Technology

People ask me all the time about my favorite gadgets and I rarely have any answers. I&ve been playing with stuff since 2004 and I&m pretty gadget-ed out. But this year I&ve finally found something that I really enjoy: the GPD XD, an Android-based gaming handheld that lets you play multiple emulators including an endless array of homebrew and classic ROMS.

As an early fan of the Caanoo I&m always looking for handheld emulators that can let you play classic games without much fuss. The Caanoo worked quite well, especially for 2010 technology, and I was looking to upgrade.

My friend bought a GDP and showed it to me and I was hooked. I could play some wonderful old ROMs in a form factor that was superior to the Caanoo and this super cheap, super awful 4.3-inch device that emulates like a truck.

The GDP, which has two joysticks, one four-axis button, four shoulder buttons, and a diamond of game buttons, is basically a Wi-Fi enabled Android device with a touch screen. It runs Android 7.0 and has a MTK8176 Quad-core+ processor and 4GB of memory. It comes with NES, SNES, Arcade, and Playstation emulators built in as well as a few home-brew games. You can install almost anything from the Google Play store and it includes a file manager and ebook reader. It also has a micro SD card slot, HDMI out, and headphone jack.

To be clear, the GDP isn&t exactly well documented. The device includes a bit of on board documentation & basically a few graphics files that describe how to add and upload ROMS and emulators. There are also a number of online resources including Reddit threads talking about this thingemulation prowess. The original model appeared two years ago and they are now selling an updated 2018 version with a better processor and more memory.

GPD recently launched another handheld, the Win 2, which is a full Windows machine in a form factor similar to the XD. It is considerably more expensive & about $700 vs. $300 & and if you&re looking for a more computer-like experience it might work. I have, however, had a lot of fun with the XD these past few months.

So whatever your feelings regarding ROMs, emulators, and tiny PCs, I&m happy to report that I&ve finally been pleased with a clever and fun bit of portable technology.

Tesla has reached a deal with the Shanghai government to build a factory capable of producing 500,000 electric vehicles a year.

The factory would be the automakersecond assembly plant and aimed at serving the alluring Chinese market. Tesla and the Shanghai Municipal PeopleGovernment announced Tuesday they had signed the cooperative agreement.

Tesla announced last year it was working with the Shanghai municipal government to explore the possibility of establishing a factory in the region. Construction on the factory, which the company has dubbed Gigafactory 3, is expected to begin &in the future after we get all the necessary approvals and permits,& a Tesla spokesman told TechCrunch in an emailed statement.

&From there, it will take roughly two years until we start producing vehicles and then another two to three years before the factory is fully ramped upto produce around 500,000 vehicles per year for Chinese customers,& the spokesman said.

Tesla hasn&t provided an estimate of what the factory might cost to build. Thata critical data point for Tesla, which has been burning through cash as it tries to ramp up production of its Model 3 vehicle.

Still, the deal is a milestone for Tesla and Musk, who has long viewed China as a crucial market. Italso notable because this will be a wholly owned Tesla factory, not a traditional joint venture with the Chinese government. Foreign companies have historically had to form a 50-50 joint venture with a local partner to build a factory in China.

Chines President Xi Jinping has pushed forward plans to phase out joint-venture rules for foreign automakers by 2022. Tesla is one of the first beneficiaries of this rule change.

Tesla is particularly exposed to escalating trade tensions between China and the U.S. because the company doesn&t have a factory in China, unlike other automakers such as BMW,Ford Motor and GM. Tesla builds its electric sedans and SUVs at its factory in Fremont, Calif. and ships them to China, which subjects the vehicles to an import tariff.

China raised its tariff on auto imports from the U.S. to 40 percent in retaliation against the Trump administrationdecision to put additional duties on Chinese-made goods, forcing Tesla to raise prices on its electric vehicles there.

&Shanghai will be the location for the first Gigafactory outside the United States,& Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a statement. &It will be a state-of-the-art vehicle factory and a role model for sustainability. We hope it will be completed very soon. We&ve been impressed by the beauty and energy of Shanghai and we want our factory to add to that.&

French startup Ledger has been working for a while on a brand new app to manage your crypto assets on your computer. The company is designing and manufacturing one of the most secure hardware wallets out there.

While itclear that security has always been the first focus of the company, the user experience has been lacking, especially on the software front. The company launched a new app called Ledger Live to handle everything you used to do with Chrome apps before.

Thatright, before today, the company relied on Google Chrome for its desktop apps. You had to install the browser first, and then install a new app for each cryptocurrency. There was also a main app to update the firmware. It could quickly become a mess.

Now, everything is centralized in a single app. After downloading and installing the app on Windows, macOS or Linux, you can either configure the app with an existing Ledger device or configure a new Ledger wallet.

The app first checks the integrity of your device and then lets you manage the device. You can upgrade the firmware and install apps on your Ledger Nano S or Ledger Blue from the &Manager& tab.

More interestingly, you can now add all your wallets to the Ledger Live app. You won&t have to switch from one app to another to view your wallets. When you click the add button, the app will try to retrieve existing wallets on your device. You can also generate a new set of keys (and a new wallet) from there.

Once you&ve added all your wallets, you can get an overview of your entire portfolio. The app gets historical pricing information from popular exchanges, such as Kraken and Bitfinex. You can also click on individual accounts to see how a specific cryptocurrency has evolved over time.

The portfolio interface looks like a Coinbase account. Itwell-designed and ita great way to get a quick look of your accounts.

Many Ledger users have been using tracker websites and apps. These services let you enter a cryptocurrency and the amount you own to get an overview of everything you own independently of the wallet.

Ledgernew app partially replace tracker services. If you don&t need to check your balance from your phone, you can get enough information with the Ledger app. You can see your balance without having to plug your Ledger device.

The company is already working on new features. You&ll be able to view and manager ERC20 tokens in the future. So if you invested in a bunch of obscure ICOs, your tokens will be there too.

Ledger also told me that you could imagine an integration with decentralized exchanges eventually. This way, you would be able to send tokens to an address and get another set of tokens back on another Ledger-generated address. It would be a great way to exchange cryptocurrencies without signing up to a centralized exchange and leaving the Ledger app.