Technology

The 2020 presidential election is nearly upon us, and the hours leading up to it are full of unknown, eldritch horrors. The old gods are awakening, and the pollsters are sharpening their needles. Or at least it feels that way. Because so many bad things have happened in America this year, every day can feel like navigating a field chock-full of unexploded ordnance — and all there is to do, really, is put on a mask and vote. Personally, I feel like I’m T-posing at the end of the world. So I’ve leaned into compiling a playlist of anime fight scenes on YouTube: they’re power fantasies that always end with the good guys winning. It’s been helping a little. Many of my colleagues have come up with their own, unique ways to deal with the fact that reality has lately become surreal. Here are a few...

Apple’s upcoming “One More Thing” event, announced this morning and scheduled for November 10th, will be a major break with tradition in more ways than one: it will be the first time the company unveils an Apple laptop featuring its own custom Arm-based CPUs. Apple plans to debut three new laptops next week, one 13-inch MacBook Air and two different-sized MacBook Pro models (13-inches and 16-inches) that ditch Intel processors, according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. We had a strong inkling that this event — coming on the heels of an iPhone-specific one last month and one dedicated to the latest Apple Watch and iPads back in September — would be when Apple debuts its Arm-based Macs, which the company confirmed after years of swirling rumors back at WWDC this past summer. Bu...

The pandemic has taken many things from the world — but mostly it’s stolen events. Every hang is a potential death sentence. Thankfully, Twitch, at least, has gone virtual: it announced today that its flagship conference, TwitchCon, will be happening online this year. Oh, and it’s not called TwitchCon. It’s now GlitchCon, and it’s happening on November 14th. “Important announcement from Twitch,” the ad begins, “Numerous glitches have been observed on Twitch.” In this particular universe, those glitches were caused by — yes — “a portal to another dimension.” Which is fun! If GlitchCon is anything like the analog version, it’ll show off the site’s artists, cosplayers, and communities. TwitchCon is the streaming platform’s signature event, and its main function is to bring its numerous, dispa...

The COVID-19 exposure notification app used in England and Wales failed to warn users if they were in close contact with potentially infectious COVID-19 patients. Because of the error, thousands of people were not told to quarantine even when they should have been, according to the Sunday Times, which first reported the flaw. The app was launched on September 24th, and there have been 19 million downloads since. It’s built using Google and Apple’s Bluetooth Low Energy-based system, which monitors nearby phones. If someone tests positive for COVID-19, their app can alert the phones that they were in contact with. The UK originally planned to use its own app, sidestepping the Google and Apple system, but reversed course in June. Since its launch, the app flagged few users for possible exposu...

Gabe Newell, president of Valve, the video game company behind the Half-Life series and game marketplace Steam, is thanking the country of New Zealand for its hospitality by launching a gnome into space with aerospace company Rocket Lab in mid-November. Newell decided to stay in New Zealand at the start of the pandemic and is donating a dollar to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at Starship Children’s Hospital for every viewer who watches the satellite launch livestream or the online recording within 24 hours of launch. This soon-to-be astronaut gnome is actually a 150mm tall model of “Garden Gnome” or “Gnome Chompski,” an item that first appeared in Half-Life 2: Episode Two but achieved meme status following the speedruns and travelogues (like this charmingly detailed one written by for...

Spotify’s going to test letting artists and labels influence more of what its algorithm promotes. The company announced today a new test for all artists and labels on the platform where they can decide to promote any music that’s important to them. So, for example, if Fleetwood Mac wanted to promote “Dreams” after it went viral on TikTok, they could decide to do so, and Spotify’s algorithm would consider that request when building a radio session or when a listener enters autoplay. Of course, this could apply to any song, including tracks that might be new or that artists want to put extra promotional push behind. “We want to be able to provide tools that help our artists leverage those moments, so they can be more in control of their success on Spotify and more in charge of their careers,...

OnePlus has revealed a wild-looking Cyberpunk 2077-themed 8T, and it looks radically different from the standard OnePlus 8T. Disappointingly, though, the Cyberpunk 2077-themed phone is only available to preorder in China at the moment, where it costs CNY 3,999 (a little less than $600). The phone has a lot of cosmetic touches to match the visual tone of the upcoming game, such as striking yellow accents and a Cyberpunk 2077 logo on the bottom of the phone. But the thing I can’t stop looking at is its giant camera module, which encompasses much of the width of the back of the phone. Just look at that camera module.Image: OnePlus The software gets some Cyberpunk 2077-themed touches as well, including a custom wallpaper. The phone also has two special camera filters, “Night City” and “North C...

Anthony Fauci is probably one of the most recognizable faces of the coronavirus pandemic in the US. So when a public health expert needed a way to measure how her students were coping with all of the stresses of 2020, she created a chart to gauge their “level of Fauci.” “We all kind of need something that’s positive, that makes sense to us,” Karen Sautter Errichetti, an assistant professor in public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, said. She’d noticed that her community of public health and medical professionals was feeling pretty depressed. So to lighten the mood and get the students interested, she and her co-instructor Reece Lyerly start every class with a meme of some sort. Nothing caught on quite like the Fauci meter, which she introduced to her st...

The 28th named storm of an epic Atlantic hurricane season formed yesterday and is barreling toward Central America as Hurricane Eta today. That ties the record with 2005 for the most storms strong enough to earn a name in a single season. This is also the 12th hurricane to form this season, which has only happened three times before, according to Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. 2020 has been exceptionally active The World Meteorological Organization ran out of names on its alphabetical list in mid-September, with more than two months left in the 2020 season. That forced the agency to turn to Greek letters for storm names for just the second time in its history. But this is the first time Eta has been used since one...

Music can be said to be the universal language: while our tastes in tunes may differ, there are few people who don’t have their own favorite songs to listen to. New technologies have increased the quality of that music — however, we can’t all afford the types of speakers and headphones that offer the most superior sound. But if you’re a music fan with a strict budget, don’t despair. There are audio devices out there that offer good or even excellent sound without forcing you to take out a loan. The following are reviews of various speakers and headsets (both headphones and earbuds) that will allow you to really enjoy your playlist. Read on, and see if you can’t find something that will fit your needs perfectly. Headphones and earbuds Razer Opus headphonesPhotography by Cameron Faulkner / T...

Some of the most important parts of our country are literally falling apart. Our airports are crumbling. Our buses and rail networks are hemorrhaging riders and falling into disrepair. Many of our bridges are so old they’re eligible for Medicare. And with the global pandemic crisis driving cities into an unprecedented budget crisis, things are likely to get worse before they get better. Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) releases its “Infrastructure Report Card,” which assesses everything from ports and dams to transit, schools, and hazardous waste management. In 2017, the group gave the country a D+, the same grade it delivered in 2013. The US is on track to receive the same grade (or worse) in 2021. Things shouldn’t have gotten this bad. Investing in infrast...

Samsung’s pocket-sized T7 USB-C SSD is steeply discounted at a few retailers. The price cut applies to the 1TB and 2TB models, both of which could make for speedy external add-ons for the PS5 or Xbox Series X / S consoles, in addition to the more obvious use case of connecting it your PC. The 1TB SSD is down to $160 (usually $200). As far as the color options of the T7, Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H Photo have them in red, blue, or black. If you want to double the storage to 2TB, that version of the T7 is $250 (usually $370) at Amazon. That’s a particularly good value. I reviewed Samsung’s T7 Touch, a variant that includes a fingerprint sensor for added security. Some real-world benchmarking tasks proved it to be significantly faster at transferring data than its predecessor, the T5. In my...