Canadian Reviewer Weekly Roundup 5/20-5/26

Why the Mazda MX-5 is the world's best roadster

You can now share Instagram posts to your stories

Is a cheaper Beats-branded Apple HomePod in our future?

Samsung targets 2020 for bringing its Bixby assistant to all its smart home products

Google Photos now has a favourites feature

Review: Sennheiser Ambeo Smart headset

Apple offering $50 refund for out of warranty iPhone 6 or later battery replacements

Review: Fitbit Versa

Acer unloads new notebooks, Chromebooks, and gaming PCs for 2018

Instagram now lets you mute accounts you don't want to unfollow

IBM's CEO Ginni Rometty says AI needs to "augment human intelligence, not replace it."

Amazon Prime Music brings Alexa hands-free functionality to mobile devices

Car-sharing service Car2Go ceases service in Toronto over prohibitive parking regulations

Samsung releases ‘Incredibles 2’ AR Emojis

Facebook will let you enable two-factor authentication without SMS

Essential Phone 2 reportedly cancelled as company pivots to smart home products

Samsung now needs to pay Apple $539 million in copyright infringement damages

What to expect at Apple's WWDC 2018

PayPal will soon support single sign-in across all Google services

Nokia has ‘some new stuff to share’ at May 29 event

Amazon Prime Video saves 'The Expanse'

Fan-made ‘Phoenix Rising’ is a free ‘Pokemon’-inspired game you can play now

Fan-made ‘Phoenix Rising’ is a free ‘Pokemon’-inspired game you can play now

If you’re a huge fan of the Pokemon franchise, you might want to check out this new fan-made game. Phoenix Rising is an episodic game made with RPG Maker XP and Pokemon Essentials engine. It’s a free game that will get its subsequent releases announced in the future. The demo a.k.a. the first episode that was just released is also free. The developers hope that by keeping the game free, not asking for donations, and having an official site, among other things, will keep The Pokemon Company won’t issue a Cease & Desist order. The company is known to shut down fan-made projects. Now whether the precautions taken by this game’s developers is enough, we should find out soon enough.

Source: Comic Book

Two French teenagers get arrested for defacing popular music videos on Vevo’s YouTube page

Last month, Vevo’s YouTube account got hacked and had defaced a number of popular music videos. Now, two 18-year-old French citizens have been arrested in Paris in relation to this incident. The Paris Prosecutor’s Office, together with the Manhattan’s DA’s office (where Vevo is based), identified the two suspects as “Nassim B.” and “Gabriel K.A.B.” and are known by their respective online handles of “Prosox” and “Kuroi’ish.” The two have been charged with six and five criminal counts, respectively.

Authorities claim the two gained access to Vevo’s YouTube account to change the thumbnail images, video titles, and descriptions of videos like Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito” and other popular videos from the likes of Taylor Swift, Shakira, Selena Gomez, to name a few. Vevo has since removed all these changes.

Source: Variety

Amazon Prime Video saves 'The Expanse'

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos just announced that Amazon Prime Video will save The Expanse which will see a Season 4 coming to the streaming video service. This is huge news as fans of this transcendent science fiction series based on the books from author James S.A. Corey, The Expanse was cancelled by Syfy Channel in the US ( Space channel in Canada) earlier this month which prodded millions of fans to rally behind the show and launch a #Savetheexpanse movement.

Based on a series of nine books, The Expanse TV series (shot here in Toronto) is one of the best cast, intelligently produced and engaging sci-fi shows on TV. The beauty of the show is that while it is on its third season, it's barely scraping the tip of the iceberg of this epic show. Kudos to Amazon for seeing the value of good programming. This alone is worth the subcription to Amazon Prime Video.