Carl Pei-founded tech startup Nothing’s all-black Ear (1) are now available to order in Canada.
Announced earlier this month, the new black edition brings a smoky matte black finish to the buds, while the basic design of the earbuds remains the same, with transparent stems and a transparent charging case and a matte black finish on the previously white painted elements.
Other than the colour change, the Black buds are identical to the originally released white colourway, with the same specs, including active noise cancellation, transparency mode, wireless charging and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity.
The buds are also IPX4 water-resistant and sport an 11.6mm driver tuned by Swedish gadget maker Teenage Engineering.
Nothing has also announced that it can now receive cryptocurrency payments for its buds. “We’ll be accepting some of the most widely used cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), USD Coin (USDC) and Dogecoin (DOGE),” reads Nothing’s blog post.
Crypto payments are available in the following countries: The United Kingdom, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, United States, Canada and Japan. However, the option doesn’t appear to be live yet in Nothing’s payment section.
Learn more about the all-black buds or purchase them here.
If you’re still working your way through this year’s gift list, have a look at Best Buy’s daily list of holiday discounts. Today’s batch includes some great deals on everything from speakers and keyboards to a steeply discounted knife block:
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Black Friday and Cyber Monday are a thing of the past, however, ahead of Boxing Day and possibly ‘extended’ Boxing Day deal, Amazon Canada has once again discounted some tech that might be on your list this year.
Here is a round-up of some the ‘Epic Deal’ Amazon has available:
MobileSyrup utilizes affiliate partnerships. These partnerships do not influence our editorial content, though MobileSyrup may earn a commission on purchases made via these links that helps fund the journalism provided free on our website.
Analogue, the company behind the excellent-looking ‘Pocket’ handheld for playing old GameBoy games, announced that it will accept more orders for the handheld on December 14th.
Further, the December 14th orders will open at 11am ET/8am PT — those who place an order will land in a fulfillment group with a staggered rollout process. The first group can expect Pocket devices to arrive sometime in Q1 2022, while the second group will need to wait until Q4 2022. And those unfortunate enough to land in group three won’t see a Pocket until 2023.
If that format sounds familiar, it’s because other handhelds — like Panic’s Playdate and Valve’s Steam Deck — received similar treatments after being delayed.
Fulfillment groups will be assigned on a first-come first-serve basis.
Moreover, Analogue announced that it was increasing the price of the Pocket from $200 USD to $219 USD (about $254.55 to $278.73 CAD) due to “industry-wide component price increases.” Accessories, however, will likely remain the same price.
Analogue will start shipping Pockets to those who have already placed an order starting Monday, December 13th (today) as promised.
Analogue, the company behind the excellent-looking ‘Pocket’ handheld for playing old GameBoy games, announced that it will accept more orders for the handheld on December 14th.
Further, the December 14th orders will open at 11am ET/8am PT — those who place an order will land in a fulfillment group with a staggered rollout process. The first group can expect Pocket devices to arrive sometime in Q1 2022, while the second group will need to wait until Q4 2022. And those unfortunate enough to land in group three won’t see a Pocket until 2023.
If that format sounds familiar, it’s because other handhelds — like Panic’s Playdate and Valve’s Steam Deck — received similar treatments after being delayed.
Fulfillment groups will be assigned on a first-come first-serve basis.
Moreover, Analogue announced that it was increasing the price of the Pocket from $200 USD to $219 USD (about $254.55 to $278.73 CAD) due to “industry-wide component price increases.” Accessories, however, will likely remain the same price.
Analogue will start shipping Pockets to those who have already placed an order starting Monday, December 13th (today) as promised.
Analogue, the company behind the excellent-looking ‘Pocket’ handheld for playing old GameBoy games, announced that it will accept more orders for the handheld on December 14th.
Further, the December 14th orders will open at 11am ET/8am PT — those who place an order will land in a fulfillment group with a staggered rollout process. The first group can expect Pocket devices to arrive sometime in Q1 2022, while the second group will need to wait until Q4 2022. And those unfortunate enough to land in group three won’t see a Pocket until 2023.
If that format sounds familiar, it’s because other handhelds — like Panic’s Playdate and Valve’s Steam Deck — received similar treatments after being delayed.
Fulfillment groups will be assigned on a first-come first-serve basis.
Moreover, Analogue announced that it was increasing the price of the Pocket from $200 USD to $219 USD (about $254.55 to $278.73 CAD) due to “industry-wide component price increases.” Accessories, however, will likely remain the same price.
Analogue will start shipping Pockets to those who have already placed an order starting Monday, December 13th (today) as promised.
Amazon’s Alexa-enabled devices are an essential part of every smart household. Since the Echo’s launch in Canada back in 2017, the adoption of Alexa-enabled smart home devices has been on an uptrend, and families with kids love using the device.
When kids see their parents using the Echo to turn on lights, call friends and family or even ask answers to questions, their curiosity naturally rises. This abundance of information and knowledge can be beneficial for children to learn new things, but this is also worrisome for parents.
There are existing Alexa skills for kids, but parents want more parental control over what their children are looking at and for.
While gadgets like Amazon Fire tablets for kids have made parents worry less, the same doesn’t translate to other Alexa devices.
With new Voice Profiles, parents can teach Alexa what their children sound like, ensuring that whenever the kids ask a question or request a task, Alexa can recognize the voice and give an appropriate kid-friendly reply and suggest suitable apps, songs, stories, games or other parent-approved content.
Let’s say for example your child asks an Echo to play Better Now by Post Malone. Alexa would automatically recognize that the voice isn’t an adults, and will play the clean version of the song.
Parents can also set bed timings, or timings to pause the Echo in certain situations like for dinner, or when your kid is doing homework. Further, a range of parental controls are available in the Alexa app that can automatically default to a specific music service that you want your kids to be listening to.
Through the dashboard, parents can also turn off voice purchasing and review recent activity, including voice recordings and what questions Alexa was asked. Parents can also pre-approve select contacts they want their kids to have access to, such as emergency numbers or certain family members.
As a way of positive reinforcement, whenever your kid asks Alexa to do something politely, Alexa will reply in a positive way and compliment the fact that they asked politely.
You can create a voice profile for your children by heading to the Alexa app. Navigate to settings and tap on Amazon Kids and follow the prompts.
This range of controls offers ease of mind to the parents while budding children’s curiosity and making the overall experience fun.
Learn more about Echo’s parental controls and Amazon Kids on Alexa here.
Sometimes, you need to reset your Windows PC. There are a ton of reasons for it — maybe something isn’t working properly, so you want to reset and try to fix it. Or perhaps you need to return a work or school PC and you want to clear your data off it. Or, maybe you want to start fresh and clear out years of digital clutter in one fell swoop.
Whatever the reason, Windows has a somewhat approachable reset tool. Before we get into how to use the reset tool, I want to note that this article will focus on Windows 11 since it’s the newest (and current) version of Windows. Most of these steps should apply to previous versions of Windows (very little, if anything at all, has changed here since Windows 10), but some things may look a little different.
With that said, let’s get into it.
How to reset Windows
First things first, you need to open Settings then scroll down and click ‘Recovery.’ There are a few troubleshooting tools here you can play with, but for the purpose of this article, we’re going to go straight for ‘Reset this PC.’ Click the ‘Reset PC’ button to open the reset tool.
If for some reason you can’t access the settings app, you can boot your PC into the Windows Recovery Environment by holding the Shift key and clicking restart. Then click Troubleshoot > Reset this PC to get to the reset tool.
Once you open the reset tool, you’ll just need to click through and select a few options. Don’t worry, I’ll explain them as we go.
The first choice is between ‘Keep my files’ and ‘Remove everything.’ If you’re just looking to try and fix and Windows issue and don’t want to lose anything, the first option for you. Anyone wanting to clean house — for example, on a work laptop you’re giving back to IT — you’ll want option two.
Next up, the reset tool will ask how you want to reinstall Windows. You can choose to reinstall from the cloud via an internet connection or use a local reinstall from files stored on-device.
I almost exclusively use the local restore to avoid waiting for a download (although the estimated 4GB size Microsoft lists isn’t huge). As someone who regularly resets review units to return them once I’ve finished testing, I’ve also never had an issue with using local reinstall. That said, there may be instances where cloud reinstall is the way to go, so make the selection based on your needs.
Next up is the ‘Additional settings’ screen, which lists out the current reset options you’ve selected. However, there are almost always more options worth looking at if you click ‘Change settings’ at the bottom of the list.
For example, if you’re doing a reset and keeping your files, clicking ‘Change settings’ will give you a toggle to restore preinstalled apps and settings that came with your device.
When doing a full reset, on the other hand, this section includes an option to ‘Clean data.’ It takes longer, but it fully removes your files from the drives. I highly recommend cleaning your drive if you’re doing this before giving away that device as it should help prevent someone from recovering any of your personal files down the line.
Finally, the last screen in the reset tool will give a summary of what will happen when you reset. This should include all the options you’ve selected so far. Review the list and, if everything looks good, click ‘Reset’ to start the process. Depending on your device, the size of your drives and other factors, the reset can take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or more. If you’re resetting a laptop, you should plug it in and leave it plugged in throughout the process.
That should be it. You’ll need to wait while Windows runs through the reset process. When it’s done, you’ll either be able to go back to using your computer (if you kept your files) or run through the whole initial set-up process again, as if you just bought a new computer.
However, a lot of people tune into The Game Awards for the trailers and announcements rather than the actual accolades. At the event, we saw new trailers for games that we already know about but also plenty of reveals none of us saw coming.
We saw trailers for Star Wars: Eclipse, Wonder Woman, Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, Homeworld 3, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Sonic Frontiers, Have A Nice Death and Canadian-made Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course.
The event also got people hyped up for games like Elden Ring, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, Forspoken, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and The Lord of the Rings: Gollum.
With all of this in mind, this week’s community question is: what announcement were you most excited about at the Game Awards?
Every week, MobileSyrup outlines some of the most notable movies and TV shows that recently hit Canadian streaming platforms.
Our ‘Streaming in Canada’ column typically focuses on new content from Amazon Prime Video, Crave and Netflix, but other services like Apple TV+ and Disney+ will be mentioned when relevant.
We’ll also highlight shows or movies that are made by Canadian companies, involve notable Canadian cast or crew and/or are filmed in Canada.
Amazon Prime Video
Encounter [Amazon Original]
A marine attempts to rescue his children from an alien threat.
Encounter was co-written and directed by Michael Pearce (Beast) and stars Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal), Octavia Spencer (The Help) and Janina Gavankar (The Morning Show).
Amazon Prime Video Canada premiere date: December 10th, 2021 Genre: Sci-fi thriller Runtime: 1 hour, 48 minutes
In the series’ final season, Holden and the Rocinante crew face off against Marco Inaros and his Free Navy.
Based on James S. A. Corey’s eponymous novel series, The Expanse was created by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby (Iron Man) and stars Steven Strait (Magic City), Dominique Tipper (Vampire Academy) and Wes Chatham (The Hunger Games series).
It’s worth noting that the series is filmed in Toronto.
Amazon Prime Video Canada premiere date: December 10th, 2021 Genre: Sci-fi Runtime: Six episodes (around one hour each)
The full list of movies and shows hitting Amazon Prime Video Canada this month can be found here.
Apple TV+
Snoopy Presents: For Auld Lang Syne [Apple Original]
Vancouver-based WildBrain returns with a new Peanuts special that sees Charlie Brown try to accomplish one of his New Year’s resolutions before midnight while Lucy plans a New Year’s Eve party.
Apple TV+ Canada premiere date: December 10th, 2021 Genre: Animated, family Runtime: 38 minutes
Years after the events of Sex and the City, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) are back to navigate life and friendship in their 50s.
It’s important to note that Courtenay, B.C.-raised Kim Cattrall did not return as Samantha, although other Sex and the City actors reprise their roles, including Mario Cantone (Anthony), David Eigenberg (Steve), Sara Ramirez (Che) and Chris Noth (Mr. Big).
Crave/HBO Max premiere date: December 9th, 2021 (first two episodes, new episodes every Thursday) Genre: Comedy-drama Runtime: 10 episodes (around one hour each)
Inspired by MTV Canada’s 1 Girl 5 Gays, Toronto’s Brooke Lynn Hytes (RuPaul’s Drag Race and Canada’s Drag Race) moderates a panel to discuss challenges facing the LGBTQ2S+ community.
Crave premiere date: December 9th, 2021 (first two episodes, new episodes every Thursday) Genre: Reality Runtime: Eight episodes (around 30 minutes each)
Basketball legend LeBron James teams up with the Looney Tunes in the Warner Bros. ‘ServerVerse’ to save his son from an evil AI.
Space Jam: A New Legacy was directed by Malcolm D. Lee (Barbershop: The Next Cut) and stars James as a fictionalized version of himself, Don Cheadle (the Iron Man series) and Sonequa Martin-Green (Star Trek: Discovery) in live-action roles, Looney Tunes veterans Jeff Bergman and Toronto’s own Eric Bauza as most of the Tunes, and Zendaya (Euphoria) as Lola Bunny.
Original release date: July 16th, 2021 (theatres and digital)
Crave premiere date: December 10th, 2021 Genre: Live-action animated comedy Runtime: 1 hour, 55 minutes
A standard Crave subscription is priced at $19.99/month, with Starz costing an additional $5.99/month. A mobile-only subscription is also available for $9.99/month.
The full list of movies and shows hitting Crave this month can be found here.
Disney+
Welcome to Earth [Disney+ Original]
Two-time Oscar nominee Will Smith (Ali) travels around the world to explore volcanoes, deserts and more.
Disney+ Canada premiere date: December 8th, 2021 Genre: Documentary Runtime: Six episodes (36 to 44 minutes each)
The Titans face off against Red Hood and a mysterious new villain aiming to destroy Gotham City.
Based on DC Comics’ Teen Titans characters, Titans features an ensemble cast that includes Brenton Thwaites (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales), Anna Diop (Us), Teagan Croft (The Osiris Child), Ryan Potter (Big Hero 6) and Curran Walters (Too Close to Home).
Original run: August to October 2021 (HBO Max in the U.S.)
Netflix Canada premiere date: December 8th, 2021 Genre: Superhero Runtime: 13 episodes (41 to 52 minutes each)
After being released from prison, a woman convicted of murder seeks to rebuild her life.
Based on the 2009 British miniseries Unforgiven, The Unforgiveable was directed by Nora Fingscheidt (System Crasher) and stars Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side), Viola Davis (How To Get Away With Murder), Vincent D’Onofrio (Full Metal Jacket) and Jon Bernthal (Marvel’s Punisher).
Netflix Canada premiere date: December 10th, 2021 Genre: Drama Runtime: 1 hour, 54 minutes
