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Google currently sells two smart displays, the second-gen, seven-inch Nest Hub and the first-gen, 10-inch Nest Hub Max—both are filled with so many functions that you may not have gotten around to using them to their full potential.

If you've been using your Nest Hub or a Nest Hub Max to simply check the time and weather, watch YouTube clips, and chatting with Google Assistant about random trivia, read on to learn a few useful commands to add to the rotation. (These were tested on the second-gen Nest Hub, but should also work on the Nest Hub Max, except where stated.)

1. Wake up gently

One of the reasons you might want to set an alarm on your Nest Hub rather than your phone is that you get more options for a gentle wake up: Swipe up from the bottom of the screen, tap the alarm icon (the clock symbol), then choose Set an alarm and pick a time.

On the next screen you can choose a gentle alarm tone, but there's also a Sunrise Alarm menu. Open that, and you can select a soothing gradient effect shown on the display (and any connected smart lights), as well as enabling a soothing pre-alarm sound.

2. Cast any media

Your Nest Hub will show up as a casting destination. Credit: Lifehacker

Your Nest Hub has Chromecast functionality built right in, so you can beam just about any kind of video and audio over from your phone, as long as both devices are on the same Wifi network. Just tap the cast button in your app of choice on your phone—you could send over movies from Plex, for example, or podcasts you're playing in Pocket Casts.

3. Use gesture control

Sometimes it's more convenient to use gesture controls, maybe when you're dozing in bed or have stuff all over your hands. In the Google Home app on your phone, tab on the hub, then tap the gear icon (top right) and Quick Gestures to get everything set up.

To pause media playback, for example, hold your palm up (Nest Hub Max) or tap the air in front of the display (Nest Hub). Alarms can be dismissed with a palm up (Nest Hub Max) or a wave (Nest Hub). You'll see a full list of supported gestures inside the Google Home app.

4. Broadcast a message

You can broadcast messages from the Communication screen. Credit: Lifehacker

If you've got a bunch of Nest speakers and displays at home, you can broadcast a message (like "dinner's ready" or "we leave in two minutes") to all of them at once. From your smart display, open Communication and choose Broadcast, then speak your message. If you want to talk directly to a specific speaker at home, choose Call another room instead.

5. Get your hub to recognize you

Set up voice recognition (Nest Hub) or face recognition (Nest Hub Max) to get personalized results—for questions about your Google Calendar schedule perhaps, or for listening to your own YouTube Music playlists. It's handy if you live with multiple people who all share the same hub.

This can be configured through the Google Home app by tapping on the Nest Hub you want to work with, tapping the gear icon (top right), and then choosing Recognition and sharing. You can choose which Google accounts get linked, and how recognition works.

6. Enable dark mode

Dark mode can be enabled manually or automatically. Credit: Lifehacker

Your Nest Hub comes with a dark mode you can make use of, if you find it easier on your eyes. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen, tap the gear icon for settings, and then choose Display. You can pick from Light, Dark, or Auto—that last one will automatically adjust the screen based on the time of day and the lighting conditions in the room.

7. Connect to your other smart devices

Any Google Assistant-compatible device that you can add to the Google Home app can also be controlled via your Nest Hub. If you head to the Home control screen on your smart display, you'll see all of your connected devices and their controls available.

You don't get quite as much control as you would in the individual companion apps for these devices, but there's still a lot to play around with: In the case of smart lights, for example, you can turn them on and off, and change their brightness levels and colors.

8. Create a digital photo frame

You've got several options for using the hub as a photo frame. Credit: Lifehacker

To turn your hub into a digital photo frame, select the device in the Google Home app, then tap the gear icon (top right) and choose Photo Frame. Here you'll be able to choose the images shown on your smart display: You can pick from images curated by Google, or from pictures stored in your Google Photos library (sorted by album or particular people).

9. Discover the Google Assistant

Don't neglect the tab on the far right of the Nest Hub home screens, which is titled Discover. It showcases some of the useful questions you can ask Google Assistant: You can bring up recipes, find nearby restaurants, open your photo library, and more.

These are just suggested examples though. Say "hey Google" and then ask anything you want to know—from how long it will take to drive somewhere, to what time sporting events start—and the Google Assistant will give you an answer right on screen.

10. Pair a bigger speaker

The hub can connect up to other speakers too. Credit: Lifehacker

The Nest Hubs have decent built-in speakers, but you can also pair them with bigger Bluetooth speakers if you need more audio oomph. Swipe up from the bottom of the display, tap the gear icon to open settings, then choose Bluetooth to pair a new device. You'll need to put your separate speaker in pairing mode in order to make the connection.

11. Track your sleep

This one only applies to the Nest Hub, because it has a tiny, built-in radar that can keep track of your tossing and turning in bed. To get started, tap Calibrate your device to get sleep data on the Wellness screen, and then follow the instructions for setting it up.

The Nest Hub does have to be fairly close to your bed for this to work, so a bedside table is ideal. Over time, you'll be shown details of your sleep duration, schedule, and quality—areas where you can improve your sleep routine will be highlighted for you.

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Framework, the company making modular, upgradeable, and repairable laptops, and DeepComputing, the same company that’s making the DC ROMA II RISC-V laptop we talked about last week, have announced something incredibly cool: a brand new RISC-V mainboard that fits right into existing Framework 13 laptops.

Sporting a RISC-V StarFive JH7110 SoC, this groundbreaking Mainboard was independently designed and developed by DeepComputing. It’s the main component of the very first RISC-V laptop to run Canonical’s Ubuntu Desktop and Server, and the Fedora Desktop OS and represents the first independently developed Mainboard for a Framework Laptop.

↫ The DeepComputing website

For a company that was predicted to fail by a popular Apple spokesperson, it seems Framework is doing remarkably well. This new mainboard is the first one not made by Framework itself, and is the clearest validation yet of the concept put into the market by the Framework team. I can’t recall the last time you could buy a laptop powered by one architecture, and then upgrade to an entirely different architecture down the line, just by replacing the mainboard.

The news of this RISC-V mainboard has made me dream of other possibilities – like someone crazy enough to design, I don’t know, a POWER10 or POWER11 mainboard? Entirely impossible and unlikely due to heat constraints, but one may dream, right?

Amazon has seemingly figured out that part of our obsession with security cameras is being able to share the moments we capture, whether funny, scary, or just plain weird. As a way to sweeten the deal for subscribers of the Blink Plus plan, Blink will now give you a daily summary of your events, stitched together in a single “moment” made for sharing.  

Jonathan Cohn, head of product at Blink, seems to acknowledge that most of the videos on security cams aren’t dangerous or threatening, but rather another format for capturing our daily lives. Per a press release from Blink, “Whether it’s their family playing outside, packages being delivered, or pets exploring the yard, Blink Moments combines the moments that matter into one video.”

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While Blink Moments is starting to roll out today, it’ll take a few weeks for all subscribers to see the feature. Blink offers two tiers of plans: Blink Basic ($3/month) for one camera, or Plus ($10/month) for more than one. Moments is only available on the higher tier, but according to Amazon, most customers have at least three Blink cameras anyways. The Plus plan already offers person detection, live view recording, up to 60 days of video cloud storage, and motion-detection video recording. 

Sharing aside, if your camera grabs a lot of footage, it can be painful to scroll through all the saved clips. I suspect most people, like me, simply don’t. A similar feature is available to me via my Eufy Pet Camera, which gives me an end-of-day collection of my dog’s hilarity all ready to share, and I admit has made me more likely to actually see what the camera is recording (and share it).

Blink, which is owned by Amazon, offers a range of indoor and outdoor cameras. I’ve reviewed a number of them and found them generally to be affordable and easy to install cameras with a neat, easy app for viewing.

The more accessories I add to my tablets, the more I feel like I’m missing the point. Should I really buy a brand new M4 iPad complete with a $350 Magic Keyboard, or should I just get a MacBook at that point? That’s why I like portable but separate keyboards like Logitech’s new Keys-To-Go 2, which takes what I like about my home keyboard and makes it far more travel friendly.

Logitech Keys-To-Go 2

$79.99 at Amazon

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Logitech’s current small keyboards

I’m a big fan of Logitech keyboards. At home, I use the MX Mechanical Mini, a tenkeyless low-profile keyboard with tactile mechanical switches. While away, I usually swap that out for the MX Keys Mini, which is roughly the same but with membrane switches—not as satisfying to type on, but quieter to those around me.

This usually works out for me, but I do have a few gripes. First is durability: the MX Keys Mini is entirely exposed when it’s in my bag, so I worry about keys getting damaged in transit. Second is size: It’s a small keyboard, but it’s still a little wide at 11.65 inches, and the angled riser it uses for greater comfort when typing makes it harder to store away.

This is partially my fault, since the MX Keys Mini isn’t meant for travel. That's why Logitech released the original Keys-To-Go, a completely flat keyboard that’s so thin its keys don’t have much opportunity to get damaged.

This comes with its own problems, though, mostly in the form of comfort. There’s a reason my MX Keys Mini has that angle, even if its riser likes to get caught on notebooks and flaps when packed away.

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

How the Keys-To-Go 2 improves on what came before

With the Keys-To-Go 2, Logitech is trying for the best of both worlds, completely redesigning its portable keyboard for both greater durability and greater comfort.

The change mostly comes down to one new design feature: The keyboard comes with an attached cover now. This allows the Keys-To-Go 2 to protect its keys while packed away, plus provide a greater angle while typing.

That steeper angle is thanks to a magnetic bottom, which allows the cover to fold underneath the keyboard to act like a riser. When fully deployed like this, the Keys-To-Go 2 has an 18mm pitch, slightly up from the original Keys-To-Go. It’s also got 1mm of key travel, which is equivalent to the Magic Keyboard's.

The entire Keys-To-Go 2 is smaller than the original Keys-To-Go, too, since the cover replaces what was a large rectangle of empty space at the top of the original. Plus, the shortcut keys are now a full function row when used on non-mobile operating systems.

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

Still room to grow

There’s still compromises (I scored 86 wpm on the Keys-To-Go 2 vs. 92 on the MX Keys Mechanical), but the overall experience is now much more similar to a Magic Keyboard or an MX Keys Mini at a fraction of the cost.

Whereas my previous Logitech keyboards needed me to plan my packing around them, I could easily see myself just making the Keys-To-Go 2 part of my everyday carry routine. It’s just under 10 inches long and only 0.18 inches tall (with the cover closed), so I certainly have room for it.

That said, this is still a tablet or phone keyboard through-and-through. There’s no touchpad, so it expects you to control your device via its own touch screen. Or you could pair a mouse, although that sort of defeats the purpose of this being a neat and tidy all-in-one package.

There’s also a sacrifice that comes with having a neat and tidy package: the batteries. To get this keyboard so thin, there’s no room for rechargeable batteries, so instead you need to supply replaceable ones. Some people actually prefer these, since they don’t limit your device’s lifespan, but they’re a bit hard to swap out in the Keys-To-Go 2. You’ll need both a nonstandard screw bit (T5) and nonstandard batteries (CR2032 coin batteries) for this. The keyboard comes with batteries already installed, but not a compatible screwdriver, so you might be in for a bit of frustration when your battery first runs dry.

Logitech does promise up to 36 months of battery life with up to two hours of continuous typing per day, a metric I didn’t have time to test in the couple weeks of early access Logitech gave me with the Keys-To-Go.

One more minor complaint: I was sometimes able to press keys even with the cover closed. While I don’t expect this would damage the keyboard, it could turn on your connected devices while it jostles around in your bag.

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

It’s a bit pricey

The Keys-To-Go 2 is purposefully designed for one specific task, and at that task, it succeeds just about as well as it could. While I would personally like to see a touchpad on the device, the extra space or thickness needed for that would just turn this into an entirely different product.

For non-attachable tablet keyboards, this implements a lot of smart upgrades over its predecessor and is among the best options you have right now.

Unfortunately, that also means there’s a bit of a premium for it. The price here starts at $80, which while far under what an attachable keyboard can run you, is still lot to pay for a one-purpose device. It's also $10 more than its predecessor.

Whether that’s worth it to you depends on how much you appreciate Logitech’s build quality, as well as convenience features like its shortcut keys for easily mapping across three different devices. For me, these are well worth the price of entry, especially with the smart changes Logitech has made to durability here, meaning the keyboard is likely to last a long time.

With a market flooded with vacuums and mops and models changing so rapidly, it’s almost impossible to feel confident about what you’re buying in the moment. For the last month, I have been testing the Ecovacs Deebot T30S Combo ($1199.99)—a robot vacuum and mop, in a self-emptying tower, combined with a stick vacuum. It’s a machine trying to do a lot; I’m going to discuss the parts as they compare to other vacuums and mops already out. 

ECOVACS DEEBOT T30S Combo Robot Vacuum and Mop, All-in-One Cleaning Hub, 11000Pa, ZeroTangle Technology, TruEdge Adaptive Edge Mopping, Dual Self-Emptying, Hot Water Mop Washing, Auto-Mop Lifting

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A huge tower

The T30S comes in two variations: The first has a handheld vacuum with a few attachments, but without the extension for the vacuum, it’s merely a nice Dustbuster. (For about 30 dollars more, you can get a fully extendable stick vacuum.) 

The first thing you’ll notice about the T30S is that the base is monstrous—it eclipsed in size any other robot I've tested in the last year, particularly in height. Water tanks and vacuum accessories can all be stowed in the tower itself, which is handy—but even so, its size and width makes it harder to place in your home. There’s almost no assembly except for clicking together the ramp to the tower and stowing the accessories in a drawer designed for them. Pairing the robot to the Ecovacs app was also fast and streamlined. 

Advanced features in app, but lots of advertising

Open the Ecovacs app, and without fail you’ll be hit with offers and banners. They’re easy to click off, but still, it’s an annoying distraction. Otherwise, the interface for the vacuum works very similarly to other advanced robots out there including Roborock, Switchbot, and Dreame. Like Roborock, it has a voice assistant named Yiko and it works about as well as Roborock’s (which isn’t very well, but shows promise). Unlike other robots in this price range, the T30S lacks onboard video. The T30S is missing two of my must-have features on robot vacuums these days: remote control and pin and go, which you now see in almost all high-end models, including those mentioned above. Remote control allows you to control the robot using your phone, meaning you never have to go fishing for a bot under the couch again. You can simply drive it over to you. "Pin and go" allows you to mark a spot on the map and have the robot proceed to that pin and clean in that specific area. It’s a great way to quickly deal with a spill.

In its favor, the T30S had a feature I’m beginning to see more of: the ability to designate room cleaning priorities. In other words, if it's cleaning my bathroom and any other space, I can have it always clean the bathroom last. If it's cleaning the kitchen and any other space, I can direct it to always get the kitchen first. Another newer feature I like is the maintenance log for all the working parts, which gives you a status report of every single replaceable part. Other standard features like child lock, schedules, and intensity settings for your mop and vacuum are present on the T30S. 

A better mop than vacuum

Every household produces different kinds of detritus. A floor that only has some dust could use almost any robot vacuum with success, and might want to focus on models like Dyson, which are specifically designed to capture microparticles. Some vacuums are specially designed to grab pet hair. I, on the other hand, have "macroparticles": large stuff that is tracked in by the dog, or dropped during various crafting or cooking activities. If you have kids who drop Cheerios, for instance, you have a macroparticle problem, and it’s one that robot vacuums struggle with. The T30S struggled with macroparticles, getting stuck on almost anything larger than a popcorn kernel, which meant I had to come clear out the roller brush. But it didn’t really capture smaller debris that well, either. This could be due to a singular roller design, but I think it’s also due to the small size of the debris container. The T30S did not seem to return to the base once full to empty itself, instead stubbornly continuing its run, unable to pick up anything else. If you, like me, suffer from larger detritus, then this is not the vacuum for you. But I believe this could be capable of picking up pet hair and dust, etc. without a problem. 

More successful was the mop, which is handled by two spinning mop pads, much like the Roborock Qrevo line. While I still believe that mop pads, like the Roborock S8 are better for mopping than spinning pads, I thought the T30s did an admirable job, better than the Dreame L10 I recently reviewed, and on par with the Qrevo. Because the pads extend out from the robot, they’re able to get into corners and room edges admirably. I generally found that this was all more successful when I ran a complete vacuum run and then a separate mop run. 

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Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni Robot Vacuum and Mop

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Navigation issues might be more feature than bug

The T30S did something that surprised me: It moved through a curtained-off area. When robots used bump-and-go technology to map an area, they would go anywhere a little battery-powered motor could take them. New robots including the T30S use LiDAR (lasers that use light and distance to determine where to go), which means most robots these days don’t bump into things at all, and actively avoid them—they perceive obstacles they could get through or under as walls. So I was shocked to watch the T30S slip under a floor-length velvet curtain between my hallway and living room as if the curtain didn’t exist. While this is probably a bug (Ecovacs is still looking into it), I think it's a bug that could work in your favor if you have a space that previous LiDAR robots haven't "seen," whether that's a space blocked by a pet gate a robot could still slip under, someplace you're using a room divider, or a curtain, like me. While a bug could always get corrected, I think it's unlikely to happen, given that most companies just make a new robot altogether. In fact, this "bug" didn't exist on the Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni, which I tried (and liked) just a few months ago.

On the downside, the T30S also stranded itself more than a few times once the job was completed. It struggled to return to the base, abandoning itself in hallways and other random spots, and although this only represents 15% of all the times I used it, it's still a consideration.

A near-miss on what could have been a killer feature

The hand vac included in the T30S makes you question how badly you want to use it. On one hand, it’s such a good idea to have a self-emptying hand vac; you never have to deal with a messy canister over a trash can. This one feature is what makes me prefer the Samsung Bespoke Jet AI vacuum over any Dyson I’ve tried, because you simply grab the vacuum all ready to go, clean, and then place it back on the dock, where it empties itself. Unlike Samsung, though, there are extra steps to use the T30S. You have to assemble it each time you want to use it, and then disassemble it to put it back in the dock, where it self empties. All the time and energy saved by the self-emptying feature is canceled out by the work to put the vacuum together and take it apart each time you want to use it.

At least when you get the T30S with the extended stick vacuum, you just remove the handheld portion to place it in the tower, and the stick and whatever accessory you’re using get docked on the exterior of the tower, so it's not as labor-intensive. However, this also means the tower now takes up even more space vertically and horizontally. 

Not a bad buy, but not the best buy

Despite all that, the truth is that if you were to buy a mid-range stick vac and robot vacuum, you’d still end up spending more than the list price for this combo tower. While I think if you want a better robot vacuum/mop you’d buy a Roborock or Switchbot, and if you wanted a better stick vacuum you’d get the Samsung Bespoke Jet AI, the Deebot T30S is going to work well for someone without major floor detritus who just wants a reliable bot to keep up with the daily dust, and wants a handheld vac nearby for things above ground level.

In the last 8 months Qualcomm has made a lot of interesting claims for their high-performance Windows-on-Arm SoC – many of which will be put to the test in the coming weeks. But beyond all the performance claims and bluster amidst what is shaping up to be a highly competitive environment for PC CPUs, there’s an even more fundamental question about the Snapdragon X that we’ve been dying to get to: how does it work?

Ahead of next week’s launch, then, we’re finally getting the answer to that, as today Qualcomm is releasing their long-awaited architectural disclosure on the Snapdragon X SoC. This includes not only their new, custom Arm v8 “Oryon” CPU core, but also technical disclosures on their Adreno GPU, and the Hexagon NPU that backs their heavily-promoted AI capabilities. The company has made it clear in the past that the Snapdragon X is a serious, top-priority effort for the company – that they’re not just slapping together a Windows SoC from their existing IP blocks and calling it a day – so there’s a great deal of novel technology within the SoC.

↫ Ryan Smith at AnandTech

I cannot wait until AnandTech can move beyond diving into information provided by Qualcomm, and can start doing their own incredibly in-depth benchmarks and research. Assuming the effort succeeds, the Snapdragon X line will most likely form the backbone of ARM PCs for years – if not decades – to come, meaning that when you and I go shopping for a new laptop, this chip will be the one heavily promoted by stores and outlets.

How closely independent benchmarks line up with Qualcomm’s eight months of promises and cherry-picked benchmarks will also tell us a lot about how trustworthy the company will be about the performance of its chips going forward. In smartphones – where we mostly see Qualcomm today – performance simply doesn’t matter as much, but when you’re dealing with laptops, and in the future possibly even desktops, performance suddenly matters a lot more, and Qualcomm’s claims will be facing a level of scrutiny and detail I don’t think they’ve ever really had to deal with before.

PC enthusiasts don’t mess around.

If the Linux support turns out to be as solid as Qualcomm claims, and if the performance figures they’ve been putting out are verified by quality independent reviewers like the people at AnandTech, I honestly don’t think my next laptop will be using x86. I just hope weird companies like Chuwi will release a version of their MiniBook X with one a Qualcomm chip, because I’ll be damned if I go back to anything larger than 10″.

It would appear that some Roku TVs are now self-sabotaging their owners. And by that, I mean they're enabling motion smoothing without any way to turn it off.

Between this complaint on the Roku subreddit, this thread on Roku's customer forums, and reports from staffers of The Verge, this issue appears to be more than a one-off, even if it isn't necessarily widespread. The problem is occurring on TCL TVs running Roku OS 13: Reportedly, these TVs started using motion smoothing out of nowhere, with no notice, nor any option to disable the feature. Users looking at both standard settings or picture settings cannot find a "motion smoothing" option to turn off the feature.

This bug isn't going unaddressed: In the forums complaint, a Roku community mod confirmed the company is investigating the issue, and included the standard instructions for disabling motion smoothing.

What is motion smoothing, and why is it bad?

Motion smoothing (or "Action Smoothing," as Roku calls it) is a feature on HD and 4K TVs that essentially adds new frames to whatever content you're watching. Video is made up of individual pictures, or frames, and most shows and movies run at 24 or 30 frames per second. With motion smoothing, your TV analyzes the content and creates extra frames on the fly to smooth out the motion of the image. Some content, like live sports and video games, are made better by additional frames, since it can help keep track of fast-moving action. However, almost always, artificially adding the frames makes the image look worse, not better.

It's particularly bad when watching shows and movies: Doubling the frame rate and making the motion smoother is what gives this content the "soap opera" effect. Soap operas are filmed in a higher frame rate than most other shows and movies, so when you double the frame rate of 24 or 30 fps content, it looks like daytime television. That isn't a compliment.

How to disable Action Smoothing on Roku TVs

While some users experiencing this motion smoothing bug won't see the option to disable Action Smoothing at this time, other Roku TV users can control the setting.

First, press the Star button on your Roku TV remote while watching something, then scroll down and choose Advanced Picture Settings. Here, you should be able to control the Action Smoothing settings. Roku says that if you can't see this setting, your TV doesn't support the feature. That's likely not comforting to users watching the new season of House of the Dragon as Game of Thrones' first soap opera.

I’ve long been waiting for a powerful ARM laptop that can run Linux comfortably, and it seems that with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X Elite SoC, that’s finally going to happen. We talked earlier about how for once, Qualcomm is taking Linux support for their new laptop-focused processors very seriously, and that promise and associated effort is paying dividend. Tuxedo, a popular Linux OEM from Germany, has announced it’s working on a laptop with the Snapdragon X Elite chip, and they showed off a working prototype at Computex in Taiwan.

We have been working with a first prototype for some time, which will soon be replaced by a second one. The development is still in the alpha stage, as some drivers are still missing, which will hopefully be available with the next two kernel versions.

It is quite conceivable that an ARM notebook from TUXEDO will be under your Christmas tree in 2024. However, there are still too many pieces of the hardware, software and delivery capability puzzle missing to even begin to set a release date. TUXEDO for ARM will come, but we don’t yet know exactly when.

↫ Tuxedo’s website

Their timeline of more Qualcomm drivers making it into the next two kernel versions lines up with Qualcomm’s own timeline, so it seems we’re mostly just waiting for them to finish their Linux drivers and add them to the kernel. This is quite exciting, and a much better option for Linux users than buying a Windows version of an X Elite or Pro laptop and hoping for the best.

You know what could really use a dose of “AI”? Your BIOS.

aiBIOS leverages an LLM to integrate AI capabilities into Insyde Software’s flagship firmware solution, InsydeH2O® UEFI BIOS. It provides the ability to interpret the PC user’s request, analyze their specific hardware, and parse through the LLM’s extensive knowledge base of BIOS and computer terminology to make the appropriate changes to the BIOS Setup. This breakthrough technology helps address a major hurdle for PC users that require or desire changes to their BIOS Setup for their personal computers but do not fully understand the meaning of the settings available to them.

↫ Insyde press release

Google told users to put glue on pizzas and eat rocks, so I’m sure the combined efforts of a BIOS maker will surely not pose any problems when automatically changing BIOS settings based on the requests of users who do not really understand what they’re doing. This surely is a recipe for success, and I can’t wait to tell my BIOS to enable XMP, only for it to disable hyperthreading, change the boot order to only allow booting from the non-existent floppy drive, and to force the use of the integrated GPU when I’m actually using a dedicated one.

This is going to be just fine.

The Turbo9 is a pipelined microprocessor IP written in Verilog that executes a superset of the Motorola 6809 instruction set. It is a new modern microarchitecture with 16-bit internal datapaths that balances high performance vs small area / low power. The Turbo9R with a 16-bit memory interface achieves 0.69 DMIPS/MHz which is 3.8 times faster than Motorola’s original 8-bit MC6809 implementation. It is an active graduate research project at the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Florida.

↫ Turbo9 GitHub page

The Turbo9 is aimed at SoC sub-blocks and small mixed-signal ASIC, so it’s definitely not intended to be some sort of general purpose CPU. The reason for opting for the 6809 instead of, say, RISC-V or ARM, is that the 6809 enables a far smaller footprint due to being 16bit, which is all the target market really needs from the Turbo9.

The current version of the Turbo9 is thoroughly verified and is capable of running C code. However, we still consider this version v0.9 because we are missing a few items. All the 6809 instructions and addressing modes have been implemented and tested except SYNC and CWAI. The signed versions of the Turbo9’s 16-bit divide and multiply need to be completed. Interrupts are partially implemented including SWI and Reset.

↫ Turbo9 GitHub page

This is the kind of riveting content you’ll only really find on OSNews.

Few things in technology excites me more than an amazing computer I have never heard of before – especially one with pedigree.

Many people take a casual glance at this machine and say, “Isn’t that an overgrown word processor?” And one could certainly think so, in part because of its keyboard-centric operation, but mostly from the utterly uncomprehending way Canon advertised it in 1987. Canon dubbed the Cat a “work processor” because of its built-in telecommunications, modem and word processor even though Jef Raskin, its designer, had intended it as a “people’s computer” that could be inexpensive, accessible and fully functional — all things he had hoped to accomplish at Apple after first launching the Macintosh project, prior to departing in 1982.

Canon, however, never fully grasped the concept either. Apart from the tone-deaf marketing, Canon sold the device through their typewriter division and required the display to only show what a daisywheel printer could generate, limiting its potential as a general purpose workstation.

↫ Cameron Kaiser

Wait, wait, wait. You mean to tell me there’s a unique, well-designed computer that seemed ahead of its time, sold by a printer and copier company, that failed in the market due to botched marketing and grotesque misunderstanding among management of what the device is supposed to be? What are the odds this happens twice?

The Canon Cat was designed and built by Jeff Raskin’s – of Macintosh fame – company Information Appliance, Inc., and licensed to Canon. It’s an all-in-one 68000-based computer with a bitmap display, an operating system stored in ROM, and a comprehensive Forth environment easily accessible despite the device autostarting to a word processor (because Canon).

Much like some of the predecessor machines Raskin had worked on before licensing the Cat to Canon, the Cat has an intriguing input method that I’d never seen before. Instead of a mouse or even cursor keys, it has two keys labeled “Leap” that are used for manipulating the text cursor.

In fact, there aren’t even conventional cursor keys. The Cat has the same “leap” keys as the Swyft and SwyftCard, in a bright but tasteful pink, and they work the same way to jump to portions of the document or into other documents. You can also use them to scroll with the SHIFT key, or move by single letters, sentences or paragraphs. The LEAP keys are also how you highlight text blocks to manipulate by LEAPing to the beginning, LEAPing to the end, and then pressing them together.

↫ Cameron Kaiser

The Forth programming environment is also very interesting. It was hidden in that Canon didn’t really want you to use it, but Raskin’s company made no secret of it, and it was easily accessible. It uses a special dialect of Forth, which can be used at either a traditional OK prompt, or just by typing Forth code into the word processor, highlighting it, and executing it with a keyboard shortcut, after which any output will be displayed in the word processor as well.

The Canon Cat was a market failure, and hence it shouldn’t be a surprise it’s exceedingly rare. The article further details the internals, some fixes that were required and performed, and much, much more. A follow-up article will delve deeper into the software, too.

Earlier this month, we talked about the arrival of the new CAMM2 memory module standard, specifically designed to make replaceable memory modules as fast and capable as soldered memory. There’s technically no reason for CAMM2 to not also be beneficial to desktop use, and it turns out MSI is experimenting with this.

MSI on Thursday published the first image of a new desktop motherboard that supports the innovative DDR5 compression attached memory module (CAMM2). DDR5 CAMM2 modules are designed to improve upon the SO-DIMM form factor used for laptops, alleviating some of the high-speed signaling and capacity limitations of SO-DIMMs while also shaving down on the volume of space required. And while we’re eagerly awaiting to see CAMM2 show up in more laptops, its introduction in a PC motherboard comes as a bit of a surprise, since PCs aren’t nearly as space-constrained.

↫ Anton Shilov at AnandTech

This MSI motherboard is a bit of an experiment, as it also contains other more experimental choices like back-mounted power connectors. While CAMM2’s space savings won’t mean much for most desktop builds, it does leave more room for CPU coolers, and it looks a bit cleaner, too.

As expected earlier this year, Raspberry Pi is going public on the stock exchange in London. Back then, CEO Eben Upton said he did not expect the IPO to change how Raspberry Pi did things, but history tells us that initial public offerings tend to, well, change how companies do things. In their official announcement that they intend to hold an IPO, there’s an incredibly interesting and telling contradiction, as noted by @yassie_j on MastoAkkoma:

Raspberry Pi, in their listing press release, says: The Enthusiast and Education market is the “heart” of the Raspberry Pi movement.

But also says: Industrial and Embedded market […] accounts [for] over 72 per cent

So the heart seems to be going neglected, it seems, because there’s no way you’re going to not cash in on industrial applications. Especially when you’ve just done a big IPO.

↫ @yassie_j on Akkoma

This exactly illustrates the fears we all have about what an IPO is going to mean for Raspberry Pi. It’s already become increasingly more difficult for enthusiasts to get their hands on the latest Raspberry Pi models, but once the IPO’s done and there’s shareholders breathing down their neck, that will most likely only get worse. If the industrial and embedded market is where you’re making most of your money, where do you think Raspberry Pi devices are going to end up?

Luckily the market’s a lot bigger and more varied now than it was back when Raspberry Pi was new, so we have a wide variety of options to choose from. Still, I’m definitely worried about what Raspberry Pi, as a company, will look like five, ten years from now.

If you remember a time when using floppy disks didn’t seem weird, you’re probably at least 30 years old. Floppy disks or diskettes emerged around 1970 and, for a good three decades or so, they were the main way many people stored and backed up their computer data. All the software and programmes they bought came loaded onto clusters of these disks. They are a technology from a different era of computing, but for various reasons floppy disks have an enduring appeal for some which mean they are from dead.

↫ Chris Baraniuk at the BBC

Articles such as these in more mainstream media are always incredibly odd to me. Nobody bats an eye at someone lovingly maintaining a classic car, or restoring an old house, or a group of people petitioning a local government to not demolish a beloved old building or whatever, but as soon as computer technology is involved, so many people find it incredibly weird that classic computer technology, too, can be worth saving.

It highlights how society views technology – disposable, replaceable, worthless, to be dumped and forgotten about as soon as something newer comes along. Even after at least two decades of articles like this, they keep being essentially republished with the same words, the same storylines about these weird people who keep using – get this! Look at these idiots! – older technology when faster, newer, shinier stuff is readily available.

I’m glad the retrocomputing community seems to be growing by the day, and there’s now definitely a large enough internationally connected group of people and organisations to maintain our old computers and related hardware and software.

Today we’re pleased to announce the beta release of Raspberry Pi Connect: a secure and easy-to-use way to access your Raspberry Pi remotely, from anywhere on the planet, using just a web browser.

It’s often extremely useful to be able to access your Raspberry Pi’s desktop remotely. There are a number of technologies which can be used to do this, including VNC, and of course the X protocol itself. But they can be hard to configure, particularly when you are attempting to access a machine on a different local network; and of course with the transition to Wayland in Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm, classic X remote desktop support is no longer available.

We wanted to be able to provide you with this functionality with our usual “it just works” approach. Enter Raspberry Pi Connect.

↫ Gordon Hollingworth

Pi Connect uses WebRTC, and a daemon running on your Pi listens for incoming screensharing requests from the Raspberry Pi website to connect the VNC server on your Pi to the VNC client running in your browser. The service is in beta, it’s free, but the one major downside is that for now, there’s only one TURN server for this service, located in the UK, but they might set up more of them if demand is high enough.

If you want to try this service on your own Pi running Raspberry Pi OS, you’re going to need to be using a Raspberry Pi 5, 4, or 400, using the latest version of the operating system running Wayland. Update your operating system, install the rpi-connect package, reboot, and you’re good to go.

This is the story on how I spent far too much money and time getting a scanner to work over iSCSI so that I could prove “Chris O” wrong on StackExchange. The TL;DR is that yes scanners work fine over iSCSI.

↫ xssfox

The next step is connecting a bunch of flatbed scanners to a disk array enclosure, but that turns out to be quite an expensive little exercise. Regardless, this is absolutely wild, and I love it when people go to great lengths just to prove that something pointless can actually be done. Bravo.

But today we got our hands on LPCAMM2 for the first time, and this looks like the future to us. LPCAMM2 is a totally modular, repairable, upgradeable memory standard for laptops, using the latest LPDDR chips for maximum speed and efficiency. So instead of overpaying (or under-speccing) based on guesswork about your future memory needs, you’ll hopefully be able to buy your next laptop and then install more RAM as needed. Imagine that!

↫ Carsten Frauenheim

LPDDR memory, used in modern laptops, has been difficult – or impossible – to upgrade because its low power nature means it needs to be located as close to the processor as possible with short traces, since the longer the traces, the more power is needed to maintain signal integrity between the processor and RAM. This would defeat the entire purpose of low-power DDR memory to begin with.

Originally developed by Dell and eventually adopted by JEDEC and the wider industry, LPCAMM2 solves this problem by using screw-down RAM modules located right next to the processor. These modules can, like regular memory modules, be replaced and upgraded when needed or desired. This is a great leap forward, and I really, really hope we’re going to see quick, widespread adoption.

Qualcomm’s Adreno 6xx architecture has been superseded Adreno 7xx, but it’s still used in countless devices, including the current-gen Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3. Here, I’ll be looking at the Adreno 640 GPU in the Snapdragon 855. Zarif98 on Reddit kindly provided a OnePlus 7 Pro, and I’ll be using that to check out Adreno 640.

Compared to the older Snapdragon 821’s Adreno 530, Adreno 640 dramatically increases compute throughput while still working within a very constrained power and thermal envelope. Process node improvements help, and TSMC’s 7 nm process should be far better than the 14 nm Samsung node used in the Snapdragon 821. But cell phone SoC constraints meant Qualcomm couldn’t go around copy-pasting basic GPU building blocks and call it a day.

↫ Chips and Cheese

Chips and Cheese with another deep dive.

While it’s still yet to debut, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite is looking like a big deal for ARM-powered Windows machines and, now, it’s getting a more affordable cousin in the Snapdragon X Plus.

Announced today, Snapdragon X Plus is based on the same Oryon CPU as Snapdragon X Elite, just with a bit less power. The chip has 10 cores to the Elite’s 12, and is also clocked down from the Elite’s 3.8GHz to 3.4GHz.

↫ Ben Schoon at 9To5Google

It really seems like it’s finally happening – ARM computers for the general public (that aren’t from Apple). I really hope that Qualcomm can deliver on its promises, and that Microsoft’s involvement means these computers will be fairly standardised so it’s easier for non-Windows platforms to support them. I’ve seen quite a few rumblings from people invited to Qualcomm’s press events for these new ARM chips that the company is delivering Linux support alongside Windows support, so that’s at least a good start.

Whenever we talk about ARM coming to the generic PC market, people rightfully point out the lack of standardisation in the ARM space, so that really is the deciding factor here for people like us, who tend to not be all too interested in locked-down platforms. If every one of these machines is different enough that supporting them is a nightmare – like the world of smartphones – ARM for PCs will be dead on arrival for me because I have zero interest in buying Windows-only hardware.

One thing Microsoft tends to be good at is getting at least some standardisation to stick in the PC market, and I hope they’re going to that here, too – Microsoft probably isn’t relishing supporting each individual ARM machine in Windows ‘by hand’ either. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

There is something about surprising interfaces: clapping to switch on lights is more fun than a flipping a switch. Pressing a panic-button to order a pizza is more fun than ordering via an app. Recently I came across this surprising interface: a flute controlled mouse cursor for a first person shooter. I recognize a good idea when I see one, and immediately wanted replicate the idea and make it freely available. So I got to work.

↫ Joren Six

I don’t think I have ever seen something quite so unique.