Sunday Link-Off: Back Room Politics

nicole-williams-kore13-06Welcome to the first Feedly edition of the link-off. I’ve gone to Feedly to replace Google Reader. It’s not perfect but I think it’s the best replacement. I’m also taking to Reddit to find cool links now too. It’s a bit of a change of sourcing but hopefully you won’t notice too much of a difference.

Anyhow, let’s get this show on the road. First, here’s Canadian model Nicole Williams.

Mohamed Morsi is no longer the president of Egypt. Was this another people’s revolution or did the military intervention make this more of a coup in all but name? (Vice)

The story of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has gotten more interesting. The leaders of Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia have all said they would grant Snowden asylum. The Americans aren’t happy about that. (RT)

And when you’re in the middle of a controversy, recruiting isn’t a good idea. Right, NSA? (The Guardian)

Continue reading

Caption This: June 29 – July 5, 2013

Inspired by the Globe and Mail’s caption writing person, we waste our time writing funny picture captions for some of the more interesting photos we come across when blogging. So here are some of the best pictures from the past week with a funny (-ish) caption. Continue reading

Gunpoint Review: Spying Excellence

gunpoint-logoIt’s not everyday that one single indie game, an indie game that’s the first effort of a former gaming journalist, causes the whole of the gaming press to pause and take notice. But that’s what we have with Gunpoint, the rookie effort of now-former PC Gamer writer Tom Francis. I say that he’s now a former PC Gamer writer because the commercial success of Gunpoint has given Francis the financial freedom to pursue game development full-time.

So could the debut effort of a man who hasn’t made a game before and put it together in off-the-shelf game making software be worthy of all the praise it received? Yes. Yes, it can.

Continue reading

F1 Power Rankings: German Grand Prix

Just one week after a controversial British Grand Prix, we’re right back at it for the next round of the 2013 Formula One World Championship. This time, it’s the German Grand Prix from the Nurburgring. Fortunately for Pirelli and the teams, the new Nurburgring is quite a bit slower than Silverstone so there shouldn’t be as many tyre issues. That doesn’t mean that we’re likely to hear less about Pirelli’s issues.

Continue reading

Wednesday Link-Off: With or Without Google Reader

chrissy-teigen-gq13-09Welcome to the post-Google Reader era of The Lowdown Blog. So this weekend has seen troubles with me finding a new RSS reader and WordPress screw up image embedding so now most of them won’t work in a paragraph. So I don’t know if the linkdump image is going to be to the right of this paragraph or above. It might eventually sort itself out. I’ve noticed that this has gone retroactive so it looks like some update got pushed down that messed up the layout.

Anyway, let’s start this post with Chrissy Teigen.

Getting kicked out of two of the most popular bands of the 90s would completely devastate most men but Jason Everman isn’t most men. (New York Times)

The iWatch isn’t something that Apple has to make for you or me but it has to make it for their investors. (The Atlantic Wire)

The NRA might blame video games but it looks like Newtown school shooter Adam Lanza was a student of mass murders. (Orlando Sentinel)

Continue reading

F1 British Grand Prix: Safety Dance

f1-2013-britain-rosberg-victoryThe story of the day at the British Grand Prix was the same as what it always seems to be this season. Tyres have been an issue all season but it came to a head in Britain. The race was exciting but it had an unexpected added aspect of danger as there were a number of tyre failures. Nico Rosberg may have crossed the line first but he certainly wasn’t the story of the race.

Continue reading

25 New Reasons to Love Canada

Here at The Lowdown Blog, we love our country. Not only that but we love the women of Canada. I might be a bit biased but I think that Canadian women are the greatest in the world. Since I know the Yanks will be promoting their finest on Independence Day, to celebrate Canada Day here’s another look at 25 of the hottest Canadian women. Happy Canada Day!

Continue reading

Sunday Link-Off: Common Sense Prevailing

andi-muise-fredericks13-07It’s the last link-off of the Google Reader era. What am I going to do without it? I basically rely on it to help run my blogging pseudo-empire. Well, I’m boned. In the meantime, here’s our pre-Canada Day linkdump. We have our usual Canada Day fare tomorrow with the F1 recap and analysis on Tuesday.

So let’s start off our day before Canada Day post with Canadian model Andi Muise.

Texas governor Rick Perry is just the worst. He thinks filibustering god Wendy Davis should support a near ban on abortions in Texas because she was a teenage mother. What a fool. (Think Progress)

Rather than allow general trolling, two major newspapers used a new commenting system  to categorize the people commenting on stories about gay marriage. (Nieman Lab)

Pandora might be great for us as music lovers but it doesn’t pay to have your music on there. (The Trichordist)

Continue reading

Caption This: June 22 – 28, 2013

Inspired by the Globe and Mail’s caption writing person, we waste our time writing funny picture captions for some of the more interesting photos we come across when blogging. So here are some of the best pictures from the past week with a funny (-ish) caption. Continue reading

Xbox One vs. PS4: Who’s Really Over-Delivering Value?

playstation-4-vs-xbox-one-banner

In an interview on Bloomberg TV last week, Microsoft President of Interactive Entertainment, Don Mattrick, said that the Xbox One was over-delivering on value. In fact, the Xbox boss went so far as to say, “We’re delivering thousands of dollars of value to people.”

The problem is that no one apart from Mattrick, Microsoft employees and the staunchest of Xbox loyalists believe this to be the case. When you look at the dollars and cents of the next generation of consoles, it’s pretty obvious that the Xbox isn’t actually over-delivering and definitely not thousands of dollars worth of over-delivery.

Continue reading