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Relive the sound of the 80s with a Bluetooth cassette player

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NINM Lab is introducing the “world’s first Bluetooth portable cassette player,” an update of the classic Sony Walkman that will play the collection of cassette tapes you still have buried at the back of your closet.

The IT’S OK cassette player has Bluetooth built in, so you can listen to your cassettes on wireless headphones. Or, if you’re a purist (or hipster), you can still use headphones.

It comes in three colors: Cloud white, sakura pink and evening blue, and the case is transparent so you can show off your sweet mix tapes to everyone. It “brings a new perspective to the romanticism of the ’80s cassette player,” apparently.

It launches on Kickstarter later today, and you can get your hands on a piece of ironic / retro tech of your own for $63, if that’s something you feel you need in your life.

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Chinese publisher loses license over game that mocked President Xi Jinping

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Devotion mysteriously disappeared from Steam back in February after Chinese nationalists spotted a poster in the game that read, “Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh moron”, according to GameDaily. Right-wing gamers immediately began flooding Steam with negative reviews of the game, calling out the Taiwanese video game developer for mocking the Mainland Chinese. Red Candle Games apologized for the incident and said the poster’s inclusion was accidental and vowed to fix the problem. Despite such measures, Devotion has yet to return to Steam. Another worrisome sign is that game developer Red Candle Games hasn’t tweeted since February 19th, the date of Devotion‘s release.

China’s aversion to Winnie the Pooh goes far beyond just direct comparisons of President Xi to the bear. The beloved A.A. Milne character itself is seen as a symbol of civic disobedience in the authoritarian regime. China’s censors began banning images of Winnie the Pooh after internet memes comparing the cuddly bear to the Chinese leader emerged after Xi visited the US in 2013. The nation has gone to extreme lengths to erase the image of the forgetful bear from public knowledge; even censoring the release of the 2018 film Christopher Robin and blocking HBO’s website after comedian John Oliver made fun of China’s censorship of the bear.

In the case of Devotion, the consequences of China’s censorship is especially troubling since even those outside of the nation can no longer play the game. Chinese regulators have shown no mercy in banning content considered harmful to the public good. Last December, the nation ended a nearly nine-month freeze on new game approvals and imposed new rules on blood and gambling in games. Given its power and status as the largest gaming market in the world, it’s likely China will still continue to have a lasting influence on video game publishers.



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Kia made a tiny Faraday cage to protect your wireless key from thieves

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The case is available for £10 (slightly under $13) both during the transfer process for both new and existing Kia owners.

Before you ask: yes, Kia is fully aware that this isn’t an ideal situation. It’s promising that future wireless key fobs are “as close to impervious to attack as possible” through technologies like ultra-wideband signals and sleep buttons. This is more about acknowledging the issue (a particularly rampant one in the UK) and sparing drivers the trouble of hunting down an aftermarket option.

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PlayStation Classic price drops to $25 at Best Buy, Amazon

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We get it — you really don’t like the PlayStation Classic. You’ve told us, over and over again. We weren’t huge fans when we reviewed it, but that was when it cost $100. The price quickly dropped over the next few months, to $60, $40, and even $30. Now, as Wario64 points out on Twitter, it’s easily available at both Best Buy and Amazon for just $25 — a 75 percent discount from the starting price.

Sure, the controllers might feel a little cheap, but at least there’s two of them. The 20 pre-loaded games may not be the strongest list ever and includes PAL versions with poor performance but again — there’s 20 of them, which include titles like Metal Gear Solid, Twisted Metal and Final Fantasy VII. And people have even modded the system for successful sideloading. Whatever the issues of this attempt to cash in on the mini-retro-console craze, at some point it’s cheap enough for nostalgia to win out.

The real problem with buying one now — other than finding it unopened in six months once you’ve forgotten you even purchased it — is feeling like a sucker when they start giving them away on Black Friday. We’ll see you back here next year for the Genesis Mini and TurboGrafx-16 mini.



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Netflix pulled 66 episodes of Chelsea Handler’s canceled talk show

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The first season of Chelsea streamed 90 episodes, but it failed to catch on, and showrunner/executive producer Bill Wolff departed, a bit mysteriously, after just nine episodes. Still, Chelsea was renewed for a second season. Netflix told The New York Times that it removed the episodes — all from season one — to make it easier for viewers to catch up before the second and final season launched. The second season had 30 episodes, a fraction of the first season’s run.

Removing the episodes is unprecedented, but it’s not entirely surprising that Chelsea flopped. The talk show format doesn’t carry over to streaming as easily as other genres have. Since talk shows usually discuss current events, they don’t age well and can lose their relevance after as little as a month. In the past two years, Netflix has canceled two other talk shows: The Break With Michelle Wolf and The Joel McHale Show With Joel McHale, and Hulu canceled Sarah Silverman’s I Love You, America after 21 episodes.

Before Chelsea launched, one of the main questions was how the talk-show format would adapt to Netflix’s “anytime” viewing model. Handler remained confident, saying that the Netflix team was “the most forward thinking, alert group” she’d worked with in ages. Apparently, that wasn’t enough.

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Lyft outlines its disaster response strategy

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The company also promises to offer transportation help to first responders and volunteers. It’ll steer customers toward valuable resources as well, such as Airbnb Open Homes, United Way 211 info and shelter locations.

The disaster plan is part of Lyft’s larger City Works strategy aiming to support the community at large. While there’s clearly a public relations angle to all of it, this latest program could be particularly vital. If there’s a disaster, you don’t want to guess where help will come from. This could help you plan a retreat to safety, and make it clear when you’ll have to look for alternatives.

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Google Photos will let you manually tag faces it doesn’t recognize

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According to Lieb, a few capabilities previously restricted to the web will finally make their way to mobile. You’ll soon be able to search for recently uploaded photos on mobile, and you’ll be able to edit timestamps on Android; as Android Police reports, users can already do that on the web and iOS. Lieb also revealed that “the team” is working to let Android users delete photos while in an album. Again, that’s a feature that web and iOS users already have access to.

It’s unclear when the new features will arrive or if Google Photos will consider any of the ideas that were tossed around — like adding a map feature, removing duplicates and showing photo descriptions in slide shows. If nothing else, it’s nice to see a Google product lead take to Twitter to have an open conversation with users.



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Superhuman email client turns off location tracking after ‘spying’ controversy

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The email app Superhuman was profiled by the New York Times just a week ago as a buzzworthy startup with big names from Silicon Valley lining up to pay $30 per month for its service. Since then, a blog post by Mike Davidson dived into what that money gets users has caused a war of words among many in the tech industry over privacy and communications.

Other than just providing a ‘premium’ email client that comes with tons of keyboard shortcuts and AI assistant to make reaching Inbox Zero easier, it turned on by default a feature that puts a tracking pixel in each outgoing email. If you opened an email sent by a Superhuman user and viewed the images, then they got a report of when you opened it, how many times you opened it, and even where you were when you read the email.

This revelation has creeped some people out for very good reasons explained by Davidson, so now Superhuman founder and CEO Rahul Vohra explains in a blog post that it’s changing the policy.

Rahul Vohra, Superhuman:

  • We have stopped logging location information for new email, effective immediately.
  • We are releasing new app versions today that no longer show location information.
  • We are deleting all historical location data from our apps.
  • We are keeping the read status feature, but turning it off by default. Users who want it will have to explicitly turn it on.
  • We are prioritizing building an option to disable remote image loading.

According to Vohra, “I am so very sorry for how our read status feature made folks feel. We did not imagine the potential for misuse. Now we are learning and changing.”

Many supporters of the app/feature pointed out tracking pixels online and in email aren’t new, and that many businesses — like our own The Morning After newsletter — collect information on their readers. Still, the original configuration of Superhuman seems quite a bit different in the granularity of the information collected, and how unexpected the behavior is. Read receipts are usually visible to the receiver, and don’t include location flags without some sort of opt-in. The new Superhuman setup seems to respect this, but we’ll see how it’s received by the public.

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Lotus’ electric hypercar is named ‘Evija’

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No, Lotus isn’t ready to spill the beans on its Type 130 electric hypercar. It is, however, ready to give the car a name: meet the Evija (pronounced “ev-eye-a”). While the company’s choice of name is a bit strained — it means “the first in existence” or “the living one” — it makes sense given both Lotus’ traditions and what it represents. The company has long given its cars names starting with E (Esprit, Elise, Exige), and it only seems fitting to name an EV as, well, “Ev.”

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Netflix releases ‘Always Be My Maybe’ director’s commentary podcast

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The second episode of the Watching With podcast (following one for Someone Great) features director Nahnatchka Khan and star and co-writer Randall Park offering their thoughts about the flick, including the bit where Park’s character Marcus gets into a throwdown with some video game star named Keanu Reeves. Having to play a podcast alongside the movie to get the full effect of the commentary might be a little more unwieldy than simply adding it as an audio track on the movie itself. That said, it gives you an easier option to listen to Khan, Park and Netflix’s Jarett Wieselman discuss Always Be My Maybe while you’re on the go.

The commentaries are an expansion of Netflix’s push into podcasting, which is essentially another way to promote its original shows and movies. They include, naturally, discussions about what people are watching on the service, as well as one in which stars of Netflix originals answer random questions along with deep dives into documentary, true crime and nonfiction projects.



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