After years of development and millions of advertising dollars spent to convince us that a tablet could plausibly replace a laptop, Microsoft finally delivered the goods with the Surface Pro 4 in 2015. Equipped with robust processing power, a perfectly sized display and just-right aspect ratio, and a few critical add-on accessories, the current generation …
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December, 2016
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21 December
Panda vs. snowman is the showdown we all need to see
In “Frozen,” Anna famously asked sister Elsa if she wanted to build a snowman. But everyone knows the real fun isn’t in building something, it’s in breaking it. Or so a giant panda named Da Mao seems to think. The Toronto Zoo posted a video Tuesday of Da Mao taking apart a snowman like Clubber Lang knocking out Rocky, only …
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21 December
Best albums of 2016 to stream in 2017
Oh, you don’t have an Apple Music or a Tidal subscription? Then you probably initially missed out on some of the most buzzworthy albums of the year. Luckily for you, most of these were only exclusive for their first few weeks of release and are all — save one — now available for everyone to stream on Spotify, Apple Music, …
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21 December
Oculus, Vive, PlayStation VR, Daydream: Reviewing a year in VR
When I look back to December 2015, VR was all about mysteries and promise. Oculus Rift ($290 at Amazon), HTC Vive ($479 at Amazon) and PlayStation VR ($127 at Amazon) were all unreleased, and still shrouded in some mystery. I’d tried them, but they weren’t yet available. Now, all the VR systems have arrived. So many, in fact, that it …
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21 December
Talking toys can become your kid’s digital friend
Voice assistants like Siri and Alexa can make phone calls and do web searches, but they’re not necessarily great for kids to talk to. That’s where several toys out this holiday season come in, able to listen and interact with kids during playtime. The Zoomer brand by Spinmaster has a number of voice-activated friends for kids to play with, including …
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21 December
Here are the most
There was no escaping death and politics in 2016. That’s the lesson from Wikipedia, which on Wednesday released the list of its most-edited pages for the year. Predictably, the contentious US election dominated our attention, both on Wikipedia and in the real world, with five of the top 10 edited-pages being related to the candidates, campaign endorsement and primaries. The …
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21 December
France will let drones deliver the mail (kinda)
Drone deliveries are taking off. Amazon delivered its first package. Alphabet is delivering burritos. 7-Eleven has delivered all kinds of stuff. And now, France has become the first country to let its national postal service deliver mail by drone — as long as you live on a single, 9-mile long postal route. Let me rephrase that: as long as you …
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21 December
The only true 15
Strange but true — when we went looking for a Windows alternative to the new 15-inch MacBook Pro, only one laptop stood out. Right now, the Dell XPS 15 is the only machine with portability and performance to match Apple’s largest laptop. Problem is, its CPU and graphics are about to be a year out of date. It looks like …
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21 December
Zuckerberg says Facebook is ‘not a traditional media company’
Mark Zuckerberg is still trying to explain what his company does. The Facebook CEO said in August that the social-networking giant had no ambitions of being a content provider, insisting that Facebook is “a tech company, not a media company.” On Wednesday, he appeared to retreat a bit on that statement, painting a slightly different portrait of his company during …
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21 December
Winter is here. Let’s give it a warm welcome, social media
The first day of winter has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere, and the welcome party is all over Twitter. It’ll be the shortest day of the year, with the sun setting, at New York’s latitude, about nine hours after it rises. Be sure to read this fast so you can go out and soak in the sunlight while it’s still …
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