I’d heard about 5G. But I didn’t know just how fast it would be until I was watching myself miss free throws in real time.

On Monday, Verizon opened the doors to its 5G Experience pop-up shop in downtown Los Angeles. In the space, visitors tested out Verizon’s 5G Home network. 

Internet service providers say 5G will be hundreds of times faster than 4G, and at least four and a half times faster than wireless broadband. Last year, average download speeds for broadband were around 65 Mbps. Verizon promises its “5G Ultra Wideband” — despite sounding like a pair of maternity pants — will deliver speeds between 300 Mbps and up to 1 GB per second.

Those numbers are exciting. But they’re just numbers. To showcase what that actually means, Verizon filled its pop-up demo with devices that streamed and multi-tasked without a hitch. Now, the “experience” was clearly an optimized version of the network — perfectly constructed to deliver the best possible version of 5G. But if it bears any resemblance to reality, the promise of 5G could be the real deal. 

Verizon launched its first commercial 5G broadband network in October in four cities: Houston, LA, Sacramento and Indianapolis. 

Image: rachel kraus/mashable

The entirety of the four Chosen Cities aren’t wired with 5G … yet. For example, my home on the Westside of Los Angeles doesn’t have the option.

We’re not talking about mobile 5G. That may take awhile, though Verizon and Samsung announced Monday they’re unveiling a phone that will be able to connect to 5G in the first half of 2019. 5G-connected enabled iPhones, on the other hand, likely won’t arrive until 2020.

Image: rachel kraus/mashable

Still, Verizon’s 5G home network might be about to make life for streamers, gamers, and other people who consume a whole lot of content online a lot less annoying.

The pop-up had three experiences to demonstrate what 5G can do. The space was connected to 5G via a node on a telephone pole across the street, which beamed the signal to the receiver in a corner of the room. None of the devices used for the demos were hardwired to the internet.

Image: rachel kraus/mashable

Verizon first showcased the power of 5G to stream a high-quality virtual reality experience. I sat in a circle swivel chair, put a VR headset and headphones on, and was told by a very well-trained employee that I would be taking a trip to the moon.

A VR video promoting the new Neil Armstrong movie, First Man, played. It was a little cheesy, but getting to sit in the spacecraft, and swivel around to see Earth out the window, was affecting. And, most importantly, those millions of dynamic pixels in 3D were all coming through a wireless connection — without any lag.

Image: rachel kraus/mashable

My WiFi sometimes gets cranky just streaming Hulu shows. The moon VR experience was in a different league in terms of data consumption, and 5G seemed to handle it no problem.

Next, a Verizon employee tried to get me to play Rocket League, which was stressful, since gaming is not something I do. He explained to me that we were playing a graphics-intensive game — one you can normally only play on a PC or game console — on a phone connected to the 5G network. A gaming handset connected to the phone via Bluetooth, and the phone wirelessly broadcast its screen to a high-definition TV above. Two other gamers on TV-connected phones played along, all of us connected to Steam via the 5G network. 

Image: rachel kraus/mashable

I got the picture that this was a feature that someone like my partner — who ran an impossibly long ethernet cable through our attic so that he could hard-wire his gaming computer to our router — would definitely appreciate. And no more hearing a swear word plus “I’m lagging out!” from the other room while I watch Netflix.

Finally, I shuffled over to a tiny basketball court, where two employees held basketballs in their hands. I put on a VR headset that had a camera attached to it. The camera livestreamed its feed to the VR headset, without any discernible lag. As an employee talked to me, standing in front of me IRL, I watched his lips move through the livestreamed image of him, perfectly in time to the words I was hearing with my own analog ears. When I watched him hand me the ball through my headset, I knew just where to reach out and grab it.

Image: rachel kraus/mashable

Then came the embarrassing part. The basketball demo was meant to show the livestream’s speed and accuracy. So, ostensibly, I would be able to shoot hoops, just as I would in real life. I held the ball, bent my knees, released, and watched the basketball fly past my eyes into the air … and way to the left of the basket.

I am happy to report that I was just as terrible at shooting hoops in livestreamed VR as I was in real life. But I got the point: livestreaming with 5G was apparently no different to my weak human brain than seeing something with my own eyeballs.

Verizon set up a showcased living room, demonstrating the router and receiver set-up for 5G, which looked a lot like what most people are probably used to. The difference was that the receiver wasn’t hardwired to the internet — only the nodes outside were. 

Despite the literal hoops Verizon made its 5G network jump through, it’s impossible to say for sure whether 5G will be the Prince That Was Promised by the ISPs. The experience lab had a special set of large receivers power the internet in the room; ordinarily, a home would just have one considerably smaller one. Plus, the node the receivers were connecting to was just across the street. That sort of proximity won’t be guaranteed for every home, or device, in the future. Which is all to say that at the “5G experience,” everything was optimized to work perfectly.

However, I have been to enough conferences, concerts, meetings, and public events where WiFi and sometimes even the hardwired internet fails. At the Verizon experience, I didn’t notice any load time for anything — not even the VR moon landing. I kid you not when I say that not a single frame was out of place, including during the gaming showcase and my basketball #fail. So even knowing that this event was staged to show off Verizon’s shiny new toy, I still walked away impressed, and ready to live in the 5G future, where we can do away with that silly concept: patience.

Try as it might, Just Cause 4 does not live up to its predecessors.

In a game that’s built around normally fun elements like chaos, destruction, and revolution, Just Cause 4 ends up getting in its own way far too often with extraneous menu-based systems, a wild camera and controls, and (on PC) a litany of performance issues and inexplicable game crashes. It’s a disappointment, to be frank, and made me want to give up and play Just Cause 2 instead.

In my admittedly short time with the game, there were a few moments where things were clicking and I was having a good time. But then the game would crash. I’d take a couple minutes to boot up, go back to the mission to try it again, and then the game would crash again.

I changed some of the graphics settings to see if that would help, but the game continued to crash occasionally, which made getting through missions very difficult and severely slowed down my progress. I haven’t gotten through very much of the game because of this.

The portion of the game I have gotten through is… fine.

The world of Just Cause 4

Rico Rodriguez is back again to blow shit up in Just Cause 4 and help disenfranchised people fight back against their oppressive government. It’s the same story that has been the excuse for violence in the last three games, except this time the action goes down in the fictional South American country of Solís.

With his trusty grappling hook, parachute, and wingsuit, Rico navigates the world with relative ease, able to hook himself onto any vehicle and seamlessly maneuver into the driver’s seat to drive or fly his way to the next mission, whatever it is.

The government Rico’s trying to topple is working on various projects that control the weather, causing blizzards, tornadoes, and storms throughout Solís. Supporting them is the private military organization Black Hand, which bring all kinds of weapons and tactical vehicles to fights

To keep the story moving forward, Rico has to fight his way through enemy bases to keep pushing the warfront forward, unlocking new areas on the map and new missions along the way. It’s pretty similar to past games, and is a formula that works pretty well for a lot of games, but all the problems surrounding the premise makes it unbearable.

Bugs galore

Just Cause 4 is full of bugs.

First of all, there are all the crashes that I mentioned earlier. I played the game on two different desktop computers with two completely different hardware builds, and turned down the graphics settings on both to see if it would lessen the crashes, but the game insisted on randomly exiting to desktop.

I’ve run into a handful of bugs and weird problems

It mostly occurs during missions, which is particularly annoying because I have to start the missions over (and usually travel back to the start of the mission, which adds several minutes of repetitive gameplay). Sometimes it happens when I’m just traveling around. Nothing in particular seems to set it off.

Outside of crashes, I’ve run into a handful of bugs and weird problems. One time I was driving to a mission and somebody about 40 feet away from me screamed and died for no reason. They just fell out of their chair, dead.

One time I was in the middle of a firefight and Rico just teleported about four feet to the right while I was trying to shoot someone.

There are also weird physics things, like when I’m driving a car and hit another car that’s exactly the same as mine, and their car goes flying through the air while mine continues non-plussed.

There are also a bunch of things that kind of seem like bugs, but aren’t. There’s the poor visuals (even when settings are maxed out), major framerate drops, horrible motion blur when driving, and obnoxiously accurate and aware enemies.

Unwieldy controls

Driving cars and flying various aircraft is not very fun, which is a huge bummer because that tends to be my favorite part of these kinds of games.

As mentioned above, when driving or flying there is way too much motion blur which just makes looking at the screen unpleasant.

But even more annoying is the controls. When playing with a mouse and keyboard, driving and flying feels incomplete, like the developers never tested what it actually feels like. Turning is way too sensitive and there’s quite a bit of delay from input, which causes a lot of overturning. And as you’re overturning all over the place, the camera whips around far too quickly.

There is also delay when aiming weapons in vehicles, like the missile-equipped helicopters. It makes hitting moving targets very difficult. Normally I enjoy using a helicopter to blow up tons of enemies, but in Just Cause 4 it’s frustrating.

The problems in this game are maddening.

Ruining a good thing

Just Cause was decent. Just Cause 2 was amazing. Just Cause 3 was really good. Just Cause 4 took a lot of what made those games what they were and muddled them up with poor design and a bad, buggy backbone.

Hopefully with updates the game will get better and a bit more playable, but as it stands right now, this game is pretty bad. I cannot recommend it on any grounds, especially given its proclivity to crash.

Instead, just play Just Cause 2. It’s so much better.

Camila Cabello is coming off a whirlwind weekend during which she wowed crowds at KIIS FM’s Jingle Ball in Los Angeles and NOW!’s Poptopia in San Jose, California. And now the 21-year-old has a few more reasons to celebrate. Taking to Instagram on Sunday (December 2), she reveled in the news that her debut album, Camila, has gone platinum, “Havana” has gone seven times platinum, and “Never Be the Same” has gone two times platinum.

“THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST SPECIAL, MEANINGFUL THINGS IN THE WORLD,” she captioned a photo of her shiny new plaque. “Numbers and awards don’t drive me, but it is really special that this many people wanted to listen to my music.”

The former Fifth Harmony singer went on to thank fans for their support while gushing about the opportunity to finally create an album of her own. “It was one of the most special, intoxicating, consuming experiences of my life,” she wrote. “I poured every part of myself into it and it really feels like every song is my baby.”

Perhaps most thrillingly, Cabello capped her post with a brief update on the status of her new music — and it definitely sounds promising. “I can’t wait to show you the next chapter soon – it’s already the most special thing I’ve ever worked on and I am already peeing myself.”

As for what we can expect to hear on album No. 2, the opportunities are endless. Producers Brian Lee and Louis Bell, who worked with the singer on Camila, told MTV News earlier this year that “her depth of what she knows musically is huge — she could do whatever she wants.”

Check out Cabello’s full post below.

Tumblr just thoroughly pissed off a whole bunch of adults, and now has to face the wrath of their memes.

After the website known for its lighthearted content, artwork, and yes, porn, announced it will be banning all adult content from its platform on Dec. 17, lots of Tumblr-loving adults got Very Mad Online.

The drastic new policy comes weeks after Tumblr’s iOS app was temporarily removed from the App Store due to child pornography.

The site, which previously allowed all sorts of NSFW content will now limit “adult content” such as “photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts,” per a statement.

As you might expect, many Tumblr users who were not offended by and even may have enjoyed the site’s lax, NSFW content, weren’t too pleased to hear the news.

Many shared their outrage via Twitter, creating Tumblr-esque memes, dragging the site for not taking tougher action on child porn and on-platform trolls. 

It’s been a tough week for those who enjoy consuming porn online, as Starbucks recently announced it plans to block access to porn from its public WiFi, too.

Stay strong, everyone. Twitter probably doesn’t give a fuck about porn.

Image: Ken Towner/Evening Standard/REX/Shutterstock

Despite what you may have heard, Netflix is not removing Friends – at least not yet.

The panic started when users saw a note of imminent expiry next to Friends on the Netflix mobile app, but Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos told The Hollywood Report that it’s a rumor.

We’ve had scares like this in the past, like when The Office was allegedly leaving and, well, didn’t.

Netflix first started hosting Friends in 2015, to the delight of its subscribers, and it also became a big incentive for new users to sign up. 

THR did note that WarnerMedia, which owns Friends, is planning to launch its own on-demand streaming service, so losing Friends from Netflix would be akin to losing Disney movies or Marvel shows, in that they’ll likely appear elsewhere in a matter of time.

Mashable has reached out to Netflix for comment. 

Despite releasing “Perfect Duet” more than a year ago, Ed Sheeran and Beyoncé never linked up for a live performance of the doe-eyed ballad — probably because she’s been off touring with hubby Jay-Z, while he’s been playing stadiums of his own. But that finally changed on Sunday (December 2), when the English crooner and the Lemonade legend took the stage together in South Africa at Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100, a star-studded event honoring the legacy of Nelson Mandela.

For their inaugural performance of “Perfect Duet,” Sheeran and his trusty guitar joined a fuschia-clad Bey onstage at Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium, in front of a crowd of nearly 100,000 people. As seen in the footage below, the stripped-back stage design kept the focus entirely on the pair, as fans sang along and lit up the stadium with cell phone lights. Their harmonies were heavenly, their musical chemistry was stunning, and it was simply… perfect.

“Perfect Duet,” a re-recorded version of Sheeran’s lovestruck Divide ballad — and many a couple’s wedding song over the past year — topped the Billboard Hot 100 for five straight weeks beginning in December of last year. It marked Beyoncé and Sheeran’s first collaboration on wax, though the two had previously teamed up for an acoustic performance of “Drunk in Love” at another Global Citizen Festival, in 2015. Judging by the magic they make onstage together, hopefully they’ll treat fans to more joint performances soon.

Image: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

When Tesla CEO Elon Musk introduced a lower-priced Model 3 a few months ago, he deducted thousands in federal tax incentives from the sticker price. On Monday, according to Reuters, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the subsidies for electric vehicles from Tesla and other carmakers would end in 2020 or 2021.

Trump’s administration has long floated the idea of eliminating the tax break. Last week, he said he was thinking about cutting electric vehicle subsidies for General Motors after it announced plans to shut down five U.S. car plants. 

As it stands now, Americans who buy a qualified electric vehicle (like the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt, or any Tesla) receive a $7,500 tax credit. That’s a sizeable chunk meant to incentivize electric vehicle (EV) adoption. But there’s a cap for car makers. After 200,000 electric vehicles sold, the subsidy is halved every six months until it disappears.

Tesla hit its 200,000th EV sale in July, so the incentive program is phasing out. Tesla buyers are still eligible for a tax credit, even though it will dwindle to $1,875 by the end of 2019. General Motors is expected to hit 200,000 cars by the end of the year. 

For other companies like Volvo, Volkswagen, and Toyota that are far from the 200,000 car limit, ending the subsidies could seriously hurt their ambitious goals to produce more — if not switch entirely to — electric vehicles in the next few years. 

It’s not all terrible news for lower-emission vehicles. Many states and even local jurisdictions are pushing EV rebates, credits, and tax breaks and subsidizing electric charging networks and infrastructure.

Musk has supported the federal tax program for years and has tried to change the law concerning the cap for all electric vehicles. He’s also argued for a carbon tax to disincentivize traditional car use.

We reached out to the leading EV sellers in the U.S.: Tesla and GM. A GM spokesperson said the company supports the consumer credit and doesn’t think there should be a cap. 

“We believe an important part of reaching a zero emissions future and establishing the U.S. as the leader in electrification is to continue to provide a federal tax credit to help make electric vehicles more affordable for all customers,” the spokesperson said in an email.

Tesla has not yet responded to a request for comment. 

AICAN is a program designed by Rutgers’ Art & AI Lab that’s basically an AI artist. After looking at nearly 500 years of art history, it learned the ins and outs of artistic aesthetic, and created some pieces of its own. Who knows, maybe AI art will be hanging in museums around the world one day.

The Dog Liberation Movement has officially begun.

Take a look at this Frenchie, who used their dog wiles to break free from their designated dog zone. Unable to figure out how the dog kept escaping, the owner set up a camera to catch it in the act.  

Congratulations on your dramatic escape, Frenchie.