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Before I tested one of the Dan D’Agostino M400 MxV amplifiers, serial number 5879, with my Audio Precision SYS2722,1 I preconditioned it by following the CEA’s recommendation: I ran it at one-eighth the specified power into 8 ohms for 30 minutes. At the end of that time, the side-mounted heatsinks were hot, at 106.1°F (41.2°C), and the top panel was hotter, at 110.5°F (43.7°C). After testing the amplifier at high powers, the temperature of the top panel had risen to 120.4°F/49.1°C. The M400 MxV needs to be well-ventilated. The D’Agostino’s voltage gain was 26.9dB into 8 ohms, and the amplifier preserved absolute polarity (ie, was noninverting). The specified input impedance is 1M ohm. I measured 183k ohms at 20Hz, 152k ohms at 1kHz, and 129k ohms at 20kHz. Though lower than…

Seemed like a swell idea at the time. This past March, an intrepid trio of veteran backcountry trekkers gazed upon Half Dome, the granite monolith that rises majestically from California’s Yosemite National Park, and decided to ski down a steep, icy furrow that runs near its famously sheer northwest face. Never mind that their chosen route, dubbed Bushido Gully after the moral code of the samurai, is seldom used even for summer climbing ascents, and never for descents in inclement weather—too rugged, too exposed, too damn easy to slip to certain death. That’s just the sort of wintertime fun they crave. Shortly after a frigid-but-glorious sunrise, the trio’s deputized photographer, Eric Rasmussen, balances shakily on a precipitous slope with Half Dome’s lookout spot, known as the Diving Board, looming over his…

IT’S TAKEN LUCID 13 years to get here, from a humble battery supplier to an American EV start-up that’s valued at roughly $39 billion before delivering a single customer car. It takes less than 10 seconds to realize it’s been worth the wait. That’s how long the 1111-hp Lucid Air Dream Edition Performance needs to crack the quarter-mile, specifically 9.9 seconds at 144 mph. Here in the Arizona desert, just a few hours from Lucid’s greenfield factory in Casa Grande, I content myself with lung-squeezing whomps to 120 mph in the time it takes many cars to hit 60. With the Air in its electron-huffing Sprint mode, I struggle to put the spatial dislocation into words. You know how you flick a stray ant off a picnic table? In the Lucid…

Men, women show different interface with behavioral care November 6, 2020, OTAGO, New Zealand—Treatment patterns and use of national health services in New Zealand appear to differ between men and women with bipolar disorder, a new study suggests. Researchers found that the rates of people with bipolar in contact with specialist mental health services were 30 percent higher among women. In addition, women were more likely to receive only outpatient treatment and to have co-existing anxiety. Men had higher rates of co-existing substance use disorder and were more likely to be convicted of crimes when unwell, receive inpatient treatment, and receive compulsory treatment orders. The study, which appeared in the journal BJPsych Open, was entitled “Gender and mental health service use in bipolar disorder: National cohort study.” • Quality of life can predict mood states January 1,…

Lithium-ion batteries pack an amazing punch for their size. They’re robust enough to run our laptops for hours on a single charge, they’re at the core of the latest smartphones, and they even serve as the power plant behind cutting-edge electric vehicles such as the Tesla line. But lithium-ion batteries do have limits. Given how powerful laptops have become in the last few years, we’re relying on our machines for longer than ever. That has implications for batteries: They’re in service a lot longer, too. And sometimes, that means they show the limits of their technology. You may have had this happen to you: A laptop or phone you’ve had for years suddenly stops working, or maybe just starts showing some sign of internal physical swelling. The screen of your phone…

THE INSPIRATION FOR Mike Rabbitt’s HO scale H&R Steel Co. layout came to him in a flash – literally. As a youth in Sandusky, Ohio, Mike entertained himself riding his bicycle through the industrial landscape, observing the workings of the many factories and railroads in the city. One day he was outside a steel mill that he could look inside to see workers loading an electric arc furnace that converted scrap metal into steel. A sudden flash of light and blast of hot air almost knocked him over as the melting process began. The sight – as well as a wave of searing heat – took his breath away. It was a moment that kicked off a lifelong study of iron and steel, and ultimately the construction of several model railroads focusing…

When a big company with lax security suffers a breach that exposes your personal data, passwords, or profile pics, there’s not much you can do about it. That doesn’t mean you’re powerless to protect yourself, though: You can strengthen your security and guard your privacy at home. You don’t want to lose the novel you’re writing to ransomware or let a banking Trojan siphon off all your cash, right? Fortunately, you can mount a local defense against these local problems. Making your devices, online identity, and activities more secure really doesn’t take much effort. In fact, several of our tips about what you can do to be more secure online boil down to little more than common sense. 1. INSTALL AN ANTIVIRUS AND KEEP IT UPDATED We call it antivirus software, but fending…

Fifteen years ago, on January 9, 2007, I sat on the floor of a Las Vegas Convention Center entryway and pondered the iPhone. While I was running around the Consumer Electronics Show looking at the latest LG Chocolate, Steve Jobs was over at Macworld changing the world. I’d been covering smartphones for three years by then, and they were complex gadgets for road warriors. With the iPhone, Apple simplified the smartphone and made it a must-have for everyone. This wasn’t solely about Steve Jobs’ brilliance. He struck when several other technologies were becoming available—3G for the mobile web and capacitive touch screens for finger-friendly interfaces. And he worked without the legacy-software hangovers that Microsoft, Nokia, and Palm all struggled through from the first generation of proto-smartphones. The iPhone has made a huge number…

With the Apple Watch Series 8 and the Apple Watch Ultra, Apple has introduced features designed to help women take charge of their reproductive health. Except in the United States, women are no longer in charge of their reproductive health, and there is a risk that those who now are could get hold of the data from an Apple Watch and use it against women who use these features. At the Apple Event in September, Apple introduced a feature that it said, “takes our commitment to women’s health even further.” The Apple Watch Series 8 and Apple Watch Ultra each have two temperature sensors, one on the back and one below the display. Data from these sensors is added to Apple’s existing Cycle Tracking app to indicate and track ovulation. Users…

There’s a whole subculture out there of passionate people building vehicles in their garages, and not just kit cars. You’ve heard of homebrewed beer. These are homebrewed cars. In most cases builders use a mix of common components and hand-built one-off items to create a totally unique vehicle. Take Joe Harmon, for example, from Mooresville, North Carolina. While studying industrial design in grad school, Harmon decided to build something for his final project that had no precedent: “the world’s only wooden supercar,” as he put it. He built the Harmon Splinter over some 20,000 hours. The all-wood body was made of strips woven like carbon fiber on giant looms. He even handcrafted the wheels, which have floating spokes of walnut and ash, and packed a modified Chevy LS7 V-8 behind the…

The newest 992-generation Carrera Cup race car is the fastest in the Porsche single-make series’s 30-year history. It is, therefore, the best Cup car ever. Exactly how “best” is it? That’s the murky part. Objectively, it is about 1 percent faster around any given racetrack than the outgoing 991-generation car. To an engineer, a race-team owner, or a pro-level driver, that’s the difference between first and fifth. To almost everyone else, it’s inconsequential. According to Leh Keen, the lanky Atlantan who regularly puts this 311RS Motorsport Cup car on the podium, the new model is not just objectively superior; it’s also subjectively better. It’s easier and more comfortable to race, and more fun, too. And with service intervals for the engine and gearbox long enough to squeeze in two full seasons,…

Competition is the impetus for innovation. Which, in racing, translates to rising speed. Consider that the Ferrari 250 P that won Le Mans in 1963 maxed out at around 180 mph on the Mulsanne. Three years later, at the height of the Ford-Ferrari war, the GT40 routinely cracked 200 mph. The advancements in top speed made the Mulsanne all the more important to victory. And even more dangerous. “THE MULSANNE STRAIGHT, if you’ve got a good car, is a place to use the superiority that you’ve got,” says Richard Attwood, a Le Mans champ and one of the few still-living drivers of the original GT40 at the Circuit de la Sarthe. “You used all of the Mulsanne straight. We never eased off, unless it was raining or there was any sort…

Michelle Weisfelner Bloom, MD Associate professor, Division of Cardiology; director, Heart Failure and Cardiomyopathy Center; and codirector, Cardio-Oncology Program at Stony Brook University’s school of medicine in New York Dendy Engelman, MD Assistant clinical professor of dermatology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and head of dermatology at Shafer Clinic Fifth Avenue in New York City Karen Fields-Lever, DDS Founder of 28 to Brush Dental Studio in Forest Park, Illinois Carol Figuers, MS, PT, EdD Professor, Doctor of Physical Therapy division at the Duke University School of Medicine Christine C. Greves, MD Board-certified ob-gyn at the Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies Michelle Henry, MD Clinical instructor of dermatology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City Bridgette Hill Certified trichologist, colorist, and founder of the Root Cause Scalp Analysis Angela Holliday-Bell, MD Board-certified physician, certified clinical sleep health specialist,…

You’ll get plenty of sound career advice during your lifetime. Much of it will be valuable, but some of it will come at the wrong time or be the opposite of what you need to hear at that moment. Depending on your immediate needs and long-term desires, good career advice can turn out to be wrong for you. Curious to hear other people’s experiences, I asked around and collected ten pieces of career advice that don’t always hold up. 1. GO WHERE THE MONEY IS There are high-paying jobs, and then there are jobs that come with lower base pay but generous compensation packages that lead to more guaranteed money in the long term—and sometimes a happier life. The classic example: any job with a pension. If you collect a full pension for…

One glorious September afternoon, along the banks of the Seine, designer Gabriela Hearst held her first in-person show for Chloé. For it, she made the collection and presentation – spring/summer 2022 – as sustainable and inclusive as possible. How so? Guests were seated on cushions made of Chloé fabric remnants, atop benches of stacked bricks, constructed by Les Bâtisseuses, a network that trains women refugees. The clothes were conceived to be environmentally friendly, too. As Hearst believes “luxury fashion has become overly industrialised,” she introduced the Chloé Craft initiative: products handcrafted by independent artisans, such as the multicoloured sleeveless dress in recycled hand crocheted cashmere, or the white cashmere poncho with hand-painted blue stripes. Chloé’s staples, such as its signature tote bag, Nama sneakers and all of its denim, incorporated recycled…

AUTHORS WHEN WE FIRST traveled to China, in the early 1990s, it was very different from what we see today. Even in Beijing many people wore Mao suits and cycled everywhere; only senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials used cars. In the countryside life retained many of its traditional elements. But over the next 30 years, thanks to policies aimed at developing the economy and increasing capital investment, China emerged as a global power, with the second-largest economy in the world and a burgeoning middle class eager to spend. One thing hasn’t changed, though: Many Western politicians and business executives still don’t get China. Believing, for example, that political freedom would follow the new economic freedoms, they wrongly assumed that China’s internet would be similar to the freewheeling and often politically disruptive…

RYAN BUCHTER, 34, has spent almost half his life pitching in professional baseball. In those 15 years, Buchter has been traded four times, released three times, changed organizations 10 times, pitched for teams in 22 cities and only once spent a full season in the majors without being demoted or released. What his itinerant résumé does not show is its cost: a drinking problem and depression that left him so wounded he is speaking out because he knows his story is prevalent among players. “I really think it’s important to share my story [because] of how common it is,” Buchter says. “Truly, I want guys to be more open about receiving help. “This is something I’m extremely passionate about…. I want guys to know it’s O.K. as a man, [a] baseball player,…

Last November, in an otherwise mundane Week 10 meeting of noncontenders, the Chargers and Dolphins offered A GLIMPSE INTO WHAT MIGHT WELL BE FOOTBALL’S FUTURE. Facing third-and-10 late in the second quarter, trailing by seven, L.A.’s rookie quarterback, Justin Herbert, counted off five receivers and surveyed an atypical defensive front from his usual shotgun roost. Of the six Miami defenders milling around the box, none had a hand anchored to the ground. In fact, neither did any of the linemen charged with protecting Herbert. As the play clock ticked down, every player on the field stood, save for one: center Dan Feeney. At the snap, four of the Dolphins up front sprinted forward, intent on whizzing by backpedaling linemen rather than hunkering down and bulldozing through them. Herbert’s protectors parried the charge by…

Have you ever watched a game and wondered why a defense can’t prevent the ball from going to the one receiver everyone knows is getting it? Is it reassuring to know that many coaches have wondered the same thing? At this point, you surely know about the rule changes that have encouraged more passing and led to historic offensive output. You also have heard all about the forward-thinking passing concepts that are slowly (sometimes begrudgingly) absorbed from the lower levels of football, allowing rookie receivers to adjust to professional football faster than ever. But what you might not have picked up on is precisely why the NFL’s best pass catchers—and specifically, a certain quartet of them almost universally recognized by coaches and players as being a cut above the rest—get open on seemingly…

Professor Ordabayeva, DEFEND YOUR RESEARCH ORDABAYEVA: When people identify strongly with a brand, as football fans do with the NFL, a negative review may seem like a threat to their own identity. This often happens when the review comes from a “socially distant” source: someone who is dissimilar to them in terms of geographic location, age, gender, sports team affiliation, and so on. In that instance people are apt to question the reviewer’s right to criticize the brand. They may consequently feel an urge to “protect” it by increasing their preference for it and their intent to buy it. It’s a visceral reaction to what feels like a personal attack. HBR: Are our egos really that fragile? As a rule, no. Only certain types of brands trigger this reaction—ones in which you…

Electro-Motive Division FP7 and F7B diesel locomotives. Wm. K. Walthers Inc. offers these Proto series models decorated for Amtrak, Pennsylvania RR (Dark Green Locomotive Enamel), Soo Line (maroon), Southern Pacific (gray and scarlet), Southern Ry. (green and white), and VIA Rail Canada (blue and yellow) in two to four road numbers per scheme. The HO scale models have prototype-specific details and a die-cast metal frame. Direct-current models with 21-pin plug are priced at $189.98 (FP7) and $369.98 (FP7-F7B set). Versions with a dual-mode LokSound 5 sound decoder are $279.98 (FP7) and $549.98 (FP7-F7B). Wm. K. Walthers Inc., 414-527-0770, walthers.com Athearn made a big splash recently by announcing three newly tooled HO scale models for its Genesis family of products. A General Electric AC4400CW and an Electro-Motive Division SD90MAC will be added…

MOST RANKINGS ARE OPINION-BASED. Scouts watch games, whether via video or in person. They determine how to weigh performances over the course of the season compared to international tournaments. I have taken a different approach. While I have scouted and continue to do so, I set out to create a draft model that uses publicly available data to predict the best players in the NHL draft. I researched components of where successful players are drafted from. Those ranged from regions, leagues, point thresholds and other areas that contribute to predicting value at the NHL level. This research allowed me to build a model that considers a number of factors, weighs them accordingly and provides a ranking. The model accounts for league strength and comparative scoring. A player with 10 points in…

ALEXANDRA GRAY BENNETT and her husband were ready to nest. Finally back together in their native Minnesota—after they married, he had moved to Boston for business school—the couple were looking for an ideal home to start a family in. “We were basically Trulia regulars,” jokes Bennett. “But I remember the first moment I saw our house in 2017. I just had a feeling.” Set in the leafy Kenwood neighborhood of South Minneapolis, the 2,300-square-foot, two-and-a-half-story 1920s cedar-shingle dwelling had a traditional foursquare design, with a room in each corner and a central hall and stairway. It ticked all their boxes: It was simple and beautiful, close to lakes and trails for their Labrador, and—the kicker—walking distance from one of the city’s best playgrounds. Two years and one positive pregnancy test later,…

A long-time interest in the transition-era Denver & Rio Grande Western (D&RGW), in both standard gauge and narrow gauge flavors, plus a large (if somewhat inconveniently arranged) space set the stage for this multi-deck track plan. My client – I’m a professional layout designer – had already commissioned two excellent custom plans for somewhat different spaces, but little could be salvaged from either of those for the new space that, while ample, was festooned with doors, posts, and other obstacles. Moreover, it included a number of oddly angled walls. Based on my client’s personal interest and those earlier design efforts, the primary elements to include were Pueblo Junction wye and yard, the famous Hanging Bridge scene near Cañon City, the busy narrow gauge/standard gauge terminal at Salida, and as far north…

Today’s shortline railroads offer advantages for modelers with an interest in the contemporary scene, but who don’t care to tackle a Class 1 railroad. If the idea of running 50-year-old diesels alongside new passenger locomotives and cars appeals to you, the Morristown & Erie Railway may be the prototype you’ve been looking for. The M&E originated as the Whippany River Railroad in 1895. The line, renamed Morristown & Erie after a merger in 1903, served paper mills and heavy industries until the 1970s when these core customers began to disappear as a result of a general downturn in manufacturing in the Northeast. The Morristown & Erie of today dates to 1982 when a local businessman, Benjamin Friedland, bought the railroad out of bankruptcy and launched an aggressive campaign to develop new customers.…

DON’T THINK OF RIVIAN as a truck company. Sure, the brand’s first production vehicle, the R1T you see here, is a four-door pickup truck. And next to launch will be the R1S, a three-row SUV based on the R1T. And then there’s the cartoonish RPV, an electric delivery van with up to 900 cubic feet of cargo space. Amazon hopes to have 100,000 of these rigs in service by 2030. Trucks, all of them. But when founder RJ Scaringe launched his company—in 2009, in his twenties, having just finished engineering school—his dream was to build a mid-engine hybrid sports car. And if you want to understand Rivian, you have to think of it as a sports-car company. The evidence sits snug on the centerline of the R1T’s chassis: four electric motors, one…

With COVID-19 still keeping so many people working from home, Wi-Fi routers are doing a lot more than streaming movies and games. Not only are home Wi-Fi routers keeping millions of people working, but they’re also connecting an ever-growing range of smart home devices. That means picking one that does the best job for you and fits your budget is trickier than ever, especially now that we’re seeing more Wi-Fi 6 devices becoming available. When you’re shopping for a new router, start by considering the size of your coverage area and the number of clients you need to support as well as the types of devices that you’ll be connecting. Not everybody needs the kind of performance that you get with the latest and greatest models, and there’s no reason to…

It was the lack of ports that convinced me to stick with my four-year-old MacBook Air. At least the OS upgrades easily and seamlessly (not like Windows 10 on my Surface Pro). It was ludicrous to leave USB 3.0 out of the equation—hundreds of dollars in dongles would be useless. Plug in a dock? Ridiculous. Touch Bar instead of Touch Screen? Laughable. Maybe they will get it right in the future, but they seem to be stuck in a “form instead of function” mindset. —Firewallbill There are some things I like about macOS, such as apps that are single ZIP files without needing to install to registries or smear their files across the OS. I like the soft color palette they use. I think the underlining Unix OS renders graphics nicely. But…

When my wife, Jenny, and I decided in the fall of 2017 to sell our house of 47 years and move into a retirement community, that meant the Argentine Industrial District Ry. would be dismantled. At age 80, I had no plans to build another railroad. I decided to give away or sell everything. Some 700 freight cars, 25 locomotives, and numerous structures and all support materials were disposed of in about two months. We moved to the retirement community in January 2018. By then, I’d accepted the reality that I’d built my last railroad. But then something surprising occurred when in July, Jenny asked me whether I thought we could find a house in Prairie Village, as she missed living in our own home. We began looking, and to our…

Heard the one about how charging your phone overnight destroys its battery? How about this whopper: Macs can’t get viruses? There’s plenty of fake tech news floating around; each new generation of technology products and services begets even more false beliefs. A lot of those are pretty easy to discredit, but we found a few for this story that might make even our readers do a double-take! It’s possible you’re worried about something that isn’t true—or maybe something that used to be true but isn’t now, as new discoveries and updates cleared up the problem. Go through our list below and see if there’s something you thought was true but, well, isn’t. Then pass on the real deal to your friends, family, and social following, so they won’t fall prey to tech…

Your hard drive hasn’t been acting the same lately. It’s starting to make clicking or screeching noises, it can’t seem to find your files, and it’s moving really slowly. Every hard drive dies eventually, and when it’s near death, you’ll see the signs: Strange noises, corrupted files, crashes during boot, and glacial transfer speeds all point to the inevitable end. This is normal, especially if your drive is more than a few years old. On older spinning drives, moving parts such as the motor can degrade over time, and a drive’s magnetic sectors can go bad. “Your computer can notify you before data loss occurs, and the drive can be replaced while it still remains functional.” Newer solid-state drives (SSDs) don’t have moving parts, but their storage cells degrade a little every…

IMAGINE YOU’RE IN charge of powertrain development at Cosworth, the legendary English firm with fingerprints all over racing. Two separate automakers—Aston Martin and Gordon Murray Automotive—have brought a challenge: build a free-revving, naturally aspirated V-12 able to meet today’s strict emissions standards. GMA wanted 650-plus horses from 4.0 liters for its T.50 supercar; Aston Martin wanted 6.5 liters and 1000 hp for its Valkyrie hybrid hypercar. How do you proceed? You’d figure the answer lies in a microchip. Render a V-12 engine in ones and zeros and tweak a million variables until you nail it. You could fiddle for thousands of hours without ever having to machine, cast, forge, or weld a single physical part. Computer simulation is key for Cosworth, but it doesn’t show a complete view of internal combustion. “Imagine…

LAKE SPEED is famous for beating Ayrton Senna for the 1978 Karting World Championship, but he doesn’t even remember it. “He was just another helmet to pass,” says Speed. Then, fearing he sounds arrogant, Speed adds that in 1978 he was making his sixth attempt at the championship, having failed to claim it five years in a row despite his six national titles back home in the States. “I was totally focused. Senna was from Brazil, and 99.9 percent of the drivers that had won the world championship were from Europe, so I really wasn’t thinking about him at all. The only helmets I was racing against were the ones that were Italian.” Senna never did win a world karting title, although, as Speed says, “he went on and did really…

IF YOU WANT to get behind the wheel of a fully developed, ready-to-run electric race car today, you’ve got about two options. The first: Elbow your way in among the 24 top-flight professional drivers competing in Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile’s Formula E, guys with experience in touring cars, sports-car endurance racing, even Formula 1. You’ll pilot a bespoke carbon-fiber race car fielded by a team with a budget in the double-digit millions and the backing of a major global automaker. If this is a reality for you, you’re probably already on a first-name basis with some Andrettis or Penskes. Or you can go to Sacramento, Pennsylvania, a tiny rural hamlet nestled in the Appalachians, halfway between Harrisburg and more mountains. Pull up at Entropy Racing, a shop with an ancient yellow…

THINK OF THE GREATEST designs in American automotive history. The 1949 “Shoebox” Ford. The ’57 Chevy. The ’64-½ Mustang. The suicide-door Lincoln Continental. The muscular Sting Ray and all its forebears. Every one of the Forward Look Chryslers that flowed from Virgil Exner’s pen. The gobsmacking Buick Riviera. The razor-sharp Eldorado. The jolie laide Avanti. These designs have practically nothing in common. You’d never mistake a Buick for a Lincoln, a Studebaker for a Chrysler. But take another look at those faces. They’re all arranged around a ubiquitous, generic piece of mandatory equipment: the circular sealed-beam headlamp. It was a regulatory necessity—and an unsung motivator that pushed designers to unparalleled creative heights. Starting in 1940, U.S. automakers agreed on the round seven-inch sealed-beam as the universal standard headlight. It made replacing a…

Shelby Cobra BY A.J. BAIME SHELBY PHOTOGRAPHS BY MP CURTET “You gotta try this sandwich,” Bruce Meyer told me over the phone. “It’s from Nate ’n Al’s. World famous.” It was the automotive adventure of a lifetime, and it began with a tuna melt. Meyer and I were preparing to meet in his office in Los Angeles, and when I got there, the sandwiches were on his desk. Meyer is the founding chairman of the world’s most important auto museum, the Petersen in Los Angeles. He’s renowned for caretaking, experiencing, and sharing some of the greatest motoring masterpieces of all time. I had come with a big ask. Truly giant. Would he let Road & Track borrow, drive, and photograph his Shelby Cobra CSX2001? It was like walking into the Museum of Modern Art…

Smartwatches get dirty—filthy, even. But cleaning a smartwatch or a fitness tracker is a simple project, as long as you know a bit about the device and its materials. For example, if you have an Apple Watch, you need to know what kind of wristband you have, such as silicone, stainless steel, leather, or gold. Once you know your materials, you just have to pick the right cleaning supplies. In many cases, you won’t even have to buy anything special. Many common household items will do. SUPPLIES Here’s a list of any supplies you might need, many of them common household items: • water• mild liquid soap, either dish soap or hand soap• distilled white vinegar• microfiber cloth• unused coffee filter• cotton ball• all-purpose leather cleaner and conditioner• clean cotton sock• cotton swabs…

Dust, coffee stains, oil from your fingertips, food particles, plain old grime: If your laptop shows any of those, it’s time to clean and disinfect. Basic cleaning supplies and 15 minutes of time can make your laptop look brand-new again. This guide goes through all aspects of laptop cleaning, including how to deal with its screen, the keyboard, the outside surfaces, the vents, and the ports. We show you what to do and what to avoid, as well as share some handy tips on keeping your laptop looking clean all the time—not just when it achieves grungy critical mass. GET YOUR CLEANING SUPPLIES Most of the cleaning supplies you need might already be in your home. A proper cleaning cloth is first priority. Instead of a cotton rag or paper towels, which can…

When COVID-19 first hit, I was terrified to leave my home. As the father of three and a husband of 25 years, I felt helpless to protect my family as the narrative changed seemingly day-to-day. I knew fashioning medical masks from scarves was far from ideal, so I made masks for my family, friends, and any elderly customer that wanted one, using my 3D printer and some micron-level cloth filter material intended for residential HVAC systems. Still, I felt like I had no control over what was happening. The CDC reported in 2020 that between June 24 and 30, close to 40% of adults in the US reported at least one adverse mental health concern, including anxiety, depression, substance use, and suicidal ideation, among others. UK-based researchers introduced the term “COVID-19…

WATCH THE MASTERS ESPN and CBS, April 8–11 Tony Finau should be one of the biggest stars in golf. Everything about his game is outsize, from his height (6' 4") to his power off the tee (he has said he is chasing Bryson DeChambeau, and he is one of the few who can catch him) to his smile. He has a memorable name, a fun backstory, he is perpetually in contention and he might be the nicest player on the PGA Tour. There is just one small problem: He never wins. From October 2017 through the beginning of March, Finau finished in second place eight times. He didn’t win once. His run of near-greatness is maddening; it seems so statistically unlikely that one wonders whether Finau was born with a severe trophy allergy, or…

Dominican Republic A LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF Dear High School Senior Kim, I could obviously give you a road map of your journey from 12th-grade social butterfly to business mogul who’s on the cover of the SI Swimsuit Issue and point out all the pitfalls along the way, but that wouldn’t do you much good. And no, I’m not teasing you about your driving or the fact that right after you got your first car you wrecked it. Rather, what I’m saying is: I don’t want you to change a thing, because if you don’t make the mistakes you’re going to make, how will you learn? But there are a few things I want to share that I’ve picked up along the way. Back to that fender bender. When you got the car,…

EVERY NASCAR Cup Series champion since 2004, with the exception of one, has come from one of four teams: Joe Gibbs Racing, Team Penske, Hendrick Motorsports or Stewart-Haas Racing. “In racing, money wins, and money has always won,” says longtime driver Justin Marks. “And I think if you’re trying to tell a story that resonates with millions and millions of people around the world, the story can’t be, ‘This rich guy’s beating that rich guy.’ ” Marks, 41, noticed that those four core teams had another thing in common: the way they were named. “They were all sort of the namesakes of very successful owners,” he says. “As a result of that, there just weren’t really any fans of teams. Fans follow drivers, they follow the sponsors, or the car maker…

Let’s face it: For many model railroaders, the cliché about not getting any younger is no longer a laughing matter. Contrary to the laws of physics, smaller scale models are shrinking before our very eyes. Detail that used to pop out has mysteriously vanished. Hands that were steady enough to do neurosurgery now automatically stir our coffee. And eyes that could read the road number on an N scale boxcar at 10 paces now require reading glasses just to sign checks. Doesn’t sound like you? Your time will come, probably sooner than you think. Think positive thoughts! Rather than brood about how things “ain’t quite what they usta be,” let’s look at the positive side of the ledger. We do indeed have choices that will go a long way toward dealing with…

9. DAVID REINBACHER BORN Oct. 25, 2004, Hohenems, Aut. 2022-23 Kloten POS D HT 6-2 WT 185 SHOOTS R CENTRAL SCOUTING No. 5 (Int’l skaters) THERE ARE SOME scouts who believe Reinbacher’s value will be inflated by the fact 2023 doesn’t look like a strong draft for defensemen. In fact, there’s a chance Reinbacher will be the first blueliner to hear his name called. The Austrian-born defenseman fared well with Kloten in Switzerland this season and has the kind of size and skill set that translate well to the NHL. “There’s really nothing bad in his game,” one scout said. “He’s a good skater, he’s a good puck-mover, he has better than average skill, he has better than average compete, he has really good size. What’s not to like?” Scouts would like to see more offense from…

A half-dozen companies are potentially ready to spend $80 billion for C-Band, a new set of airwaves that promise to fix the perilous state of American 5G, at an FCC auction. That’s a vast amount of money, and it shows how important C-Band is. But what is C-Band, and what does it mean for 5G? Do you need a C-Band phone? Is C-Band a new frequency? Should you be scared of C-Band? I can explain. RECOVERING THE SATELLITES According to wireless testing firm Rohde and Schwarz, the C-band is all frequencies between 4GHz and 8GHz. When US wireless geeks talk about C-Band, though, they’re talking about 3.7GHz to 4.2GHz—and specifically, in this case, the range from 3.7GHz to 3.98GHz. This frequency had been used for satellite TV since the 1970s, but as C-Band…

Many of us dream of having a large model railroad in a basement or garage, with scale miles of track and long trains. But we’re often confronted with the reality of a lack of separate space to dedicate to a layout. By re-examining the space we have, it might be possible to build a layout in another part of the home that shares other family activities. It would take a tolerant spouse to agree to building a layout in the formal living room, dining room, or master bedroom. But family rooms and dens, with their ubiquitous televisions and children’s toys, are fertile ground for a model railroad. That’s exactly what I did. When I wanted to build a modern HO layout to complement my existing O scale Civil War-era layout, I…

Lamborghini Countach That the Piedmontese word countach translates roughly to “holy shit!” tells you all you need to know about the impact of this quintessential Lamborghini. Unlike earlier supercars, whose sensuousness was often compared to reclining nudes, designer Marcello Gandini’s brutal masterwork looks more like a deadly weapon, a flying ax-head. This is the Countach’s legacy: It defined a level of outrageousness against which all future supercars would be judged. But the Countach itself is defined by its mechanical packaging. Mounting the radiators at the sides meant the nose could plunge to a honed edge. The huge, longitudinally oriented V-12 faced rearward, its transmission pointed toward the front, centralizing the car’s weight and pushing the passenger compartment forward, inverting the typical sports-car proportions. Also, in the post-Countach era, a supercar without…

Windows 11 may be better known for its centered taskbar and rounded window borders, but the new Snap Layouts feature (sometimes also called Snap Assist) might be a more useful UI innovation. Windows, as its name implies, has long been excellent at managing and rearranging program windows, but Snap Layouts elevate the operating system (OS) to the next level. HOW DO SNAP LAYOUTS WORK? To get started with this new productivity tool, you simply hover the mouse over the Maximize icon in a program window’s upper-right corner. You’ll see a choice of layouts, like this: Note that not every application supports this feature. In my testing, the Firefox and Spotify programs showed only the old Maximize option. But you can still position them within a Snap Layout after starting the process with an…

Even after 51 years, CES still manages to pack some surprises. We’re not talking about the rain that caused crazy floods or the two-hour blackout in Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. We’re talking about 65-inch rollable OLED displays, robotic dogs, and $4,000 treadmills that deliver live workout classes on HD screens. There were plenty of less surprising, though no less welcome, innovations on display as well. We weren’t surprised to see voice assistance play a bigger role than ever this year, for instance. But we didn’t necessarily expect to see it embedded in the bathroom, where it can start your shower or turn on your toilet’s foot warmer. We’ve gathered our favorite 21 new products and technologies from the show. Although they aren’t all guaranteed to the make it…

Tearing down a model railroad that one has worked on for a long time, exerting a lot of sweat and blood, isn’t a fun task. It can bring a grown man to tears. However, one thing that makes it worthwhile is the thought that the next railroad will be better. In our minds we picture better trackwork, wider curves, longer sidings – the list goes on. What an opportunity! When my family was getting ready to build a new house, a place to build a new railroad was paramount. I ruled out a basement or attic, as both required stairs. Let’s face facts, we’re all getting older. Right now, stairs are no problem, but the time will come where our knees will balk at them. The answer was a separate but…

For years, security researchers have complained about the problems with passwords and dreamed of a better, password-free future. But that glorious dream remains elusive—this clunky, outdated technology is still the best solution we have. PROBLEMATIC PASSWORDS What has made passwords so compelling is that they solve multiple problems simultaneously. A password verifies the identity of an individual, since only the correct person would know the correct password. Requiring a password limits access to files and infrastructure, allowing multiple people with different levels of access to use the same systems. Most important, a password lives outside the computer, safely stored in someone’s head. Unfortunately, passwords have not kept pace with the number of sites and services that require them. In 2018, password manager Dashlane reported that the average person had 150 accounts that required…

Apple’s 2022 iPad Air is the epitome of a mobile tablet, with a nearly perfect balance of features and performance. The company’s M1 chip is impressively powerful, and support for the second-generation Apple Pencil makes the new Air a better creative tool than its predecessor. While battery life could be better, it’s not bad, so that’s a relatively minor complaint. If you’re looking for a do-it-all tablet with top-notch accessories, the 2022 iPad Air is the best choice in Apple’s tablet lineup—and a better bet than any Android tablet—earning it our Editors’ Choice award. PROS • Excellent performance • Works with second-gen Apple Pencil • Fits existing iPad cases and keyboards • Light and easy to carry CONS • Battery life could be longer • No millimeter-wave 5G support BOTTOM LINE The 2022 iPad Air offers many of the benefits…

The Apple Watch Series 8 looks exactly like its predecessor, but it offers some notable health and safety improvements that weren’t available on last year’s model. Its biggest upgrade is the ability to measure and track changes in your body temperature while you sleep, with a dual-sensor design for more accurate readings. If you have a menstrual cycle, the Series 8 can use your body-temperature data to estimate the date of your last ovulation. And on the safety front, the watch can detect whether you’ve been in a car crash and automatically call for help. With these upgrades, plus an already unrivaled user experience and app selection that’s further enhanced by watchOS 9, the Apple Watch Series 8 is still the best iPhone-compatible smartwatch for most buyers and remains our…

ON HIS 18TH birthday, Gordon Murray’s parents gifted him a set of Wild Heerbrugg Swiss drawing instruments. From those simple tools—a pen for lines, one for curves, a compass, some odds and ends—Murray’s future unfurled like a red carpet. “And then I was away, you know,” Murray says. “Once I had a drawing board at home and the instruments, I thought I was absolutely away.” The set of chromium-plated tools was built to offer a lifetime of dutiful service. And it did. Murray used them to design his first car, the T.1 (aka IGM-Ford). The burnt-orange Ford-powered imp looks like a Lotus Seven, but is lighter and stiffer. Murray cut his teeth on the car, rebuilding and refining, always looking to a future in motorsport. As a kid in South Africa, Murray grew…

KART RACING IS an outrageously physically demanding activity. The steering is, of course, unassisted. Your body is the suspension system. Bumps, curbs, and taps from competitors route directly through your corpus. And karting’s demands become more acutely felt as your body ages. I started racing karts when I was 12, running weekly at a local track through the warmer months as well as traveling around the country. It was a blast. Karting was hard, even then. And I remember having days when I was sore. But I don’t remember it incapacitating me. After this, my first run in nearly 20 years, I was a broken husk of a man. In one day, I aged 30 years. I suspected I’d cracked at least one rib. It’s not hard to see why. In a…

I REMEMBER STUMBLING upon the original Porsche 911 Sport Classic on a near-deserted stand at the stifling 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show. I shrugged at it as I shuffled past, jet-lagged, hungover, and sweating a worrying amount. My judgment, in that moment, might not have been entirely sound. But even after resting, hydrating, and returning to a country with functioning air-conditioning, I still didn’t really get the Sport Classic. It wore a ducktail spoiler on its engine lid and black Fuchs-style wheels at each corner. I assumed that the show car must be some sort of rolling advertisement for a line of retro-tinged accessories that the company would begin selling. Wrong. Porsche planned to build 250 examples of this tarted-up 997-generation Carrera S and price each at $225,000 (in today’s dollars). I…

You’re ready to get rid of the old, unused devices that have accumulated in your home and office. That’s admirable. But what are you going to do with the things you don’t want? You know you should dispose of these items, including electronic waste, in a responsible way. But what constitutes “responsible” leaves a lot of people guessing. When in doubt, leave it out—of the trash, that is. Here’s what else you can try. RESELL COMPUTERS, TABLETS, AND SMARTPHONES Reselling used electronics is a great option for desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. It can work for other items, too, but the aforementioned items are easy wins. The downside is that reselling can be a time-consuming process, so if your priority is getting rid of clutter, you may have to skip this one (look…

For PC Magazine’s charter issue in early 1982, the newly minted editor-in-chief and publisher David Bunnell flew to Seattle to interview a fresh-faced, 26-year-old Bill Gates, the president and co-founder of a little software company called Microsoft. Bunnell’s goal with this exclusive interview was to understand the part Microsoft and its software played in the development of the groundbreaking IBM PC that was born less than a year earlier. After all, that IBM PC was the namesake of Bunnell’s new publication. In the interview, the two discuss how much fun it was for Bill and his team to contribute to the IBM project, how gratifying it was to have been part of it, and how the IBM and Microsoft teams worked together to actually get it done. They even speak of…

Each morning, when NBA commissioner Adam Silver flips open his laptop and looks upon the records of the teams in his league, what he sees makes him smile: a cluster of squads competing for playoff spots with no one separated from the rest. “It’s the most compact our standings have been literally in the history of the league,” says Silver. “And that’s something that we see from the league-office standpoint as very positive.” Welcome to the new NBA, where a No. 8 seed can—and might—topple a No. 1 seed, and a half dozen teams (or more) will enter the playoffs with more than a puncher’s chance at a championship. Looking for superteams? Gone. Superstars? Evenly distributed. “This is the most competitive the league has ever been,” says Cavaliers president Koby Altman. Somewhere,…

Junctions have always been interesting places on any railroad. Some could be very busy, while others saw only sporadic action. My HO scale Reading Co. Shamokin Division depicts the anthracite (hard coal) mining region of eastern Pennsylvania, where numerous junctions branched off to serve distant mines during the steam-to-diesel transition era. The junctions on my layout represent such places found along the 40-mile main line between the Pennsylvania towns of Tamaqua and Shamokin. I’ve always been fascinated with the history and operating patterns of railroads in this region. As a longtime member of the Anthracite Railroads Historical Society, I appreciate the many resources they offer, especially their publication Flags, Diamonds, and Statues. One article from 1984 written by the late professional railroader Robert Malinoski has been a tremendous resource to me.…

ONE OF THE THINGS on my to-do list for a research trip to the American Midwest was to find a small, modern, rail-served business I could model on my layout. This turned out to be harder than I expected. Although I found several small businesses that used to be rail-served, the rails looked like they hadn’t been used for decades. Many times, the track wasn’t connected to the main line anymore. Then in Grand Island, Neb., I got lucky: A small Safety-Kleen facility that was still served by rail. Safety-Kleen is an oil recycling business, and the one in Grand Island receives a tank car or two at a time. It was perfect for my needs. The complex consists of an office connected to a small storage building. At the other end of…

The alarm sounded at around 3 A.M. on April 3. An electrical malfunction had stalled the behemoth South Pole Telescope as it mapped radiation left over from the Big Bang. Astronomers Allen Foster and Geoffrey Chen crawled out of bed and got dressed to shield themselves from the–70-degree-Fahrenheit (–57 degrees Celsius) temperatures outside. They then trekked the few thousand feet across the ice to restart the telescope. The Sun set on March 22 in Antarctica. Daylight won’t return until six months later. Yet life at the bottom of the planet hasn’t changed much — even as the rest of the world has been turned upside-down. The last flight from the region left on February 15, so there’s no need for social distancing. The 42 “winter-overs” still work together. They still eat…