The Morning After: Facebook exploited, useless Japanese gadgets

It's Monday, March 19, 2018. Hey, good morning! Good morning there! A new week starts, and we’re headed to GDC: the biggest game developer event around. At the same time, we’re embarrassing ourselves with chindogu, as seen above. Also: You’ve heard of Fortnite right? Where did it come from? And can I play against Drake?  From beta to record breaker.   The rise and rise (and rise) of ’Fortnite'   It's safe to say that when a video game that counts Drake among its fans and has breakfast TV shows around the world discussing its effect on younger players, it has truly made it. No, we're not talking about Grand Theft Auto, but Fortnite, Epic Games' mass-multiplayer shooter that has more than 40 million players across consoles and PC, and continues to grow at a rapid pace. When Fortnite launched as a paid Early Access game in July 2017, it was solely as a player vs. environment experience, but that was just the start. Here’s how it climbed its way to megahit. The UK’s biggest sushi chain re-acquaints us with the word ‘chindogu’. Postmodern dining with the Japanese art of useless gadgets   The Japanese word "chindogu" covers a delightful range of terrible gadgets. It's about vaguely genius concepts, ruined either in their execution or ambition. If you've seen the baby-floor-mop onesie or the upside-down umbrella for capturing rainwater, you've seen a chindogu. Yo Sushi, wanted to celebrate this ridiculous facet of Japanese culture, and invited Engadget’s Mat Smith to embarrass himself through a selection of crapgadgets and tasting dishes. Here are the GIFs that matter. Using data harvested from 50 million profiles.   Whistleblower explains how Cambridge Analytica 'exploited' Facebook   Last night Facebook announced bans against Cambridge Analytica, its parent company and several individuals for allegedly sharing and keeping data that they had promised to delete. This data reportedly included information siphoned from hundreds of thousands of Amazon Mechanical Turkers that  collected data from about 50 million accounts. That data reportedly turned into information used by the likes of Robert Mercer, Steve Bannon and the Donald Trump campaign for social media messaging and "micro-targeting" individuals based on shared characteristics. Now, the FTC might have to get involved. But wait, there's more... 1. NASA's portable antennas help bring space data back to Earth 2. Nissan's electric SUV concept will enter production 3. Apple reportedly invests in its own MicroLED screens The Morning After is a new daily newsletter from Engadget designed to help you fight off FOMO. Who knows what you'll miss if you don't subscribe. Craving even more? Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. Have a suggestion on how we can improve The Morning After? Send us a note. Copyright © 2016 Aol Inc. All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: AOL 770 Broadway #4 New York, NY 10003 You are receiving this email because you opted in at engadget.com. Not interested anymore? Unsubscribe from this newsletter.

The Morning After: Weekend Edition

It's Saturday, March 17, 2018. Hey, good morning! You look fabulous. Welcome to the weekend! Other than some highlights from last week, you can check out an Alphabet-backed smart city plan and Facebook’s latest Friday night news dump. The timing is interesting. Facebook suspends Trump-linked data firm Cambridge Analytica Late Friday night, Facebook has announced it's suspending Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) from its site. While you may not have heard of SCL, its political analytics firm Cambridge Analytica has made headlines in the last few years due to work for the Trump campaign and the Brexit initiative. The reason? Apparently, data passed on from a "personality prediction" app that scooped up information from Mechanical Turkers paid to use it -- and all of their friends. "Fail fast, fail often" is a bad ethos when lives are at risk. Inside Google’s plan to build a smart neighborhood in Toronto On the Sidewalk Labs website is a 200-page document explaining its vision for a smart neighborhood in Toronto. The lengthy pitch document, however, is just a taste of what the area might become. Most companies would struggle to execute just one aspect of the plan (autonomous transit, or buildings that can be cheaply repurposed at different times of the day). As Nick Summers explains, Sidewalk Labs wants to do it all.  For Pi day. Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ adds more power For 3/14, the Raspberry Pi foundation is bumping the specs of its DIY computing platform one more time. Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ sports a 1.4GHz quad-core Broadcom BCM2837B0 processor instead of the standard 3’s 1.2GHz chip, plus dual-band WiFi and support for Power over Ethernet. The best news, though, is that the price stays the same: $35/£30. Still not there yet. One year later, Samsung’s Bixby AI assistant is still half-baked Now that the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus are on sale, Chris Velazco thought we should take some time to get reacquainted with Samsung's ambitious virtual assistant. The sad truth is, the version of Bixby installed on the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus isn't that much better than what shipped on last year's Samsung flagships. Mark your calendar. Standalone Oculus Go headset could debut at Facebook's F8 event Last year Oculus teased its standalone "Go" VR headset saying it would go on sale for $199 early in 2018. Now Variety cites unnamed sources claiming that it will debut at Facebook's F8 conference May 1st. Flex. ThinkPad X1 Yoga review (2018) The ThinkPad X1 Yoga is meant for business users who want something more than a traditional laptop. Its different modes are genuinely useful, but you’ll pay for that with extra weight. But wait, there's more... 1. SEC charges Theranos and CEO Elizabeth Holmes with 'massive fraud' 2. The father of the world wide web is one disappointed dad 3. A New York town just placed a moratorium on cryptocurrency mining 4. Audi Sport's e-tron GT will be based on Porsche's Mission E 5. ThinkPad X1 Carbon review (2018): The best business laptop returns 6. How to find the best TV antenna for free HD channels 7. Trump blocks Broadcom's attempted takeover of Qualcomm 8. Stephen Hawking passes away at age 76 The Morning After is a new daily newsletter from Engadget designed to help you fight off FOMO. Who knows what you'll miss if you don't subscribe. Craving even more? Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. Have a suggestion on how we can improve The Morning After? Send us a note. Copyright © 2016 Aol Inc. All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: AOL 770 Broadway #4 New York, NY 10003 You are receiving this email because you opted in at engadget.com. Not interested anymore? Unsubscribe from this newsletter.

Editor's Pick: Larry Page's Self-Flying Taxi Set for New Zealand Test Runs

Larry Page's Self-Flying Taxi Set for New Zealand Test Runs

David Jones Mar 15, 2018 1:17 PM PT
	A new air taxi service financially backed by Google cofounder Larry Page is set to take off in New Zealand. Page's Kitty Hawk company, the developer of a new autonomous flying machine called "Cora," will begin testing the service in rural Canterbury, according to Hayden Munro, press secretary for Megan Woods, New Zealand's minister of research, science and innovation. [More...]

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