What's New

Statistically speaking, there’s a pretty good chance you’re one of the 1.2 billion people who use Facebook Messenger at least once a month. Anecdotally, there’s a decent chance you harbor deep resentments toward its sluggishness, its bloat, and its liberally borrowed Snapchat features. Friends, there’s a better way. It’s called Messenger Lite . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The market for devices like the Amazon Echo and Google Home is so new that nobody really knows anything, except that smart speakers are fun as hell and they're probably important to the connected future of everything. Somehow. We're firmly in the spaghetti-throwing phase of the technology, as companies experiment in public to find out what works. Barely a week after Amazon unveiled a half-dozen new Echo products , Google has a new smart speaker of its own. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

First thing in the morning, the second your head pops off the pillow, you reach over and grab your Pixel off the nightstand. You check Twitter, thumb through email, poke at the New York Times app to make sure we're not at nuclear war . You stand, stretch, and say, "Hey Google, good morning. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It’s been almost a decade since anyone watched TRL and since then everything about its primary foci—music videos, celebrity culture, TV consumption—has changed. So when the network announced in July that it was bringing back its afternoon music-video countdown show, the prevailing question was: “Why?” TRL , the MTV show formerly known as Total Request Live , went off the air in 2008. On November 16 of that year, to be exact; Beyoncé performed its swan song. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Five years ago, Vlad Dragusin began making wooden cars in the evenings and on weekends. At the time, he was an architect at the design studio Gensler, and the cars were just a hobby—a way to escape the real world obstacles inherent in designing buildings. “With architecture, it gets to the point where you’re spending this much time on other things,” he says stretching his arms wide, “and this much time on design.” The cars, on the other hand, were pure design. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Most of the time, I navigate to my social media apps reflexively, as though my finger and the icons are magnets. I don't even realize I'm doing it until my thumb taps the Instagram icon on my screen. Again. And again. And again. It’s a dirty digital habit, and it doesn’t make me happy. Maybe you can relate. Studies have repeatedly found that while social media connects us to one another, it also makes us feel bad. And yet, we do it anyway. We do it because we can’t stop. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Amazon's new Fire TV looks more like a Chromecast than a typical set-top box. It's a small rectangle attached to an HDMI cable, meant to go right behind your TV. But the tiny thing packs heat: It supports 4K and HDR, Dolby Atmos sound, and all the games and apps on the Fire TV. And most important, it supports Alexa, which Amazon hopes will be the remote control of the future. Amazon's announcement was full of little digs at the new Apple TV. It's $69.99, not $179.99—for $79. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Even just mentioning the Super Nintendo brings memories flooding back: there’s little me, sitting in the playroom at the top of the stairs in my house in Massachusetts, battling my sister in Donkey Kong Country. She still swears she didn’t need my help, but deep down she knows I was the only one who could hack the mine cart levels. My family got a SNES a couple of years after its 1991 release, and didn’t upgrade for the better part of a decade. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For as long as Twitter has existed, it has been a place of brevity, if not levity. The 140 character limit—originally created so that tweets could fit into single SMS messages—is as much a part of the brand as the silhouetted bird. You want to yell about the NFL, hurl some insults at the president, or debate the parentage of Kylie Jenner’s unborn child? Fine. Just make it quick. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last night, CBS finally took the wraps off its oft-delayed new show , Star Trek: Discovery . The two-part debut ("The Vulcan Hello" and "Battle at the Binary Stars") gave fans the first new TV Trek since Star Trek: Enterprise ceased subspace transmission in 2005. And they were ready for it—last night's premiere set a single-day record for new signups for CBS' All Access streaming service. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices