Category Archives: Blog

After months of waiting, Apple’s new, powerful (and expensive) Mac Pro is here, cheese grater casing and all. And while we’ve gotten up close with it in the past, the folks at iFixIt have done their thing and popped it open for all to see. 

Known for their tear-downs of new tech in an effort to help users understand how they can fix their own devices, despite Apple’s best efforts to prevent that, iFixIt’s video here is even cooler than usual because of the new Mac Pro’s power and it being a modular computer. 

And, yes, they try to shred cheese with that case. 

This isn’t even iFixIt’s full tear-down of the Mac Pro, either, just an initial 20-minute look which means there’s even more to come. Here’s hoping that will include those $400 wheels.  Read more…

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The Hallmark Channel, producer of all your favorite schmaltzy Christmas movies, is facing a stiff online backlash after pulling multiple ads featuring same-sex couples kissing. The ads were pulled as a result of pressure from the conservative group, One Million Moms. 

The controversy started when Hallmark aired a series of ads for wedding planner site Zola, including one that featured a lesbian couple. 

One Million Moms, though, was apparently appalled at this perfectly innocuous advertisement for a website that reflects the real world and shows two consenting adults in a loving relationship.  Read more…

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Essentials Week spotlights unexpected items that make our daily lives just a little bit better.

When Apple unveiled its Smart Keyboard Folio alongside its latest and priciest iPad Pro models in late 2018, the peripheral barely registered on my radar. Little did I know it would become my constant companion, one of the most loved and most essential Apple products I’d ever bought. 

Sure, I’d been a huge iPad fan, and a sucker for the latest model, ever since nabbing the first model the day it launched in 2010. And yes, I was forever hunting for the best not-on-screen keyboard solution for my iPads. I’d long been jealous of Microsoft Surface users, who used keyboard covers to turn their tablets into tiny ultraportable laptops. But Apple’s version seemed more like a full-on keyboard case, which often name themselves Folios. I had no need to protect the back of my iPad (c’mon, Apple, it’s pretty durable) so I dismissed the option out of hand.  Read more…

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Top Gun: Maverick takes to the skies on June 26, 2020 and here’s a brand new poster to help get you in the mood.

That’s not all, either. Paramount released the poster on Sunday ahead of a new trailer that will be coming on Monday morning. The end of the year is always blockbuster trailer season, and Top Gun: Maverick promises to be one of the biggest hits of summer 2020.

The long-awaited sequel brings us back into the life of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, though it’s not clear exactly how or why. The first trailer made it clear that Maverick’s career pretty much stalled after the events of Top Gun, but it seemed to be much more about setting a mood. This next trailer should gives us a better sense of the story.  Read more…

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In case you needed another reminder of the potentially terrifying downside of having a Wi-Fi-connected security camera in your home, consider this: it’s surprisingly easy for hackers to gain access to them.

Hackers have created software that essentially streamlines the process, and are selling and sharing it on internet forums, Motherboard reported. The exploit is possible not because of any one vulnerability in Ring’s software, but rather how it takes advantage of insecure passwords in order to get into the accounts in question. 

This is much more than a theoretical vulnerability. There have been reports all around the country of people encountering strangers on the other end of their in-home security camera.  Read more…

More about Tech, Amazon, Cybersecurity, Ring, and Tech

We’ve all done it: you start a movie only to realize partway in that it’s actually terrible. If you’re streaming on Netflix or somewhere else, this is no big deal because you can just switch to something else. 

But if you’ve paid to rent the movie, it’s much more of a bummer. Now, not only do you have to find something better, you’re also out the rental fee. 

Walmart-owned streaming platform Vudu has a solution: “rental redo,” which gives users a 30-minute window to bail out on movie rentals without having to pay the fee. 

“Rental Redo is just like having a gift receipt for your movie,” the company explains. “If you decide your rental is not for you within the first 30 minutes, we’ll give you a ‘redo’ so you can find another movie to fit your mood.” Read more…

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On the one hand, Fortnite x Star Wars is such an outlandish and untested idea, you have to admire the sheer chutzpah of Epic Games. On the other, the actual technical experience sucked for an awful lot of people.

First, the good: J.J. Abrams debuted a new Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker clip inside Fortnite on Saturday. The reveal was preceded by an epic sky battle between the Millennium Falcon and some pursuing TIE Fighters. All the while, a whole, entire fleet of Imperial Star Destroyers sat higher up in the sky watching everything unfold.

After the Falcon fended off its attackers and landed, Abrams popped out of the ship – literally, a Fortnite avatar of the famed filmmaker – to vamp for a little while before revealing the clip. Geoff Keighley was there, too, dressed in a Stormtrooper skin.  Read more…

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Good news, green bubbles: Google has finally flipped the switch on an update that makes texting on Android more like iMessage. 

If you live in the U.S, Google’s Messages app should now officially support “chat” features like read receipts, typing indicators, and better support for photo and group messages. The update is the result of a years-long effort by Google to ditch SMS, which was created decades before the first smartphones changed how we think about text messaging.  

Google announced in November that it was upgrading its Messages app to support Rich Communication Services (RCS), a newer standard that allows messages to be sent via Wi-Fi, along with all the other “chat” features you expect from a messaging app in 2019. But Google being Google, this update wasn’t actually available to everyone until Thursday.  Read more…

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It’s official: Taylor Swift is 30, flirty, and thriving.

The singer celebrated her milestone birthday on Friday, and spent the night singing at iHeartRadio’s 2019 Jingle Ball and celebrating with friends.

After her performance, radio host Elvis Duran came on stage to present Swift with a giant cat-covered birthday cake, and he asked all the fans in Madison Square Garden to sing her “Happy Birthday.”

The cake has three cat faces on it, which likely signifies Swift’s own cats: Benjamin Button, Olivia Benson, and Meredith Grey. Aww. Duran’s three-tiered cat cake was gorgeous and genuinely impressive, but it wasn’t Swift’s only cat cake this birthday. Read more…

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If you’re looking for news, J.J. Abrams does admit here that “we don’t really get into Midichlorians in” Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Congrats to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for landing that scoop!

The stars of the final chapter in the so-called “Skywalker Saga” (aka the reason Star Wars exists) spent a little time recently putting them all through a “Just One Question” gauntlet. The result is a hilarious mix of skewered Star Wars stereotypes, fresh (and less-than-fresh) takes on tired gags, and  – the real highlight – an epic Star Wars explainer for anyone who’s never seen these movies. Read more…

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