TM: More Than 350,000 Streamyx Users In Non-Unifi Areas To Receive Speed Upgrades Streamyx users, you are not forgotten.

Malesia



On top of a RM79 budget plan and free upgrades for existing Unifi users, TM has also unveiled plans for its pool of Streamyx users.
More than 350,000 Streamyx users not in Unifi coverage areas will receive double the speed upgrades of their existing Streamyx packages, TM revealed in a media briefing yesterday, 12 July
For some 340,000 Streamyx users within Unifi's coverage, they will be offered to migrate to Unifi packages.

The prices of these Unifi packages won't be too far off from current Streamyx plans, said Imri Mokhtar, the Executive Vice President for Unifi as reported by Lowyat.net.

It is unknown when the migration will commence.

Streamyx users can visit Unifi's official website starting 15 July and get to know their upgrade options
According to Malaysiakini, which quoted Bernama, there are about 800,000 home Unifi customers and 690,000 Streamyx customers, out of which 350,000 Streamyx customers reside in Unifi coverage areas.

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Pea shortage predicted in Britain after hot weather spell

Malesia
shortage of peas is feared in Britain as recent hot weather means they cannot form in their pods.

The dry, warm climate has meant fewer pods and smaller peas are being produced as they do not have enough water to fully grow.

It is also proving the perfect breeding ground for specific types of bugs, such as the pea moth and bruchid beetle, which feed on both peas and beans at this time of year, causing further problems for pea stocks.
The UK is the largest producer of peas for freezing in Europe - producing 150,000 tonnes of them a year - and is 90 per cent self sufficient.

In 2016/17 approximately 8,652 tonnes of peas were exported from the UK to countries within the EU.
But all of this could be dramatically reduced after this summer has seen several weeks of warm temperatures more than ten degrees above the average.

Met Office figures revealed that June this year was the driest on record in some parts of the country.

Franek Smith, president of the British Edible Pulses Association, told The Grocer: "Though the life cycle of the plant means they die in the field and dry out before harvest, the hot weather is forcing them to die before they reach maturity.

"The peas have only just formed in their pods, so stopping growth now means there are fewer and smaller peas in the pods depreciating value of the yield.

"The number of pods is also reduced as top flowers have aborted production due to hot, dry weather."

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Supermoon eclipse to hit Friday the 13th

Melbourne
SUPERSTITIOUS Aussies might want to stay inside today as a super-size new moon eclipse hits on Friday the 13th for the first time in 44 years.
WHILE stargazers will be treated to a solar event that hasn’t taken place for 44 years, superstitious Aussies might want to stay inside.

That’s because today — on a date typically associated with bad omens and hockey mask-wearing psycho killers — a super-size new moon will block out part of the sun.

Millions of Australians will be able to catch a glimpse of the rare phenomenon on the country’s southeastern coast and Tasmania, while Kiwis can witness it on New Zealand’s Stewart Island.

The planet has not seen a solar eclipse fall on a Friday the 13th since December 1974 and if you miss this one, you won’t see another until 2080.
A solar eclipse occurs when the moon and the sun are aligned so the Earth glides through at least part of the moon’s shadow. That when the moon’s disk seems to take a chunk out of the sun. In the event of a total eclipse, the moon fully covers the sun.

Those braving the cold to watch today’s partial eclipse, will witness the Earth pass through the moon’s wide shadow cone, sending a slice of the sun into darkness.

Believers in the supernatural will be even more worried to hear that the moon is 50,000km closer to Earth than it usually is — creating a phenomenon that’s popularly known as a supermoon.

But, the amount of the sun’s disk that will be covered will depend on where you are.

According to National Geographic, Melbourne will see only a tiny nibble, as less than half of 1 per cent of the sun’s disk will be covered, while those in Hobart will see 3.5 per cent of the sun’s disk blotted out.


In southern Australia, you’ll be able to witness the phenomena from about 1pm and it is due to last about 40 minutes.

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2018 Emmy Nominations: Some Progress and a Lot of the Same Old, Same Old

Sidney
For the first time in Emmy history, a streaming service – that would be Netflix – has more nominations to its credit than any other network. That’s a notable milestone, as our Joe Adalian pointed out, especially since Netflix has only been in the original programming business for five years and HBO has been the reigning Emmy nomination king for the past 17. (On the other hand, Netflix only surpassed HBO by four nominations. Given how much Netflix spent on programming and how many shows they put out in the past year, HBO’s Emmy return on investment is still pretty impressive.)

Still, that narrow victory confirms something that even the most casual observer of the TV landscape has been aware of for a while: that Netflix has become the dominant force in the medium and that viewers increasingly stream their television rather than watch it by traditional means. In other words, the Netflix Emmy triumph is at once significant and a case of the Emmys telling us something that we already knew years ago. The Emmys does that a lot: make moves that suggest the voters are forward-thinking even as certain choices highlight the degree to which they’re still a few steps behind the times and TV audiences.
Look at the field of nominees and you can find multiple examples of this. Voters finally acknowledged that Modern Family no longer should be nominated for outstanding comedy, which is something they should have figured out four years ago at least. On the other hand, that omission made room for three series that were brand new: GLOW, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Barry. On the other other hand, in the same category voters also nominated the reboot of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which, while amusing at times, hit pretty much the same beats the show hit during its original run. (They didn’t nominate another reboot, Will & Grace, that also worked with familiar instruments, which speaks to the Emmys’ lack of interest in traditional sitcoms and an overall inclination away from network TV and toward prestige-y cable and streaming offerings.)

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So Should You Buy The 'Fortnite' Season 5 Battle Pass, Or Pass On The Pass?

New York
Fortnite's Season 5 battle pass is out today, and for those players that like to play both Fortnite and dress-up, that means it's time to pay the piper. For those that don't know, the battle pass is a one-time purchase you can make that allows you access to a whole treasure trove of skins, gliders, pickaxes, emotes and more. You don't get them automatically, however: you have to level up and unlock them through play.  It's a phenomenal value for what you get, so long as we are assigning a concept of value to cosmetic digital goods. Which we are! The real question, however, is: should you buy it? Does it make the game better enough to spend the requisite $10? Let's think about this question.

So we'll ask ourselves a few questions. First is: do you have $10? Or, in another way, what is $10 worth to you? If $10 is a lot of money to you, this is a bigger decision than it might be if $10 is what you spend on lunch every day. Fortnite is, of course, a free-to-play game, so you shouldn't really feel like the $10 is something you need in order to enjoy Fortnite: Battle Royale.

Let's think for a second about what you get if you don't buy the battle pass. You get the basic game of Fortnite: Battle Royale, for starters, and it's the exact same game a paying player gets. As far as Season 5 is concerned, that means that you get all the same map changes, all the same new weapons, vehicles, limited time modes, in-game events and more. The most epic moment of Season 4 was arguably the one-time-only rocket launch, and everyone in the game could watch that no matter whether they paid or not.

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Massive response to sale prompts Build-A-Bear to shut down lines, offer vouchers

San Francisco

Families went so nuts for a Build-A-Bear sale that stores had to shut down 01:25
(CNN)The "overwhelming" response to a sale event at Build-A-Bear Workshop prompted the retailer to shut down long lines outside stores across the United States and Canada.

Crowds waited outside stores well before opening time on Thursday. The retailer announced before noon it was cutting off lines and not accepting more customers "due to crowds and safety concerns" from local authorities.
"Based on the information available to us before the day began, we could not have predicted this unprecedented reaction to our Pay Your Age Day event," Build-A-Bear said.
Build-A-Bear announced its Pay Your Age event earlier this week. Customers who show up to the stores can pay their current age for the popular stuffed animals. On Wednesday, the retailer wrote on its Facebook page that it was "anticipating potential of long lines and wait times."
Shoppers braving the wait times shared photos and videos of lines snaking down the halls of malls and shopping areas.
Allison Viron, from McMurray, Pennsylvania, got in line outside the Build-A-Bear South Hills Village location in Pittsburgh around 9:15 a.m. to get stuffed animals for her daughters, Caroline and Catharine,
"The line was cut off sometime in the 10 a.m. hour," Viron said, adding that she was still in line inside the store at 4 p.m., and there were "hundreds of people behind" her.
Alex Sullivan took her 4-year-old daughter Madison to the Westfield Countryside Mall in Clearwater, Florida. They arrived shortly before 8 a.m.
Sullivan said doors opened earlier and they were able to leave the mall -- with a stuffed animal that smelled like cotton candy and a happy child -- before 1 p.m.

"It was obviously very difficult for [the store] to control the line and the people in it or trying to get in it or around it," Sullivan said. "However, the staff members inside the store still did an amazing job making the experience special for children making their build-a-bears."
The store distributed vouchers for customers who waited in line but left without a stuffed animal and will also make the vouchers available to US and Canada Build-A-Bear Bonus Club members who log into their account by Sunday, July 15. The coupons will be honored through August 31, the statement said.
"Our goal with the voucher extension is to enable us to better flow traffic to the stores over the next several weeks to avoid long lines and wait times as much as possible," the store added in the statement.
Shawn Jackson took one of the coupons being handed out at the Build-A-Bear store at La Plaza Mall in McAllen, Texas.

"I'm all for a good deal, but those lines were insane!" she wrote in an Instagram post.
CNN's David Williams contributed to this report.

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Skyscraper review: The Rock can't save this uninspired homage to old-school action flicks

Dwayne Johnson dabbles in some middle age self-doubt in his latest movie, set inside a 225-storey tower in Hong Kong.

The hulking, muscle-bound actor is known for bringing slapstick smarts to comedy action films (google him bouncing berries off his gigantic pecs in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island), but he plays an amputee in a decidedly more sullen mood here.

He's a retired cop who once led hostage rescue missions, until a botched job ended in multiple casualties and lost him a leg.

He's never forgiven himself.
On his first day as a security consultant in the world's tallest building, however, he gets a shot at redemption when a group of heavily armed psychos sets the tower alight, trapping its reclusive billionaire owner (Chin Han) in a hi-tech penthouse suite, and Will's wife Sarah (Neve Campbell) and two children in their mid-level apartment.

Johnson goes from vulnerable dad to rampaging papa bear as he races against the clock to avert tragedy, at one point even turning his prosthetic limb into a life-saving prop.
There's the DNA of mid-70s disaster classics like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno in every pixel, but Skyscraper is more homage than daring reinvention.

It does what it says on the tin: there are improbable leaps onto narrow ledges and fire roaring up lift shafts.

There's gunplay and wrestling, too, and at least a couple of interesting villains: a beautiful female assassin played by Australian Taiwanese actor and model Hannah Quinlivan and a cold-blooded mercenary played by rugged Danish actor Roland Møller (Land of Mine), who's the mastermind of the operation.

Unfortunately, writer director Rawson Marshall Thurber does Møller a disservice by failing to carve out a more memorable role for him, and in a way this flaw is emblematic of the film itself.

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Kylie Jenner set to become youngest self-made billionaire in history

Reality TV star Kylie Jenner is on track to become the youngest self-made billionaire in history thanks to the booming cosmetics company she launched two years ago, Forbes magazine reported on Wednesday.
Jenner, 20, half-sister of Kim, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian, debuted Kylie Cosmetics in 2016 with $29 lip kits containing matching lipstick and lip liner, and has since sold more than $US630 million ($855 million) worth of makeup.

Forbes said it valued her company at nearly $800 million and that Jenner owns 100 per cent of it.

Adding millions from TV programs, endorsements and after-tax dividends from her company, Forbes said Jenner was "conservatively" worth $900 million.

Another year of growth would make her the youngest-self made billionaire ever, male or female, the magazine said, surpassing Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg - who became a billionaire at age 23.
According to Forbes, the company has only five full-time employees, with Jenner’s mother, Kris Jenner, handling finances and public relations in exchange for a 10 per cent management fee.

Kylie Jenner first grabbed the spotlight as part of the "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" reality TV show with her mother and siblings. Forbes estimated that Kim Kardashian, who has her own cosmetics, clothing and mobile games lines, is worth $350 million.

In an interview with Forbes, Jenner credited social media for helping drive her success.

"Social media is an amazing platform," she said. "I have such easy access to my fans and my customers."

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It’s 7-Eleven Day and that means free Slurpees, $1 hot dogs

An ice-cold Slurpee from 7-Eleven is a great way to cool down on a hot day in Sacramento, especially when that Slurpee is free.

To mark its 91st birthday, the chain is giving away small Slurpees Wednesday, July 11 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. This includes the featured Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries limited-time flavor.

“Free Slurpee day may be the most anticipated day of the year for millions of 7‑Eleven customers and new customers alike,” said Raj Kapoor, 7‑Eleven senior vice president for fresh food and proprietary beverages in a press release. “7‑Eleven Day is a celebration, not only of our birthday, but more importantly, of our customers."

7-Eleven launched the Slurpee, named after the sound it makes when traveling through a straw, 52 years ago in 1966 and has celebrated its birthday with free Slurpees on 7/11 since 2002, according to the release.
The free drink is available at participating stores while supplies last. The Irving, Texas-based company expects to give away an estimated 9 million Slurpees, according to Business Insider.

7-Eleven operates 66,000 locations worldwide with 12,000 of those in North America. There are 1,730 stores in California with more than a dozen in the Sacramento area. To find your closest store, head over to 7-Eleven's official website.

The convenience store chain is also offering $1 hot dogs on Wednesday and seven days of deals following the 7-Eleven Day celebration. The items on offer will range from artisan sandwiches to "decadent" brownies.

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