Last, Last, Last-Minute Tech Gifts That Don t Suck, According to Me
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People wearing face masks amid concerns of the Covid-19 coronavirus walk past a Christmas display at a shopping mall in the Wanchai district of Hong Kong on December 24, 2020.
Photo: Isaac Lawrence (Getty Images)
I didn’t pour a ton of money into upgrading my tech this year. Our flailing economy and my general unease about the impact of the pandemic on our already troubled news industry left me feeling a little more conservative than usual about how to spend my pocket money. Where I did invest, however, I believe I did so wisely. I’m getting a lot of mileage out of some of the relatively cheap devices scattered around the apartment where I’ve been in quarantine alone, for the most part, since March.
Photo: Mario Tama (Getty Images)
When we ask who should take the rap for the decline of local news, most folks agree the blame partially lies on Google’s shoulders. The tech giant has spent the past decade systematically swallowing a larger and larger chunk of the digital ad market, diverting the dollars that outlets particularly smaller outlets desperately need.
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That’s not the only diversion that Google’s been doing. In an article published in the Washington Post this week, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the National University of Singapore described how they tried to figure out whether Google might be stymieing people hunting for local news on the company’s search engine. Close to 100,000 searches later, the team reported that, yep, it looked like Google’s engine defaulted to squashing struggling local outlets, and highlighting prominent national publishers in their stead.
Though the police’s post did not share the suspect’s name in full, the South China Morning Post reports an executive by the name of Yao Xu was recently tapped to oversee Yoozoo’s Three-Body Universe, a unit focused on other projects based on
The Three-Body Problem. Though Yoozoo initially planned to produce a both cinematic and gaming adaptations of the story, both failed to materialize, and it was unclear whether
The Three-Body Problem would ever make it to screen until earlier this fall when Yoozoo moved to partner with Netflix.
While there’s no word on what might have motivated the crime (THR points to “a dispute among the Chinese entertainment company’s executive ranks” and notes that the unspecified poison was allegedly administered via a cup of tea) reports are that Qi is recovering and in stable condition. There’s also no word on how, or if, these events might affect the future of
Someone Totally Neglected This Buick Grand National For 34 Years And Now It Looks Brand New Again
Screenshot: AMMO NYC on YouTube
In the mid-to-late 1980s, Buick somehow persuaded hundreds of people to purchase and then never drive its most expensive model. Could you imagine anyone going down to the Buick dealer and buying a new Enclave Avenir today, then storing it in the garage undriven until 2054?
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It seems like every time a Grand National comes up for sale, it has less than 2,000 miles on the odometer. It’s a wild phenomenon that I’ll never understand.
Anyway, back in 1987 when I was but a bouncing baby boy, a couple in Columbus, Ohio, purchased a Buick Regal Grand National. They shoved it into their pole barn and apparently never looked at it again until 2020, when it was sold to a guy from the Big Apple. During those resting years, the car’s tires lost air pressure and the family dog jumped on the door and fender nonstop for what looks to have be