If you’re in the market for a baby monitor, now would be a good time to snap up a Eufy Spaceview set. The company has discounted its popular single-camera kit to $125 — just clip the on-page coupon for $15 off and use the code eufybbm20 at checkout to get the sale price.
That’ll get you the 720p HD camera plus the 5-inch 720p display. The camera has night vision and can pan 330 degrees and tilt 110 degrees so you can see your entire nursery. The default field of view is 50 degrees, but the kit comes with an additional 110-degree lens that you can install when your little one starts exploring.
While the SpaceView camera doesn’t support WiFi, that’s not a bad thing. Instead, it uses a FHSS connection to let you check out your kiddo’s activities securely in real-time, regardless of if your home’s internet is a bit spotty. The set-up supports a range of up to 1,000 feet so you can check in on them from anywhere in the house, and the 2,900mAh battery runs for 15-hours so the display won’t run out of juice overnight. It will also provide you with sound alerts and two way audio, and since it’s not connected to WiFi, you don’t have to worry about anyone hacking into it.
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McDonald’s McFlurry machine and its tendency to break down has been the inspiration for countless jokes and Twitter feuds, and now it could become the subject of a Federal Trade Commission investigation. According to The Wall Street Journal, the agency recently reached out to McDonald’s restaurant owners to collect more information on their experiences with the machines.
Why is the FTC looking into McFlurry machines, you ask? The answer may have something to do with the right to repair movement. At the start of July, President Biden ordered the agency to draft new rules to empower consumers and businesses to repair their devices on their own. Later that same month, the FTC made good on that order, voting unanimously to tackle unlawful repair restrictions.
By all accounts, McFlurry machines are a nightmare to repair. Moreover, Taylor, the firm that makes them, is at the center of a legal battle over measures it uses to prevent restaurants from repairing the machines on their own. When a McFlurry machine breaks down, only a certified technician from Taylor is allowed to fix it, leading to long wait times. Those wait times have increased during the pandemic. A federal judge recently sided with a company that produces a diagnostic tool that threatens Taylor’s monopoly on repairs.
The FTC hasn’t opened a formal probe yet. “The existence of a preliminary investigation does not indicate the FTC or its staff have found any wrongdoing,” the agency said in the letter it sent out this summer, according to The Journal. However, it reportedly wants to know how often restaurant owners are allowed to work on the McFlurry machines on their own.
Traveling with young children is like trying to turn a cruise ship: It’s cumbersome, takes a significant amount of planning and requires a team effort. Because I apparently lack any amount of common sense, I recently took a 3,000-mile RV trip with my partner and two toddlers. Traveling with little ones can be stressful because they rely so much on their established routines; anything that deviates from that is going to be hard for them and you.
While we tried to maintain a semblance of normalcy by bringing along familiar toys and blankets, we also took the advice of a close friend who is an early childhood development specialist. She recommended keeping our twins engaged and entertained by grouping toys or activities together and rotating them throughout the day. Here are a few things that we tried that we’ll be returning to the next time we travel.
Music
Depending on how you’re traveling, music can be a great way to entertain tiny travelers. The repetition in children’s songs help kids learn patterns and expand their vocabulary. What’s more, musical play encourages movement along with both fine and gross motor skills. That’s great if you’re in a car where you can clap, sing and wiggle, but gets more challenging when you’re stuck on an aircraft with dozens of other people who don’t want to hear “Old MacDonald” seven(-ty-seven) times in a row.
Instruments
Sesame Street
My mom bought us this “CD player” for our trip and weeks later, the twins are still fighting over it. My daughter really likes the music, my son really likes taking the “CD” out repeatedly to figure out how the player works, and they both like the colorful book of lyrics. Fisher Price has a similar option with light-up buttons, which is perfect for occupying little hands.
Another cool gadget we’ve recommended in the past is the Blipbox, an entry-level synthesizer that comes with 300 melodies and a synchronized light show. It contains a digital synth engine that includes an amp envelope, two LFOs, a modulation envelope and a low-pass filter — perfect for teaching kids about creating music while also entertaining their caretakers.
When my twins were infants, the only thing that got them to sleep was playing Maxence Cyrin’s version of “Where is my mind?” on repeat. We still have a classical playlist of songs for when it’s time to sleep, but I also keep a playlist of songs that are entertaining for adult passengers as well (think: “Yellow Submarine” and songs by They Might Be Giants). It’s nice both to switch up the endless parade of nursery rhymes and expose them to different types of music.
YouTube playlists
On the other hand, kids respond to nursery rhymes because they incorporate simple melodies, repetition and actions (some of which can be easy to do while seated). YouTube has dozens of long playlists of classic nursery rhymes, some of which include the lyrics, which is helpful if you’re like me and have long forgotten the words to “Three Blind Mice.”
Podcasts
Older kids might enjoy one of the many educational podcasts out there. As a bonus, if they’re able to keep headphones on for a decent stretch of time, this makes for a good airplane option, too. As an avid podcast fan myself, I’m excited for my twins to be old enough to enjoy them with me, and I’ve already bookmarked several to try out. The But Why? podcast from NPR answers questions that kids send in themselves from “how do you make ice cream?” to “why do we wear clothes?” If your kid is into science, try Brains On or Tumble to explore topics like “how far can a cloud travel?’ and “how to become an astronaut.”
Being stuck in a car or plane seat for long periods of time can make it challenging to find activities that involve younger kids’ need to explore, but there are still a few options. Most notably, a kids camera, like the Action Cam or the Creator Cam from VTech, can help them stay amused. They can document the trip with photos, videos and use stop-motion or time-lapse effects. The Action Cam can be mounted on a bike and comes with a waterproof case, while the Creator Cam comes with a small tripod and includes more than 20 animated backgrounds that the kids can use to spice up their photos and videos.
For kids younger than the recommended age for a camera, I like busy boards. Car time with my twins has become a lot easier since we got a few of the soft, zippered activity books that feature a variety of buckles, zippers and clasps for them to fiddle with.
If your child is into arts and crafts, you’re not out of luck when traveling (although maybe leave the glitter at home). There are a few easy ways to travel with a crafty kid, like bringing along a trusty Etch a Sketch, which never needs batteries, or investing in an airplane busy box, which includes coloring books as well as activities like creating a puppet show or superhero mask.
If you’d like something a little more high-tech and easy to pack, try a color by numbers app for your phone or tablet, which are engrossing even for adults. Or there’s the Osmo kit for Fire tablets which incorporates games, drawing and problem solving via various games and animations.
My kids enjoy reading as much as I do, which means there are always at least a few books included when we travel. They’re not quite old enough for a Kindle Kids Edition yet, but it will be a great option when they graduate from board books. I honestly can’t wait to load up the Harry Potter series and a selection of Roald Dahl onto an e-reader for them.
In the meantime, I compromised by taking short videos of me reading through some of their favorites, like the Grumpy Monkey, and brought a selection of others like their Indestructible books. Not only are the Indestructible books rip-proof and chew-proof but they’re also washable so you don’t have to worry about them getting wet. My favorite part is that they’re very slim, so it was easy to pack several of them at once without adding a lot of bulk.
Of course, there are a few gadgets that will help make your life easier as a traveling parent. I’m thinking specifically of the Baby’s Brew portable bottle warmer I recently invested in, which made our trip significantly easier since my daughter refuses to have a cold bottle. It did take me a few tries to get the hang of the controls, which is embarrassing to admit since there is a single button on it, but it did the job well and solved my cold bottle problem.
I also brought along the Munchkin 59s portable sterilizer which uses UV to clean a pacifier in under a minute; that’s helpful since every pacifier winds up on the floor in under a minute. Lastly, if your kiddo has a prized blanket, pacifier or toy that is essential for soothing or sleeping, consider tagging it with a Tile or Chipolo tracker. If I had thought about it in time, I would have thrown one on my daughter’s fox lovey to save myself from constantly worrying that she’d left it in Nebraska.
Microsoft is moving into the next phase of its plan to bring Xbox Cloud Gaming to as many devices as possible, and it's one of the most important steps yet. Starting this holiday season, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will have access to cloud gaming on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One consoles.
The company, which made the announcement during its Gamescom showcase, said you'll be able to fire up more than 100 games without having to download them first. At some point in the future, Xbox One owners can play some Series X/S games through the cloud, such as Microsoft Flight Simulator. You'll know a title is cloud gaming-compatible if you see a cloud icon next to it in the Game Pass library. Microsoft is targeting 1080p gameplay at 60 frames per second.
It took Facebook several hours to pull down a livestream from a man suspected of making a bomb threat at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. According to Politico, the unidentified man, who approached the Library of Congress in a pickup truck and told police he had a bomb in the car, streamed live on Facebook for multiple hours as police negotiated with him. The video "circulated widely" before Facebook finally took it down.
On Twitter, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the company had taken down the stream and the man's profile and is "continuing to investigate" the matter.
It's not the first time Facebook has had to scramble to prevent a disturbing live stream from spreading. In 2019, the company raced to pull down more than a million copies of a live stream recorded by a mass shooter in New Zealand, in an effort that took multiple days.
Waze might have a way to keep your kids entertained during a drive without handing them a tablet: distract them with your navigation app. The company has added a PAW Patrol experience to Waze that has the TV show's Ryder guide you to your destination with help from Chase, Marshall and Skye. You can also switch your Waze Mood to replace the usual icon with Chase's police car, Marshall's fire truck or Skye's aircraft.
The feature is available for a "limited time" to English users through the My Waze section in the app. It's available on both Android and iOS.
This is a not-so-subtle plug for the upcoming PAW Patrol movie, but it could be helpful for keeping your young ones engaged. It might even encourage them to take an interest in the drive and the world outside the car window. Of course, it's also easy to see this going very badly — the last thing you want is to have your kids shouting at the phone while you're listening for directions. This might be best for children who tend to watch the show in raptured silence.
Amazon is known for making affordable tablets that get the basics right. As of now, the retailer is offering discounts on a range of its own-brand slates that cut up to 33 percent off its biggest and best devices. You can grab last year's 8-inch Fire HD 8 with 32GB expandable storage for just $60, down from $90. If you want something larger and more powerful, the latest 10-inch Fire HD 10 (also with 32GB storage) is available for $100, $50 off its typical price. You should note that barring the Kids tablets (see below) these are all ad-supported versions of the devices and opting-out of lockscreen adverts comes at a cost.
If you're looking for an affordable tablet for work, you should check out Amazon's Productivity Bundle, which is currently discounted by $100. With it, you get the Fire HD 10 along with a Bluetooth keyboard and a 12-month subscription to Microsoft 365 for $170. The latter gives you access to Office apps and 1 terabyte of OneDrive cloud storage for up to five devices. Though it's far from a true laptop replacement, Amazon's biggest tablet should be fine for creating and editing Work or Excel documents.
Overall, both the Fire HD 8 and HD 10 are suitable for browsing the web and social media, watching Netflix in HD and accessing Amazon's ecosystem of shopping, music, reading and video streaming services. On the downside, they come with a paltry selection of apps compared to iOS or Android tablets, including a lack of Google services like YouTube.
Alongside the regular Fire tablets, Amazon is also offering all-time low deals on some of its Kids range. The cheapest of the lot is the Fire 7 Kids Pro, down to $60 from $100, which makes up for its non-HD screen and lack of USB-C (micro-USB instead) with a bevy of parental controls and age-appropriate web and app content for kids. You get all of those pros, plus HD resolution and USB-C, for $30 more on the Fire HD 8 Kids Pro, which is on sale for $50 off. The last time we saw Amazon's children's tablets drop this low was in July.
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Now that many kids are about to go back to school, Google thinks it can offer a helping hand — including after class. It's introducing Assistant and search features to help parents coordinate in morning and kids to learn more (or at least, stay entertained). To start, Family Bell is coming to mobile devices. Accordingly, it can soon start a checklist on a Nest Hub to remind kids to make the bed and brush their teeth before they fly out the door.
Kids will also have more ways to improve their education at home. Search now has an interactive periodic table that uses augmented reality and 3D to help children visualize atoms and learn useful tidbits about the elements. On their phones, young ones can tap a Live Translation button in search to recall a particular phrase. Assistant will also offer more diverse educational stories from The English Schoolhouse, while Harry Potter fans will have the option of listening to Fantastic Beasts stories on Android or Assistant smart displays.
And yes, there's something for the parents who need to get moving. You'll soon have the option of starting your morning Assistant routine the moment you dismiss your alarm, making it easier to focus on your kids or just getting dressed for the day.
The feature additions might be particularly apt in a year where back-to-school will be complicated. Many kids will finally return to in-person classes as the pandemic subsides, but some will still have to learn remotely for some or all of the school year. In theory, Google is covering both bases.
Lucille Ball sadly passed away long before podcasts became a reality, but that isn't stopping her from joining the modern phenomenon. The LA Timesreports that SiriusXM is turning Ball's Let's Talk to Lucy radio show into a 'pop-up' satellite radio station for three weeks. Once that stint is over, all 240 episodes of the 1960s-era show will be available as podcasts through both SiriusXM's app, Stitcher and other common platforms.
Notably, this isn't just mining nostalgia. This is the first time Let's Talk to Lucy has been heard since airing on the radio 50-plus years ago — there are conversations with legends like Bob Hope and Carol Burnett that haven't surfaced for decades.
SiriusXM is clearly hoping to boost its satellite and podcast offerings. At the same time, this also illustrates the usefulness of podcasting as a historical tool. In theory, the podcasts will both preserve Ball's interviews and make them accessible to a wider audience that might not listen to radio in the first place.
The BBC has announced that Chris Chibnall (pictured, center), Doctor Who’s executive producer, and its star, Jodie Whittaker (pictured, right), will leave the series in 2022. A trio of specials through next year would herald the pair’s departure from the long-running series. This, then, seems like an ideal time for Doctor Who to undergo the radical shakeup it so desperately needs. I don’t agree with The Guardian’s recent piece saying that the series needs to be off the air for a while, but it is very clearly time for the show to evolve again.
This is in part because Doctor Who under Chibnall has been such a waste: the showrunner’s work before taking the job, while popular and award-winning, had always left me cold. My initial apprehension was calmed, somewhat, by the news emerging from the production of the revived series’ 11th run. Chibnall also deserves credit for hiring the first two writers of color in the show’s nearly sixty year history. The fact that many of the episodes had an explicit focus on material social history suggested a bright new direction for the series. The Woman Who Fell To Earth, too, was a blisteringly confident debut and all seemed well.
And then, yeesh. As good as Chibnall is at birthing some truly inspired ideas, the quality of his execution is terrible. He struggled to flesh out the quartet of lead characters and failed to offer them real stakes to deal with. And for all of the era’s emphasis on diversity, the content of each episode seemed to be far more backward-looking. I’ve written before about Chibnall often appearing to make the argument opposite to the one he thinks he’s making. Unless he intended to say that polite protest is the only good protest, Amazon’s treatment of its staff is good, actually, and that we can all benefit from the spoils of colonialism.
Naturally, the casting of a woman in the central role encouraged the usual petulance from those corners of the internet. Sadly, I think that the actors involved have all performed miracles trying to make anything Chibnall writes remotely believable. And Whittaker’s departure before she could work with another executive producer will be yet another tragically wasted opportunity in this era. I hope that this bad-faith criticism doesn't force the production team to make a “safe” choice for the next Doctor.
The big secret to Doctor Who’s endurance is both the malleability of its premise and its knack for reinventing itself. Every few years, often as the show’s creative team changed, it would become an almost entirely different show. You could argue that this lack of sentimentality has been the case since the show’s first mission-switch, which happened in its fifth episode. The revived show has been using a version of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer template since 2005, and it’s starting to wear a bit thin.
It didn’t help that while Series 11 was designed to avoid any of the show’s dense backstory, Series 12 was at times incomprehensible to anyone but die hard fans. Chibnall, after all, devoted his series arc to validating a production gaffe in an episode that aired on January 24th, 1976. (And, in doing so, made the Doctor the Time Lord equivalent of Jesus, contradicting everything that we’d learned over the last six decades.) This was the worst kind of self-indulgent fan fiction, and hardly a bold new direction for a mainstream drama.
Unfortunately, the media landscape has changed, and competition has intensified beyond all belief. The BBC no longer has a monopoly on the conversation as it did — at least here in the UK — and is dwarfed by the streaming giants. Netflix, Amazon, Disney and others also have the wealth to offer the sort of creative freedom that once made the non-commercial BBC stand out among the crowd.
The knee-jerk reaction, I’m sure, will be to demand Doctor Who jumps on the bandwagon driven by Marvel’s recent streaming shows. That would be a mistake, because Who is at its best when it pushes away from whatever genre show is cresting into the mainstream that year. Financially, the BBC can’t compete with these mega-franchises, but the quality of its writing and its unique sensibilities, can. The one thing that the series could learn from those shows, however, is how to build every episode into an event.
This could mean that the show becomes a run of occasional specials with a longer running time, like a glorified movie of the week. Or it could, like the COVID-influenced 2021 season, be a shorter run of tightly-interconnected episodes. Chibnall may indeed stumble onto the template that helps revitalize the show going forward, but I’m personally hoping for something more radical.
For instance, if Doctor Who can’t succeed as a glossy, hour-long standalone drama, then why not go back to being a series of short serials? Netflix’s Russian Doll and the BBC’s I May Destroy You are both examples of (excellent) half-hour dramas that offer a break from the current prestige-drama template. It helps, too, that Doctor Who was run in this format for 25 of its first 26 seasons, and offers new — or at least different — methods for structuring a story.
It may also make it easier to binge during its long second life on a streaming platform. Think about it: how many times have you ducked watching a long episode of The Crown because it’s too much time to invest out of your day, but you’ll happily burn through four episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine without complaint. You could even get Michaela Coel to write it, although at this point I’ll settle for anyone who isn’t named Chris Chibnall.
