Tag: culture

Campnite

In “I definitely didn’t have this on my 2022 BINGO card” news, is this weird acquisition. Fortnite’s maker Epic Games has gone ahead and purchased the music website/service platform Bandcamp. Todd Spangler at Variety has more. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. “Fair and open platforms are critical to the future of the creator economy,” Epic Games, best known as the company behind battle-royale game “Fortnite,” said in announcing the pact. “Epic and Bandcamp share a mission of building the most artist-friendly platform that enables creators to keep the majority of their hard-earned money.” Variety Bandcamp has been a go-to…

Switch At Five

It’s crazy to think the Nintendo Switch has been on the market for five years. Back in 2017, it was very much a gamble. Nobody could know it would be a massive success over and over. Nintendo has rebounded from the Wii U years incredibly well. I personally bought my Switch at launch and fell in love immediately. The biggest change Nintendo made this generation was making sure there was a constant release of games. That (among other reasons) was a big reason for the Wii U’s failure. Over on Endgadget, they go over some of their favorite games for…

Sanderson Time

For many, many years the Pebble Time has been the top project ever on Kickstarter. The revolutionary smartwatch was a smash hit on Pebble’s second trip to Kickstarter. I was an early backer and loved the product. After so many years though, it was only a matter of when someone overtook Pebble to claim the #1 slot. Leave it to prolific author Brandon Sanderson to be that person. Chaim Gartenberg at The Verge has more. The project’s original goal was to raise $1,000,000 in 30 days; Sanderson hit that number in around 35 minutes, according to The New York Times.…

Nobody Asks That

Most companies / brands have a ‘voice’ or style that they look to use everywhere. Whether it’s in their advertising, website, copy on its products itself, etc. Oat milk company Oatly decided to have some fun with their website and dedicate a section of their website to infrequently asked questions. The page itself is funny, but more so because many of the questions are accompanied by a user manual or poster-style graphic that visualizes the question. Some of the questions they’ve been “asked” include getting an electric vehicle tax credit by buying their oat milk and asking if any oats…

Long Runtime

Brian Stauffer reported for Variety on something I’ve surely noticed a lot lately: movies are really freaking long now. So many movies clock in at two and a half or even nearly three hours, lately. For me, it seems to be a detrimental factor each and every time I think about watching a film. Even when watching at home, the long runtime means you can’t just pop a movie on after dinner, especially when you need to be up for work the next day. Stauffer talks to a number of industry people about this and how all that extra footage…

I Agree, I Agree

If anything from using software and signing up for stuff has taught us, it’s that nobody ever reads the giant page of legal text before using something new. Basically, we click “I Agree” and move on. Software license agreements and Terms & Conditions are important, yet it’s more of a legal CYA than anything. Enter TikToker Mckenzie Floyd who found something funny on Peacock’s Terms & Conditions. In a viral TikTok posted last week, TikToker Mckenzie Floyd (@mckenziefloyd) revealed Peacock’s secret Easter egg: A chili recipe from The Office. “Kevin’s famous chili” is famous among Office fans, featured in the slapstick cold open to the episode “Casual…

Crypto Your Way Out of It

In all the talk of what countries will do in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a key move is mentioned every time: sanctions. The idea is pretty basic. Stop doing business with a country, freeze their assets, and stop goods from going in. It’s an economic way to turn the screws. But, living in the 21st century means Russia is ready. Emily Flitter and David Yaffe-Bellany at the New York Times have more about the Digital Ruble. Should it choose to evade sanctions, Russia has multiple cryptocurrency-related tools at its disposal, experts said. All it needs is to find…

Miss Info Spreader

The past decade’s rise of social media brought with it a firehose of information. Is a website down? Check Twitter. What’s on the menu at my local burger restaurant? Check their Facebook page. What we failed to recognize early on was the lack of vetting of what was being loaded into that firehose. Sprinkled in were tidbits of fringe views, conspiracy theories, and footholds into people’s lives. Plant a seed of doubt and you can cultivate a person’s personality into one that aligns with your point of view. In the last few years between a tumultuous American election cycle, a…

Alexa Anyone

Amazon’s runaway success with Alexa and the Echo devices “she” lives in is quite obvious. As someone who owned an original Echo back when you needed an invite to buy it, I can remember the awe in how good the voice recognition was. The time it took to understand a question, send it to the cloud, then return a response was a big win. It seems now that Amazon allows anyone to provide information to questions Alexa may not know. Jack Morse at Mashable has the story. Way back in 2019, Amazon announced that, going forward, any old idiot off…

The Final Upside-Down

We’ve been teased about the fourth season of Stranger Things for so long. Then COVID had other plans for the show and things were on hold. But finally, finally, finally we get not only new information about season 4 but a release date! Netflix announced last week that this upcoming season will be split into two volumes. Season 5 will also be our final foray into Hawkins. That, to me, is fantastic news. Season 4 has been split into two parts with Volume 1 coming on May 27th. The second volume will stream on July 1st. David Tyler over at…

Yet Another List

Over on Den of Geek, they asked their staff to rank the best sci-fi films of the past 15-years. They also asked their readers to get in on the action as well. I may have to hand in my Nerd Card because there’s a lot on here that I haven’t seen. Colossal, The Endless, and Annihilation all flew under my radar. Some notable movies I have actually seen are higher up on the list. One that I really loved is Interstellar. Finishing higher on this sort of list than many might have expected in 2014, there’s a strange haunting quality…

Sights Out

When your computer, car, phone, or any other Thing is dead or ready for an upgrade, we head out to the store and upgrade our tech. It’s a simple proposition. But what do you do when your tech is literally inside your body? That is the real scenario faced by many customers of Second Sight. This was a company pioneering medical implants to help visually-impaired people see again. “Was” is the keyword, because they’re now out of business. Eliza Strickland and Mark Harris at IEEE have this more of this cautionary tale. Yet in 2020, Byland had to find out…

Burning Rubber

It’s no secret that buying a car right now is a complete nightmare. You have dealerships marking up cars by $5, $10, $15k because of the increased demand. On the used side, there’s never been a better time to sell your car. Even Carvana is buying cars from people for more than their original sticker price. If you’re in the market for a VW or Porche, get ready to add another headache to your list because this news by Jonathan Franklin over on NPR hits hard. A ship carrying cars from Germany to the United States caught fire in the…

Thanks For Wii Memories

It’s no secret that the Switch has been a massive hit for Nintendo. Its 2017 launch was questioned by the industry. It launched in March, nowhere near the holiday season. Its launch lineup was sparse. It was coming off the embarrassing era of its previous console, the Wii U. Nintendo overcame its stumbles and now the Switch is everywhere. In turn, the Big N has given the green light to shutter the eShop for the Wii U. Kyle Orland at Ars Technica covers this news while also covering the fact that the eShop digital store for the 3DS portable console…

Adamsplaining

2022 began with New York City getting a new mayor. Eric Adams has only been at the helm of the Big Apple for a short time, but he’s wasting none of it when it comes to NY’s economic recovery. Fola Akinnibi writing for Bloomberg reports how Mr. Adams is coaxing CEOs to end remote work policies to get people back into the city to work. The mayor said he met with 100 chief executive officers this week as part of scheduled meetings his office has with both small businesses and corporations in the city. He used the meeting to coax…

Anti-Ambition

In a lengthy writeup for the NY Times, Noreen Malone dives into trends that bubbled up since COVID struck the workforce. The idea of anti-ambition is a phrase she explains is where our jobs have been stripped bare. Gone are the interactions, preparing to leave, the rituals, and the encounters. What we’re left with are jobs in our intimate spaces. A huge swath of luster (if any was there to begin with) is now gone. Now, though, it’s as if our whole society is burned out. The pandemic may have alerted new swaths of people to their distaste for their…

Doo-Wop With The Sickness

In a world where people are pretty gifted, leave it to the YouTube channel There I Ruined It to take a hard-hitting Disturbed song and completely change it. The channel posted this gem last week showcasing Disturbed’s hit song Down With The Sickness and morphed it into a doo-wop 50’s style song. It’s really good and this person is immensely talented. So have a listen for yourself and good luck getting this version out of your head.

Walking The Catalog

It’s a normal Saturday afternoon of browsing shelf after shelf of items for sale. Some displays are elaborately laid out. Other sections have setups that feature wonderful layouts on the walls. In the middle of it all is a jewelry section complete with attendants waiting to help their next customer. After going through the immaculate display of a store, you decide that the stereo you saw earlier was the one to take home. And this is where things are different. Because there are no boxes in this store. No stock of products waiting to be brought to the checkout. Here,…

Insider Impersonating

It is crazy to think how information can easily spread so fast online without anyone performing any fact-checking. It’s how many “industry insiders” can pose as experts without any track record. If they nail a couple of rumors, it gets reported and that begins a flywheel of self-fulfilling credibility. Take Jon Cartwright, a video game YouTuber, who decided to see how easy it is to become an insider. Spoiler: it’s super easy. Last week Nintendo aired one of their “Directs”, which are pre-recorded presentations that announce upcoming video games and projects. Plenty of people will try to guess what’s coming.…

Pokemon Uncut

Eagle-eyed reporting from Matt Jarvis at Dicebreaker. He caught this unusual item up for auction: an uncut sheet of Pokemon cards from the 1998 Base Set. The uncut sheet – produced before the individual cards are cut out later in the manufacturing process – includes all 16 of the holographic ‘shiny’ cards from the Pokémon TCG’s 1999 Base Set, its first English-language release. Among the holo cards is the ever-popular shiny Charizard, along with fellow first-gen evolutions Blastoise and Venusaur, which appeared on the front of the series’ Game Boy games Pokémon Red, Blue and Green. Dicebreaker The auction house…

Accusations of a Clueless Person

Back in October Missouri governor Mike Parson, decided to hold a press conference and sling accusations against a reporter. The charge? Hacking. The crime? Viewing the HTML code in a browser of a publicly-available webpage. It took many months to get some resolution to this, but the prosecutor has decided to not press charges. Rational thinking prevails. Jon Brodkin at ArsTechnica has more. Post-Dispatch reporter Josh Renaud had been facing the threat of prosecution since his discovery that the state website’s HTML source code exposed the full Social Security numbers of teachers and other school employees in unencrypted form. Renaud…

Fifty And Charge

In a further push to get electric vehicles into more driveways comes a plan by the US government to set up charging stations at set intervals. The first iteration of predictable stops to charge a car is set to build chargers every 50 miles along interstate highways. When those stations are built, they must contain a minimum of four chargers and each with the capacity to provide 150 kW. Tim De Chant at ArsTechnica has more. Once states have completed the Interstate charging network, they’ll be able to apply for grants to fill in gaps elsewhere. The Joint Office of…

The Return of MoviePass

Back in 2018, MoviePass was a big deal with people who wanted to go to the movies. The small startup was flowing with VC money and posing an impossible deal: subscribe for $10 per month and see unlimited movies in theaters. Of course, this was unrealistic. The cost for a monthly subscription didn’t even cover the cost of a single ticket and MoviePass was losing money like crazy. It didn’t take long for MoviePass to crater and die in a spectacular blaze. This past week Stacy Spikes, the original founder of MoviePass pre-VC money, held a presentation announcing he purchased…

Spielberg’s Films Ranked

Over at Thrillist, Dan Jackson and Matt Patches went through 32 of Steven Speilberg’s films and ranked them. The list does the usual worst-to-best reverse order and, spoiler, Crystal Skull takes the crown for worst of the worst. Coming in at 32, this dud of a stinker is the epitome of why some movie franchises should leave good enough alone. The action-adventure revival rolled into fans’ lives like an 8-ton boulder booby trap. There are spurts of Spielberg-patented, high-flying fun—the opening shootout in Area 51 and a chase across Professor Jones’ university campus summon the angular thrills of Raiders of the…

Swingin’ It

Looking for the intensity of boxing and UFC but without the violence, blood, or bodily injuries? Then perhaps the Pillow Fight Championships are more your speed. Yes, professional pillow fighting is now a thing. Steve Williams, a serial entrepreneur, has put in some serious cash to make pillow fights the real deal. “There’s just something so cathartic about getting hit in the head with a pillow,” he tells Jordan Blumetti over at The Guardian. It’s a laughable statement but also pretty intriguing. How do you take something we all did as kids and morph it into a professional competition? The…

Scratch That

If there was ever a creative service to be offered for people, this one takes the cake. Toni George runs Scratcher Girls, a professional back-scratching service. According to George, they use a combination of different techniques to scratch and also adjust the pressure as needed. Here’s the breakdown from 60 Second Docs’ Twitter account: Given that it’s winter and the air is dry AF, I would love to do this. George runs her business in Miami, Florida so if you find yourself in the area, Scratcher Girls is sure to be one to check out. Apparently they do heads, feet,…

First Class All the Way

In one of the more interesting things to do with a retired aircraft, this story from CNN talks about a super-unique project. Suzannah Harvey, the CEO of Cotswold Airport near Kemble in England purchased a retired 747 for £1 (around $1.30) in October 2020. The goal was to convert it into a party space people could rent out. The project is nearly complete and while she may have scored a bargain for the plane itself, the job to transform it into its new role was a different story. The makeover has cost nearly £500,000 ($671,000). However, Harvey points out that…

Face The Drop

Seems like my latest edition of The Longform had impeccable timing, as Facebook Meta has reported its first drop in daily active users ever. During their quarterly earnings call with investors, Facebook delivered the bad news. Which then tanked its stock by about 20%. Alex Heath at The Verge has more. The massive stock drop, which instantly wiped out roughly $200 billion in market value, shows that Facebook’s corporate rebrand to Meta isn’t enough to distract investors from the problems in its core business of social media. Not only was user growth across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp essentially flat last quarter, but…

Permanent Deletion

We scroll and eventually pause. Is it a funny photo that caught the eye? Perhaps it’s a memory that the algorithm has surfaced. Or maybe it’s simply some piece of content that’s got way too many likes and comments for its own good. It won’t be an ad, of course, because we scroll right by those. As far back as I can recall, that was my typical time on Facebook. Always scrolling, sometimes posting, never satisfying. Then something strange happened: I’d had enough. I proceeded to do what most people never even consider doing. This is the story of my…

Wordle Joins NYT

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…