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Naturally, you’ll need to splash out on the pricier versions of both cars, when they’re available to buy, but don’t think you can pull 180s on the highway. After all, tank turns are designed to be done in rough conditions and require a little kick of the wheels to get you going. But it’s still a neat trick that you can show off to your friends while off-roading, whenever either Rivian vehicle winds up on sale.
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2020 is VR’s make-or-break year
After years of teasing, VR might be ready for the big time. The path from expensive niche for hardcore enthusiasts to mainstream acceptance is getting clearer thanks to the new Oculus Quest and Valve’s Half-Life: Alyx game. Devindra Hardawar explains all the reasons VR will be easier to experience in 2020.
Techno-thriller ‘Mr. Robot’ ends on a mind-melting high
After four seasons, the finale of Sam Esmail’s groundbreaking show made clear it was about a lot more than just authentically presented hacking.
Streaming won’t get easier or cheaper
It’s not just Netflix, Hulu and Amazon anymore. Disney and Apple have already entered the streaming video ring, while Comcast and AT&T bring new competition next year. Peacock and HBO Max will make the subscription streaming field more crowded than ever, and that’s just the start.
What do Engadget readers think of products like the Roomba iRobot i7, Pixel Slate, Nest Hub and Sega Dreamcast? Find out all of that and more with these, the best user-submitted reviews of 2019.
Ford’s next Focus RS may be a powerful hybrid
That Ford’s hot hatch isn’t available in North America was already bad enough — and that was before we heard a rumor that its next generation may include a hybrid option. According to the Car Magazine report, it would combine a 400HP engine connected to the front wheels, with an electric motor in the back for better traction with smarter torque vectoring.
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YouTube had reportedly assembled a team of 40 employees with the code-name Crosswalk, in reference to the numerous dangerous content “streets” on the site. One of the proposals was to screen every single video aimed at kids under the age of eight to ensure that no inappropriate content got through. For example, last year reporters found disturbing videos with suicides and violence, often featuring knockoff versions of beloved cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse and Peppa Pig.
The screening proposal advanced to the point that a press release was drafted. At the last minute, however, CEO Susan Wojcicki ditched the plan, according to Bloomberg’s sources. Apparently, such moderation would make the site too much like a media company. That in turn could open it up to the same kind of accountability faced by news publishers over copyright, threats, hate speech and more.
YouTube vowed early in the year to take stronger action on content for kids and started by disabling comments on “tens of millions” of clips. It has managed to reduce views of videos that violate its policies by 80 percent, while increasing viewership on videos from “authoritative news publishers” by 60 percent.
However, the company has stopped short of taking more significant steps. Wojcicki told CBS recently that “if we were held liable for every single piece of content that we recommended, we would have to review it.” It’s also nearly impossible for the company to deal with the scale of content, with over 500 hours of footage arriving every minute. “YouTube is so ill-equipped to manage these massive challenges,” a former YouTube marketing manager told Bloomberg.
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Countries like China, Iran and Saudi Arabia have already restricted what their citizens can access and how they can communicate with one another on the internet. Russia’s project — nicknamed Runet — presumably follows suit and lets the government filter content through its own censors. Runet “would get ISPs and telcos to configure the internet within their borders as a gigantic intranet, just like a large corporation does,” Professor Alan Woodward, a computer scientist at the University of Surrey, said to the BBC. This type of infrastructure would even make it difficult for VPNs to access blocked content. With all that said, it’s difficult to tell just how successful this test was, or how far along Russia is in its goal to create its own Great Firewall.
Technologists have theorized about a “splinternet” for nearly 20 years. While certain governments have tried to control how their citizens communicate and what content they can access, the world wide web has yet to fracture into a multitude of closed-off national webs. But as superpowers like China and Russia learn to balkanized their infrastructure, more nations could follow, and the internet could look very different down the road.
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Driver assists can help make our trips much safer, but integrating software decisions into the control of a vehicle could cause serious problems if the system glitches at the wrong time. According to Mazda, a “Incorrect programming” in its Smart Braking System (SBS) can make fourth-generation Mazda3 vehicles to falsely detect an object in their path while driving and automatically apply the brakes while driving. The problem affects 35,390 2019 and 2020 model year cars in the US, but Mazda says it is not aware of any injuries or deaths as a result of the defect.
If the issue occurs, the driver will notice because their car has suddenly stopped, and also as an alarm sounds and a message is displayed on the in-car warning screen. Some Reddit posters report experiencing situations of the system activating while driving with nothing around, and note that while the system can be disabled, it appears to re-enable itself every time the car starts.
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The Department of Defense likely released the memo just before Christmas, since purchasable DNA test kits are now seen as some sort of hot gift items for the holidays. In addition, the memo notes DNA test companies have been targeting military members with discounts. Pentagon spokesperson Cmdr. Sean Robertson has confirmed to The New York Times that the notice was sent to DoD personnel, telling the publication: “We want to ensure all service members are aware of the risks of Direct to Consumer (DTC) genetic testing.”
Robertson explained that the “unintentional discovery of markers” for certain illnesses and conditions could end up affecting a service member’s career. Unfortunately, he didn’t expound on the exact kind of “security consequences” the Pentagon is worried about. As Yahoo News points out, though, the memo was signed by Joseph D. Kernan, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. As such, it could’ve been part of of the Pentagon’s measures to protect its personnels’ biometrics data. Apparently, US intelligence authorities have been increasingly worried that other countries could use DNA, fingerprints and facial recognition information to expose American national security personnel.
Ancestry denies it targets military personnel in a statement sent to the NYT. Meanwhile, a 23andMe spokesperson assured the publication it does “not share information with third parties without separate, explicit consent from [its] customers.”
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Vlad
Vlad’s review is both a comprehensive and realistic look at the pros and cons of the laptop, includes plenty of examples of his personal experience using the Air and has a helpful breakdown of scores for each aspect of the laptop.
The performance of the 2018 Macbook Air is a mixed bag. On paper, although it seems underwhelming, the custom Intel chips optimized for short bursts of activity suggest that the laptop would perform well in everyday tasks, and for the most part it does so well. Problems arise for users who like to have several apps open, or are hoarders with many browser tabs. App performance may degrade noticeably in such circumstances, but it varies from app to app. The biggest problem with performance is switching between desktops. The transition animation drags on so slowly that the only way to make it bearable is to disable them entirely in Settings (under Accessibility). Overall, performance is adequate.
As for features, MacOS continues to shine and compare very favourably with Windows in most domains. Key are ease of use, compatibility with apps and hardware, and a stellar backup system that can restore your entire system to exactly how it was. Speed & features: 8/10 (Performance alone is a 7/10).
Scribbler
Not every good review is a positive one! Here, Scribbler demonstrates why an owner’s point of view is so important by detailing some noteworthy issues with the build of their laptop, some thermal throttling and the touchscreen.
The Lenovo Yoga 720 13-inch has a lot to love on paper. It has a fast quad-core 8th generation processor (some models had older 7th gen CPUs), plenty of memory (8 or 16GB) and fast solid state storage using an NVME SSD. It put all those great spec points into a sub-3 pound 2-in-1 form factor with a beautiful 1080p display with touch and pen input and a large precision touchpad.
My first impressions of the machine were good. It has handsome looks, though the aluminum casing is not particularly exciting. However upon closer inspection, I noticed that the build tolerances were not very high. Uneven panel gaps exist between the bottom plate and the rest of the frame and between the LCD glass and casing. Even brand new, some uneven cuts can be seen along the beveled edges of the laptop, and some have been known to arrive from the factory with scratches in the aluminum. On top of these issues, the lid on my unit does not align with the base when closed. On my laptop it sticks out to the right about three millimeters.
Shirko
A lot of folks disagreed with our review and score of this tablet. However, Shirko wasn’t one of them. A long-time Google fan, they didn’t hold back when detailing the ways in which the tablet disappointed with both its hardware and software — and awarded the device a painfully low score of 30.
Engadget is asking for a “fan’s opinion.” Seeing as my main device is a Pixel 3 (and Pixel 2 and OG before that), and I bought two different variants of the Slate (m3 and i5), as well as having pretty much bought into most of Google’s software ecosystem, I would consider myself a “fan.” That still doesn’t stop me from recognizing all of Google’s problems and issues, which I am very passionate about. After all, I want the devices I use to work as good as possible; excusing shortcomings is helping no one. The fact that this is essentially my hobby, and I have the privilege of owning and testing many different units in these segments, allows me to have a somewhat qualified opinion as well.
Too big. If you want it to be used both as a tablet and a laptop, don’t make the damn thing 12″+. It’s even bigger than my Surface Pro. 10-10.5″ is the sweet spot here. I don’t have problems with 10″ on a Surface Go, which I have tested; I certainly wouldn’t on the even more simplistic Chrome OS. Not to mention that the few Android apps that have tablet support, are scaled for 8-10″.
QC issues, of which buzzing speakers is a major one. This is not an anomaly, but rather a recurrent behavior by Google, who continuously sell these expensive (Pixel phones, Pixel buds, etc) units, with way too many widespread QC issues. The speakers not only buzz, but also completely change the way they sound in the higher volumes, which is weird. This is simply bad engineering and bad quality control.
Yitz
Yitz takes the time to break down and counter various criticisms of the OnePlus 6T from the camera to the software. They support their argument with both personal day-to-day experience and tech knowledge to explain why this handset deserves a perfect score of 100.
As a 6T user, I will address the points of critique: 1) I leave the adapter that came with the phone on my headphones. I only use my headphones and when I do, it is very infrequently. In reality, there have not been many situations where I needed to plug an auxiliary cord into my phone (considering my car has Bluetooth).
2) the fingerprint scanner is significantly faster than [the] Samsung S10, and is shown to unlock faster than some iPhones with fingerprint readers (which also fail to work with wet fingers). It seems, the alternatives are not much better. Secondly, after some muscle memory you will be able to place your finger on the right spot just as fast as a fingerprint reader.
Lougan
You know who loves his robot vacuum? Lougan. In this review he shares the ways his iRobot i7 impressed him, with multiple examples about how the product performs in his household (including a memorable tale about a cat hairball).
I’ve had a Roomba 770 in the past. It was ok. Completely unpredictable. I felt like it cleaned by luck, bouncing off things until it cleaned something. I wanted something that cleans SMART. Because of that, I purchased a Roomba i7 and named it Billy. I didn’t get the i7+ because it was the same robot, and I’m not lazy. I want to take part in the cleaning of my house. I can empty a bin, right? Well, yes. Turns out I can empty a bin.
Billy is AMAZING. We have cats, and it still blows my mind how much it picks up every day. He runs every night at 10pm, which is my cue to go to bed, and it cleans the whole bottom floor of the house. It’s [a] mix of mostly hardwood and linoleum, with two area rugs, one that’s medium pile and one that’s low. It cleans everything beautifully. With the room mapping feature, I was even able to map areas right in front of the litter box, so it actually cleans that 2 additional times a day…
James
A ‘power user,’ James provides a lot of examples of the ways the small-form factor machine is perfect for his needs — without ignoring the compromises and trade-offs that are present.
My review differs a bit in that my Mac Mini is nearly spec’d out, w/ the i7, 64GB ram, 10Gbps [ethernet], and 1TB SSD, which I purchased as “refurbished” for only ~$2500 (compared to the original price of ~$3500+ if I remember correctly when it debuted). I’m a software engineer. I wanted the extra cores and memory to run multiple virtual machines and/or containers without having to worry about resources. I also own a spec’d out 2018 MacBook Pro 13″, but felt constrained at times with my development needs, trying to squeeze everything into memory at once.
The fact the new MacMini uses a desktop class CPU (prior generations used mobile processors) which in turn allowed it to support 64GB of ram (you can thank Intel for that restriction on their current gen of mobile processors) made this model a massive upgrade over not only my MacBook Pro but also prior generations of Minis. I won’t go into details, but I will say it’s both noticeably faster than my MacBook Pro, and it’s faster while simultaneously doing more things at the same time…
Michael
Michael does a great job mixing nostalgia, tech knowledge and detail in his review (which was heavily featured in our user review roundup article for the product as well). I was also particularly charmed by his closing line!
One does not simply review the Dreamcast because you didn’t use the console, you had a relationship with this grey box of wonder. I’ll never forget the articles in magazines heralding its coming, the bleeding-edge graphics, descriptions of “a home arcade experience” backed up with actual ports of games that consumed my quarters — and this spiral-symboled machine could replace them all for one massive investment of $200.
That was the first time I ever saved for something. I hoarded my miniscule allowance and would jump at any odd-job for my parents to put another buck away. My friends and elementary school classmates continued to hold true to their Sony and Nintendo allegiances and left me as the lone sega-weirdo. At long last, after brokering a deal with my parents to cover half of the console so I could afford a game and a second controller, I received a concession of “OK this is really cool” from a Nintendo acolyte after a blazing session of Capcom’s revolutionary fighting game Powerstone — it was worth the hype.
JPFeifer
JPFeifer does a solid job of weighing the pros and the cons of this smart home device against its price and value, and provides a few suggestions for how it could be improved to be even more useful.
The display on this is excellent and likely its best selling point. The display and integration with Google Photos makes it hands down the best digital picture frame I’ve ever used. I initially bought one for my kitchen as I have a very small kitchen and the size is perfect for that scenario, but upon seeing how little light it emits when it goes into its low light mode I bought another to use as a smart alarm clock.
The idea of having an always on screen next to my bed seemed like a bad idea to me, but the light from this thing is less intrusive than most alarm clocks I’ve used. Using it in the bedroom definitely makes the lack of a camera a plus as well. Having a camera in my bedroom has always felt… unsettling… to me.
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The largest manufacturer of these sensors is Sony, which controls over 50 percent of the market by revenue and supplies all of the camera sensors found in modern iPhones. This means, for example, that the company sells four 12-megapixel sensors for each iPhone 11 Pro that Apple makes.
For the second year running, Sony has been operating its chip factories “24/7” over the holidays. Despite that, it’s not been enough to keep up. Sony has poured money into increasing its capacity, and is building a new factory that’s scheduled to open in 2021, but the head of its Semiconductor Solutions Group, Terushi Shimizu, has already warned that the increased capacity is unlikely to dramatically change the situation. “Judging by the way things are going, even after all that investment in expanding capacity, it might still not be enough,” Shimizu told Bloomberg. “We’re having to apologize to customers because we just can’t make enough.”
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The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare team is marking the holidays with decidedly kinder, more lighthearted gameplay. Infinity Ward and Activision have introduced a Snowfight mode that will only be available until December 31st at 1PM Eastern. It's exac…
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Of course, if you haven’t been able to read along throughout the year, you should be sure to check out Black Software by Charlton D. McIlwain, Six Concepts for the End of the World by Steve Beard, The Bastard Brigade by Sam Kean, Talking to Robots: Tales From Our Human-Robot Futures by David Ewing Duncan, and Cult of the Dead Cow by Joseph Menn. Beyond that, Richard Panek’s The Trouble with Gravity is solid, as is Robot, Take the Wheel from Jason Torchinsky. Wow that’s a bunch of male authors, if you have any suggestions for writers you’d like to see featured in 2020, let me know in the comments below.
Unfortunately, the titles that do get published are a pale shade of the total number that cross the Engadget newsdesk. There are simply too many books released each week to be able to release excerpts of them all. So if you get a chance this holiday season and need a reason to bury your nose in a good book, give these a read: War in Space by Linda Dawson, Power Trip by Michael Webber (also the name of a fantastic Dallas-area thrash metal band — Power Trip I mean, not Michael Webber though that would be a pretty hardcore band name too), How To from Randall Munroe aka the guy from XKCD, How to Invent Everything by Ryan North, Radical by Kate Pickert, Targeted by Brittany Kaiser, and You Look Like a Thing and I Love You by Janelle Shane. They’re all fantastic books and cost less than a medium pan pizza, you can’t lose.
If those don’t float your boat, check out Engadget’s 2019 Holiday Gift Guide – Book and Movie edition. Or if sci-fi is more your preference, take a gander at The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal, the Omega Force series by Josh Dalzelle, Richard Kadrey’s unrivaled Sandman Slim series (which is gonna be a movie, squee), or basically anything by James SA Corey, Tim Pratt, Ken Lozito or Glynn Stewart. Granted, space operas aren’t to everyone’s taste so if you trend more towards pure fantasy, give Legacy of Ash a read. Author Matt Ware used to write campaigns for Warhammer 40k and now he’s got a new series that rivals Brandon Sanderson’s Words of Radiance. It’s really good.
We’ve got one more post for you before the end of the year and then Hitting the Books will return with the best science and tech titles we can find immediately following CES. Happy holidays, merry Christmas, bienvenue Krampus. Go read a book.
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