Sunday reads: Changes, fakes, and the future.

Also some very bad, some very good tv shows. [Gizmodo]( December 30, 2018 [New technology changes we're excited about for 2019]( [2019 is the year that tech gets it together, we can feel it. Last year, we pegged our hopes for 2018 on ambitious technologies like mixed reality and alien alloys. We learned our lesson. Looking ahead to 2019, we’re excited to see tech wrestle with some of its failures and possibly innovate its way out of the messes it’s created. As tone-deaf, duplicitous, and just plain wrong as the tech world often is, there’s still a good chance that it started to read the room over the last year. Pressure from lawmakers, the public, and from within is growing and there’s a reason to believe we’ll see newcomers and the establishment taking steps to curb issues like screen addiction and invasion of users’ privacy. Don’t count on Jeff Bezos allowing workers to take an extra pee break or Sheryl Sandberg sacrificing profits to make a better product. But there are a few developments to keep an eye on next year that could make the world a better place or at least a more enjoyable one.]( [YEAR IN REVIEW]( [Apple's future looks rotten]( [A weird thing happened this year: Apple put its brand new iPhone on sale just a few weeks after release. Well, it wasn’t an outright sale. Faced with poor sales, the company boosted trade-in values of old iPhones so that you could get an iPhone XR for up to $300 off. These slumping sales numbers are part of a trend, too. People just aren’t buying as many iPhones as they used to, so Apple has been scrambling to figure out its future. What will it look like? It might look pretty rotten, in my opinion. I know, I know. “Rotten” is a too-easy quip to describe potentially troubling times for a company named after a fruit. But I can’t stop thinking about the company’s trajectory, especially the degree to which it’s just stuttered in the past few months. I also can’t stop seeing reports of Apple’s plummeting stock price. Just last week, Apple entered a death cross, which is a very bad thing that happens when a stock’s 50-day moving average falls below its 200-day moving average. The same thing happened to Google, Facebook, and Netflix earlier this year, which some observers believe signals the beginning of a bear market or even a recession. I’m personally circling back to this rotten Apple idea.]( [GIZ ASKS]( [What's wrong if you have a red, shiny nose?]( [All this talk about whether or not Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is problematic has obscured a very important question—i.e., what was actually wrong with Rudolph’s nose? Like, medically? Did no one ever think of taking him to a doctor, to see if everything was ok with his nose, before being mean to him about it? In case you yourself develop a glowing-red nose, after many years of regular-nosehood—we have, for this week’s Giz Asks, corralled a top-notch bunch of rhinologists to tell us what, if anything, a red nose indicates, when you’re a human (as opposed to a stop-motion reindeer).]( [YEAR IN REVIEW]( [18 viral photos and videos from 2018 that were totally fake]( [Have you seen this photo, supposedly showing the last image captured by the Cassini space probe before it crashed into Saturn’s atmosphere? It’s beautiful. But unfortunately, it’s also totally fake. The image was doing the rounds this year, racking up tens of thousands of views and retweets on social media. But the image was created using computer graphics. Some people have confused the image for a real photo simply because it appeared on the NASA website, but the description of the image makes it clear that it’s just an artist’s depiction.]( [CONSERVATION]( [Eastern lowland gorillas heading towards "genetic meltdown"]( [Eastern lowland gorillas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have endured dramatic population declines in recent decades, leading to a startling lack of genetic diversity and a slew of harmful mutations, according to new research. By comparing the genomes of living eastern lowland gorillas, also known as Grauer’s gorillas, with genomes derived from museum samples, researchers from the Swedish Museum of Natural History (SMNH) and Uppsala University have shown that genetic diversity is declining in the species, while inbreeding is increasing. This double-whammy is due to declining populations, and it’s causing an effect known as “temporal genomic erosion,” whereby the lack of genetic diversity is introducing deleterious mutations in Grauer’s gorillas, including fertility problems and a reduced capacity to ward of infectious diseases. The new research was published today in Current Biology.]( [YEAR IN REVIEW]( [The 10 best (and 4 worst) TV shows of 2018]( [It’s part of our job to watch TV here at io9, and it was a damn good year for the airwaves—you wouldn’t believe how spirited the debate was as we narrowed down our list of best shows, emerging with a 10 best (most of which won’t surprise you, since we’ve been singing their praises all year). Read on for our top picks, as well as four shows that came up short in a 2018 that was thankfully rather packed with TV delights both traditional and streaming.]( [FIELD GUIDE]( [How to upgrade your Nintendo Switch to be better at Super Smash Bros.]( [I am bad at Super Smash Bros. Maybe you are too! We could listen to our betters, who claim the only tact for improving is to “get gud,” or we could employ the time-honored tradition of modifying our hardware to make our gaming a little less shitty. This isn’t me encouraging you to apply some shady mod that lets you cheat though. These are tips for upgrading you Switch through with dongles, controllers, and display devices. The Switch does not come standard with an Ethernet port so you might assume that the only way to access the internet and play your friends is via wifi. But in a game where crucial plays can be ruined by a few milliseconds of bad timing, wifi is not your friend. Wifi can be prone to hiccups, which lead to lag. Wifi on the Switch, in particular, is also pretty dang slow, which makes downloading updates or new games an hours-long slog. Ethernet is much faster, and when you plug your Switch into its dock, you’ll notice that there are three USB-A ports on the device, any of which can accept Nintendo’s $40 Ethernet adapter. Just plug in, restart, and you’re good to go.]( You made it to the end. Thanks for reading our newsletter! [Visit Gizmodo]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( [YouTube]( [Terms of Use]( | [Privacy Policy]( | [Unsubscribe]( © 2018 Gizmodo Media 114 5th Avenue, Floor 2 New York, NY, 10011