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New campaign promotes Canadians ‘politely kicking ass’ in movies, TV and games

Made / Nous has kicked off a new campaign to promote the Canadian talent working in the entertainment industry.

The organization, which is supported by the likes of the Canada Media Fund and Telefilm Canada, has put up a charming billboard in Hollywood saying “Politely Kicking Ass. (Sorry.)”

Another Hollywood billboard, meanwhile, promotes four acclaimed Canadian directors: Bécancour, Québec’s Denis Villeneuve (Dune), Toronto’s Sarah Polley (Women Talking), Kapuskasing, Ontario’s James Cameron (Avatar: The Way of Water) and Toronto’s Domee Shi (Turning Red). Dune was nominated for Best Picture at last year’s Oscars, while Women Talking and The Way of Water are up for the top honour at this year’s show, and Turning Red is a Best Animated Feature nominee.

“Need direction? Look north,” reads the ad.

At home, Made / Nous is also running an ad that spotlights Canadians in the entertainment space.

“Made funny, made relatable, made historic — Canadian stories are just #MadeBetter,” writes Made / Nous in a tweet.

In the bit, we see the hit Canadian comedy series Schitt’s Creek, Letterkenny and Sort Of; popular movies like Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (starring Mississauga’s Simu Liu) and Free Guy (starring Vancouver’s Ryan Reynolds and directed by Montreal’s Shawn Levy) and Mississauga’s Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (Never Have I Ever) talking about the “impact Canadians can have on the entire world.”

The ad also mentions a few milestones that Canadians have recently helped set:

  • First female to direct a Pixar movie (Domee Shi on Turning Red)
  • First Muslim superhero (Markham, Ontario’s Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel in Ms. Marvel)
  • First project from all-Indigenous creators (Kahnawake, Quebec’s Devery Jacobs Toronto’s D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai and Paulina Alexis are three of the four leads of Reservation Dogs)

And on the gaming front, we see a cinematic from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, a massive video game from one of the largest developers in the world, Ubisoft Montreal. Given that this is only a 30-second ad, it makes sense that games are only briefly touched on. Still, it’s worth noting that Canada is the third-largest producer of games in the world, with the national games sector bringing in $5.5 billion to our GDP annually.

Besides Assassin’s Creed, some of the most prominent games made here include Mass Effect (BioWare Edmonton), FIFA (EA Vancouver), Far Cry (Ubisoft Montreal and Toronto), Cuphead (Oakville, Ontario’s Studio MDHR), Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy (Eidos Montreal) and PGA Tour 2K23 (Lunenberg, Nova Scotia’s HB Studios).

What are some of your favourite Canadian-made projects? Let us know in the comments.

Image credit: 20th Century Studios

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Mobile Syrup

Virgin Plus still offering $10/mo Lunar New Year discount

Koodo, Virgin Plus, and Fido logos on smartphones.

Last week, MobileSyrup detailed Koodo’s plan to remove its $10/mo Lunar New Year discount on February 14th. Now that the 14th is behind us, Koodo has dropped the discount. So has Rogers flanker brand Fido, though Bell’s Virgin Plus still offers the discount, for now.

Fido’s website has removed the Lunar New Year discount from the plan page and the listed plans no longer show the discount. As a refresher, customers could save $10/mo for 12 months with the Lunar New Year deal. It appears Fido removed the offer at the same time as Koodo.

Fido plans with no Lunar New Year deal (as of Feb. 15th)

Meanwhile, Virgin Plus still lists the $10/mo discount on its website. Virgin says the deal is a “limited time offer” but there’s no end date listed. It’s not clear how long the discount will stick around.

Virgin Plus plans as of Feb. 15th.

The deal is available on the following plans:

  • $55/mo 8GB ($45 after discount)
  • $60/mo 10GB ($50 after discount)
  • $65/mo 15GB ($55 after discount)

If you want to take advantage of the Lunar New Year deal, you’ll want to move fast.

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Mobile Syrup

Here are the new games hitting PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium in February 2023

PlayStation has revealed what’s coming to its PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium memberships in February.

Extra

  • Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (PS4)
  • Borderlands 3 (PS4/PS5)
  • Earth Defense Force 5 (PS4)
  • The Forgotten City (PS4/PS5)
  • Horizon Forbidden West (PS4/PS5)
  • I am Setsuna (PS4)
  • Lost Sphear (PS4)
  • Oninaki (PS4)
  • Outriders (PS4/PS5)
  • The Quarry (PS4/PS5)
  • Resident Evil 7 biohazard (PS4)
  • Scarlet Nexus (PS4/PS5)
  • Tekken 7 (PS4)

PlayStation Plus Extra starts at $17.99/month and includes all of the PS Plus Essential perks.

Premium

  • Destroy All Humans! (PS4)
  • Harvest Moon: Back to Nature (PS1)
  • The Legend of Dragoon (PS1)
  • Wild Arms 2 (PS1)

PlayStation Plus Premium starts at $21.99/month and includes all of the PS Plus Essential and Extra perks.

All of these games will join the Extra and Premium catalogues on February 21st. A round-up of this month’s free Essential games can be found here.

Image credit: PlayStation

Source: PlayStation

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Mobile Syrup

Rogers offering some $60/100GB win-back offer

It looks like carriers are out with crazy win-back deals once again. MobileSyrup’s own head of creative, Brad Bennett, received a call from Rogers offering a win-back deal of $60/mo for two years for a 100GB plan with unlimited Canada/U.S. calling, texting and data.

According to details shared with Bennett, the plan includes a $25/mo win-back discount and another $35/mo bring-your-own-phone (BYOP) discount. Presumably, there’s an autopay discount in there somewhere too.

It appears the plan in question is Rogers’ $125/mo ‘Infinite Premium’ plan, which offers 100GB of data at up to 1Gbps speeds (throttled to 512Kbps for use beyond the 100GB allotment). It also includes unlimited international texting and unlimited calling, texting and data within Canada and the U.S.

Rogers’ $125/mo 100GB plan.

Previously, Bennett was paying $80/mo for a 50GB Canada/U.S. plan from Telus. This plan has a small discount applied to it and when he signed up, it was $90.

Obviously, your mileage will vary when it comes to getting a deal like this. Win-back offers are hard to come by and may be based on your current plan, but if you’ve recently switched away from Rogers (or another carrier), keep an eye out for any calls or messages from your old carrier. You never know what they might offer you.

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Mobile Syrup

Where to watch Degrassi: The Next Generation for free in Canada

One of the most iconic pieces of Canadian media is, without a doubt, Degrassi. 

Created by Linda Schuyler and Kit Hood in 1979, the Toronto-set teen drama franchise has told a slew of coming-of-age stories and addressed all kinds of social issues. To date, there have been five main series, on top of tie-in movies and other media.

Since nostalgia is all the rage nowadays, and Warner Bros. recently shelved a planned Degrassi HBO Max reboot, we thought it would be good to look back on The Next Generation. 

After all, it’s perhaps the most notable entry in the long-running Degrassi saga. Besides being the show that helped kickstart Toronto rapper Drake’s career, it was frequently the most-watched domestic drama series in Canada while gaining popularity internationally.

Thankfully, it’s very easy for Canadians to watch the show — you can do so for free on Pluto TV. If you’re unfamiliar, the Paramount-owned service is a free, ad-supported television (FAST) channel. In other words, you can simply visit the Pluto TV website or app on Android, iOS and supported smart TVs and navigate a guide like you would on a cable box to watch whatever you want. You don’t need to pay or even sign up for an account — the only catch is ads will run like they would on standard TV.

On Pluto TV, there’s a dedicated channel just for Degrassi: The Next Generation. This means you can either watch whichever episode is playing “live” or select your desired episode in the “on-demand” section. All 14 seasons of the beloved series are available.

If you want more Degrassi, Prime Video is also streaming all three seasons of Junior High (the second series) and all four seasons of Next Class (the fifth and most recent series). However, you’ll need a $9.99/month Family TV channel add-on in addition to a Prime membership.

Which Degrassi series is your favourite? Let us know in the comments.

Image credit: WildBrain

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Mobile Syrup

Microsoft clarifies Bing AI waitlist, plans to expand it to other browsers

Microsoft’s head of consumer marketing, Yusuf Mehdi, took to Twitter to clarify some things about the waitlist to try the company’s revamped Bing, which mostly amounts to telling people to “hang tight.” However, Mehdi also noted Microsoft plans to expand bing Chat to “all browsers.”

According to Mehdi, the new Bing — which includes Bing Chat powered by an updated version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT — is currently in ‘Limited Preview’ so Microsoft “can test, learn, and improve.”

“If you’re on the waitlist, just hang tight. As we said at launch, we intend to scale to millions of people beginning in the coming weeks. We’re only one week in!” Mehdi wrote, noting that the company is “scaling people off the waitlist daily.”

Mehdi went on to explain that Microsoft is prioritizing people with Bing and the company’s Edge browser set as their default, as well as the Bing Mobile app installed, to “optimize the initial experience.”

This leads to perhaps the most interesting tidbit in Mehdi’s post. “Over time we intend to bring it to all browsers,” he wrote. That should relieve anyone wanting to play around with Bing Chat but not interested in committing to Microsoft’s Edge browser. Currently, people with access to Bing Chat who attempt to use it on a browser that isn’t Edge get a prompt to move to Edge to “unlock conversational search.”

I’ve been using Edge Dev for the last few days since it gives me access to Bing Chat and other AI-powered features built directly into the browser (presumably, the in-browser integrations won’t come to other browsers). But aside from the benefit of having Bing Chat open next to whatever I’m working on, and some other small features like the ability for it to interact with the webpage I’m currently viewing, there’s not a ton of difference between Bing Chat in Edge and Bing Chat on the web.

Finally, Mehdi said that Microsoft is testing Bing with people in 169 countries.

Source: Yusuf Mehdi

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Mobile Syrup

Musk made Twitter boost his tweets after getting fewer Super Bowl views than Biden

Following reports that Twitter users’ For You feeds were flooded with Elon Musk posts, we now know why the platform suddenly started pushing its owner to so many people: Musk’s Super Bowl tweet got fewer impressions than U.S. President Joe Biden.

Zoë Schiffer and Casey Newton detailed Twitter’s new Musk-oriented algorithm in the latest Platformer newsletter based on interviews with people familiar with the events, as well as through documents obtained by Platformer. It started early Monday morning — 2:36am, specifically. Musk’s cousin, James Musk, posted a message in Twitter’s Slack with an ‘@here’ tag to notify everyone. The message sought help debugging an “issue with engagement across the platform” that was “high urgency.”

Except, the so-called emergency was a quintessentially Elon Musk problem. Musk tweeted support for the Philadelphia Eagles in the big game, generating some 9.1 million impressions before Musk deleted the tweet (apparently out of frustration for the low view count, not because the Eagles lost, as some previously surmised).

Biden’s tweet, also in support of the Eagles, generated 29 million impressions.

Platformer reports that Musk flew back to the San Francisco Bay Area Sunday night in his private jet to demand answers about the low impressions. This, ultimately, led to the changes that put Musk’s tweets at the forefront of Twitter users’ feeds.

It’s worth noting as well that it was the latest event in an ongoing saga of Musk obsessing with engagement on his tweets. Previously, Musk reportedly fired an engineer who offered a potential explanation for his declining impressions. Platformer reports that Musk’s deputies told the rest of the engineering team over the weekend that they would also lose their jobs if the engagement issues wasn’t “fixed.”

The fix involved changing Twitter’s systems to boost Musk’s tweets

Musk addressed his team late Sunday, with some 80 people pulled in to work on the project. Fixing Musk’s engagement had become priority number one, and employees worked through the night investigating the issue (if only Musk had put as much effort into the other top priorities he’s claimed to have).

Per Platformer, engineers suggested that Musk’s reach could have been reduced because a large number of users have blocked or muted him in recent months. They also found a technical reason for the issue. Twitter typically promotes tweets from users whose posts perform well to both followers and non-followers in the For You feed — engineers estimated that Musk’s tweets should have fit that model but were only showing up about half as often as they should.

The problem was fixed by Monday afternoon, and Twitter deployed code to automatically “greenlight” all of Musk’s tweets, according to Platformer. This meant Musk’s tweets would bypass Twitter filters that were designed to show people the best content possible and that the algorithm artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000 — that score ensured his tweets ranked higher than others in the feed.

Moreover, the change allowed Musk’s account to bypass Twitter heuristics that would otherwise prevent a single account from flooding the For You feed.

This all explains the deluge of Musk’s tweets filling up people’s For You pages over the last couple of days. An internal estimate said that over 90 percent of Musk’s followers now see his tweets. It also resulted in an uproar from users, leading Musk to tweet about making adjustments to the algorithm. Platformer reports that the artificial boost is still in place, but the factor has been reduced from 1,000.

Additionally, Platformer notes that views for Musk’s tweets still fluctuate significantly, at least as counted by Twitter. (There are many reasons to doubt the accuracy of Twitter’s view counts, but there isn’t better information to work with.) But rather than contend with the fact that some of his tweets aren’t good, Musk pressured Twitter to show his tweets to almost everyone to keep view counts up. Faced with the threat of losing their jobs, Twitter employees made it happen.

Source: Platformer.

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Mobile Syrup

Elon Musk says Twitter isn’t ready for a new CEO just yet

It looks like Elon Musk is staying on as Twitter CEO for another year, at the minimum.

In a video appearance at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Musk said “the end of the year would be good timing to find someone else to run the company.”

As Bloomberg reports, this means Musk will lead the company for at least another year.

“I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place in that the product roadmap is clearly laid out,” Musk continued in the video.

The statement follows reports Musk has been looking for a new CEO for the company for the past couple of months.

Musk also conducted a poll in December asking Twitter users if he should step down from the top job. A majority wanted him gone.

Some of the dislike for Musk likely comes from his erratic changes to the social media platform. Mass layoffs, API changes, and buying verified statuses are part of his many moves since buying the company last year. But it’s possible more changes will come.

Twitter is “still somewhat of a startup in reverse,” Musk said, adding more needs to be done to get it to a “stable position.”

Image credit: Shutterstock 

Via: Bloomberg

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Mobile Syrup

Ikea launches new smart sensor capable of monitoring indoor air quality

Ikea is launching a new smart home air quality monitoring device. Dubbed Vindstyrka, the smart sensor is able to raise awareness of indoor pollutants and can also encourage users to better their air quality.

The Vindstyrka smart sensor is capable of monitoring and displaying particulate matter (PM2.5) levels, humidity, temperature and total volatile organic compound TVOC levels. PM2.5 is a measurable pollutant that can’t be seen by the human eye. In fact, these particles can be as small as 2.5 micrometres. TVOC, on the other hand, is a measure of pollution load that can be found within a home.

Ikea’s latest innovation can display air quality levels via the Ikea Home app. However, these air quality levels can also be viewed on the Vindstyrka on its own. Additionally, users can pair the Vindstyrka with the Starkvind smart air purifier. Working in unison, Vindstyrka can alert the Starkvind’s fan to speed up and adjust to the amount of PM2.5 in the air. In addition, users can sync the sensor with Ikea’s Matter-supported Dirigera Hub.

The front of the Vindstyrka device offers a reasonably large display to read all available levels, including humidity and temperature. The smart sensor also has a colour-coded metre to better assist users in analyzing the air quality of their homes.

Pricing of the Vindstyrka has not yet been revealed by Ikea. However, the company is announcing that the smart sensor will be available in Canada. Additionally, it is launching in “all Ikea markets” starting in April 2023.

Image credit: Ikea

Source: Ikea

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Mobile Syrup

Apple AirPods Max, 2nd and 3rd-Gen AirPods are up to 18 percent off today

Check out these solid deals on Apple wireless headsets and earbuds. Both the Airpods Max and 2nd and 3rd-gen AirPods are on sale for up to 18 percent off:

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Source: Amazon Canada