Way back in 2012, Google "released" an 8-bit version of Google Maps as one of the company's then-annual April Fool's Day jokes. There was a low-res 8-bit style of Google Maps to play with, but the company didn't deliver on its promise of a cartridge you could pop in your old Nintendo Entertainment System. Gizmodo noticed that, nine years later, someone has figured out how to pull this off, with the help of a heavily-modified NES system and the previous work of other hackers before him.
Specifically, YouTuber ciciplusplus used a method to build his maps inspired by someone who figured out how to translate Bing Maps aerial imagery into 8-bit tiles that make up scenery in the original The Legend of Zelda NES game. Ciciplusplus used a similar method to convert Google Maps images into what appears to be tiles from the NES game Dragon Warrior (yes, Dragon Quest for those who didn't grow up playing it in the US).
As for the elaborate mods he made to a standard NES, those were inspired by YouTuber TheRasteri, who figured out how to get Doomplaying on his NES (of course). You can see a full video of how he pulled it off below:
As for the final Google Maps on NES product, well, you can vaguely make out the shapes of continents, and areas by the coast are recognizable, but once you zoom in, there isn't a whole lot of detail to distinguish what you're looking at. Still, it's an impressive and fun hack that we're guessing Google didn't think anyone would ever pull off.
T-Mobile says it’s “truly sorry” about the data breach that exposed the personal information of more than 54 million customers. “The last two weeks have been humbling for all of us at T-Mobile as we have worked tirelessly to navigate a malicious cyberattack on our systems,” the carrier said in an update on the situation attributed to CEO Mike Sievert.
“To say we are disappointed and frustrated that this happened is an understatement,” Sievert wrote in the post. “Keeping our customers’ data safe is a responsibility we take incredibly seriously and preventing this type of event from happening has always been a top priority of ours. Unfortunately, this time we were not successful.”
In T-Mobile’s account of what happened, the individual who hacked the company’s IT systems used “specialized” tools and knowledge of its infrastructure to gain access to its testing environments. "In short, this individual’s intent was to break in and steal data, and they succeeded," said Sievert.
The executive says the company is “fully committed” to improving its security practices as it works to regain the trust of its customers, many of whom had personal information like names, birth dates and social security numbers compromised in the incident. As a first step, T-Mobile has contacted “just about every” current customer or primary account holder who had data such as their name, SSN or address accessed. He also reiterated the company will offer two free years of access to McAfee’s ID Theft Protection Service to all of those affected by the incident.
Looking to the future, the carrier has signed multi-year partnerships with KPMG and cybersecurity firm Mandiant. According to Sievert, the two will help T-Mobile audit its current security practices and implement systems and policies that will help it prevent future cybersecurity incidents.
“Mandiant and KPMG will work side-by-side with our teams to map out definitive actions that will be designed to protect our customers and others from malicious activity now and into the future,” Sievert wrote. “I am confident in these partnerships and optimistic about the opportunity they present to help us come out of this terrible event in a much stronger place with improved security measures.”
And T-Mobile may need all the help it can get. John Binns, the hacker who claimed earlier in the week they were responsible for the data breach, said the company’s security was “awful.”
AI and Machine Learning systems have proven a boon to scientific research in a variety of academic fields in recent years. They’ve assisted scientists in identifying genomic markers ripe for cutting-edge treatments, accelerating the discovery of potent new drugs and therapeutics, and even publishing their own research. Throughout this period, however, AI/ML systems have often been relegated to simply processing large data sets and performing brute force computations, not leading the research themselves.
“The distinct characteristic of this challenge is to field the system into an open-ended domain to explore significant discoveries rather than rediscovering what we already know or trying to mimic speculated human thought processes,” Kitano wrote in June. “The vision is to reformulate scientific discovery itself and to create an alternative form of scientific discovery.”
“The value lies in the development of machines that can make discoveries continuously and autonomously,” he added, “AI Scientist will generate-and-verify as many hypotheses as possible, expecting some of them may lead to major discoveries by themselves or be a basis of major discoveries. A capability to generate hypotheses exhaustively and efficiently verify them is the core of the system.”
Today’s AIs are themselves the result of decades of scientific research and experimentation, starting back in 1950 when Alan Turing published his seminal treatsie, Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Over the years, these systems have grown from laboratory curios to vital data processing and analytical tools — but Kitano wants to take them a step further, effectively creating “a constellation of software and hardware modules dynamically interacting to accomplish tasks,” what he calls an “AI Scientist.”
“Initially, it will be a set of useful tools that automate a part of the research process in both experiments and data analysis,” he told Engadget. “For example, laboratory automation at the level of a closed-loop system rather than isolated automation is one of the first steps. A great example of this is Robot Scientist Adam-Eve developed by Prof. Ross King that automatically generates hypotheses on budding yeast genetics, plan experiments to support or refute, and execute experiments.”
“Gradually, the level of autonomy may increase to generate a broader range of hypotheses and verification,” he continued. “Nevertheless, it will continue to be a tool or a companion for human scientists at least within the foreseeable future.”
By having an AI Scientist handle the heavy intellectual lifting involved in generating hypotheses to explore, their human counterparts would have more free time to focus on research strategies and decide which hypotheses to actually look into, Kitano explained.
As always, avoiding the Black Box Effect and implicit bias (both in the software’s design and the data sets it is trained on) will be of paramount importance to establishing and maintaining trust in the system — the residents of Dr. Moreau’s island wouldn’t have been any less miserable had he been a mad AI instead of a mad geneticist.
“For scientific discoveries to be accepted in the scientific community, they must be accompanied with convincing evidence and reasoning behind them,” Kitano said. “AI Scientists will have components that can explain the mechanisms behind their discoveries. AI Scientists that do not have such explanation capabilities will be less preferred than ones [that do].”
Some of history's greatest scientific discoveries — from radiation and the microwave to Teflon and the pacemaker — have all come from experimental screwups. But when hyper-intelligent AIs start devising their own inscrutable spoken language, researchers rush to pull the plug. So what happens if and when an AI Scientist makes a discovery or devises an experiment that humans cannot immediately understand, even with an explanation?
“When AI Scientists get sophisticated enough to handle complex phenomena, there are chances to discover things that are not immediately understood by human scientists,” Kitano admitted. “Theoretically, there is a possibility that someone can run highly autonomous AI Scientists without restrictions and [not caring] if their discovery is understandable. However, this may come with a large price tag and one has to justify it. When such an AI Scientist is recognized to make important scientific discoveries already, I am certain there will be guidelines for operation to ensure safety and to prevent misuse.”
The advent of an AI Scientist able to work alongside human researchers could also lead to some sticky questions as to who should be credited with the discoveries made — is it the AI that generated the hypothesis and ran the experiment, the human that oversaw the effort, or the academic institution/corporate entity that owns the operation? Kitano points to a recent decision by an Australian court that recognized the DABUS “artificial neural system” as an inventor for patent applications as one example.
Conversely, Kitano notes the case of Satoshi Nakamoto and his inventions of blockchain and bitcoin. “There is a case where a decisive contribution was simply published as a blogpost and taken seriously,” he argues, “yet no one ever met him and his identity (at the time of writing) is a complete mystery.”
“If a developer of an AI Scientist was determined to create a virtual persona of a scientist with an ORCID iD, for demonstration of technological achievement, product promotion, or for another motivation,” he continued, “iit would be almost impossible to distinguish between the AI and human scientist.” But if a truly groundbreaking medical advancement comes from this challenge — say, a cure for cancer or nanobot surgeons — does it really matter if it was a human or a machine running the experiment?
When Microsoft released the Windows 11 Insider preview earlier this summer, it did so with some confusion around minimum system requirements. It quickly reversed course, saying that more people could install the software update than its requirements originally stated so the company could gather more performance on how the OS performed. After a few months of users testing and providing feedback, Microsoft says that, for the most part, its system requirements from June will stand — but there are a few notable changes.
This means that you'll need a compatible 64-bit processor, 4GB of memory and 64GB of storage, as well as "UEFI secure boot, graphics requirements and TPM 2.0." For the most part, Microsoft is still requiring an 8th-generation or newer Intel processor, but the company is adding a few 7th-generation Intel options to the supported list, including Intel Core X-series, Xeon W-series and the Intel Core 7820HQ. For the latter, Microsoft will only support "select devices that shipped with modern drivers based on Declarative, Componentized, Hardware Support Apps (DCH) design principles, including Surface Studio 2."
After working with AMD, Microsoft has declined to include the first generation of AMD Zen processors in its officially supported list. The full list of supported processors can be found here.
There is some good news for people running older hardware, though. According to The Verge, Microsoft won't prohibit computers running processors on its "supported" list from installing Windows 11 — they just won't be able to do so through the official Windows update software. You'll instead have to download a Windows 11 ISO file and install it yourself. The Verge says this method will primarily be for businesses to try Windows 11 and it won't be publicizing this method to standard users.
If you're still wondering whether or not your computer will be able to officially run Windows 11, Microsoft has released an update for its PC Health Check, which was originally giving users some rather vague and unhelpful messages regarding compatibility. The new version should make it much clearer whether your computer is supported and, if not, what it needs to meet the Windows 11 system requirements.
After sending out a call to action on Monday, #AppleToo, a group made up of current and former Apple workers looking to shine a light on the company’s workplace culture, says it has collected nearly 500 stories of incidents involving discrimination, harassment and retaliation “that happened at the hands of a colleague off of campus.” According to the Apple Workers Twitter account, the majority of those who got in touch asked for information on how to file a complaint with an external authority like the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH).
So far, we've received nearly 500 responses, and hundreds of stories of racism, sexism, discrimination, retaliation, bullying, sexual and other forms of harassment, and sexual assault that happened at the hands of a colleague off of campus.
What’s more, the group says more than half of the individuals it spoke with asked for information and guidance on how to contact the media about their stories. “Almost everyone consented to having their stories shared respectfully and anonymously,” it said. Apple Workers plans to start sharing those stories publicly next week, but it offered a preview on Friday, noting the throughline in many of the incidents was that workers felt they were ignored by Apple’s HR department.
That's similar to what Ashley Gjøvik, the senior engineering program manager Apple recently put on paid administrative, said when she shared her experiences of trying to talk to the company about unsafe working conditions, sexism and a hostile office environment. "I only resorted to this because everything I tried internally has failed," she says on a website she created to document her claims.
By July 19, I started countering #Apple employee relations gaslighting by dropping concerns in our internal Slack and gathering responses from colleagues before ER uses the "it's ok" canned response. Here's me preparing for that re: my male bosses freq say they're "open kimono"? pic.twitter.com/mw1nOszomT
The tweets paint a picture of a company seemingly unwilling to address legitimate concerns. Before she was put on administrative leave, Gjøvik says asked Apple's employee relations team to investigate 558 pieces of evidence and 13 individuals. The company reportedly told Gjøvik it would only investigate people because it was "simpler." In a separate tweet, Gjøvik detailed a situation where the company said it was "ok" for a male director to ask her out for drinks and talk about cheating on his wife and mistresses.
"We are and have always been deeply committed to creating and maintaining a positive and inclusive workplace,” Apple said when the news first broke. “We take all concerns seriously and we thoroughly investigate whenever a concern is raised and, out of respect for the privacy of any individuals involved, we do not discuss specific employee matters.”
Update 5:35PM ET: Added more details about Gjøvik's claims against Apple.
Labor Day sales are starting to pop up across the internet as the holiday weekend gets nearer. Apple's MacBook Pro M1 remains $200 off at Amazon while a few models of the Apple Watch SE with GPS + Cellular are on sale as well. You can still grab the August WiFi smart lock for $179, a record low, at Wellbots with Engadget's exclusive discount code, and ThermoWorks' latest open-box sale brings the Thermapen Mk4 down to only $60. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.
Apple Watch SE
The 44mm, GPS + Cellular model of the Apple Watch SE is $59 off right now, bringing it down to $300. This is the smartwatch to get if you're new to the wearable space and have an iPhone. We gave the Watch SE a score of 88 for its solid performance, comfortable design and comprehensive feature set for the price.
Apple's MacBook Air M1 has fallen back down to its lowest price ever — only $850, or $150 off. Only the gold model is available right now, so if that color works for you, you can save a bunch on what we think is the best MacBook for most people right now. We gave the Air M1 a score of 94 for its excellent performance, fanless design and good battery life.
The MacBook Pro M1 is $200 off at Amazon thanks to a sale price and an automatically applied coupon on top of that. That means you can get the model with 256GB of storage for $1,099. We gave the Pro M1 a score of 84 for its powerful performance, solid keyboard and trackpad and healthy battery life.
A slew of Razer laptops and gaming gear is on sale at Amazon for today only. Of note is the Raze Blade 15 Advanced gaming laptop, which has a 10th-gen Core i7 processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super Max-Q graphics, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage and is down to a record-low of $1,700. Razer keyboards, headsets, mice and more have been discounted as well, so you can pick up a whole new machine or just a few peripherals for less.
August's 4th-generation WiFi smart lock is down to $179 at Wellbots when you use the code ENGADGET20 at checkout. This is the best price we've seen on the smart home gadget that impressed us with its simple setup, attractive design and good security measures. You can use it to remotely lock or unlock your door and, whenever you want to open it up the old-fashioned way, your normal key works with it.
ThermWorks' latest open-box sale is still live, so you can get things like the Thermapen Mk4, the 4-channel BBQ thermometer and the ThermoWorks Dot for much less. The Mk4, one of our favorite instant-read thermometers for cooking, is down to $60 while the Dot probe-style thermometer is on sale for $32. Just remember that these open-box items are a mix of cosmetic seconds, customer returns, sale demo items and more.
GOG.com is running a sale through September 9 on Myst Complete Collection, dropping it down to just under $60. If you were to pay for all of the games separately, it would set you back around $110.
In this Omaze giveaway you can win two seats on one of the first Virgin Galactic flights to space. In addition, you'll go on a tour of Spaceport America in New Mexico with Richard Branson. You don't have to pay to enter, but funds from all paid entries will support Space for Humanity, an organization that hopes to make space more accessible for all. The sweepstakes is open through September 1, so you still have some more time to enter.
Through September 18, Omaze is giving away another $20,000 to build your ultimate gaming PC. This sweepstakes is free to enter, but funds donated with purchased entries will benefit Schools on Wheels, an organization that provides free tutoring and mentoring services to children experiencing homelessness across Southern California.
Through December 8, you can enter to win four-day passes to San Diego Comic-Con 2022. Along with the passes, you'll get access to a special preview night, reserved seating in Hall H, a personal concierge, a private tour of the Comic-Con Museum, dinner in Balboa Park and tickets to the "Night at the Comic-Con Museum" event. It's free to enter, but funds from this sweepstakes will go to the San Diego Comic Convention.
The Jaybird Vista 2 earbuds are $20 off right now, bringing them down to $180. These true wireless earbuds are more durable than most with an IP68 water-, dust- and sweatproof design, plus they have active noise-cancellation and a 24-hour battery life when you include the extra juice provided by their charging case.
BioLite's Labor Day sale has begun and it knocks 20 percent off everything on the company's website. BioLite's gadgets, like the Headlamp 200, has made it into many of our guides in the past, and it's a good place to go when you need new gear for your backyard or for your next camping trip.
One of our recommended VPNs is running a decent sale on a two-year subscription. You can sign up for NordVPN for $99 for the first two years, which comes out to $49.50 per year, and get three additional months of access for free. We like NordVPN for its speed, its no-logs policy, the thousands of servers it has to choose from and that one account supports up to six connected devices.
Let’s face it, Apple’s AirPods Pro may be small and pocketable, but they’re also easy to lose. If you’re the type of person who’s prone to misplacing their belongings, accessory maker Spigen might have something that could help. As spotted by Gizmodo, the company has released the Tag Armor Duo, a $34.99 case that protects your AirPods Pro case while including a slot for an AirTag.
Spigen isn’t the first accessory maker to make something like this, but the company’s solution has a certain elegance to it. Not only is there a built-in slot for Apple’s lost item tracker, but it also comes with a handy carabiner on the side and a cutout on the bottom to leave the Lightning port unobstructed. You also don’t have to take the case off to charge your AirPods Pro wirelessly.
At $64 for both the case and a single AirTag, Spigen’s Tag Armor Duo isn’t exactly a cheap option. It’s also worth pointing out iOS 15 will include a feature that will allow the AirPods Pro to connect to Apple’s Find My network over Bluetooth. Still, if you want the most peace of mind possible, you could do worse than the Tag Armor Duo. With an AirTag attached to your AirPods Pro case, you can use the U1 chip on a recent iPhone to find the case using an ultra-wideband connection. That allows you to take advantage of Apple’s Precision Finding feature to make locating it easier. The tag also includes a speaker so it can ring to let you know where it is.
You can buy the Tag Armor Duo from Spigen's website and Amazon.
Nintendo surprise-announced Metroid Dread, the fifth mainline game in the series, at E3 this year. Part of the surprise was that it was arriving this year, October 8th to be precise. Now, with just over a month before it arrives, Nintendo has released a new trailer for Metroid Dread, which might be our last look at the game before launch. Of course, this trailer isn't as detailed as the 20 minutes of gameplay Nintendo showed off at E3, but it still shows off a lot of what to expect when Metroid Dread arrives on the Switch.
The video mixes more cinematic shots of Samus Aran battling some pretty huge and intimidating baddies with the 2D gameplay footage that originally defined the series before the first-person Metroid Prime games. The game looks immediately familiar to people who've been waiting for a new 2D Metroid game, but Samus Aran has more abilities to navigate the terrain and battle enemies than ever before. The trailer moves fast, but there's lots of aerial dashing, underwater action, multiple different arm cannon weapons, wall jumping and more.
Given that this is the first all-new, side-scrolling Metroid game since 2002's Metroid Fusion for the Game Boy Advance (!), Dread has a lot to live up to. But at least from what we've seen so far, Nintendo may have pulled off the feat of bringing one of its oldest franchises into the modern era of gaming. We'll find out in just over a month.
When Tesla began building a secretive 100-megawatt energy storage project in Angleton, Texas, a town some 40 miles south of Houston, there were questions about what the company planned to do with the facility. Now we know.
Per an application filed by the company with the state’s Public Utility Commission, Tesla wants to sell electricity directly to consumers in Texas. Tesla Energy Ventures, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the automaker, made the move in mid-August, according to Texas Monthly. If approved, the company could start selling electricity to residents as early as November.
Tesla has built utility-scale energy storage projects in various parts of the world, including South Australia and California, but has so far avoided selling electricity stored in those facilities directly to consumers. Instead, it has tended to work with providers by helping them with their storage needs.
I’ve been a technology journalist for 10 years now and have written thousands of news articles, reviews and analysis pieces in that time. But lately I’ve wanted to change it up and do some writing that flexes different parts of my brain: things like short stories, essays or even a longer fiction piece.
But since I’m a tech nerd at heart, I couldn’t help but start thinking about new software or gadgets I could use to optimize my pursuit. I started using my favorite writing app, Bear, on the iPad Pro. I had read that minimizing distractions while writing can be crucial to making headway – and though my job means I’m almost always multitasking while writing, the luxury of my new hobby is that I can take the time to truly focus. But all those notifications and distracting apps lurk right beneath the surface, testing my resolve to actually sit down and get into the zone.
At the same time, I caught wind of a new product from a company called Astrohaus, the “Hemingwrite,” a limited-edition version of a device that Astrohaus has sold for about five years. The Freewrite (and the Hemingwrite edition, which is already sold out) combines an excellent mechanical keyboard with an e-ink display and is meant purely for drafting text. There aren’t even arrow keys, so editing anything more than a few words back is a non-starter. It has WiFi, so you can sync your drafts to Dropbox, Google Drive or Evernote, but that’s about the only concession it makes to the internet age.
My colleague Kris Naudus tried the Freewrite Traveler last year. As the name implies, it’s a portable version of the Freewrite with a clamshell, laptop-like design and a standard laptop-style keyboard. She did not love it, mostly because of the refresh rate on the e-ink screen.
The Traveler held little appeal to me, but the full-size Freewrite wormed its way into my mind. It’s expensive at $600, but it’s a beautiful machine with an aesthetic that spoke to me. I imagined starting my day with a large cup of coffee and the Freewrite, banging out my thoughts for an hour every morning before starting my work day. With my phone silenced, good music on my headphones and a blank page in front of me, I’d surely get into the writing flow.
By the beginning of August, I had decided to try the Freewrite for a month and see if it was a useful tool for me. My first impression of the Freewrite hardware was that it looked just as striking in person as it does online. The main chassis is a dark gray aluminum, while the underside is a bright white soft-touch plastic that matches the white keycaps. The e-ink screen is a little under five inches wide and a bit over two and a half inches tall. There’s also a smaller thin strip of a screen below that displays things like word count, a clock, a timer or the sync status of your drafts.
Flanking that screen are two pleasantly chunky physical switches: one for controlling WiFi settings and another to move between three different folders that drafts are saved in. The last button wakes up the Freewrite when you’re ready to go. Like the two switches, this button just feels great to press. At a time when so many of our devices try to do so many things, there’s something pleasant about a beautiful piece of hardware designed to do one thing well.
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
Right away, I noticed the learning curve. For me, it was a combination of the mechanical keyboard and e-ink screen. Those are both two of the main selling points for the device, and they’re each very different from what I’m used to. After years of using thin laptop keyboards, the mechanical keyboard tripped me up a bit; my accuracy and speed were not the finest. Given the lack of a cursor and arrow keys, I tried to train myself to blast past small typos rather than delete words to go back and fix them.
This is just what the Freewrite’s creators intended. This isn’t a device for editing your thoughts, just for getting them out as quickly and efficiently as possible. Fine-tuning can happen later, on a laptop. It took some time to get used to this approach, and I still often find myself stopping to go back and fix small mistakes, but I can definitely appreciate the benefit of moving forward with whatever I’m writing rather than getting hung up on the details.
The e-ink screen presents its own challenges and benefits. I was originally worried about its size, but that turned out not to be an issue. You can adjust the text size, but the default setting let me see plenty of my draft. I’d occasionally have to page up a bit to refresh my memory on what I was working on, but it honestly never felt too cramped.
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget
It’s sharp, clear and looks great with or without the light activated. I tried to train myself to write by natural light, and most of the time I found the built-in front-light (again similar to the Kindle) unnecessary. It’s still good to have you prefer working in darker conditions, but I try to do most of my work in a well-lit room.
If you’ve ever used a Kindle, you know the big downside of e-ink screens: the refresh rate. It’s not as big an issue on a Kindle, where you flip the page every 30 seconds or so, but on a typing device the screen is updating constantly. It’s far different than the instant feedback you get when typing on a traditional computer, and I can absolutely see how it would be off-putting to some people.
It’s worth taking the time to get used to, though. Most experienced typists probably don’t need to watch every single character appear; I just tried to type and get into a flow and only really pay attention to the screen when I wanted to go back and read something. In my mind, I think the trade-off between a traditional LCD screen here is worth it. We have more than enough blue-light screens in our lives.
Another benefit of the e-ink display is that it means the battery life is measured in weeks, not hours (yup, like the Kindle). I’ve been using the Freewrite pretty heavily over the last month and I think I’ve given it a full charge twice. Astrohaus says it’s rated to run for four weeks with 30 minutes of daily usage. My sessions were usually longer but less frequent; I definitely didn’t hit four weeks between charges, though. Regardless, unless you use the device for multiple hours every day, you shouldn’t have to worry about running out of juice.
Overall, I’d say the hardware delivers what Astrohaus promises. But I’m not trying to review this like an iPad or other modern gadgets. For me, the question has been whether this thing will help me become a more disciplined writer, and if it is better suited to that task than other tools at my disposal.
By one very important metric, the Freewrite is a success: I’ve written over 15,000 words on it in less than a month, the vast majority of which were not for work. Aside from this story and one other, everything else I’ve created on the Freewrite has been words I would not have written if I wasn’t trying to write creatively.
Of course, that’s not to say I couldn’t have done the same thing with my iPad, a laptop, or various other gadgets. From that perspective, it’s hard to spend $600 on a Freewrite, as it doesn’t offer any truly new features compared to a laptop.
But, in the same way that a Kindle, Nintendo Switch or a high-end digital camera are better for specific purposes than a smartphone or iPad, the Freewrite is optimized for its singular purpose better than other options. Because the hardware is so gorgeous and easy to use, I found myself wanting to pull it out – it has been a positive reinforcement tool that has helped me build my habit.
That said, I still have to have the discipline to use it and block out potential distractions. If I set up with a laptop on my desk while trying to write with the Freewrite, I’m just screwing myself.
That’s why the Freewrite hasn’t been an essential tool for my work. Even on days when I need to get writing done, I’m often multitasking, keeping an eye on our Slack channel and the news in a broader sense. I realize this doesn’t make for an optimal writing environment, but it’s the reality of being an online journalist.
Practically speaking, I’m often flipping between my writing and a browser for research or another document with notes on my piece. There simply aren't a lot of stories that I work where I can just sit down and write uninterrupted. This story is one of them, though, and a workflow where I do my drafting on the Freewrite while also having my iPad handy for research, notes and an occasional Slack check has worked pretty well thus far.
There’s no way to quantify how much of this is due to the Freewrite and how much of it is simply me finding the willpower to start developing a new habit. People are creatures of habit, and I, too, enjoy a good ritual. I haven’t fully transformed my life where I can write uninterrupted every morning like I imagined, but I have found myself making more time for my new hobby. The other night, I had a few hours free after work, and instead of blowing them on video games, I worked on a story I’ve been writing – a small victory over my lowest impulses, but I still think it counts.
Lately, I find myself waking up thinking about when I can squeeze in 30 minutes or an hour of writing time without the distractions of news and work, and the Freewrite is my first choice for that. It’s a joy to type on, and it’s a prime example of hardware that just gets out of your way and lets you focus on the task at hand. There’s no doubt that it’s an expensive device, and one that is more limited than a comparably priced laptop. It’s a luxury, but for a specific type of person, it might also end up being an invaluable tool for your work. For me, it's been a great help in fostering a new hobby. It's not an essential tool, but it's something that makes me want to write more when I'm not, and something that makes me want to keep writing when I am using it.
We rarely see the MacBook Air M1 drop below $900, but that's the case today on Amazon. Apple's thin-and-light laptop is on sale for $850 right now, or $150 off its normal price. The base model has been hovering at $900 on Amazon for the past few months, likely to stay competitive with Apple's education pricing during the back-to-school season, but this is the first time since a brief moment at the end of July that we've seen the Air M1 this low. At the time of writing this, only the gold model is in stock — both silver and space gray have sold out.
This is far and away the best Apple laptop for most people thanks to its slender body, lack of fan noise and killer performance. We gave it a score of 94 in part for those attributes, plus we also like its lovely Retina display, comfortable keyboard and trackpad and excellent 16-hour battery life.
The star of the show here is Apple's M1 chipset, which makes the Air run incredibly fast. The notebook wakes almost instantly when you open the lid, native apps run super smoothly and the machine as a whole is impressively responsive. You're also able to run iOS apps with the M1 chip, which is a fun feature to have. Graphics performance is noteworthy, too: MacBook Airs have not been gaming machines in the past, and we probably still wouldn't use it to run intense titles, but it performed well while playing Apple Arcade games and even Fortnite. And since the laptop doesn't have a fan inside, it'll be much quieter than most previous Apple laptops you may have had.
Our biggest complaints about the MacBook Air M1 are its paltry 720p webcam and its limit of two USB-C ports. While living the dongle life can get frustrating, it's a small price to pay for an otherwise stellar laptop that can handle most things you'll through at it.
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The humble computer keyboard might feel utilitarian, but given it’s the part of your setup you interact with the most, it’s kinda wild that we don't often give it thought. Fortunately, there’s a vibrant scene of small (and not so small) companies that understand everyone’s needs are different and that getting the right size, shape and ergonomic layout can upgrade your working or gaming life in significant ways. Keychron is one such company.
Keychron has earned a reputation for making affordable yet feature-rich mechanical keyboards, and the Q1 (starting at $169) is the latest member of the family. The Q is a nod to QMK, a popular open-source firmware that lets you customize compatible keyboards to your liking. It’s Keychron’s most ambitious deck yet, and a direct competitor to something like the GMMK Pro or the KBDFans Bella, both of which cost north of $250 depending on your preferred configuration.
The Q1 is a 75-percent keyboard, which means there’s no number pad and the home cluster and arrow keys are placed a little more tightly compared to a tenkeyless deck (that gives those keys a little more space of their own). The Q1 is Mac- and Windows compatible and comes with an Aviator style USB-C cable so that people know you really mean business. Alas, there’s no Bluetooth option here if that’s something you wanted.
As customization is the key here (no pun intended), it’s no surprise that the switches are hot-swappable. Keychron already offers a decent range of keycaps, though you can of course grab your own if you have a preferred set already. If you already own switches you like, you can order the barebone deck and save $20. You can also choose from three aluminum case colors: black, navy and space gray. Both ANSI and ISO layouts are available depending on your preference (or, more likely, location).
James Trew / Engadget
One thing I love about all Keychron keyboards is that they not only come with a keycap puller tool and a switch remover tool (where applicable), but you’ll also get the keycaps for both Windows and MacOS layouts. This makes it easy for the company just to stock one SKU and possibly helps keep costs down. If, like me, you use both operating systems — you can then repurpose any of their keyboards without having to buy new caps later. Or worse, live with a CMD key when you want a Windows key or vice versa.
A fancy keyboard isn’t anything without RGB lighting, of course, and naturally, that’s included here too. Keychron opted for a more subtle “south-facing” integration, which pretty much means what you think: The lights are only visible from below. I don’t need or use RGB, so I tend to turn it off. The implementation here is subtle yet bright enough to still remain useful if it’s something you want.
For the more hardcore enthusiast, inside there’s a gasket-based design with a noise-reducing foam deck between that and the PCB. For those who really like to get into details, know that the stabilizers here are screw-in (rather than plate), which usually means the larger keys are steadier. There’s also the option for a customized metal “badge” where the Insert key would be. If you send Keychron a design, it’ll etch it onto that badge for you to make it truly personalized. There will also be an option to add a rotary dial here (much like on the GMMK Pro), or you can just switch it back to the Insert key if none of that tickles your fancy.
For all its changeable parts, arguably the most useful way to customize the Q1 is with the Via app, or with the aforementioned QMK. (Via is basically a graphical interface for the latter.) With Via you can reassign any key to pretty much anything else as well as design and assign macros to the function layer (i.e., press Fn and a target key to trigger more complex key combinations). More on this later.
James Trew / Engadget
With all this talk about gaskets and stabilizers, it might seem that the Q1 is designed for advanced users. And it certainly will appeal to those with specific requirements. But Keychron’s popularity, in my opinion, is born out of making the geeky and exotic accessible to the normies out there. The Q1, then, is perhaps marketed toward those who have dabbled with mechanical keyboards and want to dip a toe into deeper waters, while still offering enough for the avid keyboard tinkerers.
That said, the first thing you’ll want to do with the Q1 when you take it out of the box is… put it down. At 3.5 pounds (1.6kg) it’s definitely on the chunky side. For context, Keychron’s K2 wireless keyboard has a similar footprint but is a svelte 1.5 pounds (663g) — less than half the weight. The Q1 isn’t really designed for portability, though, so that extra heft just glues it to your desk and makes you feel more confident that this isn’t going to rattle itself apart as you bash out fanfic/code/school essays on it. The weight is also pretty standard for this category.
The model I was able to test came pre-installed with Gateron brown switches. Before then I had been using Gateron reds but I’m an instant convert. Of course, the very point of the Q1 is that you can put in whatever switches you like. Keychron also included a set of blue switches, which I used to test out how easy it was to swap ‘em out. Not only was that process pretty easy (once you get used to the very firm pull required to get them out), but I found myself fond enough of the blues for certain keys that I left them in. They’re generally a little too loud for my taste to have across the board, but being able to mix things up that way is the very spirit of customizable keyboards like these.
On that theme of noise… for me that was one of the bigger turn-offs for mechanical keyboards. Until I experimented myself, my main exposure to them was hearing someone across the office frantically clacking their way through an email. This is why I gravitated toward red switches at first. On the Q1, though, even something clicky like a blue switch isn’t too audible thanks to the gasket design and the foam insert on the Q1. Even the noisier switch flavors won’t alert your neighbors to your frantic typing during the small hours. If, like my former officemate, you are unencumbered by such worries, know that the same design makes for a keyboard with comfortable flex, giving it a much smoother action than plate-based designs.
James Trew / Engadget
As alluded to earlier, though, perhaps one of the more exciting features here for those looking to take their keyboard customization to the next level is the support for VIA/QMK firmware noodling. If you get tired of doing the same convoluted keyboard shortcuts for regular tasks (like Windows’ Ctrl+Win+Arrow combo to switch between desktops), this is for you.
I already mentioned you can pretty much map any key to another. So if you wanted to swap Z and X around… you could. More usefully, you can also change which keys control media etcetera. Out of the box, the Q1 uses the standard “Fn+F10” combo to mute audio. My stubby fingers found this a little unnatural, so I used Via to remap it to Fn+Left Arrow. Much more manageable for my typing style.
Taking things a bit further, you can also enter much more complicated key combinations with macros. An explanation of this is beyond the scope of this article, but as an example, I was able to set up a simple key combo to launch one of my favorite chat apps. This was more of an experiment for someone who hasn’t done anything remotely like programming in a number of years. You’ll need to do some reading up to figure out how to tell a macro what to do, but once you have (and it’s really not that hard), you’ll find yourself thinking of evermore clever ideas.
James Trew / Engadget
Some keyboards, like the GMMK Pro, offer their own software for customization. You can generally expect these apps to be a little more tightly integrated with the makers’ products, but VIA is easy enough to use that you can get most things done without much hassle.
Support for VIA/QMK is far from unique to the Q1: The GMMK Pro and KDBFans Bella both offer it too, along with many other customizable keyboards. But considering the price of the Q1, it rounds out an impressive spec sheet making it both a very accessible yet technically capable choice.
Some potential buyers might lament the lack of wireless connectivity, or the fact you can’t adjust its height (it measures just shy of two inches/45mm at the back). But both of these things are fairly standard for barebones and customizable keyboards. The fact that you can configure pretty much anything else to your liking makes this a great entry into the world of barebones keyboards at a price that’s very competitive.
The Q1 is available now directly from Keychron starting at $169. The rotary dial add-on will come in the following weeks.
Amazon is ushering in the weekend with a one-day-only sale on a bunch of Razer laptops and gaming accessories. Everything from headsets to mice to microphones has been discounted, but the biggest savings you'll find are on some of the 2020 Razer Blade 15 laptops. Of note is the Raze Blade 15 Advanced gaming laptop with a 10th-gen Core i7 processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super Max-Q graphics, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, which is down to a record-low of $1,700.
Those looking for slightly better graphics and more storage have another option. The Blade 15 Advanced with the same specs as listed above but with NVIDIA RTX 2080 Super Max-Q graphics and 1TB of storage has dropped down to $2,200, or $285 off its normal price. The 2020 Blade 17 Pro is also on sale: a model with a 10th-gen Core i7 processor, RTX 2080 Super Max-Q graphics, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage is $950 off, bringing it down to $2,250. If you're just looking to get your foot in the door with one of these gaming laptops, you can snag the Razer Blade 15 base with a Core i7 processor, GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics, 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for $1,048 (although we did it about $50 less on Prime Day back in June).
The Blade has been one of our favorite gaming notebooks for a while. It's on the pricier side, but it's worth it if you want a slick-looking laptop with a bunch of customization options when it comes to specs. And since it is on the higher end of the price spectrum, it's always better to wait for a sale like this so you can get the model you want while saving a bit of cash. Just keep in mind that these discounted models aren't the latest from Razer. The 2021 laptops came out recently, decked out with 11th-gen Intel processors, NVIDIA RTX 30-series graphics and QHD displays — along with steep price tags to match.
If you already have a solid gaming machine, there are a bunch of Razer peripherals on sale, too. The BlackWidow V3 mechanical keyboard is down to an all-time low of $90, and it has yellow switches, a a digital roller and media key, Chroma RGB lighting and an included wrist rest. Also discounted are the Kraken headset, which is down to $50, and the DeathAdder Essential wired mouse, which you can grab for only $20.
You can already play some popular and unique skateboarding games on PC, but one franchise that has been conspicuously absent is Skate. Well, that's about to change with the next instalment in EA's beloved series. The game's official Twitter account confirmed the PC release on Thursday in a tweet that features a clip from a skate vid.
A new Skate game, a follow-up to 2010's Skate 3, was announced last summer. Since then, we've heard that new developer Full Circle — which counts series vets Deran Chung and Chris “Cuz” Parry among its ranks — will take point on the title. Until now, the main series has mainly stuck to Xbox and PlayStation consoles, though a spinoff (called Skate It) was released for the Nintendo DS, Wii and iOS.
It's been a big year for skateboarding in general, with the sport making its Olympics debut in Tokyo this summer. Perhaps, EA is looking to capitalize on the mainstream attention with a multi-platform release for its stuttering series.
A vulnerability in Microsoft's Azure cloud computing service left several thousand customers susceptible to cyberattacks. The tech giant has warned its clients of the flaw in its flagship database service Cosmos DB after it was discovered and reported by security company Wiz. In the blog post Wiz has published, it said it was able to use the vulnerability, which it has named "ChaosDB," to gain "complete unrestricted access to the accounts and databases" of thousands of Azure clients.
Azure customers, including Fortune 500 companies such as Coca-Cola and Exxon-Mobil, use Cosmos DB to manage the massive amounts of data they get in real time. The company explained that it found a series of flaws in the Cosmos DB feature called Jupyter Notebook that gives customers a way to visualize their data. That feature has been around since 2019, but it was switched on for all Cosmos DB customers just this past February. Wiz said that a series of misconfigurations in the notebook created a loophole, which allows any user "to download, delete or manipulate a massive collection of commercial databases, as well as read/write access to the underlying architecture of Cosmos DB."
While the security company praised Microsoft for disabling the notebook within 48 hours after it was alerted about the issue and for notifying around 30 percent of its customers, it warned that more clients may be at risk. Microsoft only notified the customers that were affected during Wiz's week-long research period this early August. However, the security firm believes the vulnerability has been exploitable for months, possibly even years. It's now advising Azure customers to rotate and regenerate their access keys even if they didn't get an email from Microsoft. That said, the tech giant said it found no evidence that the flaw has been exploited. It told the customers it emailed that there's no "indication that external entities outside the researcher (Wiz) had access to the primary read-write key
As Reuters notes, this is the latest in a series of bad security news for Microsoft over the past year. In February, the tech giant has revealed that the SolarWinds hackers accessed and downloaded source code for Azure, its cloud-based management solution Intune and its mail and calendar server Exchange. The Chinese Hafnium hacking group also exploited a vulnerability in Exchange to infiltrate at least 30,000 organizations around the world, including police departments, hospitals and banks.
