Lora Kelley / New York Times:
In recent months, several companies like Airtable, Handshake, and Opendoor have announced that they are “refounding”, as they scramble to add new AI features  —  In the age of artificial intelligence, some company leaders are framing new business lines as radical reboots.

USB PD is a fun protocol to explore, but it can be a bit complex to fully implement. It makes sense we’re seeing new stacks pop up all the time, and today’s stack is a cool one as far as code reusability goes. [Vitaly] over on Hackaday.io brings us pdsink – a C++ based PD stack with no platform dependencies, and fully-featured sink capabilities.

This stack can do SPR (5/9/15/20V) just like you’d expect, but it also does PPS without breaking a sweat – perfect for your Lithium Ion battery charging or any other current-limited shenanigans. What’s more, it can do EPR (28V and up) – for all your high-power needs. For reference, the SPR/PPS/EPR combination is all you could need from a PD stack intended for fully taking advantage of any USB-PD charger’s capabilities. The stack is currently tailored to the classic FUSB302, but [Vitaly] says it wouldn’t be hard to add support for a PD PHY chip of your choice.

It’s nice to have a choice in how you want your PD interactions to go – we’ve covered a few stacks before, and each of them has strong and weak sides. Now, if you have the CPU bandwidth, you could go seriously low-tech and talk PD with just a few resistors, transistors, and GPIOs! Need to debug a particular USB-C edge case? Don’t forget a logger.

Welcome to your guide to Pips, the latest game in the New York Times catalogue.

Released in August 2025, the Pips puts a unique spin on dominoes, creating a fun single-player experience that could become your next daily gaming habit.

Currently, if you're stuck, the game only offers to reveal the entire puzzle, forcing you to move onto the next difficulty level and start over. However, we have you covered! Below are piecemeal answers that will serve as hints so that you can find your way through each difficulty level.

How to play Pips

If you've ever played dominoes, you'll have a passing familiarity for how Pips is played. As we've shared in our previous hints stories for Pips, the tiles, like dominoes, are placed vertically or horizontally and connect with each other. The main difference between a traditional game of dominoes and Pips is the color-coded conditions you have to address. The touching tiles don't necessarily have to match.

The conditions you have to meet are specific to the color-coded spaces. For example, if it provides a single number, every side of a tile in that space must add up to the number provided. It is possible – and common – for only half a tile to be within a color-coded space.

Here are common examples you'll run into across the difficulty levels:

• Number: All the pips in this space must add up to the number.

• Equal: Every domino half in this space must be the same number of pips.

• Not Equal: Every domino half in this space must have a completely different number of pips.

• Less than: Every domino half in this space must add up to less than the number.

• Greater than: Every domino half in this space must add up to more than the number.

If an area does not have any color coding, it means there are no conditions on the portions of dominoes within those spaces.

Easy difficulty hints, answers for Dec. 7 Pips

Equal (4): Everything in this space must be equal to 4. The answer is 0-4, placed horizontally; 4-4, placed vertically; 4-6, placed horizontally.

Number (9): Everything in this space must add up to 9. The answer is 4-6, placed horizontally; 0-3, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (4): Everything in this space must be greater than 4. The answer is 0-3, placed horizontally; 1-5, placed horizontally.

Equal (1): Everything in this space must be equal to 1. The answer is 0-1, placed horizontally; 1-5, placed horizontally.

Medium difficulty hints, answers for Dec. 7 Pips

Less Than (2): Everything in this space must be less than 2. The answer is 0-3, placed horizontally.

Equal (3): Everything in this red space must be equal to 3. The answer is 0-3, placed horizontally; 3-3, placed vertically.

Number (1): Everything in this space must add up to 1. The answer is 1-6, placed horizontally.

Not Equal: Everything in this space must be different. The answer is 6-2, placed vertically; 1-6, placed horizontally; 5-4, placed vertically.

Less Than (5): Everything in this space must be less than 5. The answer is 5-4, placed vertically

Greater Than (3): Everything in this space must be greater than 3. The answer is 0-6, placed horizontally.

Equal (0): Everything in this space must be equal to 0. The answer is 0-6, placed horizontally; 0-0, placed vertically.

Hard difficulty hints, answers for Dec. 7 Pips

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 5-2, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (2): Everything in this space must be greater than 2. The answer is 3-6, placed vertically.

Equal (2): Everything in this red space must be equal to 2. The answer is 5-2, placed horizontally; 2-6, placed vertically.

Greater Than (15): Everything in this space must be greater than 15. The answer is 3-6, placed vertically; 2-6, placed vertically; 6-0, placed vertically.

Number (5): Everything in this orange space must add up to 5. The answer is 5-0, placed horizontally.

Equal (0): Everything in this space must be equal to 0. The answer is 6-0, placed vertically; 2-0, placed vertically; 5-0, placed horizontally; 0-4, placed horizontally.

Equal (1): Everything in this space must be equal to 1. The answer is 1-1, placed horizontally; 1-2, placed horizontally.

Number (4): Everything in this green space must add up to 4. The answer is 4-4, placed vertically.

Number (5): Everything in this light blue space must add up to 5. The answer is 5-1, placed horizontally.

Number (4): Everything in this dark blue space must add up to 4. The answer is 0-4, placed horizontally.

Not Equal: Everything in this space must be different. The answer is 4-4, placed vertically; 2-2, placed vertically; 5-1, placed horizontally.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Today's Connections: Sports Edition will be easy if you know your baseball parks.

As we've shared in previous hints stories, this is a version of the popular New York Times word game that seeks to test the knowledge of sports fans.

Like the original Connections, the game is all about finding the "common threads between words." And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier — so we've served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.

If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for the latest Connections solution. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

What is Connections: Sports Edition?

The NYT's latest daily word game has launched in association with The Athletic, the New York Times property that provides the publication's sports coverage. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there's only one correct answer.

If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake — players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.

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Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.

Here's a hint for today's Connections: Sports Edition categories

Want a hint about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:

• Yellow: Accident

• Green: Ballparks

• Blue: Legends in the snow

• Purple: Black and White

Here are today's Connections: Sports Edition categories

Need a little extra help? Today's connections fall into the following categories:

• Yellow: Mistake

• Green: MLB Stadium Names

• Blue: Famous American Alpine Skiers

• Purple: Teams That Wear Black and White

Looking for Wordle today? Here's the answer to today's Wordle.

Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today's puzzle before we reveal the solutions.

Drumroll, please!

The solution to today's Connections: Sports Edition #440 is...

What is the answer to Connections: Sports Edition today?

• Mistake - BLUNDER, ERROR, FLUB, HOWLER

• MLB Stadium Names - BUSCH, COORS, FENWAY, NATIONALS

• Famous American Alpine Skiers - MILLER, SHIFFRIN, STREET, VONN

• Teams That Wear Black and White - JUVENTUS, NETS, NEWCASTLE, WHITE SOX

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be new sports Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Connections.

The NYT Connections puzzle today is not too difficult to solve if you're a meateater.

Connections is the one of the most popular New York Times word games that's captured the public's attention. The game is all about finding the "common threads between words." And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we've served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.

If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for today's Connections solution. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

What is Connections?

The NYT's latest daily word game has become a social media hit. The Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create the new word game and bringing it to the publications' Games section. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there's only one correct answer.

If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake—players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.

Here's a hint for today's Connections categories

Want a hint about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:

• Yellow: To move quickly

• Green: Parts of an animal

• Blue: Heard in the shop

• Purple: Spanish terms

Here are today's Connections categories

Need a little extra help? Today's connections fall into the following categories:

• Yellow: Move at breakneck speed

• Green: Organ meats

• Blue: Woodworking joint terms

• Purple: El ___

Looking for Wordle today? Here's the answer to today's Wordle.

Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today's puzzle before we reveal the solutions.

Drumroll, please!

The solution to today's Connections #910 is...

What is the answer to Connections today

• Move at breakneck speed: BARREL, BOLT, HURTLE, TEAR

• Organ meats: GIZZARD, HEART, TONGUE, TRIPE

• Woodworking joint terms: DADO, DOVETAIL, MITRE, MORTISE

• El ___: CAPITAN, DORADO, GRECO, PASO

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be new Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? Get all the Strands hints you need for today's puzzle.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Connections.

Today's NYT Strands hints are easy if you love to pamper yourself.

Strands, the New York Times' elevated word-search game, requires the player to perform a twist on the classic word search. Words can be made from linked letters — up, down, left, right, or diagonal, but words can also change direction, resulting in quirky shapes and patterns. Every single letter in the grid will be part of an answer. There's always a theme linking every solution, along with the "spangram," a special, word or phrase that sums up that day's theme, and spans the entire grid horizontally or vertically.

By providing an opaque hint and not providing the word list, Strands creates a brain-teasing game that takes a little longer to play than its other games, like Wordle and Connections.

If you're feeling stuck or just don't have 10 or more minutes to figure out today's puzzle, we've got all the NYT Strands hints for today's puzzle you need to progress at your preferred pace.

NYT Strands hint for today’s theme: You're styling!

The words are related to cosmetics.

Today’s NYT Strands theme plainly explained

These words describe grooming treatments.

NYT Strands spangram hint: Is it vertical or horizontal?

Today's NYT Strands spangram is horizontal.

NYT Strands spangram answer today

Today's spangram is Beauty Salon.

NYT Strands word list for December 7

• Facial

• Extensions

• Beauty Salon

• Waxing

• Haircut

• Braiding

Looking for other daily online games? Mashable's Games page has more hints, and if you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now!

Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Strands.

Today's Wordle answer should be easy to solve if you're an instrumentalist.

If you just want to be told today's word, you can jump to the bottom of this article for today's Wordle solution revealed. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

Where did Wordle come from?

Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once. 

Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.

What's the best Wordle starting word?

The best Wordle starting word is the one that speaks to you. But if you prefer to be strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.

What happened to the Wordle archive?

The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles was originally available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it, but it was later taken down, with the website's creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times. However, the New York Times then rolled out its own Wordle Archive, available only to NYT Games subscribers.

Is Wordle getting harder?

It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn't any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle's Hard Mode if you're after more of a challenge, though.

Here's a subtle hint for today's Wordle answer:

A wind instrument.

Does today's Wordle answer have a double letter?

There are no recurring letters.

Today's Wordle is a 5-letter word that starts with...

Today's Wordle starts with the letter F.

The Wordle answer today is...

Get your last guesses in now, because it's your final chance to solve today's Wordle before we reveal the solution.

Drumroll please!

The solution to today's Wordle is...

FLUTE

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

Reporting by Chance Townsend, Caitlin Welsh, Sam Haysom, Amanda Yeo, Shannon Connellan, Cecily Mauran, Mike Pearl, and Adam Rosenberg contributed to this article.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Wordle.

Want an Apple-centric smart home setup? We've put together this roundup of our favorite HomeKit devices, many of which make excellent gifts.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Dec. 7, No. 440.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Dec. 7.

The Shortcuts app has been around on iPhones for years. But thanks to native AI integration, it can now pull off multi-step, cross-chores in a few seconds.

The post The iPhone’s Shortcuts app is smarter than you think, you’re just using it wrong appeared first on Digital Trends.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank calls himself "a highly creative hypochondriac" — who just paid for an expensive MRI scan to locate abnormal spots as tiny as 2 millimeters. He discusses the pros and cons of its "diffusion-weighted imaging" technology combined with the pattern recognition of AI, which theoretically "has the potential to save our lives by revealing budding cancers, silent aneurysms and other hidden would-be killers before they become deadly. " But the scans cost $2,500 a pop and insurance won't pay. Worse, for every cancer these MRIs find, they produce a slightly greater number of false positives that require a biopsy, with the potential for infection and bleeding and emotional distress. Even when the scans don't produce a false positive, they almost always come up with some vague and disconcerting abnormality.... Will we feel better after viewing our insides? Or will we become anxious about things we hadn't even thought to worry about? Part of living has always been in the mystery, in not knowing what tomorrow will bring. Now, because of sophisticated imaging, genome sequencing and other revolutionary screening tools, we can have predictability, or at least the illusion of it. But do we want that? The American College of Radiology says we do not. Its still-current 2023 statement says there is not "sufficient evidence" to recommend full-body screening, cautioning that the scan could lead to needless testing and expense. But David Larson, chair of ACR's Commission on Quality and Safety, told me that could change as more data comes in. "When people ask me, 'Would you recommend it?' I would say it depends on your tolerance for ambiguity," he said, giving the example of somebody found to have a borderline aortic aneurysm who is advised to wait and monitor it. If "that won't keep you up at night, then I wouldn't necessarily recommend against it...." About 1 in 20 gets that dreaded call. A study Prenuvo presented earlier this year of 1,011 participants found that 4.9 percent of scans required a follow-up biopsy. Of those, 2.2 percent were actually cancer, and the other 2.7 percent were false positives. Of the 22 cancers the scans caught, 86 percent of patients had no specific symptoms. But if finding something truly awful is rare, finding something abnormal is almost guaranteed. [Vikash Modi, Prenuvo's senior medical director of preventative medicine] said only 1 in 20 scans come back completely clean. The vast majority of patients wind up in the ambiguous realm where something may look suspicious but doesn't require urgent follow-up. He opted for the cheaper $1,000 torso scan, which the senior medical director calls "our bread-and-butter area," since 17 of the 22 cancers detected in one Prenuvo study were in that area and is where they often find cancers that wouldn't be discovered until they were incurable like "that scary pancreatic stuff...." Milbank's scan found 12 "abnormalities" included "a 2.5 mm pulmonary nodule in the right lower lobe" and "a 4.6 mm intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm in the pancreatic tail" — but with 10 abnormalities labeled "minor" (and six being musculoskeletal wear-and-tear problems "I already knew about from the usual aches and pains".) Even the two "moderate" findings didn't sound that grim when I read on. The "indeterminant lesion" in my lung requires no follow-up, while the thing in my pancreas is "low-risk."... The "most interesting" finding was the pancreatic cyst, because, at this size and location, there's a 3 percent chance it will become cancerous in the next five years. But if annual follow-up scans of my pancreas (covered by insurance) show it's getting bigger, the cyst can be removed before it becomes cancer. For me, this made the MRI worthwhile. Sure, there was a 97 percent likelihood the cyst never would develop into a problem even if I hadn't learned about it. But now, with minimal inconvenience, I can eliminate that 3 percent risk of getting pancreatic cancer, the most lethal of major malignancies.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just because the weather outside is frightful doesn't mean it has to be cold inside. Our CNET experts recommend these top space heaters.

Monique Mulima / Bloomberg:
Digital asset treasuries, one of the hottest trends in public markets in H1 2025, saw a dramatic reversal in H2; SharpLink stock has fallen 86% from its peak  —  What began the year as one of the best trades in the stock market has, in a matter of months, turned into one of the worst.

The V-JEPA system uses ordinary videos to understand the physics of the real world.

The company is aiming to produce its first silicon wafers by 2028 and have its first commercial system online by 2029.

Is an interstellar spacecraft zooming through our solar system? That’s the big question for fans of unidentified flying objects — and for a researcher at the University of Washington who analyzed the speculation over the interstellar comet known as 3I/ATLAS.

Mert Bayar, a postdoctoral scholar at the UW Center for an Informed Public, focused on 3I/ATLAS to track how social-media influencers use over-the-top speculation to fill in information gaps.

“I’ve written previously on how expert opinions can fuel conspiracy theorizing through elite-driven rumoring and amplification,” Bayar explained in an email to GeekWire. “My academic interest in philosophy, epistemology and the politics of conspiracy theories, plus a personal interest in space-related conspiracy theories, led me to look more closely at 3I/ATLAS.”

His analysis, published this week, is titled “Alien of the Gaps: How 3I/ATLAS Was Turned into a Spaceship Online.” The title takes inspiration from a concept known as “God of the Gaps,” which traces how thinkers through the ages explained phenomena they couldn’t fully understand by appealing to the influence of higher powers.

In ancient Greece, those higher powers might have been the gods on Mount Olympus. Bayar argues that a similar process exists today: “Where natural explanations feel incomplete, we substitute a different higher agency, not Zeus this time, but extraterrestrials,” he writes.

Such questions came into the spotlight when 3I/ATLAS was spotted in July. The object’s trajectory suggested that it was only the third known celestial interloper coming into the solar system from far beyond. Even after astronomers built up evidence to classify it as a comet, 3I/ATLAS exhibited enough anomalous behavior to sustain speculation about alien technology.

Exactly how was that speculation sustained? A key figure is Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb. Years before 3I/ATLAS was found, Loeb and a colleague raised the possibility that a previously sighted interstellar object known as ‘Oumuamua “may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization.”

Loeb hit upon the alien-technology theme repeatedly in follow-up research papers and a book published in 2023. This year’s discovery of 3I/ATLAS gave a fresh boost to his speculative musings. To track how such musings influenced online discussions about 3I/ATLAS, Bayar used a media analytics platform called Brandwatch to analyze roughly 700,000 posts about the comet that were published on the X social-media channel between July 1 and Nov. 21.

“Almost 280,000 of the 700,000 posts invoke aliens or ET technology — about 40% of the 3I/ATLAS conversation on X,” Bayar writes. About 130,000 posts reference Loeb by name or by his status as a Harvard scientist. More than 82,000 posts explicitly pair his name with the alien-technology hypothesis.

“To be fair, at times, Avi Loeb states that 3I/ATLAS is most likely a natural interstellar comet,” Bayar says. “But he then spends far more time walking through its supposed ‘anomalies’ and entertaining the alien-technology hypothesis. For most audiences, the volume and emphasis of that speculation effectively buries the initial caveat and recenters the story around the alien frame rather than the natural-comet explanation.”

All that feeds into a broader online ecosystem that Bayar calls the “mystery economy.”

“Our information systems reward the production of mystery and speculation,” he writes. “That reward is amplified by a ready-made ecosystem of websites, content creators across platforms who produce, spread and amplify speculative takes. Those creators need a steady supply of ‘new’ material, and Loeb’s ever-growing list of anomalies, even when indirectly refuted by organizations like NASA, feeds that need for sustained mystery and endlessly recyclable content.”

In case you’re curious about the anomalies, Penn State astronomer Jason Wright, who focuses on studies of extrasolar planets and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, ticks through Loeb’s list (and offers explanations that don’t involve aliens) in a blog post that was published last month.

But the point behind Bayar’s research has more to do with social-media dynamics than with planetary science. The insights gained from studying the “Alien of the Gaps” could well be applied to other spheres of conspiratorial theorizing, ranging from vaccine denialism to the search for a Jan. 6 pipe-bomb suspect.

Bayar had to limit his statistical analysis to posts about 3I/ATLAS on X, but he saw signs that information was flowing between different online platforms. “One of the most frequently appearing terms in the 3I/ATLAS conversation on X is ‘@YouTube,’ suggesting that many X accounts are reacting to or sharing YouTube videos,” he told GeekWire.

“Because of data-access constraints, we can’t confidently identify a single ‘nexus’ of spread,” Bayar said. “What we can say is that the conversation on X is both widely distributed and largely contained within alien-adjacent communities: Total volume is still under a million posts, which suggests it hasn’t broken out into a truly mass-viral story beyond the UFO/UAP crowd.”

That could change, however. 3I/ATLAS is due to make its closest approach to Earth on Dec. 19, which means there’ll be further opportunities for astronomical imagery — and for speculative online buzz.

Thanks to Julien De Winter for permission to republish a Nov. 25 image of 3I/ATLAS that was captured by Victor Sabet and De Winter using a Starfront Observatories telescope in Texas.

[Michael Lynch] recently decided to delve into the world of off-grid, decentralized communications with MeshCore, because being able to communicate wirelessly with others in a way that does not depend on traditional communication infrastructure is pretty compelling. After getting his hands on a variety of hardware and trying things out, he wrote up his thoughts from the perspective of a hardware-curious software developer.

He ends up testing a variety of things: MeshCore firmware installed on a Heltec V3 board (used via an app over Bluetooth), a similar standalone device with antenna and battery built in (SenseCAP T-1000e, left in the header image), and a Lilygo T-Deck+ (right in the header image above). These all use MeshCore, which is built on and reportedly compatible with Meshtastic, a framework we have featured in the past.

The first two devices are essentially MeshCore gateways, to which the user connects over Bluetooth. The T-Deck is a standalone device that resembles a Blackberry, complete with screen and keypad. [Michael] dove into what it was like to get them up and running.

Probably his most significant takeaway was that the whole process of onboarding seemed a lot more difficult and much less clear than it could be. This is an experience many of us can relate to: the fragmented documentation that exists seems written both by and for people who are already intimately familiar with the project in its entirety.

Another thing he learned was that while LoRa is a fantastic technology capable of communicating wirelessly over great distances with low power, those results require good antennas and line of sight. In a typical urban-ish environment, range is going to be much more limited. [Michael] was able to get a maximum range of about five blocks between two devices. Range could be improved by purchasing and installing repeaters or by having more devices online and in range of one another, but that’s where [Michael] drew the line. He felt he had gotten a pretty good idea of the state of things by then, and not being a radio expert, he declined to purchase repeater hardware without any real sense of where he should put them, or what performance gains he could expect by doing so.

Probably the most surprising discovery was that MeshCore is not entirely open source, which seems odd for an off-grid decentralized communications framework. Some parts are open, but the official clients (the mobile apps, web app, and T-Deck firmware) are not. [Michael] found this out when, being primarily a software developer, he took a look at the code to see if there was anything he could do to improve the poor user experience on the T-Deck and found that the firmware was proprietary.

[Michael]’s big takeaway as a hardware-curious software developer is that the concept is great and accessible (hardware is not expensive and there is no licensing requirement for LoRa), but it’s not really there yet in terms of whether it’s practical for someone to buy a few to distribute among friends for use in an emergency. Not without getting into setting up enough repeaters to ensure connectivity, anyway.

A feature that we’ve taken for granted since 2020 – the ability to shoot Portrait Mode photos using Night Mode – has quietly vanished from the latest Pro models. Users started noticing something was wrong and flagged it on Reddit and Apple’s forums. Now, Apple has officially confirmed via a support document that Night Mode […]

The post Apple quietly removes Night Mode Portraits on iPhone 17 Pro, leaving users puzzled appeared first on Digital Trends.

Tesla has announced that it has begun rolling out its 2025 holiday software update including a raft of new features and upgrades.

The post Tesla’s 2025 Holiday Software Update Is Now Rolling Out first appeared on Redmond Pie.