Month: September 2020

Enlarge / A Nikola Badger pickup truck. (credit: Nikola Motors)

The original design for Nikola’s flagship truck was purchased by founder Trevor Milton from a designer in Croatia, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, despite company claims in a 2018 lawsuit that the vehicle was initially designed by Mr. Milton “in his basement..”

The truck, the Nikola One, is at the centre of a $2 billion lawsuit with Tesla, in which Nikola alleges its rival infringed on its patents. Nikola claims in that lawsuit that Mr. Milton began designing the model in 2013, with other company staff later working on it.

In a rebuttal to the lawsuit filed last week, Tesla alleged that Nikola could not protect the designs because they did not originate from the company itself, but from Adriano Mudri, a designer based in Croatia.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

TikTok will be gone from app stores tomorrow morning unless a federal judge acts to block the Trump administration's ban on the app before midnight tonight.

Judge Carl Nichols of the US District Court for DC said today that he will determine whether to grant or reject TikTok's request for an injunction on the ban before the deadline hits at the stroke of 12.

In a hearing on Thursday, Nichols gave the administration until Friday afternoon either to delay or defend the ban. The administration chose to file a response defending the ban but did so under seal, so the filings are not available to the public.

There’s no shortage of documentaries about our current political climate or the fact that the Internet might be bad, but Feels Good Man focuses on the craziest intersection of these two modern realities: Pepe, the cartoon frog.

If you’re aware of Pepe already, chances are it’s because the character has become synonymous with the alt-right, that extreme online demographic tied to modern white supremacists and Nazi movements. Or perhaps you heard of Pepe before that, during the time this frog had become the meme du jour of 4chan, the anonymous message board associated with all sorts of nefarious real world behavior. Though Pepe's most high profile 15 minutes of fame were inarguably an infamous cameo on then candidate Donald Trump’s Twitter feed, leading to the character’s adoption by some of his most extreme supporters like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Feels Good Man will get to all that, of course, but this documentary starts with the now toxic toad’s tadpole days. By doing so, the film will likely show viewers something they didn’t know or hadn’t previously considered regardless of prior familiarity with Pepe and the insanity swirling around him. And through tracing Pepe’s evolution, Feels Good Man manages to remind everyone of a fundamental truth of communication, particularly in the Internet age. Once you click send on something, things like original intent and context might become as ephemeral as a single tweet.

Enlarge / Acer's Swift 1 looks a little more professional than Gateway's GWTN141-2—but looks aren't everything, as our testing conclusively demonstrates. (credit: Jim Salter)

We've been on the lookout for good but seriously cheap laptops for a while now. Acer's $650 Swift 3 is an excellent choice for budget laptops in the under-$700 range, but we've been really itching to find one in the almost nonexistent sub-$400 category. To that end, today we're looking at two of Walmart's finest—a $378 Acer Swift 1 and a $350 Gateway GWTN141-2.

Both of these are serviceable if cheap laptops, but the Gateway, despite being the less expensive model, will be the clear winner for most people. It's more powerful, more repairable, more upgrade-able, and in our testing, a bit more reliable as well.

Acer Swift 1 SF114-32

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  Thankfully, the off-putting dingy yellow POST logo isn't in your face for long—the Swift 1 cold boots to the desktop in about 11 seconds. [credit: Jim Salter ]

We didn't actually intend to test or review the Swift 1—we ordered a Walmart Motile 14, with a Ryzen 5 processor for only $350. But Walmart has an unfortunate tendency to just throw in any similar product when it runs low on stock, and the Swift 1 is what got sent in its place—with no notification, either by email or in our account at Walmart.com, and no paperwork in the box either.