Summary Sadly, video game arcades have largely died off in most parts of the world, and most true arcade games are now a relic of a retro-gaming past. Yet in some ways these early video games were ahead of their time. That is, they pioneered the “pay to win” approach to game design. Arcade Games Are Designed to Take Your Money Fast An arcade game is there to entertain you, but it’s main purpose is to drain your wallet as efficiently as possible....

Quick Links Many consumers are conditioned to think bigger is better, and that may be true in some cases. For travel mice, small is where it’s at, and theCHERRY MW 9100supports this. The sleek mouse has all the necessary features and then some for office use, but don’t expect it to be an everyday peripheral. The moment I held the CHERRY MW 9100 mouse in my hand, I was sure I would dislike every second with it....

Most smartphone models are updated yearly, and even though they usually don’t undergo significant design changes each time, cases designed for one model usually won’t work on the next iteration. So you’re stuck coughing up more money for a new case (or gambling with a naked phone). It doesn’t have to be this way, though. We’re long past the era of smartphones receiving groundbreaking changes every year, outside of foldables and other experimental form factors....

Quick Links Whether you’re streaming, recording yourself, or taking part in video chats, you’re probably disappointed in the picture quality you’re getting. Before you order an expensive new webcam however, consider that the real issue may not be your camera, but your lighting setup. Lightning Matters the Most A camera, any camera, is essentially a device for gathering and recording light. That’s why even the most expensivewebcamin the world won’t help you if your lighting is bad....

Knowledge is a valuable thing. This is even truer as we continue to face economic uncertainty and are forced to pivot within our careers. Give yourself even more breathing room by enhancing your skills in tech through Udemy. Theonline educational marketplaceprovides you with a breadth of coursework to help improve your current skillset and knowledge base, ensuring that you remain mission-critical as the leading tech resource in your current organization, or you may shop for a new tech career with a broader set of skills....

Our cultural association with earbuds is pretty straightforward—if someone’s wearing earbuds, they’re isolated and cannot hear the outside world. But a new trend is pushing things in an interesting direction. Instead of plugging up your ear canal, some companies want to keep your ears unobscured. The FiiO JW1s launched on July 27th. You can purchase them from the link at the bottom of thisFiiO press release. The latest example of this trend is the FiiO JW1, a set of “open-ear” wireless earbuds....

Summary TheFreewrite Alphais essentially a Wi-Fi-connected keyboard that should save and sync all the words you bang out on it. It’s the latest distraction-free writing device from a company intent on exploring the best ways to keep people writing, no matter where they are. The premise makes sense. Convergence hasn’t always been a writer’s friend as every device seems to have more distracting capabilities than the last. Unfortunately, the Alpha’s execution leaves a lot to be desired....

The Garuda Linux team announced over the weekend changes to several packages that enable hardware support, including for Nvidia cards. It’s an update optimizing and further modernizing the Linux distribrution meant for gaming and other performance computer tasks. Garuda is officially replacing some of its hardware profiles with more modern ones. These new hardware profiles don’t rely on mhwd, Manjaro Linux’s hardware detection software that Garuda describes as not meeting its standards and as “a major maintenance burden....

Quick Links For many of us, Google was the gateway to the internet. It was a clean, inviting homepage—an oasis among the chaotic web of the late 90s. That simple, efficient elegance was what made Google popular, but somewhere along the way, that guiding principle was abandoned. Google Search in Its Prime Google’s big innovation was an algorithm called “PageRank.” Instead of just counting how many times a keyword appeared on a page (which often led to spammy, irrelevant results), PageRank looked at how many other pages linked to a given site, and the quality of those links....

Quick Links Summary Need a lot of storage for cheap? Buy a refurbished hard drive instead of a new one—you could save yourself hundreds. Here’s what you need to know about used hard drives and where to buy them. Hard drives aren’t the latest and greatest tech anymore, but they still have some advantages oversolid-state drives (SSDs). Foremost among these is cost. Though prices vary, hard drives are still much cheaper per gigabyte (or terabyte) of storage than solid-state drives, especially if you’re talking about the latestNVMe PCIe SSDs....

Summary No matter how reliable the power supply is where you live, there will inevitably be some point where you’ll suffer an outage. With our homes now filled with sensitive (and expensive!) technology, how much harm can power outages do to our gadgets? Power Outages Can Cause Data Loss Most power events, be it a full power outage or a brown out, won’t cause wall to wall chaos in your home with electronics going up left and right in a puff of smoke, thankfully....

Quick Links What if you had a TV remote that you never needed to charge or replace the batteries? That may sound like a futuristic dream, but it’s actually been a reality for a little while already. The technology is pretty cool. What Is a Self-Charging Remote? Let’s start with the basics—what the heck is a “self-charging” or “self-powered” remote, anyway? It’s essentially a remote with technology that allows it to maintain a charge without traditional charging methods....

Technology is playing a larger role in the automotive world than it ever has before, with new cars coming loaded with things straight off the cutting edge. Tesla has built its name by thriving in this new world of technologically advanced vehicles. However, Honda has showcased a new operating system that might challenge their dominance. Honda’s new ASIMO OS, named in honor of the humanoid robot produced by the Japanese firm over 20 years ago....