube and shared on social media, creator Samperson showcased just under one minute of footage that feels like a flickering, greyscale fever dream. Although they didn’t break down their process, Samperson explained the footage isn’t sped…
In the words of Ian Malcolm: Well, there it is. The long-running saga of if shitposter extraordinaire Elon Musk would own Twitter is now over. It comes as no surprise that a man who impulsively signed a purchase agreement could not get out of it, no matter how much he tried. As of last Friday, the company is his. The immediate changes were swift with him cleaning out the executive suite. Again, no surprise. In leaked chats, he showed no affinity toward Parag Agrawal, the now-former CEO. The Twitter.com homepage was redirected to the service’s Explore section, which surfaces everything…
It is everywhere. You buy a sandwich, you’re asked to tip. Grabbing a t-shirt at a concert’s merch booth? You’re asked to tip. Picking up an online order you needed to pay for at the counter? Tip. Stop the insanity! Tipping is uniquely American and we have created a society where employees are severely underpaid (legally) because they can earn tips. That system alone is awful because people should earn a living wage regardless of tips. However, tipping has permeated into situations where the employee is doing their job or minimal work. Sara Morrison at Vice has more about how…
Interesting documentaries can always be a fun time. I’ve seen numerous movies about cool subjects, such as Class Action Park and Off The Rails. Now a new one is getting funded on Kickstarter that’s all about famous houses from movies and TV shows. Germain Lussier at Gizmodo has more on this cool idea. The film is called The House From and it takes fans not just to the outside of famous houses from movies and TV shows like Full House, Golden Girls, Friday, Twilight, and Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, but beyond. More than just a tour, it’s an exploration of the people who live or have…
Sometimes you find an interesting story that catches your attention. That’s this haunted house in Gainesville, Texas where you can try your luck at having an encounter with the spirit world. However, there’s more to this than meets the eye: the ghosts in Linda Hill’s home are all perverts. More from Sean Giggy at WFAA: Rumor has it, the house, built in the 1840s, used to be a bordello. That’s why Hill said many of the ghosts here tend to reveal themselves in a particular nature. “Sexual,” she said. “There’s no other way to put it.”Hill said several people have…
With travel back to pre-COVID numbers, there are a ton of people who are on the move. This is also a return to the issue of people who must go somewhere but can’t or don’t want to fly. Enter NapAway: an overnight bus service that fits the bill for this situation. Sounds crazy, right? Well, Natalie Compton at the Washington Post gave it a try. Instead of sucking up half your day getting to and from airports, you could travel overnight and wake up in downtown Nashville. It’s like taking a redeye, but with the ability to have a full…
A subscription for features in your car is one of the worst “you don’t really own it” ideas of the modern subscription-heavy world we live in. I’ve previously written about how horrible of an idea this is. Now, New Jersey is doing something about it. Jonathan Gitlin at Ars Technica has more. In late September, Assemblymen Paul Moriarty and Joe Danielsen introduced a bill that would prohibit car makers or dealers from offering subscriptions in New Jersey for any feature that uses hardware already installed on the vehicle at the time of purchase unless that feature would represent an ongoing…
If you’re going to build an experimental house on the water, it has to do one thing: float. Unfortunately, that’s what a home unveiled in Panama didn’t do. Emily Brown at Unilad has more from the “You Had One Job” department. Unfortunately, the ‘floating’ part of the house didn’t quite go to plan when it was unveiled in a ceremony which included Panama’s president, Laurentino Cortizo, last month. Footage from the event shows the structure leaning at a dramatic angle, with some people actually on the home slowly trying to make their way back to safety as part of it…
Last week Apple updated its iPad line, as rumors had suggested. It wasn’t a flashy prerecorded event or a live keynote. With some press releases and an update to their store, the “new hotness” was unleashed. But unlike many new products, this lineup is… confusing. For years Apple has gone with a Small, Regular, and Large iPad lineup. The mini was a niche item that dedicated people liked. The iPad without a suffix was for “normals” and the Pro was the one with the big screen. Then the waters were muddied by the iPad Air sticking around to float wherever…
Leave it to kids and a weird set of circumstances to become an income stream for musicians out there. A fascinating story from Katie Notopoulos at Buzz Feed wherein people who make silly songs are earning streaming income by kids yelling “Poop” at Alexa. With the proliferation of Echo devices putting Alexa in many homes, kids will yell silly things at it. Of course, kids think this stuff is funny, but when they issue this command, Alexa translates it into a request to play a song. With Amazon Music set as the default music service, it serves up songs like…
The Weather Channel has been around since the beginning of cable television. One popular portion of their offerings has been Weatherscan channel. It’s a 24/7 feed of local weather without any anchors, meteorologists, or interruptions. It’s just weather set to jazz music. And now weather lovers are saving it before the official shutdown. Benj Edwards at Ars Technica has more. The Weather Channel amassed a large fan following over the decades, and that community maintains a wiki filled with intricate details about beloved on-air talent, discontinued programs, and the back-end tech that pulls it all together. It’s that deep lore that inspires hobbyists like Bates to…
As Facebook Meta continues its push to convince you that VR is really really really the wave of the future, they made an announcement last week that legs were coming to their Horizon Worlds experience. There was a whole demo around this feature. Avatars have only been floating torsos up to this point. It isn’t a stretch to think that adding the rest of a body would be desirable. Meta’s live tweets even had a tweet that only said “Legs”. I’m not even kidding. There’s only one problem: the demo was completely fabricated. Ian Hamilton at Upload VR has more.…
If there is one thing Americans love to do, it’s file lawsuits. Our legal system is gunked up again by a man in California who felt the best way to use his time and resources was to file a lawsuit. About hot sauce. Because it’s not made in Texas. If you’re saying “really??” then let Ariana Garcia at Chron tell you more. A Los Angeles man has filed a class action lawsuit accusing Winston-Salem-based T.W. Garner Food Co. of false advertising after learning that its Texas Pete hot sauce is made in North Carolina—not the Lone Star State. As reported…
Another story from the “I can’t believe this is a real thing” department. This time the reporting from Elena Kadvany at the SF Chronicle details a high-end restaurant for dogs complete with a $75 tasting menu. Dogue opened last week at 988 Valencia St. with pastries and “dogguccinos” served during the day and a $75, three-course tasting menu on Sundays. Passersby could easily confuse this for San Francisco’s hottest new all-day cafe. A glass case is filled with elegant pastries, like a rose-shaped cake filled with wild venison heart and a doggy petit gâteau modeled after the creations of acclaimed French pastry…
The Serial podcast was one of the first truly breakout shows. Podcasting had been fairly niche until they hit on this engrossing formula: true crime told from a journalistic and narriative point of view. Their subject, Adnan Syed, was convicted of a murder he claims he didn’t do. The evidence seemed flimsy. The more Serial dug, the more doubt many people had about the crime’s investigation. For years Syed was helped by the attention to get the case reviewed by the courts. Now, hot off the presses, the prosecutors in Baltimore have announced they are dropping all charges. Jacob Knutson…
When you have more money than you ever need in your lifetime, what do you do? Well, instead of trying to buy / not-buy / be forced to buy Twitter, or go to space, Yvon Chouinard has taken his company Patagonia and given it away. Valued at three billion dollars, the clothing company that has been a mainstay for decades will be transferred to a non-profit. Meera Navlakha at Mashable has more about how this was done. The Chouinards donated 2 percent of their voting stock to the specially created Patagonia Purpose Trust, which the Times reports will be overseen by family…
McDonald’s is doing what a lot of other companies love to do: cash in on nostalgia. Many things from the ’80s and ’90s are back these days. Now “Mickey D’s” has done something pretty cool: an adult happy meal. It’s a collaboration with a secretive streetwear brand called Cactus Plant Flea Market. Even better, it still comes with a toy. Nicholas Vega at CNBC gives us the details. The Cactus Plant Flea Market Box is a collaboration between McDonald’s and the famous streetwear brand, and will roll out to participating stores starting on Oct. 3. Unlike the smaller menu items…
Ice cream is one of the best desserts out there. There are enough flavors being made all over that there is truly something for everyone’s tastes. But, like most food, cultural and geographic differences can change what is popular. We can now see, thanks to the Top agency, how each state in the US stacks up against the others. Top Data team analyzed digital commerce trends in 2022 to determine the most searched ice cream flavors in America. Looking through Top’s analysis of search data, we get some interesting results. Rocky Road is quite popular, along with Strawberry. One I…
Minecraft, one of the most popular and longest-lasting games out there, made an interesting rule change earlier this year: no integrations with NFTs would be allowed anymore. To many (or even most) players of Minecraft, this would likely be no big deal. But to a few who parlayed their servers into a play-to-earn model, the results would be disastrous. That is how I came across this fascinating story by Neirin Gray Desai at Rest of World. Desai recounts the story of how one savvy player established his own server, used NFTs to create an in-world currency, and make money doing…