Fortnite’s new season adds Spider-Gwen and goopy chrome

Apple has a Will Smith problem.

The New York Times reporting on the lose-lose situation at Apple over the release of Emancipation, a $120 million Civil War drama starring Will Smith that finished filming about a month before Smith climbed on stage during the Oscars in March and slapped Chris Rock:

“If they shelve the movie, does that tarnish Apple’s reputation? If they release it, does it tarnish their reputation? ... Hollywood likes a win-win situation. This one is lose-lose.”

The film is said to have generated an “overwhelmingly positive reaction” in private audience screenings, according to NYT’s sources, with Smith’s performance described as “volcanic.” Some are now pushing for the film’s release before the end of the year to make it eligible for awards consideration.

Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory reached a new milestone.

After opening the Austin-based plant back in April, Tesla announced on Twitter that the location built its 10,000th Model Y electric SUV. We’re still waiting for the “future home of Cybertruck” to actually start building the thing, though, and that isn’t expected to happen until next year.

What happened to CryptoKitties?

CryptoKitties, a blockchain-based game known for its NFT cats, took off when it first made its debut in 2017. Things have come crashing down since then, sending the value of most CryptoKitties plunging. Matthew Smith over at IEEE Spectrum has an excellent writeup on how the game’s breeding mechanism and Ethereum gas fees contributed to its demise.

CryptoKitty in the past three months is about 0.04 ether, or $40 to $50, which is often less than the gas required to complete the transaction. Even those who want to casually own and breed inexpensive CryptoKitties for fun can’t do it without spending hundreds of dollars.

Developers are already spicing up the iPhone 14’s Dynamic Island in ways I didn’t expect.

One developer, Kriss Smolka created a Pong-style game, called Hit the Island, that challenges you to bounce a ball between your paddle and the Dynamic Island to earn points.

Meanwhile, Christian Selig, the dev behind the Apollo app for Reddit, added the fun option to keep an adorable pixelated pet on the Dynamic Island when using the app. I don’t have an iPhone myself, but I’m looking forward to seeing how other devs put their own spin on the new feature.

The Fifth Circuit really blew up the First Amendment by upholding the Texas social media law.

The law still isn’t in effect, but the court’s opinion sets up a Supreme Court battle over the future of content moderation and the First Amendment. Mike Masnick has a good (if wonky) breakdown up already. It’s… well, it’s one of the dumbest First Amendment opinions in a long time.

The fact that Oldham claims, that “the Platforms are no different than Verizon or AT&T” makes me question how anyone could take anything in this ruling seriously.

Forget vinyl.

If you appreciate media preservation, make some time for this Q&A with the “last man standing in the floppy disk business,” Tom Persky of floppydisk.com.

The customers that are the easiest to provide for are the hobbyists – people who want to buy ten, 20, or maybe 50 floppy disks. However, my biggest customers — and the place where most of the money comes from — are the industrial users...Probably half of the air fleet in the world today is more than 20 years old and still uses floppy disks in some of the avionics.

New terrible First Amendment ruling dropped.

Remember when a Texas appeals court decided to blow up internet moderation with no explanation? Well, it finally explained itself, and so far I don’t feel any better. We’re still working our way through the decision, but you can read it below. For now, though, the Supreme Court already temporarily blocked the law while its court battle continues.

Watch Tim Cook express his honest opinion about iMessage, Android, and green bubbles.

It’s not hard to figure out why Tim Cook won’t fix the green bubbles and SMS fallback that comes with texting Android users from your iPhone using iMessage.

But you’ve got to see this response for yourself, as Cook (while laughing) suggests Vox Media’s LiQuan Hunt should “buy your mom an iPhone” to fix the issue.

So now what do you do with your old phone?

I’m guessing at least a few of you snagged brand-new iPhone 14s today, and I love that for you, but I’ll keep using my Pixel 6.

But if you still have your old phone and want to avoid creating unnecessary electronic waste, Kaitlyn Tiffany writes in The Atlantic that your best bet — despite recycling programs and flashy robots — is probably to just keep it.

Please enjoy this moose crash test dummy.

In some places, such as Scandinavia and Alaska, moose are big hazards. (Moose crashes can be fatal for people.) So a master’s student developed a moose crash test dummy to help carmakers improve moose safety. “The crash test results were very pleasing since the demolished cars looked very much like cars involved in real moose crashes,” wrote Magnus Gens, who won a 2022 Ig Noble award for the work.

Who built the Dynamic Island?

The iPhone 14 Pro is shipping today and new owners will see the sharp little black pill pretty quickly after they power on their phone. One of its designers, Chan Karunamuni, took to Twitter to talk about it. Did you know it can move to the side of your phone when you have Reachability enabled? I didn’t!

Wordle was especially rough today.

We won’t spoil the word, but around The Verge, we got our butts kicked. “Ludicrous,” says Tristan; Jake declares he is “mourning”; meanwhile, Adi isn’t sure she’s ever heard this word before; Andy got yesterday’s Wordle in one try — only to fail today’s. “It’s been a rollercoaster,” he says.

How far would you go for a song?

Death Cab for Cutie made fans visit one of the around 800 locations the band had played if they wanted to listen to a single early. The game’s thematically appropriate — “Rand McNally” is about life on the road.

According to Wired, the band used a defunct fan site and the Wayback Machine to figure out all the places it had played. The Internet Archive truly is wonderful.