Gadgets & Tech – Spoken Edition

All of my childhood memories involving Etch a Sketch end the same way. I’d fiddle with the knobs and then after a few minutes, shake it in frustration, erasing all evidence of my hideous “art.” The ionic toy is marking its 60th anniversary this year with a few limited edition launches, but of all of them the Etch a Sketch Revolution was the one that had us shaking our fists at how lucky kids today are.

Reddit’s had its fair share of leaker s in the past, with more than a few subreddits dedicated to the task of sharing leaks from video games, movies, tv shows, and the like . Last week, one of these leakers posted a now-deleted clip that they claimed was from the game’s new “battle royale” mode coming to Call of Duty in the coming month.

If you love slathering everything from french fries, to canned tuna fish, to BLT sandwiches in mayonnaise, but don’t always have the energy to squeeze a bottle, Japan has once again come to the aid of the lazy with packages of sliced mayonnaise that are as easy to use as sliced cheese.

Nintendo showed off its latest first-party title, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, this morning, and the reception was mostly good. However, gameindustry.biz noted that there’s at least one big problem with the yet-to-be-released game: You’re pretty screwed if you lose your save. The problem is the limitation Nintendo is putting on saves. The FAQ at the end of the New Horizons video notes that cloud saves will not immediately be available.

Baby Yoda was definitely the break out star of The Mandalorian, but it also looks like he’s the breakout star of this year’s Toy Fair too. A slew of Baby Yoda toys just dropped at a Disney event today, but of all of them, this animatronic plush by Hasbro is the highlight The Child Animatronic Plush by Hasbro, as you might expect, is incredibly lifelike in person. He burbles and coos, like a good baby should. His ears wiggle up and down.

Peloton accused rival stationary bike company Flywheel of stealing its ideas back in 2018, and now the two companies have settled. Flywheel is ending its at-home classes—both live-streamed and on-demand—in March, The Verge reported, which means Flywheel bike owners won’t have anything to watch on their giant screens. But don’t worry: Peloton is offering those riders free Peloton bikes, which is kind of a win-win for everyone.

The devices we use every day are increasingly voice-controlled or internet-connected, even if they probably shouldn’t be. If you’re also one of those folks that’s morbidly curious about which of these devices are hiding behind bullshit privacy policies to collect reams of data on you, there’s now a handy app for that. Enter the Internet of Things Assistant, released today by a team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

May 15, 1989, 83-year-old Modine Wise was found naked and beaten in her home. The perpetrator left evidence scattered around her: a bloody handprint, a jacket, a pack of cigarettes, and two hairs. In February of 1991, the court sentenced 23-year-old Timothy Bridges to life in prison for the crime. The conviction was largely based on statements from police informants (later revealed to have been bribed for their testimony) and expert forensic testimony. By merely examining the two hairs under a microscope and comparing their characteristics with hairs from Bridges, the FBI-trained analyst concluded the hairs all came from the same person.

Not sure you’ve heard, but the planet is getting hotter. The heat is making farming harder in some places, but it’s also making it possible to bring agriculture into new areas.

Scientists have released their initial analysis of a meteorite that fell over Europe last September. They report that the rock, the remnant of a daytime bo lide that impacted Earth with an energy of 0 .48 kilotons of TNT (around this much), is a carbonaceous chondrite—the kind of meteor that contains material from the earliest epoch of the solar system.