Technology

People had a lot of questions when I pulled out my M1 MacBook Air at a party over the weekend: “What is that?” “What happened to your laptop?” “Is that the new Mac?” This was to be expected, as there certainly was something different about mine. See, my MacBook Air doesn’t have a screen — and I made it that way. Don’t worry — it’s not broken. All I did was take apart my laptop without, you know, re-attaching the display. It has now been simplified into just its bottom half: an aluminum slab with an embedded keyboard and trackpad. I’m calling it a “slabtop” now. And I kind of like it. Behold! I present to you my slabtop.Photo by Umar Shakir / The Verge It’s a whole-ass computer inside a keyboard, not unlike PCs of yesteryear like the Apple II and Commodore 64. But this M1-powered slabtop is...

Sweet Sixteen games in this year’s March Madness tip off tonight and tomorrow — all exciting games (like reigning national champions Stanford vs. Maryland) and one that is going to be deeply stressful for me personally (Connecticut vs. Indiana — go Huskies). You’d be forgiven for thinking that the games started yesterday, though. As of this writing, searching “sweet sixteen march madness” pulls up a schedule box for the men’s tournament, which did have that round start yesterday. The women’s games are relegated to a ribbon at the bottom. This is the first year that the women’s college basketball tournament is able to use the high-profile March Madness branding. The change came after an uproar over the embarrassingly inequitable conditions at last year’s women’s games and another few months...

The Los Angeles Times has a great piece that interviews three former Tesla employees about their experiences with racism, discrimination, and retaliation at the company, which is well worth a read. The story acts as a way to contextualize a lawsuit that the automaker is currently facing, where the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing alleges that the company has a “racially segregated workplace.” While the experiences described in the lawsuit and in the Times’ story are similar (and equally disturbing), being able to read actual interviews helps connect names, faces, and individual experiences to the situation at Tesla’s facility in California. “They were waiting for me to make a mistake” The workers have unique stories, but they share disturbingly similar through-lines. Tw...

Ken and Roberta Williams, two of the most influential figures in video game history, are bringing the original 1976 text adventure Colossal Cave Adventure to virtual reality, as well as Mac and Windows PC. It sounds pretty straightforward when I put it like that, right? And then I remind you that the game in question looked like this: Colossal Cave Adventure running on a PDP-11/34 with a monitor.Photo by Autopilot (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0) And then I remind you that Roberta and Ken have been retired for the past 25 years. And then I remind you that — while Roberta and Ken made King’s Quest and Phantasmagoria AND are credited with the first graphical adventure game ever in Mystery Quest AND founded storied game company Sierra, which published everything from The Incredible Machine t...

2022 is going to be a big year for Wear OS. Google’s rumored to be making its own Pixel Watch (again). Older Wear OS 2 watches are expected to finally make the transition to Wear OS 3. Samsung’s promised that Google Assistant will be coming to its Galaxy Watch 4 in the “coming months.” But there’s something notably missing from this Wear OS lineup: Fitbit. Since Google and Samsung first announced their partnership at last year’s Google I/O, Fitbit CEO James Park hasn’t been coy. He’s said multiple times that a premium Fitbit smartwatch running Wear OS was in the works. This year will be the one where Wear OS 3 debuts on a wider scale. It would’ve been stellar timing to unveil a Wear OS Fitbit. However, a 9to5Google report notes that although code uncovered in the Fitbit app hints at severa...

This may sound familiar, but there’s something wrong with the latest software update for Google’s Pixel 6 phones. As Google tweaks the version of Android it distributes to phones running its custom Tensor chip, there have been some odd issues, but instead of problems with Wi-Fi or a slow thumbprint scanner, this time, it’s affecting another key feature: notifications. They still pop up on the phone just as regularly, but for some reason, the strength of the vibration is now significantly weaker than it was before. Adjusting the vibration settings has no effect I’ve had my phone’s sounds set to silent for years, so any difference in the notification buzz is immediately an issue. It’s also noticeably softer for incoming calls, and some people have reported missing phone calls as a result. Ad...

Valve’s next Steam Next Fest, an event where players will be able to try out demos of upcoming PC games right from Steam, will take place from June 13th through June 20th, the company has announced. Valve is promising there will be “hundreds of demos” this year, and while it hasn’t shared what might be playable for the upcoming event, there were some notable games featured last June, including Sable and Toem. It seems likely that Valve will promote games that are great for the Steam Deck, and hopefully by that time, many more people will have gotten their highly-anticipated reservations. (Sadly, my projected Q3 order availability means I’ll very likely miss out, at least when it comes to trying games out for the handheld.) The mid-June scheduling means Steam Next Fest will be timed right a...

If you have yet to pick up a decent pair of true wireless earbuds, you can still buy the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds at Adorama and Amazon for $219.99 instead of $279.99, one of the lowest prices we’ve seen on these earbuds since Black Friday. There’s no shortage of noise-canceling earbuds available right now; however, we think these are worth your attention thanks to their excellent sound quality, impressive fit, and wireless — albeit, bulky — charging case. Even with newer options available like the Sony WF-1000XM4 and Samsung Galaxy Buds 2, we still count these among some of the best wireless earbuds you can buy, especially if superb noise cancellation is what you’re after. Read our review. Bose QuietComfort Earbuds $219 $279 22% off With dynamic, rich sound and the best noise cancellatio...

Bloodborne’s seventh anniversary was earlier this week, and even though FromSoftware lets fans languish without a PC port, Lilith Walther — creator of the popular Bloodborne PSX demake — continues to keep the community fed, watered, and loved with her new fan project: Bloodborne Kart. Bloodborne Kart seems to be exactly what the name implies: a Bloodborne kart racer. It has the same graphics and overall vibe of the PSX demake, but instead of felling foul beasts, the Hunter will now get the opportunity to roam the streets of Yharnam and possibly beyond on a sweet-ass motorcycle. I’m hoping there will be the opportunity to race against my faves like Father Gascoigne, Micolash, and Gehrman, as well as some of Bloodborne’s less-humanoid denizens like… why the hell not, the Orphan of Kos....

A group of workers for a Google Fiber subcontractor in Missouri has voted to unionize, the first of its kind at Google’s parent company Alphabet. The votes were counted Friday in a Zoom hearing with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The workers are employees of Google contractor BDS Connected Solutions, a staffing agency in Kansas City. Ten of the 11 workers signed union cards in January to organize under the purview of the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU), which is part of the larger Communication Workers of America union. On Friday, the official count found there were nine votes in favor of joining the union, with one vote against. The AWU will be a members-only union, representing those workers who join voluntarily, rather than going through the NLRB to hold a vote to convince a ma...