Google Maps is going to start offering recommendations about where to eat and visit based on your interests.

The popular mapping app is adding a personalized “For You” tab to the iOS app starting today and expanding the feature to more than 130 countries on Android, the company announced in a blog post Monday.

Google previewed the feature at the company’s I/O developer conference earlier this year as part of a major design overhaul for the app.

The For You update is intended to make it easier to keep track of what’s going on nearby, and to keep track of favorite local businesses. By tapping buttons at the bottom of the screen after launching the app, users will now be able to view recommendations about where to visit, where to eat, and what to do in a neighborhood. 

The feature launched on Android in June, so it only makes sense that the company would add the feature to the iOS version of its app too. If users are inclined, they can also follow specific businesses to make sure they’re always in the loop on changes, events, or anything else new.

The For You tab is just the latest update to encourage Google Maps users to be more social with their whereabouts and interests. In February 2017, Google Maps added a feature that allowed people to create lists of their favorite locations. Users could then send those curated lists to family and friends through email, SMS, messaging apps, and of course, social media.

The company has also been adding plenty of other features to the app lately, such as sending your ETA to friends and family, controlling music directly from inside the app, and planning group dinners. In essence, the company wants the app to do more than just get you from Point A to Point B — and not everyone is thrilled about it.

Still, in our limited test of the new “For You” feature, it seems to be relatively unobtrusive. You have to click any of the large “explore” buttons at the bottom of the screen, and if you don’t,  you can simply search the map as usual. So long as it’s not getting in the way of Google Maps’ primary functions, it probably couldn’t hurt to know that there’s a cheap bar right near the office.

The world lost Carrie Fisher almost two years ago, and on Sunday night Family Guy used the approaching anniversary of her death to finally lay Angela, the character she voiced, to rest.

It’s not the most touching set of parting words you’ll ever hear, but this is also Family Guy. That Peter Griffin’s eulogy for his former boss — Fisher played Peter’s boss at the Pawtucket Brewery, appearing in 25 episodes since 2005 — manages to avoid being overtly offensive is an achievement unto itself.

Peter’s goodbye is mostly comprised of weird, tangential references to TV show theme songs. There’s one genuinely touching bit right at the end, though: “I may have lost a boss, but heaven has gained a princess.”

Winning any competitive race is hard, but one should be extra proud to pull off a victorious run by punctuating the event with a faceplant at the finish. 

21-year-old French runner Jimmy Gressier was streaking to an easy victory this weekend, carrying aloft two French flags as he approached a muddy, slippery finish line for a win in the SPAR European Cross Country Championships Under-23 mens race in Tilburg, The Netherlands. That’s when he fell flat on his face while attempting to slide across the finish line.

Not to worry, his lead was big enough he still clinched the win. Sadly, he didn’t even break the finish line tape, instead, the person holding it awkwardly let it fall as Gressier laid in the mud. 

Gressier took it all in stride, even flashing a smile, which is a whole lot easier to do when you win. 

[h/t:Deadspin]

The end of the controversial display notch is nigh… for Android at least.

Samsung kickstarted the death of the cutout with — no surprise — another type of display cutout on its newly announced Galaxy A8s. Instead of the typical notch, the A8s sports an “Infinity-O” display with a “punch hole” cutout for the selfie camera located in the upper left corner.

The A8s marks the first time Samsung’s released a phone with a new display without a symmetrical top and bottom bezel and beats Chinese rivals like Huawei from claiming first for yet another mobile innovation.

The Galaxy A8s is a midrange phone and, well, it’s not Samsung’s best. But that’s not to say it’s not capable, though. On the contrary, other than the slower Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 chip, the A8s’s got some respectable specs:

• 6.4-inch LCD display (2,340 x 1,080 resolution)

• 6GB or 8GB of RAM

• 128GB internal storage

• microSD card slot (up to 512GB)

• 3,400 mAh battery

• Triple cameras: 24-megapixel (f/1.7) main camera, 10-megapixel telephoto camera (f/2.4), 5-megapixel camera (f/2.2) for depth-sensing

• 24-megapixel selfie camera

• Fingerprint sensor on rear

Samsung pledged to invest in bringing new innovations to its midrange phones to better compete with Chinese phone makers such as Huawei and Xiaomi, and the A8s fulfills that promise.

The A8s appears to be quite the spec’d-out phone so long as you’re not looking for the best performance.

Unfortunately, the phone and its new display is only available in China. No pricing has been announced, but since it’s a step below the Galaxy S9 and Note 9, you can expect it to cost less.

Huawei’s also releasing hole-punch phones

But Samsung’s not the only one will a shotgun aimed right at the notch. Huawei’s, the second-largest smartphone maker and the biggest threat to Samsung’s mobile domination, is readying its own phones with “punch-hole” displays.

Its Nova 4 teased last month will be unveiled later this month on Dec. 17 with the same display with circular selfie camera cutout. Huawei’s Honor sub-brand has also semi-announced the View 20, a midrange successor to the View 10; the phone will come with its latest Kirin 980 chip, 48-megapixel rear camera, and hole-punch selfie camera display.

Three new phones with the hole-punch display officially makes the screen design a new trend. The most anticipated phone that’ll come with the hole-punch design is looking like Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S10, which is expected to be announced sometime in February or March of 2019.

Advanced 3D face unlocking unlikely

Punch-hole displays no doubt increase a phone’s screen-to-body ratio (a feature coveted by many tech geeks), but they’re likely missing any kind of sophisticated 3D depth-sensing system (comprised of an IR sensor, flood illuminator, etc.) that make face unlock on the iPhone X, XS, XS Max, XR and some Android phones like the Huawei Mate 20 Pro and Oppo Find X more secure.

With a single round hole just for the selfie camera, these new punch-hole phones will have to either rely on less secure 2D-based face unlocking, which are more easily bypassed using printed photos or pictures on a high-resolution display. 

The other alternative to 2D face unlocking is to forgo it in favor of a fingerprint sensor, which is what the Galaxy A8s appears to have. An in-display fingerprint sensor as rumored on the Galaxy S10 is another workaround.

Inching closer towards an all-display phone

Lots of phones with notches or narrow bezels are advertised as “all-display,” but that’s just marketing bunk.

Phones with notches are close but not quite all-screen. Hole-punch displays and motorized and slider camera mechanisms get us closer to the sci-fi devices of our dreams where you’re holding just a sheet of glass in your hand.

It’s been a very interesting year watching as phone makers use all kinds of techniques to achieve an all-display phone. 

We’re inching closer towards a phone with a 100 percent screen-to-body ratio. Will it be Samsung or Huawei or some other company that gets there first? Frankly, I don’t care who’s first — I just want it.

If you’ve ever wondered what a Fast & Furious franchise film would look like if shot using a child’s toy train, you’re in luck. 

The crew over at 5MadMovieMakers put together the above video, which showcases the swerves and tricks of an old toy diesel train engine on a wooden track, and the results are stellar. 

According to the video creators, the clip happens on the fictional Island of Sodor, home of Thomas the Tank Engine and pals in both the original book series and the television incarnation. But you’ve never seen Thomas move like this. 

Eat your heart out, Vin Diesel. 

Frankly, it’s a fool’s errand to determine the 10 best films of any given year. There’s too much to see, and too many variables to consider about the ones we have seen. And even once we’ve settled on an opinion of a given movie, there’s no way of knowing how it might evolve in the coming days or weeks or years.

But that’s also the fun of choosing 10 favorites. This list is a snapshot of what we were into this year, at the end of this year—what made us laugh or week, gape in awe or fall in love over the past 12 months.

10. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before 

In a year of romcom resurgence, none stole our hearts more completely than To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. It was funny, it was sweet, it had loads of personality, and it leaned into that most gleefully ridiculous of romcom tropes, the fake relationship. But the reason we spent a full month watching this damn movie on repeat were its leads, the bubbly Lana Condor and the hunky Noah Centineo, and the electric chemistry between them. 

Every love letter Lara Jean wrote may as well have been us sighing and swooning over To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. It’s that irresistible.

9. Can You Ever Forgive Me? 

Like its antiheroine, Can You Ever Forgive Me? is brilliant in an unflashy sort of way. Unlike its antiheroine, it’s also a pretty lovely way to spend two hours—at least if you don’t mind having your heart shattered at regular intervals.

Melissa McCarthy turns in a career-best performance as the caustic Lee Israel, and she’s well-matched by Richard E. Grant, all charming smiles as Jack Hock. The setting, too, is devastatingly specific: the bookshops and gay bars of early-’90s New York. Lee’s crime (forging letters by famous writers), is the plot of the movie, but not the point of it. That would be the aching loneliness of these two souls on the margins.

8. Hereditary 

Creepy doesn’t begin to describe Hereditary, which gave us some of the most unsettling scenes we’ve ever seen. (Remember the telephone pole? Or the head covered in ants??) It’s the kind of horror that gets under your skin, festering there and keeping you up at night. 

And then, even once that fear has dissipated, it leaves a lasting ache. Because Hereditary isn’t just about literal demons. It’s about grief, in all its madness and its ugliness—its ability to possess you, poison you, pervert everything and everyone around you. Maybe you believe in the power of Paimon and maybe you don’t. But the power of death can’t be denied.

7. Black Panther 

The best fantasy stories pull us into a fully realized world, making us believe—making us want to believe—that it’s all real. Black Panther‘s Wakanda is so vivid, so vibrant, that seeing it for the first time felt like coming home, and leaving it again felt like a bittersweet goodbye. 

Which is not to say that Black Panther felt divorced from our own reality. Far from it. The film grappled with thorny geopolitical issues that had no easy answers, through conflicted heroes and complicated villains—while also delivering satisfying popcorn action and crowning your new favorite superhero.

6. Roma 

“Transporting” doesn’t begin to describe Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, which employs unhurried long takes, thoughtfully composed wide shots, and an immersive soundscape to bring you through the screen and into another time and place entirely—specifically, early-’70s Mexico through the eyes of Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a kind and quiet live-in nanny. 

What Roma understands is that the personal and political aren’t just inextricably intertwined, but one and the same; that every single detail or setting tells a story, if only you know how to listen; that the intimate can be epic, and vice versa. And despite being released by Netflix, it’s one of the greatest arguments this year for making the effort to actually go to the movies.

5. If Beale Street Could Talk 

So much of Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk plays out in the way people look at each other: with love, with longing, with expectation or anger or pride. All those gazes make the film breathtaking in its intimacy, even as it connects a large cast of characters across years and even countries. 

The plot is explicitly about racial injustice—it concerns a young black man (Stephan James) sent to jail on a false accusation, as his fiancée (Kiki Layne) discovers she is pregnant—and the film does not shy away from the ugliness of their ordeal. But what’s most striking about it is its insistence on joy. Beale Street is a film concerned not just with the hardships of life, but in the big and small blessings that make it worth living anyway.

4. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 

Did the world really need another Spider-Man movie? We didn’t think so, until we saw Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The film embraces Spidey’s comic-book roots (this is seriously one of the most gorgeous animated films in recent memory) while simultaneously putting a fresh and funny spin on the mythology we know so well.

Standouts among this new team of ever-stranger spider-people include Jake Johnson as a weary Peter Parker and John Mulaney as a weirdo Spider-Ham. But the story belongs to Shameik Moore’s winsome Miles Morales, a living embodiment of the idea that anyone can grow into that mask.

3. First Man 

First Man‘s IMAX moon landing sequence alone probably would’ve been enough to secure its on best-of-2018 lists. It’s a stunner of a scene, so huge and so crisp that you might think, for a moment, that you’ve actually been transported to the moon.

But what makes that moment hit so hard is everything leading up to it. First Man takes the time to show us all the blood, sweat, and tears—as well as the not-insignificant amount of luck—that have gone into Apollo 11. The greatest accomplishments in history are made up of thousands or millions of tinier achievements and setbacks. By focusing on the small stuff, First Man makes the big stuff feel enormous.

2. The Favourite 

“As it turns out, I am capable of much unpleasantness.” That line is uttered by Emma Stone’s Abigail, but it may as well be the slogan for every single character in this wickedly delicious film.

There’s pleasure in watching Abigail, Sarah (Rachel Weisz), and other courtiers jockey for influence, but there’s tragedy, too, in Olivia Colman’s Queen Anne—ostensibly the most powerful person in the land, but in reality a woman trapped in a gilded cage. Like the cakes she eats, in defiance of her stomach condition, The Favourite will go down sweet, come up acid, and have you going back for seconds.

1. Eighth Grade 

Eighth Grade is such a dead-on representation of adolescence that watching it feels less like remembering your youth than like reliving your youth, with all the expectation and mortification that that entails. This could be the best non-horror movie we’re too traumatized to ever watch again.

Which isn’t to say Eighth Grade is depressing. To the contrary, it ends on a sweetly optimistic note, with a sense that this little girl is going to be all right. Kayla may be unsure of who she is, what she wants to be, and how she wants to be seen—but Eighth Grade knows exactly what it’s doing, thanks to Elsie Fisher’s flawless lead performance and Bo Burnham’s confident direction.

Image: Lukas Schulze/Getty Images for European Athletics

Not many people can say they’ve had the glory of celebrating a European Cross Country Championship win in front of a crowd of cheering people.

Not many people can say they’ve become a meme after face-planting in the mud, either.

Well, Jimmy Gressier can say both. Over the weekend, the runner claimed victory in the men’s under-23, rounding off an epic race off with an attempted knee slide through the mud.

As you can tell from the following video, it didn’t quite go to plan.

Let’s get another angle on that:

It wasn’t long before the moment was well on its way to meme territory.

To be fair, a successful knee slide would have been far less memorable.

H/T Twitter Moments.

No, Doctor Who is not going to suddenly start killing everybody off (at least that we know of)

But it does look like the show is going to pull a Game of Thrones of sorts in terms of how long it will be between seasons. 

The 11th season of the legendary sci-fi show ended on Sunday, but we won’t see get to see much of The Doctor next year. 

BBC just announced that Season 12 of Doctor Who won’t be ready until 2020. This means that apart from a New Year’s special that will be broadcast on the very first day of 2019, the coming year will be totally free of Doctor Who. 

The showrunner of Doctor Who, Chris Chibnall, tells the BBC that work on the 12th season has in fact already begun. It was recently confirmed that the 13th Doctor, Jodie Whittaker, will be returning for Season 12. 

Christmas Day is usually synonymous with Doctor Who, but there won’t be one to look forward to this holiday season. Instead, fans will have to wait until January 1 to see the festive special, which has been given the very suitable title “Resolution.”

Brace yourself for a sparse 2019 without The Doctor.  

Image: Samir Hussein/WireImage

Brexit is so nightmarishly complicated that even the mere mention of the word is enough to bring the average British person out in shudders.

Not J.K. Rowling, though. Despite the ongoing stress that goes hand-in-hand with the daily headlines about politicians, votes, and Article 50, the Harry Potter author remains undeterred.

On Monday morning, following the EU court ruling that Britain will be allowed to cancel the Brexit decision if it decides to do so (even without permission from the 27 other member states of the EU), Rowling tweeted this:

She followed that up with a comment on the “will of the people” — a phrase that has consistently cropped up on both sides of the Brexit divide.

Those tweets aren’t a first, either. Rowling’s been doggedly tweeting her support for a second referendum for a while now.

So, is a second referendum an actual possibility?

Well it’s complicated, and that’s putting it mildly. On Tuesday, the House of Commons is voting on whether or not to give the deal Theresa May has negotiated the green light. 

If it doesn’t get the seal of approval from enough MPs, a second referendum is a possibility — but it’s only one of a fairly large range of possible scenarios.

Image: courtesy of JOhan deckmann

How to make dysfunctional love last forever is a self-help book I’d personally be very, very interested to read. 

Unfortunately, it’s not a real self-help book, and it can’t help solve that problem.

That’s because it’s really a work of book cover art by Instagram artist @JohanDeckmann, who’s page is dedicated to taking the most relatable thoughts and ideas and printing them into fake book covers, which he shares with his nearly 85,000 followers.

His mock self-help titles are so relatable, it’s actually a crying shame they’re not real books (though they are printed on old books from antique stores).

Johan Deckmann, a Copenhagen-based artist, psychotherapist, and author, came up with the book-cover art format when he read a beautiful old book, much like the fake ones from his Instagram.

“I was reading a beautiful old copy of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and I realised that this would become my artistic expression — my profession as a psychotherapist combined with the authority of the book,” Dickmann tells Mashable. The result is a lot of fake book covers that aim to be “a portrait of the modern human condition and self-sabotage.”

Deckmann tells Mashable that these mock self help-books are just manifestations of whatever is at the top of his mind. And even though his work comes off as very relatable for many of us existentially confused millennial Instagram scrollers, that’s not the real aim of Deckmann’s work. “Whether it’s relatable to others is out of my hands,” Deckmann says. 

The comments on Deckmann’s Instagram, though, have a lot of people chanting “same,” and “my life in a nutshell.”

Deckmann insists that most of his works are not autobiographical. “I get inspired by anything from human behaviour in general to situations in connection with my practice to the horrible condition of our world,” Deckmann says. “Not to mention pure fantasy.” 

One of Deckmann’s own favourite pieces on his Instagram is a book cover featuring a child on a swing, with the title: How to feel the way you felt before you knew what you know know. 

“It describes the loss of innocence, which I think everybody experiences whether they perceive it or not,” Deckmann explains. 

Reading these universally relatable book titles, it’s hard not to start wondering what such a book would actually say on the inside. But Deckmann says he can’t even begin to imagine that. It’s not a part of his work.

“I leave that to the viewer to imagine,” Deckmann says. “That’s your story, your work of art, and that’s way more interesting than anything I could ever come up with.”

If these books were to come out, we’re pretty sure they’d be instant bestsellers.