Blogroll

Some people say phones are largely boring now, which may be somewhat true. But to keep things interesting, you have companies like Meizu trying new and, erm, innovative things. Like the new Zero phone, which has no ports or buttons.

Building a phone with no ports or buttons was surely a challenge, but if we’re honest, probably no more challenging than using said phone. Hell, it doesn’t even have a speaker grille. It’s just a screen and a body. To offer the feel and function of a power button and volume rocker, Meizu packed the Zero with a “virtual side button.” It’s like Google’s Squeeze for Assistant stuff, but for buttons. It provides haptic feedback so you know you pressed something.

Naturally, it charges wirelessly. It comes with Bluetooth 5.0 for all your audio needs. The fingerprint reader is under the display. The screen works as a speaker—a 5.99-inch speaker, somehow. This thing is weird. There’s not even a SIM slot!

So, what happens when you inevitably have to perform a hard reset? There’s a pinhole, like the good ol’ days where you had to stuff a paperclip into a thing to restart it. It’s like that. For data transfers, it uses USB wireless connectivity, which Meizu claims is as fast as USB 3.0. I’m skeptical.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 processor does the heavy lifting, though other important hardware details are non-existent right now. The Zero is IP68 dust and water resistant, which makes perfect sense for a phone with essentially no openings.

Neither price nor availability for the Zero is available, but I’d guess it will be “a lot” and “in China,” respectively. We’ll see.

via Android Police

Man, that took a while, but two years after it first became available, YouTube TV is finally available for essentially everyone. That’s cool because YouTube TV is pretty good (and simple!) as far as streaming services go.

You’d be forgiven for not being super familiar with YouTube TV, especially since it was limited to certain locations until now. But overall it’s a solid streaming service—for $40 a month, you get over 60 channels, YouTube Originals, and the option to add extras like Showtime, Starz, Shudder, and more.

Aside from a decent selection of channels, every YouTube TV subscription allows for six accounts per household, which means everyone under your roof can get their own set of favorite channels and recordings. Speaking of recordings, YouTube TV offers unlimited DVR space, which is pretty unheard of for any streaming service.

And while it was once only available on a handful of devices, you can now access the service from pretty much any of the major players—Android TV, Apple TV, Roku, iOS, Android, Xbox, and a slew of smart TVs. Per the norm, the PS4 is probably the biggest name missing.

So if you’re looking to replace your existing cable subscription with a streaming platform, give YouTube TV a look. It’s pretty hard to beat for $40 a month, especially if it offers all the channels you want. You can learn more about the service here.

via TechCrunch

Whether you like it or not, folding phones are coming. Samsung showed off its folding design late last year, but now Chinese company Xiaomi is teasing its folding phone, and it’s, well, it’s interesting as hell.

When most of us think about “folding phones,” we simply imagine a tablet that folds in half and becomes a phone. That’s cool and all, but what Xiaomi is proposing is…cooler. Maybe more functional? Perhaps even more innovative. Whatever it is, I think I like it. Here’s a look at it in action:

Check out this special video from #Xiaomi President and Co-founder Bin Lin, showing off a very special phone prototype…

Mechanical keyboards have been the big trend in computer inputs the last few years. They feel great, but they’re kind of like the monster trucks of the desk: big, loud, heavy, and unapologetic. Niche manufacturer Hexgears aims to change that.

The X-1, ostensibly designed after the Bell X-1 hypersonic plane, uses Kailh Choc low-profile switches, a smart key layout, and some sleek engineering to make a full-sized mechanical keyboard that’s about the same size as the more stylish designs that ape Apple’s Magic Keyboard.

While it includes Bluetooth for hassle-free wireless, it also has a lagless USB-C connection with N-key rollover for the gamers among its target audience. An aluminum casing, full RGB lighting, and a choice of two colors and three switches rounds out an impressive feature set, helping to justify the premium $120 price.

The X-1’s laptop-style chiclet keys won’t please everyone, and its battery life drops sharply if you turn on the lights. But those are the only major complaints I can lodge against this thing. It’s beautiful, it travels better than any other mechanical keyboard I’ve tried, its switches are shorter than I’m used to but that’s a more than acceptable compromise for its size and weight. If you’ve been put off by the chunky looks and stodgy insistence on wired designs of most mechanical keyboards, this one might just make you a believer.

Tastes in keyboard aesthetics are quite broad. If you find two users who actually care about how their keyboard looks (which is admittedly a small subset), you’re unlikely to find a common opinion between them. Even so, I’ve yet to hear anything except praise for the look of the Hexgears X-1.

I ordered mine in black, to match the rest of my desk, but it also comes in grey aluminum with white keys if your taste leans towards Cupertino. The whole thing has around the same footprint as a tenkeyless keyboard, but it’s only three-quarters of an inch tall at its thickest point. I usually forego keyboard legs, but I was happy to use the small fold-out legs in the X-1 just to get a more familiar raised profile.

The flat chicklet keys use white printing that allows the RGB lights to come through as bright as any “gamer” keyboard, and the thin aluminum housing feels elegant and sharp. The aluminum wraps around the curved corners and sizes, only surrendering to plastic on the bottom face of the board, I suspect for the sake of weight and Bluetooth wireless signal.

Read the remaining 28 paragraphs

Arlo’s highly-rated and versatile Pro camera system is particularly affordable today with the 2-camera starter kit at an all-time historical low. Now’s the time to snatch up a great camera system for nearly 50% off the original price.

While the most current version of the Arlo platform is the Arlo Pro 2 (which builds on the Pro cameras by upping the resolution from 720p to 1080p, widening the field of view, and integrating some software features like enhanced activity zones), the Arlo Pro cameras are still fantastic cameras. They’re among the highest rated Wi-Fi security cameras on Amazon (4 stars based off 13,500+ reviews) for good reason.

The Pro cameras integrate with both Alexa and Google-based smarthomes so you can easily see your live video stream on your Echo Show or Google Home Hub, for example. The Arlo system also includes a wide variety of features not found on many other Wi-Fi security cameras including a siren in the base station, local USB recording (and free 7-day cloud recording too). The cameras are weather-resistant and can be used indoors or out. Finally, the real selling point of the system: rechargeable batteries with six-month battery life so you can place cameras anywhere without drilling holes in your walls or running wire.

The 2-camera starter kit is down to only $224 from the original price of $420 which puts it at nearly $200 off the introduction price and nearly $60 off even the low prices we saw on Black Friday in 2018.

It’s highly unlikely that someone will hack into your Nest cameras, but it has happened. And if you don’t enable two-factor authentication on your Nest account, it could eventually happen to you.

One family’s Nest camera was recently hacked and used to belt out a fake emergency message about an impending missile strike from North Korea using the Nest Cam’s built-in speaker—a bizarre way of using the hacked camera for sure.

Google says this hack job was merely accomplished by using a compromised password that was also used on another website that was breached. Turning on two-factor authentication would have prevented the Nest camera from getting hacked.

RELATED: What Is Two-Factor Authentication, and Why Do I Need It?

There was also another instance of a Nest Cam (being used as a baby monitor) becoming compromised where the perp started shouting expletives through the camera’s speaker. What’s wrong with these people? It’s just weird.

Long story short, Wi-Fi cams can get hacked into. With that said, if you don’t have two-factor authentication enabled for your Nest account, here’s how to do it.

Go to home.nest.com in a web browser (you can’t do it from the app, unfortunately) and log in to your account.

Read the remaining 16 paragraphs

Setting the rounding precision forces Excel to always round numeric values to a specified number of digits following the decimal, saving you from having to use the ROUND function on each formula. Here’s how it works.

Note that setting Excel’s rounding precision can save time, but be certain you want to round all values before you enable this feature. When Excel is set to round numbers, it deletes the extra data following the precision point you set, permanently affecting the accuracy of the numbers in your workbook. This means, for example, that if a value like “12.7851698” is displayed with two digits after the decimal point, then Excel will permanently delete the “51698” and leave only the “12.76” remaining.

This feature also works on a per-workbook basis, meaning you can enable it for some workbooks and not others. You must enable it for an entire workbook, though; you can’t enable it only for specific sheets within a workbook.

Navigate to the “File” menu.

Select the “Options” menu.

In the Excel Options window that appears, click the “Advanced” category on the left.

Read the remaining 10 paragraphs

A file with the .msix extension is a Windows application installer. Microsoft recently introduced MSIX as an alternative to EXE, MSI, and even AppX packages. Exercise caution and ensure you trust an MSIX file’s source before running it.

Currently, Windows has three common installer formats—MSI, EXE, and AppX. Each has different strengths and weaknesses.

MSI installers are best for simple, possibly unattended, installations. They use a basic install graphical user interface (GUI) that installs or uninstalls the program with no extras or options. At the very core, this installer is a compressed set of installer files containing all necessary data for the software. The install process won’t detect if the software already exists, or if any components are missing. It may overwrite any files in the install path. This simplicity means a silent, all-defaults install is a breeze for administrators to accomplish.

EXE installers are more versatile than MSI installers, but with the added capability comes complication. This installer can include options for languages, add-ons, detecting previous installations, and more. EXE installers allow for custom install paths and choosing which components to install. Developers can add their own branding to the GUI and incorporate language-specific terms of service or point to a webpage for a welcome message. But this, in turn, makes a silent unattended install much more difficult, and thus less useful in an enterprise situation.

AppX installers are used for Universal Windows Apps and share some of the benefits of MSI installers. They are simple, straight forward installers with few choices given to the end user. Additionally, they allow for an easier upgrade path from older versions of software to newer versions, and they allow for a cleaner uninstall. AppX installers also rely on container technology, so they are isolated from the rest of the operating system for security. Unfortunately, a program written for an MSI or EXE installer had to be rewritten or converted, perhaps with the help of tools, for the AppX package. And AppX packages can only be used with Windows 10, so older versions of Windows are out of luck.

An MSIX file has the benefits of AppX while being similar to an MSI file. It is a straight forward installer that system administrators can even script for automatic, “unattended” installation. Additionally, it relies on container technology, which allows for smooth uninstalls and upgrades.

From a user perspective, an MSIX installs like an MSI file, but behind the scenes, it installs like an AppX file. Additionally, MSIX distribution outside the Microsoft Store is possible. And with this new process, it’s easier to bring older programs in and repackage them for MSIX.

Read the remaining 10 paragraphs

One year ago we reviewed the newly released Logitech MX Ergo and absolutely loved it. Today we’re taking a look back at the wireless trackball and how our opinion of it (and the product itself) has held up over a year of use.

The Ergo’s claim to fame, above all else, was that it represented an update to Logitech’s long-running line of trackball mice (a line that stretches well back into the 1990s). Fans of their trackballs hadn’t had much to sink their teeth into for ages (the wireless predecessor to the Ergo was the M570 from 2010) and they—myself included—were pretty excited about the Ergo’s release.

RELATED: Logitech MX Ergo Review: A Worthy Heir to Logitech’s Lengthy Trackball Mouse Lineage

If you revisit our full review here, from January of 2018, you’ll see we were very pleased with the MX Ergo on multiple fronts. It boasts a very pleasant-in-the-hand ergonomic shape that echoes (and improves upon) past incarnations of the TrackMan-style trackball mice. You can use Logitech’s Unifying Reciever dongle or Bluetooth to connect to your computer, or you can use both to connect to two different computers (and switch between them with the click of a button on the mouse). The build quality is fantastic.

In fact, after extended use, we can safely say that even the very minor complaints we had about the mouse aren’t complaints we’d lodge anymore. We pointed out that the mouse was a bit heavy (to be expected from a full-size trackball mouse with a metal base plate and a large battery) but after a year of tossing it in a small laptop bag and taking it all over the country, we can say that it’s a fair trade-off. Sure it’s not as light as a tiny travel mouse but it’s also way more comfortable (especially for dedicated trackball users who abhor using tiny travel mice on the road).

The second point very-minor complaint we lodged was that it would require more charging than M750 (which was legendary lasting 1-2 years, or longer, off a single AA battery). We’re happy to report that the MX Ergo has pretty great battery life. Maybe not two years of daily use without charging, pretty great, but pretty great none the less. In fact, the Ergo has seen use week-after-week as our goto laptop mouse without a single charge.

We couldn’t tell you exactly how that’s worked out in terms of minutes of use over the last year, but it’s sure been nice not worrying about charging it—and when we do have to charge it, it’s just a few hours of recharging for another 6-12 months of use.

On top of all that, despite taking no special care with the mouse—we meant to buy a travel case for it, but never did—and tossing it into our laptop bag with a bunch of laptop-bag-type-junk, it still looks brand new despite the benign neglect.

Read the remaining 3 paragraphs

Exposure bracketing is a technique where, instead of taking a single photo, you take three (or more) that are all exposed slightly differently; normally one is correctly exposed, one slightly underexposed, and one slightly overexposed. It’s in quite a few situations, so let’s look at how it works.

Getting exposure right can be a complex subject. There are lots of things you have to balance: how your camera is metering the scene, your camera’s dynamic range, and of course, what settings you’re using. You might also be trying to deliberately overexpose your photos a little to get more data in the RAW file without going too far and blowing your highlights.

With all these moving pieces exposure bracketing is a solid technique for making sure that you get a good exposure while you’re on location—there are some things you can’t fix in post. By also taking one photo that is a stop or two underexposed and another that is a stop or two overexposed, even if you misjudge your exposure, you still have the bracketed shots. Landscape photographers sometimes refer to bracketed shots as “safety shots” for this reason.

RELATED: Exposure Values Give You a Better Understanding of How Your Camera Works

If you shoot bracketed shots, there are also a few more advantages: you can always create an HDR image, you can blend different parts of the image yourself if you need to, and, if something is moving through the scene, you can replace it with original image data instead of relying on Photoshop’s tools.

Now, exposure bracketing only works well in certain situations. It’s really a landscape or architecture photography technique. If you’re photographing people, pets, or anything else that moves a lot, you won’t be able to shoot bracketed exposures; instead, you’ll just be taking different photographs with different exposure values.

There are two ways to take bracketed exposures: manually and automatically.

Read the remaining 12 paragraphs

Sebastian Kaulitzki/Shutterstock

When you buy a new appliance, you’re making an investment that should last a while, but that may not be true for smart appliances. Manufacturers aren’t obligated to keep your machine up to date, which could turn your investment sour.

Today, there are still plenty of homes furnished with fridges, stoves, and washing machines from the ’80s. These appliances may not look as good as they used to, and they probably inflate electric bills, but they’re reliable and easily serviceable. Some of these appliances may survive for another ten or twenty years. So it’s fair to assume that a brand new appliance will last for decades, right?

Well, it depends on what you buy. Let’s say that you’ve invested in a smart appliance, like the Samsung Family Hub smart fridge or an LG smart A/C unit. You could’ve bought a cheaper appliance, maybe even a refurbished appliance from the 2000s. But you (justifiably) consider the functions of a smart appliance to be a major selling-point and worthwhile investment.

Well, there’s a chance that your expensive smart appliance will be dumb in less than a decade.

Remember landlines? They tended to last for a while, and you didn’t need to replace them unless you wanted a voicemail receiver or a cordless phone. But cell phones are a different story. According to a Gallup poll, 44% of Americans replace their cellphone every two years, and most cellphones become obsolete after about five or six years.

People don’t complain too much about having to buy a new phone every few years, mostly because they don’t have much choice. Smartphones regularly require new hardware and software to keep up with the times, and old computers tend to slow down. Not to mention, people are becoming increasingly concerned about privacy, and older phones can be more vulnerable to hacking attempts.

When you consider the fact that smart appliances are built like smartphones and tablets, and that they’re meant to work in tandem with smartphones and tablets, it raises a question. Will smart appliances need to be replaced every five or six years? Obviously, your smart fridge isn’t going to stop producing cold air just because its smart features are out of date. But if you dropped thousands of dollars on a smart fridge that can’t stay smart, then that’s a serious problem.

The first wave of smart appliances came to market less than a decade ago, yet companies are already showing that they’re not interested in putting out firmware updates. And a lot of these appliances are hitting the market with rushed, underdeveloped software, so people are already finding themselves with smart appliances that aren’t so smart.

LG sold their brand of smart appliances (ranges, A/C units, washing machines, and so on) with the promise that they’d work with Google Home, but early adopters in the US claimed that their devices couldn’t connect to Google Home. They also complained that LG wouldn’t offer any support for the problem.

Read the remaining 28 paragraphs

1. Raised Dots
2. Unique Wire Leads
3. Colored Bands
4. Serial Numbers

Think you know the answer?

Ad blocker uBlock Origin “can no longer exist” if a proposed change to Chrome goes through. That’s according to Raymond Hill, the developer of uBlock Origin and uMatrix, in a comment on Chromium’s bug tracker.

As spotted by The Register, Google engineers are proposing this change in the Chromium project’s bug tracker. Chromium is the open-source browser that forms the basis for Google Chrome, Opera, and soon Microsoft Edge.

Don’t worry, though: This won’t break ad blockers entirely. Instead, Google engineers are taking permissions away from browser extensions. Right now, ad blockers and other extensions use the “webRequest” API to listen for events during web page loads and block them.

If the proposed change goes through, extensions won’t be able to block events with this API. Extensions can only watch these events, and that should speed up page load times. Chrome won’t have to wait for extensions to weigh in while loading a page.

Ad blockers must use the “declarativeNetRequest” API to tell Chrome what they want to block. Chrome itself does the blocking without waiting for extensions to respond, and this should be faster. However, declarativeNetRequest uses an Adblock Plus-style filtering system.

Raymond Hill notes that, if this change goes through, ad blocker uBlock Origin and content filter uMatrix can’t do anything special:

If this (quite limited) declarativeNetRequest API ends up being the only way content blockers can accomplish their duty, this essentially means that two content blockers I have maintained for years, uBlock Origin (“uBO”) and uMatrix, can no longer exist.

Beside causing uBO and uMatrix to no longer be able to exist, it’s really concerning that the proposed declarativeNetRequest API will make it impossible to come up with new and novel filtering engine designs, as the declarativeNetRequest API is no more than the implementation of one specific filtering engine, and a rather limited one (the 30,000 limit is not sufficient to enforce the famous EasyList alone).

Read the remaining 4 paragraphs

Microsoft releases “C” and “D” updates to people who click “Check for Updates” in Windows Update. Those people become unwitting beta testers. January 2019’s C update has a rare distinction: Microsoft tested it with Windows Insiders first.

C and D updates are released in the third and fourth week of most months. They include non-security fixes and are only installed for people who click the “Check for Updates” button in Windows Update. These people essentially beta test the updates before the fixes form part of next month’s stable Patch Tuesday updates. Those Patch Tuesday updates are named “B” updates, as Patch Tuesday is in the second week of each month.

These C and D updates have caused problems before. For example, a “D” update recently caused blue screens on Microsoft’s own Surface Book 2 hardware. Only people who clicked the “Check for Updates” button would have installed it and encountered the problem. Microsoft calls these people “seekers” and thinks they’re looking for more updates, but we think most people clicking that button have no clue they’re opting into unstable updates.

There’s finally some good news, though! As Woody Leonhard points out at AskWoody.com, this month’s C update—Windows Update KB4476976—has actually gone through thorough testing in the Windows Insider Release Preview ring earlier this month:

It’s finally out. The first Win10 patch (to the best of my knowledge) that’s been thoroughly tested in the Windows Insider Preview Ring — and I’d be willing to bet that it’s pretty stable.

…Raise a glass of cheer. We may be witnessing a fix to Microsoft’s fumbled fixing method.

This is still a C update and it’s still only installed if you click “Check for Updates,” but “seekers” who do click that button will be getting a patch that’s already gone through a round of testing with people who know what they’re getting into. Windows Insiders are, of course, people who’ve chosen to be beta testers.

Read the remaining 12 paragraphs

Are you the proud owner of a 2016 or newer MacBook Pro? Unfortunately, there’s a ticking time bomb on the inside that will eventually cause issues for the display’s backlight, and it’s a design flaw that affects every single unit.

Forever known as “Flexgate” (and detailed by iFixit), the issue deals with the MacBook Pro’s flexible display ribbon cables, which Apple designed to be extremely thin in the newer models. Unfortunately, they made them too thin, and with enough opening and closing of the lid, that thin cable will prematurely wear down and tear apart.

This causes the backlight of the display to give off a “stage light effect” at the bottom of the screen, and eventually craps the bed entirely once the lid is fully open, as demonstrated in the video below.

Unfortunately, according to iFixit, these cables are a part of the display, so the cables alone aren’t replaceable, but rather the entire display assembly has to be replaced, which is an expensive repair to say the least. Worse yet, iFixit says that it’s not a matter of “if” this will happen to your unit, but “when” it will happen.

This isn’t just a manufacturing defect that affects a small number of MacBook Pro units. Rather, it’s a design flaw which affects every single unit made since 2016. Some users have been able to get their unit repaired free of charge, but others haven’t been so lucky. The best thing you can do is contact Apple support as soon as you start having issues.

Apple has yet to officially address the issue, but as time goes on, we’re betting that we’ll see more and more complaints about this, and Apple will eventually have to do something.

via iFixit

For the longest time, Twitter has been doing that thing where it shows “popular” tweets instead of the newest stuff. The thing is, that’s a terrible way to experience Twitter. But now you can (finally) arrange tweets chronologically.

This is a relatively new feature on both iOS and Android, but at this point, it should be available to everyone. To keep things simple, the process is identical on both platforms. Here’s the skinny.

With your Twitter open on your timeline, take a look in the upper-right corner. There should be a little star icon there. Tap that thing!

A new menu will open, giving you the option to “See latest Tweets instead.” Tap that to magically, automatically, and some other “cally” get your Tweets in chronological order. The tastiest way to consume Twitter.

If you get sick of seeing things in a way that makes sense, you’re also free to go back to the Twitter-curated method. Just tap the little star icon again, the choose the somewhat-snarkily named “Go back Home” option.

Read the remaining 3 paragraphs

With iPhone and iPad, particularly the former, iMessage is integral to the way we communicate. It’s likely one of the most used apps for a lot of us. Emoji users love it, but did you know you can easily use words to call up Emoji?

One of the great things about iPhone and iPad is that their onscreen keyboards make it possible to quickly and easily switch to a host of Emoji that you can enter with a tap, but there are some other ways to send Emoji via Messages, and one of them, in particular, is super fast. In fact, there are two methods of adding Emoji-shaped flair to a message that you might not know about.

If you’re in the middle of writing a great message, nobody likes to have to switch keyboards mid-flow. If you’re using an iPhone, that’s not necessary because iOS will suggest Emoji based on the word that you just typed. To test it out, type the word “Apple” into a Messages text entry window and note what happens in the QuickType bar, just above the keyboard. Notice the two Emoji apples?  To select one, just tap it.

Note: Turn off the QuickType bar and forget how to turn it back on? Here’s how to enable and disable Predictive Typing on your iPhone or iPad.

This works mid-sentence and is a super quick way to avoid having to switch keyboards when composing a message. It even works for multi-word Emoji names, like “Thumbs up.”

If you’ve gotten to the end of a message and want to add some Emoji for a little color, that’s not a problem either. There’s no need to go back and start editing; instead, switch to the Emoji keyboard by tapping the icon below the keyboard.

Read the remaining 5 paragraphs

If you own an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, or an Apple TV, you might be pleased to know that a software update is available for each of these devices. So you may want to hit refresh in settings.

The version numbers for these updates are as follows:

• iPhone, iPad: 12.1.3
• Apple TV: 12.1.2
• Mac: 10.14.3

These updates merely just consist of bug fixes that improve the “security, stability and compatibility” of most devices, but even though they don’t come with any big new features, it’s worthwhile to update your device to the latest and greatest.

The most noteworthy thing is probably for HomePod. iOS 12.1.3 fixes issues that could cause HomePod to restart, as well as an issue that causes Siri to stop listening. Otherwise, here’s what’s going on under the hood on iOS devices:

– Fixes an issue in Messages that could impact scrolling through photos in the Details view
– Addresses an issue where photos could have striped artifacts after being sent from the Share Sheet
– Fixes an issue that may cause audio distortion when using external audio input devices on iPad Pro (2018)
– Resolves an issue that could cause certain CarPlay systems to disconnect from iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max

via AppleInsider

Wacaco

In need of an espresso fix wherever you go? We’ve got you covered with a bunch of great portable espresso machines that mean you won’t miss out on a delicious cup of coffee.

We’ve looked at portable espresso machines that are exactly that — small enough to take out and about with you, while also being powered through some means that doesn’t require a mains electricity supply. Wherever you’re on a long drive and need a cup of coffee to keep going, or you’re out hiking or camping, there’s a portable espresso machine for you.

RELATED: The Best Big Thermoses And Insulated Growlers For Hot And Cold Drinks

One thing you may want to keep in mind is that you’ll need super hot water to power most of these portable presses. If you’re at an office that has an electric kettle or water cooler with a hot water tap, that’s one thing, but if you’re in your car or on a hike you’ll want to tote along a big thermos full of hot water.

Here are some of our favorite portable espresso machines currently out there.

We’re going to level with you straight away—the Wacaco Nanopresso isn’t for the faint hearted but wow, does it make a good cup of espresso. It’s built around a pumping system so there’s no need for a battery or electrical supply. The downside here is that you have to pump it hard to maintain stable enough pressure to make a great espresso. It’s worth it though (especially if you’ve ever thought “I wish making my morning coffee was more similar to pumping up bike tires”).

It works with all varieties of ground coffee, and you simply add boiling water to its tank then pump manually until complete. At the end of that, you have a great drink and you never once had to worry about electricity. The water tank can hold up to 80ml of water with the device itself small and lightweight so it’s perfect for taking on trips with you. It’s tough too, so you don’t have to worry about the odd knock.

If you’ve got the arm strength for it, you can’t fault the Wacaco Nanopresso. It works great and you can make good espresso anywhere from a hotel room to a mountain slope.

The Barsetto Tripresso is a great portable espresso maker that makes an even better gift. It brews up to 355ml of coffee with a consistent flavor from start to finish. It’s made from stainless steel with a high-quality anti-slip silicon so it’s able to withstand you taking it out and about without an issue. A double wall vacuum gives you insulation while fully closed, keeping your coffee warm for up to 6 hours.

Read the remaining 9 paragraphs

DxOMark, the website that’s trusted for its camera ratings, has been testing the image quality on phone cameras for a while. But now they’ve started rating the selfie cameras on phones, a move that shows how powerful our phone’s cameras have become.

There’s a chance that you haven’t heard of DxOMark, but you’ve felt the website’s impact. Tech journalists consider DxOMark a leading authority in image quality assessments, and their ratings for phone cameras have a big influence on product reviews and marketing. If you’re a self-proclaimed phone photographer, then DxOMark is probably one of the reasons why you own the phone that’s in your pocket right now.

Earlier today, DxOMark published ratings for the selfie cameras on 12 different phones, and the company promised to rate cellphone selfie cameras in the future. But up until this morning, DxOMark only provided ratings for cellphones’ primary cameras. They didn’t bother testing the selfie cameras that are on phones, presumably because selfie cameras are notoriously underpowered and inconvenient for conventional photography.

DxOMark’s choice to start rating selfie cameras is an acknowledgment that our culture and our technology are changing. Selfies have become a serious form of photography. Even if you think that selfies are stupid, you can’t escape the fact that a large percentage of the photos that we take today are selfies. The cameras in our phones have grown to accommodate this trend, and as DxOMark shows, the front-facing cameras in our phones are only a little less powerful than our phones’ main cameras.

So, which phones have the best selfie cameras? Well, DxOMark gave both the Google Pixel 3 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 an average score of 92. But they’ve detailed some aesthetic differences in the cameras that may appeal to different people. The Samsung has a low noise ratio that makes faces appear smoother, while the Pixel shows a lot of texture that makes photos appear slightly noisy. The iPhone XS/Max came in with a score of 82 points, mostly due to its poor low-light performance.

Just think, the selfie cameras in phones have become so good that they’re discussed on terms of minute aesthetic differences, not just resolution.

via DxOMark