Engwe’s Mapfour N1 Pro looking fine in Amsterdam.Europe has an electric bike problem. Direct-to-consumer e-bikes from inexpensive Chinese brands like Engwe and countless others can be easily purchased online despite openly flouting EU restrictions. They feature throttles and powerful motors that can be easily unlocked to far exceed the 25km/h (16mph) legal speed limit — no pedaling required.Here in Amsterdam, cheap Super73-knockoffs ridden at almost twice the legal speed have made the city’s renowned bicycle lanes increasingly chaotic and dangerous. Across the Netherlands, over 10,000 of these electric “fat bikes” were seized in 2024. Engwe’s new Mapfour lineup is the company’s attempt at going legit by expanding from souped-up electric fat bikes and foldables into “premium commuter” e-bikes. And because they’re the first e-bikes that Engwe has designed exclusively for European roads, the company swears they can’t be unlocked for more speed.I’ve been riding the new Mapfour N1 Pro model for the last few weeks. It lists for €1,899 (almost $2,000), or €1,799 during the initial launch — a price that brings heightened expectations. The N1 Pro is slathered in premium capabilities like GPS/GSM tracki …Read the full story at The Verge.

When you pile up hundreds and thousands of files on your PC, finding the one you need at any given time can become a challenge. Even though File Explorer in Windows offers a built-in search option, it can still take a while to get to the files you want if you don't make full use of the tools available to you.

Despite all these years using Chrome, I never thought about how handy it would be to put the browser in a split-screen mode. I don't mean opening a new window and placing it beside my current one; I mean splitting one window into two separate tabs. It would make research for work a lot easier, especially for those who are on one monitor. Well, it turns out that Google is working on such a feature, and it's shaping up to be a staple in my workflow.

The cheapest iPhone still feels about $100 too expensive.The iPhone 16E is everything I love and hate about iOS. FaceTime at your fingertips. A reliable camera. Simplicity. Familiarity. They’re the pillars of the iPhone experience, and Apple’s newest phone has ‘em. My husband picked up the 16E, concerned that he would have to “learn something new” to use it. He swiped around for a second and said, “Oh. It’s just like my phone.” It is just like his phone — a six-year-old iPhone XR — only updated with a few essential improvements (a faster processor, nicer screen, and a modern camera, that kind of thing) and little else.That’s the other pillar of the iPhone experience: You get exactly what Apple gives you and nothing more. On Android, you can buy a $500 phone with a fast refresh-rate screen, two rear cameras, seven years of software support, and wireless charging. On iOS, you can buy this $599 phone with one rear camera, a standard 60Hz screen, wireless charging (but no MagSafe), and an ample but unstated amount of software support. Apple has no competition when it comes to phones running iOS. The company can gatekeep these conveniences behind a higher price tag, and that’s simply the way things will be. I’m …Read the full story at The Verge.

Navigating through dozens of files and apps on your MacBook can slow you down, so application launchers are a must-have. These tools make it easy to quickly access applications and files as you perform various tasks with just a few keystrokes. They streamline your workflow, making you organized and efficient. While many of these app launchers offer advanced customization, integrations, and automation, we believe these six will speed up your productivity on Mac.

You know, I really like checking out what kind of stuff people get Doom running on as many things as possible. Enthusiasts have pulled some pretty amazing tricks to get Doom running on things it really shouldn't, such as a PDF document. Now, someone has worked out a way to render Doom within a TXT file, and while it's not pretty, it's definitely very impressive.

When leaks began giving us an image of what the GeForce RTX 5090 would look like, we knew immediately that it was going to be expensive. Sure enough, the card went on sale for $1,999; that is, if you managed to find one that wasn't being scalped. Well, if you're not keen on dropping that much money on a GPU, you can instead buy a whole new PC equipped with a Radeon RX 9070 XT and still have $200 left over for some games.

Apple announced in a whitepaper that it plans to introduce a bunch of new child safety features, including letting parents share their kids’ age ranges with apps, refreshing the App Store’s age ratings system, and making it easier for parents to set up Child Accounts for their kids. The company says it will introduce the features “this year.”Companies like Meta, Snap, and X have called for platforms to be responsible for verifying the ages of users at the OS or app store level. Apple also reportedly lobbied against a proposed bill in Louisiana that would have required the company to enforce age restrictions.In the whitepaper, Apple argues that age verification “at the app marketplace level” wouldn’t be ideal, as it would require users to hand over “sensitive personally identifying information” to the company. “That’s not in the interest of user safety or privacy,” Apple says. The age sharing system gestures in that direction without going so far as to fully verify each user’s age. With the age range feature, “parents can allow their kids to share the age range associated with their Child Accounts with app developers,” Apple says.The age range will “be shared with developers if and only if parents decide to allow this information to be shared,” and parents will be able to disable sharing. The feature also won’t “provide kids’ actual birthdates.” Developers will be able to request the age ranges with a new API that Apple says is a “narrowly tailored, data-minimizing, privacy-protecting tool to assist app developers who can benefit from it.”“Today’s announcement is a positive first step, however, developers can only apply these age-appropriate protections with a teen’s approval,” Meta spokesperson Jamie Radice says in a statement to The Verge. “Parents tell us they want to have the final say over the apps their teens use, and that’s why we support legislation that requires app stores to verify a child’s age and get a parent’s approval before their child downloads an app.”As for App Store ratings will expand from four thresholds to five; the new categories will be Age 4 plus, 9 plus, 13 plus, 16 plus, and 18 plus. In their app listings, developers will be asked to highlight “whether apps contain user-generated content or advertising capabilities that can impact the presence of age-inappropriate content” and if apps have their own content controls.Apple says that the App Store won’t show kids apps with age ratings “in the places where we feature apps on our storefront” that are higher than what their parents set on their accounts.As for Child Accounts, Apple says that it will introduce a new setup process and let parents fix the age associated with the account if it wasn’t set up correctly.Update, February 27th: Added Meta statement.

Jitter is a lesser-known networking issue that I can guarantee that most of you have experienced, probably recently. It's most apparent in any type of real-time communications, like video calls, VoIP systems, livestreaming, and in-game comms, but can also affect video and audio streaming from services like Spotify or YouTube.

People often misunderstand the term "bottlenecks," but that's mainly due to the misinformation they tend to find on the internet. This leads to them overcomplicating things and spending money on the wrong hardware. If you browse some Reddit threads, you'll see people constantly arguing about CPU and GPU bottlenecks, and while some of them are right, you'll also notice many pointing out that it's the worst thing that can happen to a PC.

Excel may be the dominant spreadsheet-editing software, but there are plenty of alternatives that can fulfill your data analysis and number-crunching needs. Whether you’re paranoid about storing your precious files on Microsoft’s servers or want a neat app that doesn’t force you to pay subscription fees, you’ll find plenty of decent Excel alternatives. Grist is one such option that you can self-host on your local hardware, and here’s a byte-sized guide to help you integrate this neat utility into your workflows.

The battle of AMD vs Intel has been going on for as long as I can remember. Over the years, they've both had their fair share of time at the top. These days, it will come down to what you want to do and which will be the best choice for you as they both have a great lineup of CPUs. It's always worth remembering that not all CPUs are made for every task, so it's best to decide what you want to achieve before you go out and purchase a new CPU.