If there is one subset of PC hobbyists that can simultaneously become a rabbit hole and an obsession, it’s those who are enamored with mechanical keyboards. These fans create custom keyboards, cobbled together from bespoke keycaps and individually suited switches in order to make their perfect input device. It is a fun hobby and can be an expensive one. For those looking to level up, Scharon Harding at Ars Technica has the story of an awesome keyboard in Elvish, the fictional language from Lord of the Rings. The Drop + The Lord of the Rings Dwarvish and Elvish Keyboards ($169) are the first to gain official Lord…
Tag: tech
In an event that wasn’t leaked beforehand or tipped off to any insiders, T-Mobile made a big announcement last week. The company, which merged with Sprint recently, will partner with Starlink to fill in gaps within their coverage map. The coolest part? It will work with existing cell phones without the need to buy special equipment. Eli Blumenthal at CNet has more. …with this program T-Mobile users should be able to connect to the SpaceX satellites through a “new network, broadcast from Starlink’s satellites using T-Mobile’s midband spectrum nationwide.” Although the company hasn’t yet offered specifics on where the network…
With the rise in remote learning, partially due to COVID, there have been a fair number of companies working to get in on this new way of education. Many colleges and universities have purchased service agreements with electronic proctoring companies in order to achieve some form of honesty amongst test-takers. However, the means by which these companies are conducting themselves have run afoul of the law. Monica Chin at The Verge has a story about one student who fought back. Chemistry student Aaron Ogletree sat for an online test in the spring 2021 semester. Ogletree was asked to show the…
The phrase “OK, Boomer” is nearly played out, but still makes a point to an older generation about the way to do things. Playing on this, Bronwyn Petry at MoneyWise makes a list attempting to equate “old things” with “don’t do this anymore” or “this is a good skill to have”. The weirdness of Petry’s list is that it tries to ride a line between “things we don’t need” and “things you should still know how to do”. However, it is lobbed into a single list. Many of these are things modernized by current technology while others are things that…
Google launched a new campaign two weeks ago that looks to do two things: The first is to tout how far RCS has come since Google began pushing it a few years ago. The second is to shame Apple into supporting it on iOS. Google will fail. That isn’t simply my opinion. While it is true I am an iOS user and I do prefer Apple’s products above Google’s, I also have seen this before. Let us hop in the Delorean and go back to 2004 when Real Networks (remember them!?!) waged a similar campaign against Apple, but that time…
Atari was a fascinating company, responsible for both the rise of home video game consoles in the US and also the market crash of the same industry. The legendary 2600 was everywhere in the early 80s and there was certainly no shortage of software. The company may be a shell of itself these days, but Ben Edwards at How To Geek has a great interview with its founder Nolan Bushnell. When it came time to develop and release a more advanced home video game console with cartridges (the 2600), Atari needed capital, and Bushnell sold his company to Warner Communications.…
On this anniversary of TimeMachiner, I wanted to highlight a few of my favorite stories of the past year. There have been many random happenings I’ve written about that I think are still funny, insightful, and interesting today. The archive has filled up nicely since I started and I want to share with you the stories I think are the best. Let’s dive in. “Best Sellers” Trailer Gives Entire Movie Away (8/21/21) – A true pet peeve of mine is when you can watch the preview for a movie and then not even bother with going to see it because…
In a world where there’s always enough money to spend and enough companies to buy, leave it to Amazon to buy one of the biggies. News broke late last week that the World’s Largest Bookstore has acquired iRobot, the company that makes the Roomba. The price tag? A cool $1.7 billion. Brian Heater at TechCrunch has more. “Since we started iRobot, our team has been on a mission to create innovative, practical products that make customers’ lives easier, leading to inventions like the Roomba and iRobot OS,” CEO Colin Angle said in a release. “Amazon shares our passion for building…
The Nissan Leaf was one of the first electric cars to sell en masse. The automaker made a big splash in 2011 with a car that was somewhat affordable, but also had decent styling. Now, the Nissan Leaf is no more. The company has announced they will be phasing out the car by 2025. Nathan Bomey at Axios has the story. After its debut in 2011, the Leaf quickly became the best-selling EV in the world. But it soon ceded the throne to Tesla, and never came close to achieving the vision laid out by former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn:…
It’s no secret that Amazon is pushing hard into grocery. Here on Long Island, there are no less than six Amazon Fresh stores under construction. One innovative aspect of Amazon stores are their “Just Walk Out” system that tracks your items and auto-bills you for them when you leave. That works great for convenience store items, but what about grocery? That’s where the Amazon Dash Cart comes in. James Vincent at The Verge has more about this. The cart’s main feature is a sensor array in the rim that uses AI-powered cameras and barcode scanners to identify whatever you put…
I’m a big fan of electric vehicles (EVs). I used to talk about them extensively in my previous days as a podcaster. With the past decade ushering in actual EVs people can buy, some attention has been put on infrastructure. Some geniuses in North Carolina don’t like the idea of public charging. Now they are looking to stop those pesky chargers in their tracks. Nico Demattia at The Drive has more. Republican North Carolina State Representative Ben Moss has introduced a new bill, H.B. 1049, that would ban free public electric vehicle chargers, unless free gas and diesel pump alternatives…
One of the most infamous Apple products to hit the market in the first Non-Steve-Jobs Era was the Newton. This PDA (remember those!?!?) was Apple’s attempt to make a device that could be portable, useful, and have some amazing technology in it. The Newton was an absolute failure for Apple. Now, 30 years later, Jeremy Reimer at ArsTechnica looks back at this device with so much wasted potential. The Newton MessagePad 100 went on sale for $900 in 1993 dollars, or about $1,800 today. For that money, you received a device that was absolutely innovative and different but which still…
For the past two decades we’ve lived cable hell. It’s the place where everything we own has a different charger cable and one where there are so many “standards” that never make things easier. It has gotten a bit better in recent years, but now the US is working to push it even further. Jenny Zheng at GameSpot has more on how there is a big push for “the one plug to rule them all”. A group of US lawmakers are urging the Department of Commerce to establish a standardized common charger for all mobile devices. Spearheading the appeal are…
Leave it to the Wide World of TikTok to showcase Austin & Marideth (@Cost_N_Mayor). This pair has come up with a stellar video of dance moves… set to iPhone text tones. There’s 40 in all and this pair certainly has the moves. I don’t know about you, but I find this fun an wildly impressive. It’s also not the first time I’ve seen awesome mixing of tech and music on the platform. @cost_n_mayor Reply to @krustykrustykrab ♬ original sound – Cost n’ Mayor Here’s a link to their video.
Facebook Meta has been hard in their efforts to get you to know about “the metaverse”. Basically it’s VR. That’s it. That’s their plan. Yes, this is a simplification of what Zuckerberg is doing, but they are investing a ton of time into this. Over at The Verge Adi Robinson, who usually handles anything related to VR, goes through all the prototypes that have been developed. There’s 24 in all. Most are just proofs of concept. None will ship. All are efforts to be a leader in what they think is the next “big thing”. Meta described Half Dome’s tech…
I’ve been saying it for a while now: you never truly own something that is purely digital. We have been sliding into a culture of renting for many years. Now Jon Porter at The Verge has a scoop about Sony’s PlayStation store removing PURCHASED movies from people’s libraries. The shutdown will come into force on August 31st, exactly one year after Sony discontinued movie and TV show purchases through its digital store. At the time Sony said that its customers will still be able to access previously purchased content. Notices posted on the PlayStation website blame “evolving license agreements with content providers”…
There is a fascinating time between January 2007 and January 2010 in the world of smartphones. This short 3-year span was one where Apple was blazing a trail with the iPhone and other manufacturers responding in kind. One standout is the BlackBerry Storm phone. It was a revolutionary failure. Rewinding to Steve Jobs’ unveiling of the iPhone, we were told something we’d never considered as consumers prior: the buttons on a phone were set forever. The iPhone could change or hide buttons whenever. At this time the BlackBerry line was THE smartphone to own. Many came for it and it…
In an attempt to combat social isolation amongst the elderly, NY state has decided to begin deploying social robots to people who may be in need. Of course, this program will take money and time in order to see if it is effective, but it’s an interesting take on a big problem. James Vincent at The Verge has more. Intuition Robotics’ claim is that ElliQ can project empathy and form bonds with users. The robot is supposed to remember key details about a user’s life, and shape its character to their own. It will crack more jokes if the user…
Imaginary “currency” that has no intrinsic value, is wildly manipulated, speculated like crazy, that uses more electricity than many nations, turns out to be a bad idea. Shocker, right? But that’s what is going on in the cryptocurrency world right now. And it’s not just Bitcoin either. For nearly a month, the bottom has fallen out from under the imaginary coins floating around. Bitcoin alone has lost over $2 TRILLION in value since Nov 2021. Being the biggest player in the space, of course, this brought down the value of every other “coin”. It’s losses for everyone who’s involved. Corrie…
Tech events unveiling new software, gadgets, and services are pretty common nowadays. However, back in the earlier times of computers, it was still a nerd’s paradise. Computers were a niche product, existing mostly in professional settings or schools. The Internet was still in its infancy. So, to say that Microsoft’s Windows 95 was a big deal, it’s all true. The Blue OS Museum YouTube account has unearthed and posted the full 90-minute video showing Microsoft’s event. It has everything you could ever want from a company flexing its semi-might at a pivotal point in computing history. From the clothes, to…
Books are in a weird resurgence right now. Barnes & Noble, once the villain of the bookseller world, is seen now as a refuge where books can be given space. Let’s face it, they’re the only bookseller with space large enough to house all these books. Finally, B&N has decided to give the old Nook eReader another try. But they mean it for real this time. Alex Cranz at The Verge has more. The Nook GlowLight 4e charges via USB-C and has 8GB of built-in storage, which is standard for an e-reader at this price. It also has a 6-inch…
With little surprise, Apple held its annual developer conference. Everything we knew was coming was announced: iOS 16, iPadOS 16, watchOS9, and macOS 13 (Ventura). There’s a bunch to break down, including some hardware. I have thoughts. Let’s dive in. If I were to distill iOS 16 to core updates, this version brings improvements to the lock screen and Messages. Basically you get to “un-send” and edit a sent message. You get a 15-minute window to do those things. To me, that’s too long. The other cool thing is the ability to hold on the subject of an image and…
Later, later, later. That’s what we always say to those annoying popups. They hound us. They implore us to act on them. In the end, we find them supremely intrusive and frustrating. But it’s the world we now live in. It’s a place where nothing is produced in a Final version and we constantly have to live with those decisions. We live in a world of the software update. It Ships When It’s Done Before the internet was ubiquitous, it was commonplace to purchase software of any sort in one form. That was it. Whether you were purchasing a copy…
Straight from the “How Stupid Can You Be” department is reporting about Chinese company BOE. This supplier for Apple manufactures OLED screens for the iPhone 13. In a massively-dumb move, BOE decided on their own to change the specs of how the displays were made and didn’t tell Apple. Gijong Lee at The Elec has the not-so-shocking consequence of BOE’s stupidity. The company was caught having changed the circuit width of the thin film transistors on the OLED panels it made for iPhone 13 earlier this year, people familiar with the matter said. This was done without Apple’s approval in…
The march of time and technology never stops. The latest item to be reduced to the trash is the final payphone in New York City. In a place where payphones were on every single corner, the city that never sleeps now relies on wireless technology to keep New Yorkers connected. The bank of two phones was on 7th Avenue and 50th Street in Midtown Manhattan. And, as you might expect in Manhattan, graffiti was scrawled on it. The city began removing payphones in 2015 and replacing them with public Wi-Fi hotspots. The removal marks the end of the payphone era…
Google, whose failure to get people to use its various chat apps is well known, has been pushing an SMS alternative for years. RCS was to bring parity to Apple’s iMessage system for non-iPhone users. Google worked tirelessly to get carriers on board with RCS because it’s supposed to be better. And yes it’s better: for spammers. Jon Porter over at The Verge goes over how Android users in India are being flooded with RCS spam that is coming from legit companies. It’s unclear how widespread the issue currently is, but Indian-based Ishan Agarwal — whose recent tweets have drawn…
Microsoft Excel is everywhere these days. It lives on the web via Office 365, in a standalone application since 1992, and has been replicated tons of times. Excel will always be a thing and a commonplace product. But back in 1992, Microsoft tried to wow everyone with what it could do. One elevator, two businessmen, one report they’re trying to complete. It’s a great trip down memory lane.
Apple has made some big announcements about providing the parts, tools, and manuals to repair their products. This has been due to pressure from governments and Right To Repair making progress on bills in the works. But, Apple never said they had to be nice about it. In a lengthy write-up for The Verge, Sean Hollister goes over the insane process Apple puts a person through in order to repair their iPhone. I expected Apple would send me a small box of screwdrivers, spudgers, and pliers; I own a mini iPhone, after all. Instead, I found two giant Pelican cases…
In an unstable market comes very unstable times. For the past few weeks, everything in the cryptocurrency world is plummeting back down to earth. People who have been heavily invested in coins like Bitcoin and Etherium are taking a bath in losses. Things that claim to be “investments” like NFTs are also being realized as worthless. Over on the trading side, K. Holt at Endgaget writes about how Coinbase has paused hiring. For the record, Coinbase is one of the largest exchanges to trade in crypto and is probably one of the best-known sites out there for it. The company…
In a world of Apples, Google wants to be… a Google-type of Apple. That’s my takeaway from the annual Google I/O conference last week. In typical Google fashion, they debuted new hardware, Android updates, and sorta-near-future mind-blowing tech. Let’s dive in. Pixel Watch was not only leaked but something that had been rumored for a while. It’s round, has proprietary bands, and runs Wear OS. It’s hard to leave much to surprise when Google let the cat out of the bag a while back. So far, it looks nice, and honestly, Android users deserve a tightly-integrated wearable experience like Apple…