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The Morning After: Discovery+ is the first new streaming service of 2021
Slack started 2021 with an outage, Discovery dived into streaming and Nintendo bought a developer.
A lot of us went back to work yesterday, with a lot of us depending on work-from-home software and tools to communicate and get stuff done. Unfortunately, Slack wasn’t feeling it. For anyone using the chat app in the morning hours of ET, you might have struggled to send messages. By 11:20AM, Slack was in full-blown outage, with red icons across the board on its status page.
The company eventually got the service up and running by roughly 3:30PM ET — when the workday was already winding down for most of us. Did you have to switch up your communication strategy? What worked best? Telegram? Discord? Old-fashioned ICQ? Carrier pigeon?
— Mat Smith
Nintendo is buying the developer of ‘Luigi's Mansion 3’
And ‘Luigi’s Mansion 2’ on 3DS.
Next Level Games is best known for developing Luigi’s Mansion 2 (aka Dark Moon) for 3DS and Luigi’s Mansion 3 on the Switch. Now Nintendo is acquiring the Vancouver-based developer, saying in a statement that it will improve “development speed and quality by enabling closer communication and exchange of staff with the Nintendo development team.” Nintendo is the latest console maker to bring one of its developers in-house, though it’s on a smaller scale than Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda and Sony buying Insomniac Games.
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China's huge FAST telescope will open to scientists globally in April
Following the collapse of the Arecibo Observatory, this is the largest FAST telescope in the world.
The Sky Eye parabolic dish is the world’s largest Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) used for spotting pulsars and other energetic astronomical targets. It will also be used occasionally to search for alien life. It was officially put into service on January 11th, 2020, but starting April 1st, foreign scientists will be able to apply for access to the 500-meter (1,600 foot) dish.
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HP Reverb G2 review
A great VR headset with middling controllers
The Reverb G2 is the best Windows Mixed Reality headset we’ve seen so far. However, as Devindra Hardawar explains, its $600 price and so-so controllers hold back the experience despite its accurate tracking and sharp display.
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Discovery+ is now available to stream on Fire TV, Roku and more
Two platforms typically left out of streaming launches get the service on day one.
Discovery waited until the last possible moment to tell you exactly where you could access its new service, Discovery+. Now live in the US, the company has finally shared the extensive list of places where you stream it, with almost every popular platform but PlayStation included at launch. There are a few deals around depending on your mobile carrier, but otherwise Discovery+ will set you back $5 per month for the base tier. It’s an extra $2 every month if you don’t want to see ads. At launch, you’ll find shows from channels like HGTV, Food Network, Animal Planet, TLC and, of course, Discovery.
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Amazon’s big healthcare venture is reportedly no more
It was a joint project with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase.
Three years after Amazon started a healthcare venture with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, the trio have decided to call it quits. CNBC reports that the organization, once called Haven, is disbanding, and the company will likely shut down by the end of February.
The original purpose behind Haven was to find a way to reduce the rising costs of the employer-based healthcare system in the US. The task may have proved a little too arduous for Haven, given the highly complex nature of the problem, involving multiple parties and vested interests. CNBC also reported that the three companies worked on their solutions separately, which might have rendered the whole joint venture irrelevant.
The three companies have also said they would still collaborate on some healthcare projects. A Haven spokesperson said the trio would use their collective knowledge to “design programs tailored to address the specific needs of our individual employee populations and locations.”
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But wait, there’s more...
Google engineers and workers have formed a union
‘Wild Rift’ finally made me a ‘League of Legends’ player
After almost four years, the last 'Nier: Automata' secret has been found
Singapore police can access data from the country's contact tracing app
UK court rules Julian Assange shouldn't be extradited to the US
Twitter is buying a podcast app to help build its audio Spaces
Epic Games' next headquarters will replace a local shopping mall
Breath of the Wild's minor characters are likely advanced Miis
Comedy Central, MTV and more are coming to Hulu’s live TV service
