Hasta La Gadget!

Bethesda’s Fallout 76 marketing onslaught is continuing apace ahead of the game’s November 14th release. Last week, it snagged Ninja, Rick and Morty, and Logic for a nerdtastic livestream — now it’s releasing limited edition postage stamps across th…

“Who am I going to be worried about? Oh Facebook seeing? No, I’m not worried about Facebook seeing. They’re going to look at my great art collection and say they want to come steal it? No, I never really thought about it.” That’s my 72-year-old mother Sally Constine’s response to whether she’s worried about her privacy now that she has a Facebook Portal video chat device. The gadget goes on sale and starts shipping today at $349 for the 15.6-inch swiveling screen Portal+, $199 for the 10-inch Portal, and $100 off for buying any two.

The sticking point for most technology reporters — that it’s creepy or scary to have a Facebook camera and microphone in your house — didn’t even register as a concern with a normal tech novice like my Mom. “I don’t really think of it any different from a phone call” she says. “It’s not a big deal for me.”

While Facebook has been mired by privacy scandals after a year of Cambridge Analytica and its biggest-ever data breach, the concept that it can’t be trusted hasn’t necessarily trickled down to everyone. And without that coloring her perception, my mom found the Portal to be an easy way to video chat with family, and a powerful reminder to do so.

For a full review of Facebook Portal, check out TechCrunch hardware editor Brian Heater’s report:

When we look at our multi-functional smartphones and computers, connecting with loved ones isn’t always the first thing that comes to mind that way it with an old-school home telephone. But with the Portal in picture frame mode rotating through our Facebook photos of those loved ones, and with it at the beck and call of our voice commands, it felt natural to turn those in-between times we might have scrolled through Instagram instead chatting face to face.

My mother found setting up the Portal to be quite simple, though she wished the little instructional card used a bigger font. She had no issue logging in to her Facebook, Amazon Alexa, and Spotify accounts. “It’s all those things in one. If you had this, you could put Alexa in a different room” the Constine matriarch says.

She found the screen to be remarkably sharp, though some of the on-screen buttons could be better labeled, at least at first. But once she explored the device’s software, she was uncontrollably giggling while trying on augmented reality masks as we talked. She even used the AR Storytime feature to read me a bed time tale like she would 30 years ago. If I was still a child, I think I would have loved this way to play with a parent who was away from home. The intuitive feature instantly had her reading a modernized Three Little Pigs story while illustrations filled our screens. And when she found herself draped in an AR big bad wolf costume during his quotes, she knew to adopt his gruff voice.

One of the few problems she found was that when Facebook’s commercials for Portal came on the TV, they’d end up accidentally activating her Portal. Facebook might need to train the device to ignore its own ads, perhaps by muting them in a certain part of the audio spectrum as one Reddit user suggested Amazon may have done to prevent causing trouble with its Super Bowl commercial.

My mom doesn’t Skype or FaceTime much. She’s just so used to a lifetime of audio calls with her sister  back in England that she rarely remembers that video is an option. Having a dedicated device in the kitchen kept the idea top-of-mind. “I really want to have a conversation seeing her. I think i would really feel close to her if I could see her like I’m seeing you now” she tells me.

Convincing jaded younger adults to buy a Portal might be a steep challenge for Facebook. But if it concentrates on seniors and families with young children who might not have the same fears of Facebook or practice using smart phones for video chat, it may have found a way to actually bring us closer together in the way its social network is supposed to.

The actor also hailed “the record number of women who rose to the challenge of restoring the balance” this midterms.

Blizzard was primarily known as a company who developed games for the PC. However over the years the company has diversified their offerings where games such as Overwatch and Diablo have expanded to consoles. They have also expanded to mobile where titles such as Hearthstone remains incredibly popular, and where Diablo Immortal will be launching as well.

Now if you thought Blizzard’s mobile efforts were done, think again as the company has confirmed that they have multiple mobile titles in the works that will apply across the company’ entire lineup. This was revealed during a Q&A session where executive producer Allen Adham confirmed the company’s plans.

According to Adham, “In terms of Blizzard’s approach to mobile gaming, many of us over the last few years have shifted from playing primarily desktop to playing many hours on mobile. We have many of our best developers now working on new mobile titles across all of our IPs.” He adds, “Some of them are with external partners like with Diablo: Immortal. Many of them are being developed internally only, and we’ll have information to share on those in the future.”

It will be interesting to see what kind of mobile experiences Blizzard might come up with. We imagine that titles like Heroes of the Storm could do well on phones, especially given that mobile MOBA games do seem pretty popular, but what do you guys think?

Blizzard Working On Mobile Titles Across Its Franchises , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

As much as we love or LEGO sets, these building blocks are made of plastics, which are byproducts of crude oil and natural gases. And while we’re not tossing LEGO bricks in the trash like drinking straws, making them still isn’t great for the environment. That said, LEGO wants to be more sustainable, and it is starting with this set called the LEGO 10268 Creator Expert Vestas Wind Turbine.

The set is based on Vestas’ wind turbine which is installed in over 80 countries. What makes this set unique is its use of plant-based plastic. The tiny trees in the set are made from all-new sustainably sourced plant-based plastic. The plastic used to make the spruce trees are made from sugarcane. The rest of the plastic elements of this set still uses plastics from conventional sources, but I guess LEGO needed to start small to see how this goes before ramping up.

The 826-piece set has a Vestas Wind Turbine that stands 3.3 feet tall, and comes with the ‘Plants from Plants’ spruce trees, along with a house with a working porch light. You also get three LEGO Vestas servicemen minifigures and a LEGO dog. This is one pretty cool and innovative LEGO set. I’d really like to own this one. You can order yours for $199.99 starting on November 23, 2018 in the LEGO Shop.

[via Mike Shouts]