Month: December 2020

Enlarge / Luckily in 2020, there may be an at-home puzzle for everyone.

A few weeks ago, my husband and I broke into a museum.

Well, we didn't break in, exactly. We had keys, so it was more like, you know, a little light trespassing. The keys came from some guy in a hooded cloak standing around outside, but they worked, and the cops never showed up. So, long story short: there’s an artifact sitting in our living room currently, and we’re trying to figure out what to do with it.

The artifact, alas, exists only digitally (for now, at least). And both the keys and the museum were made entirely of paper. My husband and I both wore cozy pajama pants for the break-in slightly unauthorized entry, which took place on our coffee table while I sipped a glass of red wine.

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It has been rumored for years, but now even Reuters is claiming that Samsung is killing the Galaxy Note. Samsung's big-screen, stylus-packing phone has struggled for years to differentiate itself from the Galaxy S line, and with the rise of foldables, Samsung apparently doesn't have room anymore for redundant slab phones. Reuters says that "the South Korean tech giant does not have plans to develop a new version of the Galaxy Note for 2021" and "development efforts that normally would have been directed to the Note would now be channeled into its foldable phone range." That would mean 2020's Galaxy Note 20 is the last of Samsung's Note line.

In the early days, the Note line led the charge toward ever-bigger screen sizes, but for many years now, the Note has struggled to justify its existence compared to the mainline Galaxy S series, which gets released earlier in the year. Usually, the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note have similar specs, similar screen sizes, and similar designs, leaving only a stylus as the Note's defining feature. We usually skip reviewing the Note line because there's nothing to say compared to the S phone released earlier in the year, and every year you'll see calls from various outlets to kill the Note because it just has nothing new to offer.

Reuters claims the Galaxy Note's one defining feature, stylus support, will actually be ported over to other devices. The report says the S21 "will have a stylus" and the "next version of Samsung’s foldable phone" (we assume this means the Galaxy Z Fold 3) "will be compatible with a stylus."

Enlarge / A thoughtful soul decides to poison the air as he drives through the infield at Daytona International Raceway during the 2016 Rolex 24 race. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

I remember the first time someone rolled coal on me. It was 2006, and I was driving to work at the University of Kentucky. It was a bright, sunny day in Lexington, and I had the roof down and was stopped in traffic behind a large pickup truck with decidedly non-standard exhaust pipes exiting straight up behind the cab. Whoever was driving the pickup evidently noticed the Miata in his mirror and enveloped me in a thick cloud of soot when the lights changed.

As automotive subcultures go, intentionally modifying your truck's diesel engine to make extra pollution is one of the more antisocial ones out there. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, diesel trucks with disabled emissions controls are far more widespread than you might think and emit more pollution than the diesel engines that got Volkswagen such hefty fines.

In 2016, Volkswagen agreed to a pair of court settlements totaling nearly $16 billion after it was caught selling diesel vehicles fitted with emissions defeat devices. In total, the VW scandal affected more than half a million cars and SUVs sold in the US, which produced up to 40 times the legal limit of nitrogen oxides (NO_x) when in daily operation.