LPX

About 200,000 Korean children have been adopted internationally since the end of the Korean War in 1953. Most were taken in by American families, but some were raised in Europe, Australia, and other nations. As those children  have become adults, many have struggled with questions  of identity and belonging... and many have come together in online communities and formed real-world groups...

In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election in the United States, we heard a lot about " fake news " and its proliferation on social media, where millions of people get much of their news... and where many people like, share, or just scan through a sea of made-up headlines and news stories that can be tough to distinguish from factual reporting. We've heard even more about the issue after the...

Smartphones are useful for a lot of things. You can read the news, watch videos, play games, keep up on your email, and even write a novel on a smartphone . Oh yeah, you can also make phone calls and send text messages. But sometimes you want a larger screen, a bigger keyboard, or some of the other features you get from a laptop or desktop computer. Today most of us probably have at least two devi...

A generation of computer users grew up using Microsoft DOS in the 80s and 90s, but Microsoft started to phase out the operating system with the launch of Windows 95. Decades later, there are still people playing DOS-based games and even corporations using DOS-based software. Writer George R.R. Martin famously said in 2014 that he was still using a DOS-based word processor to compose his books. Don...

Dozens of smartwatches have hit the market in the past few years. Apple has one. Samsung has half a dozen. Pebble has a few. And companies ranging from Motorola to TAG Heuer have gotten in the action. The idea is to put an internet-connected device on your wrist that looks as good as a traditional watch, but which can also show your smartphone notifications and in some cases, do much more. Some mo...

Intel's Atom processors have been powering low-cost computers since 2008. The first models were used in netbooks, but these days you can find Atom chips in Chromebooks, Windows and Android tablets, tiny desktop computers , and even a handful of smartphones . But Intel never really made much headway in the smartphone space, where companies like Apple and Samsung typically use ARM-based pr...

The DragonBox Pyra has a 5 inch screen and a dual-core ARM-based processor. But it's not a smartphone. In fact, this handheld computer looks more like a cross between a tiny laptop and a Nintendo DS game system. It has a physical keyboard, a bunch of storage and input/output options, dedicated buttons for playing games, and Debian Linux software which allows you to play games or run desktop s...

Are chatbots the new apps? A lot of developers seem to think so. Facebook and Microsoft have both rolled out tools that make it easy for coders to create bots that you can chat with on Facebook Messenger, Skype, and other platforms including plain old SMS text messaging. I wanted to get a better sense of what chatbots are, what they can do, and why we should use them. So for this episode of the LP...

Vivaldi is a new web browser that's aimed squarely at power users. Like to open 25 browser tabs at a time? Vivaldi has tools that makes it easier to manage your tabs and move from one to the next. Want to save notes and screenshots while you surf the web? There's a tool for that. Like to use mouse gestures or keyboard shortcuts? There are a  ton of those. Vivaldi 1.0 is now available for...

Most people probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about the materials used to build their phones, or the workers who put the hardware together. But Amsterdam-based Fairphone is trying to change that... by selling phones made with conflict-free minerals from Africa and by setting up a Worker Welfare fund for factory workers in China. Even if you don't care about those things, the Fairpho...

Most people in the United States who pay for TV have to use a set-top-box rented from their cable provider. In February, the Federal Communications Commission voted to adopt an "UnblockTheBox" plan that could change that by requiring TV providers to open up the data streams so that you could access content on something like a Roku, Chromecast, or Apple TV. But the cable, satellite, and other TV pr...

Remix OS is a customized version of Android designed to look and feel like a desktop operating system. You can use it to run just about any Android app, but there's a desktop, a taskbar, and support for viewing multiple apps at once in windows that you can resize and reposition on the screen. It basically looks like a cross between Windows and Android. The operating system is developed by a Chines...

Intel's is expanding its line of Compute Stick mini-PCs in 2016, so I decided to accompany my 2nd-gen Intel Compute Stick review with a state-of-the-stick episode of LPX. This episode features interviews with Intel's marketing manager for the lineup and Ian Morrison , an Australian developer who has been working to port Ubuntu and other open source software to run on Intel's tiny desktop computers...

For our first episode, we have interviews with two people hoping to change the way we use computers. Nitro Duo: two computers in one tiny case Shane Lewis wanted a smartphone that could run Android apps... but which could also work as a full-fledged Windows desktop computer when attached to a docking station. And since there was nobody selling a phone that met that description, he decided to build...