Nation’s Dorky Little Nerds Announce They Have Nosebleed

WASHINGTON—Tilting their heads back, breathing in thick gurgling gasps and flailing their arms about while stumbling for the nearest trash can, dorky little nerds across the country announced Monday that they, in fact, have a nosebleed. “Oh my, oh no. Please, someone? Get a tissue?” mewled millions of dweebish…

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The Boom 3’s Magic Button turned a good speaker into the best one

In today’s digital age, it sometimes feels like hardware has taken a back seat to the software that drives our devices. Button of the Month is a monthly look at what some of those buttons and switches are like on devices old and new, and it aims to appreciate how we interact with our devices on a physical, tactile level.

The Ultimate Ears Boom has long been the best Bluetooth speaker around. But for all its popularity, the line of speakers was plagued for years by a critical flaw: it lacked a play / pause button. Then, in 2018, it finally got one, and the addition has made all the difference between the Boom being a great Bluetooth speaker and the single best option for taking music to the pool.

The Magic Button (its name, not mine) does…

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Instagram quantified our popularity, and now it wants to fix it

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales

Instagram announced a fundamental change in April: users in Canada would begin testing a new feature that hides the number of likes their posts receive. The announcement was met with uncertainty over how it would change the way we use Instagram. But after a couple of months in testing, people appear to love it.

“Without seeing the Likes count on feed posts now, I find myself more clearly focused on the actual quality of the content being posted,” user Matt Dusenbury tells me over Instagram direct message.

People in the test group can still see the number of likes their posts garnered, so long as they tap through it. Everyone else, however, cannot. Instagram says the goal is to make people “focus on the photos and videos you share, not…

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