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Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
We’re in a cultural moment where the impact of social media isn’t something that we just notice when we catch ourselves heads-down in our phones or computers. It’s something that’s underscored with almost daily news stories, with each new revelation seemingly more sinister than the last. It&rsq

This is anything but trivial: the popular app-based game show HQ Trivia has made it to the UK. 
Now, Brits can compete for $11 winnings with regular games geared toward UK audiences. One of the game's hosts Sharon Carpenter, who is from England, will be the popular online show's host for across the pond.
SEE ALSO: Download this: An app to help you get better at HQ Trivia
The first British game kicked off Sunday. It seems like British players were into the game after months of playing the "A

A glimmer of a shadow of a possibility that Google Play will soon be offering audiobooks has the bibliophiles of the internet buzzing.
When a tech blog spotted a banner ad for audiobooks directly through Google's online store, Google Play, everyone jumped on their seemingly imminent arrival. There's only one issue: The link that was apparently from the ad last week is already a dead end. 
But it seems like Google is ramping up for the eventual arrival of audiobooks available through Google

In August, Verizon split its unlimited data plan into three new options with some annoying limits and restrictions on video streaming. The basic of those three plans, Go Unlimited, will soon work in Canada and Mexico. But there’s still some annoying restrictions.If you’re a Verizon customer on the basic plan, you won’t have to pay for an additional data plan if you travel overseas, according to Droid Life (via Engadget), and the changes to the plan kick on on January 25th, 201

The best football ads are the weird football ads.
So it was with Electronic Arts' Madden Season debut back in 2014, and so it is now with CBS Sports' "teaser" video for Sunday's AFC Championship match-up between the Jacksonville Jaguars and New England Patriots.
SEE ALSO: Chrissy Teigen and the rest of the internet bewildered by Philadelphia's #CriscoCops
No explanation needed, really. Know only that this weirdness is fueled mostly by John Malkovich, the best "weird dude" actor in Hollywood. Jus

Last week, British Prime Minister Theresa May appointed an official "minister of loneliness" to the government. 
It's not as bizarre as one might think at first. In fact, experts who study the health effects of chronic loneliness are cheering the move. 
Combating a disease whose cause isn't so outwardly pernicious — like cigarette use or alcoholism — is expected to be a challenging task, but one scientists and doctors say is critical. Isolation from others makes us sick, an

Finding and sending GIFs has never been easier, but GBoard's latest update has taken things one step further. 
If you're an iOS user, the Google keyboard app now has a simplified way to create your own GIFs because the more looped images the world has, the better.  
SEE ALSO: Google wants your phone screen to double as a speaker
According to The Verge, the app already had the GIF-making capabilities, but the feature's new home (it's the camera icon featuring an infinity sign, located r

It's not just a few pink pussyhats, a handful of marchers, #MeToo posts, or women launching political campaigns — a huge surge of women is getting involved in politics. A movement is here.
SEE ALSO: Trump was a disaster for women in 2017. It may be his undoing.
After the one-year anniversary of the inaugural Women's March on Washington, Time magazine's cover this week features 48 of the record-breaking number of women running for political office in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential e

The White House press team might want to ask for a mulligan on this one.
One day into the U.S. government's first shutdown since 2013, the White House sent out a press blast featuring photos of Donald Trump at work. The message was simple: Look at our president working so hard to end this shutdown.
SEE ALSO: Here's what kids think of Trump's first year in office
It was a fine idea with only one problem. There's a photo of Trump sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office where it doesn't act

Add the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office to the growing list of government units around the world that are investigating Apple over the reduced performance of iPhones with older batteries inside. The company’s poor messaging about an iOS update intended to prevent unexpected shutdowns — a change that required throttling the processor and slowing performance of iPhones with chemically-aged batteries — led to widespread controversy and customer frustration late l

On Jan. 18, NASA announced that astronaut Jeanette Epps would not fly, as expected, to the International Space Station in June. The mission would have been historic, since she would have become the first African-American crewmember on the orbiting outpost. 
The space agency hasn't released any information about why Epps was benched from her planned mission, saying only that "these decisions are personnel matters for which NASA doesn’t provide information," according to NASA spokespers

If you’ve ever wondered what you’d look like with thicker eyebrows (or maybe even no eyebrows), there’s a new web app from Benefit Cosmetics that lets you try on the eyebrows of your dreams via AR. Called “Brow Try-On,” the site uses the webcam on your device to track your face and put a virtual imprint of eyebrows over you. You can also upload a photo, but real time is more fun. You can choose the shape and shade to your heart’s content, and (obviously) the

Apple has released a new commercial for its iPhone X, which showcases the camera’s ability to take some great selfies, set to a monologue by Muhammad Ali.Ali’s words are appropriate here: he was brash and outlandish, and his assertion that he was the greatest is an attitude that’s often applied to those taking selfies of themselves. But while selfies can be condemned as self-aggrandizing and only for the vain, Ali’s words underscore the importance of one’s self con

Near the end of the first episode of Netflix’s new anime Devilman Crybaby, high schooler Akira Fudo and his best friend, Ryo Asuka, find themselves in a rave-lit orgy full of neon and nude characters whose body parts flap wildly. The party spirals into a bloodbath when Ryo begins attacking strangers. As the scent of blood and debauchery attracts demons, people are ripped into pieces or transformed into hellions themselves.It’s impossible to look away from, and a perfect table-setter

Football fandom is a helluva thing.
Philadelphia officials are so concerned over the possibility of rioting on Sunday night, after the city's Eagles face off against the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC Championship Game, that they're resorting to extreme measures: Crews are greasing up light poles to stop people from climbing them.
SEE ALSO: The rest of the NFL playoffs will stream on Yahoo's sports app
The effort even has its very own hashtag: #CriscoCops.Good morning from Philly where crews from

It can be difficult to find time to finish a video game, especially if you only have a few hours a week to play. In our new biweekly column Short Play we suggest video games that can be started and finished in a weekend.
Writing believable teenage characters is a tricky proposition. If you go too hard in one direction and really lean into teenspeak, it can feel forced and unrealistic. But go too far the other way and they sound generic or too old. Butterfly Soup, a visual novel from developer B

Thinking of adolescence as lasting until age 24 “corresponds more closely” to how the lives of young people today work, writes an expert in adolescent health.Compared to earlier generations, youth today are staying in school longer, marrying and having kids later, and buying a house later, writes Susan Sawyer, the chair of adolescent health at the University of Melbourne, in an op-ed published today in the journal The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health. The transition period from

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
When filmmakers turn their cameras on themselves and their families, the results are rarely as fascinating to the viewers as they are to the participants. Family documentaries come with a lot of emotional baggage that the audience doesn’t get to share, and while it’s possible to get a broad overview of a f

This weekend, US spaceflight startup Rocket Lab successfully launched its second Electron rocket for a crucial flight test— and reached orbit for the first time. The Electron took off from the company’s New Zealand launch facility at 2:43PM local time on Sunday (or 8:43PM ET on Saturday), and about eight and a half minutes later, the rocket deployed three small commercial satellites. It marks the first time the Electron has completed a full mission, and that may mean Rocket Lab is r

 “Everything’s a battle,” Cindy Gallop sighs, although it’s clear she relishes those battles. What she means is that the entire Internet has long been divided into two separate, walled fiefdoms: one labelled “pornography,” the other marked with those three dread words “no adult content.” The territory between those two worlds, which she is trying… Read More