Dan Jones

Caterpillar Inc (better known as 'CAT') makes tractors, excavators, trucks, engines, and... smartphones. Actually, the phones are manufactured by Bullitt Group, but they retain the company's focus on durability. If you want a phone that can survive a six-foot drop onto concrete with no damage, the entire lineup of CAT phones is on sale at B&H Photo.

The cheapest model on sale is the S31, at $279.99 ($30 off). It has bottom-of-the-barrel specifications, including a Snapdragon 210 processor, 2GB RAM, 16GB of internal storage, and a 4.7-inch 720p screen.

CAT's ultra-durable Android phones are $30-250 off right now at B&H Photo was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Nissin's Top Ramen and Cup Noodles wrapping paper comes with a warning: "Wrapping anything but Cup Noodles or Cup Noodles-related merchandise in this paper could be misleading and result in an angry, inconsolable gift recipient." Thanks for the...

YouTube Premium (previously called YouTube Red) is the only (legal) way to watch YouTube Originals. Sure, the service gets you ad-free video viewing, background play, and a subscription to Google Play Music, but YouTube had to push the service with a bigger incentive.

That came to be YouTube Originals, TV show-like series from various huge creators that required the subscription to view. Many of them are quite good too! However, YouTube likely saw that Originals aren’t why most people are paying for the service. Just going ad-free is great as it is. Plus there are a lot more views to gain from making the shows free.

Thus the company has decided to make all YouTube Originals free with ads by 2020. We don’t know if there will be strategies like release delays to keep people coming to YouTube Premium, but the company will continue bankrolling productions for Originals.

I don’t think this will hurt YouTube Premium subscriptions in the least, but it will allow a lot more people to view the great content that’s currently hidden behind a paywall.

Sacha Goldberger made a series of portraits of characters from Star Wars and superhero comics as if they were the subjects of 16th-century Flemish paintings, ruffs and all. (thx, anna)

Santa’s Stocking Flask – Party like they do in the North Pole this Christmas Eve with Santa’s Stocking Flask. Shaped like the classic red & white stockings you hang over your fireplace, each stocking will hold and dispense up to 2.25 liters of your favorite wine or booze.

Comes with a sturdy clip so you can hang it just about anywhere. But please hang responsibly.

The post Santa Stocking Flask appeared first on Shut Up And Take My Money.

Dinosaur Menorah – The Menorasaurus Rex is fixed to a heavy plastic base and spray painted gold. The candle-holders are made of 9mm metal tubing.

The post Dinosaur Menorah appeared first on Shut Up And Take My Money.

Nintendo Gameboy Wrist Watch – Featuring the striking Game Boy design with a gray strap and digital display, take this watch out on your next adventure and always know what time it is in style.

The Game Boy buttons actually work and are used to set the time, date and alarm. They even make official Super Mario Land alarm sounds. Wake up to the sound of Mario!

Great for Game Boy and Nintendo fans. This Game Boy Watch is a unique stocking stuffer, secret Santa, or a birthday present for your Mario and Donkey Kong loving friends.

The post Gameboy Wrist Watch appeared first on Shut Up And Take My Money.

If you are in the market for a new smartphone, and also happen to be on the hunt for a new TV, T-Mobile might be the place to look.

The Un-carrier has announced that beginning Friday, November 30, it will launch a limited time promotion that will see buyers of a flagship Samsung Galaxy smartphone also net themselves a free 50-inch Samsung 4K TV. This isn’t just for the newest Samsung smartphones, either, as last year’s models are being offered as part of the deal, too.

The eligible devices are: Samsung’s Galaxy S9, Galaxy S9+, Galaxy Note 9, Galaxy S8, and the Galaxy S8 Active. If you pick up one of these devices with T-Mobile’s Equipment Installment Plan and activate a new line of service, then you’ll get a code to cover the cost of a 50-inch Samsung 4K TV.

You’ll need to buy the new phone from a participating T-Mobile store. Once you do, you will then “apply for your code” at the official promotions page. You will get your code for the free TV by email within three days. With that code you’ll head over to Samsung’s online storefront and order the TV. You have until December 31, 2018 to order the TV with the promo code.

T-Mobile stresses that this is a limited promotion and that when the available TVs are sold out, the free offer goes with them. So if this sounds good to you, make sure you take advantage of the deal which kicks into gear this Friday.

Who’s getting themselves a free TV?

It's that time of the year and that most corporate and commercial of holidays, Black Friday, is upon us again. As ever, we've got our eyes and ears out for the best deals we can find. For your convenience, we've put all the best stuff we've spotted into a single list, saving you time as well as money. Let's get started.

You're probably familiar with how we handle deals here at Android Police, but just in case you aren't, here's how it works.

2018 Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals roundup [Updated continuously] was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Lately I’ve been noticing that more and more authors seem to be adapting their adult nonfiction books for younger readers (typically for the middle grade set, ages 8-12). The young readers editions are shorter and often contain more illustrations, photos, graphs, and charts than their adult counterparts, distilling the story and information down into what would be in the movie versions of these books. Here are some of the young readers’ editions I’ve run across.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: Young Readers Edition by Michael Pollan. “This young readers’ adaptation of Pollan’s famous food-chain exploration encourages kids to consider the personal and global health implications of their food choices.”

A Young People’s History of the United States: Columbus to the War on Terror by Howard Zinn (adapted by Rebecca Stefoff). “Zinn in the volumes of A Young People’s History of the United States presents a radical new way of understanding America’s history. In so doing, he reminds readers that America’s true greatness is shaped by our dissident voices, not our military generals.”

Notorious RBG Young Readers’ Edition: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik, “mixes pop culture, humor, and expert analysis for a remarkable account of the indomitable Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Heroine. Trailblazer. Pioneer.”

Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491 by Charles Mann. “A companion book for young readers based on 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, the groundbreaking bestseller by Charles C. Mann.” See also Mann’s 1493 for Young People: From Columbus’s Voyage to Globalization.

Hidden Figures Young Readers’ Edition by Margot Lee Shetterly, “the powerful story of four African-American female mathematicians at NASA who helped achieve some of the greatest moments in our space program”.

On the Origin of Species: Young Readers Edition by Charles Darwin (adapted by Rebecca Stefoff). “Meticulously curated to honor Darwin’s original text, this compelling edition also provides contemporary insight, photographs, illustrations, and more.” (Having tried to read the original text once, I might recommend this version for everyone who isn’t a biologist.)

Code Girls: The True Story of the American Women Who Secretly Broke Codes in World War II (Young Readers Edition) by Liza Mundy. “Due to the top secret nature of their accomplishments, these women have never been able to talk about their story — until now.”

I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World by Malala Yousafzai. “In this Young Readers Edition of her bestselling memoir, which has been reimagined specifically for a younger audience and includes exclusive photos and material, we hear firsthand the remarkable story of a girl who knew from a young age that she wanted to change the world — and did.”

Unbroken (The Young Adult Adaptation): An Olympian’s Journey from Airman to Castaway to Captive by Laura Hillenbrand. “Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would respond to desperation with ingenuity, suffering with hope and humor, brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would hang on the fraying wire of his will.”

How We Got To Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson. “This adaptation of his adult book and popular PBS series explores the fascinating and interconnected stories of innovations — like clean drinking water and electricity — that changed the way people live.”

We're starting our Thanksgiving break a day early this year. To make up for it, we're dipping back into the archives for a classic WTF. Original

"Perl is a language for getting your job done," is the underlying philosophy of the language. The only right way to write a Perl program is whatever way works. The ultimate flexibility of Perl is a breeding ground for WTFs . That's doubly true when you're new to the language, like Dave once was.

To get Dave started with Perl, his boss paired him up with Alvin, the veteran Perl programmer. He'd been using Perl since version 4, and had a reputation for wielding regexes like a scalpel. After Dave had a few days of ramp up, Alvin started sending him code from their codebase so that Dave could try and understand how their applications worked.

Alvin's style might have used a lot of doSomething(foo) unless condition; constructs , but his coding style was fairly consistent and clear. Dave followed his code pretty well- although one convention really confused him:

#after writing a bunch of stuff to a file
close(MYHANDLE);
sleep(5);

Every close had a matching sleep. Dave couldn't help but ask Alvin, "Um… why is that sleep there? "

Alvin gave Dave the Stare™- that alpha-nerd, hairy-eyeball that makes you wonder, "Did I just say something incredibly stupid?" Just before Dave caved in and said "never mind", Alvin replied. "It's to make sure the file handle is really closed before the program continues."

"I don't think close works that way," Dave said.

"I'm pretty sure it does," Alvin said.

"I don't think so," Dave said. He made a copy of the script in question and with what little regex-fu he had learned so far, he replaced all the close/sleep pairs with just a plain old close. He ran the script, and as you might expect, it worked flawlessly and took about 15 seconds fewer to run. "See?" Dave said, "You don't really need those."

"Apparently," Alvin said.

They spent the rest of the afternoon tracking down major places where there were close/sleep pairs. Alvin grudgingly let Dave remove them and check the changes into CVS after testing them to prove it still worked. Dave went home feeling pretty clever. He really was learning this Perl stuff.

Dave slept on it, and he felt pretty good about everything until he got into work the next day. Over night, Alvin had gone back through the code and added in each and every one of those sleeps, and he made them all one second longer. Dave stopped down at Alvin's cube. "Hey, about those sleeps- you put them back?"

Alvin gave Dave the Stare™. And he didn't stop until Dave retreated to his cube. Apparently, those sleeps really were important to the application.

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How old were you when you learned that the Moon in the Southern Hemisphere is upside down? I was today years old…this is my head exploding —> %@*&!$. Ok, the Moon isn’t upside down (that’s Northern-ist) but its orientation changes depending on if you’re north or south of the equator.

“From our perspective, the Moon and the night sky is actually rotated 180 degrees compared to our Northern Hemispherical friends,” Jake Clark, an astronomer from the University of Southern Queensland in Australia, explained to ScienceAlert.

“In the south we see the Moon’s dark ‘Oceanus Procellarum’ sea in the south-east corner compared to in the north-west corner for a northern observer.”

But why does it look like this? Well, because physically, we’re actually upside down compared to someone standing in the opposite hemisphere.

That makes perfect sense & the explanation is quite simple but it’s still messing with my head. How did I not know this? Here’s how the Moon appears in the Northern Hemisphere (from Wikipedia):

And here’s a photo from Brendan Keene in Australia:

The developer of Tasker recently said that the task automation app would lose features thanks to Google’s new Play Store rules. The rules, aimed at bolstering security on the Play Store, didn’t allow apps to access the SMS and call permissions unless they’re the default apps handling those services.

Fortunately, Google has listened to the developer and the community and is now making an exception to the rules for task automation apps. The company has been in touch with Tasker’s developer to get this done right.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that Tasker will be approved (it’s still in the approval stage) but chances are that it won’t be losing any functionality after all! We’re glad to see Google making common sense exceptions in its strive for security.