Month: September 2024

Enlarge / GM CEO Mary Barra (left) and Hyundai executive chair Euisun Chung (right) have agreed to have their companies collaborate. (credit: Hyundai Motor Group)

Two of the world's largest automakers are becoming closer friends, we learned this morning. Hyundai Motor Group and General Motors, which together sold 13.5 million cars last year, have decided to try and collaborate in a range of areas in the coming years, including vehicle design, technology development, and even supply chain sourcing.

GM is one of the world's oldest and most established automakers and has a long legacy of clever engineering solutions, albeit one often hamstrung by corporate decision-making.

Meanwhile, GM was just a year from its 60th birthday when HMG got going, and while the Korean automaker was not taken particularly seriously in the US as a budget brand at launch, over the last 15 years its products have been class-leading, especially its electric vehicles.

Enlarge / GM CEO Mary Barra (left) and Hyundai executive chair Euisun Chung (right) have agreed to have their companies collaborate. (credit: Hyundai Motor Group)

Two of the world's largest automakers are becoming closer friends, we learned this morning. Hyundai Motor Group and General Motors, which together sold 13.5 million cars last year, have decided to try and collaborate in a range of areas in the coming years, including vehicle design, technology development, and even supply chain sourcing.

GM is one of the world's oldest and most established automakers and has a long legacy of clever engineering solutions, albeit one often hamstrung by corporate decision-making.

Meanwhile, GM was just a year from its 60th birthday when HMG got going, and while the Korean automaker was not taken particularly seriously in the US as a budget brand at launch, over the last 15 years its products have been class-leading, especially its electric vehicles.

Enlarge (credit: iFixit)

Not being able to solder puts a hard cap on the kinds of devices you can fix at home. As more modern devices add in circuit boards and discrete electronics (needed or otherwise), soldering is often the only way to save an otherwise functional object from ending up in a junk drawer, or landfill.

That's the kind of roadblock iFixit's FixHub is intended to address. The repair store and repairability advocate now offers battery-powered soldering tools and beginner's kits, intended to make soldering something you can do almost anywhere, quickly, with a few features intended to help out novices and those feeling a bit rusty.

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  iFixit's soldering tools are meant to be used together or separately. The battery pack can control the soldering iron temperature, but so can a browser. [credit: iFixit ]

iFixit, which says it is going "all-in on soldering" in a press release, offers a few interconnected pieces as part of a FixHub system:

Enlarge / The Engo 2 smartglasses with heads-up display look slightly bulky. (credit: BradleyWarren Photography)

When it comes to working out, I'm a data nerd. A Google spreadsheet contains every bike ride I've been on for the past four years, tracking data points ranging from average moving speed to normalized power output. Sometimes I ride just for fun—road cycling is one of my favorite activities, period—so I'm not always thinking about cadence and power curves when I'm on the bike. Fitness-focused rides, on the other hand, mean a lot of looking away from the road and down at my bike computer. That's comfortable for me most of the time, but sometimes the cars are flying by or frost heaves are coming fast and furious, so the smart move is keeping my eyes down the road. So I was intrigued when I had a chance to check out ActiveLook's Engo 2 augmented reality sunglasses with a built-in head-up display.

Priced at $299 (or $349 for photochromic lenses), the Engo 2 essentially takes data from your Garmin bike computer, watch, or fitness tracker; Apple Watch; Android Wear device, Suunto watch, or ActiveLook's homegrown app and projects it toward the top inside part of the right lens. (Garmin is the only bike computer supported by ActiveLook.)

The Engo 2 AR sunglasses. You can see the HUD projector just to the right of the bridge. (credit: BradleyWarren Photography)

The inside of the glasses. The charger connects to the four gold dots above the bridge. The "V" at the bottom adjusts to the width of your nose. The projector is on the right. (credit: BradleyWarren Photography)

From most angles, the Engo 2 looks like a normal pair of sports-oriented sunglasses, with wide, curved, and extensive lenses. The only oddity is a small metal plate in the middle of the glasses, right over the bridge of the nose, which is a sensor. Swipe from left to right, and the display will switch to another view or shut off—if your finger isn't too sweaty or your swipe is insufficiently forceful.