The Roku Smart Soundbar is exactly what you think it is: a soundbar with a Roku player built in. An entertainment turducken, it stuffs half a gajillion media apps inside a streaming player inside a speaker system. Just add a TV and couch and you’ve got a complete home theater package.Plop the 32-inch-long log under…
Ransomware has emerged as one of the top threats facing large organizations over the past few years, with researchers reporting more than a fourfold increase in detections last year. A recent infection by a fairly new strain called LockBit explains why: After it ransacked one company’s poorly secured network in a matter of hours, leaders…
I’ve been an Animal Crossing fan for 19 years, so you can say things are pretty serious. New Horizons for the Nintendo Switch is, in my opinion, the best version of the game yet.With my extensive (okay, obsessive) knowledge of the series, I’m always fielding questions about the newest game. So, I decided to compile…
Even in the midst of a pandemic, never doubt the world’s ability to surprise. This week, we tracked some remarkable trends. Serious crashes are, blessedly, down in California, according to a new analysis—people aren’t really traveling after that whole shelter-in-place thing. While delivery robots (and the companies that built them) are trying their best to…
There’s no way to sugarcoat it: Last week was another tough one. Authorities found corpses in U-Haul trucks and anecdotal evidence came out suggesting child abuse is rising due to quarantine. Upsides are hard to come by; unemployment continues to grow as more are laid off as a result of the virus, with the markets…
The discrepancy between how fast the universe seems to be expanding and how fast we expect it to expand is one of cosmology’s most stubbornly persistent anomalies.Cosmologists base their expectation of the expansion rate—a rate known as the Hubble constant—on measurements of radiation emitted shortly after the Big Bang. This radiation reveals the precise ingredients…
One of my favorite parts about working in the Gadget Lab is how gearheads have strong opinions on … pretty much everything. We’re just as likely to hash out our favorite kinds of tape as we are to discuss ebikes, mechanical keyboards, or Android phones. But not everything we love costs hundreds of dollars. I’ve…
In a matter of weeks, Zoom has gone from obscure business app to household name. It’s where college kids throw parties and how elementary school students attend class (at least until their teachers get Zoombombed). “Zoom happy hour” has officially entered the nomenclature, and some people are even suffering from “Zoom fatigue.” Millions of Americans…
I downloaded Google Photos years ago, during the era that I’ve only half-jokingly started to call the Before Times. It was the eve of my college graduation. My family had just flown in on a plane. The next day, I would shake hands with my professors and then eat a slice of cheese with those…
There is no hope of outrunning the suffering that has settled into the hospital and the world around it, so Andrew Ibrahim laces up his blue waterproof sneakers and walks. In the time it has taken the daffodils to poke through the loamy soil and dapple Ann Arbor with pale yellow blossoms—about as long as…
