Theo on tech · June 24th

What does clean smell like? It’s a simple question, but one that reveals just how successfully we’ve been sold a myth. Because, for most of human history, clean didn’t smell of anything in particular. It meant washing dried outside in the sun; soap, water and open windows. Clean was simply the absence of unpleasant odours. Then somewhere along the way, clean acquired a scent. “Fresh Linen”. “Spring Meadow”. “Cotton Breeze”.

Long before UEFI came along, PCs used to use a BIOS to get everything set up. It took quite a bit longer to get the job done, but seeing the old BIOS screens brings back memories of diving into an older PC and tweaking settings to better control the hardware.

The TOP500 list of Earth’s mightiest supercomputers has a new leader: the 2.198 Exaflop/s LineShine machine housed at the National Supercomputer Center (NSC) in Shenzhen, which took the top spot without using any kit from Nvidia, Intel, or AMD. Which is not to say that LineShine is an entirely Chinese creation. As explained in a pre-press paper, the machine’s LX2 processors are a local effort but use Armv9 designs – so chalk up a win for Blighty, the home of Arm. The machine also runs KylinOS – a Linux distribution that features contributions from around the world.

SAVE $70: The Soundcore Sleep A30 Special earbuds are on sale for $159.99, down from $229.99. That's a 30% discount or $70 in savings. Credit: Amazon You may have earbuds for all sorts of occasions, including exercise, swimming, and just general use. But do you have some for sleeping? Sure, it sounds a bit strange, but they exist! Sleep earbuds can help out with blocking noise so that you can get a good night's rest.

SAVE $180: The Bose QuietComfort headphones are on sale for $359, down from $179. That's a 50% discount or $180 in savings. Credit: Amazon Bose is one of the most recognizable names out there when it comes to audio. (It even won a Mashable Readers' Choice Award!) Whether it's earbuds, headphones, or speakers, name it, and Bose has them all. Bose's products are also quite high-quality, and the Bose QuietComfort headphones are no different.

The Google Home Speaker is set to start shipping very soon but, ahead of that, one user was able to buy one from a retail store early. They’ve since shared their first impressions, which unfortunately confirm that the speaker has a fixed power cable that’s also pretty short.

If you're someone who was on the internet a lot during the turn of the century, you likely used MSN Messenger to chat with your friends. If you're a bit too young for it, MSN Messenger was an old messaging service that was pretty bare-bones compared to something like Discord, but at the time, it was a staple app that kept people connected.

So, the Steam Machine made its grand debut in the gaming market, and it ended up costing at least $1,049. It's a far cry from the $750 price tag Valve initially wanted to sell the Steam Machine for, but given how the RAM market is, the company felt it had to bump the price up to cover for the volatile market.

If you had one monitor back in the 8-bit era, instead of having to wait to use the family TV, you were already amongst the blessed. If you had five, maybe you worked at a computer store– but if you did, you could have done what [The 8-Bit Guy] demonstrates in a recent YouTube video and plug all five (5) monitors into a Commodore 128. The computer isn’t modified in any way– well, except for the now standard use of an SD card disk emulator– so what gives? Well, you probably guessed he’s splitting up the colour signal into multiple monochrome images, but since the C128 actually has an RGBI, that

It’s 100 feet shorter and $100 million cheaper than Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s superyacht, but another billionaire’s ship had no trouble drawing attention in Seattle on Tuesday. “Zen,” a $200 million, 289-foot yacht reportedly owned by Chinese billionaire Wu Guangming, motored smoothly through the Ballard Locks and out to Puget Sound, attracting onlookers along the railings of the popular Seattle destination. Flying a Cayman Islands flag, the vessel displayed its port of registry, George Town, below its name on the stern. Wu is the founder of China’s Jiangsu Yuyue Medical Equipment and Supply,