Nuclear Monster

  • Sony is giving away eight PlayStation 4 games as part of their Play at Home marketing campaign during the pandemic to encourage people to stay home instead of going out. Click this link for the games on the US PlayStation store. There’s Subnautica, Enter the Dungeon, Abzu, The Witness, Rez Infinite, Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, Moss, Thumper, and Paper Beast. All of these can be downloaded until 8PM Pacific Daylight Time on the 22nd of April.

    Ratchet & Clank is also left over from last year’s campaign and available for free until the end of March. Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition will be available for free from April 19th to May 14th.

    These games don’t require a PlayStation Plus subscription to download for free, and more are supposed to be added in the next months.

  • Before the Nintendo Switch there was the electrical mechanical switch. Tim Hunkin’s new video about the subject is out in his Secret Life of Components series above and we are about midway through the release schedule for these videos as they go up every Thursday. We are about midway through the series of eight episodes having already covered chains, LEDs, hinges, and now switches, with springs, connectors, glue, and bearings coming up. As I think about that schedule I am just now coming to realize the hope that Hunkin really kinda glosses over the history of glue. I highly recommend checking out Hunkin’s website on the new series and chipping in a few dollars if you enjoy the new series.

  • Apple has a new series of video ads with the statements “More durable than ever” and “Tougher than any smartphone glass” followed by the slogan “Relax, it’s iPhone.”

    The first ad depicts a home cook mishandling, spilling ingredients on, dropping their iPhone 12, and finally washing it off with tap water. If the rubber gaskets and glue that add water sealing on the cook’s iPhone fail and the cook doesn’t have AppleCare+? They have to pay big bucks to repair it or replace it outright. The newer iPhone’s are water resistant, they aren’t water proof. They may even be extremely water resistant but it isn’t perfect. This first video has fine-print disclaiming the actions: “Water resistance may lessen through normal use. Rinse only when dirty.” 

    The second ad has the protagonist fumbling with and eventually dropping their iPhone 12 on a city street, but the iPhone conveniently lands in some soft dirt. If the protagonist of the second clip had their iPhone fall a little farther over and land on the sidewalk? The glass will likely crack, they need to buy a new iPhone or pay for costly repairs. The “ceramic shield” may be better than ever, but it likely isn’t capable of withstanding a direct hit face-down on a concrete sidewalk without some cracking. The pained expression on the protagonist’s face as they fumble trying to keep the iPhone aloft as it falls doesn’t even make sense if the iPhone is so durable. 

    If the incidents happen exactly the way they are shown the iPhone might survive, but I don’t think that is enough certainty for people to relax about accidentally destroying expensive devices.

    This isn’t the only time they have made these claims, at almost every recent iPhone announcement there is a slide with claims of enhanced durability. For these ads to be honest Apple would need to change the warranty to include failures of the “ceramic shield” and the water resistance and end the AppleCare+ insurance program or actually make an iPhone that is durable to real sidewalk falls and somehow doesn’t lose water resistance over time. It is remarkable that these ads are aired with these claims of enhanced durability and go without much in the way of scrutiny.

  • Nintendo released a little single-purpose Animal Crossing: New Horizons website that you can use to make either a poster advertising your Animal Crossing island or a short video about the island. Oddly, the website is only available through the end of this year. The process of getting photos and videos off of a Nintendo Switch is so complicated already, however Nintendo did recently add the ability for your Switch to run a small web server on its own wifi network and shuttle videos and photos over wifi to a mobile device but it is an incredible pain to get it to work properly. Once you have the photos and videos you can proceed to Nintendo’s Island Tour Creator website and get started making your trailer or poster.

  • Tim Hunkin’s ongoing series about the parts that he uses to make his contraptions continues in episode three: Hinges. Tim is an absolute legend and he can even make hinges interesting. The series has so far covered working with chains and LEDs. You can find out more about The Secret Life of Components at Hunkin’s website.

    Hunkin has also re-released machine-learning upscaled versions of the first series of The Secret Life of Machines episodes from 30 years ago and added a bonus chat at the end with recollections from filming and other behind the scenes hints: