ArduinoMania

Composting was a big — and daily — part of my life for five years when I lived off-grid. Granted, we were composting more than just food, but I learned a lot about what goes into making a healthy compost pile. Mostly, it’s a lot of work — and now that I live in a city, I don’t do it myself. To be clear, I still believe in composting, especially when you consider that each person in the US throws away an estimated 200 pounds of food per year. Food waste in landfills does bad stuff, like releasing methane and contributing to climate change. In compost, old food does good stuff, like improving the soil and acting as a carbon sink.

Now that more municipal curbside composting programs exist, millions of people have a dead simple way to deal with food scraps. But if you, like me, live where city-wide compost pickup isn’t yet a thing, you have two options: compost at home, with or without a machine to help out, or do what I do and pay someone to compost for you..

How to compost at home

It’s tempting to think of composting as building a holder, throwing in food and coming back a few weeks later to something you can toss in your garden, but the reality requires much more time, space and effort. For me, the toughest part of composting was the consistency it required. At least a few times per week, any active compost pile needs tending, including adding to it, turning it, watering it in dry climates or shielding it from excess rain. In addition to time, home composting requires the space and materials to build the bins. You’ll also need a regular source of “brown” or carbon-rich materials like dried leaves, untreated paper, cardboard, sawdust or wood chips.

Plenty of people (with more knowledge than I) have put together how-tos on the subject. I followed The Mini Farming Guide to Composting, but these online guides will also serve you well:

• EPA: Offers a high-level overview of the process and includes a handy chart with examples of green and brown materials.

• ILSR: A more in-depth guide, complete with illustrations and the reasoning behind each step.

• NMSU: A science-rich reference with multiple methods and troubleshooting suggestions.

• Joe Gardener: A multi-page, highly detailed PDF from Joe Lamp’l, the host of PBS and DIY Network gardening shows.

Each source gives the same basic advice: build your bin, collect your food scraps, stockpile brown materials, maintain your ratios, monitor and amend moisture and aeration levels, then let a full heap finish for six to eight weeks (so yes, you generally need two piles).

As you can see, composting correctly isn’t as easy as chucking scraps into a bin and letting time handle the rest. Of course, if the process appeals to you (and it is pretty fascinating) that’s not a drawback. Gardeners in particular, who are out in the yard anyway, make excellent candidates for keeping up healthy piles — not to mention, they also have the most use for the finished product. People without yards, however, are out of luck (unless they’re comfortable hosting an indoor worm farm).

Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget

Kitchen composting machines

Calling them “composters” is a misnomer, since these devices don’t actually create compost – that requires microbial processes that take weeks. Instead, these appliances chop and dehydrate food, creating an odor-free material that’s substantially smaller in volume than what went in. You can even include meat and dairy – an advantage over home compost piles in which animal products are generally not recommended. As for what comes out, it can be added to your backyard pile, spread in your garden, added to houseplants or thrown in the green bin or trash – where it will take up less room and won’t stink anything up.

I haven't tested any of these devices, but after researching from the perspective of a fairly informed composter, here’s what I see as the pros and cons of a few of the more popular devices on the market.

Mill ($40 to $65 per month with USPS pickups, $30 - $50 per month without pickups)

I like that Mill offers a solution for the substance it produces and that it’s large enough to hold the scraps an average family might generate over the course of a few weeks. Instead of buying the machine outright, you sign up for a subscription, which includes the Mill bin and USPS pickup for the “grounds” it creates. Add food throughout the day and the dehydration and mixing cycles run automatically each night. …Once it's full, you empty the contents into a prepaid box and ship it to Mill’s facility in Washington where the grounds are turned into food for chickens.

You can also keep the grounds, feeding them to your own backyard chickens, adding them to a compost bin or sprinkling them (sparingly) in your yard where water will begin the actual composting process. If you go that route, you’ll pay $30 or $50 per month, depending whether you pay annually or monthly for the bin itself. For the Mill machine plus pickup for the grounds, you’ll pay an extra $10 per month on the annual plan or $15 each month.

Lomi ($828)

Lomi also chops and dehydrates your scraps. The unit is smaller than the Mill, so you’ll likely have to empty it every few days. It offers three modes, one of which, Grow Mode, uses small capsules of probiotics called Lomi Pods to create “plant food” in about 20 hours. Lomi suggests mixing the results with regular soil at a ratio of one to ten.

If you have a yard, it’s easy enough to add a little here and there to maintain the ratio, and if you’re an apartment dweller with houseplants you can mix small amounts into the soil. But the end product should only be used sparingly, like a fertilizer, so you’ll probably need to do something else with the excess. Lomi suggests adding the excess to your compost, dropping it into your green bin if your city provides curbside compost pickup or throwing it in the trash where it will take up less space and won’t smell.

Reencle ($499)

Reencle is larger like the Mill bin, and involves microorganisms in the process like Lomi. You can buy it outright or rent it for $30 per month, but that doesn’t include pickup for the results. I like that Reencle is, in essence, a living pile of fermentation, using low heat, grinders and a regenerating bacterial population to break down your food scraps.

Adding scraps daily “feeds” the pile, and when it’s full, you’re only supposed to remove about half of what’s in there, leaving the rest to breed more Bacilli. Again, the material works as a plant food or fertilizer, not like standard compost. Reencle recommends a byproduct-to-soil ratio of one part to four, and that you let the mixture sit for five days before adding to your monsteras and gardens.

Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget

Why you should consider a composting service

DIY home composting is a lot of work. Countertop machines are expensive and, from what users say, noisy and sometimes unreliable. Both methods leave you to figure out what to do with the byproduct, whether it’s the finished compost from your bins or the dehydrated proto-compost from the appliances. That’s great for gardeners — compost makes plants happy. Everyone else may find themselves stuck with a delightful pile of black gold and nowhere to put it.

Home composting also doesn’t let you take advantage of compostable dishware, bags and to-go items. Companies like Matter Compostables make cups, plates and utensils that compost down in about a year at commercial composting facilities (but not all of them will break down in home piles). That decomposition time frame sure beats the multiple centuries it takes for a plastic fork to degrade. Matter even makes compostable kitchen trash bags, which I found to be surprisingly strong replacements for plastic.

In cities where municipal composting exists, many restaurants are beginning to offer compostable to-go containers. That not only drastically reduces plastic use, people can also toss unwanted leftovers and the box it came in into the bin. Of course, not all of us live in cities with municipal composting services (I don’t). Which is why I pay for a local service and I recommend it.

Most subscription-based compost pick-up services work the same way: for a monthly fee, they provide you with a bucket and lid. You fill the bucket with leftovers and set it on your front porch/steps/stoop on pickup day. They collect your bucket, leaving you a fresh one on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis. Scraps are then composted on a large scale and the results are sold to local farms or people in the community.

Each service has different rules about what you can add, but most let you throw all food and food-related items in the bucket (including meat, bones, dairy and fruit pits). You can also usually include coffee filters, pizza boxes, houseplants, BPI-certified compostable plastics and paper towels (without cleaning products on them). All services ask that you remove produce stickers and pull the staples from your teabags.

I have our pickup scheduled for every other Tuesday. Does two weeks’ worth of food in a bucket stink? It does. To help with that, we keep our bucket outside with the lid firmly on. I keep a canister on the countertop to fill with scraps throughout the day and empty it into the bucket when the canister is full or starts to smell. I also keep old food in the fridge until right before collection day.

Of course, these services aren’t available everywhere, and they cost $20 to $40 per month, so it’s not a universal solution. I pay $22 for a twice monthly pickup and I look at the cost in terms of time: I would spend more than two hours a month maintaining a compost pile, so if I value my labor at $12 per hour, which is my state’s minimum wage, the cost is worth it.

I like the little perks too, like getting a “free” bag of compost twice per year and having a place to drop off our yearly batch of jack-o-lanterns once the faces start caving in. The service I use is also currently working on opening a new composting facility that will allow it to take in more food scraps from restaurants and even create a community space. That’s a much better end game for my avocado pit than being sealed up for eternity in a landfill.

A sampling of composting services in the largest US markets

Modern tech is making it easier for these services to pop up in more cities. Sign-up is done online and most payments are automatic. My driver told me they use the Stop Suite app to optimize their pickup routes, send out text reminders and handle other customer service functions. Composting may be old as dirt, but the way we’re creating it is brand new.

Of the 20 largest metro areas in the US, nine have or will have municipally-run compost collection programs. I spent some time in Seattle, where most homes had three collection bins: trash, recycling and compost. That’s by far the easiest and cheapest way to do it. But if you don’t live in one of those nine locales with city-run services — you’ll have to go the paid route. Here’s a list of the community composting services available in 11 major metro areas:

• New Jersey: Garden State Composting, Neighborhood Compost

• Chicago: WasteNot Compost, The Urban Canopy, Collective Resource Compost

• Dallas: Recycle Revolution

• Houston: Moonshot Compost, Zero Waste Houston

• Washington DC: Compost Crew, Veteran Compost

• Philadelphia: Mother Compost, Circle Compost, Bennett Compost

• Atlanta: Awesome Possum Composting, Compost Now

• Miami: Compost for Life, Renuable

• Phoenix: R.City

• Detroit: Midtown Composting, Scrap Soils

• Tampa: Suncoast Compost

• Albuquerque (the service I use): Little Green Bucket

When Google debuted AI Mode at the start of March, the company promised to work quickly on bringing the feature to more users, and now it's doing exactly. Following a smaller expansion last month, the company says AI Mode is now available to all Labs users, with no wait list in place to limit access. As a reminder, AI Mode is a new chatbot that Google has built directly into Search. Labs, meanwhile, is a program you can sign up for to try out new Search features before they're widely available.      

With today's expansion, Google is also updating AI Mode to add new visual cards that will appear when you ask the chatbot for information related to places and products. "For local spots, like restaurants, salons and stores, you can quickly see info like ratings, reviews, and opening hours, and if you’re looking for a product, you’ll see shoppable options with real-time prices (including the latest promotions), images, shipping details and local inventory," Google says of the new feature.

Google

On desktop, Google is also adding a search history tool, allowing users to revisit and continue previous conversations they've had with AI Mode. The idea here is to allow people to pick up on research they might have left unfinished. 

If you're not enrolled in Labs and live in the US, there's a chance you might see AI Mode appear in Search sometime in the coming weeks. Google says it's doing this because the response to the feature has been "incredibly positive," and it wants to collect additional feedback before a broader rollout.     

Apple has been ordered to pay a $502 million lump sum payment by UK courts for infringing on patents owned by Optis Cellular Technology LLC, based out of Texas. This particular company is not an aggrieved innovator, but instead what is referred to as a “patent troll.” That’s a company that buys up niche patents with the specific intent to seek damages for infringement from lucrative defendants like Apple, and it’s not their first time being awarded damages from the Cupertino giant.

This lawsuit was originally filed through London courts in 2019 over patents governing cellular technology, including 4G, that Optis says was improperly used in iPads and iPhones. In 2023, London’s High Court ruled in Optis’ favor and ordered Apple to pay just over $56 million plus interest to settle the dispute, inclusive of past and future sales that featured the offending tech. Optis successfully argued that this was far too low a sum, leading to the half-a-billion-dollars in damages ordered today.

The iPhone maker has found itself in court over patent infringements time and time again in the past — not only with patent trolls, but also fellow industry stalwarts. The ability for enormous tech companies to (allegedly) infringe on design or utility patents and pay pennies on the dollar for the damage done years later seems to be a feature, not a bug.

Apple has unsurprisingly responded by promising to appeal the court's decision, to which Optis insisted it will fight to defend its intellectual property.

The recently-released Apple iPad Air M3 is already on sale via Amazon. You can pick up the 11-inch model starting at $499 and the 13-inch version starting at $699. If Amazon isn’t your bag, these deals are also available at Best Buy.

This model topped our list of the best iPads, and we said it the perfect choice for most consumers. The M3 chip is extremely powerful, which increases performance and multitasking when compared to the base iPad. It offers support for the Apple Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard, which is nice, and the overall design is lovely.

The battery can last up to 12 hours, which is a decent metric for a modern tablet. The two 12MP cameras won’t be winning any awards, but they get the job done. These are also fairly lightweight, which makes sense given the name. The 11-inch version weighs around a pound and the 13-inch model shoots up to 1.36 pounds. That’s light enough for long-term use without any real issues.

While the screen is gorgeous, it’s not an OLED. It also maxes out with a 60Hz refresh rate, which is on the lower end. It’s worth noting that the $499 base price for the 11-inch model gets you 128GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. Other variations are on sale, but the cost can add up. For instance, the 13-inch version with a 1TB drive will set you back $1,200.

Check out our coverage of the best Apple deals for more discounts, and follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

If you've been thinking about upgrading your old Apple Watch, or you're keen on picking one up for the first time, take note: The Apple Watch Series 10 is back down to $299 in a few colorways at Amazon and Best Buy. We've seen this deal a few times in recent months; nevertheless, it matches the wearable's lowest price to date.

This price applies to the 42mm GPS version, but the GPS + cellular model is also on sale for $110 off, bringing it down to $389 in a handful of color options. If you want something larger, meanwhile, the 46mm GPS model is $100 off Apple's list price and down to a low of $329 as well. Considering the Apple Watch is usually only updated once a year alongside the iPhone in September, these are decent deals to snag now while the Series 10 will remain the flagship smartwatch in Apple's lineup for a few more months.

The Apple Watch Series 10 is our pick for the best smartwatch overall, though note that you'll need a compatible iPhone to use it. We gave the wearable a score of 90 in our review.

Admittedly, this is a relatively iterative upgrade. If you have an Apple Watch Series 8 or 9, the upgrade is probably not worth it. But if you're an Apple Watch newcomer or you're upgrading from an older model, this is generally the one to go for.

The Series 10 has a larger screen than its predecessor, which makes it easier to see notifications and such. The thinner frame looks nicer too. However, while the Apple Watch Series 10 is great for fitness and wellness tracking, it's a bit disappointing that the device lacks the blood oxygen feature seen in earlier models (though Apple had little choice but to nix that here).

Check out our coverage of the best Apple deals for more discounts, and follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Apple has been warning possible victims of spyware attacks, according to several alleged recipients of the messages. At the time of writing there appears to be at least two people who have confirmed they’ve been notified by Apple, and that the warning itself says that users in 100 countries have received similar alerts. The company does not offer any specifics as to how many people may have been targeted, or where the attacks are coming from

As reported by TechCrunch, one recipient of the warning message is the Italian journalist Ciro Pellegrino, who works for an online news outlet called Fanpage in his native country. The other (as far as we know right now) is Dutch right-wing commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek, who posted screenshots and a video of the alleged warning message on X.

According to Vlaardingerbroek, Apple informed her that it had detected a targeted mercenary spyware attack against her iPhone. The message she says she received said: “This attack is likely targeting you specifically because of who you are and what you do. Although it’s never possible to achieve absolute certainty when detecting such attacks, Apple has high confidence in this warning — please take it seriously.”

The warning does not say where the alleged spyware attack originated, but Vlaardingerbroek claims that Apple used the Israeli cyber-arms company NSO Group’s Pegasus software as an example. She goes on to say that the attack, if genuine, is likely an attempt to intimidate and silence her.

Apple’s official guidelines about threat notifications match the screenshots on Vlaardingerbroek’s video, where it also explains that “mercenary spyware attacks cost millions of dollars and often have a short shelf life, making them much harder to detect and prevent. The vast majority of users will never be targeted by such attacks.” The same guidelines state that targeted users will be notified with an alert at the top of the page when signing into their Apple account, as well as by email and iMessage using the email addresses and phone numbers associated with that account.

Last year, Apple device users in as many as 92 countries were sent spyware attack warnings of a similar nature, and since 2021, individuals in over 150 countries have been contacted. But Apple hasn’t given more details on how many people are targeted in such attacks, only the number of countries where it contacted affected users.

Anyone rocking a recent-gen high-end GPU like an RTX 4090 or 5090 knows that these behemoths of rendering power are heavy enough to knock out a would-be PC thief. As GPUs get larger and heavier, sagging has become a growing concern for PC builders and GPU manufacturers, and ASUS briefly let on just how aware of this issue the company is.

ASUS quietly added a function called “Equipment Installation Check” to its GPU Tweak III monitoring software back in January. Included in this toolset was a measurement named “VGA Horizontal Status” that precisely measured the angle at which the installed GPU was tilting down. Users could set a custom warning if the GPU tilted down beyond a degree threshold set by the user.

In mid-April, Taiwanese publication UNIKO’s Hardware published a teardown of the latest ROG Astral 50-series cards, which highlights what they suspect to be a Bosch Sensortec chip. Bosch describes it as “a general purpose, low-power IMU that combines precise acceleration and angular rate (gyroscopic) measurement with intelligent on-chip motion-triggered interrupt features.” The technicians at UNIKO’s Hardware believe this chip is what powers the tilting detection tool.

Curiously, the most recent mentions of this feature on ASUS forums point out that as of the latest release of the Tweak III software, dated April 11, the Equipment Installation Check button is no longer there. Users had begun reporting what they believed to be false positives, confident that their GPUs were level despite the software saying they were sagging. Engadget reached out to ASUS to understand if this feature is being deprecated or if it wasn’t reporting accurate readings but did not receive a response.

Whether the feature is gone for good or angling for a comeback, the risk of sagging GPUs is all too real for many PC gamers today. PCIe slots were not exactly designed with today’s six-plus GPUs in mind, which has led to gamers finding creative solutions to hold up their enormous graphics cards and prevent potential damage.

Microsoft is dramatically increasing the price of the Xbox Series X and Series S, as well as new games and accessories. As of today, the Series S will start at $380, up from $300, while the Series X will begin at $550, a $100 increase from its previous price. As for the 1TB Series S, it now costs $430, up from $350. Meanwhile, if you want the Series X with disc drive, it will now set you back $600. Lastly, the 2TB Galaxy Black Special Edition now costs an eye-watering $730. 

Additionally, Microsoft says beginning this holiday season "some" new first-party games will release at $80. At the same time, the company is increasing the price of nearly all of its first-party and peripherals. Most notably, a core controller will now set you back $65. 

"We understand that these changes are challenging, and they were made with careful consideration given market conditions and the rising cost of development," the company said. "Looking ahead, we continue to focus on offering more ways to play more games across any screen and ensuring value for Xbox players."

Developing... 

Tools for Humanity, a startup co-founded by Sam Altman, has launched its its World eyeball-scanning identity verification system in the US. During an event in San Francisco, Altman reportedly said that World's technology provides "a way to make sure humans remained central and special in a world where the internet had a lot of AI-driven content." Altman is also one of the founders and is currently the CEO of OpenAI, which is perhaps the most prominent artificial intelligence company today. 

World was used to be known as Worldcoin until Tools of Humanity decided to focus on the digital ID aspect of the project rather than the cryptocurrency part, because the Biden administration didn't have a friendly stance towards crypto. The project uses basketball-sized spherical objects called the Orb to scan a user's irises, which it then turns into a unique IrisCode for them. It will then use that information to create a World ID for the user that they can use to log into integrated platforms, including Minecraft and Reddit. Users who get verified will get some of the project's cryptocurrency for free. 

Tools for Humanity said World keeps some access to user's data to ensure they aren't double-scanning their biometrics. But it also said that most of the personal data it collects remains decentralized, anonymized and supposedly impossible to reverse-engineer to identify someone. World is opening six locations in Austin, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Nashville, Miami and San Francisco where people can get their irises scanned. 

During the event, the project also revealed that it's working on a smaller, smartphone-shaped device called the Orb mini that can verify a person's identify. It eventually intends to turn it into a mobile point-of-sale device. The project has introduced new partnerships, as well: It will soon launch the World Visa card for people who've had their identities verified, and it will pilot its identity and age verification tools with Tinder in Japan. 

Earlier this week, 2K announced that it will release Borderlands 4 on September 12 — 11 days earlier than planned. Now, we're getting another look at the latest in Gearbox's series, including new features and a full-length gameplay trailer.  

One of the most interesting tidbits announced is that Borderlands 4 will offer individual difficulty settings in co-op multiplayer. So, one person could play on easy and another on hard while still maintaining fluid gameplay. It's a cool option if you want to play with great gamers but not face the same intense challenges. 

Along with the new trailer, you can also watch a 20-minute deep dive into the game, if you so please. The State of Play presentation from creative director Graeme Timmins and senior project producer Anthony Nicholson shows "the nitty-gritty details of how you'll wreak havoc across Kairos and take down the Timekeeper."