Well, that’s that – Halloween 2024 is in the books. I hope you had a lovely time and spent the day doing spooky things with your friends and family. Now that November is here, it’s time to think about the family gatherings with Thanksgiving and Christmas now on the horizon. If you’ve been busy getting ready for the holiday season and missed out on what’s going on in the tech world, here’s our top five news stories for the past week.
Seriously, how has nobody thought of this sooner?
We really like DIY handhelds here at XDA. We’ve covered people turning all sorts of devices into a portable format, from console motherboards to gaming laptop hardware. However, someone created the Beth Deck that uses a Framework motherboard that was specifically designed for DIY projects, which makes me feel a little silly for not thinking of doing this myself. It’s called the Beth Deck, and if you want to make your own handheld, it seems like the perfect way to get started.
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Jsaux docking station with SSD enclosure review: Add ports and storage to your gaming handheld
This accessory gives you an M.2 SSD and five additional ports in exchange for your Steam Deck or Asus ROG Ally’s USB-C port.
No more 8GB models
Would you pay a premium price for a laptop with 8GB of RAM? That’s what some Apple fans had to put up with, as the Cupertino tech giant was pretty adamant about a pretty small amount of memory with its laptops. Fortunately, with the new M4 generation of devices, the company has seen the light and has scrapped all 8GB models. Now you’ll be getting at least 16GB of RAM when you pick up a MacBook.
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Out with the new and in with the old
So how about that new Outlook app? It sounded good when Microsoft first announced it, but once people got their hands on it, it didn’t turn out to be all that great. Fortunately, a Redditor figured out a way to keep the old Outlook UI around for the time being. The fix may not be permanent, but it’s a nice way to keep using the older design until Microsoft figures out how to patch this loophole.
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The Windows 11 2024 Update is now available — here’s what’s new and why it’s not Windows 12
The Windows 11 2024 Update will bring a ton of changes to the operating system, including better support for Arm devices.
2 Someone hacked an Alarmo, and you can too
You don’t even need to open its casing
When some people get their hands on a shiny new gadget, their only thought is how they can break it open and make it run whatever they please. This week, we saw a fellow named Gary who managed to get their Alarmo to display a cat picture and uploaded the code for others to do the same. And after a bit more tinkering, they got Doom running on it too. The most impressive part of this hack is that it doesn’t require any external modification to the Alarmo; just plug in a USB cable, run some code, and you’re set.
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That’s $20 decillion, by the way
Here’s a fun fact that I didn’t know before the week started; the total worth of all the money in the world is $110 trillion. The reason I know that is because Russia has fined Google $20 decillion for removing a YouTube channel back in 2022. The fine started off small-ish but then doubled every week until we were stuck with this gigantic number. Google didn’t seem too bothered with it, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to even begin trying to pay it back, but wow – what an amazing thing to come out of the world of tech.
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