Sean Hollister

Senior Editor

Sean HollisterOct 24, 2024

5.25-inch floppy disks control San Francisco trains — but the city’s a step away from changing that.

SF’s transportation authority has approved a $212M contract for Hitachi to replace its Muni Metro control system and track its trains with Wi-Fi or cellular instead.

SF had forecast “catastrophic failure” if disks weren’t replaced. The SF Board of Supervisors still needs to approve the contract, SFMTA spokesperson Erica Kato confirms to The Verge.

S.F. Muni approves $212 million technology to replace floppy disks

[The San Francisco Chronicle]

Sean HollisterOct 24, 2024

Toying with the GPD Win Max 2, a lilliputian computing dream.

A tiny $1200 laptop that doubles as a gaming handheld, with an incredible array of ports. Surprisingly easy to type on, plays games as well or better than a Legion Go, supports two kinds of eGPUs. Keyboard and touchpad make navigating Windows way easier than most handhelds.

But you might not enjoy holding its stiff metal frame, and it’s better paired with a mouse!

Sean HollisterOct 23, 2024

Seniors are PISSED that T-Mobile won’t honor its “lifetime” price guarantee.

“T-Mobile guarantees it will never raise the price of your rate plan,” we wrote in 2015, because that’s what its CEO said: “I’m guaranteeing those rates for as long as you’re a customer.”

But Ars Technica dug up thousands of FCC complaints that suggest people got fooled. In June, T-Mobile was asked to stop advertising its so-called “price lock.”

“I am still alive”: Users say T-Mobile must pay for killing “lifetime” price lock

[Ars Technica]

Sean HollisterOct 23, 2024

“We had a design flaw in Blackwell,” admits Nvidia CEO.

“It was functional, but the design flaw caused the yield to be low. It was 100% Nvidia’s fault,” Nvidia’s Jensen Huang tells Reuters, effectively confirming The Information’s report from August about why its new flagship AI chips won’t ship in large amounts right away.

He says it’s now fixed, but the timeline stays the same: Q4 for first shipments.

Nvidia's design flaw with Blackwell AI chips now fixed, CEO says

[Reuters]

Sean HollisterOct 21, 2024

Maybe don’t buy this cool transparent magnetic Sharge battery — a Qi2 version is imminent.

The Icemag (video below) is almost obsolete. Next month, Sharge will intro an Icemag 2 that doubles the MagSafe / Qi2 wireless charging speed to 15W, adds a folding kickstand, and reportedly improves the cooling!

Speaking of obsolete: In my tests, the recent Shargeek 140 is better than the old Shargeek 130 in my video. No more overheating, better display, same capacity.

DJI sues the US Department of Defense for labeling it a ‘Chinese Military Company’

Sean HollisterOct 19, 2024

The first Thunderbolt 5 add-in cards are arriving.

We’ve seen the first Thunderbolt 5 port, the first cable, and the first dock to theoretically offer its blistering 120Gbps speeds. Now, behold the first TBT5 cards from Gigabyte and from Asus.

Neither one magically adds Thunderbolt to your PC — to create two do-it-all Thunderbolt 5 connectors, you need to plug power, USB, mini-DP video and your motherboard’s existing internal Thunderbolt header into this thing.

No prices or release dates yet.

Images: Gigabyte, Asus

Sean HollisterOct 18, 2024

Ever seen a 9-inch handheld Xbox? Now you have.

Redherring32 says they spent four months figuring out how to trim the motherboard, build 12 custom PCBs (and custom flex ribbon cables, it seems!), put it all together, and open source it.

My dumb question: can I get a full-fat version based on the chonky original Duke instead of the superior but boring Controller S?

Sean HollisterOct 18, 2024

Actually, the Epic judge says Google *does* still have to stop doing something November 1st.

The court order just came in, and I’ve corrected our story. Bolding mine:

The Court grants a partial stay of the permanent injunction pending the circuit court’s resolution of the stay requests Google filed there, with the exception of ¶ 8 of the injunction, which is not stayed.

Paragraph 8 says: