Farewell, the optimism of humanity overcoming our baser instincts and traveling to the stars. Farewell even to the optimism of an eccentric billionaire funding an expedition to Mars. Those dreams were always silly perhaps, and in the eternal words of Charlton Heston: “You maniacs! You blew it up!” By which I mean: Surviving Mars has spawned a …
The king is dead. Long live the king. Paradox unveiled plenty of projects at the 2019 iteration of its annual PDXCon fan gathering, but none loom larger than Crusader Kings III. After eight years and over a dozen expansions, the game that (arguably) made Paradox a household name is passing the crown to an heir. There’s …
Enlarge / Coming soon to a Nest near you: Your Google account. Google’s “Nest” smart home division has seen major upheaval this year, and according to a report from Bloomberg, the changes aren’t sitting well with residential builders that formerly integrated Nest projects into their construction projects. This year, we finally started seeing results from Nest’s …
Fair elections are the lifelines of democracy, but in recent years election hacking has become a hot topic worldwide. Whether it’s American voting machines during the 2016 presidential election or India’s EVMs during 2014 general elections, the integrity, transparency, and security of electronic voting machines remained questionable, leaving a wound in the minds of many …
Spring 2020 is incredibly crowded, but it got a bit less so this week as Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 slips its release date. Am I sad? Sort of, but mostly just relieved. That news, plus the Internet Archive expands its DOS collection, Riot finally branches out from League of Legends in a big way, Saints Row …
The Motorola Razr V3—the classic phone that started this hype train moving. Motorola’s short animation announcing the event depicts the original Razr hinge. Here’s what the device underneath looks like after the original hinge is peeled away in the animation. An illustration from a Motorola patent that represents one concept for a potential Razr reboot. …
The Google Pixel 4. Ron Amadeo The back of this one is white. Ron Amadeo Normally the forehead is jet black, but if you blast it with light, you can see all the sensors inside. Ron Amadeo The bottom has one of the stereo speakers. Ron Amadeo Here you can see the camera bump. Ron …
Anyone who uses a PC should have an external drive. It’s not only a useful means of data backup and storage, it also allows you to transport files from your desktop or laptop to another device. Xbox One X users, as well, would be wise to invest in an external drive as a way of augmenting …
If you haven’t been actively shopping for earbuds or headphones in the last couple of years, you might have missed the quiet gold rush of companies competing to offer increasingly inexpensive Bluetooth earbuds. Scrolling down through search results on Amazon, there are now dozens of options in the “true wireless” earbud market starting from as …
Enlarge / A Google Wifi Router sits next to a Google Wifi Point in this product shot from the Made by Google 2019 event. Google’s new Nest Wifi is notable largely for two things—having a built-in smart speaker and digital assistant in every node and not using the newest Wi-Fi technology at all. We still don’t …