If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to code, you won’t want to miss this Humble bundle. The Humble Intro to Code Bundle gives you access to up to 25 online courses from Zenva Academy including lessons in game and web development, and languages such as Python, JavaScript, and frameworks such as AngularJS. Most courses are valued around $50 or more on their own so this appears to be a great deal for budding programmers, though we haven’t sampled these courses ourselves. Better yet, a portion of your payment will be donated to Girls Who Code and Code.org.

The initial tier allows you to pay $1 or more to get five courses, including access to a Python course, an introduction to game development, and creating a responsive website to learn HTML and CSS.

Paying more than the average, which stood at $14.54 or more at press time, adds another eight courses. Some of the highlights at this level include a beginner SQL course for all you database fiends out there, 3D game development, and an AngularJS course where you create a web app.

Finally, the $25 top tier adds another twelve courses including, jQuery, Bootstrap (a web framework that got its start as a Twitter project), and courses in virtual reality and artificial neural networks.

Again, we haven’t tried any of these courses, but they don’t appear to be your typical “learn X” language where you study the basics of, say, JavaScript and do a bunch of mini-projects. Instead, they focus on larger projects that happen to use whatever tool is required for the job. Keep in mind these are introductory courses, which are designed to get you started on the long road to development mastery. These courses have enough content to keep you busy for a long time and give you a better sense about what kind of development you’d rather do.

[Today’s deal: Humble Intro to Code Bundle.]

Amazon’s foray into the games industry is proof nobody can shortcut their way to a hit. It’s been fully five years since the online retailer, worth more than most (if not all) of the major video game publishers combined, announced it was going to start making video games. And it started so well! Amazon forked CryEngine into its own proprietary engine, Lumberyard. It hired Clint Hocking, hired Kim Swift—hired the sorts of people, in other words, that you’d want to see making games.

Then it uh…lost Clint Hocking, lost Kim Swift, and canceled the only Amazon game we’d seen in action, the MOBA-esque sports game Breakaway.

So what’s left? Well, New World. Announced at the same time as Breakaway, New World is an online sandbox set in the 17^th century, a combination survival game, builder, and social sim. There’s a lot going on here, for sure. The only problem? I’m not convinced the players will cooperate with Amazon’s vision.

Freedom of choice

We had the chance to go hands-on with New World earlier this week here in San Francisco. I’ll be honest: Two hours? Not enough time to demo a game of this scope. To its credit, Amazon Game Studios tried its best by giving our entire play-session of around 20 people a “guided tour” through some of the major features.

New World

But it’s hard, because New World is very much a sandbox. When I think MMO, I still think of World of Warcraft, or more modern examples like The Old Republic, Elder Scrolls Online, Final Fantasy XIV, Warframe, and so on. These are all wildly different games, but stem from the same role-playing game influences. They all have heavy story components. There are missions, characters, shopkeepers, and so on.

All those games succumb to the same problem, as well. See, it’s impossible for developers to produce content faster than players consume it. In the old days this led to a roller coaster, with large expansions seeing an influx of players for a few weeks or months, then a gradual falling off. Nowadays devs supplement those larger expansions with smaller missions or activities, generally every few weeks or months. Regardless, players are waiting on developers to provide the bulk of the entertainment.

New World puts that burden on the players. It’s not a new idea. Hell, EVE Online’s done it this way for nearly two decades now. EVE’s story is generally not what keeps people playing, it’s the complex and player-created political machinations. CCP gives you the tools, you use them to stab someone in the back. Easy.

New World

And yet if it’s so easy, why hasn’t anyone else done it?

Two reasons, I think. One, you need enough players to populate the game world and create these intricate factions. Two, and this is a related issue, is you need that back-and-forth to be interesting enough players stick around, form ever-more-complex webs of alliances, build up items worth losing, and ultimately create a functioning society. Sure, it’s a society in a bubble, but entire books have been written about EVE Online’s factions.

It’s (relatively) easy to get people playing your game. It’s much harder to lead them to create the kind of organic interactions you need to keep a sandbox game alive. The past decade’s littered with games that tried and failed. DayZ had that magic for a year or two before succumbing to Early Access Hell. Just Cause 2’s multiplayer mode had a few months in the sun. Sea of Thieves tried, but its world felt empty and its loop too repetitive. Fallout 76 quickly devolved into nonstop nuclear warfare or, worse, players just simply ignoring each others’ existence.

All this to say, New World has an uphill battle ahead of it. The concept is unique enough. As I said, it’s set in the 17^th century, the tail end of the Age of Exploration. You and hundreds (or thousands) of strangers are sent to an uncharted island, one of the last in the world—uncharted because nobody’s ever returned, not because nobody’s tried. Surprise, there’s something weird about this island, remnants of an ancient civilization. Also, zombies.

New World

New World

Is your garden ready for its close-up? The Philips Hue Lily—a companion product to the Hue Calla pathway light we reviewed in December—consists of three color-changing smart LED spotlights that you can mount on stakes or attach to walls.

Deploy them in your garden and they’ll provide sophisticated lighting accents for your landscaping. But if your trees and shrubs look subpar in the daylight, the Hue Lily will really make them look shabby at night. The lights themselves, as you would expect from the $280 price tag (add-on spots cost $80 each), are first-rate luminaires.

The cylindrical enclosures are fabricated from black aluminum with glass lenses, and their IP65 rating indicates that they are entirely weatherproof: Protected from water jets (from up to a 6.3mm nozzle, such as a sprinkler system), and totally protected from dust.

Signify

You’ll need to plug a sealed inline power supply into an outdoor outlet, and then connect a second cable to that using a bayonet-style fitting. Philips provides two T-shaped electrical connectors that give you lots of cable-routing flexibility. You can buy extension cables if you want longer runs between each light, or if your outdoor outlet is far from where you want to deploy the lights.

Pretty, if not powerful light

Michael Brown / IDG

The dimmable LEDs inside produce up to 600 lumens (equivalent to a 49-watt incandescent bulb), and each one can be controlled independently using the Hue app.

That independence goes beyond being able to turn them on and off, too; you can set each light to produce either white light (in color temperatures ranging from a warm 2,000 Kelvin to a very cool 6,500K), or any of 16 million colors using the respective color wheels in the app.

In addition to that, you can call up predefined lighting scenes, based on color and brightness, or you can edit these and create your own from scratch. As with all Philips Hue products, this one is based on ZigBee wireless technology, so you’ll need to connect a Hue Bridge to your router if you don’t already have one (the bridge, which is not included, sells for about $50 on Amazon). Each bridge can support up to 50 Hue lights.

Hue Routines, meanwhile, allow you to create sequences of lighting events based on the day of the week and the time of day. I created a routine I called “Backyard at night,” for example, that turns the Philips Hue Calla bollard-style pathway light to a scene called “bright” to light up my walkway, and the three Philips Hue Lily spotlights to a scene called “Savannah sunset” to bathe a Japanese maple and a couple of large shrubs in a warm white light. This routine comes on automatically at sunset and turns off and sunrise.

If you have a smart speaker, you can control any of the Hue lights with Alexa or Google Assistant voice commands. To conserve energy, I typically tell Alexa to turn off the Hue lights when I go to bed. But it’s nice not having to remember to turn on any lights when I go outside at night.

Installing one of the new Hue Outdoor sensors would be an even better solution if you want illumination only while you’re outside (or if you want movement to trigger lights to come on to dissuade burglars from hanging around). That sensor can also trigger Hue lights inside your home to turn on in response to motion outside of it.

Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) expects its Philips Hue lighting products to fetch a pretty penny; so far, they have consistently delivered the type of high-quality product and premium experience that justifies the price tag. The Philips Hue Lily is no exception.

If you’ve been watching Marie Kondo’s Netflix show, Tidying Up, you’ve no doubt caught the cleaning bug. Kondo’s organization method breaks down your clutter into five key areas: clothing, books, paper, komono (miscellaneous things) and sentimental items. Her mission is to “spark joy in the world through cleaning,” by throwing out anything that doesn’t make you happy. 

But while Kondo’s method may help keep your closets and cupboards clean, what about your phone? With six-inch screens and storage both on and off your device, it’s easy to fill up every digital nook and cranny with things you don’t need, don’t use, and just plain don’t remember.

If you transfer Kondo’s concepts to an Android phone and think of clothing as apps, books as downloaded videos and songs, and so on, you can begin to apply her wisdom to your mobile life. Here’s how we think Marie Kondo would clean a smartphone. (For more tips, check out our earlier story on “10 quick ways to clear space on an overstuffed Android Phone.”)

Apps (Clothing)

Just like it’s easy to fill your closets and drawers with shirts dating back to the grunge era, it’s easy to fill up our phones with apps we haven’t opened in years. Some might not even work anymore—backups can bring over apps that we downloaded years ago for phones that are long gone.

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Take some time to go through your app drawer. Deleting ancient and unused apps is a good start, but equally important is organizing the apps you have so you can find them easily. Most phones let you sort by name or another method of your choosing, and some let you sort by date installed. Try tapping the menu button next to the search bar to see which options you have.

Folders are also important. Nearly every phone lets you create folders within your app drawer, so you can group similar apps for easy reference. Even just creating a “Google” folder will cut down on your clutter, as you probably have a dozen or so apps from that company in your drawer. It’s easy: Just tap and hold an app and drag it on top of another app in your drawer to create a new folder. Then name it and add as many as you’d like to it.

Media (Books)

Next to apps, the most cluttersome items on our phones are media files: books, movies, songs, videos, and the like. Not only do they take up the most space, but they can also be the hardest to mind, as they’re often tucked away inside hidden folders that you can’t access outside of their respective apps. 

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Start by checking inside any apps that might have allowed downloads, such as Spotify, Netflix, and Google Play Movies. Depending on the app, you may have to delete each file individually or clear the cache inside settings. Then check the places where large downloads are most likely to live: your external SD card, and your cloud drives. There’s a reason why Google and Dropbox offer so much storage, because it’s easy to upload something and forget about it. A little digital cleaning will help—and it might even save you some money in the process.

While you won’t be able to organize your TV and movie collections into folders—an unfortunate limitation of digital media libraries—most services allow you to hide content that you’ve purchases to streamline your catalog. (In Google Play Movies, you’ll need to select a movie, then tap the menu at the top right and choose Remove from device.)

Do the same with your music library. With unlimited streaming we have a tendency to add things that we listen to only once, so keep only the songs you still want.

Files (Paper)

While they won’t pile up like they would on a PC, your Android phone can be home to tons of files that aren’t doing anything other than collecting digital dust.

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The first place to look is your documents app, which may be called Files, My Files, Downloads, or something similar, depending on your phone and the version of Android you’re using. What’s inside will be the same: any attachments, Chrome files, or other downloads you’ve collected since you started using your phone. You can probably delete most of them.

It’s easy to get rid of them: Just tap and hold on a file, and tap the trash can icon. If there are any that you want to keep, create a new folder for them, where you can also stash future downloads.

You can extend your digital tidying to any online services you have. It’s easy to lose sight of just how much stuff is in there. Check out your Dropbox, Google Drive, and any other storage lockers and see what can be saved and tossed.

Home Screen (Komono)

You might not think of your home screen as a place for clutter, but you’ll be surprised at how much opportunity there is for tidying up. First take a look at how many home screens you have. Some Android phones add newly downloaded apps to your home screen by default, so swipe left to check for strange apps hiding to the right of your main screen.

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But even if you’ve already boiled down your apps to a single home screen, Kondo would probably tell you that your home screen should be limited to the apps that you open multiple times a day. Make a list of your 10 most essential apps, then rank them in order of importance. Take your top five and put them in the bottom row of your home screen.

Chances are you’ll have a hard time naming more than 10 apps that you need to use every day, but if you do, try not to litter your home screen with them. At the most, add a second row and group the remaining apps into folders.

With so much space available, now you can rethink your home screen wallpaper as well as any widgets you have. Pick an image that’s relaxing and doesn’t extend too far into your icon rows. That’ll act as a visual barrier to prevent you from re-cluttering. Try to limit widgets to things you actually use, like a weather widget or maybe a search bar. 

Photos (Sentimental Items)

As Kondo says, the hardest thing to clean out are the things that mean the most, and on our phones, that means one thing: photos. Just like the shoeboxes your grandparents kept, your library keeps getting bigger and bigger. Even if they aren’t taking up physical space on your phone, they’re still adding to the clutter.

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So start with the easy things. More than likely there are hundreds of screenshots, miscellaneous shots, and saved memes that can be trashed. You don’t even have to search your entire library manually—just tap on the Assistant tab in Google Photos, and it’ll suggest recent photos that you can archive. You can also type screenshots into the search bar, and Assistant will filter them for deletion one fell swoop.

Then you can go through your actual photos. This will take a while, so start with your oldest pictures and work forward. Duplicate, out-of-focus, and unmemorable shots can go. Just tap and hold on an image until a check appears, then select any additional photos and tap the trash can icon in the top right. You’ll find that a smaller library with only the pics that matter most will actually be more sentimental than thousands of photos that are too overwhelming to browse.

When I reviewed First Alert’s Onelink Safe & Sound smoke alarm in mid-2018, I found it to be a powerful entry in the smart smoke detector market. Its inclusion of Bluetooth and an Amazon Echo-compatible smart speaker set it apart from every smoke and carbon-monoxide detector on the market. But its $199 price tag also made it far and away the most expensive device of its type on the market—and that price hasn’t budged since its release.

Enter the Onelink Smoke + Carbon Monoxide Alarm, which lowers the cost of the original product by stripping out its most compelling features: The smart speaker and Bluetooth.

Like other products in this category, the Onelink Smoke + Carbon Monoxide Alarm is designed to extend the capabilities of a smoke detector by linking it with your smartphone. It still functions by firing off a (rather loud) local siren whenever smoke or CO are detected, but it also (supposedly) sends push alerts to your mobile device, a feature that is most helpful for times when you aren’t at home but still want the peace of mind that it’s not on fire.

If you have multiple Onelink devices connected to the same account (even if they’re different models in the Onelink line), they are designed to all go off simultaneously when smoke is detected, which can deliver a big benefit in a large home.

First Alert

Battery and hardwired options

The Onelink Smoke + Carbon Monoxide Alarm is available in both battery-powered and hardwired versions, but the only notable difference between the two is that the latter includes a user-customizable nightlight. Note that the battery-powered model (reviewed here) is powered not by standard AAs but rather by a three-cell lithium power pack. First Alert says this battery is rated to last five years, but replacement packs are not yet available, and First Alert declined to say how much they’ll cost when they are.

Christopher Null

The Onelink alarm is a HomeKit product, and setup proceeds along the straightforward lines of installing the Onelink app and then scanning a code on the side of the device and waiting for it to connect to your network. Within the app, you can test the alarm and check its recent history—at least in theory. In my testing, that didn’t work as advertised.

I tested the Onelink Smoke + Carbon Monoxide Alarm both with a simulated fire and by pushing the Test button on the alarm itself. Once the alarm activated—with both siren and voice alerts announcing the type of danger and its location—I waited for the app to kick in and alert my phone. And waited. And waited. After repeatedly tripping the audible siren, not once did the app ever indicate there was a problem via a push notification or a message within the app itself, and none of the incidents showed up in the alarm activity history. As far as the app was concerned, my house was fine, even though the alarm itself was sounding off.

I tried resetting the system as well as testing the alarm with an Android device and was eventually able to get some notifications and history on both devices during testing, but this was erratic. Sometimes I would get a history notification on one device but not the other, and I never received a pop-up notification on the Android device. On Android, push notifications were disabled by default, and try as I might to change this setting, push notifications would invariably revert to disabled after I left the settings menu.

Second chances

Suspecting a hardware problem, I requested a second device from First Alert, and this one worked better from the start. I was never able to get push notifications on Android, but they did work on iOS reliably, as did history logs for both devices. I was also able to test the interconnect feature using the two alarms. This worked some of the time, but only if I set off the alarm on the second device, causing the first device to go off as well. Still, the interconnect function was not reliable, and never did setting off the first alarm cause the second one to also alert.

First Alert

I suspect there’s something wrong with the network connection here, with the iOS app also sometimes indicating a “device is unreachable” error, even though in-app testing always later said the connection was OK. Whether I simply had bad luck with a bum unit (or two), or there’s a systemic communications problem is hard to say, but I will note that several Amazon customer reviews have reported very similar issues.

The Onelink Smoke + Carbon Monoxide Alarm comes with a very basic Alexa skill that lets you quiz the alarm as to its status. But when I added the skill to the Alexa app and subsequently asked Alexa about the alarm’s status, the digital assistant told me the alarm didn’t support that query. Not that her response would have been very useful, anyway, since I’m sure she would have said everything is fine. First Alert did not satisfactorily resolve my query about this problem, either. (Various online buyer reviews have noted that the Alexa skill remains under development.)

There are better choices

The Onelink Smoke + Carbon Monoxide Alarm’s price tag is on par with other smart smoke/CO detectors, such as the Nest Protect, but its real-world performance is closer to interconnected “dumb” smoke detectors that sell for $80 to $90 a pair. Given its inconsistent operation, it’s decidedly tough to recommend.