The Morning After: Tuesday November 1st 2016

It’s the morning after we were reminded that war is hell, sneakers can fit themselves and jingles don’t last forever. We also reported on the quiet rise of the high-end tablet and the return of CD piracy. Join us below for everything you might have missed.

People die‘Battlefield 1’ reminds you of the horror of war

‘Battlefield’ games aren’t bought for their amazing single-player campaign. In fact, players ignore the series’s solo experiences so routinely that this was actually a reason we didn’t see a campaign mode in ‘Star Wars: Battlefront’ last year. This time around, however, it’s worth playing through the game’s opening level. What follows is a very real history lesson.

Not just for time travelersPuma’s self-lacing shoes were made for athletes

Nike might have gotten there first (with some science fiction nudges), but Puma is working on its own auto-adjusting sneakers. Despite being unlikely to race at Tokyo 2020, Engadget Chinese editor-in-chief Richard Lai got the first look at the athlete-centered shoes.

Defender of the First Amendment?Tech billionaire Thiel talks legal rights and Silicon Valley with the National Press Club

For months, Peter Thiel has found himself in the middle of multiple legal and political firestorms. A speech he made today, in front of the National Press Club, marked the first time he has publicly defended his $1.25 million donation to Trump’s campaign. He argued against military intervention and free trade and attacked the Democratic Party, calling out Silicon Valley for being disconnected from the rest of the country. And then he talked about why he funded Hulk Hogan’s legal fees, and how a “single-digit millionaire like Hulk Hogan” has “no effective access to our legal system.”

No more F-sharpApple’s new MacBook Pros drop the iconic startup chime

After cutting out all those ports on its new MacBook Pro family, the company also cut out the startup chime. Yep, the familiar F-sharp chord that accompanied the boot-up whir of previous MacBooks is gone. At least the new machines turn themselves on and boot up when you open them.

$100,000 per six seconds18 of Vine’s biggest stars asked for money in a bid to save the app

Long before Twitter announced the app’s demise, Vine’s biggest stars had seen the views on their videos fall as users left for Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube. A group of twelve in-demand users decided to give the Twitter-owned team an offer: $1.2 million each in exchange for 12 original Vines per user every month, to help the short-video platform live on. Vine didn’t bite, and the rest is now history.

But wait, there’s more…

• iPad regains share in a shrinking mobile tablet market, but the story’s more complicated than that
• The Milky Way may be several times larger than we thought
• Pirates are flooding online stores with counterfeit music CDs