Month: June 2020

Harmonix’s Fuser wants to make you a DJ… but only up to a point

Patrick June 30, 2020
Enlarge / You can’t have Coachella this summer, but you can fake like a Coachella main-stage DJ “this fall” with Harmonix’s Fuser.

Late last decade, plastic guitars and motion sensors vanished from the console gaming landscape—and, coincidentally, the same goes for Harmonix. For years, the pioneering music-gaming developer has struggled to break out with a mainstream hit anywhere near the scale of Guitar Hero, Rock Band, or Dance Central.

The company’s last new-series stab, 2018’s DropMix, was a complicated gamble, as it required players to buy a bulky peripheral and a series of physical playing

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Huawei Mate 30 Pro review: The forbidden fruit

Patrick June 30, 2020

Let’s get it out of the way. Reasonably speaking, you shouldn’t buy the Mate 30 Pro, not in its current form. It’s a superb device, but the Google uncertainty makes it impossible to recommend to the average user.

Okay, are you’re still with me? Then you’re likely not the proverbial “average user” who should stay away from all newly released Huawei devices right now. In that case, let’s talk about what makes the Mate 30 Pro special, because this is, very much, a special phone.

The Huawei Mate 30 Pro is the forbidden fruit of the tech world. You know

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Sony WF-SP800N review: noise-canceling earbuds for the fitness crowd

Patrick June 29, 2020

Sony’s noise-canceling WF-1000XM3 earbuds have been considered some of the best-sounding true wireless earbuds on the market since their release. But the 1000XM3s lack any kind of official sweat or water resistance, which means they’re not really cut out for running or other fitness use.

With the new $199.99 WF-SP800N earbuds — there’s got to be a better way of naming these things — Sony retains the noise cancellation, adds proper IP55 certification for dust and water resistance, and even extends the battery life to a fantastic nine hours of continuous listening (with ANC enabled). And they are $30 less

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A decidedly non-Linux distro walkthrough: Haiku R1/beta2

Patrick June 29, 2020
Enlarge / Haiku’s bright, colorful boot splash feels like something you’d see on Tom Nook‘s computer.

Jim Salter

Earlier this month, the Haiku project released the second beta of its namesake operating system, Haiku.

Haiku is the reimagining of a particularly ambitious, forward-looking operating system from 1995—Be, Inc.’s BeOS. BeOS was developed to take advantage of Symmetrical Multi-Processing (SMP) hardware using techniques we take for granted today—kernel-scheduled pre-emptive multitasking, ubiquitous multithreading, and BFS—a 64-bit journaling filesystem of its very own.

BeOS—the Apple OS that never quite was

This prototype Bebox's two AT&T Hobbit processors lurk—uncooled!—beneath a Trident video card.
Enlarge / This prototype Bebox’s two AT&T Hobbit processors lurk—uncooled!—beneath
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An embattled group of leakers picks up the WikiLeaks mantle

Patrick June 28, 2020

Getty Images

For the past year, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has sat in a London jail awaiting extradition to the US. This week, the US Justice Department piled on yet more hacking conspiracy allegations against him, all related to his decade-plus at the helm of an organization that exposed reams of government and corporate secrets to the public. But in Assange’s absence, another group has picked up where WikiLeaks left off—and is also picking new fights.

For roughly the past year and a half, a small group of activists known as Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDoSecrets, has quietly but

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ZTE Axon 11 5G hands-on: More than just affordable 5G?

Patrick June 28, 2020

The ZTE Axon 11 5G is the successor to 2019’s ZTE Axon 10 Pro, but it’s not a case of out and out hardware improvements across the board. Instead, the Axon 11 strives to introduce 5G to the Axon series without the usual premium-tier price tag. But does the handset have anything else to offer to entice the increasingly discerning mid-range crowd.

Read more: Best budget smartphones you can buy today

About this ZTE Axon 11 hands-on: This hands-on was written after spending just under a week using the Chinese version of the ZTE Axon 11, which required manually
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Apple AirPods Pro review: Third time really is the charm

Patrick June 28, 2020

Apple finally cotows to consumers’ demands with the Apple AirPods Pro which now have premium features like noise canceling and an IPX4 water-resistant build. We’re quick to recommend these true wireless earbuds to any iPhone user, and the only thing likely to hold you back from getting a pair is the price.

This Apple AirPods Pro review was written by the audio experts at our sister site, SoundGuys. For a more detailed look, check out SoundGuys’ in-depth Apple AirPods Pro review.

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Editor’s note: this Apple AirPods Pro review was updated on June 24, 2020, to address

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Huawei P30 Pro long-term review: Still worth buying?

Patrick June 27, 2020
Huawei P30 Pro vs competition

Credit: Robert Triggs / Android Authority

It’s a year since the arrival of the Huawei P30 Pro, a phone we praised for offering a superior camera setup and long battery life than its competitors. The handset was a pioneer of low light photography and rich with flagship defining features, making it one of the best buys of 2019. Providing it was available in your country that is (sorry, US folks).

But do those design wins still hold up 12 months later? Especially now there’s the revamped Huawei P30 Pro New Edition on the horizon with a retail price set at

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