Tech Radar

Isopolis isn’t just another map of San Francisco—it’s the city flattened into a single, meticulous isometric plane where every block tilts forward like a game board. You can trace the dip of Twin Peaks in the center or follow the jagged spine of the Mission District’s rooftops, all rendered in pixelated pink and purple. It’s the kind of project that makes you wonder why we don’t navigate cities this way more often. The best part? No one’s trying to sell you anything. No ads, no sponsored pins, just a clean, interactive grid you can zoom into block by block. The data comes from OpenStreetMap and DataSF, stripped of the usual noise, and the whole thing feels oddly personal—the "made with ♥" tag at the bottom feels like a quiet rebellion against the sterile precision of modern cartography. Try it and you might end up feeling like you’ve glimpsed the city in a way Google Maps never intended. Introduction to Isopolis Isopolis is a mapped environment with some interestin...

Alibaba is positioning Qwen3.8-Max as the first real AI coworker for developers. That's a bold claim, especially since they haven't released any specs. No parameter count, no benchmark table, no details on architecture. Just a name and a promise. I'm not taking that on faith. The good news is we don't have to. Qwen Studio and the API platform are both live, which means anyone can sign up and test this thing directly. That's the honest way to evaluate a "coworker" claim. Benchmarks can tell you how a model scores on standardized tests, but coworker is about whether it can handle the sloppy, context-heavy tasks that make up real engineering work. So I did exactly that. I threw a handful of tasks at it that I'd give a junior developer on day one, from refactoring a messy function to explaining why a test was flaky. What happened wasn't a clean success story, and that's precisely why you should keep reading. What "Cowork" Adds to Co...

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that a targeted harassment campaign on eBay ended with a whopping $56M payout. It's a staggering figure, and my initial reaction was that it must be some kind of anomaly. But as I dug deeper, I realized that this case reveals some unsettling truths about online accountability - or the lack thereof. The campaign in question was incredibly brazen, with the perpetrators sending unwanted gifts, including live insects and a pig fetus, to the victim's home. What's even more surprising is that this harassment was allegedly orchestrated by eBay's own employees. It's a shocking betrayal of trust, and it raises serious questions about the company's culture and values. I've been covering the tech industry for years, and I've seen my fair share of scandals and mishaps. But this one stands out for its sheer audacity and the devastating impact it had on the victim. As I delved deeper into the story, I couldn...

I've been following the EU's age verification project, and one thing that's caught my attention is the recent confirmation that hardware-bound attestation is mandatory. What this means is that devices will need to have a specific kind of security chip to verify the user's age, and that's raising some concerns. For instance, how will this affect Linux users, or those who prefer custom ROMs? It's not just about the technology itself, but also about the potential implications for open-source access. The more I think about it, the more I realize that this mandate could have far-reaching consequences. On one hand, it's understandable that the EU wants to ensure that age-restricted content is only accessible to those who are supposed to see it. But on the other hand, requiring hardware-bound attestation could create a whole new set of barriers for users who don't have the "right" kind of device. I'm curious to see how this will play out, ...

RISC OS turned 20 last month, which is the kind of milestone that usually gets celebrated with corporate retrospectives and vague "legacy matters" platitudes. But here's the thing: this isn't just another aging codebase limping along on nostalgia. The open-source effort behind RISC OS has quietly been doing something most retro-computing projects never attempt—actually moving forward. Take memory cards alone. In year six, the team got native SD/MMC support working on BeagleBoard hardware. That's not just about wrangling ancient drivers into shape. It means the OS could suddenly read modern storage without kludges or adapters—a real capability, not a museum piece. And then there was the Raspberry Pi port in year seven, which didn't just prove the OS could run on dirt-cheap hardware. It proved it could scale from a niche retro oddity to something that could plausibly power your next hobby project. The traffic numbers back this up: their website hit recor...

I've been looking at the words used to teach English language learners, and what's striking is how much they've changed over time. It's not just that new words have been added - though they have - but that the overall character of the list reflects fundamental shifts in the US workforce and society. Take a look at some of the words that are now considered essential: mortgage, corporation, analysis. These aren't the kind of words you'd typically associate with everyday conversation, but they're the kind of terms that are increasingly relevant in a service-oriented economy. When you think about it, this shift makes sense. By 1957, just four years after the original list was published, white-collar workers outnumbered blue-collar workers for the first time in US history. The nature of work was changing, and the language we use to describe it was changing too. But what's interesting is that this change wasn't just about adding new words - it was ...