Category Archives: Blog

The Tesla Cybertruck is many things: striking, polarizing, massive, and, as of Feb. 22, 2020, we can add esports chauffeur to the list. 

The as-of-yet-unreleased electric SUV seemingly made a rare appearance at a Dota 2 tournament hosted by WePlay! Esports. It was used to bring at least two teams onto the stage at the Saturday event, and its arrival was met with cheers from the crowd. 

Or, at least we think it was a Cybertruck. We reached out to Tesla to confirm that this was, in fact, a real Cybertruck and not some sort of bizarre knockoff. However, we received no immediate response. 

More about Tesla, Cybertruck, Tech, and Elon Musk

There’s a new Transformers cartoon on the way, and in a twist, it’s a Netflix Original.

Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy, revealed on Saturday, will kick off sometime in 2020. The six-part opening chapter, titled Siege, picks up on a familiar Transformers story: The Autobots and Decepticons are at war for control over their home planet of Cybertron. So the Decepticon leader Megatron, hatches a plan that could destroy them all.

The series comes out of a partnership between Hasbro and Rooster Teeth. It’s not clear when the series will launch or even if the plan is to release the trilogy over a three-year period. But you can get a good look at the series’ 3D anime vibe in the trailer above. Read more…

More about Netflix, Transformers, Transformers War For Cybertron, Entertainment, and Streaming Services

Android knows you’re sick of being followed around. 

The Google-owned mobile operating system teased new privacy features on Wednesday that, once live, will give users control over sharing their location data in more precise ways. Specifically, a new developer blog post reveals that the upcoming Android 11 operating system will give people the option to limit location sharing with apps to a one-time affair. 

In other words, say you want to let an app know where you are for a very specific purpose, but don’t want that app non-stop sending your location data to random third parties all the time. Going forward, Android says you’ll be able to make that happen.  Read more…

More about Google, Android, Privacy, Tech, and Big Tech Companies

Biscoff cookies are the perfect plane snack. They’re sweet but not too sweet, they’re crumbly but not too crumbly, and they’re the ideal accompaniment to a bad cup of plane coffee. Luckily, they won’t be missing from United Airlines flights for long. 

The airline announced Friday that it would replace Biscoff cookies with the fine-I-guess quasi-cookie known as the Oreo Thin. Oreo Thins, while acceptable in a pinch, do not provide the same decadent dunking experience that Biscoffs do. How could they? They are defined not by what they have, but what they lack: the heft and thickness of a full-size Oreo. Read more…

More about Travel, Cookies, Culture, and Web Culture

On Feb. 6, the ongoing impacts of climate change delivered a record-setting 65-degree day in the icy continent of Antarctica. Now you can see what that warming actually looks like.

The first image below is from Feb. 4, just a couple days before the arrival of the warm temperatures that lingered in the region through Feb. 13. The second photo shows us what that same region looks like after a week of higher-than-average temperatures.

In case it’s not clear, a lot of that ice and snow started to recede or disappear entirely by the time the heat wave ended.

More about Antarctica, Antarctic Peninsula, Climate Change, Science, and Climate Environment

You can’t buy friends, but man oh man Michael Bloomberg sure is trying. 

The recent Republican and current candidate for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination has made waves with a shady social media marketing campaign that veered hard into sponcon. But that, it seems, was just the tip of the iceberg. The latest example of suspicious online activity in support of the billionaire comes in the form of a number of now-suspended Twitter accounts singing their identical pro-Bloomberg praises.

First reported by the Los Angeles Times, on Friday Twitter suspended 70 Bloomberg fan accounts it determined were in violation of its rules.  Read more…

More about Twitter, Michael Bloomberg, Tech, and Social Media Companies

Not all fruits are safe for dogs, but blueberries are perfectly fine. In fact, they’re a healthy, antioxidant-rich treat. 

Unfortunately, this particular blueberry is on a glass table, and this dog is under it. She doesn’t seem to have quite grasped the concept of “glass,” though, and keeps swiping at the berry as if to scoop it out of the air.

It’s a tragedy, ultimately, but it’s still really cute. Read more…

More about Dogs, Viral Videos, Culture, Animals, and Web Culture

Samsung has temporarily closed one of the factories that makes the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip after one of its employees was confirmed to have the coronavirus.

The factory, which is in Gumi City, South Korea, will reopen the morning on Feb. 25 at the earliestAccording to SamMobile, other employees who came into contact with the infected employee are now under quarantine. 

Per CNN, there were over 430 coronavirus patients in South Korea at the time of writing. Over 220 new cases were reported in 24 hours, doubling the country’s total.

More about Samsung, Coronavirus, Galaxy Z Flip, Tech, and Big Tech Companies

Each year, Crisis Text Line exchanges millions of messages with people looking for help from the free mental health support service. 

Nearly a quarter of its conversations with youth involve texters 13 years old or younger who’ve been hurting themselves. In other words, almost one in four middle-schoolers or elementary school children who reach out to Crisis Text Line are talking about self-harm. 

Those children likely feel like they can’t get support elsewhere, because self-harm is a vastly misunderstood phenomenon, even sometimes to those who engage in the practice. Bystanders often look at self-harm, which can include cutting, burning, or hitting oneself, and wrongly assume it’s attention-seeking or manipulative behavior. They might mistake those acts as a form of attempting suicide, yet many people who hurt themselves have no desire to die and many are never suicidal. For the person who self-harms, it can be confusing and disorienting to find comfort in something that seems so destructive.  Read more…

More about Mental Health, Social Good, and Health

Just when everyone got “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” out of their heads, Netflix announced the casting for seven new characters who will appear in the second season of The Witcher. Three of those characters should be familiar to anyone who has read Andrzej Sapkowski’s books or played CD Projekt Red games‚ because they are…wait for it…also witchers. 

Season 1 ended with Geralt finally meeting his Child Surprise Ciri and leads directly into the plot of Blood of Elves, the first full-length novel in Sapkowski’s series. Without spoiling too much, suffice it to say that he finds a way to introduce Ciri to his bros back at Kaer Morhan, the witcher stronghold he flashed back to at the end of Season 1. Those bros include Eskel, Lambert, and Coen, all of whom have distinct personalities and their own reactions to finding out their buddy Geralt is a dad of destiny. Let’s meet the boys: Read more…

More about Netflix, The Witcher, Entertainment, and Movies Tv Shows