Hi everyone! It’s me, Shep’s mom again, back to do another rundown of some of my favorite Kinja deals for the year. Being that Shep wrote most of the posts, I’m going to say everything was awesome. But in fairness, I did not buy one of everything in 2018, so I will stick to reviewing my tried and true.
Source: LifeHacker – Shep’s Mom’s Favorite Kinja Deals of 2018
It’s New Year’s Eve, and if you’re the kind of person who likes texting all of your friends when the clock hits midnight in their time zones (in addition to yours), that means you’re in for some mental math tonight. Those who are partying hard—or playing The Jackbox Party Pack, like I probably will be—probably aren’t…
Source: LifeHacker – Say ‘Happy New Year’ to Friends in Different Time Zones
Chrome OS tablets still have some problems, not the least of which is lag. Even if you buy a higher-end model like some configurations of Google’s own Pixel Slate, there’s a real chance you’ll grapple with a sluggish, stuttery interface — it’s been…
Source: Engadget – Google aims to fix laggy interface on Chrome OS tablets
Have consumers finally had enough of Apple’s efforts to jack iPhone pricing into the stratosphere? There are numerous warning signs suggesting that this is the case. However, Apple’s decision to not breakdown sales numbers for iPhones, Macs and iPads in its future earnings reports could obfuscate any real analysis of sales data.
Apple’s flagship
Source: Hot Hardware – Consumers Have Spoken, 2018 Apple Products Were Too Expensive
Note: I’d recommend watching the video first.
The latest in the internet’s Yanny vs Laurel debates, this is a video of Sesame Street’s Grover in which he sounds like he drops an f-bomb, saying “Yes, yes, that’s a f***ing excellent idea.” Of course he doesn’t really curse, he’s actually saying “Yes, yes, that sounds like an excellent idea.” Admittedly, when I first listened to it all I could hear was the curse, presumably because that’s what I was expectign. Then when I read what he was actually saying I couldn’t hear the f-bomb at all any more. Weird! Then I realized I didn’t care and ate two cold Pop-Tarts at once, one stacked on top of the other. “Did you at least heat them up first?” I sure as hell did not. “You’re a monster.” Oh I know.
Keep going for the video.
Source: Geekologie – Great Internet Debates: Sesame Street’s Grover Sounding Like He Drops An F-Bomb
Netflix’s latest television experiment, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, has several possible endings to the story. Some quick, others more detailed. But one of them stands out, giving us a poetic story that—unlike all the others in the film—was only made possible through its interactivity. It may not be the only way the…
Source: io9 – The Hidden Beauty of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch’s Best Ending
An American medical worker in Africa may have had too close a brush with the deadly Ebola virus that is currently devastating the Democratic Republic of Congo. He returned to the U.S. and is now at a hospital in Nebraska, where doctors are keeping a close eye on him.
Source: Gizmodo – An American Aid Worker Is Being Monitored for Signs of Ebola at a Nebraska Hospital
It’s starting to be 2019 around the world, and Fortnite’s in-game New Year’s party has begun. Some players were surprised to see a New Year’s ball drop when it wasn’t New Year’s in their time zone.
Source: Kotaku – Fortnite’s New Year’s Eve Event Catches Some Players By Surprise
About two seconds before dropping a selfie in PopSugar’s Twinning app, a web app that generates your celebrity look-alike based on a user-uploaded selfie, I hesitated. “I work for a tech website,” I said to myself. “I know better than this.” But in the end, my desire to affirm my likeness for Troye Sivan won out over…
Source: Gizmodo – PopSugar’s Twinning App Doesn’t Think I Look Like Troye Sivan (Oh Also It Leaked Your Photos)
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which launched way back in 2006 and took some gorgeous shots of Pluto in 2015, is set to make a close flyby of a Kuiper Belt object close to New Year’s Eve. According to SpaceFlightNow, New Horizons will pass by Ultima Thule at 12:33AM EST, but the data will take several hours to get to Earth traveling at the speed of light. Several YouTubers are livestreaming the flyby, and you can check out one of them below:
One of the main mysteries so far in the approach to Ultima Thule has been that New Horizons has not observed any light curve, or change in brightness, from the object. Scientists expected to see Ultima Thule dimming and brightening as it rotated, New Horizons has not detected any change… “There’s nothing else on the books to do anything like this,” Weaver said. “I don’t think I’ll be alive when the next cold classical Kuiper Belt Object is encountered, so we’re all looking forward to this flyby. In that respect, this is the frontier of planetary science… As a civilization, we’re stepping out into this third zone of the solar system that was not even discovered until the early 1990s.” Scientists have brought sleeping bags, pillows, and even a tent to camp out here at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, as New Horizons speeds toward Ultima Thule – its next target after Pluto.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – New Horizons Probe to Fly By Strange Kuiper Belt Object Tonight
AdoredTV on YouTube has released a new video where he speculates on upcoming AMD product launches for 2019 such as Navi, Vega II, and Ryzen 2. AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su will have the undivided attention of the entire tech industry when she delivers her keynote speech at CES 2019, and it is anticipated that AMD will showcase their engineering prowess at the event. Buckle up and get ready to learn how AMD codenames work, which rumors are more likely to occur, and a sneak peek at the first Ryzen 3000 engineering sample spotted in the wild.
Speculating on what we might see at CES from AMD, and also the first Ryzen 3000 engineering sample is spotted.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Navi, Vega II, Ryzen 3000 and More AMD CES Rumors
Following a total freeze on video game approvals earlier this year, Reuters reports that the Chinese government approved 80 online games over the weekend. While this is great news for the gaming industry in general, the report notes that none of the games from Tencent Holdings are on the list, despite being an industry leader of the gaming market in China.
Unfortunately, Reuters didn’t actually post a link to the list, and didn’t go into details about other games. MMO Culture seems to be the only other English news site that dug a little deeper, but they didn’t post a link to the list either. Fortunately, I managed to dig up the December list on the Chinese government’s website. Most of the titles seem to be mobile games, and I don’t see any mention of western heavy-hitters like Fortnite, PubG, or any of Activision-Blizzard’s titles. The Chinese government supposedly has a long queue of games to approve, so it might be some time before PC and console games from Western companies make the list.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – China Posts List of Government Approved Games
Speculation about Nokia’s next flagship phone swirled this fall after leaks revealed a wild-looking rear-camera setup complete with five separate lenses. Nokia doesn’t seem quite ready to release any official details about the rumored Nokia 9 PureView, but a new, high-res video shows why it might be the first…
Source: Gizmodo – Nokia’s Long-Rumored, Five-Camera Beast Could Get Announced Before the End of January
Sony, the biggest maker of camera chips used in smartphones, is boosting production of next-generation 3D sensors after getting interest from customers including Apple. From a report: The chips will power front- and rear-facing 3D cameras of models from several smartphone makers in 2019, with Sony kicking off mass production in late summer to meet demand, according to Satoshi Yoshihara, head of Sony’s sensor division. Sony’s bullish outlook for 3D cameras provides much needed optimism to the global smartphone industry, which is suffering a slowdown as consumers find fewer reasons to upgrade devices. The Tokyo-based company has started providing software toolkits to outside developers so they can experiment with the chips and create apps that generate models of faces for communication or virtual objects for online shopping. “Cameras revolutionized phones, and based on what I’ve seen, I have the same expectation for 3D,” said Yoshihara, who has worked for more than a decade on wider industry adoption of cameras in smartphones. “The pace will vary by field, but we’re definitely going to see adoption of 3D. I’m certain of it.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Sony Boosts 3D Camera Output After Interest From Phone Makers
What I love about CrossCode, an action-RPG that came out on Steam earlier this year, isn’t just that it’s charming as heck and feels great to play. No, what I love about CrossCode is that it’s secretly a puzzle game. Don’t miss out on this one, folks.
Source: Kotaku – Don’t Miss Out On CrossCode, An Excellent Action-RPG
I have 470 podcast episodes in my queue right now, after some paring down. There’s just too much good stuff to listen to: fiction, chat shows, history lessons, interviews, reported documentaries, weird semi-fiction. Of the hundreds of podcast episodes I listened to this year, these are the 15 that taught or…
Source: LifeHacker – The Best Podcast Episodes of 2018
It’s almost 2019. And if you’d rather stay home tonight, we’ve got some great live video streams that will put you in the middle of the New Year’s action.
Source: Gizmodo – Watch Live Video of New Year’s Celebrations in Times Square, Disney World, and Around the Globe
On the last Sunday of 2018, Meet the Press, NBC’s hour-long Sunday morning news show, did something unprecedented. It devoted an entire hour to discussing climate change and featured actual policymakers and researchers with nary a denier in sight. Ironically, the episode also inadvertently shined a spotlight on how…
Source: Gizmodo – A Major TV Network Managed to Cover Climate Change for an Hour Without Devolving Into a Shitshow
Rare’s 2000 shooter Perfect Dark is a classic game, building upon Goldeneye 007’s frame to create a more robust shooting experience. Speedrunners are good at finding the cracks in even the best games, and one runner has collected some of the game’s biggest skips and breakthroughs into a video, showing how some of the…
Source: Kotaku – Top Speedrunner Outlines Perfect Dark’s Wildest Skips
If you’ve ever driven a baby around town simply because parking would mean waking her, then you know the power of a car’s ability to knock a kid out.
Source: LifeHacker – Why Not Soothe Your Baby With the Sweet Sounds of a Honda Engine?