For better or for worse, in many ways, 2020 was defined by capitalism, a system unprepared to provide as many hospital beds as there are sick people during a pandemic. Or PPE gear to health care workers exposed to those sick people. Or even face masks to those ordinary people just trying to shop for groceries who are…
As Microsoft continues to investigate the massive SolarWinds attack, the company says it has discovered that its systems were infiltrated “beyond just the presence of malicious SolarWinds code.” In an update from its Security Response Center, Microsoft says that hackers were able to “view source code in a number of source code repositories,” but that the hacked account granting such access didn’t have permission to modify any code or systems.
While Microsoft points to “a very sophisticated nation-state actor” as the culprit, the US government and cybersecurity officials have implicated Russia as the architects of the overall SolarWinds attack. The attack exposed an extensive list of sensitive organizations, and today’s disclosure from...
Adobe scheduled to end support for its famous Flash on December 31st, 2020, and today is the day. While Adobe won’t start blocking Flash content until January 12th, major browsers will shut it all down tomorrow and Microsoft will block it in most versions of Windows. It’s over.
Flash enjoyed huge cultural relevance and looms large in web history, which might be why its funeral procession has lasted for years. Browsers started showing Flash the door early in the last decade, and in 2015 Adobe asked developers to move on to HTML5. Things became official in 2017, when Adobe announced it would end support.
While Adobe is finally (mercifully) letting Flash go, it will live on in many historical artifacts. The Internet Archive is preserving...
In a hopeless attempt to overthrow an American election, a ridiculous cast of characters has heeded outgoing President Donald Trump’s call to misadventure — including, now, the inventor of one of the worst gadgets of all time. His name is Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, and yesterday he gave a poor imitation of a TED talk before the Georgia state senate, claiming that he has the ability to prove whether ballots from the 2020 election were real or fake. He introduced himself to a subcommittee of state senators as an “inventor and pattern recognition expert,” just before implying that he’s a titan even bigger than Apple and Google combined. “I’m on approximately about 12 billion devices globally,” he said.
We’ll definitely grant that Pulitzer does h...
If you’re still figuring out how to ring in the new year, Krispy Kreme would like to humbly suggest feasting on doughnuts. And not just any doughnuts—their melt-in-your-mouth original glazed doughnuts. To make these treats more accessible, Krispy Kreme is offering them at a special price.
In the early days of the pandemic, my social media feeds were filled with people boasting about all the reading they were getting done during quarantine, which only made me wonder when they were finding time to nurse their anxieties and care for their suddenly omnipresent children. Certainly for as many of us who …
It’s New Year’s Eve, which means that your Instagram feed — if it’s anything like mine — is probably filled with people posting “top nine” grids of their most liked photos from this year. But, bafflingly, for yet another year, everyone will be turning to sketchy-looking third-party apps and sites to make them. Because once again, Instagram has failed to offer an official, automated way to curate the images within the app.
As someone who personally enjoys using the top nine format to look back on a year of baked good photos, I’m left utterly confused by this. Users seem to love putting together the collages to look back on their past year of posts. Instagram even already offered grid tools for posting photos to your story in different...
An LG 4K monitor and Google Nest Audio 2-pack lead Thursday’s best deals.
If you just got a brand-new Android phone for the holidays, you probably want to play some games on your shiny device. Luckily, that’s especially easy to do this year with Google’s $5-per-month Google Play Pass games and apps subscription service, which offers free access to hundreds of games and apps without pushing ads or demanding in-app purchases.
We’ve looked through what’s available on Play Pass, and the service has a lot of good games to check out. Here are just a few that we recommend. Since all of the games are also available individually — either free with ads and in-app purchases or for specific prices — we’ve included their Google Play links as well.
We’ve rounded up our favorite and most-used games, apps, and entertainment....
I don’t know about you, but I can’t start my day without coffee. And with the pandemic still raging on, I’m trying to limit the time spent outside of my apartment as much as possible. If you’re a germaphobe like me, then you’ve probably also had to sacrifice trips to your local coffee shop for the foreseeable future.
Though it’s easy to label someone who frequently slips, trips, falls and/or knocks into things as being “clumsy,” there is usually more to the story than that. While it’s possible that their main problem is not looking where they’re going or paying attention to their surroundings, a large part of being steady on your…
When the clock strikes midnight this New Year’s, The Great Gatsby and other works copyrighted in 1925 will enter the public domain, becoming freely available for re-publication and — most importantly — puppet-themed adaptation. More than anything in 2021, I need the Muppet version of The Great Gatsby.
Picture this: Kermit in period-specific 1920s dress, playing the mysterious host to a huge party in West Egg. Or Miss Piggy, decked out in flapper regalia, in an abusive relationship with Fozzie Bear as her cruel, philandering husband, Tom Buchanan. There’s obvious aesthetic charms to The Muppets version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great American novel, but beyond that, The Muppets’ takes on classic stories are often better. Writers for Bright...
This time last year, Apple Arcade was still a fledgling service, but one with a lot of potential. For $5 a month, you could get unlimited access to a big library of interesting games, the kind that no one really sells in the App Store anymore. It’s still not a place to find the latest blockbusters, but Arcade has steadily evolved into one of the best deals in gaming. Its lineup of games is varied and consistently surprising, with everything from family-friendly multiplayer games to engrossing puzzlers to weird story-driven adventures.
If you just picked up a new Apple device and have signed up for Arcade (a new device gets you three months free) the sheer number of games available can be overwhelming. Here are a few great places to...
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a recall for some Sportmix pet food products, following the deaths of at least 28 dogs after eating the food. So far, there are concerns over the safety of nine total lots of cat and dog foods manufactured by Midwest Pet Food, Inc. for potentially fatal levels of a…
I am so tired of thinking and typing about this stupid year, but I’m still a little excited that it is finally ending (if only because that means I can quite thinking and typing about it). I don’t believe that 2021 will necessarily be any better—we will, as far as I can tell, still be living through a serious health…
If you’ve ever watched a Batman movie or played Just Cause, you’ve probably thought “wow, using a grappling hook would be so much fun.” YouTuber Built IRL, whose name is JT, thought so too — and he’s been working on making that happen for the past year. The end result is a grappling hook gun that functions pretty similarly to the ones we’ve seen in movies and games.
As you’ll see in the video above, this new grappling gun is more impressive than many previous attempts. For one thing, it’s self-contained — the entire unit fits on his arm, including the CO2-powered blasting mechanism that shoots the hook using standard cartridges, and a very powerful 10,000W motor that’s properly fast and can completely pull him up into the air. (He shows...
Even a cheap TV will give you pretty great picture quality these days, but as sets have gotten thinner and better, the speakers have become tiny and awful. Want explosions that put a boom in your room? Your TV won’t cut it; those speakers can barely deliver solidly intelligible dialogue. Given all that, a soundbar is…
The cost for an annual subscription for ESPN Plus subscribers will increase from $49.99 to $59.99 in 2021, according to Variety. ESPN raised the monthly price of ESPN Plus earlier this year to $5.99, and now the annual subscription is getting the same treatment.
New subscribers will start paying $59.99 on January 8th, 2021, and the new price will reportedly trickle down to existing subscribers a few months later in March. Disney had already announced that Disney Plus and the company’s bundle of Hulu, Disney Plus, and ESPN Plus would each cost $1 more starting in March 2021, raising those prices to $8.99 and $13.99, respectively. Streaming price hikes have been a theme of 2020; YouTube TV raised its price, Fubo followed not long after,...
Featured Deal: The Mandalorian on Bantha with Child (Pre-Order) | $25 | Amazon
Roasting garlic is not hard. You cut off the top, drizzle some olive oil on the exposed cloves, and wrap it all up in foil. Easy enough—but roasting it upside down in a ramekin is even easier.
Sony has announced its January lineup of games that are free for PS Plus subscribers to download.
Starting January 5th, you’ll be able to get the PS5-only version of Maneater, the eat-em-up game that Polygon’s Chris Plante described in his entertaining review as “the best shark game... ever?”, as well as two other PS4 games, Greedfall and Shadow of the Tomb Raider — both of which are playable on PS5. Unfortunately, the PS4 version of Maneater isn’t available for people who haven’t yet made the jump to the PS5, so PS4 owners get just two games this month. This bundle will no longer be available after February 1st, 2021.
It seems like Sony has established a formula for its monthly batch of complimentary games, with one PS5 game serving as...
Wondery, one of the last major independent podcast networks, might soon be owned by Amazon. The companies announced an acquisition deal today, ending speculation about who might eventually buy the network, which is most well-known for true crime podcasts like Dirty John. (Apple and Sony were also reported to have at least discussed a possible purchase.)
Amazon didn’t disclose the acquisition price, although earlier reports from Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal suggested Wondery’s value was at least $300 million. Wondery would technically be part of Amazon Music, which launched podcast support in September this year.
The acquisition is a notable one, if only because it sets Amazon up to better compete against Spotify, which has been...
COVID relief checks totaling up to $600 per individual will be mailed today, while payments via direct deposit began yesterday, according to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who made the announcement in a couple of tweets yesterday.
Christmas is behind us, the new year is mercifully just ahead, and you may now find yourself wondering: Did my friend ever receive my gift or what? It was a thoughtful gift; you’re sure she’d like it, and she always thanks you, so it’s unusual that you haven’t heard from her yet. Should you ask if she received it?…
Health officials in the United States may be able to use a fluke of COVID-19 testing to monitor the spread of a more contagious form of the virus, which was identified in the country for the first time this week. The variant is spreading widely across the United Kingdom, and has been found in over a dozen countries so far — including the US.
Experts don’t think the coronavirus variant is more deadly than other forms of the virus, and the vaccines already developed should still protect against the new strain. But the variant does appear to spread more easily, and uncontrolled outbreaks would overwhelm hospitals more quickly.
So far, one US case was detected in a patient with COVID-19 in Colorado. Health officials say that the patient...
In a year when the outside world became a literal threat, television provided more of an escape—or, perhaps, an essential outlet for emotional release—than ever before.
Even as everything from church services to first dates moved online, we still couldn’t escape our screens, because binging one more episode of …
Peloton is getting into the music business. The popular fitness startup, already known for its use of popular music during its classes, announced today that it will be commissioning its own music that can only be heard from within its app. For the new year, three new remixes of Elvis tracks are coming to the app from Chromeo, Big Boi, and DJ Dillon Francis.
Peloton will own the exclusive rights to the songs, which premiere in the app today as part of an “ultimate remix collection,” which includes yoga, strength, core, and outdoor running classes. As part of a New Year’s promo, the company is also extending its 30-day free trial to two months.
A spokesperson says the idea behind starting with Elvis was to find a “new expression of the ...
WhatsApp will soon drop support for another round of older versions of iOS and Android. As described in WhatsApp’s recently updated system requirements, you must have a device that runs at least iOS 9 or Android 4.0.3 in order to access WhatsApp after January 1, 2021.
LG CX OLED TVs and a Cubii Pro under-desk elliptical lead Wednesday’s best deals.
There are many words one could choose to describe this shit show of a year (oh look, I just chose a couple), but I’m sure we can all agree that it was...weird. Just epically strange and bizarre. As I reflect back on some of the parenting hacks I wrote this year, I realized they, too, were—at times—weird.
When the calendar flips over to 2021 this Friday, January 1st, some of the best deals that we’ve been featuring for the past few months could come to an end. Assuredly, not every single one will end, but judging from previous years, the start of a new year means the holiday season is over and most companies will likely want to raise their prices. Here are a few mainstay deals that might not be around for much longer.
If you sign up for YouTube TV by December 31st, you’ll get a free Google Chromecast with Google TV (pictured above), the latest streaming device that supports 4K HDR playback and includes a remote.
Next up, this great Walmart-exclusive deal combines a Switch Pro controller with a download code for Super Mario Odyssey for...
It’s not easy to make it to a library right now, and with a long winter stuck at home looming ahead for many of us, there’s never been a better time to hunker down with a good book. If you’ve been lucky enough to receive a new Kindle (or a non-Amazon-branded e-reader or just a device with an e-book app on it), you might be looking for some new books to read.
To help, here are some of the best new science fiction books released in 2020 (along with some additional recommendations for other books in a series, where applicable), which should be the perfect pairing with your new e-reader.
We’ve rounded up our favorite and most-used games, apps, and entertainment. Check out our app picks for iPhones, Android phones, Windows PCs, and M...
Our homes have been through a lot in 2020. From constant sanitizing, to higher energy bills, to all the dirty dishes, we’ve spent so much more time cleaning, maintaining, and improving everything around us. To help with all the time spent at home, here are our best household hacks of 2020—the tips that made cleaning…
Pandemic or not, people have mixed feelings about celebrating New Year’s Eve. It’s one of those nights when there’s so much pressure to have fun, do something memorable, and “set the tone” for the rest of the year (whatever that means), but sometimes—like right now—a certain year coming to a close is reason enough to…
Samsung’s One UI 3.0 update has started hitting older Samsung devices, starting with the Galaxy Note 10 and Galaxy Note 10 Plus, according to SamMobile. The update, which brings Android 11-specific feature changes and some small visual and interface tweaks to Samsung smartphones, is only arriving on last year’s Note 10 devices in Germany, Spain, and Switzerland for now, but a wider release is expected at some point early next year if not in just a few weeks.
Samsung first began beta testing One UI 3.0 this past fall following the release of Android 11, and it’s been at various stages of availability for different smartphones depending on your region. The Note 10 and Note 10 Plus versions have been available in beta since October, and in...
If you received a virtual reality gaming headset this holiday season, congratulations! Whether you’ve got the newly released Oculus Quest 2, one of the last few units of the now discontinued Oculus Rift S, or another headset like the PlayStation VR, there are a ton of video games for you to explore with your new head mount display. Here are ten games I personally enjoy and think are worth your time and money.
We’ve rounded up our favorite and most-used games, apps, and entertainment. Check out our app picks for iPhones, Android phones, Windows PCs, and M1-equipped Macs; our favorite mobile games from Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass; and our top choices for gaming PCs, the PS5, Xbox One and Series X / S, Nintendo Switch, and VR. We’ve...
New Year’s Eve is usually one of my favorite eves. I get to drink drinks, eat snacks, and dance with my friends, but this year is (obviously) different—no one should be partaking in that last activity (the dancing one), so I’m recommending that everyone go hard with the snacks. This may sound like I’m telling you to…
HDR10+ Adaptive is a new feature coming to the high dynamic range standard that’ll optimize TV picture quality based on a room’s ambient brightness, Samsung announced today. HDR content is typically designed to look its best in dark rooms with as little ambient light as possible, but the new feature promises to use your TV’s light sensor to react to bright environments and adjust its picture quality accordingly. Samsung says the feature will launch globally with its “upcoming QLED TV products.”
HDR10+ isn’t the first HDR standard to have introduced such a feature. At last year’s CES, Dolby announced Dolby Vision IQ, a new feature for its own HDR standard that similarly promises to optimize HDR content for the room it’s being watched in....
Taking an old console and making it as small as possible is a well-established tradition in the modding community, and there may be a new victor in the race to shrink the Nintendo 64 as far as possible (via Input). GmanModz has cut down an N64 to the point where it’s smaller than a GameCube controller — and only slightly bigger than the cartridges it takes.
Yes, cartridges. This isn’t an emulator, this is an actual Nintendo 64 that was cut, soldered, and otherwise modded to fit into a handheld package, complete with screen, battery, and controls (the joysticks are from a Nintendo Switch, chosen for their diminutive size).
At three and a half inches, the screen is...
Look, considering the “Skywalker Saga” (to be clear, you’re absolutely a narc if you call it that) came to a close last December, 2020 was still a banner year when it comes to Star Wars merchandise. Between The Mandalorian merch finally hitting in full force after a slight delay, a whole bunch of killer releases to…
An iOS app called Vybe Together that promoted private parties during the COVID-19 pandemic has been removed from the Apple App Store, had its account on TikTok banned, and scrubbed most of its online presence. It’s unclear whether Apple or the app’s creators removed it from the App Store.
Vybe Together billed itself on TikTok and its website as a place to organize and attend underground parties, using the tagline “Get your rebel on. Get your party on.” Organizers would have to approve everyone who wanted to attend, and the ones that got approved would receive the address two hours before the event. Most of these gatherings would have been illegal under current US pandemic restrictions — which may explain why the app required you to...
New Year’s resolutions typically fail when they’re sweepingly ambitious—which can really hurt you when you’re focused on managing your money. Instead, focus on quick, easy-to-manage personal finance tasks that will put you in good shape for 2021—like the ones you’ll find below.
A few weeks ago, stuck in the waiting room at the emergency vet (the cat is fine!), I watched the 2001 movie Monsters, Inc. from beginning to end. The movie is very technically about two monsters who work at a factory where they scare small children in the night in order to power the monster-only city they live in. In…
If you were one of those nerd kids who always found filling in Scantrons satisfying, you’ll love this printable habit tracker. Created by reddit user u/Propelissa, it’s a complete 2021 calendar in fill-in-the-bubble format.
The mammoth, last-minute deal that will govern the United Kingdom and European Union’s trade relations going forward post-Brexit has been finalized in the nick of time. But some security researchers have noted some puzzling aspects of the deal, including mentions of the defunct, 23-year old Netscape Communicator email software and recommendations of outdated encryption standards.
Just in case you forget what Netscape Communicator 4.0 looked like ... pic.twitter.com/573xNdN3ZH
— Prof B Buchanan OBE (@billatnapier) December 26, 2020
The mention occurs in a series of regulations concerning “encrypt[ing] messages containing DNA profile information” between countries, which must be done using a specific set of encryption protocols.
The...
The stress and upheaval of 2020 has sent all of us searching for different ways to cope. And while there is merit in seeking therapy, or striving to get outside more, or taking up a new hobby, many of have also turned to our devices to help ease the pressure.
While recognizing the enormous privilege involved in…
I don’t know when it happened, but at some point we—as a society—decided that it was indecent to consume a carbohydrate on or in another carbohydrate. There are some exceptions, such as Taco Bell’s now retired spicy potato soft taco and the UK’s chip butty, but in most circles, carb-on-carb is a fairly rare…
Some holiday waste can be recycled, but others are actually harmful to the recycling process. For the most part, wrapping paper is recyclable; paper with glitter, foil, or plastics is unfortunately not recyclable and would need to go out with the garbage.
