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When Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman spoke to Ars in April, shortly after the surprise announcement of Return to Monkey Island, they weren't ready to discuss details on where the franchise's story would be going after LeChuck's Revenge. Today, though, a new trailer and marketing materials for the game give us our first hints of what Guybrush Threepwood himself says is "a story about the time I finally found the secret of Monkey Island" (and the first mention of a Switch version, which will be a console exclusive).

It is "many years" after Guybrush's last encounter with zombie pirate LeChuck, and "Guybrush himself is adrift and unfulfilled" as "Melee Island has taken a turn for the worse," according to the game's official website. Love interest Elaine Marley "has turned her focus away from governing," while a "hip, young" Captain Madison and his pirate crew "have shuffled the old guard from power." Manic salesman Stan, meanwhile, has been imprisoned for "marketing-related crimes," which you can learn more about in an interactive conversation on the game's website (something "non-fungible" may have played a role...).

All those characters and more show up in the trailer, which features signs of inter-ship cannon battles and plenty of sword fighting (no explicit signs of insults amid the sword fighting in the trailer, but we have to imagine we'll see some of that). Amid scenes depicting plenty of scrapes for Guybrush, there's also a brief hint that Elaine may be playable at some point in the game.

Enlarge / MNT's "Pocket Reform" is the same open hardware in a smaller enclosure. (credit: MNT)

A few months ago, we reviewed the MNT Reform, which attempts to bring the dream of entirely open source hardware to an audience that doesn't want to design and build a laptop totally from scratch. Now, MNT is bringing its open-hardware ethos to a second PC, a 7-inch "Pocket Reform" laptop that recalls the design of old clamshell Pocket PCs, just like the big Reform references the design of chunky '90s ThinkPads.

The Pocket Reform borrows many of the big Reform laptop's design impulses, including a low-profile mechanical keyboard and trackball-based pointing device and a chunky, retro-throwback design. The device includes a 7-inch 1080p screen, a pair of USB-C ports (one of which is used for charging), a microSD slot for storage expansion, and a micro HDMI port for connecting to a display when you're at your desk.

The Pocket Reform's purple case does at least look a bit sleeker than the chunky black enclosure of the full-size Reform. (credit: MNT)

The full-size Reform is an interesting exercise in open source hardware and software, though a computer built around openness makes a lot of compromises that you don't have to make with a "closed" system. Our main complaint about the big Reform was its miserably slow ARM processor, which won't change for the Pocket Reform even though MNT continues to work on slightly more powerful processor options. You'll at least be able to augment the device's default 802.11ac Wi-Fi with a cellular modem and SIM card.

Enlarge (credit: picture alliance | Getty Images)

Soon after the devastating Glass Fire sparked in California’s Napa Valley in September 2020, wine chemist Anita Oberholster’s inbox was brimming with hundreds of emails from panicked viticulturists. They wanted to know if they could harvest their grapes without a dreaded effect on their wine: the odious ashtray flavor known as smoke taint.

Oberholster, of the University of California, Davis, could only tell them, “Maybe.”

Industry laboratories were slammed with grape samples to test, with wait times of up to six weeks. Growers didn’t know whether it was worth harvesting their crops. Eight percent of California wine grapes in 2020 were left to rot.