On May 19th, New York University student John DiLillo attended Grad Alley, the school’s annual block party to celebrate commencement. For two hours, he and a few friends went to places like “Pictionary Island” and peered into the (surprisingly hollow) rubbery inside of a dolphin. He got stuck underground. He ran into exactly six people,…
If you’re anything like us, over the past couple of months you’ve probably finished every “must watch” TV series on Netflix, cleaned your apartment from top to bottom, and completed every video game in your backlog. We get it: social distancing can get pretty boring. So if you’re finding yourself with a lot of time…
In today’s digital age, it sometimes feels like hardware has taken a back seat to the software that drives our devices. Button of the Month will look at what some of those buttons and switches are like on devices old and new to appreciate how we interact with them on a physical, tactile level. Apple’s…
I’ve been waiting for the Surface Book 3 for two and a half years. Microsoft’s 15-inch Surface Book 2 was largely just a refinement over the original model — released nearly five years ago — so I was really hoping the company was holding back some big changes for the Surface Book 3. Unfortunately, no…
At launch, new streaming services prompt the same question: what can I watch? But HBO Max also elicits a different line of questioning: how is this different from HBO Now? From HBO Go? From AT&T TV Now? Do I have to pay extra for this, or is it wrapped into my HBO package? HBO Max,…
Joe Rogan is largely moving on from YouTube, a site that helped transform his podcast into a viral video-making factory, earning him nearly 10 million subscribers in the process. It’s the latest sign that creators who found success on YouTube see other platforms as the next step, but it doesn’t mean that YouTube is anywhere…
One year ago today, Facebook released the Oculus Quest, its first headset to deliver a credible standalone VR experience — true head tracking, good motion controllers, and so on. It also marked a split in the Oculus ecosystem: the Quest had its own store, curated with games that had been tailored specifically for the headset’s…
When Nate Fox was working on Sly Cooper, a series of stealth games about a master thief who also happens to be a raccoon, he looked around for inspiration on how to make anthropomorphized animals feel more real. This led him to the comic Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai, which followed a wandering samurai who…
Last month, before Google and Apple announced their joint effort to enable COVID-19 exposure notifications, I wrote about the trouble with using Bluetooth-based solutions for contact tracing. Chief among the issues is getting a meaningful number of people to download any app in the first place, public health officials told me. And now that such…
The hyperlink reaches my inbox a few minutes before 10PM on Saturday night. I click the link and enter a password. And at precisely 10PM, a video pops up on the page, welcoming me to Eschaton: part performance art, part nightclub, and all conducted over video chat. During the next hour, I stumble across some…
Even though E3, Gamescom, and other summer gaming events have become online-only or outright canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems there’s still going to be a lot of gaming news this summer. Publishers and media have already scheduled many digital events, promising news and announcements, which could help fill the void left by…
Lil Nas X’s “Panini,” NASA’s social media presence, Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty line, and John Krasinski’s Some Good News YouTube show are among the winners of this year’s Webby Awards. The annual awards show celebrates the wide variety of things that happen online, from websites and podcasts to design and data visualizations to video series and…
Like all big tech companies, Google and Alphabet are playing an outsized role in our lives as the coronavirus pandemic continues. Whether it’s helping people find reliable information in search, working with the government on testing, building an exposure-tracking system into Android and iOS in partnership with Apple, or battling misinformation on YouTube, Google’s capability…
Making video games is a difficult endeavor at the best of times, but spare a thought for the people behind Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories, which finally came out last month for the PC, PS4, and Switch in the West. I first played it at a game show in Osaka in 2009; it was running…
The Gigabyte Aero 15 is a laptop aimed at designers and creative professionals. But when I first saw the thing, I didn’t believe that. It looks nothing like any laptop that comes to mind when I think of “creators” (the slim and sleek MacBook Pros, XPS 15s, Surface Books, and Zenbooks of the world). The…
A tale of two hardware divisions. Google, as reported by The Information, suffers with operational chaos that is as bizarre as it is inept. Hardware boss Rick Osterloh reportedly held a meeting where he tells everybody “he did not agree with some of the decisions made about the phone” — are these decisions not things…
After launching Untitled Goose Game on my Nintendo Switch, the game loads into its opening credits, transitioning from logo to logo. First, it credits the studio that made it, House House, then the publisher, Panic. After that, the screen reads “with support from Film Victoria.” Although the moment is brief, the credit on-screen gestures toward…
Gary Whitta is seated behind a thick wooden desk, hair perfectly coiffed, wearing a suit and a smile that curls upward like a macaroni noodle. He’s halfway through introducing his next guest, Greg Miller, when a beachball-sized head bobs into view. Whitta starts to yell. “Greg! I — goddamn you. Get back up the stairs.…
Live in Silicon Valley long enough and someone will tell you that the party is over. As far as I can tell, this phenomenon dates back to at least 1874. As Peter Hartlaub recounted last year in the San Francisco Chronicle, upon the occasion of a writer for the Washington Post announcing that San Francisco…
For obvious reasons, the interest in working out at home has never been higher. Whether you’re doing yoga with Adriene, working your way through Ring Fit Adventure, or scouring Amazon for a spin bike that’s in stock, you’ve probably been looking for ways to keep active without leaving the house. Me? I’ve been using VR.…
Taylor Walker worked hard during her time at Salem State University. She was her class’s homecoming queen, she sang in the university’s Grammy award-winning choir, and she completed a double degree in communication and speech. Graduation was her chance to reflect on all those accomplishments. To celebrate, she planned to host a party with her…
After months of hardware reveals, spec reveals, and hype, Microsoft is finally doing a proper first look at gameplay footage for its upcoming next-gen console, the Xbox Series X, showing off gameplay from 13 games that will be headed to the console this fall. Before you get too excited, the trailers showed off come from…
The biggest story of today is the creeping sense that April was in many ways another lost month in the COVID-19 response, with the average number of new cases rising slightly throughout the month to around 29,500 per day. Large swathes of the country are preparing to re-open for business even as all signs point…
Since the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has overtaken the climate crisis as the most pressing existential threat for much of the world’s population. As we adapt to isolation, the warming planet has taken an understandable back seat in the news coverage, although scientists have noted the spread of the novel coronavirus instigating a…
Kaweco Classic Sport Fountain Pen Nothing makes writing feel better than using a fancy pen, and Kaweco’s fountain pen is the perfect way to add some old-school charm to your note-taking, lease signing, or doodling without breaking the bank. Price: ~$19 Amazon Hario V60 Gooseneck Kettle There are many cheaper vessels for hot water, but…
On Wednesday, the field director for Mel Gagarin’s congressional campaign sat shirtless — illuminated by candlelight — in his bathtub reading a scary story over Instagram Live. “Bedtime Bathtime Storytimes” have become regular events for Gagarin’s campaign even if they’re only for an audience of around a dozen people, including other members of the campaign.…
If you’ve been working from home for the past few weeks, you’ve probably had to join more than a few video conference calls. Or perhaps you’ve been using video chat apps to keep in touch with friends and family while social distancing. Either way, you’ve probably noticed that the webcam on your laptop is, well,…
Microsoft now has 10 million subscribers to its Xbox Game Pass service, the company confirmed during an investor call yesterday. It’s the first time Microsoft has publicly disclosed Xbox Game Pass numbers, and it’s a sign that the company’s ambitious bet on subscription gaming is starting to pay off. Microsoft has been trying to build…
Despite pandemic-related hardware shortages, Facebook’s virtual reality business exploded at the start of 2020. The company revealed yesterday that it made $297 million in non-advertising revenue during the first quarter of 2020. That was “driven largely by sales of Oculus products,” rather than other products like Portal. The number is a full 80 percent higher…
When great just isn’t good enough After years mainly spent in the midrange phone market, Motorola burst back into the spotlight with the foldable Razr: it was bold, it was exciting, it was expensive, and it ultimately flopped. As interesting as it was, it simply wasn’t a very good phone. The newly announced Motorola Edge…