Featuring nostalgia from manual phone exchanges and typewriters to Walkmans, this institution is a shrine to technology and communication tools. Read...

Scott Technology (NZX:SCT) has secured multiple high-value contracts with leading global companies, showcasing the strength of its protein automation portfolio. Valued at NZ$18 million combined Read...

Iktos and Cube Biotech have partnered to leverage AI-driven drug discovery and advanced protein technology, targeting the Amylin Receptor for cardiometabolic disorders. Read...

Pump-and-dumps and other fraud schemes have become synonymous with cryptocurrency, with everyone from political leaders to YouTube influencers accused of using crypto FOMO to make a quick buck at the expense of their followers. But one Washington pastor decided his own church flock was an appropriate place to start fleecing, according to the US Department of Justice. The DoJ has charged Francier Obando Pinillo, the former pastor of a church in Pasco, Washington state, with 26 counts of fraud. So says an official press release issued last week and spotted by Bleeping Computer. According to the assistant district attorneys charging Pinillo, he sold his “Solano Fi” cryptocurrency to his parishioners both in person and on social media from 2021 to 2023, promising them a 34.9 percent return on investment with “no risk whatsoever.” Pinillo allegedly claimed that the idea for the cryptocurrency “had come to him in a dream,” but funneled the investments into his own accounts and those of his co-conspirators, while showing his victims fake balances and returns via a mobile investment app. The DoJ alleges that victims were told to share the investment scam with others, and when suspicions of foul play were raised, Pinillo offered to “repair” the technical systems with more money or buy out their positions by replacing them with another investor. Pinillo is charged with defrauding over a thousand victims both inside his own church and elsewhere of 5.9 million dollars. If convicted he could serve up to 20 years in prison. The insane rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, creating legitimate wealth for a small number of early investors, has made cryptocurrency an appealing and easy avenue for scammers. It’s all the easier if you’re seen as a figure of trust and authority, ditto if your audience isn’t fully versed in either financial investment, the realities of the crypto market, or the technology behind it. While many are now wary of get-rich-quick crypto investments, pump-and-dumps are still easy to find on social media. Investors in the $HAWK meme coin, based on viral influencer Hailey “Hawk Tuah girl” Welch, sued its creators just last month. “Pig butchering” scams, wherein victims are targetted with fake dating profiles and lured to invest money by their romantic interests, have become a market worth billions of dollars. These are particularly concerning, as the “scammers” themselves are often victims of human trafficking and forced labor at the hands of organized crime gangs. Read...

Could 2024 have been any worse for Sonos? The once-beloved connected speaker brand left its reputation in tatters after a rushed, misguided app update, then launched a pair of pricey headphones that, from all accounts, landed with a thud.  Faced with a mob of enraged users, Sonos has repeatedly apologized and laid out elaborate plans for how it will do better. But sometimes, “sorry” isn’t enough, and now Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is taking the last option open to him: resignation.  In a press release early Monday, Sonos announced that Spence is stepping down immediately as CEO and as a member of the company’s board of directors.   Sonos board member Tom Conrad will take over as interim CEO while Sonos searches for a permanent replacement, the company said. Conrad, who was formerly Chief Technical Officer at Pandora, promised to “work with our team to restore the reliability and user experience that have defined Sonos.”  Conrad has his work cut out for him, as Sonos is still struggling to recover from a jaw-droppingly bad year.  Last May, Sonos rolled out a major revamp of the Sonos app that included a top-to-bottom interface makeover while paving the foundation for Ace headphones, which landed a month later.  But the new Sonos app turned out to be a bewildering dud, hobbled by poor performance as well as the disappearance of key playback features, including the ability to edit music queues as well as local media access.  Sonos followed up the disastrous app launch with the unveiling of the company’s first headphones, the Sonos Ace.   The $449 Ace was greeted with shrugs and middling reviews, with many users disappointed that the Bluetooth cans couldn’t connected to their whole-home audio setups via Wi-Fi. (A “TV Audio Swap” feature that lets the Ace headphones connect directly to Sonos soundbars did get some admiring notices.) Bloomberg later reported that the Ace was “underperforming” in terms of sales.  To be fair, the news in 2024 wasn’t all bad for Sonos. The company rolled out a new high-end soundbar, the Ultra, that was widely praised for its greatly improved bass response, courtesy of “Sound Motion” technology.  Yet Sonos spent much of last year in damage control, apologizing over and over for the botch app revamp while slowing adding back missing features.   The former CEO didn’t help matters when he suggested the old Sonos app could be relaunched, only to backtrack after learning that the underlying Sonos infrastructure no longer worked with the legacy software.  So, what’s next for Sonos? Rumor has it that the company will unveil its first streaming video player this year, perhaps in the spring.  But as for rebuilding trust, Sonos still has plenty of work to do. Read...

Eight to nine years ago, the Windows world was full of companies who thought it would be a great idea to turn a Windows phone into a PC. Now, almost a decade later, a major peripheral company says that it’s time once again. DisplayLink, which is owned by Synaptics, used CES to start pitching the idea of connecting an Android phone via a USB-C cable to a DisplayLink docking station. The company demonstrated a physical link to the dock, with a pair of connected displays using the phone’s CPU and GPU to render images. It also showed off a wireless version, with a connection running on top of Wi-Fi to an external dongle. But there’s an important distinction: These phones don’t just mirror the home screen. Instead, they act like a typical multi-monitor Windows setup, with each display showing its own content, apart from what’s displayed on the phone. That’s a small but significant change from Microsoft Continuum, the solution of yore for connecting your Windows 10 Mobile smartphone to a mouse, keyboard, and display. The problem? Continuum didn’t really work. While Continuum sounded great on paper, it was slow, laggy, and buggy. Innovations like the HP Lap Dock didn’t quite solve its problems, either. In this DisplayLink demonstration, an Android phone is connected via USB-C and DisplayLink to a DisplayLink dock, and then to two external displays.Mark Hachman / IDG Now, executives at Synpatics think that modern smartphones offer the same hardware capabilities as a modern Core i5 processor, with integrated graphics. “We put a DisplayLink driver on this phone, and now you can come into a meeting like you’re going to charge your phone,” a DisplayLink representative said. “Now you can hook [the phone] up to the same dock you hooked up to your PC, but you can drive two 4K, 60-hertz displays, keyboard, and mouse. You can access flash drives, everything you can do. There’s no real difference.” On the PC, the DisplayLink technology works by compressing the information that passes over the cable to the screen, in a conceptually similar manner to how Netflix compresses data that it displays on a TV screen or monitor — the compression occurs, but any degradation in visual quality isn’t readily noticeable. The issue there is that DisplayLink requires a software driver to work. (The company is now referring to it as a “virtual graphics card.”) What that means, however, is that DisplayLink would either have to be sideloaded in, or supported by the phone maker or by Google. Other companies do this today; Samsung’s DeX can use an external display to run Android apps, for example. What DisplayLink hopes to do is convince phone makers that their hardware can be used to provide multi-monitor setups, much like the PC; and start investing in external hardware and docks to support them. That’s where Synaptics (and DisplayLink) can make its money. Continuum wasn’t all that hot, and it’s not clear how well-utilized Samsung’s DeX actually is. But there’s a chunk of the population that’s really wedded to their phones. For them, maybe it’s time to take an old technology and make it new again. Read...

It’s been a while since I felt a profound case of gadget lust at CES, the tech trade show that takes over Las Vegas every January, but that’s what happened when I picked up Lenovo’s Legion Go S gaming handheld. I’m already a satisfied Steam Deck owner, but the Legion Go S has a larger and sharper screen with 120Hz refresh rates, AMD’s new Z2 chipset, and—to my hands, at least—perfect ergonomics. It also runs SteamOS, and Valve’s plan to license its software for free to other handheld device makers (starting with Lenovo) was one of CES’s biggest developments. Just like Windows on PCs, it could allow a new gaming hardware ecosystem to bloom. That’s just one example of how CES stealthily became a window into the future of gaming hardware. Much like last year, the show had plenty of vapid AI hype to go along with the obligatory improvements in TV and home audio tech. But if you care about cool consumer electronics, the real action was happening on the gaming side, with slicker PCs, breakthrough monitors, neat mobile accessories, and yes, even more handhelds. The war for your hands Jared Newman / Foundry The Legion Go S wasn’t the only new handheld gaming PC at CES. Lenovo brought a couple of other Windows ones, including a prototype upgrade to the original Legion Go (with Switch-style detachable controllers) and a Windows alternative to the Legion Go S’s SteamOS model. Meanwhile, rival PC maker Acer is expanding its own handheld line after announcing the 7-inch Nitro Blaze last year. At CES, the company was demoing both 8- and 11-inch variants with detachable controllers, with the latter being equal parts glorious and comically large. I spied an unused accessory port along its bottom edge, and while Acer won’t spell out its purpose, one could imagine a Surface-style keyboard cover to transform the Nitro Blaze 11 into a laptop for work. The Legion Go S also served as an early landing spot for AMD’s Z2 chipset, which will come in a few different configurations for handheld makers. We’re still waiting on benchmarks, but it’s notable that AMD is launching new handheld chips for the second time in as many years—a strong show of confidence in the category. Don’t count out Intel, either. It has a willing partner in MSI, whose forthcoming Claw 8 AI+ will use a Core Ultra 7 258V processor. While Lunar Lake chips aren’t explicitly for handhelds, their Arc 140V graphics and overall power efficiency could make them a solid fit. Left to right: Large handheld reference design, MSI’s Claw 8 AI+, and an 11-inch handheld from OneXPlayer. Jared Newman / Foundry This is the kind of gamesmanship you love to see at a show like CES. It’s still unclear if the market can sustain all these gaming handhelds, but who cares? We all win when these companies fight it out by with different shapes, sizes, and spec configurations. Mobile gaming innovation The GameBaby has 8-bit game controls on its reversible iPhone case.Jared Newman / Foundry Elsewhere on the portable front, device makers are finding new ways to turn your phone into a gaming machine. After an announcement last year, for instance, BitmoLab brought a working prototype of its Gamebaby iPhone case at CES. The case has directional and face buttons on its bottom half, supporting NES or Game Boy games in emulator apps such as Delta, but you can also flip the bottom half around so the buttons are in back, letting you use your phone as normal. The capacitive controls pass through to the app’s on-screen buttons, so you can play without bulky USB-C attachments or extra batteries to charge. GameSir had a slightly different take on the idea, with a small Bluetooth controller that clips onto the bottom half of any phone. I didn’t see this one myself, but wish I had after reading Wavelength’s writeup. It should be headed for Kickstarter in the months ahead. The MCON pocket-sized controller unfurls like a switchblade.Jared Newman / Foundry And if you’re not averse to some added bulk, MCON is developing a controller with a pop-out magnetic base on which to mount your phone. It provides a full array of buttons and sticks but is slick enough to fit in your pocket. A prototype at CES looked promising, and MCON is working with magnetic accessory brand Ohsnap to bring it to fruition. Meat-and-potatoes Jared Newman / Foundry Even if you’re not into handheld gaming, CES brought plenty of intriguing updates on the desktop and laptop gaming PC front. The big news of course was Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs, which are coming in cheaper than expected on the desktop side and sparking a wave of neat PCs on the laptop side. Dell’s Alienware Area-51 laptop brand is back, for instance, with a new cooling system and slick “Liquid Teal” finish, while Razer has shaved its RTX 50-equipped Blade 16 laptop down to just 0.59 inches thick. Meanwhile, Asus keeps doing neat things with eGPUs, announcing a compact dock with Thunderbolt 5 that can turn standard laptops into gaming rigs. Monitors are getting better as well, with numerous vendors now squeezing 4K QD-OLED into 27-inch panels with 240 Hz refresh rates. If that’s not responsive enough for you, we’re also seeing 27-inch 1440p QD-OLED monitors with 500 Hz refresh rates. Acer is even pushing into 5K with its 31-inch XB323QX monitor, which still manages to achieve 144Hz refresh rates. (Alternatively, it allows for 1440p gaming at 288 Hz as needed.) It’s easy to be cynical about CES, where big device makers are prone to mindless trend-chasing instead of solving actual problems. But if you look in the right places, you’ll find plenty of reminders of what got you into technology in the first place. Gaming is increasingly where those innovations are winding up. Read...

Microsoft can’t be happy about the Steam Deck. After all, PC gaming has long been about Windows. For decades! Yet now one of the hottest PC gaming systems is… a portable Linux PC that runs Windows games? That’s right. The Steam Deck has really taken off. To make matters worse for Microsoft, Windows just doesn’t work well on gaming handhelds. Years after its launch, the Steam Deck is still the handheld gaming PC to buy. (No wonder Microsoft wanted to buy both Valve and Nintendo, according to leaked confidential documents!) If you’re Microsoft, you can’t allow the Linux-based SteamOS to establish a foothold like this. You want gaming PCs to keep relying on Windows! And with Valve’s recently announced “Powered by SteamOS” branding for partner devices, you’re probably quaking in your boots. For now, these partners might just be offering SteamOS gaming handhelds… but what’s next? SteamOS-powered gaming laptops? Desktop PCs? So, yes, Microsoft should be terrified of SteamOS. But Microsoft is striking back. The company successfully fought off the now-defunct Steam Machines back in 2015, and they can do it again — it just won’t be as easy as last time. The work Microsoft has already done While Valve’s Steam Deck has a custom-designed interface that works on handhelds, Microsoft has done a bit of their own work to make Windows run better on gaming portables. Not much, but not zero either. For example, you can toggle a “Compact Mode” in the Xbox app on Windows. It’s designed to make the Xbox app more usable on small screens, even as the rest of Windows works the same. Microsoft Microsoft also offers a “Compact Mode” for the Game Bar experience, which you can launch on any Windows PC by using the Windows key + G keyboard shortcut. Game Bar’s Compact Mode provides a more streamlined interface for handheld devices. In 2022, Microsoft employees were testing prototypes for a Windows “handheld mode” as part of an internal hackathon — something we only know about due to this leaked video. However, nothing like this has ever materialized or shipped in Windows yet. Lenovo While companies like Lenovo and Asus have produced their own Windows-based gaming handhelds, like the Lenovo Legion Go and Asus ROG Ally, there’s no getting around the fact that Windows still provides an awkward experience on handhelds. That’s why it wasn’t a huge surprise when Lenovo announced they’d be offering a SteamOS-powered Lenovo Legion Go S at CES 2025. Microsoft knows Windows is lacking here Microsoft has been refreshingly honest about the state of Windows on gaming handhelds. Last year, the company humbly signaled that Windows on a gaming handheld is… well, pretty bad. In fact, back in February 2024, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer told The Verge that Microsoft was seriously working on it: “One of the weak points in the experience on a [Windows handheld gaming PC] is Windows. How Windows works on controller input only on that kind of DPI, on a smaller eight- or seven-inch screen. That’s a real design point that our platform team is working with Windows to make sure that the experience is even better.” We haven’t seen real results in the months since he said this, apart from the few compact mode updates I mentioned above. Forget Windows. Here comes Xbox! At CES 2025, Microsoft didn’t really make any big announcements about any of this — but they did tip their hand a bit. Jason Ronald, Microsoft’s Vice President of Next Generation, said the Windows gaming handheld experience will change sometime this year. Microsoft’s plan involves “bringing the best of Xbox and Windows together, because we have spent the last 20 years building a world-class operating system, but it’s really locked to the console.” Apparently, the company wants to put an “Xbox experience” on these handheld gaming PCs instead of the traditional Windows desktop. Microsoft It’s not going to be easy, of course. While the Xbox operating system is built on Windows, it really is a separate software platform — you can’t just run an Xbox game on Windows, for example. Additionally, Microsoft’s recent “This is an Xbox” campaign encourages you to see all your devices as Xboxes. Your smartphone? That’s an Xbox, according to Microsoft! (After all, it can stream Xbox games over the cloud via Game Pass.) Why not your gaming handheld, too? Are “Xbox handhelds” the future? Despite Microsoft’s big talk about Xbox coming to handhelds, I don’t think Microsoft is promising an Xbox handheld to compete with the Nintendo Switch 2 or Steam Deck (although that could happen). To me, it sounds more like Microsoft wants to provide something closer to a “full” Xbox experience on Windows. The company has ported technologies from Xbox to PC in the past, like the DirectStorage technology that promises faster load times. Forget the Game Bar and the Xbox App that’s tacked onto Windows. Instead, picture the full Xbox dashboard popping up as an interface that’s usable on Windows. Imagine Windows booting up to that without requiring you to dig through the desktop. There’s a lot of work to be done here, porting this to the standard Windows operating system and ensuring people can still accomplish necessary PC maintenance tasks without heading back into the traditional Windows desktop experience. But it sounds interesting! From a branding perspective, it makes sense. Many console gamers love Xbox, but most PC gamers have a more positive association with Steam than Windows. Going forward, Microsoft will likely try to capitalize on that with an “Xbox handheld experience” that PC manufacturers can provide, powered by Windows (of course). Valve That’s a tough sell for the “traditional PC gamer” market, though. Again, most PC gamers are strongly invested in Steam — if they were invested in Xbox, they’d be using an Xbox console instead! And since they’ve already built up massive Steam libraries, they’re more likely to choose Steam over Xbox even on a Windows-powered handheld. At that point, why not just get a Steam Deck with better support and integration? This is all thanks to SteamOS Obviously, if Valve had released a Windows-powered Steam Deck, Microsoft wouldn’t be responding so strongly, if at all. They’d probably shrug and let Valve and PC manufacturers deal with the interface problems, just like how Microsoft leaves Lenovo to create their own software for their dual-screen Yoga Book laptop despite once promising a special version of Windows optimized for dual-screen devices. But the fact that Valve’s Steam Deck is built on SteamOS, that the Steam Deck is flaring in popularity, and that SteamOS is spreading to other gaming handhelds is a big problem for Microsoft. It means fewer Windows license fees, lost Windows market share, and a negative impact on their dominance in the gaming space. Whatever the case, it’ll be interesting to see if this is the push Microsoft needs to finally merge Windows PC gaming with Xbox gaming. I’d love to run Xbox games right on my gaming PC without needing a separate console. With all the talk about bringing Xbox to Windows, perhaps that future is in sight? Will the next Xbox console basically be a Windows PC? It’s possible! Thanks, Valve. Read...

As pubs brace for 2025, eight key technology trends are set to revolutionise operations, optimising efficiency and enhancing customer experiences. Read...

Wolters Kluwer`s Andy Hung is championing innovation through AI and partnerships, aiming to enhance efficiency and client outcomes in tax technology. Read...