As I sit here with my trusty MacBook Pro, I’m reminded of the accessories I’ve tried; some brilliant, others not so much. Usually, when I unbox a new laptop, I’m instantly on the hunt for accessories that will “enhance my workflow” or “protect my investment.” However, after trying out different products, I’ve realized that some of them aren’t what they claim to be and have caused more harm than good.

Whether you are new to Raspberry Pi or have been tinkering for a while, there is always something exciting to build. These compact boards pack plenty of power and offer many creative possibilities. They can help you learn valuable programming skills and bring many fun ideas to life. With curiosity and a free weekend, you can explore several impressive projects that will leave you feeling accomplished and eager to take on more.

The Escalade IQL has a boxier rear-end.Cadillac is taking its large and can-charge electric Escalade IQ and making it just a longer to accommodate some more luggage and leg room for third-row passengers. The new version, called the Escalade IQL, now surpasses the length of the longest gas-powered Escalade, while also adopting the ICE version’s boxier silhouette. When it goes into production in mid-2025, it will be the longest SUV ever made — gas or electric. The Escalade IQL has an overall length of 228.5 inches, an inch-and-a-half longer than the gas-powered ESV. It’s also about 4.2 inches longer than the regular IQ, while keeping the rest of the dimensions the same. Compared to other three-row EVs, the electric Escalade IQL is longer than the 206.7-inch GMC Hummer EV SUV, the 200.8-inch Rivian R1S, the 197.2-inch Kia EV9, and the 195-inch Volkswagen ID Buzz.You can tell the subtle difference between the IQ and IQL by looking at them from the sides: the IQ has small rear quarter windows bordering the rear passenger windows, while the IQL adds a body panel that separates the glass, which then is stretched across to the boxier rear hatch.The new rear can accommodate slightly bigger suitcases and more stackable space. For third-row passengers, Cadillac says you get 4 inches of additional legroom (from 32.3 inches to 36.7) and an additional inch of headroom (from 37.2 inches to 38.2). The IQL has a total of 24.2 cu.ft. of cargo space behind the third row and 75.4 cu.ft. with the third-row folded flat. That compares to 23.7 cu.ft. behind the third row of the standard IQ, and 69.1 cu.ft. with it folded. And don’t forget about the extra 12.2 cu.ft. of frunk (front trunk) cargo space you get with the Escalade’s “eTrunk” under the hood. Cadillac revealed the original Escalade IQ electric SUV in 2023, introducing features such as a 55-inch pillar-to-pillar infotainment screen running Android Automotive OS. The IQL has a 205kWh battery pack with the same advertised 460 miles of range as the regular IQ, and can gain up to 116 miles of range in a 10-minute charge on 350kW DC fast chargers.The Escalade IQL starts at $132,695 including destination charges and will go into production at GM’s Factory Zero plant in Detroit starting mid-2025.

The new Digg looks a lot more like 2025 than 2005. | Image: DiggSometime last fall, Kevin Rose started thinking seriously about Digg again. A smidge over two decades ago, he’d launched a social and link sharing website that, for years, was known as “the homepage of the internet.” Since then, Digg had been through several owners and many pivots, Rose had gone on to several other careers, and the internet had moved on. Rose had thought about building something like Digg again, and had even been approached to buy back the domain and website a few times, but the timing had never been right.This time, though, things started to click. Rose and a group of what he calls “brainstorming partners,” which included Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, design and product exec Justin Mezzell, and even folks like Blogger and Twitter cofounder Ev Williams, started to talk about whether AI might be able to help them build a better social platform. “I would call Alexis up and we would chat,” Rose says, “and we’d be like, ‘hey, what if, what if, what if?’ And a lot of those things started giving us both that butterflies-in-the-stomach situation, where you’re like, ‘oh, this could be cool. This could be really cool.’”Now, Digg is making a comeback. Rose will be its chair, Mezzell its CEO, and Ohanian an adviser. (Both Rose and Ohanian are also venture capitalists now, and their firms are investing in the new venture.) They bought the domain and other assets from Money Group for a price they wouldn’t disclose and are bringing it back. The site is relaunching today, but only in a limited form. Its ultimate ambitions, however, are enormous: Digg aims to build the kind of community-first social platform that basically no longer exists on the internet. And its new founding team thinks AI could be the secret to pulling it off.If you’ve been on the internet long enough to remember the old Digg, you already have a rough idea of how the new Digg will work. Everything is based on content and links: someone shares a link, and people can comment and vote on the links. (If you like something, you “Digg” it; the old “Bury” downvote option is now gone.) The most popular stuff ends up on the homepage — which Rose and Mezzell tell me they hope will once again be the homepage of the internet — but there will also be countless smaller communities surfacing and sharing stuff in their own niche.  There are, of course, plenty of ways to talk about links on the internet. One of them, Reddit, continues to be very popular! The team isn’t shy about the comparison but thinks that by better engaging with the community, and without the growth-at-all-costs requirements of being a public company, they can build something that takes better care of its users. If Digg does this right, the homepage will feel like Old Digg, and everything else might feel like Better Reddit.Rose says he and Ohanian are both convinced — and both learned the hard way — that the real trick, the thing nobody has yet done properly, is to give the communities the tools they actually need to operate. This is where AI comes in. So much of a moderator’s job, Rose says, is just grunt work: fighting spam, reviewing obvious policy violations, litigating pointless fights. “How can we remove the janitorial work of moderators and community managers,” he says, “and convert what they do every day into more of a kind of ‘director of vibes, culture and community’ than someone that is just sitting there doing the laborious crappy stuff that comes in through the front door?” The real trick is to give the communities the tools they actually need to operateThe new Digg, Rose says, will include lots of AI-forward ways to sort through and make decisions on content. He also hopes AI can be used for fun. “I’m just making stuff up here, but there’s everything from an AI agent that converts your entire sub-community into Klingon, to another one where you don’t allow a certain type of profanity and that’s automatically auto-moderated.” Users will be able to tap AI models to build stuff right in their communities, too. “If we can create more of a dynamic canvas where agents are layered on top to assist, to help, to do wild things, to create games, to do whatever that community wants them to do, then we have something,” Rose says. The new Digg, if the team does it right, should feel more like a community-driven art project than an old-school internet forum. But Rose and Mezzell both say the whole thing depends on doing what users want — and nothing else. “One of the things that I believe that made Digg, and makes Reddit, a special place on the internet,” Rose says, “is that there are humans behind the scenes with real opinions, real conversation, real stories that they find interesting. The second you start to sterilize that, you’re just an aggregator of information. You’re a fancy RSS reader with some voting on it.”One big challenge, Mezzell says, is figuring out how to reward and promote users for doing good work. Digg won’t show how many followers you have because that creates bad incentives; same with competing to be the most-“Dugg” person on the platform. “There are all these very simple systems that we already have, for commenting systems and branching and all that stuff. But even if we start there, we cannot stop asking the question about how to give people the respect for being really insightful, for being really encouraging, for being really funny.” He doesn’t have a perfect answer for it yet, but he knows that’s key to making it work.There’s a lot more that the new Digg team doesn’t have a perfect answer for yet. Rose and Mezzell both say, a few times each, that what’s launching today is essentially a prototype. It’ll have a homepage, a few sub-communities, some links, some comments, and that’s about it. The goal is to get people excited that Digg is back, and then both introduce them to the new platform and build it alongside them. “If you come on day one,” Rose says, it’s 99.9 percent nostalgia and you’re like, damn, this is like a slightly updated version of Digg that looks really cool.” Give it some time — maybe even just a few weeks, if the new team ships as fast as Mezzell promises — and it’ll be something different.

Microsoft hasn't been on its best behavior with its search engine, Bing. Recently, the company has attempted some pretty sneaky tricks to get people to use its services over its competitors. Its main method of attack is to identify when you search for a rival product, then slip in something that promotes Microsoft's products instead. We had hoped that the company would stop this practice, but if a recent report were to be believed, the Redmond giant has returned to its old tricks by encouraging people to use Copilot.

The search feature on Windows is often criticized for being slow and showing the wrong item, and this is one of the weaknesses that leaves users no choice but to look for advanced customization tools like Microsoft's PowerToys.

When it comes to Windows customization, the Start menu is one of the most popular elements to modify, especially because Microsoft keeps changing it, and not always for the better. To that end, Start11 is one of the most popular options out there, but another great Start menu customization tool is StartAllBack.

Obsidian’s versatility is undeniable. The popular productivity tool offers a wide range of features to enhance your note-taking setup. But are you truly unlocking its full potential? Beneath its simple interface is a tool called Mermaid. It is a built-in JavaScript-based diagramming and charting tool that allows you to create various types of visualizations using simple text-based syntax.

Portable SSDs are the way to go if you're for storage that's fast and reliable. The Samsung T7 is one of our favorite portable SSDs, and it's now down to a great price. For a limited time, you can score more than half off the 2TB model that now comes in at $130. This is one of the best prices we've seen in quite some time, which makes it the perfect time to buy. Just be sure to act quickly, or you might miss it.

Have you given a vertical tab layout a try before? If you haven't, it's a new take on the traditional tab formats that browsers use. Instead of them stretching horizontally across the top of your browser, vertical tabs put them in a sidebar. It's a little weird at first, but it has a few benefits over horizontal tabs: you can see the names of each website without them getting squished together, and you can scroll through them like you would any other list.

Ente Photos is an excellent open-source photo management tool. With privacy and security being one of the main focuses, it features everything you want from other photo management tools like Google Photos or iCloud, without compromising your data. Available on most devices and platforms, there are loads of reasons why I love Ente Photos, and you’ll love it too.

No word on when the ES90 will make it to the US. | Image: VolvoVolvo has pulled back the curtain on its upcoming ES90 electric sedan with 434 miles of range and a tech stack that includes Nvidia’s powerful Drive AGX Orin computer in a dual setup.Volvo has been trickling news out about the ES90 over the past several weeks, but today’s announcement includes our first full look at the sedan and a full rundown on its specs, including an 800-volt architecture for fast charging and the aforementioned Nvidia system-on-a-chip.The ES90 boasts Volvo’s longest range, fastest charging speed, and most advanced computing system of all its vehicles. The sedan will arrive with 700km of range (434.9 miles) based on the generous WLTP standard. (The EPA rating is likely to be less.)The ES90 will come in three different variants. There’s the base model with a single motor mounted on the rear axle, with 245kW (329 horsepower) of power output and 354 lb-ft of torque. The dual-motor all-wheel drive version can put out 330kW (442hp) of power and 494 lb-ft of torque. And the dual-motor Performance ES90 can churn out 500kW (670hp) of power and 635 lb-ft of torque. The single-motor trim sports a 92kWh battery, 88kWh of which is usable, and can accept up to 300kW of DC fast charging. Both dual-motor setups include 106kWh batteries (102kWh usable) and can draw in 350kW of fast charging.The ES90 tops out at 112mph, as per Volvo’s policy of speed-limiting its vehicles. But the acceleration specs sound impressive, with a zero to 60mph time of 3.9 seconds for the Performance trim and 6.7 and 5.3 seconds, respectively, on the single- and dual-motor setups. In addition, the ES90 will showcase new battery management software, allowing it to gain 300km (186 miles) of range in just 10 minutes of charging, while a 10–80 percent charge will be completed in 20 minutes. The 800-volt system is unique in Volvo’s lineup, but it’s comparable to other fast-charging EVs, like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6.The acceleration specs sound impressive, with a zero to 60mph time of 3.9 seconds for the Performance trim.The overall profile is tall and slightly boxy. Volvo said it wanted to purposefully blur the line between sedan and SUV, which is probably why the ES90 seems so reminiscent of the Polestar 2 fastback. (Polestar and Volvo are essentially cousins, both operating under the umbrella of parent company Geely.) Distinctively, it’s a high-riding sedan, with a height of 60.9 inches, placing it alongside other tall-ish sedans like the Toyota Crown (60.6 inches).The ES90’s roofline is sleek, its door handles flush, and it has a lidar sensor mounted on the roof. The front end resembles the EX90, featuring Volvo’s signature “Thor’s hammer” LED headlights, with new C-shaped LED lights in the rear. There’s ample cargo space, with 424 liters of room that can grow to 733 liters with the rear seats folded down. The ES90 also features a 22-liter frunk (front trunk) for charging cable storage. The panoramic roof is electrochromic for adjustable transparency on sunny days, too. Like other Volvo EVs, the ES90 features Google’s built-in infotainment system, which includes native apps like Google Maps, Google Assistant, and Google Play. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Cockpit Platform powers the 5G system. And the five-inch instrument cluster resides alongside a larger 14.5-inch center screen display. Like the EX90 SUV, the ES90 is built on Volvo’s new Superset tech stack, which includes dual Nvidia computers with the ability to perform 508 trillion operations per second (TOPS). This will come in handy when managing functionalities such as “AI-based, state-of-the-art active safety features, car sensors and efficient battery management.” The ES90’s roofline is sleek, its door handles flush, and it has a lidar sensor mounted on the roof.The ES90 is built on Volvo’s SPA2 architecture and will be the second vehicle, after the EX90, to be based on the Superset tech stack. Superset is a modular engineering platform that the company says will be used to make safer cars more efficiently and to improve them over time through over-the-air software updates.This is Volvo’s sixth all-electric vehicle, joining the EX90 SUV, EM90 van (China only), EX40 SUV, EC40 crossover, and EX30 compact SUV. The Swedish automaker had said it would be 100 percent EV sales by 2030, but it recently updated that timeline to reflect the global slowdown in EV sales. Volvo is now saying that it will rely on a mix of hybrids and battery-electric vehicles to reach its new goal of selling “90 to 100 percent… electrified models” by 2030. The ES90 is an interesting addition, especially considering most US automakers have dropped sedans from their lineups in favor of trucks and SUVs. Volvo is hoping its electric sedan can fill a gap in the market, though it could prove difficult. Volkswagen recently canceled plans to sell its own electric sedan, the ID.7, in the US.The ES90 will join the recently facelifted gas-powered S90 sedan, which starts in the US at around $59,000. Starting today, the EV version is available to order in most European countries, though Volvo has yet to announce when it will be available in the US.  The automaker also did not disclose the price. “We will share additional details on the US ES90 offer at a later date, closer to customer deliveries,” Volvo spokesperson Sophia Durr said.