Testing smart grills has raised a philosophical argument over what constitutes a “barbecue”: Must all barbecues involve actual fire (or just heat, like infrared)? Is it assumed all barbecues are also smokers? In the end, it was one specific grill that provided clarity for me around these questions. The Current Model G Dual Zone Smart Grill is decidedly not a barbecue. While it is meant for the outdoors, requiring outdoor-sized real estate, and it will put grill marks on your food, this electric grill is just that—a grill. Simply put, it was like taking a giant George Foreman grill out on the patio. 

While I appreciated the connectivity and size of the grill area, I was not a fan of the flimsy physical build. Though the grill did get quite hot and was highly effective in cooking food, it took longer than a gas grill and about the same amount of time as a charcoal grill. And cleanup was a chore, despite a self-clean function. Ultimately, it just wasn’t worth the price of $999.99 to stand on the patio for the same effect on food as standing over the stove, so even if you are prevented from using gas, charcoal, or real fire on your patio, I’d probably choose a different electric grill. 

It has a modern design, but flimsy build

If it’s been a while since you bought a barbecue or grill, the first thing to know is all grills arrive to you in many pieces and require hours to put together. The Current took two hours for me to build, and required an app for the directions, which isn’t as helpful as a printed manual when you’re  outside in the sun, squinting to see detail from the video on your phone. Still, the directions were clear, and the parts were well-labeled. Some parts of the grill were inexplicably flimsy, though, while others, like the barbecue tools (tongs, spatula) were over-engineered to be sturdier than any barbecue tools I’d ever used before and came with interchangeable rubber grips.

The metal of the grill is held together by screws in most places, but also metal clips, and these proved to be worthless. In particular, the side panels that made up the cabinet underneath the grill refused to stay on. As soon as you’d clip a panel in, the slightest breeze would cause it to slide off again. Great attention was given to creating a sturdy, two-sided staging area for food in the cabinet, which I really liked. However, the entire grill is exceptionally light and even when fully assembled, it didn't feel solid—in fact, merely rolling the grill ten feet from the spot I assembled it caused enough vibration that the grill had lost all of its panels by the time it was in its new spot. 

The grill has a large digital touchscreen that displays the temperature for both sides of the grill. It has 330 inches of cook space, which was the most of any grill I've tried, and the whole point of the Dual Zone is that you can have only one side of the grill on, or use both sides at different temperatures. There’s also a warming grate on the top half of the grill and two temperature probes to monitor your food. The grill has enough ports for two additional probes. 

Other electric grills to consider:

• Char-Broil 22652143 Edge Electric Grill, $584.99

• Char-Broil® Patio Bistro® TRU-Infrared Electric Grill, $199.97

• Weber Pulse 2000 Cart Electric Grill ,$1,068.98

It's hard to pair to the app

The Current Grill app is simple enough, with tabs for recipes and videos on how to use the grill. Through the process of testing products for review, I probably pair five to ten new products a week with my phone, and I struggle to remember ever having as much trouble doing so as I did with the Current Grill. Clearly, I’m not the only one: When you call support (which did answer the phone, even on a Sunday), Bluetooth and wifi problems are #3 in the phone menu.

After a day of troubleshooting, I was able to finally pair the app, but luckily, the grill doesn’t need the app to function. You can just turn it on from the touch screen. The benefits of the app were limited compared to other smart grills. You can’t turn any grills on remotely—that's a safety issue—but other grills offered a lot more functionality, even when the grill was off. The Current won’t let you access any information if the grill isn’t on, and when it is on and connected, you are limited to merely seeing and setting the temperature of the grill and the temperature of any probes that are connected. While the recipe section isn’t infinite, it did include enough recipes for any basic meal you’d throw on a grill. 

It's slow to heat, with a high electrical draw

The Current did leave nice grill marks and did cook food effectively, but without the hallmarks of barbecue like the flavor of fire or smoke. Credit: Amanda Blum

The whole point of this enterprise is to grill food, and in that way, the Current does a decent job. It can get up to temperatures of 700°F degrees on both sides of the grill, which sounded exciting since most electric grills can't achieve that. But even with the lid closed, it took almost 20 minutes to do so. As it is electric, and you’re not gaining any smoke or char effect, you might as well just turn your stovetop on—it’ll take less time to heat a stovetop griddle.

This leads to another issue with the Current: It loses considerable heat with the lid open. Through grilling steak, chicken, corn, salmon, cauliflower, and a pork tenderloin, I observed the same things over and over. If you got the grill very hot, you could get a nice initial sear, so long as you immediately closed the grill top, but if the lid was closed, it would take a long time for the grill to adjust to a lower temperature to cook items through. You could get around this problem by just leaving the grill lid open for a minute, though, because the heat loss was so dramatic that you really couldn’t cook much with the grill lid open. Since the lid is solid metal, this meant you couldn’t see what was happening on the grill top unless you opened it up, at which point the temperature would drop by 150 degrees. All the while, the electrical load the grill is using is not minimal at 1750 watts. Current recommends a dedicated circuit, which I did not have on the patio, and if you also do not have this, expect to have to flip a few circuit breakers through the process. 

Smart barbecues (not electric) to consider:

• Masterbuilt® AutoIgnite™ 545 Digital Charcoal Grill and Smoker, $499

• Kamado Konnected Joe, $1,699

Disappointing self clean

On the left, before self clean; on the right, after. Credit: Amanda Blum

Cleaning any grill is a chore, so I was excited about the self-clean function on the Current grill, which takes thirty minutes. At the end of each grill session, despite pre-seasoning the grill and using a liberal amount of oil, the grill plates would have a lot of stuck-on gunk, but that's true of any grill. Scrubbing with the brushes that worked on other grills didn’t do much with the Current since the cooktop isn't an open grill but a series of wavy metal plates. Sadly, the self-clean function seemed to result in the opposite effect you’d want. The grill somehow looked worse after self-clean, no matter how many times I ran it (see above). Removing the grill plates altogether and scrubbing them inside was the only way to really get them clean.

Bottom line: There are better options

I imagine that someone who buys an electric grill is doing so to avoid messing around with charcoal or an open flame. The food I cooked with the Current certainly turned out fine, and though it lacked the smokiness and char that a flame would give you, the food otherwise compared well to it’s barbecue counterparts—but it was also clear to me that the whole point of barbecuing was that effect the fire and smoke has on food. Still, even at a much lower price, I’d have issues with the build of the Current, which I fear would not withstand a strong windstorm after a long, complicated build.

The connectivity did not provide enough functionality for the pain of getting the connection up. Ultimately, you’re spending almost $1,000 to cook on the patio with less efficiency than your stovetop, for the same effect. If you had to go electric, I’d go with a far less expensive grill, and I might be willing to sacrifice the size of the active cooking space to get more consistent heat.

Most Americans have some sort of home security system in place—usually a series of connected cameras. Now, there are a number of companies who are starting to sell home security systems that don’t just alert, but fight back. These home-defense systems aim to teach intruders (or your teenager sneaking back in after curfew) one hell of a lesson: by deploying pepper spray, smoke bombs, paintballs, ear-piercing alarms or a “disorienting fog.” 

Disorienting fog

“Security experts understand that it’s extremely difficult to steal without being able to see,” is how MyShield’s public relations representative Morayah Horovitz explains the idea behind their security system. MyShield is an indoor, battery-operated device that can be integrated with existing security systems or used on its own. On detecting motion, it will request a visual confirmation from the homeowner, and once it is received, it will deploy a non-toxic but “disorienting” fog created using a polytechnic composition. You can create a network of MyShield devices that cover your whole home, and is $1300 for just the cost of the device, plus a $40 per month subscription. Essence, the company that makes MyShield, has already sold over a million similar units over the last decade in America and Europe, and claim a high level of success. While it feels a little apocalyptic, some in-home smog was the least extreme of the options available. 

Paintballs

Although it’s pre-market, PaintCam Eve is a fully funded Kickstarter that will begin shipping in 2025. Available in three models, Eve is an AI-enabled smart security camera that can also shoot your eye out with a paintball. Seeing as the AI in the various doorbells I’ve tried still occasionally ID my mailman Steve as a package and routinely think the neighbors' cat is a solicitor at my door, I asked the team at Eve how confident they were about their system. Like MyShield, it turns out none of the reactions are automated. Rather, Eve allows you to create warning zones around your home, where possible threats receive a verbal or audible warning first, while the system alerts the homeowners and they decide whether to engage the paintballs. At least, that’s how it works “in manual mode," as a representative for the executive team named Hana explained in an email. Regarding their AI, “the core of this system is a deep learning neural network that has been extensively trained on a vast dataset of images and scenarios. This training includes thousands of examples of different objects, faces, pets, and potential threats.” Basically, it works like all other AI does.

In terms of potential damage, if you’ve ever gone paintballing, you know the balls generally aren’t lethal—but it turns out, they do routinely hurt people, resulting in eye and ear damage and the rare death. While these are “non-lethal paintballs, similar to those used by law enforcement for peaceful deterrence” according to Hana, this brings up a good point: Paintballs, when used by police, incur a higher rate of injury than recreational paintball users because the victim isn’t expecting it. I haven’t broken into a home since I got home late from a concert in 1993, but I am absolutely sure I wasn’t expecting high-speed projectiles. As for pets, there are three models—Eve, Eve+ and Eve Pro—and the latter two “include an advanced Animal Detection feature.” Standard Eve users will have to trust that AI recognizes cats better than my Ring camera. Eve is predicted to start at $2165 when it launches for retail, with an additional subscription at around $38/month. 

Pepper spray (and more)

While Deep Sentinel’s new FlashBang technology will be available to residents in the future, for now it’s only on a case-by-case basis—demand is mostly from businesses. Still, if fog and projectiles aren’t enough for you, perhaps pepper spray, smoke bombs, strobes, and sirens are your flavor. FlashBang itself is part of the security system that Deep Sentinel deploys, and while the company and systems have been around for a while, FlashBang is on the verge of launch, having completed beta testing. The core system relies on AI, with integration for live "guards." FlashBang are deployment devices with encryption and security on board. Deployment of the heftier tactics like smoke and pepper spray require human approval, much like the other products detailed above. David “Selly” Selinger, CEO and Co-founder of Deep Sentinel, assured me that all the medical effects of the tactics used were temporary, and would amount to nothing more than some coughing, nasal and throat irritation, going so far as to mention that the smoke uses food-grade particles. Still, there are many reports that pepper spray and smoke bombs may have greater health effects, particularly on menstrual cycles. FlashBang will start at $2000, but since it is part of a whole security system, there are additional hardware and subscription costs. 

Is it legal?

I asked each company about the legality or liability concerns of having such a system. Eve punted the responsibility to homeowners, saying, “we advise buyers to check their local laws regarding property protection.”  Selinger noted that “all of the FlashBang components are legal in all 50 states.” I checked with two attorneys in different states, Oregon and Arizona, and while laws vary by city, state and county, generally the law in play is the Castle Doctrine, or “Stand Your Ground." The idea is that individuals can use “reasonable force” to protect themselves against an intruder in their home. The courts come into play when you have to interpret what is reasonable, and what constitutes a threat. Additionally,  there’s great variance even in Stand Your Ground laws from state to state, and both lawyers pointed out, it’s hard to argue self-defense if the homeowner isn’t even in the home at the time these security tactics are deployed. 

Is it ethical? 

I asked both Eve and Deep Sentinel to respond to the natural reaction that people might have to the severity of their defense systems. Hana from Eve replied, “For those who haven't experienced the fear of an intruder on their property while their family is home, our system might seem excessive. However, those familiar with that fear understand the necessity of a system designed not to harm the intruder, but to scare and mark them, aiding law enforcement in apprehending them more swiftly.” Selinger echoed the sentiment. “Yes, perhaps it will come off strong, but in a world where criminals are allowed to feel they have the upper hand, I believe people should feel like they don’t have to be victims.”  

Hana raises a good point—these systems just scare people, which isn’t (usually) lethal. If they can deter intruders (and home owners from taking more severe action themselves), perhaps that’s a good thing. The idea that intruders are “marked” by eye burn or smoke burn or paintballs should make it easier to track an intruder down. Still, these feel extreme. And what none of these systems factor in is the probability that "home security" will have a whole new meaning when your neighbors get fed up with the ear-piercing alarms and tactical training ground you’ve created on your property. Even paintballs have nothing on a well-worded HOA letter.

As expected earlier this year, Raspberry Pi is going public on the stock exchange in London. Back then, CEO Eben Upton said he did not expect the IPO to change how Raspberry Pi did things, but history tells us that initial public offerings tend to, well, change how companies do things. In their official announcement that they intend to hold an IPO, there’s an incredibly interesting and telling contradiction, as noted by @yassie_j on MastoAkkoma:

Raspberry Pi, in their listing press release, says: The Enthusiast and Education market is the “heart” of the Raspberry Pi movement.

But also says: Industrial and Embedded market […] accounts [for] over 72 per cent

So the heart seems to be going neglected, it seems, because there’s no way you’re going to not cash in on industrial applications. Especially when you’ve just done a big IPO.

↫ @yassie_j on Akkoma

This exactly illustrates the fears we all have about what an IPO is going to mean for Raspberry Pi. It’s already become increasingly more difficult for enthusiasts to get their hands on the latest Raspberry Pi models, but once the IPO’s done and there’s shareholders breathing down their neck, that will most likely only get worse. If the industrial and embedded market is where you’re making most of your money, where do you think Raspberry Pi devices are going to end up?

Luckily the market’s a lot bigger and more varied now than it was back when Raspberry Pi was new, so we have a wide variety of options to choose from. Still, I’m definitely worried about what Raspberry Pi, as a company, will look like five, ten years from now.

If you remember a time when using floppy disks didn’t seem weird, you’re probably at least 30 years old. Floppy disks or diskettes emerged around 1970 and, for a good three decades or so, they were the main way many people stored and backed up their computer data. All the software and programmes they bought came loaded onto clusters of these disks. They are a technology from a different era of computing, but for various reasons floppy disks have an enduring appeal for some which mean they are from dead.

↫ Chris Baraniuk at the BBC

Articles such as these in more mainstream media are always incredibly odd to me. Nobody bats an eye at someone lovingly maintaining a classic car, or restoring an old house, or a group of people petitioning a local government to not demolish a beloved old building or whatever, but as soon as computer technology is involved, so many people find it incredibly weird that classic computer technology, too, can be worth saving.

It highlights how society views technology – disposable, replaceable, worthless, to be dumped and forgotten about as soon as something newer comes along. Even after at least two decades of articles like this, they keep being essentially republished with the same words, the same storylines about these weird people who keep using – get this! Look at these idiots! – older technology when faster, newer, shinier stuff is readily available.

I’m glad the retrocomputing community seems to be growing by the day, and there’s now definitely a large enough internationally connected group of people and organisations to maintain our old computers and related hardware and software.

There are plenty of good reasons to get your home kitted out with some of the best security cameras on the market: These devices are (usually) affordable, packed with features, and simple to set up and use. Once they're in place, you can see what's happening at your property 24/7, and get alerts of suspicious activity sent straight to your phone.

Only a few years ago, putting a camera system like this in place would've cost a lot more money and required professional help—so we're definitely moving in the right direction. However, these security cameras can come with strings attached.

Many cameras on the market—including those from Arlo, the Amazon brands Ring and Blink, and the Google brand Nest—require a monthly subscription. These subscriptions usually enable cloud storage for your video recordings, so you can get at them for days or weeks afterwards.

Having an archive of footage in the cloud is convenient, but not everyone will want to sign up for yet another digital subscription to keep their security cameras working properly. What's more, having your videos in the cloud leaves you open to data breaches and requests from law enforcement and government agencies.

There is another way, fortunately—Pay up front for your security camera kit, and keep your video recordings saved locally.

Subscription options

Before we get into cameras that don't offer any subscriptions at all, you might be wondering if it's worth buying cameras from the more well-known names but without signing up for a monthly (or yearly) subscription plan. The details of these plans vary between companies and cameras, but a lot of them are pretty similar.

In most cases, being able to check a live feed from your camera, and getting motion alerts when something happens in front of it, won't cost you anything extra. Sometimes extra features like motion zones (only getting alerts about activity in certain parts of the frame) will be free as well. It's the video archives and cloud storage that typically have a price attached.

Nest cameras work best with a Nest Aware subscription. Credit: Google

Let's take Google's Nest Aware subscription as an example: yours for $8 a month or $80 a year. It means clips are stored in the cloud for 30 days (compared with three hours if you don't pay), and you also get smart face detection, so your cameras can tell the difference between a family member and a complete stranger. Smart alerts, for sounds like breaking glass and smoke alarms, are also enabled with a subscription.

Other security cameras offer similar plans, so check before buying—just make sure you factor in the cost for every camera in your home. Some companies require you to pay a separate monthly fee for each camera, though Google Nest Aware is one of the plans that covers all of the cameras you've set up at home.

Choosing a camera

Almost every home security camera on the market now comes with a subscription plan of some kind, mostly to enable cloud backups. If you don't want cloud storage or monthly fees then, it's not a question of finding a camera without a subscription option—it's about finding a camera where the subscription option isn't essential, and where local storage for your videos is offered as an option.

One of the most popular brands in this regard is Reolink. It offers a bunch of different cameras with support for saving footage to a memory card in the camera itself, or to a central storage hub on your network. Advanced features like high-resolution 4K footage, motion zones, and person and vehicle detection are available, and the company even offers advice on when the police can request recordings from you.

Reolink offers cameras and local storage hubs. Credit: Reolink

Another manufacturer worth a mention is TP-Link. Its cameras include the all-important local storage option, so you can simply slot a memory card into the back of a camera and save your footage directly to it. As with Reolink, there's plenty of subscription-free functionality built in: the ability to tell the difference between people and vehicles, motion zone support, night vision, two-way audio, and more.

It's also worth considering cameras from Lorex. There's support for local storage and no need for any subscription—and these are key selling points by the company. As well as offering cameras with memory card slots, Lorex will also sell you recording boxes to connect to your local network, so you can keep footage from multiple cameras together in one place.

Accessing footage

While cloud video storage comes with its problems, as we've already discussed, it certainly has its advantages too. You can easily access footage from anywhere in the world, and it means that if thieves make off with everything in your home—including your security cameras and their memory cards—you've still got a backup.

Any security camera you buy that saves footage locally can still be monitored over the web in terms of its live feed—but getting at the video archive when you're away from home might be trickier, depending on the camera model. That's why Reolink and Lorex offer network-attached hubs for your recordings, so that you can log into them from anywhere (some router reconfiguration may be required).

Setting up a NAS is another option. Credit: Synology

If you're really dedicated, you can set up your own custom system, using a NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive to collect recordings from your cameras and put them in a place where you can always find them (even if you're connecting remotely over the web). Some (but not all) Reolink, TP-Link, and Lorex models support this form of recording—just double-check in the listings.

There are plenty of other options out there, but some technical know-how may be required: Certain cameras are easier to set up this way than others. This list of compatible cameras from NAS manufacturer Synology is a good place to start, which lets you filter models based on the features you're looking for.

For the past six weeks, I’ve been conducting an experiment. At 5 p.m. twice a week, every house on the block has a different robot lawn mower that begins mowing the yard just as everyone in the neighborhood takes their nightly stroll. My neighbors’ willingness to loan me their lawns has been great for testing a variety of robots on a variety of lawns, but it’s also been an amazing social experiment in how people feel about robots. Most people were fascinated, stopping to watch the robots work and ask questions, gathering in little groups to chat on the corner. But they also caused consternation on Nextdoor threads—a few people expressed judgment about the bots, saying they found them elitist and a waste of money and on a few occasions, didn’t mind saying so directly to my neighbors. Still, I was impressed by how, mostly, the robot lawn mowers brought my neighborhood together. It wasn’t just that the spectacle of the robots caused people to talk to each other both in person and online, but by using the robots on more than one lawn, I discovered that you could share a robot lawn mower with neighbors. Here are some other observations I’ve realized. 

Remote control is essential

Robot lawn mowers work in a variety of ways to define boundaries. Some require boundary wire buried around the mowing area and even some wireless lawn mowers still require physical RFID markers (a common tracking system that works similarly to Apple AirTags) that you scan into the app, placed around the yard for landmarks or to create "no-go" zones. While physical markers might be the most accurate way to define your mapped areas, according Scott Porteous, robotics product lead at Husqvarna (one of the oldest companies in the lawn mowing space), I'd add that they’re also a lot of work to install. Wireless lawn mowers using GPS are easier and only require you to walk the robot around the edge of the area once, using your remote control feature in the app; then the robot figures out the interior of that space. You can also use the remote control to move the robot if you need to later, either to new spaces or if it gets stuck. If I was buying a robot lawn mower tomorrow, regardless of price point, I would look for one that uses this method of setup without any physical markers. 

Additional anti-theft tactics need to be used

For the first few weeks, I’d watch the lawnmowers on each run, ensuring they got back to their docks—I worried about the lights on each robot acting as a beacon at night. They each had stickers I made explaining they were worthless once they left the property. I had, I thought, activated anti-theft on all the lawn mowers: I’d toggled the feature on in each app, and I’d even occasionally get a false alert that the Navimow installed across the street had left its boundaries. But I’d peek out the window and see it clearly in its garage, chilling as it charged. Over time, I relaxed. After all, it’s not as if these are toy cars—they’re large and heavy and on someone’s lawn. Then the Luba 2 disappeared. Someone swiped it as it was on a morning mow, right off the lawn of my next door neighbor—and I didn’t get an alert, nor did any camera pick it up.

This is how I came to understand the fallacy of the anti-theft features. While the robots do generally stop working when they leave the property, it appears that the GPS does as well. Most of the robots allow you to install a 4G card, but the reason for that wasn’t explained well in the instructions: It read as a way to simply extend the signal in case wifi on your property wasn’t effective. It turns out, though, that the only way the robots can communicate off property is through LTE; you can't locate them without it. (It turns out many people place an Apple AirTag in the robot to help locate it.)

As soon as we realized the Luba 2 was missing, I opened the app expecting to get a GPS update of where it was, but the app still thought it was located next door. Mammotion's tech support wasn’t much help in either recognizing the urgency of acting quickly or helping find the robot. So, if you’re going to get a robot for your front lawn, take as many additional security measures as possible. Install a camera that covers the whole area, for starters, but also a tracking tag—and install a 4G card just in case. I’d go so far as to test the anti-theft by picking the bot up and taking it outside the boundary, making sure you get notifications and everything is set up correctly. Also, many people dock their robot someplace other than the front of the house, such as a garage or around back. You might have to make sure to open the garage or gate for the robot when it goes to work, which means it’s less autonomous but likely safer. Considering the investment, you can also try to add your robot to your homeowners' or renters' insurance policy. 

Robot lawn mowers work best on uncomplicated lawns

While some bots, like the Luba 2, are exceptional at climbing inclines or obstacles, and some, like the Navimow, can turn on a pin, robot lawn mowers really want flat, level ground to work on. The less obstacles, the better—especially small obstacles like lighting, flagpoles, or shepherds hooks, that require the mower to navigate around a small imprint. Smaller mowers struggle with dips and hills. You’ll likely spend at least a little time amending your yard to make the robot lawn mower work more effectively, whether that’s leveling it out, giving your flower beds more recognizable boundaries, or removing small obstacles like bird-feeder poles. The more open space you have for the robot lawn mower to run, the more effective it will be. 

If you want lawn tracks, get a heavier mower

It is interesting that one of the most prized aspects of lawn-mowing for many people is the lines left in the lawn afterwards. Heavier mowers leave lines, regardless of what powers them, so small, light robots are less likely to leave the imprint while heavier robots, like the Luba, do. Still, due to weight, none of the robots are going to leave as much of an impression as a ride-along mower, or even a walk-behind mower, would.

I've never liked to mow my lawn, so alleviating that chore through a robot was great for me. But choosing the right robot and making your yard more accommodating for the mower is essential—and you have to make sure it is less accessible to would-be thieves. Still, I'm excited for how these robots will evolve over the next few years, the same way robot vacuums have, and I'm happy to have mine doing the work so I don't have to.

Virtual assistants can be quite handy. In fact, Alexa has proven to be an integral part of my smart home system. The fact that I can walk into my home and say “Alexa, turn on bedroom” and the lights in my bedroom will pop on is certainly convenient. But these virtual assistants also have a dark side, and we're not talking about them spying on you—sometimes they just don’t know when to shut up.

If you’ve ever used Alexa, then you’ve probably found yourself hearing “by the way, did you know…” at one point or another. This can be helpful if you’re asking the assistant a question or trying to figure out all the things you can do with Alexa. But usually it’s just an attempt to advertise some other service or “plugin” that Alexa offers, like playing rain sounds. I don’t want to hear commercials when I'm trying to turn off my lights and go to sleep, thank you.

These suggestions can be tricky to stop. Telling Alexa not to suggest things didn't do the trick for me. But if you know the magic words, there’s actually an easy way to stop Alexa from suggesting things.

How to stop Alexa's "by the way" suggestions

To stop Alexa’s “by the way” suggestions, just say “Alexa, stop by the way suggestions” or “Alexa, stop by the way." It’s really that simple. I know because I tested it, and sure enough, Alexa responded by telling me it wouldn’t send any more suggestions. And it hasn’t. (You never know with these virtual assistants). Thanks for the tip, Reddit.

Looking to kit out your smart home with Amazon Alexa? Follow our guide on how to create the best Alexa set-up for your home. At time of writing, Amazon is also running deals on devices including the Echo Dot, Echo Pop, and Echo Show 8.

All-New Echo Dot (5th Gen, 2022 Release)

$49.99 at Amazon

Get Deal

Get Deal

$49.99 at Amazon

Today we’re pleased to announce the beta release of Raspberry Pi Connect: a secure and easy-to-use way to access your Raspberry Pi remotely, from anywhere on the planet, using just a web browser.

It’s often extremely useful to be able to access your Raspberry Pi’s desktop remotely. There are a number of technologies which can be used to do this, including VNC, and of course the X protocol itself. But they can be hard to configure, particularly when you are attempting to access a machine on a different local network; and of course with the transition to Wayland in Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm, classic X remote desktop support is no longer available.

We wanted to be able to provide you with this functionality with our usual “it just works” approach. Enter Raspberry Pi Connect.

↫ Gordon Hollingworth

Pi Connect uses WebRTC, and a daemon running on your Pi listens for incoming screensharing requests from the Raspberry Pi website to connect the VNC server on your Pi to the VNC client running in your browser. The service is in beta, it’s free, but the one major downside is that for now, there’s only one TURN server for this service, located in the UK, but they might set up more of them if demand is high enough.

If you want to try this service on your own Pi running Raspberry Pi OS, you’re going to need to be using a Raspberry Pi 5, 4, or 400, using the latest version of the operating system running Wayland. Update your operating system, install the rpi-connect package, reboot, and you’re good to go.

The days of running around desperately searching for an outlet to plug your phone into are mostly over. The reality is that batteries, of all shapes and sizes, have never been more powerful, available, and cheap. In fact, an entire consumer electronics industry has evolved around making sure you always have a battery backup for any situation and even have a way to power back up off the grid. Brands like Jackery, EcoFlow, and SOLIX offer a huge array of battery backup solutions across a massive spectrum of pricing. It can be overwhelming and hard to understand the terms being thrown around, though: What is the difference between a solar generator and a portable power station? Is a whole home backup different? How do you decide how much power backup you need? 

Understanding battery capacity and output

Before talking about specific devices, there are two measurements to understand. The first is how much energy the battery can output at one time. If the max output is 1,000 watts, and your device requires 1,500 watts to run, the battery can’t power on the device no matter how much energy the battery stores. The second is how much power is stored, which is usually expressed in watt hours. If you use less than the maximum output, those watt hours will last longer. If you use the maximum output, they’ll last less. To understand your needs, you have to consider what devices you’ll be powering, find out what kind of power they require, and find a battery with enough output to power that device. Next, you need to consider how long you might need to power it. Your hair dryer or microwave only requires short bursts of use, but your refrigerator will need to be powered continuously, and your CPAP may need eight hours of use. To help you figure out how long a particular power bank will power your device, you can use a calculator.

Power banks vs. power stations

All power stations are also power banks, in that they are just a battery that “banks” energy you can then use to power up devices. However, when people mention power banks, they are usually talking about very small, portable batteries. These are only meant to power your mobile devices like phones and tablets, and can be easily slipped in a purse or briefcase. Power banks generally have USB outlets. When you move up in capacity, you also need to move up in size. While power stations are also still “portable," you’re not tossing them in your purse. They vary in size and weight in accordance with how much energy they store, so a small 240wH power station will be quite light, and a 2,000wH power station will be much heavier and larger. Still, most power stations are designed to be portable since people want to use them for camping and going off grid. These power stations will have USB ports in addition to A/C ports, and in most cases, a few of those ports act as UPS, or uninterruptible power supply. This just means that you can use the power station as an interstitial between your devices and wall power. The wall power will consistently power the battery, and thus the devices. However, if you lose wall power, meaning there’s a power outage or even a surge, the power station will continue to deliver stable power until the battery runs out. 

Power banks to consider:

• Anker Portable Charger, 20,000mAh Power Bank, $31.99

• Jackery Solar Powered Power Bank, 42800mAh, $29.99

Solar generators vs. portable power stations

Most companies that sell power stations also sell “solar generators," which might lead you to believe they are different products. Rather, these are usually power stations that also come with a solar panel. The solar panel is one way to generate energy for the power station, but these stations also generally have input for standard A/C power and power from your car charger, so if you don’t have access to solar, it’s not a problem. Each power station can accept a variable amount of solar panel input at once, so how fast they charge will depend on how many solar panels you are using, as well as how clear the sky is and the panels line-of-sight to the sun. 

Power stations worth buying:

• Goal Zero Yeti 1000 Core Portable Power Station, $649.00

• ECOFLOW Portable Power Station DELTA 2, $629.00

Power stations vs. whole home backup

While portable power stations can vary on output and capacity, the one consistency is the portability. Sure, it’s hard to tote around a thirty pound battery, but it’s still doable. You can, of course, use these backups at home in the case of an outage, but you’d need to plug each item into the power station. That can mean snaking extension cords all over your home, and having to choose which home devices will be prioritized to get power, since you likely have tons of devices plugged into the wall and only so many outlets on your power station. A whole home backup is a large capacity battery, meant to stay in place, that you can directly connect to your electrical panel. When the power goes out, the entire home switches over to this backup via the electrical panel, meaning you don’t have to unplug anything—it will just receive power from the battery instead of the electric company. These systems can be attached to a solar panel system or not, and are generally expandable, meaning that you can add on additional battery units, depending on how much power your home needs. These backups can take different shapes from a unit like the SOLIX f3800, which, though quite heavy, could be moved around the house, or a wall battery that is installed to the side of your home. 

As the power grid becomes less stable and we experience more weather events that cause outages, whether fires or freezes, having battery backup is increasingly important. If you have medical equipment that requires power, or the weather is critical enough you need A/C or heat, these backups can be lifesaving. Having a mix of devices, including power banks, stations and/or a whole home backup, coupled with solar panels create a path to self-sufficiency and security when these outages happen.

Most people looking for air purifiers need it for one of two reasons: The first are people who are concerned with occasional threats to air quality from pollution or wildfires. The second are people who are using purifiers as a constant preventative health measure against pollen or viruses like COVID. Which kind of user you are will determine what purifier you end up buying—some purifiers are better at screening for viruses, and some are easier to stow away for occasional use. Mila, one of a new crop of smart purifiers, tries to hedge its bets by having solutions for everyone through different filters, while losing the clinical appearance most purifiers have in favor of a modern design. There were many things I liked about Mila, including how big an area it covered (as big as 950 square feet depending on which filter you choose), and the reporting available in the Mila app. Still, it’s expensive compared to purifiers covering that size range (prices start at $399 and go up depending on which filters you choose). While the Mila worked well, with a lot of traditional purifier companies adding wifi capability to their existing lines of purifiers, I think Mila is best suited for someone who really values the design and is willing to pay extra for it. 

Mila Smart Home Air Purifier

$399.99 at Amazon

Shop Now

Shop Now

$399.99 at Amazon

A new design

Most consumer air purifiers are small white towers, and they can scale up in size to cover larger areas. Models by Levoit, Medify and BlueAir would all look at home in any medical office. New players in consumer purifiers have tried to move away from that clinical design, and sometimes it doesn’t work well, as with the Dreo model I recently reviewed. But Mila has chosen a modern, squat design that mixes wood with the perforated white plastic you’re used to, with some nice curves to make the purifier look more natural in your home. In losing the “tower,” Mila has a bigger footprint than other purifiers, 12 inches square and 15 inches tall; it could pass as a footstool. The top of the purifier is where the interface lies, and the nice thing about Mila is you can operate it without ever even installing the Mila app. It came ready to go out of the box, unwrap it, plug it in and turn it on. But it would strain the imagination to think you’d pay the premium for a smart purifier and not choose to use that function. Luckily, the Mila app works well. The purifier paired quickly and without problem, and remained paired the entire time I tested the Mila.  

Automagical mode

An aspect of the Mila app I really liked was that by guiding you through basic questions about your home and the occupants, it revealed functions of the purifier you might not have bothered to learn about.  This is the first way that Mila really allows you to customize your experience—through its “modes.”  In essence, you can manually set a power level for purification, or you can allow the Mila to self-determine the power level needed to achieve a pollutant-free room. You might, like I did, wonder why you’d ever choose the former over the latter, and that comes down to the point I made originally: It depends on what kind of user you are. On some higher settings, like all purifiers, the Mila can be loud. It never rose to a level that would prevent a phone call—it’s merely a background white noise. Still, I could see how people could find it annoying enough to only use that kind of power level when necessary due to air quality issues. But if you’re a new parent, or someone who is using the purifier to avoid COVID or allergens, the reassurance of having a setting that readjusts to always keep the room clean is clutch, and unique to the Mila. 

Seven different filter experiences

While most purifiers have a filter you replace every six months, Mila offers seven different kinds of filters, all based on what kind of user you are. A few examples include one for parents, pet owners, allergy sufferers, or someone who’s looking for the highest level of air scrubbing possible. I chose that last one, called the Overreactor. Each filter has different levels of HEPA or additional filters, but they also affect how big an area the purifier really covers, and it’s a big variable. The “Mama to Be” Filter only covers 540 square feet, versus “Big Sneeze,” which covers 950. Replacement filters were also on the high side—as much as $115 for the Overreactor. 

Smart advantages

A smart purifier has a few advantages that are worth considering. The first is that most purifiers recommend you replace filters every six months, but that’s really generic advice. If you’ve been through a period of bad air quality, you may need it replaced sooner; if you only bring it out occasionally, it can go a bit longer and replacing it early is a waste of money. Smart purifiers tell you precisely when to replace a filter based on real-time usage. With the cost of these filters, that feels important. The second advantage is that you can turn the filter on remotely, or use it in automations, using air quality as the trigger. If you’re a new parent, you don’t need the purifier going while you’re in the hospital delivering, but you want to turn it on about an hour before you get home, for instance. 

Performs mostly as promised

In terms of actual performance, I used the Mila in my bedroom, a space well under the 720 square feet the Overreactor covered. I used two air quality sensors to measure the pollutants in the room, and I kept the purifier on “Bubble Boy” mode throughout to test how much mileage I’d get out of the filters and if the Mila could keep its promise of keeping the room 99.97% free of pollutants. During the month I had the Mila, my shedding dog was constantly in the space. I had some light construction done in my closet on one occasion, and we went through two bad air quality index days; on more than a few days, the pollen was off the charts. The AQI (air quality index) in the room dipped as low as 96% on two occasions, but only for an hour, once after the construction and once on a bad pollen day. Otherwise, it remained at 99%. 

Bottom line: Mila works but is still expensive

I like the Mila, particularly the auto mode that just does what’s required to keep the space clean, and I really liked knowing when I’ll need to replace the filters, and being able to turn the whole thing on and off remotely. However, if you’re looking to clean for viruses, other filters screen for smaller particles. The Mila screens down to .03 micron, but Medify and others screen down to .01 micron. Also, the cost of filters and the purifier itself is concerning, particularly when you choose a filter that restricts the square footage covered to 540 square feet. Other filters cover the same area at less than half the price, even smart ones like Levoit.  However, if you’re looking for a highly personalized, highly stylized experience, I have no complaints about the Mila. If it went through a dramatic price reduction, it’d be a rave.

This is the story on how I spent far too much money and time getting a scanner to work over iSCSI so that I could prove “Chris O” wrong on StackExchange. The TL;DR is that yes scanners work fine over iSCSI.

↫ xssfox

The next step is connecting a bunch of flatbed scanners to a disk array enclosure, but that turns out to be quite an expensive little exercise. Regardless, this is absolutely wild, and I love it when people go to great lengths just to prove that something pointless can actually be done. Bravo.

But today we got our hands on LPCAMM2 for the first time, and this looks like the future to us. LPCAMM2 is a totally modular, repairable, upgradeable memory standard for laptops, using the latest LPDDR chips for maximum speed and efficiency. So instead of overpaying (or under-speccing) based on guesswork about your future memory needs, you’ll hopefully be able to buy your next laptop and then install more RAM as needed. Imagine that!

↫ Carsten Frauenheim

LPDDR memory, used in modern laptops, has been difficult – or impossible – to upgrade because its low power nature means it needs to be located as close to the processor as possible with short traces, since the longer the traces, the more power is needed to maintain signal integrity between the processor and RAM. This would defeat the entire purpose of low-power DDR memory to begin with.

Originally developed by Dell and eventually adopted by JEDEC and the wider industry, LPCAMM2 solves this problem by using screw-down RAM modules located right next to the processor. These modules can, like regular memory modules, be replaced and upgraded when needed or desired. This is a great leap forward, and I really, really hope we’re going to see quick, widespread adoption.

Google’s annual budget phone refresh is here, this time making the Pixel 8 just a little more affordable. Today the company announced the Pixel 8a, which has almost all of the features included in the standard Pixel 8, but at a discount. 

As with past Pixel a-series phones, the Pixel 8a can be considered an almost pound-for-pound replacement for the 8. It’s got the same Tensor G3 processor as the Pixel 8/8 Pro, a similar 6.1-inch 120Hz “Actua” display (vs. 6.2 inches on the regular Pixel 8), and a camera system that’s a few megapixels better, though it may suffer from weaker sensors. The 8a is also getting Google Gemini Nano support via a post-launch feature drop—something Google originally said the Pixel 8 couldn’t handle before releasing it for that phone anyway.

Pixel 8a 128GB with $100 Amazon Gift Card

$499.00 at Amazon

Pre-order Here

Pre-order Here

$499.00 at Amazon

It also shares the two additional color options that were introduced with the 8. Buyers can snag an aloe (lime green) or bay (light blue) phone rather than limiting themselves to porcelain (white) or obsidian (black).

Like Google’s mainline phones, the Pixel 8a comes with seven years of security, OS, and feature drop updates. On that note, you’re not losing out on any Pixel-exclusive features, save those that are reserved for the Pro. The Pixel 8a has many AI features out of the box, including best take, magic editor, audio magic eraser, call assist, live translate, circle to search, and more.

The biggest sacrifice in the lower-priced model is a slight reduction in durability, and even that’s relatively negligible. The Pixel 7a is rated IP67, which means it can handle water and dust exposure up to about 3.3 feet of depth for up to 30 minutes. The 8 and 8 Pro are IP68 rated, which means they can be submerged slightly deeper for slightly longer.

Otherwise, the Pixel 8a largely represents a lateral move and a price cut. The camera is the biggest change from the regular Pixel 8, as the new device shares the camera setup from the Pixel 7a, which is actually slightly better on paper. The 8a’s camera is 64MP main wide/12MP ultrawide on the rear and 13MP on the front. By comparison, the regular Pixel 8 is 50MP main wide/12MP ultrawide on the rear and 10.5MP on the front. However, due to improved light sensing and pixel size, the Pixel 8’s camera may be a better choice for some. Certain qualities, like color temperature, are up to the eye of the beholder.

The Pixel 8a starts at $499 for the 128GB version, while the regular Pixel 8 starts at $699 for the same. For the first time, the Pixel 8a can be upgraded to 256GB of storage, which will run you $559.

Pre-orders are available now.

The Pixel 8a is a budget refresh of the Pixel 8 line. Check out the original Pixel 8 phones below:

• Pixel 8

• Pixel 8 Pro

Robot lawn mower designs vary wildly, as they're optimized for different benefits, and for every feature, a weakness is exposed. Light and fast robots are easy to turn over. Heavy robots are slow and get stuck. Every single robot lawn mower I test seems to be built differently, optimized for stability or tight turns or longevity or agility, but never all of the above. In this way, robot lawnmowers are very different from robot vacuums—it’s less about which is the best robot, and more about what robot is best for your yard. The Segway Navimow  i110n ($1299, but the smaller model is $979.99) is a useful little bot with an appealing design, tight turn radius, small footprint and relatively easy-to-use app. It struggles with irregular landscapes and doesn’t get as close to obstacles as I would like. Still, if you’re willing to do a little yard amendment to make it work, the Navimow is a good choice for a mid-priced robot lawn mower. 

Segway Navimow i110N Robot Lawn Mower

$1,299.00 at Amazon

Shop Now

Shop Now

$1,299.00 at Amazon

Easy to put together

The Navimow comes mostly put together right out of the box. Unlike the Mammotion Luba 2, this is not a low-to-the-ground bot; it's rather boxy. The Navimow features two large front wheels and then smaller wheels that look like office-chair casters. The garage, an additional purchase that I recommend (it protects your investment from the elements as well as thieves), was also quick to come together. The most confusing part was the navigation tower, which you install atop an included pole. You can, alternatively, mount it on your home, and the instructions weren’t helpful distinguishing the parts of the house mount and the pole from one another. The dock, mower, garage and GPS tower are all relatively lightweight.

Segway goes to great lengths in their app and documents to offer direction on how to install the tower and the bot, because like a number of other bots, the tower and bot always need to be in sight of one another, and the tower also needs to have line of sight to the sky. If you have a front and back yard, you’ll likely need to mount the pole on your home to maintain the line of sight to the bot at all times, which means the bot and tower will be in two different places. There are plenty of cords given to do so, but it’s much, much easier when you can install them both in one place. Once in place, I struggled to pair the Navimow to the app for about 30 minutes—the app just couldn’t find the robot—but eventually it did pair, and the app has been consistent since then. 

Prefers a level lawn

The Navimow sets boundaries in a way I enjoy, like the Mammotion Luba 2. You “walk” the robot around the perimeter, using the remote control in the app to set the boundary. Then the mower goes about mapping everything in that boundary. You can set “no go” zones, but in this yard, the only no go zones were some raised beds that the mower couldn’t possibly harm. You can follow the area the Navimow is mapping in the app in real time, seeing the position and precisely how much space has been covered, a feature I really liked. Almost immediately, though, the Navimow became stuck in a dip in the lawn. It wasn’t a ditch or a sizable hole, but rather a shallow depression, about two feet wide, a few inches deep. The Luba 2 had sailed over sizable ditches, but the design was completely different. Here, the two large wheels and boxiness worked against the bot. For the next few mows, the bot avoided the area as soon as it sensed the depression was still there. It did the same with a slight hill elsewhere in the yard. Again, this wasn’t a dramatic hill, but a slight raise over 18 inches, no more than a little bump. But still, the Navimow decided it was a hazard and avoided it, leaving an obviously un-mowed bump. We shaved down the hill—no more than a single shovel scoop—and then relocated that soil to the depression and leveled it out. The mower then started mowing those areas on the next run, but I was surprised it was bothered by them to begin with. 

No lawn tracks, but predictable cutting

Unlike other bots where you can set the height of the cut lawn in the app, you set it manually on top of the lawnbot itself—which means you’re less likely to adjust it once it is set. The Navimow does a respectable job mowing, dutifully going back and forth in a predictable pattern after first circling the area. Because of the lightness of the robot, I never achieved the lawn lines that so many people aspire to, regardless of how long the grass was beforehand or how short we cut it. Also, the finished lawn, although clearly mowed, did not have the tidy look provided by a heavier mower like the Luba 2. The lawn was always dotted with a few missed pieces of grass here and there. And while an occasional stray piece of grown grass isn’t a big deal, it did affect the final look. 

Improves over time

For the first few weeks, I was unimpressed with how much space the Navimow gave those raised beds. The boxes were sturdy and made of all straight lines, I assumed the bot would bump up against them and cut pretty close. Instead, the Navimow avoided them altogether, leaving an eight- to 10-inch path around them that required some string trimming. But over the next few weeks, the Navimow started closing in on those boxes, becoming more precise. By week six, the was very little space left around the boxes. 

Some features are buried

Navimow's app offers many of the same features as other lawn robots, including scheduling, reports, anti-theft protection and options for conditions under which the mower will go out: rain, darkness, etc. What it did less well than other robots was help create multi-zone maps. Most lawns, I’ve found, are going to require more than one zone. You’d likely make your front and back yards two zones, and connect them, or you might have a strip of lawn between your sidewalk and the street. The addition of new zones is buried in the app, outside of map management. I also struggled to make the connections between zones once I had established them. The mower struggled as well when I asked it to mow multiple zones, using those connections. 

Reliable and trustworthy

That said, there was a lot to like about the Navimow. It was consistent: When I asked it to mow one zone, it did so reliably. Once I solved the gradation problem, the Navimow never got stuck again while mowing a zone, and I was able to send it on scheduled runs without worrying about it over the six weeks of testing. During those six weeks, we never once had to mow manually, although we did clean up the edges with a string trimmer. 

Bottom line: well-priced for smaller spaces

I ran this test at the same time as the Mammotion Luba 2, so it’s easy to compare them. For instance, the Luba does not struggle with difficult terrain, and the Navimow could not possibly have managed the same obstacles as the Luba. But the Navimow can navigate far smaller spaces than the Luba. In spaces the Luba could barely get into, the Navimow zipped in, mowed and got out without tearing it up. While the Navimow doesn’t leave lawn tracks due to the lightness of the body, the wheels also don’t tear up the lawn making tight turns like the Luba did in those spaces. The finished result isn’t as clean-looking, but the lawn was mowed. The Navimow is also less than half the price of the Luba. If you’ve got a lawn under ¼ acre, the Navimow makes a lot of sense. For $1300 or less, you take one household labor off the to-do list, and that amortizes pretty quickly when you consider the time mowing takes or the money you’d pay a service. I do recommend the additional garage; the mower lights up like a light tower at night, and the garage does help mask the lights a bit. I also recommend mounting the GPS tower to your home for best line of sight to the robot at all times, and to make sure your lawn is mostly level. Still, if you’re willing to put in a little work up front, the Segway Navimow i110n is going to get the work done for you.

Most of us are likely to accept most computer settings as they are without varying too much from the default configuration that comes out of the box—but sometimes, a little digging can help you get more out of your hardware. That's certainly true when it comes to monitor settings: This depends on the monitor you've got, of course, but you may have more options to play around with than you thought. If you're going to be spending a lot of time staring at your screen, it's important to get it set up in the best way for you.

Whether you're looking to make the most of the display you've got, or you're simply baffled by some of the options you've come across, we'll guide you through the key monitor settings you need to know about—both those you'll find in Windows and macOS, and those available on your actual monitor.

Windows and macOS

You can find your monitor settings in Windows by going to Settings from the Start menu, then choosing System and Display. You get the fundamentals here: first and foremost, the Display resolution, which is simply the number of pixels on show. Look for the option marked Recommended in the drop down list, as this will be the native resolution for your monitor—the one where text and graphics look the sharpest.

If you're using a high-end, high-resolution monitor, using the native resolution can make Windows text and menus seem tiny, which is where Scale comes in. Use this to scale up on-screen elements without affecting the resolution. If your monitor supports the feature, you can also choose between Landscape and Portrait for the Display orientation, enabling you to use your monitor vertically if needed.

Display settings on Windows. Credit: Lifehacker

Most monitors now support a High Dynamic Range or HDR mode, which you can enable by clicking Use HDR. HDR can work wonders in terms of contrast and color range—it essentially means details in very dark and very light areas of the screen are kept visible and not lost. Imagine a person standing with strong sunlight behind them: HDR would mean that person wouldn't just be a black shadow.

Head to the Advanced display screen and you're able to set the refresh rate, if your monitor supports multiple refresh rates: This is a key monitor spec, measured in Hertz (Hz), that tells you how often per second the display is refreshing itself. A higher refresh rate typically means smoother playback for games and movies, because you're seeing more frames per second.

Dell UltraSharp 27 4K USB-C Hub Monitor (U2723QE)

$467.99 at Amazon

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Get Deal

$467.99 at Amazon

$579.99 Save $112.00

Over on macOS, you're able to get to your monitor settings by going to the Apple menu and choosing System Settings and then Displays. As on Windows, you'll see a choice of resolutions, represented in pixels—the native resolution for the monitor will be labeled as Default, and that should give you the best experience.

Display settings on macOS. Credit: Lifehacker

Then there's Color profile, which essentially manages how colors and contrast are handled by the monitor (there are more ways to do this thank you might think). This setting is of most use for creative professionals who need full color accuracy in their work—most of the rest of us won't need to change this setting, but you can certainly experiment with what's available.

The other settings here match those that we've previously covered for Windows. You're able to specify a refresh rate (how quickly the screen refreshes each second), and enable HDR (for better management of color and contrast extremes). Finally, Rotation lets you turn your monitor into a portrait or landscape orientation, if your monitor supports it.

On-board settings

That's the Windows and macOS settings, but you may also find a bunch of options available on your monitor. Obviously this will vary from monitor to monitor, so you might need to check on the web to see what exactly your model is capable of and how you get to the settings (it's usually done via buttons on the monitor itself).

Besides the basics of brightness and contrast, something you'll often see are presets, which will have a variety of names like Movie or Gaming: These presets will adjust settings like contrast, color saturation, and sharpness all together to work best for certain scenarios. The scenario should be made clear by the preset name, but you can always look it up if you need to.

On-board presets on a BenQ monitor. Credit: Lifehacker

There's nothing wrong with the standard preset that's enabled by default, by the way—this will work well for most use cases. However, if you're doing something specific, you may get better results with a preset. You can always tweak presets further by adjusting the individual settings for color and contrast yourself, if needed.

One of the individual settings you'll see on some monitors is Gamma, which controls how smoothly black transitions into white, and affects the balance between the lightest and the darkest areas of the frame. There might also be a Color temperature setting, which affects how 'warm' or 'cold' colors look on screen.

Gaming monitors will often have something called an Overdrive feature (though it might have a different name). This boosts the monitor's ability to transition between colors, and it can reduce 'ghosting' (or color trails) in fast-paced games with a lot of motion. It can also cause other noticeable artifacts though, so it's something that's best set on a game-by-game basis, depending on your personal preference.

In-game settings for Red Dead Redemption 2. Credit: Lifehacker

You might also see a mention of Nvidia G-Sync or AMD FreeSync, features that sync the monitor refresh rate to the number of frames being outputted every second by your graphics card: With this enabled, you should see less stuttering and screen tearing (where two halves of a frame don't match up). It has a variety of other names depending on the monitor, so look out for something mentioning "sync" or "variable refresh rate."

Finally, don't neglect the settings inside your apps and especially your games. Most games will come with a stack of options you can adjust to control the monitor resolution, refresh rate, latency (the delay between your input and the screen response), and frame sync settings—these will vary between games and between monitors, but they should be labeled in a way that makes them easy to understand.

HP Omen 32c 32" 1440p 165Hz Curved Gaming Monitor

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Qualcomm’s Adreno 6xx architecture has been superseded Adreno 7xx, but it’s still used in countless devices, including the current-gen Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3. Here, I’ll be looking at the Adreno 640 GPU in the Snapdragon 855. Zarif98 on Reddit kindly provided a OnePlus 7 Pro, and I’ll be using that to check out Adreno 640.

Compared to the older Snapdragon 821’s Adreno 530, Adreno 640 dramatically increases compute throughput while still working within a very constrained power and thermal envelope. Process node improvements help, and TSMC’s 7 nm process should be far better than the 14 nm Samsung node used in the Snapdragon 821. But cell phone SoC constraints meant Qualcomm couldn’t go around copy-pasting basic GPU building blocks and call it a day.

↫ Chips and Cheese

Chips and Cheese with another deep dive.

While it’s still yet to debut, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite is looking like a big deal for ARM-powered Windows machines and, now, it’s getting a more affordable cousin in the Snapdragon X Plus.

Announced today, Snapdragon X Plus is based on the same Oryon CPU as Snapdragon X Elite, just with a bit less power. The chip has 10 cores to the Elite’s 12, and is also clocked down from the Elite’s 3.8GHz to 3.4GHz.

↫ Ben Schoon at 9To5Google

It really seems like it’s finally happening – ARM computers for the general public (that aren’t from Apple). I really hope that Qualcomm can deliver on its promises, and that Microsoft’s involvement means these computers will be fairly standardised so it’s easier for non-Windows platforms to support them. I’ve seen quite a few rumblings from people invited to Qualcomm’s press events for these new ARM chips that the company is delivering Linux support alongside Windows support, so that’s at least a good start.

Whenever we talk about ARM coming to the generic PC market, people rightfully point out the lack of standardisation in the ARM space, so that really is the deciding factor here for people like us, who tend to not be all too interested in locked-down platforms. If every one of these machines is different enough that supporting them is a nightmare – like the world of smartphones – ARM for PCs will be dead on arrival for me because I have zero interest in buying Windows-only hardware.

One thing Microsoft tends to be good at is getting at least some standardisation to stick in the PC market, and I hope they’re going to that here, too – Microsoft probably isn’t relishing supporting each individual ARM machine in Windows ‘by hand’ either. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

There is something about surprising interfaces: clapping to switch on lights is more fun than a flipping a switch. Pressing a panic-button to order a pizza is more fun than ordering via an app. Recently I came across this surprising interface: a flute controlled mouse cursor for a first person shooter. I recognize a good idea when I see one, and immediately wanted replicate the idea and make it freely available. So I got to work.

↫ Joren Six

I don’t think I have ever seen something quite so unique.

Only two days ago we were talking about the software and firmware issues at Framework, and today the company’s CEO has announced they’re taking some pretty big steps to address these problems.

When building products to last, it’s not enough to design the hardware to be repairable, upgradeable, and customizable. The overall longevity of devices as complex as modern notebooks also depends on how long the software and firmware continues to be useful. That includes compatibility updates to support newer generations hardware modules, fixes for bugs or compatibility issues found by end users, and especially patches for security vulnerabilities. We recognize that we have fallen short of where we need to be on software updates, and we are making the needed investments to resolve this.

We now have a dedicated team of engineers at our manufacturing partner and a set of internal stakeholders focused on ongoing software updates for all of our products, going back to our original Framework Laptop with 11th Gen Intel Core. In the past, we were reliant on ad-hoc availability of engineering time from our suppliers (basically borrowing staffing from whichever new product development we had ongoing). This was inconsistent and resulted in slow progress. With a dedicated team, there is no longer resource contention, and we are able deliver shorter turnaround times from discovering issues to resolving them.

↫ Nirav Patel

They’ve also shared exactly how the development, testing, and release process new firmware releases will work, from identifying any issues to the final release to consumers, and they’re hiring new employees focused entirely on expediting this process. They also promise to support each device for as long as their upstream silicon vendors will, but they can’t give any guarantees on how long that will be since those upstream vendors aren’t sharing details like that.

All in all, I think this is about as good a response as you can get from an OEM, but as they themselves note, they’ll have to show their customers these aren’t just mere words. Assuming it pans out the way Framework is promising here, I think it’s a fair and customer-friendly process.

Framework puts a lot of effort into making its hardware easy to fix and upgrade and into making sure that hardware can stay useful down the line when it’s been replaced by something newer. But supporting that kind of reuse and recycling works best when paired with long-term software and firmware support, and on that front, Framework has been falling short.

Framework will need to step up its game, especially if it wants to sell more laptops to businesses—a lucrative slice of the PC industry that Framework is actively courting. By this summer or fall, we’ll have some idea of whether its efforts are succeeding.

↫ Andrew Cunningham at Ars Technica

A very painful read, and I’m disappointed to learn that the software support from Framework has been so lacklustre – or non-existent, to be more accurate. Leaving severel security vulnerabilities in firmware unpatched is a disgrace, and puts users at risk, while promising but not delivering updates that will unlock faster Thunderbolt speeds is just shitty. They have to do better, especially since their pitch is all about repairability and longevity.

This article has made me more weary of spending any money on Framework – not that I have the money for a new laptop, because reasons – and I feel more people will feel this way after reading this.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the ROCK 5 ITX coming soon and since then, samples of the Rockchip RK3588-based Radxa ROCK 5 ITX have been landing on doorsteps (or service points, screw you, UPS) of a lucky group of people and somehow I was one of those, so here’s a first look at Radxa’s latest Single Board Computer in a Mini ITX form-factor!

It’s going to be a photo-heavy post and I make no apologies for that, it’s a very nice-looking PCB, with the black and gold colour scheme looking very stylish. I imagine that was a very conscious decision seeing as, as expected, they’re marketing this as a low-power desktop option and you probably don’t want a plain Jane motherboard taking pride of place in your new system, right?

↫ Bret Weber

Now this – this, my friends, is exactly what the doctor ordered. I can’t wait for standard, ATX motherboard sporting ARM processors to become more common and readily available, hopefully standardised better than what we’re used to from the ARM world. I want my next (non-gaming) machines to be ARM-powered, and that means we’re going to need more of these ATX ARM boards, spanning wider performance levels.

There was a time when it thought that Alexa would yield a robust ecosystem of apps, or Alexa Skills, that would make the voice assistant an integral part of users’ lives. Amazon envisioned tens of thousands of software developers building valued abilities for Alexa that would grow the voice assistant’s popularity—and help Amazon make some money.

But about seven years after launching a rewards program to encourage developers to build Skills, Alexa’s most preferred abilities are the basic ones, like checking the weather. And on June 30, Amazon will stop giving out the monthly Amazon Web Services credits that have made it free for third-party developers to build and host Alexa Skills. The company also recently told devs that its Alexa Developer Rewards program was ending, virtually disincentivizing third-party devs to build for Alexa.

↫ Scharon Harding at Ars Technica

I’ve never used Alexa – Amazon doesn’t really have a footprint in either The Netherlands or Sweden, so I never really had to care – but I always thought the Skills were the reason it was so loved. It seemingly makes no sense to me to start killing off this feature, but then, I’m assuming Amazon has the data to back up the fact people aren’t using them.

It sucks, I guess? Can someone who uses Alexa fill in the blanks for me here?

The HP 200 LX was a successful palmtop computer introduced in 1994. HP continued to sell it through 1999, an unusually long run for a 1990s computer model. In this blog post, we’ll dig into this largely forgotten form factor and why it became such a quiet success.

↫ Dave Farquhar

These devices are incredibly cool, but I disagree that they disappeared, as the blog post states. Just recently I reviewed my main laptop, a very small Chuwi MiniBook (2023) with the N100, and in that article I also listed some other similar options that are still being made and sold today, from companies like GPD and OneNetbook.

PCIe 7.0 is is the next generation interconnect technology for computers that is set to increase data transfer speeds to 128 GT/s per pin, doubling the 64 GT/s of PCIe 6.0 and quadrupling the 32 GT/s of PCIe 5.0. This would allow a 16-lane (x16) connection to support 256 GB/sec of bandwidth in each direction simultaneously, excluding encoding overhead. Such speeds will be handy for future datacenters as well as artificial intelligence and high-performance computing applications that will need even faster data transfer rates, including network data transfer rates.

↫ Anton Shilov at AnandTech

PCIe 7.0 won’t hit devices until late 2020s.

Even with that said, those gray-hairs will frequently claim that of the many makers of floppies out there, 3M made the best ones. Given that, I was curious to figure out exactly why 3M became the most memorable brand in data storage during the formative days of computing, and why it abandoned the product.

↫ Ernie Smith

I do not remember if I ever held any particular views on which brand of floppy disk (or diskettes, as we called them) was the best. We had a wide variety of brands, and I can’t recall any one of them being better than the other, but then, I’m sure people in professional settings had more experience with the little black squares and thus developed all kinds of feelings about them.

Since the technology industry and associated media outlets tend to focus primarily on the latest and greatest technology and what’s right around the corner, it sometimes seems as if the only valid option when you need a new laptop, phone, desktop, or whatever is to spend top euro on the newest, most expensive incarnations of those. But what if you need, say, a new laptop, but you’re not swimming in excess disposable income? Or you just don’t want to spend 1000-2000 euro on a new laptop?

The tech media tends to have an answer for this: buy something like a cheap Chromebook or an e-waste €350 Windows laptop and call it a day – you don’t deserve a nice experience. However, there’s a far better option than spending money on a shackled Chromebook or an underpowered bottom-of-the-barrel Windows laptop: buy used. Recently, I decided to buy a used laptop, and I set it up how I would set up any new laptop, to get an idea of what’s out there. Here’s how it went.

For this little experiment, I first had to settle on a brand, and to be brutally honest, that was an easy choice. ThinkPads seems to be universally regarded as excellent choices for a used laptop for a variety of reasons which I’ll get to later. After weighing some of the various models, options, and my budget, I decided to go for a Lenovo ThinkPad T450s for about €150, and about a week later, the device arrived at my local supermarket for pickup.

Before I settled on this specific ThinkPad, I had a few demands and requirements. First and foremost, since I don’t like large laptops, I didn’t want anything bigger than roughly 14″, and since I’m a bit of a pixel count snob, 1920×1080 was non-negotiable. Since I already have a Dell XPS 13 with an 8th Gen Core i7, I figured going 3-4 generations older seemed like it would give me at least somewhat of a generational performance difference. An SSD was obviously a must, and as long as there were expansion options, RAM did not matter to me.

The T450s delivered on all of these. It’s got the 1920×1080 14″ IPS panel (there’s also a lower resolution panel, so be sure to check you’re getting the right one), a Core i5-5300U with 2 cores and 4 threads with a base frequency of 2.30GHz and a maximum boost frequency of 2.90GHz, Intel HD 5500 graphics, a 128GB SATA SSD, and 4GB of RAM. Since 4GB is a bit on the low side for me, I ordered an additional 8GB SO-DIMM right away for €35. This brought the total price for this machine to €185, which I considered acceptable. For that price, it also came with its Windows license, for whatever that’s worth.

I don’t want to turn this into a detailed review of a laptop from 2015, but let’s go over what it’s like to use this machine today. The display cover is made of carbon-reinforced plastic, and the rest of magnesium. You can clearly feel this laptop is of a slightly older vintage, as it feels a bit more dinkey than I’m used to from my XPS 13 9370 and my tiny Chuwi MiniBook X (2023). It doesn’t feel crappy or cheap or anything – just not as solid as you might expect from a modern machine.

It’s got a whole load of ports to work with, though, which is refreshing compared to the trend of today. On the left side, there’s a smartcard slot, USB 3.0, mini DisplayPort, another USB 3.0, and the power connector. On the right side, there’s a headphone jack, an SD card slot, another USB 3.0 port, an Ethernet jack, and a VGA port. On the bottom of the laptop is a docking port to plug it into various docking stations with additional ports and connectors. On the inside, there’s a free M.2 slot (a small 2242 one).

First, I eradicated Windows from the SSD because while I’m okay with an outdated laptop, I’m not okay with an outdated operating system (subscribe to our Patreon to ensure more of these top-quality jokes). After messing around with various operating systems and distributions for a while, I got back to business and installed my distribution of choice, Fedora, but I did opt for the Xfce version instead of my usual KDE one just for variety’s sake.

ThinkPads tend to be well-supported by Linux, and the T450s is no exception. Everything I could test – save for the smartcard reader, since I don’t have a smartcard to test it with – works out of the box, and nothing required any manual configuration or tweaking to work properly. Everything from trackpad gestures to the little ThinkLight on the lid worked perfectly, without having to deal with hunting for drivers and that sort of nonsense Windows users have to deal with. This is normal for most laptops and Linux now, but it’s nice to see it applies to this model as well.

Using the T450s was… Uneventful. Applications open fast, there’s no stutter or lag, and despite having just 2 cores and 4 threads, and a very outdated integrated GPU, I didn’t really feel like I was missing out when browsing, doing some writing and translating (before I quit and made OSNews my sole job), watching video, those sorts of tasks. This isn’t a powerhouse laptop for video editing, gaming, or compiling code or whatever, but for everything else, it works great.

After I had set everything up the way I like, software-wise, I did do some work to make the machine a bit more pleasant to use. First and foremost, as with any laptop or PC that’s a little older, I removed the heatsink assembly, cleaned off the crusty old thermal paste, and added some new, fresh paste. I then dove into the fan management, and installed zcfan, a Linux fan control daemon for ThinkPads, using its default settings, and created a systemd service to have it start automatically. Additionally, I checked which codecs the Intel HD 5500 supports, as well as what Firefox reported as working, and then used enhanced-h264ify to disable VP9 on YouTube, since the HD 5500 cannot hardware-accelerate decoding VP9.

The end result is a fan that pretty much never turns on. Which is the only fan I like.

Expand and repair

As happy as I am with the ThinkPad, though, it has some serious flaws stemming from it being a used laptop. The included battery holds very little charge, there’s a red splotch on the display, and the keyboard uses the Swedish layout instead of the US (International) we use in The Netherlands, and it’s also not backlit, which is a big problem if you live in the Arctic and it’s dark during daytime. Luckily, here we run into the true reason why I feel ThinkPads are the best option for used laptops: parts availability for ThinkPads is exceptional.

Let’s fix the flaws, shall we?

The T450s has an interesting battery configuration: there’s space for an internal battery, as well as a ‘junk in the trunk’-style external one. Replacements for these in various capacities are readily available in countless stores, with the small internal battery going for roughly €40, while the larger external batteries run anywhere from €60 to €8O. You can get some serious battery capacity this way, especially if you go nuts and buy two or even more external batteries. Lenovo claims you can reach 20.7 hours of battery life if you combine the internal battery with the largest external one, for whatever that means in reality.

On my model, the interior battery compartment is partially taken up by a smartcard reader, so in order to insert an internal battery, I’ll need to remove that and find some sort of way to cover up the smartcard slot. The external battery replacement is obviously a lot easier, as it slots right in without having to open the device up. Imagine that.

Another fun fact is that you can also install a second M.2 SSD using the connector freed-up by removing the smartcard reader, if you so desire. Note, however, that this requires an adapter board (FRU 04X3827) and ribbon cable (FRU 04X3987), which will set you back about €20 each, depending on where you buy them from. If storage space is more important to you than battery capacity, this might be a great choice for you.

Replacing the keyboard is also possible, and not exactly difficult either. As long as you get the right keyboard for the T450s, you can opt for any keyboard layout you want. In addition, if your model lacks the backlit keyboard – like mine – you can choose to buy a backlit keyboard instead. A new keyboard will set you back no more than €40 or so, and they’re widely available.

Lastly, I can also replace the display, and it seems this is a fairly easy affair. The reddish splotch on my display is only really visible when it’s on a very dark section of the screen, but it bothers me just enough that I want to fix it. A new 1080p display for the T450s costs about €60 or so, making it kind of a no-brainer if you’re experiencing display issues like I am.

I have not yet decided on which of these upgrades and fixes I’m going to be performing. Even if I purchase the two batteries, a new keyboard, and a new display to bring this laptop back to an almost pristine state, I’ll have only spent an additional €180 or so, which isn’t a lot considering what you’ll be getting for it: a ton of battery life, a keyboard with backlighting and the right layout, and a display without a red splotch on it. Let me know in the comments if you’d be interested in an article detailing these upgrades, and if there’s enough interest, I’ll order the parts and detail the work I needed to do to perform the repairs and upgrades.

However, even without any of these upgrades and fixes, this T450s is an excellent laptop for an amazing price, and can serve the needs of casual and more serious users alike. It’s a great buy for any kids going off to high school or university, and even as a primary laptop for a more demanding user, it’ll do just great. You really don’t have to spend well over a thousand euros or dollars to get a capable, fast laptop – and the ThinkPad’s wide availability of upgrades and replacement parts means you’ll get even more value for your money than just the ‘base’ laptop itself.

By buying used, you’re not only preventing a laptop from becoming dangerous toxic e-waste for people in poor countries to get sick from, but you’re also saving a load of money you can spend on more important things. Especially if you’re a family with multiple kids going to school and a normal, average income, used laptops like this ThinkPad are a great value, further enhanced by excellent repairability and parts availability so that you can keep the machine afloat for many years to come.

It’s yet another hardware side-channel attack:

The threat resides in the chips’ data memory-dependent prefetcher, a hardware optimization that predicts the memory addresses of data that running code is likely to access in the near future. By loading the contents into the CPU cache before it’s actually needed, the DMP, as the feature is abbreviated, reduces latency between the main memory and the CPU, a common bottleneck in modern computing. DMPs are a relatively new phenomenon found only in M-series chips and Intel’s 13th-generation Raptor Lake microarchitecture, although older forms of prefetchers have been common for years.

[…]

The breakthrough of the new research is that it exposes a previously overlooked behavior of DMPs in Apple silicon: Sometimes they confuse memory content, such as key material, with the pointer value that is used to load other data. As a result, the DMP often reads the data and attempts to treat it as an address to perform memory access. This “dereferencing” of “pointers”—meaning the reading of data and leaking it through a side channel—­is a flagrant violation of the constant-time paradigm.

[…]

The attack, which the researchers have named GoFetch, uses an application that doesn’t require root access, only the same user privileges needed by most third-party applications installed on a macOS system. M-series chips are divided into what are known as clusters. The M1, for example, has two clusters: one containing four efficiency cores and the other four performance cores. As long as the GoFetch app and the targeted cryptography app are running on the same performance cluster—­even when on separate cores within that cluster­—GoFetch can mine enough secrets to leak a secret key.

The attack works against both classical encryption algorithms and a newer generation of encryption that has been hardened to withstand anticipated attacks from quantum computers. The GoFetch app requires less than an hour to extract a 2048-bit RSA key and a little over two hours to extract a 2048-bit Diffie-Hellman key. The attack takes 54 minutes to extract the material required to assemble a Kyber-512 key and about 10 hours for a Dilithium-2 key, not counting offline time needed to process the raw data.

The GoFetch app connects to the targeted app and feeds it inputs that it signs or decrypts. As its doing this, it extracts the app secret key that it uses to perform these cryptographic operations. This mechanism means the targeted app need not perform any cryptographic operations on its own during the collection period.

Note that exploiting the vulnerability requires running a malicious app on the target computer. So it could be worse. On the other hand, like many of these hardware side-channel attacks, it’s not possible to patch.

Slashdot thread.