You know the moment: You’ve just spent the last few minutes telling your friends how great — nay! — how utterly life-changing this video you watched last night and how they just have to watch it immediately. Your audience primed, you find it on YouTube, hit “Play”… and then everyone is forced to watch a 30-second ad that cannot be skipped. Buzz. Kill. [More]
videos
Twitter’s Expanded Character Count Coming Sept. 19
Your zany uncle’s Tweets are about to get a bit more long-winded, even with those photos, GIFs, and other add-ons. After announcing last spring that it would revamp the way it counts characters in Tweets, Twitter has reportedly put a date on when this change will kick in. [More]
Tech Would Allow Users To Touch, Interact With Objects In Video
Just when you thought virtual reality couldn’t be any more like reality, engineers go and find a way to let you actually touch and interact with the objects coming at you from your VR headset. [More]
Why Are There Seatbelt Demos On Airplanes?
A seatbelt is a fairly intuitive safety device: insert the flat end into the other piece and you’re secure in your seat — it’s fairly simple. We’ve all snapped one together, whether flying, driving or riding. So with the process likely engrained in our minds, why do airlines continue to include the simple instructions in their pre-takeoff safety demos? [More]
Twitter Will Now Let Users Post Up To 140 Seconds Of Video
Twitter is upping its video game with a few announcements this week, including the news that all users can now post videos up to 140 seconds in length, up from 30 seconds. [More]
Let’s Watch Some Promotional Videos From Makers Of ATM Skimmers
Legitimate businesses create video ads to promote their products, so why shouldn’t companies that can provide you with the supplies to commit crimes? Here are some videos where sellers of the tools of the ATM skimmer trade show off how their products work, in case you’ve always wondered how to insert and remove a super-thin ATM skimmer. [More]
Will DIY Air Conditioners Really Keep You Cool This Summer?
Don’t feel like plunking down upwards of a few hundred bucks for a window unit air conditioner? No, of course you don’t; that was a silly question. At the same time, you probably don’t want to spend the next few months baking in the summer heat. You could McGyver one using ice and some stuff that’s sitting in your garage gathering dust, but will it make your life any more tolerable? [More]
Instagram Revamps Timeline, Will Show Photos By Relevance
Instagram is taking a page straight out of its big brother Facebook’s playbook: reconfiguring its timeline to show posts that are most relevant to them first, not those that happened just moments ago. [More]
Netflix Dropping Its “One-Size-Fits-All” Streaming Algorithm
The shows you watch and the shows your five-year-old niece watch probably differ: she might prefer short 30-minute animated cartoons about an exploring adolescent, and you might go for something with more action or political backstabbing. While you both deserve to have a high quality product streaming on your screen, Netflix announced today that it might have found a better way to make sure that still happens, while using less data. [More]