The Roundup

Voracious readers will take over the world.
 

Last year, Atari released a teaser of their newest, secret console. The Product Hunt community was quick to speculate:

"Atari Europe and I literally share the same floor in the same building! They're so secretive. My guess is retro console." – Pierre-Marie Galite

Pierre-Marie was right. The AtariVCS was announced today, with pre-orders starting at the end of the month:

🕹️ 100+ classic games including Asteroids, Centipede, and Breakout
🖥️ Supports 4K monitors at 60 FPS, comparable to an Xbox One
💰 $200 for the basic model, with a Collector's Edition coming soon

Atari has seen better times: they've been acquired a number of times and only recently emerged from bankruptcy. It’s been over 25 years since Atari launched a new console.

Meanwhile, Nintendo has succeeded by leveraging nostalgia. Pokémon Go exploded two summers ago as fans swarmed parks worldwide to catch 'em all. They also released a mini replica of the beloved NES. Their stock price has tripled in less than 2 years.

We can only hope that Atari will follow in Nintendo's footsteps. Unlike like the Nintendo Switch or Xbox One, the AtariVCS will be crowdfunded on Indiegogo. Anyone can sign up to buy one here.

If you can’t wait for your AtariVCS, you can play Defender, Joust, Paperboy, and 9,000 other retro games in your browser for free, legally.

The most important decision for founders: finding the perfect domain. Many spend weeks agonizing over the perfect .com.

Most of the "good" domains are taken already. One squatter registered 14,962 domains in less than 24 hours. 😳

Lucky for you, not all of the good domains are taken. There are hundreds of one-letter domain names available on this site. Some even have emoji in them. 🙀

Instead of relying only on the English alphabet, these sites use characters from Unicode, a standard library of 136,755 characters from 130+ languages used in nearly every computer to display text.

You can also now buy domains directly from your terminal, or name your startup with generator that only suggests names with available domains.

Nintendo is crushing it. Their newest console, the Nintendo Switch, is the perfect all-in-one: switch and chill at home or take it on the go.

We don't want you to miss out. Enter to win a complete $1000+ Nintendo Switch package, curated just for you:

🎮 Nintendo Switch, in the best colorway (it's not black).
💿 All the best games: Legend of Zelda, Kirby, Mario Kart, LEGO Marvel Superheroes, Rocket League, Bayonetta 2, and more.

We're even throwing in Nintendo Labo Variety & Robot kits. These cardboard origami, called "toycons," power an entire suite of games.

There's even a wearable suit where you can play as an Iron Man-esque robot, exploring virtual worlds (and destroying a building or two). 🙀

GitHub isn't just for open-source projects: it's how most engineering teams collaborate on code and products.

Instead of guessing your way through git for hours, enroll in the recently-launched GitHub Learning Lab. The friendly bot will teach you about:

📝 Markdown, the internet's favorite formatting tool
🖥️ GitHub Pages to build free websites in minutes
😬 Merge conflicts, or when you and your coworkers disagree

This isn't the only bot-based education tool to launch recently: a SMS-based university launched last week, with entrepreneurship lessons from UCLA, USC, and Babson professors.

You can also learn a language over text with the Golden-Kitty-winning Duolingo Bots, powered by AI. 🤖

Late last night, General Assembly announced their acquisition by the largest temp staffing firm in the world for $413 million.

The Adecco Group trains and places skilled temps at companies around the world. They have over 33,000 full-time employees. 👀

General Assembly teaches founders and operators the technical skills they need to compete in today's workforce, like web-development, data science, and digital marketing.

"Last fall we began mapping out on a white board with Adecco how we could work together, so we've been having off and on conversations with them," says General Assembly co-founder and CEO Jake Schwartz. "We'll be run as an independent entity."

This acquisition won't change much publicly for GA, but expect to see a new wave of GA-trained staffers around the world. 👩‍💻👨‍💻

GA has spent years supporting startups and founders everywhere with their Opportunity Fund to help underrepresented groups get into tech. Members get hands-on education, mentorship, and career opportunities.

They also open-sourced their website design course, so you too can build the most best websites from scratch.

Fun fact: the course was designed by an early Product Hunter. 😻

Tonight, when you get home, your front door could unlock automatically.

Your lights could programmatically dim based on the time of day.

The Smart Home as we imagined it exists today, but finding the right products to make each part of your house smart is tough.

You're in luck. Enter to win a complete $1000+ Smart Home package, curated by our expert friends at iTech Deals:

🔈 2 Sonos speakers for your tunes.
🛎️ A video doorbell to watch over your Amazon packages.
💡 A complete Samsung internet-connected lightbulb setup.
🤖 Google Home + 2 Echo Dots so you can talk to Alexa all the time.

Just be prepared for your friends to have smart home envy. 😉

Want to live like a VC?

We've partnered with HBO's Silicon Valley to give away an all-expenses paid trip to the 22nd Annual Webby Awards, honoring the most excellent sites, products, and apps on the internet. 🏆

You and your guest will win:
🎫 2 VIP Tickets to the Webby Awards Show in New York City
🍸 VIP treatment at the official Webby afterparty and cocktail hour  
✈️ Round-trip airfare from anywhere in the US
🏨 3 nights at a hotel, stipend, and dinner at a Webby-winning restaurant

Show off your Patagonia vest and honor the best on the Internet. 🤗

Some (brave) companies love to launch actual products on April Fool's.

On April 1st 2014, Google Maps: Pokémon Challenge was announced, teasing generations of fans with real Pokémon hiding in tall grass around their neighborhoods. Pokémon Go launched for real in 2016, and the entire world called in sick to catch Zubats. Mobs formed in Central Park.

Gmail and Amazon's Dash Buttons were originally announced on April Fool's Day too, to much skepticism.

In honor of products that must be fake, we've combined our favorite April Fool's launches with real products launched in the last year.

Can you pick the fakes?

1. Beer that teaches you a new language, or a beer that's designed to be enjoyed in the shower. 🚿

2. A crypto-only Lamborghini store, or a genetic test that reveals your perfect car based on your DNA. 🚗

3. A drone that pitches journalists, or an app that hacks your dreams. 😳

4. A bad joke detector from Google, or an app that finds your doppelgänger from hundreds of years ago. 🖼️

5. A service to pay for Amazon orders with cash, or ATM drones that deliver cash anywhere. 🚁

April Fool’s may be behind us but there’s no need to wait another year to prank your friends and coworkers. Here’s a collection of (real!) prank products. You know what to do. 👹

“We like to innovate on the infrastructure of innovation itself to help companies, and create more tech companies, because I think tech is a universal good for humanity.” — Naval Ravikant

Startups have the potential to make the world a better place, so we’d love to help you get started on your own startup.

We just partnered with our friends at Amazon to secure up to $7,500 in free AWS credits for makers, available to our annual Ship subscribers.

Product Hunt runs on AWS, and you can too. You'll also get access to the full suite of Ship tools, including:

🖥️ Landing pages – Create a lovely landing page in 60 seconds to capture interest and emails for your project.

🔖 Surveys – Gather feedback from your users and use their answers to deliver segmented email messages.

💌 Email messaging – Broadcast product updates, chat with your users 1-on-1, and send targeted emails based on survey responses.

Claim your $7,500 in free AWS credits today. ⛵