Month: March 2017

Welcome to your new Hangout.

Google continues to shake up its messaging tools with the upcoming removal of a popular feature from Hangouts. According to an email sent to GSuite administrators and subsequently posted to Reddit, Google will remove the SMS messaging feature from Hangouts on May 22. Anyone using Hangouts as both a Google messaging app and their primary text messaging app won't be able to send SMS texts after that date.

Hangouts users will be notified of this change via an in-app message starting March 27. You'll be prompted to select a new default messaging app from your list of downloaded apps. If you don't have anything other than Hangouts, you'll be directed to the Google Play Store to download another messaging app. All of your existing SMS messages will not be affected and they will be available in your new default messaging app.

Google Voice users will also be affected, but not as much as Hangouts-only users. The rule only applies to messages sent and received with your carrier phone number—all SMS messages sent with your Google Voice number will remain unaffected. "For SMS users using Google Voice on Hangouts on Android Google Voice users who also send carrier SMS messages will need to choose another default messaging app. Their Google Voice messages will be unaffected and will still be available in Google Hangouts," the email states. "For Google Voice users on Hangouts on Android Google Voice users who do not use carrier SMS text messaging will not be affected and no notification will be shown."

Enlarge

If you think Marvel and DC superheroes receive too many reboots, you clearly haven't kept tabs on the Power Rangers TV series. What began as an excuse to reuse costumed-battling footage from the Japanese show Super Sentai has spawned 24 incarnations since 1993. Twenty-four! Who knows—if Batman had gotten close to that number, Val Kilmer might have worn the suit a second time.

Despite all of those years and versions, Power Rangers waited until this week for its first motion-picture treatment (well, okay, not really, but the less said about the1995 film, the better). Weirdly, the results don't feel all that interesting as a film. Instead, viewers get a taste of what could have been the best TV treatment the series has ever seen.

Mighty Friday Night Lights?

The film follows five small-town teens going through various adolescent crises. The town's football hero falls from grace after a prank goes awry. The popular girl burns all bridges with an ill-advised text. One autistic kid misses his dead father in a big way, while two others have very different stressful issues with their own parents.

Enlarge

We're continuing this week's theme of hypercars and electric vehicles with unnecessary amounts of power thanks to a video sent to us by the nice people at Formula E. You may remember late last year that the Nio EP9 set a new EV record at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, lapping the 12.9-mile (20.7km) track in 7:05.12. Well, the complete lap has now been uploaded to YouTube for your viewing pleasure:

The man behind the wheel was Peter Dumbreck, who holds the distinction of being one of two people who have flipped a Mercedes endurance racer at Le Mans (the other is Mark Webber). Dumbreck has a much calmer time in the EP9, which looks to be extremely stable from the onboard video.

The video doesn't feature any telemetry so we don't know what the car's max speed is, but some very rough back of the envelope calculations suggest Dumbreck averages about 140mph on the uphill climb from Bergwerk to Klostertal (3:10-3:45 in the video) and at least that on the long Döttinger Höhe straight (6:15-6:45). That ride down the Ring's longest straight looks extremely bumpy though.

Enlarge / The most badass UN Deputy Undersecretary the solar system has ever seen. Shohreh Aghdashloo as Chrisjen Avasarala.

In this week's episode of The Expanse, our gang wants to get to Ganymede, but the Rocinante is a little too recognizable. Pretending to be a Martian Navy boarding party, Holden and Amos commandeer a Belter freighter, the Weeping Sonambulist, which was transporting relief supplies to the crippled agricultural outpost. Things get worse for the Sonambulist's owners when the local cops on Ganymede decides to alter the terms of their bargain, taking all the relief supplies instead of a smaller cut. It's a tough life out there among the asteroids for the little person.

Bobbie Draper finally gets to ride a dropship down Earth's gravity well, but it isn't the ride she always pictured. The Martians are visiting Manhattan to attend the peace conference. There's obviously little good faith between the two delegations, and plenty of posturing from both sides. Much to Gunny Draper's disgust, the Martians accept responsibility for causing the Battle of Ganymede, offering up the late private Travis as a scapegoat. But Avasarala isn't buying it, and even though Draper was told to keep it quiet she spills the beans about the man without the pressure suit.

The show does a good job this week of conveying just how alien Earth is to the Martians. Bright sunlight, oppressive gravity, and vast horizons would surely be disconcerting to someone used to life in the subterranean tunnels of Mars. It also gives you a good sense of how much contempt the Martians feel for Earth, filled with disgust at a civilization they think has squandered its resources and lies around in idle poverty.