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Tech NewsGadgets
Is Your Raspberry Pi Phoning Home to Microsoft?
A new update to Raspberry Pi OS, previously known as Raspbian, has put open-source fans on edge. Why? The new OS is pinging Microsoft servers every time the user updates their apps or the OS itself. The brouhaha is a bit of a tempest in a teapot, because the new OS simply pings repositories that hold … Continued
By John Biggs -
ReviewsHeadphones
These Cheap Noise-Canceling Earbuds Give AirPods Pro a Run for Their Money
In a world in which Apple is now selling $549 headphones, and the major players like Bose are sure to follow suit with equally pricey devices, it’s refreshing to find a pair of earbuds that offer solid noise cancellation, excellent design, and a great price. The Liberty Air 2 Pros from Anker sub-brand Soundcore cost … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsNews
E-Book Sales Rise as People Hunt Desperately for Stuff to Do
E-book revenues are up by 15.2% from 2019, hitting $1 billion last year, according to a report by the Association of American Publishers. December figures should reach at least $100 million if the organization’s estimates are correct. “Print book sales tracked for the year by NPD BookScan rose 8.2 percent in 2020 despite—and in some … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsNews
Amazon Rolls Out More Touchless Palm Readers
The first Amazon One palm readers are officially hitting more retail stores in the Seattle area. The readers, announced last summer, are completely touchless and instead read the lines on the palm of your hand to identify you for checkout. Amazon lets customers use the readers instead of QR codes to check customers out at … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsGadgets
The Best Way to Set Up Your Mac Mini
It was time to die. My 2014 iMac, outfitted with a 3TB drive and maxed out RAM, was a dream machine. For years, I fired it up and got to work, transcoding video, recording podcasts, and writing books. It was almost too much machine. It had a massive, beautiful screen—one of the first Retina models, … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsNews
3D Print Your Own Pouting Bernie
In a fascinating example of the physical world entering the digital and then hurtling itself back out again, the now-famous photo of Sen. Bernie Sanders looking like a petulant seventh-grader waiting for his mom to pick him up after band practice is now a 3D-printable trinket. There are two versions of the model available, one … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsGadgets
This $440,000 Watch Has a Unique Complication and Looks Cool, Also Costs $440,000
As a watch lover, I look at the new MB&F Horological Machine N°9 ‘Sapphire Vision’ with equal measures of lust and anger. Boutique manufacturer MB&F first launched this version of its Horological Machine line in 2018 and claimed the oddly-shaped and gold-bedecked timekeeper was inspired by 1950s “aerodynamic principles.” The other Horological Machines are all … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsGadgets
Raspberry Pi Introduces a New $4 Board, and Its Own Silicon
The Raspberry Pi is one of the smallest and cheapest mini computers you can buy. It has an HDMI port, USB ports, and runs Ubuntu or other open-source operating systems like a champ. The new Raspberry Pi Pico, on the other hand, is like the CPU of a more complex machine. By itself, it can’t … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsCES
Fender’s Tiny Personal Amp Could Recreate Classic Tones
Portable or practice amps are a guitarist’s best friend. These tiny devices usually plug right into your guitar and let you listen to the audio without waking the neighbors or the baby in the next room. Fender, for its part, has made it easier to get great tone out of a box the size of … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsCES
Turtle Beach Acquires Wacky Microphone Maker In Bid to Enter Podcasting Market
Turtle Beach, a maker of popular gaming headsets, has acquired Neat Microphones, a company that made waves with its unique-looking microphones for broadcasters and podcasters. Originally launched by musical instrument manufacturer Gibson, Neat’s Widget microphone line looked like something Jessica Rabbit would sing into in Toontown. Founded by the co-founder of Blue Microphones Skipper Wise, … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsCES
The Lasso Robot Wants to Make Recycling at Home Easier
Recycling is important but it’s also a pain. Separating glass from plastic from paper isn’t a terrible task but what wouldn’t it be nicer if a robot did it instead? That’s why one inventor built the Lasso, a robot that claims to accept, indentify, and prepare recycling for proper reuse. Creator Aldous Hicks built the … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsCES
The Trova Is a Bluetooth-Powered Lockbox That Actually Looks Good
Folks with kids or other snoops in the house will appreciate the Trova Home. This $550 box can be opened with your phone via Bluetooth, wifi, or NFC and is designed to look like an art piece. Which is a nice change of pace from the ones that look like they should be left in … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsCES
This Ugly Little Ultrasound Device Could Tell You When You Have to Pee
According to the National Institutes of Health, more than 25 million Americans suffer from some form of incontinence. In many cases, patients dealing with incontinence can’t feel bladder fullness, resulting in accidents. A device called the DFree is an ultrasound sensor that hopes to solve that. The DFree has been around since 2019 but the … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsCES
This Kitchen Garden System Adds Microgreens (and Alexa) To Your Lockdown Diet
When it comes to indoor gardening you basically have to go big or go home. Anyone who has started seedlings in the kitchen and hoped to get some basil or thyme out of the process knows that it’s easy to get a sprout but hard to get a plant. Chicago-based Rise Gardens hopes to change … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsNews
Researchers Use AI to Separate Conspiracy From Fact
Researchers at UCLA have created a model to distinguish conspiracy theories from actual conspiracies which will possibly allow robots to differentiate between things like Pizzagate and Bridgegate in the future. The project, created by Timothy R. Tangherlini, Shadi Shahsavari, Behnam Shahbazi, Ehsan Ebrahimzadeh, and Vwani Roychowdhury, analyzes multiple narratives including “user-generated” narratives like Pizzagate, Qanon, … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsNews
Researchers Find a Faster, More Efficient Way to 3D Print
Two researchers at Penn State have created a new system for five-axis additive 3D-printing that reduces the amount and density of support materials needed for making printed objects. In a paper entitled “Process planning for five-axis support free additive manufacturing,” doctoral candidates Xinyi Xiaoa and Sanjay Joshi proposed using a 3D printer with a movable … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsGadgets
This Robot Plays the Perfect Sad Trombone for 2021
When it comes to the perfect accompaniment to 2021, there can be nothing better than the RoboTrombo, a project by iSax Laboratories whose primary goal was to create a MIDI-controlled brass instrument “that could play any song.” It didn’t work. “When a human trombone player produces a tone it is a combination of lip tension, … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsNews
The Terrifying Reason We’re Talking About Lizard Squad Again
Today, former Trump legal representative L. Lin Wood shared some supposedly earth-shattering information about a cabal of intelligence officers from “10 of the world’s most well-known & ‘elite’ agencies” [sic] whose alleged mission is to blackmail powerful people by forcing them to have sex with children at gunpoint. In Wood’s telling, they film the activity … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech News
Taste Brings a Cards Against Humanity-Style Edge to Dating Apps
Dating apps are usually cutesy, at best. The questions they ask are always geared toward the agreeable and the design is chipper and romantic. Taste, a new dating app, isn’t that. Billing itself as a “twisted dating game,” the app asks questions that range from the confrontational to the borderline dirty. These include inquiring whether … Continued
By John Biggs -
Tech NewsTech Policy
Substack Backs Out of the Moderation Game, but Can It Stay Impartial?
Substack, the popular mailing list platform that is purported to be the next big thing in media, is talking about content moderation and bias, and it’s going about as well as you’d expect. Substack started out as a simple email service. I created an account when it first launched in 2018 and still use it … Continued
By John Biggs