The Morning After: 'Doom' meets Roomba

It's Thursday, December 27, 2018. Hey, good morning! You look fabulous. Our short holiday week isn’t over yet -- we’ll recap the exploding market for smart displays and explain what Doom has in common with your vacuum cleaner. (View in browser.) Pick a side. Smart displays came into their own in 2018 If Amazon hadn't pioneered the Echo, Google might have never come out with its own line of speakers and displays. And if it wasn't for Google making competitive products, Amazon might never have improved the Echo and Echo Show with more robust features. FYI Tesla's Supercharger network will cover all of Europe in 2019 While encouraging potential Tesla owners to get their purchase in before the end of the year, Elon Musk addressed some charging concerns. According to Musk, next year the Supercharger network will stretch  "From Ireland to Kiev (Ukraine), from Norway to Turkey." Ho ho ho. Turn your Roomba's travels into 'Doom' maps Here’s one way to celebrate Doom's 25th anniversary: make your robot sketch out new levels. Game developer Rich Whitehouse has developed a script that translates your floors (mapped by Roomba) to playable maps for the original (aka the really old) Doom. You can customize the experience by specifying the quantities of enemies, weapons and pickups you'll accept. It also comes with a 3D camera to help slim down the entire body. Honor's 'hole-punch' View 20 will get a Moschino edition Honor's recent teaser event gave away pretty much all the secrets of its new View 20 smartphone: It has a 25-megapixel punched-hole front camera and a 48-megapixel rear camera. Honor clearly just wanted to announce its "hole screen" technology before Samsung and Huawei.  Now, Honor can go over all the finer details. The company plans to price the View 20 in China starting from 2,999 yuan (about $435) for the 6GB RAM + 128GB storage version -- we expect global launch dates and prices early in 2019. But wait, there's more... 1. Android Pie rolling out now to OnePlus 5, OnePlus 5T 2. FTC issues warning about a Netflix phishing scam 3. 2018 was the biggest shakeup in years for the camera world 4. Holiday 'Fortnite' outage temporarily left players in limbo 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: An 'Elder Scrolls' cookbook

It's Wednesday, December 26, 2018. Hey, good morning! Good morning! We hope you got the gifts you were hoping for. What did you miss? Well, the UK military’s latest robots have haptic feedback, we get a deep-dive on a long-lost NES port of SimCity and an Elder Scrolls cookbook surfaces.   The major OS upgrade popped up earlier than promised.   Samsung is serving Galaxy S9 owners Android Pie for Christmas   Samsung has started rolling out Android Pie for Galaxy S9 and S9+ devices earlier than it said it would. The tech giant was originally planning to release the major OS upgrade in January, but it’s apparently appearing early in places. And, yes, it's the stable version of the mobile platform that's making its way to people, even non-beta users whose devices are still running Android Oreo.  Based on some Reddit posts, it looks like Samsung has started the rollout in Europe and some parts of Asia: users from Italy, Switzerland, Greece and the UAE reported getting the new OS on their phones.   Their operators will be able to feel what they feel.   UK military's bomb disposal robots come with haptic feedback   The British Army has received four cutting-edge robots that, unlike other bomb disposal machines, come with "advanced haptic feedback" that allows their operators to feel what their mechanical arm holds or touches through a remote-control hand grip.   It's a fascinating bite of video game history.   Dive into the long lost SimCity NES port that never was   SimCity on the SNES managed to combine the joy of simulated city building that Mac and Amiga gamers enjoyed into a family-friendly console title that anyone could play. But did you know Maxis and Nintendo also had an NES version in the works, too? Last year, two prototype cartridges of the NES SimCity appeared at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, and Frank Cifaldi of the Video Game History Foundation snagged a digital copy. As a fitting Christmas gift to the gaming world, he published a deep dive into the history of the long lost game.   How do you like your sweetrolls?   'Elder Scrolls' cookbook will let you explore the foods of Tamriel   You've fought your way through Skyrim and Oblivion, soon you can eat your way through the continent of Tamriel. Chelsea Monroe-Cassel, the author behind the official Game of Thrones and Warcraft cookbooks, is tackling the Elder Scrolls series next with a new book due in March,  But wait, there's more... 1. Lamborghini LB48H hypercar due next year 2. The year in strange tech stories 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: May all your gifts be charged and updated

It's Tuesday, December 25, 2018. Hey, good morning! You look fabulous. A Merry Christmas to all of our Morning After readers. It’s a short and snappy newsletter today as most of tech winds up for the holiday. Have a great day! (Read in browser) Beautiful. 50 years ago, 'Earthrise' inspired the environmental movement   The most famous photo ever taken from space, Earthrise, is 50 years old today. It's so iconic that we now take it for granted, but it may have had a greater impact on humanity than any photograph ever taken. Far from being planned, astronaut Bill Anders snapped it during the ground-breaking Apollo 8 mission on the spur of the moment.    The amount of Japanese students with less than 20/20 vision is at at its peak.   Japan thinks smartphones are destroying students’ eyesight   The eyesight of Japan's students is deteriorating and the country's government thinks smartphones are to blame. A recent survey conducted by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology found that the number of students with vision below the standard 1.0 score (equivalent to 20/20 vision) is at an all-time high of 25.3 percent. Over 67 percent of high school students didn't meet the bar. The government is attributing the trend to "increased time spent staring at [smartphone] screens...and mobile games." Merry Christmas…   Clever AI can trump an impressive spec sheet. How Google software won 2018   When it comes to Google's products, software can not only make up for lackluster hardware, but even give the company's devices an edge over competing gadgets. This year, Google delivered thoughtful software and truly helpful AI that made some of its otherwise mediocre devices surprisingly compelling. Hear Cherlynn Low out.   "So, dear audiophiles, it's time to move on."   Headphone jack fans lost out to fullscreen smartphones in 2018   It was hard to fathom why Apple, Motorola and other smartphone makers were so eager to drop headphone jacks. There weren't any huge leaps in battery life or other features to make it worth losing the most widely supported port ever made. When Google removed it from the Pixel 2 last year, Devindra Hardawar figured all was lost. Even OnePlus, perhaps the most geek-friendly brand out there, gave up on the headphone jack with the 6T this year. But now, it's at least clear why the entire industry is jumping on this bandwagon: everyone wants to make bezel-less all screen phones. But wait, there's more... 1. Samsung is serving Galaxy S9 owners Android Pie for Christmas 2. China's WeChat is mimicking Snapchat Stories, too 3. HQ Trivia's 'Wheel of Fortune' game is now open to everyone 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.