Creative Pebble Plus adds huge sound to your home desktop on the cheap

Creative Pebble Plus adds huge sound to your home desktop on the cheap

Anyone who works from home on a regular basis knows this all too well: Laptop speakers just don’t cut it most of the time.

Sure, for a Zoom call or the occasional YouTube video, they’ll get the job done. But for jamming out to music or streaming your favorite TV shows or movies, a real set of desktop speakers goes a long way. At just $40 and with a cool design, strong bass, and the simplest setup imaginable, the Creative Pebble Plus is a strong contender to round out audio on your home desktop.

(Just make sure you have a healthy tolerance for cable management.) Read more…

Creative Pebble Plus
$39.99
View Product
The Good

Futuristic orb aesthetic • Bassy • room-filling sound • Quick and easy setup • Incredible value

The Bad

Cable clutter

The Bottom Line

Creative Pebble Plus is an excellent budget option for anyone who wants to enhance their home desktop audio setup, as long as cable management isn’t a turnoff.

⚡ Mashable Score
4.25
😎 Cool Factor
4.5
📘Ease of Use
4.0
💪Performance
4.5
💵Bang for the Buck
5.0

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Watch John Oliver beg for innovative cereals and trash the Cheerios Twitter account

Watch John Oliver beg for innovative cereals and trash the Cheerios Twitter account

Cereal is in a rut and John Oliver is coming to its rescue.

The host of Last Week Tonight took Memorial Day week off and went on YouTube to wax poetic on a topic he’s especially passionate about: cereal. 

“I’m aware that there’s a lot going on in the world right now, but instead of focusing on any of that I’d like to raise a subject that is near and dear to my heart, and that is, there simply aren’t enough cereals,” Oliver stated in a fiery seven-minute video.

The host went on to voice his concerns about a lack of new cereals, exciting cereal-related news, and good cereal commercials in the past decade, though he did shout out one good Frosted Flakes commercial starring Shaquille O’Neal. Read more…

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This company wants to make sex toys more accessible for people with disabilities

This company wants to make sex toys more accessible for people with disabilities

Sextech is bringing a much-needed cultural shift in how we view, talk about, and sell sex. Ushered in by a wave of women-led startups combining sex and technology to disrupt historically male-dominated sectors, this burgeoning multibillion-dollar industry champions inclusivity through innovative sex products created for and by more marginalized perspectives, bodies, and identities. 

Yet while everything from high-tech sex toys to online sex education platforms are more inclusive than ever, a huge and diverse population remains excluded from this sextech revolution that’s supposedly promoting pleasure for all: people with disabilities. Read more…

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How to see a photo NASA’s Hubble telescope took on your birthday

How to see a photo NASA's Hubble telescope took on your birthday

The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most illuminating and awe-inspiring inventions, capturing the beauty of the universe with its massive lenses as it orbits the Earth day in and day out.

The telescope run jointly by NASA and ESA has been almost constantly in operation since it launched in April 1990, taking in galaxies and nebulae and all sorts of far-away space objects. No matter when your birthday lands on the calendar (except if it’s on Leap Day, sorry), Hubble has an impressive image that it captured on one of those days over the last 31 years.

In 2020, NASA published a page on its site where you can input a month and a date and it serves you a spacey image captured on that day.  Read more…

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A ‘Super Mario Bros.’ speedrunning history captures the fight for human perfection

A 'Super Mario Bros.' speedrunning history captures the fight for human perfection

In a game where the top 14 speed records are all within one second of each other, every input and every frame counts when you’re vying for the fastest time to beat Super Mario Bros. People have become so precise that they’re mere milliseconds away from reaching the known peak of human ability.

With “Super Mario Bros: The Human Limit,” YouTuber Summoning Salt lays out just how close Super Mario Bros. speedrunners have come to hitting the human limit, a theoretical time of 4 minutes, 54 seconds, and 260 milliseconds. The best runners have to execute button presses that last a single frame (in a game that runs at 60 frames per second), land jumps on spaces that are smaller than a pixel, and manage to stay composed through eight levels of the 1985 NES game to make it close to the top of the leaderboard. Read more…

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How to respectfully observe Memorial Day online, from a veteran who knows

How to respectfully observe Memorial Day online, from a veteran who knows

John Phipps doesn’t want you to thank him for his military service any day, but especially on Memorial Day. “[Memorial Day] isn’t about anyone who’s alive,” says Phipps. 

Phipps could have easily been one of those service members who didn’t return home. Between 2003 and 2008, he deployed two times each to Iraq and Afghanistan. America started wars with both of those countries and was still embroiled in them during Phipps’ tours. 

At 21 years old, Phipps turned to the Marines because he couldn’t pay for college. “I had zero ambition or direction and I knew if I didn’t break out of that cycle, all of a sudden I’d look in the mirror and I’d be 50 and I’d still be doing that,” says Phipps.  Read more…

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How to zoom out on an Apple Watch

How to zoom out on an Apple Watch

There are two types of Apple Watch users: Those who have the zoom feature turned on and those who have it turned off. 

If you’re the type who needs to see content up close, then you might find the Apple Watch’s display stuck on magnified mode at some point while using it. Don’t worry, getting back to full view is as simple as tapping on the display. 

Here’s how to zoom out on your Apple Watch display.

Double-tap with two fingers 

Double-tap to zoom in and double-tap to zoom out.

Double-tap to zoom in and double-tap to zoom out.

Image: apple / screenshot

You can zoom all the way out using the Digital Crown in Grid View.

You can zoom all the way out using the Digital Crown in Grid View.

Image: Apple / screenshot
Read more…

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Hubble captures a luminous spiral galaxy looking all chill and relaxed

Hubble captures a luminous spiral galaxy looking all chill and relaxed

Swirling around in the Virgo constellation, the Hubble Space Telescope captured a look at the spiral galaxy NGC 5037, NASA shared on Friday.

Located roughly 150 million light-years away from Earth, the galaxy was first documented by astronomer and musical composer William Herschel in 1785. This new, incredibly detailed image of the galaxy is a composite of images taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3.

The full image shows NGC 5037 encased in a wide, bold border of dark space.

The full image of NGC 5037 reveals a broader look at the galaxy's surroundings, a largely black abyss with a smattering of distant lights.

The full image of NGC 5037 reveals a broader look at the galaxy’s surroundings, a largely black abyss with a smattering of distant lights.

Image: ESA/HUBBLE & NASA, D. ROSARIO, ACKNOWLEDGMENT: L. SHATZ
Read more…

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‘Cruella’ and the ‘Quiet Place’ sequel signal a hot start for the 2021 summer box office

'Cruella' and the 'Quiet Place' sequel signal a hot start for the 2021 summer box office

Nature is healing, and so, apparently, is Hollywood.

After a blockbuster international opening for F9 just a week ago, the Memorial Day weekend box office in the United States has got to be happy news for Hollywood executives. The weekend’s big winner is A Quiet Place Part II, which earned an estimated $48.4 million domestically, according to Comscore. 

Disney’s Cruella is set to finish the weekend at number two, with an estimated $21.3 million. Both movies are in their opening weekends, and both opened wide in close to 4,000 theaters each. Note, too, that these numbers just cover the Friday-to-Sunday three-day weekendQuiet Place should hit roughly $58.5 million after Monday tickets are factored in, and Cruella should go up to around $26.5 million, Read more…

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Mutual masturbation can bring you closer to your partner, even over FaceTime

Mutual masturbation can bring you closer to your partner, even over FaceTime

May is National Masturbation Month, and we’re celebrating with Feeling Yourself, a series exploring the finer points of self-pleasure.


While hot vaxxed summer is rapidly approaching, that doesn’t mean everyone will suddenly drop their virtual connections for IRL experiences. More than half of Hinge users, for example, said they are still likely to go on video dates even when it’s safe to meet in-person. 

It’s easier than ever to explore your sexuality online, whether it’s a virtual threeway or mutual masturbation over FaceTime or other video. If you’re wondering why one might want to jerk off on cam while someone else is not only watching but also jerking off on cam, read on. Read more…

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