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Stuck for ideas on how to show your kids’ teachers the depth of your gratitude? We’re in the midst of Teacher Appreciate Week, which is a great time to thank them for all their work this year—or at least get a jump on picking out an end-of-school-year gift. If your favorite teacher is tech-inclined, they will likely appreciate one of the gadgets on this list, all of which are under $50.
Thermal printers have gotten smaller and smaller, and now they can fit in your pocket. Why a thermal printer? They can quickly produce stickers, notes, even temporary tattoos. I can think of 100 ways a teacher would use one of these printers. I like the Notebuddy for its compact shape and easy-to-replace sticker paper. You connect via Bluetooth from your phone or laptop.
If you have a Kindle or TikTok habit, you know all too well the hand cramping that comes from having to hold and flip through with your thumb. There is a solution—the scrolling ring. Worn on your finger, you can press the forward, backward, or select button on your ring and control your phone or tablet remotely. You could even use it on whatever you are showing your class onscreen.
For the last year, this neck massager has been all the rage on TikTok, but I didn’t think much of it until I was gifted one. Holy moly. What makes it work differently is that it’s shaped like a scarf you stretch around you, and put your arms through, so you can easily change the pressure based on how hard you stretch the massager.
I’ve been obsessed with this Super Mario Bros. question mark light up brick. It attaches to the wall or wherever else you’d like to stick it, and yes, you can actually punch it, and yes, it will make that deeply satisfying sound effect from the classic game. Imagine this in a classroom, where a swipe can serve as a reward.
My desk is where everything goes—mail, projects, books, gloves, my purse—so it often needs a cleaning. Can you even imagine what a teacher’s desk looks like at the end of the day? I love this cordless vacuum cleaner that I can keep nearby and grab as needed to vacuum my keyboard and mousepad if I need to, without needing to clear away pens and cords.
The Hue is a fascinating piece of tech: a small camera on a bendy, telescoping arm can project anything to your screen via USB. The macro lens can project a doc, picture, live handwriting, or an ant walking across a table, all at 720px.
The allure of LEGO is forever. This flower bouquet set is a project for relaxing at home, or working on with students. In either case, the resulting bouquet is more interesting than fresh flowers, and will give any teacher instant credibility with kids.
Waking up for another day of school with your little rays of light can be… a lot, but a sunrise alarm is the gentlest way someone can rise and shine. The alarm subtlety brings the level of light up in your room, timed to when you need to get up, mimicking the sunrise.
Teachers use their voice constantly during the day, trying to be heard over students. A little amplification couldn’t hurt. A simple wireless microphone means less shouting, and many less sore throats.
For some people, a tablet is too much tech, but a spiral notebook is too basic. Enter Rocketbook, which is the best of both. Write manually on the pages, and they’ll be scanned to the Rocketbook app.
Microsoft announced a series of upcoming new features for Copilot+ PCs and Windows 11. One of the most compelling updates for Copilot+ PCs is agent, which provides on-device AI assistance for adjusting a PC’s settings. Some of the example tweaks Microsoft gave for this application are issues such as “how to control my PC by voice” and “my mouse pointer is too small.”
Not only can the agent answer these types of queries, but if the necessary permissions are granted, the AI can also make the requested changes for a user. The blog post specifies that only questions in English are “initially” supported, which hints that more languages will be added at a later date. This feature will first roll out to Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon chips, while thoe computers powered by Intel and AMD will get agents “soon.”
Microsoft is also adding more actions to the Click to Do capability for Copilot AI assistance with whatever is currently active on a computer’s screen. Copilot will be able to act on text or an image, including creating a bulleted list from selected text or drafting copy into Microsoft Word. Other new actions include scheduling a meeting, sending a message to Microsoft Teams and sending data to Microsoft Excel. Click to Do will also support engaging a computer’s Reading Coach and Immersive Reader modes.
While most of Microsoft’s recent messaging about Windows 11 has put Copilot+ PCs at front and center, but there will be some new goodies for the owners of other machines coming to the operating system. Users will be able to customize the Start menu and use AI-focused features in File Explorer. The Copilot app will also be getting support for sharing a screen with the AI assistant thanks to Copilot Vision on Windows.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/microsoft-introduces-agent-for-ai-powered-settings-controls-in-copilot-pcs-182056293.html?src=rss
Microsoft has unveiled a substantial AI-focused update for Windows 11 and Copilot+ PCs, introducing features that leverage neural processing units across the operating system. The update centers on AI-powered helpers across core Windows apps, with an intelligent agent in Settings that can locate and adjust options via natural voice commands. Key additions include expanded Click To Do functionality, allowing users to draft Word content based on screen context, engage Reading Coach, or send details directly to Excel tables.
The Photos app gains a relight feature with support for three customizable light sources, while Paint adds object selection and text-to-sticker generation. Snipping Tool will automatically detect and crop prominent screen content, adding text extraction and color picking capabilities. System-level enhancements include an updated Start menu with phone companion integration, AI-powered actions in File Explorer for content summarization, and text generation in Notepad with new formatting options.
Most features will debut first on Windows Insider builds for Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs before expanding to systems with AMD or Intel chips. Several tools, including Ask Copilot and Reading Coach, are already available to Insiders.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Fraudsters are increasingly using recognizable and trusted domains to perpetuate phishing schemes that trick people into handing over their personal and financial information. In recent months, bad actors have exploited settings for both Google and PayPal to lull targets into a false sense of security, making these attacks harder to spot.
Another way scammers are trying to look legitimate while evading detection is through Google Forms that request sensitive data.
Phishing via Google Forms is not new. As a recent report from ESET Security points out, Google Forms are free, easy to create and implement, and trusted by users, making them a low-risk, high-reward vector for scammers. They’re also encrypted with TLS and use dynamic URLs, making them less likely to be flagged as malicious.
Google Forms scams may have several aims, ranging from stealing your login credentials or banking details to redirecting you to a fraudulent site that installs malware on your device.
A recent (and relatively sophisticated) iteration of this scam targeted higher education, including students, faculty, and staff at 15 institutions in the U.S. A post on Google’s blog from February 2025 outlines a campaign in which attackers sent links to Google Forms that mimicked legitimate university communications, complete with the school names, color schemes, and logos or mascots displayed in the headers. The forms were designed to trick recipients into providing university account credentials and, in some cases, financial institution logins under the pretense of maintaining an existing account or distributing aid.
Scammers sent forms out around important dates on the academic calendar, such as financial aid deadlines, when recipients have lots of administrative tasks to complete and are less likely to notice potential red flags.
While Google notes that all of the malicious forms identified were eventually removed, Stanford University’s Information Security Office issued an alert on April 23 warning of a similar phishing scheme meant to steal passwords and Duo passcodes for university network accounts.
The attack begins with Stanford-branded Google Forms hosted on real google.com domains with valid SSL certificates. The forms appear to come from real Google email addresses and may include familiar names in the notifications (such as “[Name] shared a document”). Not only do these forms look legitimate, but they are able to get past email malware detection.
Always have a critical eye when using Google Forms. Don’t open forms sent unsolicited, and never, ever submit sensitive information—login credentials, bank account numbers, etc.—via Google Forms. (Google displays this warning on the form itself. Heed it.) No legitimate institution will request this type of data via Google Forms anyway, and if you’re not sure, contact the organization directly to confirm the request.
Not all Google Forms phishing campaigns will be as well-designed as those targeting higher ed, so you should also look for misspellings, punctuation errors, and odd salutations. One of the examples identified by ESET begins with “Hello, Dear!”
If you believe you have already submitted sensitive information via Google Forms, change your login credentials, freeze your credit cards, and stay on top of your accounts and credit report to identify any fraudulent activity. You should also be on the lookout for any signs of malware on your computer and remove it as quickly as possible (whether you’re on Mac or PC).
Last week, a federal judge ruled that Apple was in “willful violation” of a court injunction that required the company to refrain from “anticompetitive conduct and anticompetitive pricing” in its tightly controlled iOS App Store. Part of the ongoing litigation between Epic Games and Apple, the injunction specifically forbade Apple from “denying developers the ability to communicate with, and direct purchasers to, other purchasing mechanisms.”
Following the ruling, Apple said it would comply with the court’s injunction while the company continued to appeal the decision. The day after the ruling was handed down, Apple altered several of its App Review Guidelines to grant developers permission to do things they hadn’t been allowed to do before. As summarized in an email to developers, reported by MacRumors:
3.1.1: Apps on the United States storefront are not prohibited from including buttons, external links, or other calls to action when allowing users to browse NFT collections owned by others.
3.1.1(a): On the United States storefront, there is no prohibition on an app including buttons, external links, or other calls to action, and no entitlement is required to do so.
3.1.3: The prohibition on encouraging users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase does not apply on the United States storefront.
3.1.3(a): The External Link Account entitlement is not required for apps on the United States storefront to include buttons, external links, or other calls to action.
We’re already beginning to see new versions of apps that take advantage of these changes. Case in point: Amazon’s Kindle app for iPhones and iPads, which from its original launch in 2009 up until yesterday wouldn’t actually let anyone buy books in the app. Users instead needed to navigate on their own to Amazon’s store in Safari or on their PC and Mac and buy the books they wanted, at which point the books would be available in the Kindle app.
GoW: Reloaded will come with a bevy of enhancements,
You can save today on our top security camera pick for Alexa users. Amazon has the Blink Outdoor 4 for half price. A single camera (usually $100) only costs $50, which is only $10 more than its all-time low for Black Friday. And the half-off savings also apply to multi-camera bundles.
The Blink Outdoor 4’s name is somewhat deceiving because it works just as well for indoor use. The weather-resistant camera records in up to 1080p and supports black-and-white infrared for nighttime recording. The wireless camera is powered by a pair of AA batteries.
If the impressive Blink Outdoor 4 has an asterisk, it’s the company’s subscription scheme. First, you can cover the fundamentals without one. These include motion alerts, full HD recording, two-way audio, night vision, customizable motion sensitivity, activity zones and privacy zones. But advanced features like person detection, 60 days of cloud storage, motion event recording and an extended live view require a Blink Basic ($3 monthly or $30 annually) or Blink Plus ($10 monthly or $100 annually) plan. The more expensive one adds unlimited cameras, the ability to snooze notifications and an extended warranty. Otherwise, they’re the same.
Fortunately, if storage and multi-camera support are the only things pulling you toward a monthly fee, there’s a subscription-free workaround. Pop a cheap USB drive into the Blink Sync Module 2 (included) and store your clips locally. This option loads your recordings a tad slower than cloud storage, but it isn’t a dramatic difference.
Amazon’s sale ranges from $50 for a single camera to $315 for an eight-pack. Every bundle (which also includes two-, three-, four-, five- and six-camera systems) is half off.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/blink-outdoor-4-security-cameras-are-half-price-right-now-173641806.html?src=rss
BrianFagioli writes: Fedora Linux is now officially available as a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) distribution! That’s right, folks, following prior testing, you can now run Fedora 42 natively inside Windows using WSL. As someone who considers Fedora to be my favorite Linux distribution, this is a pretty exciting development.
Installing it is simple enough. Just open up a terminal and type wsl –install FedoraLinux-42 to get started. After that, launch it with wsl -d FedoraLinux-42 and set your username. No password is required by default, and you’ll automatically be part of the wheel group, meaning you can use sudo right out of the gate.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
You might know the story by now: Framework makes repairable, modular laptops where you can sub in new components for old or broken ones. It’s been two years since the company debuted an AMD mainboard for the Laptop 13 and so it’s time for the first replacement to arrive. The new model gets AMD’s Ryzen AI 300, a series of power-efficient chips for notebooks that can do all the Copilot+ AI nonsense the industry insists people need and want.
Framework sent me the new AMD mainboard to slot into the existing chassis, along with a new bezel and input cover. Rather than the usual solid colors, the company is now offering translucent plastic versions for all those late ‘90s kids who owned Game Boy Colors. I prefer the tinted translucent version over the clear transparent one, but you can judge for yourself in the pictures.
Would-be buyers have three options: They can buy a new pre-built laptop with Ryzen AI 300, a DIY edition to assemble or just get the mainboard on its own. Either way, you get the pick of a Ryzen 5 340, Ryzen 7 350 or the flagship Ryzen 9 HX 370 capable of harnessing up to 96GB of RAM. Naturally, the price will start to climb the greater your technological ambitions.
I was supplied with the midrange Ryzen 7 350, which took me about 11 minutes or so to swap into the existing AMD model. It’s amusing to think it took me the better part of an hour the first time I did this but once you’re fluent, it becomes effortless. If you, like me, lost the muscle memory to swap components at the turn of the millennium, don’t feel like this is beyond you.
The Ryzen 7 350’s performance is fine for the sort of tasks you’d expect to do with a 13-inch notebook. I didn’t find there was a clear, epoch-shifting leap between what I got out of this and the 7840U it replaced. If you’re using it for the usual stuff — work, browsing and watching videos — then it’ll handle that all with aplomb.
As usual, the best reason to recommend the AMD model over its Intel equivalent is for its greater strength in gaming. After all, you can easily get 50 to 60 fps in titles like Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto V, making this an effective all-rounder.
There are two downsides to Framework’s modular approach, one of which is that the hardware will always look more functional than its rivals. The second, and more critical, is that all of the CPU cooling has to be integrated onto the mainboard itself. Whereas a lot of machines can be designed around thermal management, this one can’t because everything is modular. So the fan on top of the mainboard has to do all of the work with one hand tied behind its back. Consequently both the Intel and AMD versions of Framework’s laptops are noisy in ways more modern machines aren’t.
Framework says it addressed the noise issue by redesigning the heatpipe, improving the fan algorithm and switching to Honeywell’s PTM7958 thermal paste. Sadly, as many hours as the company may have put in here, you’re still going to have to deal with plenty of fan noise and heat under heavy load. And while AMD promised the 300 AI was designed to be more power-efficient, the new processor further dents this thing’s battery life. I didn’t get anything close to a full day on a charge here, but that seems to be the way with so many laptops these days.
I’ve always commended Framework for its commitment to improving every hardware component as it goes. This time around, the company worked with manufacturing partner Lite-On to give its keyboard a makeover. It focused on hard-to-spot improvements like printing the caps in a slightly thinner weight, replacing the fingerprint sensor and redesigning the Shift and Enter keys.
Thankfully, what hasn’t changed is the 1.5mm key travel, and founder Nirav Patel told me years ago that he had no interest in trying to fix what wasn’t broken. This means the keyboard itself remains as easy to use as it was before, albeit with a slightly quieter typing action. The keys aren’t as loose in their housing as they were on the older model, which is another sign of higher quality. Users can also pick from keyboards with a dedicated Windows Copilot key or the Framework key, depending on your operating system loyalties.
More importantly, the company addressed feedback that the wide keys would rattle when the speaker played at high volumes. There’s a new scaffold supporting the Shift and spacebar to reduce vibration when the sound gets loud. I think the original problem was overstated, but perhaps my audio picks aren’t as bass-heavy as some other folks. Regardless, the changes here are welcome and when I’ve watched explosion-heavy audio, I found little to no rattle at all.
It’s not as simple to swap an Intel mainboard for an AMD one as there are issues with hardware compatibility. Similarly, the AMD boards support different USB standards for different expansion card slots, as you can see in the picture. This is true for AMD boards no matter the manufacturer, but it’s one thing to remember before you make your purchase.
If you are already inside Framework’s ecosystem then feel free to sleep on this upgrade. Yes, the AI 300 is better than the chip it replaces but not to the extent I’d suggest you shell out several hundred dollars on one. If you aren’t, then you’ll probably be swayed by Framework’s broader pitch rather than this specific update. My suspicion is that the company’s maturing ecosystem is ideally placed to take advantage of the current geopolitical brouhaha. After all, if the cost of every notebook is at risk of leaping through the roof, being able to keep one machine running for longer is compelling. And, if you’re looking to leap in, you should grab one of the discounted Ryzen 7040 machines before they go. After all, if you find the performance a little slow in a few years’ time, you’ll be well-placed to take advantage of the next generation upgrade when it arrives.
I know there are some who feel Framework’s underlying platform is getting a little stale, which I do understand. Tech consumers are constantly clamoring for a newer, flashier doodad, and when the Laptop 13 first launched, it already looked a generation behind rival 13-inch notebooks in the same class. When the Laptop 13 first launched, it already looked a generation behind rival 13-inch notebooks in the same class. Five years down the line, it won’t beat any machines from Dell, Acer or ASUS in look or feel.
But while it may not have the razzle or dazzle, it does have the staying power, and that’s going to be a bigger asset in the next few years. If you’re the sort of person who would buy a Lenovo Thinkpad and run it until it falls apart, then this is a better option. After all, with a Framework, you won’t even have to worry about it falling apart.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/framework-laptop-13-2025-with-amd-ryzen-ai-300-review-the-usual-iterative-upgrade-172031005.html?src=rss
They say that with age comes wisdom, so it should come as no surprise that on the eve of Alfa Romeo’s 115th anniversary, the company that originally made its name competing in endurance races like the Targa Florio and Mille Miglia with flame-spitting sportscars is currently looking to increase its market share with a sensible, high-riding crossover.
Produced in Stellantis’ Pomigliano d’Arco assembly plant near Naples, Italy, alongside its mechanical twin, the Dodge Hornet, the Tonale plug-in hybrid introduced last year helped the Italian automaker find a foothold at a time when many of the auto conglomerate’s brands have been struggling. Now, a non-hybrid version of Alfa’s answer to models like the BMW X1 and Audi Q3 has joined the fray, sporting turbocharged power, standard all-wheel drive, and the same sharp styling at a significantly lower base price. But old habits die hard, and as I discovered over the course of a few days with the latest iteration of the Tonale, even Alfa Romeo’s most pragmatic offerings have their fair share of quirks.
The new base model comes with a double overhead-cam 2.0 L inline four-cylinder engine producing 268 hp (200 kW) and 295 lb-ft (400 Nm) of torque. The turbocharged mill is paired with a nine-speed automatic transmission and an all-wheel drive system that can send up to 50 percent of the available torque to the rear wheels. While those numbers are down a bit compared to the Tonale Hybrid, at 3,715 lbs (1,685 kg), the 2.0 L Turbo is more than 400 lbs (181 kg) lighter than the PHEV model.
Reddit’s Steve Huffman isn’t mincing words about what he found when he came back as CEO in 2015: a company full of idealists who weren’t exactly killing themselves with hard work.
“We were really idealistic, and that’s been good in many ways, but we were also idealistic about not being a business,” Huffman said on the “Prof G Pod” podcast. “Wrapped up in some of that idealism was also not working very hard,” he added.
Huffman sees this as a Silicon Valley disease: “It’s almost an entitlement of, ‘I work at these companies, but I don’t have to work very hard and I’m here for myself.'”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
High-end Danish audio brand Bang & Olufsen has announced the third generation of its Beosound A1 Bluetooth speaker. The updated A1 remains as portable as its predecessor, retaining its puck-shaped design and minimalist appearance, but there are some key upgrades under its pearl-blasted aluminum shell.
Arguably the most important of these is the larger woofer, which delivers a bass of 64dB, a 2dB improvement on the second-generation model. While that admittedly sounds modest on paper, B&O claims it’s one that makes the speaker capable of comfortably filling a room with meaty sound. If you happen to have an older A1 around, you can form a stereo pair with the latest model for even more sonic muscle.
Battery life has also been increased to 24 hours, which is a sizable six hours more than its predecessor. And while it uses the slightly older Bluetooth 5.1 standard, the new A1 supports Microsoft Swift Pair and Google Fast Pair, both of which cut down on the steps required to pair devices. The previous speaker’s three-microphone setup also makes its way to the A1 3rd Gen, allowing you to take calls from the device itself.
The updated speaker has an IP67 dust and waterproof rating, and sports a modular design that allows you to replace or upgrade broken or outdated components over time. Bang & Olufsen say it’s the first speaker in the world to get a Bronze certification from Cradle to Cradle. The C2C is a globally recognized sustainability standard that assesses a product from its supply chain through to production, and coaches companies in minimizing waste. The Bronze level awarded to the Beosound A1 is the lowest on C2C’s scale, but it’s evidence that Bang & Olufsen is paying mind to sustainability.
The Bang & Olufsen A1 3rd Gen can be purchased in the same Natural Aluminium finish as its predecessor, as well as the two new “nature-inspired” colorways of Honey Tone and Eucalyptus Green. It’s available to buy today and costs $349.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/speakers/bang–olufsens-third-gen-beosound-a1-bluetooth-speaker-has-more-battery-life-and-bass-164546063.html?src=rss
Recteq makes pellet grills, but those can’t do it all when it comes to backyard cooking. So when the company sought to create an alternative for gas grillers, without making an actual gas grill, it needed to do something radically different.
With its newly launched X-Fire Pro, Recteq may have done that. The company says that its Dual Mode Cooking combines the best of wood pellets and gas, offering a temperature range between 225 and 1,250 degrees Fahrenheit. But it wasn’t just about getting to that high level of heat. For Recteq, harmonizing the dual capabilities with an intuitive design was most important.
“Part of our development process was going after the gas grill market, attracting new users to the pellet grill universe,” Recteq’s VP of products Ben Lesshafft said. “We really felt the best way to do that was to meet them on their turf.”
Gas grills are very easy to use. They feel more familiar to most people because they function a lot like a stove and light with the press of a button. Primarily designed for higher-heat cooking, these are the grills you want for burgers, steaks and other cookout essentials when you don’t want to futz with the extra care and clean up of charcoal. Turn it on, cook your food, turn it off. What’s more, gas grills have multiple burners, which allow backyard cooks to adjust and maintain multiple temperature zones as needed.
With the X-Fire Pro Recteq needed to create a similar two-burner/fire pot setup. Just one of those wouldn’t be enough to adequately cover the 825 square inches of cooking space on such a large grill. That’s especially true when there’s a direct heat option involved. However, the dual fire pots aren’t what’s necessary for the 1,250-degree performance. For that, the company utilizes the fire pots from its Bullseye Deluxe model that’s also capable of 1,000-degree searing.
Lesshafft walked me through how Recteq achieves this, employing a specially designed, “gasification-style” fire pot that ignites the wood gas that’s produced when the pellets burn. With a double-walled construction for this crucial component, something that works similarly to the airflow channels on a Solo Stove fire pit, the company can ignite that wood gas at temperatures above 500-600 degrees for “an accelerated amount of heat.”
Now that Recteq can reach an extreme amount of heat by fully exploiting the pellets, it needs to allow food to come in direct contact with the flames. “That’s the adjustable damper,” Lesshafft said. “You can go fully closed, partially open, almost all the way open and wide open.” The damper and an Adaptive Sear Control feature are only available on the right-side fire pot though.
On the left, there’s a perforated steel deflector covering the heat source. This allows for the hot and cold sides of the grill, or hot and not-so-hot, both of which are common cooking setups for gas grilling. You’ll need higher heat for searing a steak, but more indirect heat for bringing it fully to temperature. Or maybe you have people over who all like their steaks cooked differently. Either way, gas grills allow you to have varied heat zones and so does the X-Fire Pro’s Grill Mode.
Of course, the X-Fire Pro also had to be a pellet grill, and that brings us back to Recteq’s area of expertise. “Nobody with a gas grill brags about pork butt, brisket and ribs,” Lesshafft quipped.
Pellet grills are better at low-and-slow smoking. Sure, you can do baking, roasting and limited searing on most models, but the bread and butter here is smoked meat, seafood and other dishes. Most pellet grills these days offer some form of connectivity — Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or both — so that you can keep tabs on progress without standing outside the entire time. This is typically done with an app that also allows you to to adjust the cooking temperature of the grill, activate certain modes or shut it down from afar.
For Smoke Mode on the X-Fire Pro, only the left fire pot runs. That perforated deflector I mentioned is designed in such a way that the heat is pushed towards the middle of the grill. It’s similar to how an offset smoker (stick burner) works. Even though the active fire pot is on the left side of the cooking chamber, “the temperature balance is remarkably stable,” Lesshafft noted.
To completely synthesize the two types of grills into a single unit, Recteq also had to design controls that would be easy to understand for both gas and pellet grill users. “We wanted to create a lot of things that were familiar to the gas consumer,” he explained. “That’s the knobs on the front, a lot of stainless [steel], and even when you turn it on, that’s the LED rings around the lights.”
There are four knobs in total. The one on the left controls the two grill modes: Smoke and Grill. When you select the latter, all of the LEDs around those knobs light up red. There are two knobs for burner/fire pot control, allowing you to select low, medium, high or maximum. There’s also an Adaptive Sear Control knob which allows you to adjust how much direct flame is coming in contact with your food.
When it’s time for Smoke Mode, turn that far left knob and the X-Fire Pro’s controls transform the machine into a traditional pellet grill. The LEDs around the four center knobs change from red to white, and the controller that’s mounted on the side shelf turns on. Here, you’ll adjust settings for those low-and-slow cooks and monitor temperatures. If you’re unfamiliar with pellet grilling, the controller’s display will help with tips like a reminder to keep the lid closed while smoking.
Most people who’ve cooked with a pellet grill are familiar with using a phone app to track temperatures and access remote controls. Recteq offers that in Smoke Mode on the X-Fire Pro, which means no one will be babysitting a pork shoulder or brisket grillside for 8-12 hours. Like much of the competition, this runs on your home Wi-Fi network.
While the grill is designed to run in two completely separate modes, you can switch between them with ease. If you wanted to reverse sear a steak, for example, you could just smoke it first at 225 and then open the lid and change to Grill Mode. The left fire pot is already going, but this would activate the one on the right for the desired exterior finish. Going from Grill Mode to Smoke Mode “requires a little bit more patience,” Lesshafft said, since the metal chamber has gotten hot and it will take a while for the grill to cool down to the appropriate temperature.
“We really tried to design it with the ultimate amount of versatility,” he said.
And in the end, that appears to be what Recteq did. The company put two separate grills in one machine, catering to backyard cooks who are familiar with each one individually. And in doing so, it built a unique grill that stands out from most of the competition. The X-Fire Pro isn’t a pellet grill with enough searing performance to make it passable, it’s a high-heat beast. It offers a lot more flavor than gas by burning pellets, and it’s much easier to check your fuel levels here than when you’re dealing with a tank.
“We want to deliver what they need [in a gas grill],” Lessshafft concluded. “Should you want to dip your toe in the water of some food you can’t get on a gas grill, this gives you the vehicle to do that too.”
I’ll be putting an X-Fire Pro to the test soon so see if it’s worth the steep $1,550 investment. Yes, you can find a decent gas grill to pair with a solid pellet grill for less than that. But you’d have two cooking appliances on your deck or patio, and you’d still have to contend with the anxiety of propane tank levels before each grilling session. Recteq’s new model should remedy that, and if the performance claims hold up, it will also put a novel piece of grilling gear in your backyard.
Time will tell if Recteq has truly merged the two styles of cooking.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/kitchen-tech/best-of-both-worlds-how-recteq-designed-a-pellet-grill-for-gas-grillers-163047921.html?src=rss
Instacart is rolling out a new app, but it’s not for ordering groceries—at least, not the essentials. Instead, Instacart sees “Fizz” as a party delivery app, designed for ordering snacks and alcoholic drinks.
Fizz isn’t the first to offer alcohol delivery, of course. Instacart itself supports alcohol delivery wherever it’s legal, as does DoorDash. But perhaps the most notorious alcohol delivery app was Drizly: The service was a popular option for ordering alcohol, but its reputation suffered following a massive 2020 data breach. Uber acquired the app the following year, then shut it down in 2024.
But Fizz isn’t a Drizly clone. Instead, the app seems more like if Drizly crossed with a party-planning app like Partiful or Apple’s Invites—not only do you order drinks and snacks, but you invite others to do so as well. In fact, Fizz is now embedded in the Partiful app, so you can use it when planning a party at large.
Instacart says after you start a “party cart,” you can share a link with friends to invite them to join. (They don’t need the Fizz app to participate.) Everyone in the group can see what’s already been ordered, and can add whatever they want. Anything you add to a party cart, you pay for yourself, which I feel mixed about. On the one hand, it’s cool to let people “bring” what they want to the party, without needing to track people down to pay for their share. But for some parties and gatherings, it makes sense to split everything evenly. It’d be nice if Fizz would at least add that as an option.
If you want to use Fizz with Partiful, you can choose to enable “Group Order” in the app. Then, everyone on the Partiful can access the Fizz link.
As the app is made for ordering alcohol, it’s only available to users 21 and older. There’s also a flat $5 delivery fee for all orders, though that does not include a tip.
If you live in a state or area where alcohol delivery isn’t legal, you can’t use Fizz (or any alcohol delivery service). According to TechCrunch, Fizz is available in Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana (some areas), Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico (some areas), New York, Nevada (some areas), North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming.
You can download the app by scanning the QR code on Fizz’s website.
Nvidia will release the GeForce RTX 5060 on May 19 starting at $299, the company announced via press release today. The new card, a successor to popular past GPUs like the GTX 1060 and RTX 3060, will bring Nvidia’s DLSS 4 and Multi Frame-Generation technology to budget-to-mainstream gaming builds—at least, it would if every single GPU launched by any company at any price wasn’t instantly selling out these days.
Nvidia announced a May release for the 5060 last month when it released the RTX 5060 Ti for $379 (8GB) and $429 (16GB). Prices for that card so far haven’t been as inflated as they have been for the RTX 5070 on up, but the cheapest ones you can currently get are still between $50 and $100 over that MSRP. Unless Nvidia and its partners have made dramatically more RTX 5060 cards than they’ve made of any other model so far, expect this card to carry a similar pricing premium for a while.
| RTX 5060 Ti | RTX 4060 Ti | RTX 5060 | RTX 4060 | RTX 5050 (leaked) | RTX 3050 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CUDA Cores | 4,608 | 4,352 | 3,840 | 3,072 | 2,560 | 2,560 |
| Boost Clock | 2,572 MHz | 2,535 MHz | 2,497 MHz | 2,460 MHz | Unknown | 1,777 MHz |
| Memory Bus Width | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit |
| Memory bandwidth | 448GB/s | 288GB/s | 448GB/s | 272GB/s | Unknown | 224GB/s |
| Memory size | 8GB or 16GB GDDR7 | 8GB or 16GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR7 | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
| TGP | 180 W | 160 W | 145 W | 115 W | 130 W | 130 W |
Compared to the RTX 4060, the RTX 5060 adds a few hundred extra CUDA cores and gets a big memory bandwidth increase thanks to the move from GDDR6 to GDDR7. But its utility at higher resolutions will continue to be limited by its 8GB of RAM, which is already becoming a problem for a handful of high-end games at 1440p and 4K.
Last month, Nintendo and its third-party partners revealed that many of the “physical” games on the Switch 2 would be made available only as “Digital Key Cards.” Unlike traditional physical Switch games—which contain flash memory with the necessary data to play the game on the card itself—these key cards will simply enable the holder to download a copy of the game to their system and play that copy if and when the transferable key card is inserted in the system.
Already, many players are thinking ahead to what this means for their ability to play Game Key Card releases well into the future. It’s not hard to find potential Switch 2 owners publicly worrying about games “disappear[ing] into the void” or becoming “effectively a worthless piece of plastic/e-waste” when Nintendo eventually disables its Switch 2 game download servers. Some go even farther, calling a Game Key Card an “eighty dollar rental” rather than a real game purchase.
While these are valid long-term concerns, I think some players are underestimating the likely timeline for when Game Key Cards will become “useless e-waste.” As it stands, we already have an example of Nintendo supporting continued downloads of games purchased nearly two decades ago and counting.
Meta is facing its biggest existential threat in its history. Years after the Federal Trade Commission first sued the social network in an attempt to unwind its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, the trial that will shape its future is finally underway. FTC v. Meta began last month when CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand, and is expected to last for several weeks.
The FTC is hoping to prove to US District judge James Boasberg that Meta’s acquisitions of its one-time rivals were anticompetitive and hurt US consumers. Meta, meanwhile, has argued that Instagram and WhatsApp were only able to grow to the billion-user services they are because of its investment into them over the last decade or more.
While the case is unlikely to be fully settled anytime soon, the trial has successfully uncovered tons of new details about the inner workings of Meta and its approach to potential competitors. And testimony from former execs like Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom and longtime COO Sheryl Sandberg have shed new light on the company’s past.
Facebook’s 2012 acquisition of Instagram is a central part of the FTC’s case against Meta. The government has argued that Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram in order to neutralize it as a competitor and is trying to force Meta to divest it. So it was more than a little eyebrow raising when Instagram’s cofounder and former CEO Kevin Systrom took the stand and didn’t exactly come to Meta’s defense.
While Zuckerberg had testified that Meta had helped Instagram grow, Systrom testified that Zuckerberg saw Instagram as a “threat” to Facebook’s growth and intentionally withheld company resources as a result. “As the founder of Facebook, he felt a lot of emotion around which one was better, meaning Instagram or Facebook,” Systrom said.
Facebook’s decision to pay $1 billion for Instagram — an app that had no revenue and just a handful of employees — seemed like an incredible sum to many onlookers at the time. Among them, though, was Zuckerberg’s former top lieutenant. The trial unearthed an exchange between the two from 2012 in which Zuckerberg asked if $1 billion was too much to pay. She replied that “yes, of course it’s way too much.”
On the stand, however, Sandberg said that she had been wrong. “I don’t think anyone today would say we paid too much for Instagram,” she said, in testimony reported by Bloomberg.
In one notable email exchange, Zuckerberg speculated that the company could one day face antitrust action that would force the company to divest Instagram. “I’m beginning to wonder whether spinning Instagram out is the only structure that will accomplish a number of important goals,” Zuckerberg mused in a 2018 email. “As calls to break up the big tech companies grow, there is a non-trivial chance that we will be forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp in the next 5-10 years anyway.”
In 2022, facing rising competition from TikTok, Zuckerberg apparently was growing concerned that Facebook’s “cultural relevance is decreasing quickly.” To address this, he suggested deleting users’ friends lists as often as once a year in an effort to get people to “start again.” Bizarrely, he referred to this plan as “double down on friending,” as Business Insider noted.
Zuckerberg, apparently aware that the plan was somewhat risky, even suggested that Facebook could test out the idea in a “smaller country” first in order to gauge the effect it might have on users. However, Tom Alison, who oversees the Facebook app for Meta, quickly shot him down, according to The Verge, telling Zuckerberg the plan was not “viable.”
When asked about it directly on the stand, Zuckerberg simply stated that “we never did that.” Still, the fact that he even considered such a drastic move is telling. Zuckerberg floated the idea in 2022, at a time when TikTok’s popularity among US teens was surging and Meta was becoming increasingly alarmed at TikTok’s dominance. In the same email, Zuckerberg also questioned Alison about whether Facebook could move to a “follow model.”
Zuckerberg has previously talked about how Meta was “slow” to recognize the threat posed by TikTok. But the FTC trial has unearthed new details about Meta’s response to the app’s rise. In her testimony, Sandberg said that Meta was already feeling pressure from TikTok in 2018. By 2020, the company had invested more than $500 million into building its competitor, Reels, according to an internal email noted by The New York Times. That effort saw the company hire more than 1,000 new employees to bolster the company’s video efforts.
Zuckerberg also touched on TikTok, saying that the app quickly became a “highly urgent” threat to Meta. “We observed that our growth slowed down dramatically,” Zuckerberg said, referring to TikTok’s rise. That may sound surprisingly candid for Zuckerberg, but his remarks were also strategic for Meta’s defense. The company has argued that TikTok is an even bigger threat to its business than Instagram or WhatsApp ever was, and has slammed the government for claiming that TikTok isn’t a direct rival.
As the European Union has adopted stricter tech regulations over the last few years, the new laws have forced tech giants to change their products in sometimes meaningful ways. For Meta, one such change has been the addition of ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram that are only available via subscription in the EU. The company began offering it in 2023 and has slashed the price of it more recently following legal scrutiny.
But even with a price cut, it seems ad-free subscriptions to Facebook and Instagram are unpopular. On the stand, Meta’s Chief Revenue Officer John Hegeman testified that there has been “very little interest” in the plan with only “about .007 percent” of users opting in, according to testimony reported by The Verge.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/what-weve-learned-from-ftc-v-meta-antitrust-trial-162048138.html?src=rss
The ongoing war between the Trump administration and Harvard University has taken a new twist, with the government sending Harvard a letter that, amid what appears to be a stream-of-consciousness culture war rant, announces that the university will not be receiving any further research grants. The letter potentially suggests that Harvard could see funding restored by “complying with long-settled Federal Law,” but earlier demands from the administration included conditions that went well beyond those required by law.
The letter, sent by Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, makes it somewhat difficult to tell exactly what the government wants, because most of the text is a borderline deranged rant written in florid MAGA-ese. You don’t have to go beyond the first paragraph to get a sense that this is less a setting of funding conditions than an airing of grievances:
Instead of using these funds to advance the education of its students, Harvard is engaging in a systemic pattern of violating federal law. Where do many of these “students” come from, who are they, how do they get into Harvard, or even into our country—and why is there so much HATE? These are questions that must be answered, among many more, but the biggest question of all is, why will Harvard not give straightforward answers to the American public?
Does Harvard have to answer these questions to get funding restored? It’s unclear.
NVIDIA’s RTX 5060 finally has a release date. When the company announced the budget 50-series graphics cards last month, it gave the higher-end Ti model a firm April 19 launch but limited the base 5060 model to a vague “May” window. On Tuesday, we learned that the card with a $299 MSRP arrives on May 19.
The RTX 5060 has 8 GB of GDDR7 VRAM, 19 TFLOPS Blackwell shader cores, 5th-gen tensor cores with 614 AI TOPS performance and 4th-gen RT (ray tracing) cores that can reach 58 TFLOPS. It also has 3,840 CUDA Cores.
According to NVIDIA’s benchmarks, the RTX 5060 reaches 234 fps in Hogwarts Legacy, 148 fps in Cyberpunk 2077, 220 fps in Avowed and 330 fps in Marvel Rivals. Those numbers are all set for 1080p with maxed-out graphics and 4x frame generation.
Based on today’s prices, those are impressive numbers for a $299 card. But if you can snag one at all, you’ll likely be hard-pressed to find one at that price. For that, you can thank Donald Trump. The Verge notes that retailers jacked up graphics card prices even before his tariffs kicked in. In addition, the US president recently killed the de minimis exemption, which spared goods under $800 from extra taxes. (Remember when he said he would make America affordable again?) So, consider yourself one of the lucky few if you find one on launch day for anything close to $299.
The GeForce RTX 5060 will go on sale on May 19 at noon ET from NVIDIA’s retail partners. In addition to the standalone desktop card, the laptops with the mobile version of the RTX 5060 will launch at the same time, starting at $1,099.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/nvidias-geforce-rtx-5060-gpu-arrives-on-may-19-160939549.html?src=rss