Snag some Comic-Con deals on movies from Google Play this weekend!

The San Diego Comic-Con is well underway, and to celebrate Google Play has some pretty sweet deals on superhero movies!

Following along with all the news coming out of the San Diego Comic-Con is always fun but if you’re looking jump even deeper into the superhero world, why not take in a movie at home this weekend? Right now, Google Play has discounted a bunch of superhero movies that you can rent or purchase. Everything from live action movies to animated features is available, so there’s sure to be something that piques your interest!

Some of the available titles:

• Blade Runner: The Final Cut Special Edition – $2.99 Rent – $9.99 Buy HD
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – $2.99 Rent – $9.99 Buy HD
• Justice League vs. Teen Titans – $2.99 Rent – $9.99 Buy HD
• Batman: Bad Blood – $2.99 Rent – $9.99 Buy HD
• Kick-Ass 2 (Extended) – $2.99 Rent – $7.99 Buy HD
• Serenity – $2.99 Rent – $7.99 Buy HD
• Ghost Rider – $2.99 Rent – $7.99 Buy HD
• Ghost Rider Spirit Of Vengeance $2.99 Rent – $8.99 Buy HD
• Planet Hulk – $2.99 Rent – $4.99 Buy HD
• Thor Tales of Asgard – $3.99 Rent – $4.99 Buy HD
• Spider-Man Trilogy – $19.99 Buy HD
• Amazing Spider Man Bundle – $14.99 Buy HD
• Watchmen – Director’s Cut – $5.99 Buy HD
• Batman: The Killing Joke – $9.99 Buy HD

Looking at the full list, one could say there are some blockbuster superhero movies that are missing but there are also plenty of gems in there as well. The Watchmen, Planet Hulk, and Serenity are on my list of suggestions.

See all the Comic-Con Movie Deals on Google Play

Plastic-plucking robots are the future of recycling

We are living in the Age of Plastic. In 2015, the world’s industries created 448 million tons of it — twice as much as it did in 1998. — and the rate of production is only accelerating. However, our recycling efforts have not matched pace. In fact, according to the EPA, barely 14 percent of plastic products are recycled globally. But a new generation of recycling technology is here to keep the world’s plastics in circulation and out of our landfills.

The World Bank estimates that we generate 1.3 billion tons of solid municipal waste annually, with that figure expected to eclipse the 2 billion ton mark by the middle of the next decade.

Out of the 9.1 billion tons of plastic produced since the industry’s boom began (around 1950), 7 billion tons of it is out of use — according to a study out of the University of California at Santa Barbara published in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday. Barely 9 percent of it has ever been recycled, 12 percent of it was incinerated and the rest — some 5.5 billion tons of plastic — now resides in our waterways and landfills.

“At the current rate, we are really heading toward a plastic planet,” the study’s lead author, UCSB industrial ecologist Roland Geyer, told the AP. “It is something we need to pay attention to.”

Luckily, it’s something that a number of researchers are already paying attention to. Take AMP Robotics, for example. Working in collaboration with the Carton Council and Denver-based municipal waste facility Alpine Waste & Recycling, AMP has taken a two-decade old mechanical trash sorting system and given it something not even the Great and Powerful Oz could: robotic eyes and an AI brain. Say hello to Clarke.

Clarke has been installed in the Alpine facility for about a year. It uses a visible-light camera to spot milk, juice and food cartons amidst a conveyor belt of recyclable waste, plucking them from the line using a robotic arm and twin suction cups. Clarke can pick a steady rate of 60 items per minute, 20 more than the average human worker does, with 90 percent accuracy. That leads to a 50 percent reduction in sorting costs, according to the company.

“The fundamental platform that we’ve created was a system to sort pretty much all the commodities that are in a recycling facility today,” AMP Robotics founder, Mantanya Horowitz told Engadget, “whether it’s cardboard, #1 plastics, #2 plastics, or cartons — cartons just ended up being a great place for us to start.”

Since this program took shape with the help of the Carton Council, Clarke is currently on the hunt for — you guessed it — cartons of various varieties. But the genius of this system is that learns as it works.

“Even though this first system is picking cartons, it’s actually watching and learning from all the other commodities that it’s seeing as well,” Horowitz continued. “That’s what’s really exciting. The more systems that we have out there, the better they’re going to be.”

Moving forward, Horowitz hopes to continue refining the system’s machine vision capabilities. “Right now we can say, ‘That’s a #1 plastic’ but we want to be able to say ‘That’s a Pepsi bottle, that’s a Gatorade bottle’ and give recycling facilities even finer resolution on what’s going through [their lines],” Horowitz said.

That’s not an easy feat, given the wide array of forms that modern packaging takes. There are thousands of types of cartons alone, Horowitz pointed out. And while humans are adept at spotting them amidst a waste stream, that skill remains a major hurdle for machine learning systems to identify.

Still, Clarke represents the wave of the future. “Automation is a clear trend and goal in the industry…” Belén Garnica, co-founder and CEO of Sadako, maker of the Wall-B robotic refuse sorter, said. “Of course, some task will always need a human in the loop, but we expect many of the hard and hazardous tasks to be done by machines in the future.”

“These kinds of systems will help the industry in fundamental ways. The sorting of material is just one aspect of it. We see a lot of value in the data collection you also get.” Since these systems can identify what’s moving across the lines, they can provide the same type of actionable information that manufacturing and energy companies already employ.

But simply segregating plastics from the rest of our recyclables isn’t enough because not all plastics are created equal. The plastics used in food packaging are a breeze to recycle: you just melt them down and reform them. But some blends of plastics — specifically polycarbonates, which are found in everything from baby bottles to CDs to eyeglass lenses — are generally not recycled and therefore wind up in landfills. Even worse, as these plastics slowly rot, they leach toxic chemicals like Bisophenol A (aka BPA) into the soil and groundwater supply.

However a recent discovery by Gavin Jones, who works as a computational chemist for IBM, and researchers at the company’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose have developed a means of tweaking polycarbonate chemistry to not only make the resulting product (called polyaryl ether sulfone, or PSU) harder but also prevent it from leaking BPA as it degrades. They simply heated it with a bit of carbonate salts and a fluoride reactant. “We didn’t really think that if we had everything in one pot it would just work,” Jones told Engadget. The research team chose BPA specifically because of its structural similarity to PSU, which is already commercially available.

And as for BPA’s “unrecyclable” stigma, Jones isn’t so sure. “We don’t think it’s very difficult to break down. We think the issue is that people don’t see a lot of value to doing that,” he explained. The issue is an economic one, rather than technical, Jones continued, “that’s actually a real issue for pretty much the whole field of recycling.”

So rather than continue on the industry’s current course of mechanically recycling plastics — literally shredding them down into tiny chunks and forming them into pellets which are then melted together into new plastic items — “What we do can be called chemical recycling,” Jones said. “Meaning that when we when we break these things down, we convert into the smallest molecular units and then build them up.”

“If you chemically recycle things, then you can actually get value out of it,” he argued. “I think in terms of economics that’s a better value proposition than mechanical recycling.”

Jones’ work has also led to a breakthrough in biodegradable plastics. This class of plastic comes from renewable resources but has long trailed its petroleum-based counterparts in both price and performance. What’s more, their manufacture requires a metal-based catalyst which is difficult to remove from the final product and does not break down. Until now, that is.

Working with Stanford University, Jones’ team at the Almaden Lab concocted an Earth-friendly alternative from common organic compounds: thiourea and a metal alkoxide. The result was a catalyst that is both fast-acting and selective (in that it doesn’t affect the properties of the resulting polymer). Jones’ team is currently looking to build off of this advancement and is exploring structurally-similar catalysts that might perform the same function on other classes of plastic.

However, it remains unclear if biodegradable plastics will ever unseat their petroleum-based cousins. “Biodegradable plastics are an attractive option for recycling because once they get to the landfill, they just break down naturally over some period of time,” Jones said. However, as with chemical recycling, there isn’t a lot of economic impetus for manufacturing products that will break down after their initial use.

Volunteers in the Philippines clearing non-biodegradable plastic from a beach – image: Reuters

“If an industry was created to actually recycle these plastics and then created a valuable type of industry, meaning that you’re actually the deriving value from those plastics, then that might be more attractive,” Jones concluded.

Regardless of the current business climate, the fact remains that the world’s rate of plastic production is far outpacing the rate at which it is recycled or incinerated. This is an untenable situation, both economically and environmentally. But as our lands and waters become increasingly polluted with plastic particulate, products that simply fade away or can be deconstructed to their base molecules may be our best solution. But until researchers can come up with a suitable solution, keep contributing to your local recycling bin.

NASA wants you to record solar eclipse data with an app

Chances are that, by now, you’ve heard about the full solar eclipse that will cross the continental United States on August 21, 2017. And now, NASA is enlisting all of us as citizen scientists: The organization wants your help to record data during the eclipse.

Temperatures and cloud conditions can change rapidly during an eclipse; animals will fall silent while it’s occurring. Scientists know that these events will happen, but they don’t know the hows of it. That’s why they’re calling on people all over the continent for help. Scientists want help in determining how much temperatures actually drop during an eclipse.

You don’t have to be in the path of totality (where the sun is fully obscured) to participate in this experiment; if you’ll be anywhere in North America during the eclipse, NASA still wants to hear from you. To participate, you’ll need to download the GLOBE Observer app and to procure a thermometer that can measure the air’s temperature. Next, you need to sign up for a free GLOBE account, which you can do in the app or online. The app will walk you through the rest (though my iOS app doesn’t currently have the eclipse as an option. Better update that soon, NASA.) The video below has more information on the project.

NASA’s Globe Observer program (and app) has been around for awhile; currently, you can submit observations of clouds and mosquito habitats. They’ve been planning on expanding its citizen science program, and the eclipse (which has captured national public attention) seems like the perfect opportunity to do that.

Source: NASA

Snap Spectacles hit retail in posh UK department store

You can get a pair of Snapchat Spectacles at vending machines in London. You can also grab them from Amazon or Snap itself online. The $129 glasses may be the flavor of the moment, but you wouldn’t expect them to show up at any high-end fashion outlets, though. Until now, when you can grab a pair of Spectacles from a little kiosk set up in posh UK department store, Harrods.

First noticed by Twitter user Blaire Bender and reported at TechCrunch, the bright yellow pop-up cart looks to have all three colors — teal, coral and black — of the camera-toting Spectacles on hand for shoppers to check out.

Snapchat @Spectacles kiosk inside @Harrods in London. pic.twitter.com/Ruo8oQhLaJ

— Blaire Bender (@blairebender) July 20, 2017

There’s nothing innovative about the retail stand, but that’s just the point. If Snapchat wants to make Spectacles ubiquitous, it’s going to need to get them to the everyday rank and file, many of whom might not know about the product, or might not think to head to Amazon to find it. While $129.00 isn’t exactly an impulse buy price-point for most of us, it’s a good assumption that those walking through Harrods can afford it without much thought.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Blaire Bender/Twitter

How hateful alt-right trolls hijacked your timeline

You don’t need to get attacked by a pro-Trump troll-bot horde to know that social media is a battleground for propaganda farms. It’s pretty obvious, and miles of speculative digital ink has been spilled saying as much. An Oxford study this week is getting more of that ink spilled, confirming what we already knew, but no one’s spelled out what it actually means.

The Computational Propaganda Research Project at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, certainly tried. That’s the paper everyone’s talking about this week by the way. It looked at case studies from researchers in nine countries, interviewed 65 experts, and analyzed tens of millions of posts across seven different social media platforms during moments of heightened government propaganda activity: Elections, political crises, and national security incidents.

Not surprisingly, the paper found that “Computational propaganda flourished during the 2016 US Presidential Election.” Tell us Americans that and we’ll remind you that bears make fecal deposits in the woods. We know, we knew, we saw it coming a mile away (but had no idea how to stop it). The same was true during the 2016 UK Brexit referendum, where political bots played a strategic role in shaping Twitter conversations and keeping pro-Brexit hashtags dominant.

The paper noted these incidents, and a few more. It found that automated posting accounts, combined with fake news and troll armies and harassment campaigns, have re-imagined the art and practice of authoritarian soft power in the 21st century.

Our “Facebook president”

The researchers wrote that Facebook plays a critical role in grooming young minds with political ideology because companies “such as Facebook, are effectively monopoly platforms for public life.”

Add Facebook advertising to the computational propaganda mix, and you’ve got a mind-blowing toolset for emotionally manipulating people — without their knowledge — into believing, saying, and fighting for whatever you want.

The Oxford paper concluded that “Computational propaganda is now one of the most powerful tools against democracy.”

One thing we’ve learned in the past few years is that the core messages of political propaganda on social media are driven by humans. Their job is to cover up for people in power, motivate and empower harassment, and make us too discouraged to do anything about their wrongdoings. In case you’re wondering, the people at the bottom of the propaganda chain know exactly what they’re doing.

Some love their jobs, others do not. In 2015, one of Russia’s professional trolls went to press detailing her role in making people think the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was at the hands of his own friends, rather than by government hitmen, as is widely suspected. “I was so upset that I almost gave myself away,” Lyudmila Savchuk said to press.

The paid pro-government trolls work in rooms of 20; it was reported in 2015 that their numbers are in the thousands, making posts and comments all day, every day. Upon leaving, Savchuk said her goal of going to press with documentation, including video, was to get it closed down,” she told The Telegraph. “These people are using propaganda to destroy objectivity and make people doubt the motives of any civil protest. Worst of all, they’re doing it by pretending to be us, the citizens of Russia.”

Another ex-propaganda troll, Marat Burkkhard, was assigned to spreading racist memes about public figures like President Obama. It’s enough to make one wonder more about America’s rise in open racism online. “The most unpleasant was when we had to humiliate Obama, comparing him with a monkey, using words like darkie, insulting the president of a big country,” he said.

“I wrote it, I had to.” Saying he quit for his own sanity, he added, “if every day you are feeding on hate, it eats away at your soul.” He also noted that in his particular propaganda factory, his office seemed split 50-50 in how everyone felt about what they were doing: half were racist patriots, and the rest were just in it for the money.

That was all before the US election, and what became known as Trump team’s super-obvious social media influence campaigns.

The new golden age of propaganda began much earlier than Brexit or 2016’s American presidential disaster. Last year, Leo Benedictus revealed that troll political armies could be had for the right price in a range of countries that included Russia, Israel, Ukraine, UK, North Korea, South Korea, and Turkey. He wrote, “Long before Donald Trump met Twitter, Russia was famous for its troll factories – outside Russia, anyway.” He explained:

Allegations of covert propagandists invading chatrooms go back as far as 2003, and in 2012 the Kremlin-backed youth movement Nashi was revealed to be paying people to comment on blogs. However most of what we know now comes from a series of leaks in 2013 and 2014, most concerning a St Petersburg company called Internet Research Agency, then just “Internet Research”. It is believed to be one of several firms where trolls are trained and paid to smear Putin’s opponents both at home and internationally.

Okay, so we get that troll armies and their bots do propaganda stuff to make politicians look bad. But what happens when they go after regular people? Or, like in the US now, end up with an entire resistance movement?

We get a clear picture by looking at what Russia’s government did to its resistance during the country’s 2011-2012 elections for president and Duma (its lower house of parliament). Just a couple of months before this week’s Oxford paper came out, a more instructive study on social media propaganda was published, called Communication power struggles on social media: A case study of the 2011–12 Russian protests.

When people started to mobilize and place calls to action on social media and blogs, Putin’s patriotic hackers DDoS’d every site possible, including LiveJournal, where the government was already running its posting and commenting campaigns. Those they couldn’t disable with traffic overload, like Twitter, they attacked with other means.

How? By manipulating people’s perceptions and emotions about the resistance, according to the paper. “Our analysis suggests that, in particular, the Russian government successfully used Twitter to affect perceptions of the oppositional movement’s success and legitimacy,” the researchers wrote.

This included “diminishing and discrediting the resistance,” (like insisting on low turnout numbers for protests) but also by “exaggerating, enthusing, and claiming broad public support” for pro-government … well, everything. They also elevated — through creating an appearance of popularity — certain players to be spokespeople for the propaganda topics of the day.

Finally, they created a culture of fear that encouraged people to self-censor.

“Spiral of silence”

The researchers noted how support began on Twitter for anti-corruption and anti-Putin resistance in December 2011, but that widespread delegitimization for the movement (as well as belittling), and visibility of pro-Putin messages shifted that conversation by January 2012. In addition, “Critical voices were discredited and political elites were represented as legitimate.”

The Russian regime’s anti-resistance messaging made it seem “indisputable that Putin enjoyed broad support among Russians,” and so “the protest movement began to dissolve quickly.” The paper said:

Our analysis highlights that the growing feeling of futility and disillusionment affecting the oppositional movement more broadly was clearly reflected on Twitter in the weeks leading up to the presidential election. With the political discourse on Twitter beginning to noticeably shift in favor of the Putin supporters, oppositionally minded people on Twitter may have started to slide into a so-called “spiral of silence”.

They perceived their political view to be in a shrinking minority, finding insufficient resonance in the discourse on Twitter, and gradually stopped to speak up, turning rather inward in growing self-doubts and disillusion.

They also distributed their messages well, reaching tons of people — which is social media advertising’s core promise, we should note. I think now we’re starting to see exactly why Facebook’s emotional manipulation activities are a threat to democracy in line with the Oxford study’s conclusion about computational propaganda.

In the 2011 example, the Russian government, with all its resources, was far more effective at influencing people on Twitter than those who dared question the people in power.

In conclusion, the researchers wrote:

In the end, no matter how much “real” support Putin had, our analysis of the political discourse suggests that the perceived support had a real effect on the opposition and general public on Twitter. This shows that regardless of the promises that new digital technologies hold in terms of empowerment of marginalized or weaker (political) actors, these technologies are still part of the overall system of power—in particular, uneven resource distributions—and may therefore still be utilized by governments in their favor.

In other words, our study empirically confirms that indeed “whoever has enough money, including political leaders, will have a better chance of operating the switch in its favour.

It looks like a blueprint for what’s happening on American Twitter day and night right now. Though compared to Russia’s successful 2011 resistance suppression, Trump’s trolls and botmasters are pretty bad at winning hearts and minds. Maybe that’s partly why social media propaganda is looking likely to get folded into the Mueller probe.

I stumbled on a bizarre propaganda campaign. There are bots / messaging operatives pushing Trump H1B plan. And they’re really obvious / bad. https://t.co/WaZfmKLXGU

— Timothy Castantine🔎 (@Castantine) April 18, 2017

In any case, the new golden age of propaganda is here. The companies whose structures it thrives on, in all its hideousness and viciousness, are loath to change their business models to stop it. The illness is not our fault, though that’s what they hope to convince us of, in this, our new futuristic system of oppression.

Just don’t let the fact that it looks like Idiocracy make you take it any less seriously.

Image: OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP/Getty Images (Lyudmila Savchuk)

Mobile customers claim Verizon capped Netflix and YouTube speeds

A week after millions of Americans contacted the FCC to preserve net neutrality, Verizon Wireless customers have reported lower speeds than expected when using Netflix. Some users in a Reddit thread noted their connections were capped at 10Mbps, as well as those who checked using Netflix’s speed-testing tool Fast.com. Verizon mobile customers have also reported reduced speeds on YouTube resulting in lower-quality video; In response, the telecom admitted it has been temporarily testing a new video optimization system, which it claims shouldn’t affect viewing quality.

“We’ve been doing network testing over the past few days to optimize the performance of video applications on our network,” a Verizon spokesperson told Ars Technica. “The testing should be completed shortly. The customer video experience was not affected.”

But Verizon mobile customers on Howard Forums reported similar problems on YouTube, with some seeing their connections cap around the 10Mbps mark, Ars pointed out. Some users speeds’ tripled when they used a VPN to get around the alleged Verizon cap. Netflix claimed that the problems weren’t on its end.

“We don’t cap data and don’t cap for any mobile network. We offer settings inside the Netflix app to empower our members to control their own quality preferences and data usage,” a Netflix spokesperson told Engadget.

While multiple users corroborating low-quality service is something to pay attention to, anecdotes don’t represent a necessarily concrete problem. Plenty of variables affect mobile speed. But if the apparent caps linger past Verizon’s optimization trials and exceed a reasonable window for “testing,” it could flaunt Title II protections that, for now, ensure net neutrality. Engadget reached out to Verizon and will update when we hear back; In the meantime, The Verge got a response from the telecom, which confirmed that some users were experiencing a cap but that it shouldn’t affect their video access.

“The consumer video experience should have been unaffected by the test,” the representative wrote to The Verge, “since 1080p video is HD quality and looks great at 10 [Mpbs].”

Source: The Verge

LG’s friendly robots will help travelers at Seoul airport

The rise of robots hasn’t exactly gone smoothly, but companies are determined to get it right. Today, LG announced that it’s deploying a fleet of robots at Incheon International Airport in Seoul, South Korea.

This isn’t the first we’ve heard of these adorable robot friends. LG announced them earlier this year, and they’ve been hanging out in the Seoul airport for the last five months as part of a beta test. During that time, LG engineers have been testing and improving their performance, while the robots presumably loitered and caused trouble. But now that they’re out of their rebellious teenage years, they’re ready to be pressed into service. This is still considered a trial — after all, LG doesn’t want the robots becoming suicidal and launching themselves into a fountain to end it all.

There are two robots that are in service: an Airport Guide Robot and an Airport Cleaning Robot. The Airport Guide Robot is in place to interact with passengers. It can understand four languages — Korean, English, Chinese and Japanese — thanks to LG’s voice recognition software. It can tell you where a restaurant is located or escort late passengers straight to their gate with a quick boarding pass scan. The Cleaning Robot is in place to make sure the airport stays tidy by monitoring the areas that need the most frequent cleaning — so in other words, you’ll probably see this little guy in the bathroom the next time you’re at the Seoul airport.

Service robots have become increasingly common — Dubai is hoping to hire (purchase?) enough police robots to man (robot?) an entire police station by 2030. While we’re wary of the hastening approach of the robot revolution, they certainly are pretty adorable to look at.

NASA doesn’t want you to go blind during the solar eclipse

The much-celebrated full solar eclipse is just one month away for those in the continental United States, and NASA really does not want you to go blind when it finally happens. To that end, the organization has released some important tips to ensure that you preserve your eyesight.

First, don’t look directly at the sun without proper eyewear. This should be common sense. A third grader knows this; you should too. But you may not have been aware of the fact that sunglasses are not considered proper eyewear for eclipse purposes. You need to have a special set of eclipse glasses or a solar viewer to look directly at a sun, even if it’s already partially eclipsed.

And please, for the love of god (and your eyesight), do not cheap out and try to make your own eclipse glasses. Buy a pair, and make sure they’re less than three years old and the lenses are in good shape. To confirm that they’re a quality product, the manufacturer’s name and address should appear somewhere on the glasses and they should have ISO 12312-2 certification.

Look, NASA isn’t trying to ruin your fun. “While NASA isn’t trying to be the eclipse safety glasses ‘police,’ it’s our duty to inform the public about safe ways to view what should be a spectacular sky show for the entire continental United States,” said Alex Young, associate director for science in NASA’s Heliophysics department. They just want you to plan ahead and, you know, not go blind.

NASA’s really going all out for this eclipse. They’re planning on livestreaming totality and they are even enlisting all of you as citizen scientists to gather temperature data during the event. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event (that’s happening again in 2024, but we won’t talk about that right now) that you definitely should not miss, and also should definitely secure proper eyewear for.

Source: NASA

Razer is reportedly working on a phone just for gamers

Razer is known for its high-end gaming devices. The company has desktops and laptops, keyboards and mice, power banks and even projection systems aimed at core gamers. This past January, however, Razer acquired Nextbit and its “cloud phone” called the Robin. According to Bloomberg, that acquisition may pay off soon, as sources close to Razer say that the company plans to make a mobile phone targeted at gamers.

Bloomberg‘s sources say that Razer aims to make initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong this coming October, with a valuation between $3 and $5 billion. This could help the hardware company develop its own phone. Razer’s been quietly expanding its foothold in the gaming market beyond hardware, as well. The company also has its own eSports platform as well as its own virtual currency system, zVault. The company also owns Android-based gaming console Ouya, which could also play a part in a new mobile device.

Whether Razer’s rumored new “gamer phone” will be based on Nexbit’s Robin or turn out to be a whole new animal is anyone’s guess. We’ve reached out to Razer for more details and will update this post when we hear back.

Via: 9to5Google

Source: Bloomberg

Mini’s new plug-in hybrid packs thrills into a compact cruiser

From the moment it appeared at the LA Auto Show, the new Mini Countryman ALL4 plug-in hybrid seemed to run in a different pack than other affordable EVs. That’s due in large part to the Mini’s heritage. Driving a Mini always meant having a good time, and the argument for strapping into a Countryman is as much about whipping around in a grown-up go-kart as it is about conserving fossil fuels.

For those keeping track, this technically isn’t the first-ever Mini EV — it’s just the first widely available one. BMW built the purely electric Mini E between 2009 and 2010, and it was really more of a rolling tech demo than anything else. To make things trickier, even if you were lucky enough to live in one of the two markets where it was available, you could only get it on a lease. Not so this time: You can snag a Mini Countryman ALL4 hybrid for about $37,000 at your local dealership.

Chris Velazco/Engadget

That’s not bad for a hybrid that’s this fun to drive. In case you’re unfamiliar, here’s the thing about Minis: They’re fast, agile things, and this hybrid is thankfully no exception. An electric motor works in tandem with a 3-cylinder Turbo engine to produce 221 horsepower, enough to push the Countryman from zero to 60 in about 6.7 seconds. In my experience, that has made it a perfectly snappy city ride: This plug-in hybrid has enough oomph to beat others off the line, which helps tremendously with jostling for position in crowded lanes.

The Countryman obviously isn’t as insane as a Model S or a BMW i8, but it feels like a far cry from other, more practical hybrids. That effortlessly quick feel is aided by the Countryman’s all-wheel drivetrain. Mini says this is the most affordable hybrid with AWD. For me, having spent my entire life fighting lousy Northeast winters, this is a big deal. Snow obviously isn’t a problem now, though, so the Countryman hybrid’s AWD mostly shined when taking swooping curves a little too fast on the Jersey Turnpike.

It’s on those sorts of flat stretches where the Countryman really comes into its own. With sport mode enabled, it tears across asphalt with utter confidence — just make sure to have your power settings correctly configured. Since the EV charging infrastructure in my corner of Jersey kind of sucks, I left the Countryman in “save battery mode” most of the time.

That setting lets the conventional engine do most of the work, and switching into the Green driving mode helps the battery recharge; it look a little over two hours of commuting to recharge the dry cell. The downside is, the hybrid Countryman has a fuel tank that’s about two gallons smaller than the normal model, so in trying to recharge the battery, I’ve been topping up the gas more frequently than I expected. When the battery has sufficient power, though, kicking the car into MAX eDrive is good for a laugh. From there, you can use just the electric motor until you hit 78 miles an hour.

Chris Velazco/Engadget

So yeah, you get the point: The Countryman is generally a blast to drive. The interior experience, though, can feel dicier. Don’t get me wrong, the all-leather trim and seats are comfortable enough, and there’s more cargo space and headroom than in prior models. Still, I can’t get over how clumsy the infotainment and navigation system can be. Most of the time you’ll probably use the control dial down by your right side, and it works well enough. Using the touchscreen (available as part of the $2,200 “Technology” package) is a total pain, though.

The interface, especially when it comes to navigation, rarely sticks to touch-based interaction norms, and accessing submenus can be tricky at best. Unless you’re not in a rush to get somewhere, you’ll almost certainly want to use your smartphone for navigation. If you do decide to use the built-in navigation, you’ll at least get the next direction on the list (along with current speed) on a reflective heads-up display that rises up from the dash in front of you. Companies are clearly aware of the difficulties that come with crafting software for in-car use, but man: It still feels like we’re a long way from truly good, intuitive car interfaces.

All told, the Countryman hybrid is far from perfect. I wish I could wring more than 12 miles out of the battery, and a gas tank wasn’t smaller than a regular Mini’s would’ve been nice. Still, the stuff it gets right is considerable — BMW squeezed a lot of fun into a compact package. For people looking for a more thrilling way to be green, this might just do the trick.