The Atari joystick is one of the most recognizable controllers in gaming history, and now the company is not only bringing it forward into the modern age, it’s making it better with new bells and whistles. You younglings might remember much about the Atari CX40 joystick (The author of this piece was born over a decade after the release of said controller. –Management), but it was extremely ubiquitous in the 80s and was one of the first cross-platform controllers. The introduction of the Atari joystick port predates the computer mouse, just to give you some idea of how old and… …read more

Game of Thrones was an epic ride. For eight seasons, HBO treated viewers to some of the best acting and storytelling on television. It all concluded, with a bang, on Sunday. While we all agree that it was a magical journey to get us to season eight in the first place, it’s here where two camps begin to form: some who believe the finale was a solid conclusion, and others who, well, don’t. The latter camp has even gone so far as to collect nearly 1.5 million signatures in hopes that HBO will reshoot the final season. (Don’t hold your… …read more

Google today announced it’s making a visual change to Search on mobile devices. Behold: Can you spot the difference? The “visual refresh,” as Google calls it, is a small one. But it’s also an important one: It makes sure the first thing you see in a search result is where information is coming from, including the site’s favicon/logo. In Google’s own words: With this new design, a website’s branding can be front and center, helping you better understand where the information is coming from and what pages have what you’re looking for. It’s sometimes easy to forget that …read more

Alienware‘s m17 is a hard laptop to pigeonhole. For all appearances it’s just a bigger version of the m15, but in practice it’s something entirely different. Sure they look the same, but the smaller one only really competes against other gaming laptops. The m17 feels built to take on all-comers. The size Bigger is usually better, but it’s also … well, bigger. Alienware and other manufacturers have wrestled with the giant end of gaming laptops for years, but only recently have we seen these new slimmed-down designs float towards the top of the power spectrum. And this means the m17… …read more

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff. Did you know you can adjust the brightness of your iPhone’s flashlight? If you’re like me, and have owned an iPhone for years without realizing that fact, let me walk you through how it’s done. According to Lifehacker, Apple added the flashlight brightness adjustment option (try saying that five times fast) with the iOS 10 update in 2016, so obviously this will only work on iPhones running iOSes 10 or greater. Considering we’re currently …read more