Landing a jetliner in a strong crosswind is no joke, as any pilot (or passenger) can attest. If you crank those winds up to 60-70 MPH plus, then you have not only a supreme test of pilot skill, but pure YouTube entertainment. A site called Big Jet TV has 90,000-plus people watching the butt-puckering action as planes come in nearly sideways, engines howling, trying to get down on London Heathrow runway 27L. 

The commentary itself is pure entertainment, with the announcer doing his upmost to keep his gear and himself from blowing away. It's become a notable enough happening that he's even fielding requests for interviews from the BBC and others. It can be a bit hard to watch at times and is not recommended for anyone squeamish about flying — tune in above, if you dare. 

Nintendo is addingThe Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask to the Switch Online Expansion Pack lineup on February 25th. The classic title was first released for the Nintendo 64 in 2000, was the second Zelda game to feature 3D graphics and became one of the best-selling games at the time. It also received critical acclaim for its gameplay, writing and visuals that showed an improvement from its predecessor, Ocarina of Time.

Majora's Mask picks up from where Ocarina of Time left off, with Link finding himself in a parallel world to Hyrule called Termina. There, he learns that the mask is being used to summon the moon and destroy the world within three days. 

Nintendo launched Expansion Pack in October 2021 as a higher subscription tier for Switch Online. It costs $50 a year for an individual membership, or $30 more than a basic subscription. In addition to being able to enjoy the perks of basic Switch Online, Expansion Pack members are also able to access the Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis titles the gaming giant adds to its library. Plus, it gives them access to a copy of Happy Home Paradise, a $25 Animal Crossing: New Horizons DLC.

Ocarina of Time was one of Expansion Pack's launch title. Players reported experiencing emulation issues, such as bad input lag, shortly after the tier's debut, but Nintendo has released some improvement updates since then.

Facebook rebranded itself as Meta in order to fully embrace virtual reality via the Oculus platform, so how is that actually going? The company reportedly told employees that its primary social VR platform for the Oculus Quest headset, Horizon Worlds, has grown ten times to since December, according to The Verge.

Meta's chief product officer Chris Cox said that since Horizon Worlds was rolled out widely in early December in the US and Canada, its monthly user count has expanded to 300,000 people. That includes both Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues, a separate live event VR app with the same mechanics, a company spokesperson confirmed. It doesn't include the VR conferencing app Horizon Workrooms, however.

Horizon Worlds was first launched as an Oculus social platform called Facebook Horizon back in 2019, and launched into beta later on. Users appear as avatars with an upper body only, and can build their own custom worlds. Earlier this week, Meta announced that 10,000 of those worlds have been built so far and its Facebook group for creators numbers over 20,000. 

The company seems intent on avoiding issues like harassment rampant in Facebook, having introduced "personal boundaries" to Horizon Worlds and Venues earlier this month. It's also dealing with technical issues as some users couldn't access Horizon Venues during a virtual Foo Fighters concert. 

Still, growth so far seems solid, given that access to the site currently requires an Oculus Quest headset, with the latest Quest 2 model priced at $299. However, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta planned to bring a version of Horizon Worlds to mobile phones later in 2022 in a bid to expand the user base. Depending on how well that works, it could provide a big boost to membership. 

Apple has commissioned famous Korean director Park Chan-wook to create a short film as part of its "Shot on iPhone" campaign. Park, perhaps best known for the action thriller flick Oldboy, used an iPhone 13 Pro to shoot a 20-minute fantasy martial arts movie entitled Life Is But a Dream, which the tech giant has released on YouTube. 

The film starts off with horror-like elements after an undertaker digs up a grave to steal a coffin and awakens the ghost of a swordsman, who then awakens the ghost of a hero who fell after saving the undertaker's village. After that, it becomes a blend of action, romance, dark comedy, dancing and pansori, a Korean genre of musical storytelling. 

Apple has also released a behind-the-scenes clip alongside the short film showing Park and his crew using an iPhone 13 Pro on gimbals and mounts for the shoot. The crew specifically praised the phone's ability to quickly shift focus, blur the background and shoot in low light. In the behind-the-scenes footage released alongside the film, Park said it's a story he's always wanted to tell and that he didn't have a specific camera in mind when he conceptualized it. 

You can watch the "making of" video below:

Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Todd Young (R-IN), along with Rep. Susan DelBene (D-WA) introduced a bill today that would create a $20 million pilot program with the Department of Labor to incentivize states and cities to test out portable benefits. The idea that benefits like health insurance and paid vacation should be universal, rather than tied to your job, has gained steam in recent years. Such social insurance programs, normally backed by Democrats, have sparked interest from some Republicans motivated by the rapidly changing workforce and economic climate following the pandemic.

“More Americans than ever are engaging in part-time, contract or other alternative work arrangements. As the workforce changes, it is increasingly important that we provide workers with an ability to access more flexible benefits that can be carried to multiple jobs across a day, a year, and even a career,” said Sen. Warner in a statement.

Under the bill, the Department of Labor would create a $20 million grant fund to incentivize states, cities and nonprofits to experiment with portable benefits for independent workers. It’s not the first time Warner and DelBene have introduced such legislation. The duo has been regularly pushing to pass portable benefits bills since 2017 — none of which have gotten very far. One of their measures, to provide states with emergency unemployment benefits for gig workers, was folded into the CARES Act.

The bill gives states and cities a lot of room to figure out what their portable benefits program will look like. This could include unemployment benefits, life and disability insurance, sick leave, worker training and health insurance.

A number of states such as California, Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey and Colorado have looked at implementing portable benefits programs of their own. But critics of portable benefits warn that such a system would mean that gig economy companies like Uber, Lyft, Doordash and others would be largely off the hook. Indeed, Uber and other gig companies have backed portable benefits legislation in their fight to continue to classify their workers as independent contractors.

You can now catch up on episodes of Naruto or Tokyo Revengers on your Switch while waiting for the subway. The anime streaming platform Crunchyroll today unveiled an app for Nintendo's handheld console.

Using your Nintendo Switch to watch movies is still a relatively new concept (and not for those who already suffer from eye strain due to hours of gameplay), but one that’s taking off. There are currently Switch apps for Hulu, YouTube, Twitch Pokémon TV and Funimation. It’s fair to say we’ll likely see more entertainment offerings on the Switch soon, given its popularity. Nearly 103 million units of the Switch have been sold globally, surpassing its predecessor the Wii, Wii U, GameCube and Nintendo 64. Switch sales skyrocketed during the pandemic, leading to a global shortage that has carried over to 2022 and absurd price gouging.

The user base for Switch is considerably larger and more diverse than other game consoles (half of all Switch users are women and users tend to be older). But there are far fewer streaming options on Switch than other consoles, much to the chagrin of current owners.

While Crunchyroll is free, you’ll need to purchase one of its premium plans in order to stream shows on multiple devices or watch shows off-line. Plans start at $7.99 a month.

Kickstarter's plan to create a decentralized crowdfunding platform ran into more than a little criticism, and the company is eager to reassure jittery users. The firm has clarified how it will develop the blockchain-based system, with promises it would take input along the way. To start, Kickstarter said it was "not going to force" a decentralized system on the community without testing it. It would ensure a "proof of concept" existed for those creators who wanted to try it, and would only integrate those parts that "offer value" in light of community input.

To that end, Kickstarter promised to form an advisory council that will shape feature development, including the decentralized protocol. The council would include a wide range of users and participants.

The crowdfunding firm also noted that work on the platform would occur through a Public Benefit Corporation, and that it would ensure the necessary blockchain wasn't harmful to the environment. The team-up was already known to be using the "carbon-negative" Celo chain.

Kickstarter unveiled the plans in December in hopes of bringing crowdfunding to many platforms beyond its own. As Mashablenotes, the company soon faced a backlash over several issues. Critics were not only worried about the high energy consumption that often comes with blockchain-based transactions, but that Kickstarter was tarnishing its reputation by tying itself to the technology behind scam-prone NFTs and cryptocurrencies. Some veteran creators, such as Doctor Popular, vowed to either stop backing projects or host their own projects elsewhere.

The clarification might reassure users worried they would have to move to the blockchain just to buy or fund a hot new product. However, the response also follows two months after the uproar began. That's a long time to leave users wondering about certain issues, and it's not guaranteed disaffected users will come back.

Peloton today launched Lanebreak, a new series of workouts that mimic a racing game for its connected stationary bike. Riders get behind a virtual wheel, race down a multi-lane highway and gain points for higher levels of output and resistance. The fitness company briefly beta tested Lanebreak last July, and is now launching the new mode as a software update to all Peloton bikes in the US, UK, Canada, Germany and Australia.

Unlike the majority of other Peloton workouts, there’s no instructor on Lanebreak offering encouragement throughout the ride. Instead, riders can choose from a selection of different pop-centric playlists to listen to in the background, featuring the likes of David Guetta, David Bowie, Bruno Mars and Ed Sheeran.

For Peloton riders who are bored with the usual slate of instructor-led classes, Lanebreak adds a change of pace. It’s also the first new program that the fitness company has added to their fitness library in a while, following a major expansion in 2020 that included barre, yoga, pilates and strength training classes.

The fitness company, once a darling of the pandemic, has now run into financial woes due to a decline in demand. Earlier this month, Peloton replaced its CEO and laid-off roughly 20 percent of its workforce in an effort to streamline its expenses. But despite its struggles on Wall Street, Peloton's incredibly loyal customer base has a 96% one-year retention rate. The bikes are a large upfront investment, and few Peloton riders want the added hassle of reselling and moving their $1,495 bike. While it’s unlikely that Lanebreak will recruit new Peloton riders, it’ll add some variety to a fitness library that, for some seasoned riders, has become stale.

You might be used to pinning text conversations on your phone, and now you can pin your Twitter chats in much the same way. Twitter's DM conversation pinning is now available to everyone on Android, iOS and the web without requiring a Blue subscription. The functionality is familiar — on mobile, you just have to slide a favorite conversation to the right and tap button to float it to the top of your inbox. You can pin up to six threads this way.

The expansion comes just a few months after DM conversation pins came to Blue users in November 2021. Not that it's a shock, however. Twitter said it would use Blue to offer early access to features, and DM pinning was one of the first.

This broader release mainly gives a rough sense of how long it might take for Blue-first features to reach a general audience. While the timing is likely to vary based on the feature, the wait for this DM upgrade might just line up with what you'd expect. The months-long interval may have helped Blue members justify their $3 monthly outlay, but it wasn't extreme.

As soon as Spotify struck a deal with Joe Rogan in 2020 to become the exclusive distributor of his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, it was evident that the company was paying him a pretty penny. Initial reports pegged the value of the deal at around $100 million. However, in the wake of a firestorm over claims that Rogan was enabling the spread of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, a new report suggests Spotify is paying much more than that.

According to The New York Times, the three-and-a-half year deal is worth at least $200 million, with a possibility of additional payments. As the report notes, that's more than Spotify paid to buy major podcast production companies Gimlet Media and The Ringer — each of those deals was worth a little under $200 million.

Rogan's show is Spotify's most popular podcast in 93 countries, including the US. Episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience can garner tens of millions of listeners. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek reportedly told employees this month that big exclusive deals such as the Rogan one helped make the company as successful as it is. Spotify has remained behind Rogan, even after his use of racist language on the show came under the spotlight. Rogan removed some episodes containing that language from Spotify.

The backlash against Rogan and the company ramped up after hundreds of doctors, nurses, scientists and educators sent an open letter to Spotify in January urging the company to take more action against the spread of misinformation. They sent the request after Dr. Robert Malone made claims about COVID-19 vaccines on The Joe Rogan Experience that they called "false and societally harmful assertions."

Notable critics including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell accused Spotify of spreading harmful misinformation and pulled their music from the platform. Around the same time, Brené Brown put episodes of her Spotify-exclusive podcasts on hold. Film director Ava DuVernay struck a podcast deal with Spotify last year, but cut ties this month before producing any content for the company. Reports suggest Barack and Michelle Obama may not renew their Spotify deal, which is set to expire in a few months.

Spotify has also faced criticism from employees over Rogan. The host and editor of Gimlet's Science VS podcast said they'd no longer make episodes of their show until "Spotify implements stronger methods to stop the spread of misinformation on the platform." There was one exception to that stance, though. Wendy Zukerman and Blythe Terrell are publishing episodes that debunk misinformation being spread on the platform. They released one earlier this month that examines some of the claims made in Rogan's chat with Malone.