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Friday, January 26, 2024

Quordle today – hints and answers for Saturday, January 27 (game #733)

It's time for your daily dose of Quordle hints, plus the answers for both the main game and the Daily Sequence spin off. 

Quordle is the only one of the many Wordle clones that I'm still playing now, around two years after the daily-word-game craze hit the internet, and with good reason: it's fun, but also difficult.

What's more, its makers (now the online dictionary Merriam-Webster) are also keeping it fresh in the form of a variant called the Daily Sequence, which sees you complete four puzzles consecutively, rather than concurrently. 

But Quordle is tough, so if you already find yourself searching for today's Wordle answer, you'll probably need some hints for this game too. 

I'm a Quordle and Wordle fanatic who's been playing since December 2021, so I can definitely help you solve Quordle today and improve your game for tomorrow. Read on for my Quordle hints to game #733 and the answers to the main game and Daily Sequence. 

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

Quordle today (game #733) - hint #1 - Vowels

How many different vowels are in Quordle today?

The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 4*.

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too). 

Quordle today (game #733) - hint #2 - total vowels

What is the total number of vowels in Quordle today?

The total number of vowels across today's Quordle answers is 9.

Quordle today (game #733) - hint #3 - repeated letters

Do any of today's Quordle answers contain repeated letters?

The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 1.

Quordle today (game #733) - hint #4 - total letters

How many different letters are used in Quordle today?

The total number of different letters used in Quordle today is 12.

Quordle today (game #733) - hint #5 - uncommon letters

Do the letters Q, Z, X or J appear in Quordle today?

• No. None of Q, Z, X or J appear among today's Quordle answers.

Quordle today (game #733) - hint #6 - starting letters (1)

Do any of today's Quordle puzzles start with the same letter?

The number of today's Quordle answers starting with the same letter is 2.

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #733) - hint #7 - starting letters (2)

What letters do today's Quordle answers start with?

• W

• F

• S

• F

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

Quordle today (game #733) - the answers

Quordle answers for game 733 on a yellow background

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle, game #733, are…

  • WORSE
  • FAUNA
  • SPOUT
  • FREAK

How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.


Daily Sequence today (game #733) - the answers

Quordle daily sequence answers for game 733 on a yellow background

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #733, are…

  • ADORN
  • ROCKY
  • COCOA
  • QUASH

Quordle answers: The past 20

  • Quordle #732, Friday 26 January: ONION, SHONE, KNOLL, PARRY
  • Quordle #731, Thursday 25 January: SIGMA, SHALT, SPREE, EAGLE
  • Quordle #730, Wednesday 24 January: YOUTH, PENCE, CRAZE, LUNAR
  • Quordle #729, Tuesday 23 January: BEZEL, MEALY, SLUNG, FREER
  • Quordle #728, Monday 22 January: APPLE, TRAIN, ABBEY, SPELL
  • Quordle #727, Sunday 21 January: PERCH, FIEND, THREW, MEDAL
  • Quordle #726, Saturday 20 January: SCOOP, RELAX, LAYER, TEETH
  • Quordle #725, Friday 19 January: SMELT, VENOM, SMALL, CHEEK
  • Quordle #724, Thursday 18 January: BAWDY, SCOUT, COCOA, SPECK
  • Quordle #723, Wednesday 17 January: TONAL, RAVEN, CURVE, DECAL
  • Quordle #722, Tuesday 16 January: STUNG, THETA, PAPAL, VAUNT
  • Quordle #721, Monday 15 January: QUAIL, NAVEL, FREER, SPLAT
  • Quordle #720, Sunday 14 January: WINCE, WOMEN, SMOKY, BADLY
  • Quordle #719, Saturday 13 January: SHRUB, ASCOT, COMMA, SHAWL
  • Quordle #718, Friday 12 January: VOWEL, EXILE, FUDGE, SMART
  • Quordle #717, Thursday 11 January: COUNT, HALVE, RARER, DALLY
  • Quordle #716, Wednesday 10 January: FLECK, CREAM, GUMMY, UPPER
  • Quordle #715, Tuesday 9 January: GHOUL, THINK, BLARE, TOPIC
  • Quordle #714, Monday 8 January: GOODY, MURAL, LORRY, ERROR
  • Quordle #713, Sunday 7 January: CARAT, TWANG, FLAME, THETA

Quordle FAQs: Everything you need to know

What is Quordle?

Where Wordle challenges you to guess a new five-letter word each day, Quordle presents you with four puzzles to solve. And rather than complete them in turn, you do so simultaneously. You get nine guesses, rather than the six for Wordle, but the rules are otherwise very similar. 

It's played online via the Quordle website and you can also get to it via the Merriam-Webster site, after the dictionary purchased Quordle last year

As with Wordle, the answers are the same for every player each day, meaning that you're competing against the rest of the world. And also as with Wordle, the puzzle resets at midnight so you have a fresh challenge each day.

The website also includes a practice mode - which I definitely recommend using before attempting the game proper! - and there are daily stats including a streak count. You also get Quordle Achievements - specific badges for winning a game in a certain number of turns, playing lots of times, or guessing particularly hard words.

Oh, and it's difficult. Really difficult.

What are the Quordle rules?

The rules of Quordle are almost identical to those of Wordle.

1. Letters that are in the answer and in the right place turn green.

2. Letters that are in the answer but in the wrong place turn yellow. 

3. Letters that are not in the answer turn gray…

4. …BUT the word you guess appears in all quadrants of the puzzle at the same time, so an A could turn green in one square, yellow in another and gray in the final two. 

5. Answers are never plural.

6. Letters can appear more than once. So if your guess includes two of one letter, they may both turn yellow, both turn green, or one could be yellow and the other green.

7. Each guess must be a valid word in Quordle's dictionary. You can't guess ABCDE, for instance.

8. You do not have to include correct letters in subsequent guesses and there is no equivalent of Wordle's Hard mode.

9. You have nine guesses to find the Quordle answers.

10. You must complete the daily Quordle before midnight in your timezone.

What is a good Quordle strategy?

Quordle needs to be approached in a different way to Wordle. With four puzzles to solve in nine guesses, you can't blindly throw letters at it and expect to win - you'll stand a far better chance if you think strategically.

That's the case in Wordle too, of course, but it's even more important in Quordle.

There are two key things to remember. 

1. Use several starting words

Firstly, you won't want just a single starting word, but almost certainly two or three starting words. 

The first of these should probably be one of the best Wordle starting words, because the same things that make them work well will apply here too. But after that, you should select another word or possibly two that use up lots more of the most common consonants and that include any remaining vowels.

For instance, I currently use STARE > DOILY > PUNCH. Between them, these three words use 15 of the 26 letters in the alphabet including all five vowels, Y, and nine of the most common consonants (S, T, R, D, L, P, N, C and H). There are plenty of other options - you might want to get an M, B, F or G in there instead of the H, maybe - but something like that should do the trick.

If all goes well, that will give you a good lead on what one or sometimes two of the answers might be. If not, well good luck!

2. Narrow things down

Secondly, if you're faced with a word where the answer might easily be one of several options - for instance -ATCH, where it could be MATCH, BATCH, LATCH, CATCH, WATCH, HATCH or PATCH - you'll definitely want to guess a word that would narrow down those options. 

In Wordle, you can instead try several of those in succession and hope one is right, assuming you have enough guesses left. It's risky, but will sometimes work. Plus, it's the only option in Hard mode. But in Quordle, this will almost certainly result in a failure - you simply don't have enough guesses.

In the scenario above, CLAMP would be a great guess, as it could point the way to four of the seven words in one go.



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Google's impressive Lumiere shows us the future of making short-form AI videos

Google is taking another crack at text-to-video generation with Lumiere, a new AI model capable of creating surprisingly high-quality content. 

The tech giant has certainly come a long way from the days of Imagen Video. Subjects in Lumiere videos are no longer these nightmarish creatures with melting faces. Now things look much more realistic. Sea turtles look like sea turtles, fur on animals has the right texture, and people in AI clips have genuine smiles (for the most part). What’s more, there's very little of the weird jerky movement seen in other text-to-video generative AIs. Motion is largely smooth as butter. Inbar Mosseri, Research Team Lead at Google Research, published a video on her YouTube channel demonstrating Lumiere’s capabilities. 

Google put a lot of work into making Lumiere’s content appear as lifelike as possible. The dev team accomplished this by implementing something called Space-Time U-Net architecture (STUNet). The technology behind STUNet is pretty complex. But as Ars Technica explains, it allows Lumiere to understand where objects are in a video, how they move and change and renders these actions at the same time resulting in a smooth-flowing creation. 

This runs contrary to other generative platforms that first establish keyframes in clips and then fill in the gaps afterward. Doing so results in the jerky movement the tech is known for.

Well equipped

In addition to text-to-video generation, Lumiere has numerous features in its toolkit including support for multimodality. 

Users will be able to upload source images or videos to the AI so it can edit them according to their specifications. For example, you can upload an image of Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer and turn it into a short clip where she smiles instead of blankly staring. Lumiere also has an ability called Cinemagraph which can animate highlighted portions of pictures.

Google demonstrates this by selecting a butterfly sitting on a flower. Thanks to the AI, the output video has the butterfly flapping its wings while the flowers around it remain stationary. 

Things become particularly impressive when it comes to video. Video Inpainting, another feature, functions similarly to Cinemagraph in that the AI can edit portions of clips. A woman’s patterned green dress can be turned into shiny gold or black. Lumiere goes one step further by offering Video Stylization for altering video subjects. A regular car driving down the road can be turned into a vehicle made entirely out of wood or Lego bricks.

Still in the works

It’s unknown if there are plans to launch Lumiere to the public or if Google intends to implement it as a new service. 

We could perhaps see the AI show up on a future Pixel phone as the evolution of Magic Editor. If you’re not familiar with it, Magic Editor utilizes “AI processing [to] intelligently” change spaces or objects in photographs on the Pixel 8. Video Inpainting, to us, seems like a natural progression for the tech.

For now, it looks like the team is going to keep it behind closed doors. As impressive as this AI may be, it still has its issues. Jerky animations are present. In other cases, subjects have limbs warping into mush. If you want to know more, Google’s research paper on Lumiere can be found on Cornell University’s arXiv website. Be warned: it's a dense read.

And be sure to check out TechRadar's roundup of the best AI art generators for 2024.

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Intel's troubles won't stop Arrow Lake from coming to your desktop, CEO insists

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has been adamant about the manufacturer’s upcoming Arrow Lake processors release window set for 2024, despite its revenue troubles during Q1 2024.

The tech giant’s financial results for Q1 2024 were released and with it, we found out that Intel share prices have plummeted by 12%, a massive decline versus the 10% increase in Q4 2023 compared to the same period in 2022. 

In defiance, Gelsinger has stated that the new server chips produced on Intel’s 3-node technology are still set. According to PC Gamer, he’s also “excited” about getting into the “Angstrom era with Intel 20A and Intel 18A,” especially as Intel has been an industry leader in that regard by about two years according to his statement. The 20A refers to the Arrow Lake processors, which are still on track for a 2024 launch, while 18A is set to launch more specifically in the second half of 2024.

Intel’s Arrow Lake is promising but… 

There’s a lot to look forward to when it comes to Arrow Lake. It’s not only buffed up with some of Intel’s best tech but the tech giant is reportedly packing in a host of other features. 

According to a rumor from known leaker Coelacanth Dream, Arrow Lake’s integrated graphics will be Xe-LPG Plus, meaning a superior version of current-gen Alchemist graphics cards. This makes for better performance compared to the base version of Xe-LPG, which is already in Meteor Lake. It will also include eXtended Matrix eXtensions (XMX), which is Intel’s version of AI upscaling meant to compete with Nvidia’s DLSS and AMD’s FSR.

Another rumor from leaker YuuKi_AnS on Twitter/X reveals that Arrow Lake-S processors may come with Thunderbolt 5, which comes with tons of new features, including 120Gbps of bandwidth and PCIe Gen4 x4 support. This makes it ideal to hook up external GPUs, which are graphics cards in an external enclosure that’s used for gaming laptops when at your desk.

That said, it’s quite worrying seeing the Intel CEO seemingly so desperate to assure us (and shareholders) that Arrow Lake is definitely coming out this year. If things were so assured, then why so much bullish promising? 

Of course, the main reason would most likely be the share price drop, though this is hardly uncommon in the tech industry. So why is he continuing this rather strange reassurance? It feels like it could have the opposite effect, making us wonder how things are truly going in the background.

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Thursday, January 25, 2024

Quordle today – hints and answers for Friday, January 26 (game #732)

It's time for your daily dose of Quordle hints, plus the answers for both the main game and the Daily Sequence spin off. 

Quordle is the only one of the many Wordle clones that I'm still playing now, around two years after the daily-word-game craze hit the internet, and with good reason: it's fun, but also difficult.

What's more, its makers (now the online dictionary Merriam-Webster) are also keeping it fresh in the form of a variant called the Daily Sequence, which sees you complete four puzzles consecutively, rather than concurrently. 

But Quordle is tough, so if you already find yourself searching for today's Wordle answer, you'll probably need some hints for this game too. 

I'm a Quordle and Wordle fanatic who's been playing since December 2021, so I can definitely help you solve Quordle today and improve your game for tomorrow. Read on for my Quordle hints to game #732 and the answers to the main game and Daily Sequence. 

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

Quordle today (game #732) - hint #1 - Vowels

How many different vowels are in Quordle today?

The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 4*.

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too). 

Quordle today (game #732) - hint #2 - total vowels

What is the total number of vowels in Quordle today?

The total number of vowels across today's Quordle answers is 7.

Quordle today (game #732) - hint #3 - repeated letters

Do any of today's Quordle answers contain repeated letters?

The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 3.

Quordle today (game #732) - hint #4 - total letters

How many different letters are used in Quordle today?

The total number of different letters used in Quordle today is 12.

Quordle today (game #732) - hint #5 - uncommon letters

Do the letters Q, Z, X or J appear in Quordle today?

• No. None of Q, Z, X or J appear among today's Quordle answers.

Quordle today (game #732) - hint #6 - starting letters (1)

Do any of today's Quordle puzzles start with the same letter?

The number of today's Quordle answers starting with the same letter is 0.

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #732) - hint #7 - starting letters (2)

What letters do today's Quordle answers start with?

• O

• S

• K

• P

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

Quordle today (game #732) - the answers

Quordle answers for game 732 on a yellow background

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle, game #732, are…

  • ONION
  • SHONE
  • KNOLL
  • PARRY

How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.


Daily Sequence today (game #732) - the answers

Quordle daily sequence answers for game 732 on a yellow background

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #732, are…

  • NEEDY
  • TRIAL
  • BROOD
  • TEPID

Quordle answers: The past 20

  • Quordle #731, Thursday 25 January: SIGMA, SHALT, SPREE, EAGLE
  • Quordle #730, Wednesday 24 January: YOUTH, PENCE, CRAZE, LUNAR
  • Quordle #729, Tuesday 23 January: BEZEL, MEALY, SLUNG, FREER
  • Quordle #728, Monday 22 January: APPLE, TRAIN, ABBEY, SPELL
  • Quordle #727, Sunday 21 January: PERCH, FIEND, THREW, MEDAL
  • Quordle #726, Saturday 20 January: SCOOP, RELAX, LAYER, TEETH
  • Quordle #725, Friday 19 January: SMELT, VENOM, SMALL, CHEEK
  • Quordle #724, Thursday 18 January: BAWDY, SCOUT, COCOA, SPECK
  • Quordle #723, Wednesday 17 January: TONAL, RAVEN, CURVE, DECAL
  • Quordle #722, Tuesday 16 January: STUNG, THETA, PAPAL, VAUNT
  • Quordle #721, Monday 15 January: QUAIL, NAVEL, FREER, SPLAT
  • Quordle #720, Sunday 14 January: WINCE, WOMEN, SMOKY, BADLY
  • Quordle #719, Saturday 13 January: SHRUB, ASCOT, COMMA, SHAWL
  • Quordle #718, Friday 12 January: VOWEL, EXILE, FUDGE, SMART
  • Quordle #717, Thursday 11 January: COUNT, HALVE, RARER, DALLY
  • Quordle #716, Wednesday 10 January: FLECK, CREAM, GUMMY, UPPER
  • Quordle #715, Tuesday 9 January: GHOUL, THINK, BLARE, TOPIC
  • Quordle #714, Monday 8 January: GOODY, MURAL, LORRY, ERROR
  • Quordle #713, Sunday 7 January: CARAT, TWANG, FLAME, THETA
  • Quordle #712, Saturday 6 January: HEFTY, GAZER, SWOON, DRAMA

Quordle FAQs: Everything you need to know

What is Quordle?

Where Wordle challenges you to guess a new five-letter word each day, Quordle presents you with four puzzles to solve. And rather than complete them in turn, you do so simultaneously. You get nine guesses, rather than the six for Wordle, but the rules are otherwise very similar. 

It's played online via the Quordle website and you can also get to it via the Merriam-Webster site, after the dictionary purchased Quordle last year

As with Wordle, the answers are the same for every player each day, meaning that you're competing against the rest of the world. And also as with Wordle, the puzzle resets at midnight so you have a fresh challenge each day.

The website also includes a practice mode - which I definitely recommend using before attempting the game proper! - and there are daily stats including a streak count. You also get Quordle Achievements - specific badges for winning a game in a certain number of turns, playing lots of times, or guessing particularly hard words.

Oh, and it's difficult. Really difficult.

What are the Quordle rules?

The rules of Quordle are almost identical to those of Wordle.

1. Letters that are in the answer and in the right place turn green.

2. Letters that are in the answer but in the wrong place turn yellow. 

3. Letters that are not in the answer turn gray…

4. …BUT the word you guess appears in all quadrants of the puzzle at the same time, so an A could turn green in one square, yellow in another and gray in the final two. 

5. Answers are never plural.

6. Letters can appear more than once. So if your guess includes two of one letter, they may both turn yellow, both turn green, or one could be yellow and the other green.

7. Each guess must be a valid word in Quordle's dictionary. You can't guess ABCDE, for instance.

8. You do not have to include correct letters in subsequent guesses and there is no equivalent of Wordle's Hard mode.

9. You have nine guesses to find the Quordle answers.

10. You must complete the daily Quordle before midnight in your timezone.

What is a good Quordle strategy?

Quordle needs to be approached in a different way to Wordle. With four puzzles to solve in nine guesses, you can't blindly throw letters at it and expect to win - you'll stand a far better chance if you think strategically.

That's the case in Wordle too, of course, but it's even more important in Quordle.

There are two key things to remember. 

1. Use several starting words

Firstly, you won't want just a single starting word, but almost certainly two or three starting words. 

The first of these should probably be one of the best Wordle starting words, because the same things that make them work well will apply here too. But after that, you should select another word or possibly two that use up lots more of the most common consonants and that include any remaining vowels.

For instance, I currently use STARE > DOILY > PUNCH. Between them, these three words use 15 of the 26 letters in the alphabet including all five vowels, Y, and nine of the most common consonants (S, T, R, D, L, P, N, C and H). There are plenty of other options - you might want to get an M, B, F or G in there instead of the H, maybe - but something like that should do the trick.

If all goes well, that will give you a good lead on what one or sometimes two of the answers might be. If not, well good luck!

2. Narrow things down

Secondly, if you're faced with a word where the answer might easily be one of several options - for instance -ATCH, where it could be MATCH, BATCH, LATCH, CATCH, WATCH, HATCH or PATCH - you'll definitely want to guess a word that would narrow down those options. 

In Wordle, you can instead try several of those in succession and hope one is right, assuming you have enough guesses left. It's risky, but will sometimes work. Plus, it's the only option in Hard mode. But in Quordle, this will almost certainly result in a failure - you simply don't have enough guesses.

In the scenario above, CLAMP would be a great guess, as it could point the way to four of the seven words in one go.



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Apple finally letting people run third-party browsers unfettered – but only in the EU and not because it wants to

For iOS 17.4, Apple is making sweeping changes to iPhones in the EU including finally giving users the ability to run native third-party browsers on their phone.

You may be wondering, “Aren’t there already third-party browsers on iOS?” Not exactly. The way things work currently is developers must rework their software to run on the WebKit framework, effectively turning browsers like Chrome on iOS into a reskinned Safari. As a result, features that work fine on Android don’t on iOS. But in the future, the tech giant will allow companies to use their own engines “for browser apps and apps with in-app browsing experiences.” What’s more, people can make their preferred browser the default on iPhone during setup. You will no longer be beholden to Safari.

This is a big deal for the everyday user. It means Google Chrome, the most popular browser in the world, will be able to deliver its intended experience to iOS for the first time. Of course, this includes other apps running on the Chromium engine like Edge and Opera. Independent options like Firefox are a part of this group too. 

Before developers can rush their unbound software to the App Store, Apple will need to approve them. A new support page on the Apple Developer website details all of the criteria teams must meet. It’s a pretty long document, but the main takeaways are that browsers must have robust protections for iPhone owners, block third-party cookies, as well as be exclusive to the European Union. 

App Store upgrade

As for the other changes, they center around several App Store upgrades 

Apple will now let people install apps from “alternative app marketplaces'' like the Google Play Store. There is a catch, however.  Software downloaded from outside the App Store “will not be compatible” with the platform’s features such as Ask to Buy or Family Purchase Sharing.

Every app from an outside app store must meet “Notarization requirements” before being allowed on iPhones, according to 9To5Mac. The process involves meeting multiple automated checks and a human review. Dev teams must prove their app is safe, fully functioning, and accurately represent their capabilities (No pulling a fast one on people). Once everything is squared away, companies can freely distribute their service on their preferred marketplace.

Regarding sideloading apps, Apple’s announcement doesn’t broach the topic at all. A recent Wall Street Journal report revealed the tech giant has plans to enact fees on platforms allowing sideloading to occur. But, the only money-related topics in the post revolve around offering developers new payment processing options and a reduced commission for iOS apps on the App Store.

These changes will “come into effect in March” across 27 EU countries. As we get close to the release date, Apple will publish resources explaining the iOS ecosystem update further.

Future expansion

If you live in the EU and want to try out the revamp yourself, iOS 17.4 beta is available for download via your iPhone’s Settings menu. Make sure you’re currently signed up for the Apple Beta Software Program to gain access. Check out our guide on installing an iOS 17 beta to learn how to do this. 

Now the question is: will all this roll out to the US and elsewhere? Maybe, but not right now. In another 9To5Mac report, a series of Apple statements make it abundantly clear that it’s not making changes because it wants to. It’s doing them because the brand is choosing to comply with the new rules set in place by the Digital Markets Act (DMA). 

When asked about expanding the App Store update, Apple doesn't want to because it sees the DMA changes as unsafe and doesn’t want to expose others to potential danger. That said, if the US passes its own version of the DMA, we could see the revamp elsewhere. 

While we have you, TechRadar recently updated its roundup of the best iPhone deals for 2024. Give it a look if you're looking for a new device.

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Good news Windows fans, the Ayaneo Next Lite gaming handheld will support your favorite OS

The latest in a long line of Ayaneo PC gaming handhelds, dubbed the Ayaneo Next Lite, will not only be an incredibly affordable portable option but will also be changing course on its OS.

According to a statement posted on the official Ayaneo Twitter/X account, the handheld will come with Windows 11 64-bit Home Edition pre-installed instead of Linux. A great option for those who are more familiar with Windows OS versus a Linux-based one. However, for those who prefer the latter, users will still have the option of the open-source HoloISO project version of Linux, which is based on SteamOS.

All this and the Next Lite is still launching at the very budget price of $299 up to and during crowdfunding, which is far less expensive than other options on the market. It’s a switch-up from the Next and Next Pro, which seems to be sticking with the Linux-based OS. And that makes more sense as they’re both meant to compete with the Steam Deck.

Ayaneko could differentiate itself from the market 

While in general, I’m quite agreeable with the idea of using Windows OS for the Ayaneo Next Lite, since it’s the most widely used operating system by a longshot, there needs to be a reckoning for PC gaming handhelds that use it in general.

What makes SteamOS so excellent is that it’s tailor-made for the Steam Deck, so it feels smooth and intuitive. However, other PC gaming handhelds that use Windows OS like the Asus ROG Ally and the Lenovo Legion Go, make the mistake of not tailoring said OS to the system which results in a much clunkier user interface.

Though we don’t know what Ayaneo is planning with the Windows 11 OS it’s using for the Next Lite, crafting a unique user interface would be a great way to differentiate it from other handhelds that otherwise have gotten more attention due to its brands being more well known.

Then again, Ayaneko has also made some unusual decisions, like choosing HoloISO which hasn’t been updated in months (at the time of this writing) instead of ChimeraOS for the Linux-based OS. So there’s no telling what the manufacturer is planning other than targeting a much larger market. We'll have to wait and see how things shake out when the handheld finally launches.

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Wednesday, January 24, 2024

Ring removes Request for Assistance from Neighbors app in a further shift away from law enforcement assistance

Ring is just about done playing Robin to law enforcement's Batman.

For every amusing Ring Video Doorbell video showing a bear dancing in the snow or a mailman pirouetting to the Broadway show tune in his head, there are videos of people stealing packages, vandalizing homes, or committing other petty crimes. The video collected by these popular front door cameras has been a potential crime-fighting bonanza for local law enforcement.

After launching in 2013, Ring (an Amazon company) added the free Neighbors app in 2017 as a place where Ring customers in a community could share details of local crime (like people stealing packages from doorsteps). The platform also let local law enforcement post public service updates, and contact Ring owners directly to request videos of illegal activity happening outside their homes. While a potentially powerful crime deterrent, it was also seen as a possible privacy and civil-right-violating issue and Ring's track record for sharing customer videos with law enforcement without seeking permission wasn't exactly spotless.

Now following the 2021 update that forced local law enforcement to post all calls for video in a public part of the Neighbors app under "Request for Assistance," Ring has decided to sunset that feature, as well.

Neighbors becoming even more neighborly

In other words, there should be no more posts from law enforcement within the Neighbors app that describe a crime in your local Ring coverage area and then request videos relating to the incident. Ring customers can still, obviously, freely share videos with law enforcement and authorities if they choose.

In a release on the update, Ring head of Neighbors Eric Kuhn notes that " fire and police departments can still use the Neighbors app to share helpful safety tips, updates, and community events." The platform will no longer be a place to ask for and exchange videos with authorities.

Ring also appears to be pushing Neighbors beyond (or maybe away from) its community safety roots and more toward those viral videos we share on TikTok. It's adding a new Neighbors section called "Ring Moments," which is decidedly not about sharing crime and safety videos, and "Best of Ring" which will feature Ring-curated videos.

Ring's Neighbors will still, the company notes, be a place to share important information about safety-related events happening in your community, including floods, major storms, and fires but it's no longer a major law enforcement source for crime-fighting information.

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