RIP Sir Clive Sinclair, creator of UK’s famed ZX Spectrum gaming computer

Enlarge / Sir Clive Sinclair holding the world's smallest television screen when it was created by Sinclair Radionics in 1977. (credit: Getty Images) Sir Clive Sinclair, the namesake of a British electronics manufacturer who helped pioneer Europe's microcomputing boom, is dead at the age of 81. His company, Sinclair Radionics, is arguably best known...

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Study confirms superior sound of a Stradivari is due to the varnish

Enlarge / A 1729 Stradivari known as the "Solomon, Ex-Lambert" on display at Christie's in New York in March 2007. (credit: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images) Along with Andrea Amati and Andrea Guarneri, Antonio Stradivari dominated the so-called Golden Age of Violins (roughly 1660 to 1750), and the instruments they crafted remain the gold standard today...

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Nintendo’s “thing after the Switch”: How an overheard convo sent me reeling

Enlarge / Today's very brief hint of the gaming future comes wrapped in a Nintendo bow. (credit: Aurich Lawson) SEATTLE—It's not every day I hear about unannounced Nintendo products over guac. Thanks to a chance encounter last month, I've been sitting on one of the weirder scoops in my 25-year writing career—one that will simultaneously set many...

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Battlefield 2042 joins recent game-delay frenzy, moves to November

Enlarge / This looks fun. (credit: EA) Battlefield 2042 has been delayed from its initial October 22 release date, though it will still launch this year, EA announced today. The multiplayer-only shooter will now hit stores on November 19, the publisher said in a statement. Citing the complications of developing games in a work-from-home environment...

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Lost Judgment impressions: 15 wild hours in Yokohama

Lost Judgment's action detective, Takayuki Yagami. At a glance, Lost Judgment may seem intimidating to anyone who hasn't graduated from Sega's school of hard Yakuza knocks. To start, it’s a spinoff of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s long-running crime series, which is saddled with a truckload of backstory. On top...

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How 13 Reasons Why sparked years of suicide-contagion research

Enlarge / Back in 2017, the first season of the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why sparked controversy about suicide contagion. Four years later, a new UCLA study offers guidance for Hollywood on how to best handle such topics going forward. (credit: Netflix) When 13 Reasons Why debuted on Netflix on March 31, 2017, it was initially met with mostly rave...

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Nintendo Switch finally supports Bluetooth audio—but beware the lag

Enlarge / Bluetooth on Switch, presented as an overly literal image translation of the concept. (credit: Sam Machkovech) In an out-of-nowhere Tuesday evening update, Nintendo reversed course on one of the Nintendo Switch's biggest limitations: its lack of Bluetooth audio support. Bluetooth functionality is now live through the system's 13.0 firmware,...

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Storage galore: New PS5 update finally lets users add more space for games

Enlarge / A major new update to the PS5 firmware lets players upgrade the console's internal storage via an M.2 SSD. Players will be able to add specific M.2 SSDs to the PS5 with a new system update rolling out tomorrow, two months after a beta that featured the option was made available to users who signed up. As detailed in a post on the PlayStation...

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It’s all in the ink: Vinland Map is definitely a fake, new analysis finds

Enlarge / The Vinland Map purports to be a 15th-century map with a pre-Columbian depiction of the North American Coast. A new analysis has confirmed that the map is, in fact, a modern-day forgery. (credit: Yale University) Scholars have questioned the authenticity of a purported 15th-century map housed in Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book &...

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Cruis’n Blast review: ’90s arcade racing, supercharged for the modern era

Flipping past a T-Rex in a shiny, blue sports car: that's the Cruis'n Blast lifestyle at work. [credit: Raw Thrills / Nintendo ] Cruis'n Blast's placement on my list of favorite video games of 2021 should not be taken as a universal recommendation....

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