Technology

The US PC market has declined during the recent quarter, due to pandemic-related supply issues. It’s the first time the US PC market has declined since the pandemic began causing lots of people to rush out and buy new PCs over the past 18 months. Overall, Gartner and IDC analysis both suggest the worldwide PC market grew in Q3, but at a slower rate than we’ve seen during the pandemic. Gartner says “consumer and educational spending began to shift away from PCs to other priorities,” during the quarter, leading to less demand for PCs. That’s illustrated best by a 17 percent drop in Chromebook shipments, which Gartner has included in its traditional PC shipments for the first time ever this quarter. Both IDC and Gartner report 84.1 million shipments of PCs in Q3, while IDC puts the number at ...

When it comes to judging how cool robots are, I deploy a simple but reliable heuristic: can I imagine this machine appearing in the Metal Gear Solid franchise? With LEONARDO, a bipedal robot with propellers for arms, I can not only imagine it, I’m pretty sure it is in MGSV. From the bubble head to the uncannily precise movements, it’s just a very cool robot, which I can also imagine being used to infiltrate mercenary basecamps. Just like a bird, LEONARDO can both walk and fly LEONARDO is a pleasingly choppy acronym for “LEgs ONboARD drOne” — the product of those linguistic geniuses in Caltech’s Aerospace Robotics and Control Lab. You may have seen an earlier iteration of the bot back in 2019 (when, amazingly, LEONARDO stood for “LEg ON Aerial Robotic DrOne” instead), but its design and cap...

I’m not the only one who hates the new Windows 11 taskbar, and now third-party developers are coming to the rescue with apps that bring back some of the features missing in Microsoft’s latest OS. Microsoft removed basic taskbar functionality in Windows 11, like displaying the time and date on multiple monitors, moving the taskbar to the top of the screen or sides, and even small things like altering its height and having small icons. It has angered many Windows users, and most of the top feedback in Microsoft’s Windows Insider program was related to the taskbar changes before Windows 11 debuted last week. Stardock’s new Start11 app primarily focuses on allowing you to change the Start menu back to classic styles, but there’s also a lot of taskbar customization, too. You can change the task...

Just when you were starting to think about upgrading to a Wi-Fi 6 router, Wi-Fi 6E is here. And it’s expensive. Netgear announced its newest entry into the 6E foray today, the Orbi Quad-B and Mesh WiFi 6E RBKE960 series. This is the first quad-band Wi-Fi 6E mesh offering, but not the first Wi-Fi 6E mesh router (the $1,200 Linksys Atlas Max 6E took that honor earlier this year). Featuring a 2.4 GHz band, two 5GHz, and a brand spanking new 6GHz band, this $1,500 system also supports four different networks out of the box, including one designed exclusively for your insecure smart home devices. And if that doesn’t get you excited, they’re also releasing a limited-edition color… black. The new Orbi router is larger than most of its mesh competitors and also a lot more expensive.Image: Netgear ...

Amazon has now updated its work-from-home policy for corporate employees as the world begins to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, offering its individual teams the power to decide on an arrangement that best suits their needs. The original plan for the e-commerce giant was to have everyone return to the office in January 2022, but the company’s CEO Andy Jassy has now decided on a change in direction. In an email to its office workers, the company’s head explained that individual teams will now have the option to decide what kind of arrangement best suits their work models: “For our corporate roles, instead of specifying that people work a baseline of three days a week in the office, we’re going to leave this decision up to individual teams. This decision will be made team by team at the ...

Instagram is testing a new feature that will alert users when the service is having major technical difficulties. The alert will appear as a notification in users’ Activity Feed when “people are confused and looking for answers,” says Instagram. In other words: when the app’s systems take a serious and prolonged nose-dive, as they did last week. It’s a sensible feature from Instagram’s parent company Facebook, given the chaos that’s caused when its services go down. When Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram fail, people often wonder if there’s something wrong with their connection, their internet, or their account. A little notification telling users, “Don’t worry, it’s not you, it’s us” will probably save a lot of confusion in the future. It seems users will also be notified when ...

HTC is planning to release a new VR headset this week and is also working on its own metaverse-like virtual world, according to a report from Protocol. Let’s start first with that new headset. It’s reportedly a standalone VR headset called the Vive Flow and is intended to be a media consumption device “with access to some casual gaming,” Protocol says. However, it won’t ship with controllers and will be less powerful than the Oculus Quest 2, Protocol reports. The Vive Flow will reportedly be announced at HTC’s October 14th event, which would make sense, as HTC is promoting the event with the “Go with the Flow” tagline. The new metaverse space is apparently called Viveport Verse. According to a site about the service (which was live as of publishing this article), you’ll be able to make you...

Magic Leap has raised $500 million in funding and is preparing to release a new AR headset, the Magic Leap 2, next year, the company announced Monday. The headset will be generally available next year, the company said, and “select customers” are using it as part of an early access program. CEO Peggy Johnson said in a statement that with the new funding “Magic Leap will have greater financial flexibility and the resources needed to continue our growth trajectory as we expand on our industry-leading AR technology.” She revealed the new device in an Monday appearance on CNBC. Magic Leap, of course, is the company that began its existence as a mysterious AR startup, received almost $3 billion to fund its consumer-friendly AR headset, before changing its headset’s name from Magic Leap 1 to The...

Samsung is sharing new details about how it tests the durability of the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3. However, it’s unclear exactly why Samsung is releasing this information now, especially given that both phones launched in August; that makes us think it could be an attempt to assuage fears sparked by recent reports of cracks on Galaxy Z Flip 3 screens. In a video posted on its website, Samsung shows four separate tests. One has the phones in an environmental chamber, where Samsung tests the phones under different climates to make sure they still work. Another test engulfs the phones in water. One uses a robot arm to test the performance of the S Pen on the Z Fold 3. A fourth test folds both phones over and over. Samsung has shown off its stress tests in the past Samsung has shown off its...

Sky has launched a new streaming TV called Sky Glass. Integrating hardware, software and content, the cutting-edge model offers Sky TV over WiFi, meaning it doesn’t require a satellite dish or box to operate. For its venture into hardware, Sky Glass offers its viewers a 4K HD screen and six powerful speakers, optimal viewing and sound quality. It also prioritizes energy efficiency, with built-in low-power features such as auto-switch-off and auto-adjusting screen brightness. Sky partnered with the agency Map Project Office to design the TV, which is available in three sizes — ranging from 43 inches (109 centimeters) to 65 inches (165 centimeters) — and five colorways, with choices including blue, white, black, green and pink, as well as matching remotes. Utilizing only one wire and plug, t...

Netflix has suspended a trans employee who tweeted about Dave Chappelle’s comedy special The Closer. In the stand-up set, which was released on October 5th, Chappelle doubles down on his jokes about LGBTQ groups. The next day, Netflix software engineer Terra Field tweeted about Chappelle, writing that the comedian “attacks the trans community, and the very validity of transness” in the special: I work at @netflix. Yesterday we launched another Chappelle special where he attacks the trans community, and the very validity of transness – all while trying to pit us against other marginalized groups. You’re going to hear a lot of talk about “offense”. We are not offended — Terra Fied (@RainofTerra) October 7, 2021 The tweet thread went viral, quickly spiraling into a con...

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent an email to employees on Monday outlining a shift in work-from-home policies for its office workers. As of August, the plan had been for employees to return to the offices in January 2022, with the expectation being that workers spent three days a week in the office and two days a week remote. However, under the new policy announced Monday, Amazon lets individual teams decide how often their people need to come into the office. Here’s Jassy’s explanation of the new policies and how they will work: For our corporate roles, instead of specifying that people work a baseline of three days a week in the office, we’re going to leave this decision up to individual teams. This decision will be made team by team at the Director level. We expect that there will be teams th...