Steal all the loot in King of Thieves [Retro review]

Can you dodge deadly traps and collect enough treasure to become the King of Thieves?

King of Thieves certainly fell below my radar when it was initially released in 2015. Developed by Zepto Labs, it’s a fun and colorful platformer that offers a real challenge with tight controls and split-second timing gameplay reminiscent of the incomparable Super Meat Boy — except instead of controlling a bloody hunk of animated meat, you play as a shadowy thief, Prince, who’s after those gold coins and gems.

Play King of Thieves with No In-App Purchaes! GAMESTASH

Zepto Labs is best known as the developers of the somewhat iconic Cut the Rope franchise, and rightly so. It was a runaway hit and a true showcase for how touch screens were revolutionizing mobile games back in the early days of the Play Store (then called Android Market). It’s the perfect casual physics-based puzzle game that’s easy for anyone to pick up and play thanks to the very intuitive controls and gameplay.

King of Thieves accomplishes a similar feat for the extreme platformer genre, taking that pinpoint platforming style and boiling it down to something you can play one-handed while waiting for a bus.

The visual style is strong and the animations are smooth. Available in both the Google Play Store as well as on GameStash, you’re thrown right into the game, which involves you bouncing off the walls and dodging traps as you stealthily ransack guarded treasure in one-screen dungeon levels. Your character automatically runs, and you simply tap the screen to jump. Just like Super Meat Boy, your little thief will cling to walls and slowly slide down (without the gratuitous gore) which is required to dodge enemies and set up pin-point leaps over deadly blades.

There are 112 single player levels to complete, but the game sure wants you to engage in the online multiplayer aspect of the game, which requires you to steal gems from other players which denote your rank in the game. By collecting more gems and defending your own loot by designing a dungeon of your own, you earn all sorts of things that help you upgrade your character or the traps in your dungeon.

The online component is interesting for sure, but ultimately just a bit cluttered with too many currencies and things to track, and makes the game feel like just another game full if grinding to get to the top of the heap (unless you just pay your way to the top with in-app purchases).

The true strength of this game is in the actual gameplay, and fortunate for those who just want to play the core game without having to mess about with all the extra online business, the GameStash version just gives you the core single-player game along with a seemingly lifetime supply of keys for unlocking each level so you’re never left waiting to play.

Play: King of Thieves (free) with GameStash

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Snapchat’s redesigned app is here and much easier to use

Snapchat still looks mostly the same, but there are a few big changes that should make using it a lot easier.

As popular as Snapchat has become over the years, its app has been in need of a redesign for quite some time. Everything within the app technically works but trying to navigate it has always been something of a pain. That is, until now.

Snapchat’s CEO hinted at a redesign of the application at the beginning of November, and today that redesign has officially been announced. Upon opening the new Snapchat app, you’ll be met with the familiar screen of your camera’s viewfinder. However, the pages to the left and right of it have received a major overhaul.

The page to the left of your viewfinder previously showcased direct messages with your friends in the last order that you talked with them, but Snapchat is now turning this into “the dynamic Friends page.” You’ll still be able to access direct messages to your friends here, but this is also where you’ll now watch their public Stories.

Also, rather than displaying your friends in chronological order based on when you last talked to them, Snapchat is using its new “Best Friends algorithm.” Snapchat says the algorithm will display your friends in the order that it thinks you want to talk to them, and the more you use the app, the more accurate it’ll be in determining which friends should be placed at the top of your list.

As for the page to the right of the viewfinder, this is being dubbed as the “Discover” page. Since your friends’ Stories are now on the new Friends page, Discover is where you’ll find all of the content from creators, publishers, and other people in the Snapchat community that you’re interested in. Just like the Friends page, content showcased on Discover will change and adapt over time based on your interests and what you like to watch the most.

The new Snapchat UI should be rolling out soon, and if you get confused, just remember – friends on the left, everything else on the right.

Snapchat on Android: Everything you need to know

Physicists keep striking out in the search for dark matter

Space may be the final frontier, but we’ve barely begun to explore its underlying mechanics. For as much as humanity has discovered since we first looked to the heavens, we’ve only seen about 15 percent of the total matter in the universe. The other 85 percent — the so-called “dark matter” — well, we can’t even figure out how to see yet. But that doesn’t mean researchers from around the world aren’t devising ways to do so.

The search for dark matter began in earnest back in the 17th century, shortly after Isaac Newton released his theory of universal gravity, when astronomers posited that some celestial objects might not emit light but could still be observed based on their gravitational effects (i.e. black holes). Over the past few decades, thanks to advances in optical and radio astronomy technologies, evidence for the existence of dark matter has continued to mount. At this point, astronomers believe dark matter constitutes about 27 percent of the universe’s total mass (and nearly 85 percent if you include dark energy as well). While the scientific community is now certain that dark matter exists, there’s no consensus as to what the stuff is actually made of.

There are two leading theories right now. One argues that dark matter is made of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) — theorized to have a mass 100,000 times greater than an electron (and therefore behave as conventional particles). The other speculates it’s made of axions, elementary particles with a mass a hundred-billionths that of an electron (and that behave as waves). Axions are thought to exert the same Wave-Particle Duality that photons do, just without our ability to observe them directly.

“If dark matter was some new particle, there’s really only a couple of ways that it can interact with us,” Dr. Philipp Schuster, associate professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC), told Engadget. “One possibility is that it could be a particle that’s actually charged under familiar forces [i.e. WIMPs]. And the other the possibility is that it could just be a particle that’s not charged under standard model forces but nonetheless have it its own force.

“In that case, it could interact and through a new vector particle, basically for something akin to electromagnetism,” he continued, “or it could interact with us through something that actually doesn’t have an analog in nature.”

In order to determine what these dark matter particles are made of, researchers devised a number of experiments. These studies can be divided into three general categories: particle detectors should dark matter be made of WIMPs, wave effect detectors if dark matter is actually axions (aka dark photons), and astronomical surveys that study the effects of dark matter on the observable universe, specifically, gravitational lensing.

If dark matter is made of WIMPs, we’ll likely discover it with enormous tubs of liquid xenon stored deep beneath the Earth’s surface. Because WIMPs, as their name implies, don’t readily interact with known matter, detecting them is a tricky process. Anything radioactive — from cosmic background radiation to the trace amounts of uranium in soil — can return a false positive reading.

The XENON1T study, for example, is buried deep within a mountain underneath the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. Every piece of equipment it uses has been hand-crafted from super radio-pure stainless steel, Rafael Lang, associate professor of physics and astronomy at Purdue University, told Engadget. Its one-ton vat of liquid xenon is among the purest on Earth, with just one part per trillion (PPT) of krypton contamination — orders of magnitude lower than what’s found in nature. In fact, the XENON1T is the most sensitive (read: least radioactive) WIMP detector built to date.

“What we do is we take a bucket, we fill it up with liquid xenon and we sit and wait until a particle hits the liquid xenon,” Lang explained. The device’s primary detector, the Liquid Xenon Time Projection Chamber (LXeTPC), sits in the cryogenically-cooled xenon, itself surrounded by a larger tub of purified water to further shield it from radiation.

The idea is that, with all this shielding, the only stuff that will make it through will be WIMPs. And, should a WIMP manage to strike one of the xenon nuclei, the impact will cause the liquid to scintillate — that is, create a flash of visible light — that the LXeTPC will detect.

The LUX-ZEPLIN experiment being conducted in South Dakota by the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab is also looking for WIMPS. “The basic idea is we’re building a super fancy Geiger counter to try to detect this one particular type of event,” Dr. Daniel Akerib, professor of particle physics and astrophysics at Stanford University, told Engadget.

The XENON1T and LUX-ZEPLIN experiments aren’t the only subterranean devices looking for WIMPs. As part of its Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS), the US Department of Energy is working with SLAC to build out the SNOLAB, a dark matter detector located two kilometers below ground at Vale’s Creighton nickel mine in Ontario. Once SNOLAB comes online in 2018, it’s expected to be ten times more sensitive than the current CDMS experiment being conducted 2,340 feet below ground at University of Minnesota’s Soudan Underground Laboratory.

“We’re not only going to be able see lower-mass particles, but we’re also going to be much more sensitive than ever before,” SLAC senior staff scientist Richard Partridge said in a statement. “This is a huge challenge, one that requires much R&D, very careful fabrication, and high-precision testing. SLAC has a big role in all this, but we’re also working closely with many other institutions.” Lang, for one, welcomes the competition. “It helps, it helps greatly,” he exclaimed. “There’s a big need to try out all kinds of crazy different ideas that you can come up with.”

These experiments’ current failure to positively identify an interaction between WIMPs and xenon nuclei may be due to the theoretical particle’s weakly interacting nature, or it may be because researchers are simply looking for the wrong thing. If dark matter isn’t made of massive particles, but light ones such as axions, detectors like the LUX-ZEPLIN or XENON1T won’t see them. But the Dark Matter Radio, Fermilab’s ADMX, or the APEX experiments just might.

“If the dark matter is built out of a spinless particle that is sufficiently light, then it actually behaves much more like something like an electromagnetic wave than a particle,” Schuster explained. And by sufficiently light, he means “a billionth the mass of an electron.”

“What that means is that there’s a lot more of it. There’s a lot more particles in order to make up the dark matter of the galaxy,” Dr. Peter Graham, associate professor of physics at Stanford, told Engadget. “And what that also means is that you don’t, for example, look to see an individual ping from an individual axion on it in your experiments. It’s just it’s just way too little energy.”

Just as a single drop of water can’t cut through bedrock while a river can, researchers have to look for axions behaving en mass. To do so, we just have to find their resonant frequency. The Dark Matter Radio experiment out of Stanford University, for example, operates much like a terrestrial radio, just on a cosmic scale. The radio is akin to a basic LC circuit (read: an electronic oscillator) “looking at the hundreds of megahertz or megahertz even down to maybe kilohertz, we’re looking at a broad range,” Graham said.

This setup provides unique challenges compared to particle detectors. For one, the radio does not have to be buried deep underground to avoid interference from cosmic rays. It does, however, have to be encased in a conducting box to effectively screen out background radio noise. What’s more, while particle detectors are turned on and left to run for a year at a time, these radios can cycle through its various frequencies every 10 to 15 minutes. Once researchers do find the resonant frequency, they’ll be able to immediately calculate the individual axion mass. “Because we know it’s basically nonrelativistic, we know the frequency is equal to the mass of the axion,” Graham explained.

Whether dark matter is comprised of WIMPs or axions makes a big difference in our understanding of the universe’s mechanics. “Dark matter could just be built out of hidden photons (aka axions),” Schuster said. “That would basically mean that not only is there a new force out there, but the remnants of that force — the particle carriers — have a high enough density in the universe that it actually is producing dark matter. I think that would actually surprise the field quite considerably.”

Should this turn out to be the case, researchers will have discovered a new fundamental force — the 21st-century equivalent to electromagnetism.

“The other possibility, of course, is that dark matter could be built out of an existing particle but it could be charged under a new force, that its photons are the mediator particle,” Schuster continued. “That possibility is very similar to the WIMP idea, but it’s just it’s different in that the particle is not charged under [a known] force, they’re charged under a new force, the hidden photon being the mediator.”

Some astronomers are taking a more direct approach and searching for evidence of dark matter using the cosmos. Astronomers with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which will be coming online in 2021, and the Dark Energy Survey, which is has been collecting data at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile since 2013, hope that gravitational lensing might hold the key to observing dark matter directly. Well, as directly as a weakly interacting fundamental particle can be observed.

These surveys hope to observe dark matter much in the same way that we search for black holes: by looking for the light that they deform. “If you put a mass concentration in front of some distant object you’re looking at then the light coming from that distant object will come around that mass, the rays will be diverted and you’ll get a distorted image,” Dr. Steve Kahn, professor of physics at SLAC and the head of the LSST project, told Engadget.

Both the DES and the LSST can and will exploit this effect to potentially find clumps of dark matter in space. “Correlations in the distortion of galaxies which are near each other in the sky will appear distorted in similar ways…” Kahn said. “So this lensing effect is a way of literally seeing dark matter. The dark matter is invisible but we can infer its existence and its distribution of lensing in the background images of the galaxy.”

This technique will also help us calculate how far away these mass concentrations are due to their Doppler redshift. Just as the sirens of an ambulance rise in frequency as the vehicle approaches you but then drop as it passes, the photonic frequency appears more blue if the light source is approaching you and shifts to red if the source is moving away.

At this point, however, humanity’s journey to discover the secrets of the universe has barely begun. “It would just be very, very surprising if the if the bulk of what’s leftover is, you know, some simple single particle with no interesting interactions,” Schuster concluded. “I think a much more likely possibility is that there are many more forces, many more new interactions, that are related to dark matter. We just need to figure out what it is.”

Trump retweets violent anti-Muslim propaganda

This morning, President Trump retweeted violent anti-Muslim propaganda videos that were originally tweeted by verified user Jayda Fransen (@JaydaBF on Twitter). We are not linking to the tweets or the videos because they contain graphic content; one of the videos appears to be of a person’s murder.

It’s no secret that Twitter has an abuse problem, and despite the service’s continued promises to improve how they deal with these issues, users haven’t seen much improvement. The service also got into hot water recently because it verified the account of a white supremacist. The Twitter team later acknowledged that verification could be seen as validation of a user’s beliefs, and paused the process to put together rules to address the situation. They now will supposedly remove the verification of anyone who “promot[es] hate and/or violence against, or directly attacking or threatening other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease.”

Twitter’s terms are clear when it comes to violent and graphic images. It prohibits graphic violence, which includes “any form of gory media related to death, serious injury, violence, or surgical procedures.” Additionally, Twitter prohibits “hateful conduct”: “You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”

It’s pretty clear that Fransen is engaging in both of these behaviors. Why hasn’t Fransen’s account been suspended? How is it still verified? This user is clearly tweeting racist, bigoted content that violates Twitter’s terms of service. Fransen, who is the deputy leader of Britain’s far-right party Britain First, was arrested back in August for using threatening and abusive language during an anti-terrorism demonstration in Belfast. Her “political party” is well-known for racist anti-Muslim stunts, such as invading mosques.

And now the president of the United States is retweeting this hateful anti-Muslim propaganda. Trump has violated Twitter’s terms before, spewing bigoted comments and violent threats, and the service has done nothing. In fact, the support team has tripped over themselves to explain why his tweets are “newsworthy” and therefore will not be removed.

We’ve reached out to Twitter for clarification on both Fransen’s Twitter account status, as well as if they will take any action on President Trump’s retweets. Even if Twitter suspends Fransen’s account, it doesn’t solve the Trump Twitter problem. If the president of the United States is tweeting this racist propaganda, and Twitter won’t do anything about it, it’s hard to imagine that it will ever fully solve its abuse problem.

Netflix adds social sharing to its Fast.com speed test

Back in 2011, Netflix started issuing ISP report cards to head off possible throttling, and now, as the future of net neutrality is in doubt it’s upgrading Fast.com. The simple speed test debuted last year, and according to Netflix has already been used over 250 million times, with an even split between people testing on desktop or mobile devices (there’s an app). Now, anyone who uses it can easily share their results on social media, where they can be quickly checked by and compared with others.

While Netflix’s large customer base should head off most attempts by ISPs to mess with it, if there’s another situation where connections drop off then this tool could be useful for spotting and sharing the news.

Source: Netflix Blog

Snapchat’s redesign separates friends’ posts from media content

Snapchat’s major redesign is here and it’s all about separating your relationships from content. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel wrote on Axios today that Snapchat has always been primarily geared towards conversing with friends and with the new layout, Snapchat will make that even easier. “With the upcoming redesign of Snapchat, we are separating the social from the media, and taking an important step forward towards strengthening our relationships with our friends and our relationships with the media,” he wrote.

Prior to this redesign, opening the app would bring you to the camera. You would swipe left to get to your messages, swipe right to get to your Stories and swipe right again to get to the Discover page. Now, all of that is being shuffled. Opening the app still brings you to the camera, but swiping left now takes you to the new dynamic Friends page. There, you’ll find friends’ Chats and Stories. That page will learn how you use it and who you message and will then begin to arrange your friends in the order in which you talk to them most. Swiping right will bring you to the new Discover page, which will have all of your subscriptions up top and Stories it thinks you might be interested in below. Those suggestions will also be curated based on how you use the app and what content you seek out.

“Separating social from media has allowed us to build the best way to communicate with friends and the best way to watch great content – while addressing many of the problems that plague the Internet today,” Snapchat said in a statement. You can check out the video below for a demonstration on how the new Snapchat works.

Source: Snapchat

Microsoft’s Redmond HQ is getting a multi-billion dollar makeover

Microsoft is planning a multi-billion dollar expansion of its Redmond campus, as it looks to add room for an extra 8,000 workers. Over the next five-to-seven years, the company will construct 18 new buildings, add 6.7 million square feet of renovated workspace, and pump $150 million into transportation improvements and recreational facilities alone. The massive project, which spans the equivalent of 180 football fields, will kick into gear in fall of 2018.

It seems Microsoft has been suffering from office-envy of late, watching from the sidelines as fellow tech titans hogged the limelight with their new HQs. As if Apple’s jaw-dropping ‘spaceship’ campus wasn’t enough, Amazon flipped the script this year by asking cities across the US to bid to host its second headquarters. Meanwhile, Google is gradually taking the wraps off its $1 billion London campus, complete with a pool and multi-purpose games area.

Unlike its counterparts, though, Microsoft is staying put. The company has become synonymous with Redmond, Washington, since moving there in 1986. And in the future, parts of the campus will be open to the public, including its two-acre open-air plaza that packs sports facilities, a retail space, and hiking trails. The site will hold up to 12,000 people, claims Microsoft. To accommodate commuters, car parking is moving underground and a pedestrian-and-cyclist-only bridge is being built across the WA-520 highway, in preparation for the local light rail arriving in 2023.

It’s also hoping to generate goodwill by touting the external job growth (particularly in construction) the project will create. And, by pointing to the millions in investments and donations it’s already given back to the community. Maybe it recalls that Facebook went as far as building affordable housing in East Palo Alto, San Francisco, to appease local residents fed up with Silicon Valley’s new builds hiking up rent prices. In the words of Microsoft president Brad Smith, the project is “good for [our neighbors in]…Puget Sound.”

Source: Microsoft

Waze Becomes First Navigation App to Support Carpool Lanes

Waze today announced it is rolling out three new features in its popular crowdsourced navigation app for iOS and Android, the most notable of which is support for high occupancy vehicle lanes, also known as carpool lanes.

Image via TechCrunch
If you are driving with at least one passenger, or have a hybrid or electric vehicle with a special permit, Waze will now take carpool lanes on highways into consideration when determining your optional route.

If you are carpooling, the feature can enabled under Navigation > Add Toll/HOV pass within Waze’s in-app settings. If you have a fuel-efficient vehicle, it can be selected as an option under Navigation > Vehicle Type.

Carpool lane support is initially available to Waze users in 22 states across the United States, and in the Canadian cities of Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. More cities in the United States and Canada will be added over time.

The states supported include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. Washington D.C. is also supported.

Next, a new “OK Waze” voice command allows for true hands-free use, allowing drivers to initiate navigation, get a preview of the route ahead, send traffic-related reports, add stops along the way, and more while staying focused on the road ahead. The feature can be enabled under Sound & Voice > Talk to Waze > OK Waze.

Talk to Waze is initially available to English-speaking Waze users in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, and will continually roll out in more languages soon.

Last, Waze now supports motorcycles as a vehicle type. In this mode, motorcycle riders will be directed on routes optimized for motorcyclists. Waze says the more motorcyclists ride in this mode, the smarter the routing will become.

Waze, developed by Google, is a free download on the App Store [Direct Link] for iPhone. Today’s update doesn’t appear to be available yet, although “OK Waze” functionality is working, so some changes may be implemented on the backend.

Tag: Waze
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Review: Logitech’s CRAFT Wireless Keyboard is Pricey, but the Input Dial Is a Useful Addition

Last month, Logitech released the CRAFT, a wireless “Advanced Keyboard” complete with a creative input dial for controlling customizable, app-specific functions. I’ve been testing one out over the last few weeks to see if the company’s latest Mac/PC accessory can live up to its $200 price tag.

Design

At 960 grams (2.1 pounds), the full-size CRAFT Advanced Keyboard felt heavy against my daily workhorse, Logitech’s compact K810. The extra space it took up on my desk was immediately noticeable, but on the upside it instills the CRAFT with a premium feel and there’s absolutely no chance of it sliding about as you type or turn the dial.

The keys aren’t any wider apart than you would expect of a typical full-size keyboard, but that does take a little getting used to if you’re coming to it from the K810 or a 13-inch 2015 MacBook Pro keyboard. Just something to think about.

The CRAFT, top, compared to Logitech’s K810 keyboard ($99)
The CRAFT features smart illumination, with backlighting that detects hands and adjusts automatically based on room lighting conditions. The backlighting bleeds around the edges of the keys, which is something to note if that is likely to bother you. There are also proprietary buttons above the insert/home/page up keys that let you dynamically switch between any three connected devices.

Standard Mac system controls are clearly labeled along the top row of function keys, but are numbered slightly differently due to an additional “Show Desktop” function (F5). Helpfully, the modifier keys are labeled with both Mac and Windows commands.

Along the right-hand side of the keyboard’s rear edge is a power switch and a USB-C port for connecting the supplied USB-C to USB-A cable, which charges the integrated 1,500mAh battery. The LED on the top-right of the raised aluminum strip glows blue when it has a decent charge, and red when the battery is low.

Meanwhile, the dial or “Crown” sits on the opposite end of the aluminum strip and is touch sensitive, so you can tap or turn it to adjust particular settings depending on the application.

Included in the box is a small USB Unifying receiver that uses 2.4GHz wireless technology to provide a connection up to 33 feet (10 meters) away. It’s capable of connecting up to six keyboards and mice to one computer, so from that perspective it’s a useful inclusion if you have any existing wireless Logitech accessories. Otherwise it just takes up another USB port. Fortunately, you can pair over Bluetooth instead, which is what I set out to do straight out of the box.

Performance

Unfortunately, my initial attempts at pairing the CRAFT failed. The keyboard kept disappearing from the Devices list in Bluetooth preferences before I was able to input the pairing code. After replicating the behavior on several other devices, I concluded that the keyboard was faulty and resorted to using the Unifying USB receiver until Logitech could get a replacement unit sent out to me.

The second keyboard I received paired over Bluetooth without a hitch. The backlight on the first pairing key pulsated as I connected the CRAFT to my MacBook Pro. Later I added an iPad mini 4 and an iPhone X to the mix, and was able to switch seamlessly between the three of them by tapping pairing keys 1, 2, or 3.

One of the first things I noticed after just a few minutes of typing on the CRAFT was the location and size of the Enter key: I can’t tell you how many times my little finger has missed and accidentally hit the key directly above it (“”) .

As a UK user familiar with ISO-style keyboard layouts, my muscle memory continually expects Enter to extend vertically across two rows in an inverted L-shape, as it does on the UK versions of the K810 and the MacBook Pro, as well as on Apple’s Magic Keyboards. The CRAFT is available only in an ANSI layout that will be familiar to US users, so it’s something to consider if you’re used to an ISO keyboard. Even now I will sometimes hit the wrong key.

The CRAFT’s key travel is very reminiscent of pre-butterfly era MacBook Pro keys, which many users will undoubtedly welcome. The keycaps themselves have a shallow concave depression, which also feels nice to the touch. The keys are certainly closer together than on my MacBook Pro which takes some adjustment, but in my experience, finger fatigue isn’t an issue with the CRAFT, and the angle of the keyboard feels just right for use on a computer desk. The hand proximity sensors also do a great job of illuminating the layout before you start typing, so you’re never squinting in the dark for the correct key.

The Crown’s functionality can be adjusted using the Logitech Options software utility, which has custom profiles for Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Illustrator CC, Adobe Premiere Pro CC, and Adobe InDesign CC. Profiles for Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel and Word currently only work on PC, according to Logitech.

Tapping the dial brings up an onscreen menu overlay offering functions specific to that app, like brush size, brightness, chart type, font size, and so on. Turning the Crown moves you through the menu, clicking it selects the appropriate tool, and turning it again adjusts the value or setting. After playing with it for a few hours, using it this way soon became second nature.

Additionally, the touch-sensitive Crown can be set up to access a variety of global Mac controls, so you can use it do things like activate screen zoom, navigate between apps, adjust brightness, or even assign to it a particular shortcut key combination.

It’s also possible to assign Crown functions to each of your favorite apps, but after a bit of fiddling I found that I preferred to keep the controls global, so that turning the dial switched desktops, pressing it took the current app fullscreen, and pressing then turning changed the system volume. Using the Crown this way turned out to be a convenient method of performing these functions without having to look down at the keyboard, and made up for the fact that my MacBook Pro’s trackpad is perennially out of reach on a raised stand.

Apart from assigning Crown controls, the Logitech utility also very usefully lets you remap function keys. For example, I never use the macOS Launchpad, which can be invoked using F4, so I re-assigned the key to display the Notifications sidebar instead.

Bottom Line

I found Logitech’s wireless CRAFT advanced keyboard to be a solid, well-built peripheral that is comfortable in daily use – even despite my Enter key issues. I would have liked a longer battery life – for me it averaged about 8 days – but this isn’t sold as a portable keyboard and anyway, you get plenty of warning before it completely runs out of juice.

As for the Crown, I found it intuitive and easy to get to grips with, requiring little thought when used to adjust system controls and only a gentle learning curve when working within Adobe apps.

That said, if you’re a professional who spends a lot of time in a more niche creative application, you may run into trouble. The CRAFT’s software support is still wanting on Mac, but that’s something Logitech hopes to address soon.

My only real gripe is the price. $200 – or £180 in the UK – is a lot to pay for a wireless keyboard, dial or no dial. In my opinion, $150 would have been a more reasonable ask, given the current state of the CRAFT’s software compatibility.

Pros

• Customizable dial and function keys
• Comfortable to use
• Pairs with up to 3 devices

Cons

• Battery life could be better
• Lack of app support
• Expensive

How to Buy

The Logitech CRAFT Wireless Advanced Keyboard costs $199.99 and can be ordered directly from the company’s website.

Note: Logitech supplied the CRAFT Keyboard to MacRumors for the purposes of this review. No other compensation was received.

Tag: Logitech
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Snapchat Unveils Redesigned App Aimed at Separating Your Best Friends From Brand Content

Following an op-ed shared on Axios earlier this morning by CEO Evan Spiegel, Snapchat has now unveiled its radical redesign with the goal of creating a personalized user experience that’s easier to navigate, particularly for new users (via TechCrunch). The app’s update will start to roll out to iOS and Android users on Friday, and will be introduced to everyone “within a few weeks.”

The update aggregates both Stories and direct messages into one place, to the left of the main camera section of the app, and an algorithm sorts and prioritizes this section by “who you talk to and view most.” This personalized content is now separate from premium publishers, celebrity Snapchatters, and aggregated Story events in “Discover” to the right of the camera, where Stories were located previously.

Images via TechCrunch
According to Spiegel, this is an attempt to “separate the social from the media” and ensure that it’s simpler to keep up with your real friends and not be inundated with things you might not care about created by brands and influencers.

With the upcoming redesign of Snapchat, we are separating the social from the media, and taking an important step forward towards strengthening our relationships with our friends and our relationships with the media. This will provide a better way for publishers to distribute and monetize their Stories, and a more personal way for friends to communicate and find the content they want to watch.

The Discover area is curated by Snapchat employees but is also affected by an algorithm that will sort content based on your past viewing behavior, which Spiegel stated is inspired by Netflix’s recommendation algorithms. Spiegel said that research has shown “your past behavior is a far better predictor of what you’re interested in than anything your friends are doing,” referencing rival companies like Facebook and Twitter.

All of this borders the camera section of the app, which you’ll still see first when you open Snapchat. Navigation is made simpler thanks to icons that push you to specific sections of the app from this launch menu, including more obvious buttons for My Story, adding friends, Snap Map, and more.

The biggest change comes on the Friends page and its combination of Stories and direct messages. When you come to this area of Snapchat, you’ll first see new Snaps and messages at the top, then Stories from close friends (who you watch and chat with the most), and then last will be other Stories from friends you don’t interact with as much. Auto-advancing is back but with a new quality of life fix that provides a brief title screen that pops up with the name of the next friend in the queue, which you can easily swipe to skip.

Snapchat has been facing intense competition from Instagram and its own Stories feature, which it launched in August 2016. The Facebook-owned company’s version of Stories quickly caught on with users and eventually managed to capture more daily active users than Snapchat in less than a year.

Tag: Snapchat
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