Felix Kjellberg, better known as YouTube megastar PewDiePie, just had his YouTube show canceled by the service. Why? Seems some people – and companies, like Disney – took offense to what seems to be a pattern of anti-Semitic jokes and pranks in his recent videos.
The water got too hot for Disney-owned Maker Studios and Google after PewDiePie paid some men on Fiverr to hold up a sign that read “death to all Jews.” The prank got the men – who later made a video apologizing for the slur, claiming they did not know what they were saying – banned from the service Fiverr. In a Tumblr post, PewDiePie says he is absolutely not anti-Semitic or a Nazi sympathizer, and the videos just show that people will do or say anything if you pay them to do it, and that’s just how our crazy world now works.
He also went to bat for the two guys banned by Fiverr and helped get them reinstated. However, the Wall Street Journal reports he’s posted nine videos with anti-Semitic content since last August, including one in which a person dressed as Jesus says “Hitler did absolutely nothing wrong.” Some of the videos have been removed from YouTube, which, while it did cancel his show, has not banned his channel or taken any other action.
Call it the KISS phone
Do you have the latest, greatest smartphone but secretly pine for those innocent days when a cell phone could only do a few things, like make actual phone calls, slowly send a text and play Snake? Then you’ll be glad to hear that HMD/Nokia is expected to bring back the beloved Model 3310 “candy bar phone” at this year’s Mobile World Congress.
The original 3310 helped Nokia become a tech powerhouse back when it was released in 2000, and for 2017, it’s supposedly getting a makeover, which will hopefully include a color LCD screen and an updated version of Snake. Price looks to be about $60.
What’s in the water at Kaby Lake?
Apple’s latest MacBook Pro, while very nice indeed, sort of underwhelmed our review staff here at DT and elsewhere, but that could change soon. According to a post on Smart Stock News, Apple will update its top-shelf laptop with Intel Kaby Lake processors later this year, upping both power and efficiency. It’ll probably have to in order to keep up with upgraded Surface Pro devices from Microsoft, and high-end models from everyone else.
So if you’ve been thinking of upgrading, well, you might want to sit tight for a while longer if you can.
