Gear Live: The Latest Tech, Gadgets, AI, and Gaming News
Audi’s A2 e-tron Starts at €38,200 With Up to 646 km of WLTP Range
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Design, Transportation,
Audi has spent the last few years selling big, heavy, expensive electric cars. The A2 e-tron is the correction. It's a compact hatchback about the size of a Volkswagen ID.3, it starts at €38,200 in Germany, and its best trick is how little electricity it uses. The efficiency champ of the lineup needs 12.8 kWh to cover 100 km on the WLTP cycle, which Audi says makes it the most efficient production car the company has ever built.
Pricing went public this week, and it splits into four versions, all built in Ingolstadt. The 125 kW car with a 52 kWh LFP pack is €38,200. The 140 kW car with 61 kWh of LFP is €41,900. Step up to the 84 kWh NMC pack and you pay €48,900 for 170 kW or €51,200 for 240 kW. Order books open September 10, with first deliveries in December.
Click to continue reading Audi’s A2 e-tron Starts at €38,200 With Up to 646 km of WLTP Range
LEGO’s Next Zelda Set Puts Link on Epona With 1,750 Pieces
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Toys, Video Games,
LEGO started its Zelda line with a tree. Then it built a castle. Now it wants you to build a horse, and it would rather not say what the horse costs.
The LEGO The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time – Link & Epona set got a few seconds of screen time during Nintendo's Zelda 40th Anniversary Direct on Tuesday. Nintendo's own description calls it a 1,750-piece collectible display model for adults, due in spring 2027. That is the whole spec sheet. No price, no set number, no dimensions, and no preorder date.
Click to continue reading LEGO’s Next Zelda Set Puts Link on Epona With 1,750 Pieces
Advertisement
166 Investigations, 36 Convictions: Taiwan’s Six-Year Hunt for Hidden Chinese Chip Labs
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News,
In the spring of 2020, a 32-year-old chip designer in Hsinchu took what looked like a great job. The company, Blue Ocean Smart System, was American. The work was an ambitious AI chip design project. The salary was $120,000, roughly double the Taiwanese industry average, enough to cover private elementary school for his two kids. Then he started noticing that he had never actually spoken to an American coworker. The people in his weekly meetings, the ones he was handing his engineering code and chip designs to, were all in Nanjing.
In August 2021, Taiwanese investigators raided the company. They alleged the Hsinchu operation was a locally registered front for the Nanjing firm of the same name (the Chinese name differed by exactly one character) and that it had no permission to operate in Taiwan at all. The Taiwan office was shut down. That was one case out of 166.
Latest Andru Edwards Videos
The Zelda movie is called The Legend of Zelda, and drops on April 30, 2027
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Editorial, Movies, Video Games,
Nintendo had the biggest Zelda stage it has built in years, a 40th anniversary Direct packed with a remade Ocarina of Time and a themed Switch 2, and when it came time to talk about the live-action movie, it showed a logo. The title is The Legend of Zelda. No subtitle, no footage, no release date you didn't already know. Shigeru Miyamoto came out, said a few careful sentences, and that was the segment.
I don't think that's nothing. A logo reveal is still a reveal, and Miyamoto on camera talking about a movie is rare enough that people will pull it apart frame by frame. But seven months out from a worldwide theatrical release, "here's the font" is a strange thing to lead with, and the way Nintendo framed it tells you a lot about how it plans to run this campaign.
Click to continue reading The Zelda movie is called The Legend of Zelda, and drops on April 30, 2027
Logitech’s $99 MX Keypad Bets Your AI Prompts Deserve a Physical Button
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Accessories, Peripherals, Artificial Intelligence,
You probably have a prompt you retype several times a day. Something like "run the tests and fix whatever breaks," or "explain this function to me like I just joined the team." You paste it into Copilot, then paste it again into a terminal ten minutes later. Logitech's bet is that a prompt like that has earned a physical button.
The MX Keypad went on sale September 8 for $99.99 in Graphite and Pale Grey. You get nine keys, each one a small full-color LCD you can drop an icon on, plus two page buttons that cycle through as many as 15 pages of layouts. It measures 3.6 by 3.1 inches, weighs 96 grams, plugs in over USB-C, and works with macOS 13 or later and Windows 10 or later.
Click to continue reading Logitech’s $99 MX Keypad Bets Your AI Prompts Deserve a Physical Button
The Zelda 40th Anniversary Switch 2 Console Is Gorgeous and Game-Free
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Handhelds, Video Games,
Nintendo finally made a Switch 2 that doesn't look like every other Switch 2. The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition, shown off at Tuesday's Zelda Direct, is a black console with gold Triforce patterns across the back, dark green Joy-Con 2 controllers with Triforce detailing (and, per Siliconera, Zelda pixel art on the back of the right one), and a black dock with one big gold Triforce on the front. The wrist straps match too. It launches October 29, one week before the Ocarina of Time remake arrives on November 5.
It's the first special-design Switch 2 hardware since the system came out last year, and the first time the Joy-Con 2 has shipped in a color other than black. I'd have bought it for the dock alone. Then I read the fine print.
Click to continue reading The Zelda 40th Anniversary Switch 2 Console Is Gorgeous and Game-Free
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake Hits Switch 2 on November 5, and You Can Hum the Songs
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Video Games, Videos,
The highest-rated game on Metacritic is getting rebuilt from the textures up, and Nintendo finally put a date on it. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time arrives on Switch 2 on November 5, worldwide, as a Switch 2 exclusive. Today's Zelda 40th Anniversary Direct brought the cinematic trailer you see above plus roughly 15 minutes of gameplay, which is a lot more than the teaser we got back in June.
I've played this game more times than I'd admit to a doctor, and the detail I keep thinking about from today is the microphone. You can hum a song into the Switch 2 and Link's ocarina plays it back. A 28-year-old game found a new party trick.
Switch 2 Owners Are Getting Banned, and Nintendo Isn’t Saying Why
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Handhelds, Video Games,
Turn on your Switch 2 and find that Nintendo Switch Online is gone, the eShop won't load, and the screen is showing error code 2124-4508. Nintendo's own support page is blunt about what that means: the console has been permanently banned from connecting online for breaching the user agreements. A growing number of Switch 2 owners have been staring at that message since Saturday, and plenty of them say they have never run a pirated game.
The complaints piled up on the r/NintendoSwitchHelp subreddit over the weekend. One owner posting as OutlandishnessHour37 bought a console through the Indonesian marketplace Tokopedia back in June. Another, MathPrestigious, bought from Yodobashi Camera in Japan and got banned two days after taking it home. On the Chinese social app RedNote, at least 150 people have posted about losing network features. The reports stretch across Asia, Europe and the United States, though a pile of social posts is not a reliable way to measure how big a problem actually is.
Click to continue reading Switch 2 Owners Are Getting Banned, and Nintendo Isn’t Saying Why
Huawei’s Mate XT 2 Tri-Fold Lands Two Days Before Apple’s Foldable iPhone
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Design, Displays,
Apple's first foldable iPhone is expected on Wednesday. Huawei got out ahead of it on Monday with a phone that folds twice, and at the moment no other major manufacturer is selling one.
The Mate XT 2 Ultimate Design went official at Huawei's HarmonyOS 7 launch in China on September 7. It is the follow-up to the 2024 Mate XT, the first tri-fold phone anyone actually shipped, and it starts at 19,999 yuan. That is the same opening price the original carried two years ago.
Click to continue reading Huawei’s Mate XT 2 Tri-Fold Lands Two Days Before Apple’s Foldable iPhone
9 Smart Home Upgrades That INSTANTLY Improve Your Life (Video)
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smart Home, Videos,
You don't notice how much friction lives in your house until someone points it out. You dig for keys every time you get home. You cross the room for a light switch that's always on the wrong wall. Your blinds offer blinding sun or total darkness and nothing in between. None of it feels broken, because that's how houses have always worked. I've been deleting that friction one piece at a time, and these are the nine upgrades that did it, from a $40 smart plug to one that costs a lot more than I'd like to admit.
Click to continue reading 9 Smart Home Upgrades That INSTANTLY Improve Your Life (Video)