The takeaway: Game Boy enthusiasts with physical cartridge libraries who are unwilling to pay $240 for an Analogue Pocket might want to consider the recently launched FPGB Mini. Although it isn’t quite as versatile as Analogue’s well-regarded handheld, it still plays ROMs and cartridges with virtually perfect emulation accuracy at less than half the price. It’s also barely larger than a Game Boy cartridge.

FunnyPlaying has launched a smaller version of its budget-priced rival to the Analogue Pocket. Slightly cheaper but with the same software capabilities, the FPGB Mini might be as small as a faithful Game Boy clone will ever get.

Most retro handhelds, like Ayaneo’s products, emulate the Game Boy and other classic systems entirely in software, typically running Android or Linux. In contrast, devices like the Analogue Pocket, Game Bub, or FPGB use FPGA-based hardware emulation.

FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays) are integrated circuits whose logic isn’t hard-wired at the factory. As such, they can be reprogrammed at the hardware level for various purposes, including imitating retro game consoles. This lets them emulate retro devices essentially flawlessly with low TDPs, meaning longer battery life.

However, following recent price hikes, the Analogue Pocket retails for $240, while the Game Bub starts at $249 and climbs to $300 for its limited-edition color. FunnyPlaying, meanwhile, sold through its initial batch of 20 early-bird FPGB Mini units at just $69, and even its standard $89 MSRP significantly undercuts the competition.

Despite measuring just 113 × 64 × 22 mm, only slightly larger than a Game Boy cartridge, the FPGB Mini is a fully featured emulation handheld. Its 2.98-inch, 800×720-pixel IPS screen displays at exactly five times the original Game Boy’s resolution, its 1800 mAh rechargeable battery promises four to six hours of gameplay, and a microSD slot (up to 32GB) handles digital ROMs and firmware updates while USB-C takes care of charging. With a USB-C adapter, it also supports Game Boy link cables.

Compared to the Analogue Pocket, the FPGB Mini’s main drawback is that it doesn’t support Game Boy Advance games or emulators for other retro consoles. Its tiny form factor also prevents inserting cartridges with extra hardware features such as rumble.

Also Read: GPUs vs. FPGAs: What’s the Difference?

The FPGB Mini’s first batch sold out within minutes, but it’s expected to restock on FunnyPlaying’s online store, which also sells custom and replacement screens, motherboards, batteries, and other components for official Game Boy models. Natalie the Nerd’s shop is another well-regarded source for Game Boy parts and documentation.

Lena Schiwitz explores the topic of trust in AI, and how building a career in tech isn’t always about coming from a traditional background.

In less than a month, Lena Schiwitz – an AI operations manager at Zurich-based start-up MoodTalk – will be heading to the University of Oxford as one of 35 students taking part in a new AI master’s programme. 

Today, much of her work is focused on artificial intelligence and how it can be integrated into consumer and internal processes – and specifically, how organisations can actually adopt it. 

Schiwitz told SiliconRepublic.com, “That means building AI workflows, working with customers and looking closely at where people trust the technology, where they hesitate and what makes it genuinely useful in their day-to-day work.

“Our broader focus is on making knowledge inside organisations more accessible. Often, the information leaders need already exists somewhere in the organisation, but it is spread across teams and levels and does not reach the right person at the right time.

“We use AI to gather perspectives and identify patterns across them, so leaders can understand what is happening without waiting for information to slowly move through meetings, reports and layers of management.”

The concept of finding the right person at the right time, or being the architect of someone else’s journey, is one that is very personal to Schiwitz, whose career trajectory was initially headed in a very different direction. 

She started out by studying to be a national school teacher in her native Austria and spent two years working in childcare. 

“At the time, I had very little exposure to technology or to what careers in tech actually looked like. I had always loved maths, logical thinking and figuring out how things work. I just never knew there were careers built around those interests,” she said. 

“That changed when I moved to Switzerland to work as a nanny. Both parents in my host family worked in tech, and over dinner, they would talk about products they were building, problems they were solving and decisions they had to make. I found those conversations fascinating. For the first time, I saw a professional world that matched the way I liked to think.”

From there, she studied business information technology, a course in a field that many of her peers had prior experience of via a range of apprenticeship programmes and previous jobs. 

“I had spent those same years working with children. At first, that felt like a disadvantage,” she said. 

“But over time, I realised I was bringing a different perspective. My background had taught me a lot about how people learn, what motivates them, how they respond to change and why the same approach does not work for everyone.”

Once she completed her bachelor’s thesis on trust in AI, the pieces all fell into place and she found, for the first time, there was an outlet through which she could combine an understanding of people and learning with a knowledge of technology and AI. 

“I realised that I was most interested in the space where those things meet, understanding what technology can do and what people need in order to actually use it.”

AI – tool or collaborator?

The concept of trust in AI is one that is particularly fascinating for Schiwitz, who explained that we are starting to adapt to the tech almost as much as it is adapting to us. 

“A few years ago, we mostly asked AI isolated questions. Now we give it access to our meetings, documents, decisions and, increasingly, our organisational memory. We record conversations knowing they can become searchable later. We document information differently because we expect AI to understand the context,” she said. 

“I find that shift fascinating. We are building AI around the way humans work, while at the same time starting to organise our work around what AI can understand. And this is happening faster than the norms around it can develop. 

“We are still deciding what AI should remember, what it should forget, how much context it should have and which decisions should remain human.”

She finds herself driven by a need not only to build better technology, but to be a part of figuring out how humans and AI should work together, as “many of the most important questions are still open”.

The right kind of trust

Schiwitz noted, however, that building trust in AI needs to be about more than simply making the human more trusting of technology, especially in cases where it may be unwarranted. 

During her academic research, she discovered that it isn’t necessarily difficult to increase people’s trust in AI in scenarios where the artificial intelligence hasn’t actually been improved. 

“For my bachelor’s thesis, I changed relatively simple things around an AI assistant. I explained more clearly why people were interacting with it, made its limitations more visible and gave the conversation more structure. The AI itself did not become any smarter, but people’s trust in it increased significantly and the way they interacted with it changed,” she said. 

“I found that fascinating, but also slightly uncomfortable. I had started my research asking how I could make people trust AI. By the end, I was asking whether more trust should even be the goal. If relatively small design choices can change how much people trust an AI, then trust is not necessarily evidence that the system deserves it.”

Following this, she began to think about AI in organisations and how the goal should never be simply maximum trust, but “helping people trust AI when they should and question it when they should not”.

And her unique pivot into tech, whereby she came in with a less-than-traditional educational background, has aided this desire to cultivate real trust in AI and tech teams as a whole.

“For a long time, I thought I had entered technology too late. Now I think I simply entered it with a different perspective. My background in education still shapes the questions I ask about technology, especially around how people understand, trust and use it,” she said. 

“This autumn, I am starting Oxford’s MSc in Artificial Intelligence for Business alongside my work. For me, it feels less like another change of direction and more like going deeper into the questions I have been following all along.”

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? CNET publishes daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles. And here’s a page that Wordle players should be sure to bookmark. We’ve made a list, with help from the Oxford English Dictionary, showing which letters show up the most in English words. So if your starter word isn’t getting the job done, consider switching to one of the words that uses more of the highly ranked letters. (I like TRAIN and CLOSE.)

Today’s Wordle answer has a first letter that I rarely guess. Need a tip or two? Read on for hints and the answer.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has no repeated letters.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

Today’s Wordle answer has two vowels.

Wordle hint No. 3: First letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with W.

Wordle hint No. 4: Last letter

Today’s Wordle answer ends with N.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer can mean to stop sleeping.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is WAKEN.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

 Yesterday’s Wordle answer, Sept. 18, No. 1,917, was SNOWY.

Recent Wordle answers

Sept. 14, No. 1,913: RINSE

Sept. 15, No. 1,914: DEALT

Sept. 16, No. 1,915: WISPY

Sept. 17, No. 1,916: THETA

CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of “Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the ’70s and ’80s,” as well as “The Totally Sweet ’90s.” She’s been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She’s Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she’ll be first in line.

See full bio

In this week’s Sunday Reboot, a London Apple Store gives hope for the future of the company’s mall locations.

Sunday Reboot is a weekly column covering some of the lighter stories within the Apple reality distortion field from the past seven days. All to get next week underway with a good first step.

An Apple Store near the UK HQ

On Monday, I found myself getting up hours earlier than normal and getting on a train to London for an appointment. While I could easily complain about the travel (three delayed trains and the London Underground is astoundingly noisy), one column-worthy thing did occur on that day away from the keyboard.

I had some hours free before my trip back across the UK, and I was close enough to Battersea Power Station to pay a visit. Battersea Power Station is actually Apple’s UK headquarters, which was used to display Christmas trees designed on an iPad on its towers last year.

Obviously, there’s no chance of me going into Apple’s offices there for a tour, but there is also an Apple Store.

Battersea Power Station’s main space is now a massive retail emporium, where you can pay big brands big money for expensive things. Basically, it’s now a mall inside a very iconic London location.

Outside Apple Battersea. It’s like a fishbowl.

We have discussed the store in the past, including its launch in 2023. However, in AppleInsider’s ongoing campaign to visit every store possible and to comment on it, this was an opportunity I had to take.

Apple exists on the ground floor in one of the larger spaces, opposite Ralph Lauren and Lacoste, near to Ray-Ban and Nike. It has a nice mostly-glass frontage, interrupted by structural frames around the panes and a large Apple logo in the middle.

This is fairly pedestrian, until you go onside and are greeted by the famous tables. There are lot of them, and this is also typical of the Apple retail experience.

However, this isn’t quite the usual mall grey-everywhere generic mall fit-out you’d see in most places. This was an almost completely wood-clad store.

Looking down Apple Battersea. So much wood.

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All of the side avenues were there, except there wasn’t the usual massive video wall that gets used for Today at Apple sessions or events. There was a lit poster near the door, a smaller and more conventional television for showing Apple TV in one corner, but no video wall at all.

There was a nice alcove in one corner that is used to host Apple Vision Pro sessions. It was a nice break-out area, with seating on the sides and a central table showcasing the very-expensive headset.

Looking upward the lights were masked slightly by a drop ceiling, consisting of lots of vertical slats, running the entire length of the room. It certainly made the room feel longer than the sizable space truly occupied, and it was a nice touch.

The Apple Battersea Genius Bar, with the dual-height counters.

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Of particular note is the Genius Bar, which takes up space at the back left corner. There are two avenue spaces for this, with a pair of wooden counters at different heights, as well as stools and lower seating.

As far as stores go, this was a pretty good one. Sure, it’s not as fancy as Apple Champs-Elysees in Paris, nor the museum-like Apple Via Del Corso in Rome, but it was still quite a step up from the other mall-style outlets I’ve ever run into.

A long-time hint to the future

I wish more Apple Stores took this warmer approach. If a story from last week is right, we may well see something similar.

Last weekend, Apple’s store refurbishment plans were said to concentrate on renovations more than opening up new locations around the world. This included a revamp of the Avenue, the removal of the video wall idea, and changes to the Genius Bar.

Those changes would involve replacing them with all-wood elements, consisting of two counter heights. Behind would be storage drawers and large product posters.

The alcove where you play with the Apple Vision Pro at Apple Battersea.

At the time, it dawned on us that the description matched an existing store that we had also saw. The reopening of the Tysons Corner store in 2023 showed this style of bar and other changes outlined in that report.

These same changes are also evident in the Battersea Power Station store. And again, that was opened in 2023 too.

The refurbishment report added that Apple had tested new layouts in a number of stores internationally. It makes sense for the “local” store to the UK HQ to be among that list.

This is hopefully a good sign to store-goers on what they may see their nearby Apple Store turning into in the coming years.

I really hope that this happens in the UK soon. I don’t fancy another six-hour train ride to experience this again anytime soon.

Last week’s Sunday Reboot discussed the Apple Event and the first Ternus presentation.

The desktop headphone market is starting to look a lot like the rest of high-end audio: fewer boxes, fewer cables, and more functionality packed into a single component. Instead of assembling separate DACs and headphone amplifiers, listeners can increasingly choose one-box solutions designed to handle digital conversion, amplification, source switching, and even preamplifier duties without surrendering performance.

That is precisely the problem the Sendy Audio KYLIN is trying to solve. At $1,499/£1,499, however, simply combining a DAC and headphone amplifier in one handsome chassis is no longer enough. This has become a fiercely competitive category, and buyers spending this much should expect excellent sound, enough power for demanding headphones, useful connectivity, low noise, strong build quality, and the ability to genuinely replace multiple components on the desktop.

Sendy Audio has been one of my favourite headphone manufacturers in recent years. The Aiva 2 impressed me with its craftsmanship and engaging presentation, while the Egret has been one of my favourite planar magnetic headphones of the year so far.

I first listened to the KYLIN at CanJam London and enjoyed it enough that I wanted to spend considerably more time with one away from the noise and chaos of an audio show. Having now lived with it, that initial attraction is still very much there.

But at $1,499/£1,499, excellent sound is only the price of admission. The more important question is whether the Sendy Audio KYLIN does enough to justify replacing a stack of very capable DACs and headphone amplifiers already competing for the same space on your desk.

Related Reading:

Inside the Sendy Audio KYLIN: DAC, Class A Amplification and Connectivity

The KYLIN represents Sendy Audio’s move beyond headphones and into desktop electronics, combining a DAC, preamplifier, and headphone amplifier inside a single, substantial aluminium chassis.

Digital conversion is handled by the familiar ESS ES9038Q2M DAC, partnered with an XMOS USB implementation. Sendy Audio specifies support for native DSD512 playback, while digital connectivity includes USB-B, coaxial, and optical inputs.

Rather than building the KYLIN around the kind of highly integrated amplifier topology that has become commonplace in modern desktop DAC/amps, Sendy has gone with a Class A output stage employing matched Hitachi transistors. Dual Burr-Brown OPA604 op-amps are used in the preamplifier section, with WIMA and Nichicon capacitors also featuring internally.

This is not really trying to compete with products from Topping, FiiO, and similar manufacturers by offering the longest feature list or the most extravagant collection of measurements. The KYLIN feels much more like an old-school headphone amplifier that happens to have a very capable DAC built into it.

Three headphone connections are provided on the front panel: 6.35mm, 4.4mm, and four-pin XLR. Around the back are USB-B, coaxial, and optical digital inputs, alongside three sets of RCA analogue inputs and RCA preamplifier/line-level connectivity.

At this price, I would have liked balanced XLR line outputs. There is certainly enough room on the rear panel, and I am not convinced that three sets of RCA analogue inputs will prove more useful to most buyers than having the option of balanced connectivity to active loudspeakers or a separate power amplifier.

Furthermore, the KYLIN provides an altogether more analogue user experience. There are no digital filters to cycle through, no parametric EQ, no large colour interface, and no labyrinth of internal settings to configure. There is not even a remote control. Depending on your perspective, that will either sound refreshingly simple or surprisingly limited.

Plenty of considerably cheaper DAC/amps now offer PEQ, extensive filter controls, Bluetooth, saved profiles, and increasingly sophisticated software ecosystems. Some all-in-one components are even beginning to dabble in AI-assisted functionality.

The KYLIN gives you knobs, switches, and two physical VU meters. I suspect Sendy Audio is perfectly happy with that distinction.

Design & Build

Inside the box, Sendy Audio supplies the KYLIN with the necessary power cable alongside an unusually generous collection of interconnects, including RCA, optical, and multiple USB cables intended to cover the most common computer and mobile-device configurations. It is one of those rare products where you can open the box and have a very good chance of finding the cable you actually need rather than immediately rummaging through a drawer or making another online purchase.

I think the unit itself is beautifully made. That should not come as an enormous surprise if you have handled Sendy Audio’s cans before. Its headphones place considerable emphasis on materials and machining, and the KYLIN takes a similar approach to desktop electronics.

At 245 x 225 x 50mm (9.6 x 8.9 x 2 inches) and roughly 3.1kg, it is not especially large, but there is enough weight to stop it from moving around the desk every time you connect a pair of headphones.

The centrepiece is unquestionably the pair of analogue VU meters. Of course, they are not exactly necessary, but they do look cool. Screens have become almost unavoidable on modern desktop audio equipment. The advantage is obvious when a product has dozens of settings, filters, and input modes, but there is something satisfying about using an amplifier that does not resemble another small computer sitting next to my PC.

The volume knob deserves particular praise because it feels excellent. There is real weight to its movement, with enough resistance that adjustments feel deliberate and precise rather than loose or vague.

Unfortunately, the KYLIN has an unusually small usable window before things get loud. Even with the HiFiMAN HE6se V2 — hardly a headphone famous for being easy to drive — I was operating within roughly the first 10% of the potentiometer’s travel for much of my normal listening. Small movements therefore create disproportionately large changes in output level.

That is irritating with demanding headphones and becomes a much bigger problem with efficient ones. Fine adjustment at lower listening levels is far more difficult than it should be.

There is also audible background noise with sufficiently sensitive headphones. I could hear a noise floor with easy to drive full size dynamic headphones such as the THIEAUDIO Cypher, and I would be very cautious about buying the KYLIN primarily for sensitive IEMs.

Unless you listen to a lot of classical music with very wide dynamic range, extended rests, or extremely quiet passages, the noise floor should not pose a significant problem in normal use. But for a $1,499 headphone amplifier, it is still something that should not really be there.

There are certainly no complaints about the thermal performance, though. Despite the Class A design, the chassis only became lukewarm to the touch during extended use. Having spent time with products such as the Aune S17 Pro and LAiV Audio Crescendo VERSE, both of which can generate considerably more heat, I was expecting the Sendy Audio to become rather toasty. It never did.

That makes the KYLIN much easier to live with on a normal desk and gives you far more freedom over placement than some other Class A designs.

Listening & Headphone Synergy

The Sendy Audio KYLIN was used primarily as an all-in-one DAC and headphone amplifier with a range of planar magnetic and dynamic driver headphones. I fed the unit a mixture of high resolution FLAC files and Spotify streams from both my PC and smartphone.

As mentioned previously, my first proper listen to the KYLIN was at CanJam London, where its combination of warmth, dynamics, and physicality immediately stood out. I can now say that those initial impressions have largely survived extended listening.

Perhaps the best thing about the KYLIN is just how dynamic it sounds. Bass has real texture and physical presence, with enough weight behind kick drums and bass guitars to give music a convincing sense of scale. Transients have plenty of impact, and the KYLIN never sounds short of energy, especially in the low end, even when connected to more demanding planar magnetic headphones.

I especially enjoyed listening to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” where the recurring bassline punched through the rest of the track and gave the song even greater impact.

There is also a subtle old school Class A warmth to its presentation. It is not thick or syrupy in the traditional sense, but there is a little additional richness through the lower registers and midrange that gives instruments more body without completely neutering treble energy.

For that reason, I think the KYLIN pairs especially well with dead neutral headphones such as the HiFiMAN HE1000 Unveiled, adding a hint of cosiness that can otherwise be missing at times. It can also help tone down particularly spicy sections of certain tracks. Hans Zimmer’s “2049” can cause listening fatigue with some systems, but I had no such issues with the KYLIN.

As alluded to previously, the unit also has no trouble driving some of the most demanding headphones currently on the market. The HE6se V2 has earned a reputation for exposing amplifiers that look powerful on paper but struggle to provide convincing control and dynamic authority in practice. Despite this, the KYLIN had plenty of headroom while retaining bass impact and definition, and large dynamic swings never collapsed or became noticeably compressed.

British rapper AJ Tracey’s “Wifey Riddim 4” delivered the level of hard hitting impact I was looking for with the KYLIN paired with the Sendy Audio Egret.

The subtle warmth continues into the midrange, where vocals and guitars possess a pleasing sense of density without obscuring detail. There is enough clarity through the upper midrange and treble to prevent the KYLIN from becoming overly romantic, and it manages to retain a sense of openness despite its richer tonal balance.

That is refreshing in a market dominated by components chasing neutrality and increasingly impressive measurements. The KYLIN still sounds similarly clean and resolving to products from Topping or SMSL, but it adds a degree of dynamic exuberance and tonal character that gives the presentation some personality.

The Bottom Line

In an era when a DAC/headphone amplifier costing under $500 can offer colour touchscreens, Bluetooth, parametric EQ, a myriad of filters, and enough menu options to keep you occupied for an entire day, the $1,499 Sendy Audio KYLIN might not initially seem like the most enticing all in one option. It has physical VU meters, conventional controls, and very little in the way of software.

But that more analogue user experience will be exactly what some listeners are looking for. It allows you to focus on the music rather than constantly fiddling with settings in an attempt to make the listening experience that little bit more convenient.

And the KYLIN simply sounds magnificent. It has acres of power, a slightly warm tonal balance that draws attention to its powerful and immaculately controlled bass performance, yet still manages to retain a high level of detail and spatial precision. That is a difficult balance to achieve. The unit is also beautifully constructed, with a reassuring heft and level of finish that make it feel every bit like a serious piece of desktop audio equipment.

Just be aware of the lack of balanced XLR line outputs and the fact that the KYLIN is not the best companion for sensitive IEMs or easy to drive dynamic headphones, owing to its audible noise floor and very narrow usable volume range.

Pros:

• Beautifully constructed chassis with excellent physical controls
• Analogue VU meters give the KYLIN real character
• Substantial power for difficult full-size headphones
• Excellent pairing with hard-to-drive planar headphones
• Dynamic, textured bass response
• Slight Class A warmth without excessive treble roll-off
• Runs surprisingly cool for a Class A desktop amplifier
• Generous selection of supplied cables

Cons:

• Very narrow usable range on the volume control
• Audible noise floor with sensitive headphones
• No balanced XLR line outputs or remote control
• No PEQ, digital-filter selection or extensive internal configuration

Our Ratings:

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound Quality

★★★★★★★★★★ Build Quality

★★★★★★★★★★ Usability

★★★★★★★★★★ Features

★★★★★★★★★★ Value

Where to Buy:

Related Reading:

There’s no denying the appeal of deep-fried foods, from donuts to drumsticks, plus numerous bite-sized appetizers and every kind of potato. But when it comes to whether to bother deep-frying at home, it isn’t necessarily a matter of difficulty. With the right vessel and thermometer, frying can be a quick, easy way to make memorable dishes — the real issue is: what to do with all that leftover oil?

Shallow frying can also get the job done in many cases, but it can also create a conundrum. Putting that oil down the sink? Potentially drain-clogging, environmentally dubious, and frankly, wasteful. I grew up in a household where leftover grease and oil went into a glass mayonnaise jar kept under the sink, to be discarded once it was full. Sure, this saves the sink, but it doesn’t address the other two issues. It’s a quick kitchen hack that makes it easier to put it out with food waste, but there’s also another solution.

Don’t get rid of it. “Oil used for frying is not one and done,” says Melanie Underwood, cookbook author, culinary instructor, and founder of Nourish and Gather, “unless the oil has been overheated, or if you’re frying things that are particularly strong in flavor. With something like seafood, you want to be careful, but it’s perfectly reusable as long as it wasn’t smoking.”

With that, Underwood shares her best practices and advice for reusing oil multiple times before it’s done.

Manage the oil before and during the frying process

To ensure oil is good for multiple uses, first make sure you’re using the right oil — something neutral in flavor with a high smoke point. “Any vegetable oil, such as canola oil, peanut oil or sunflower oil, is best for frying,” says Underwood. While olive oil can be tricky to fry with because it has a lower smoke point, “I definitely have used olive oil,” she says, “and I have never had any problem with it whatsoever.”

Resist the impulse to eyeball your oil for temperature clues, or test bits and pieces to make sure you’re in the right zone, unless you fry so regularly that it’s second nature. Otherwise, that’s a recipe for pieces with burnt exteriors and undercooked interiors, and/or smoking out your upstairs neighbors. (Speaking from experience, sadly.) Using a thermometer, “the correct range for frying is usually between 350 to 400,” says Underwood, which prevents smoking.

During the frying process, it’s a great idea if you can skim out any crumbs or whatever has come off in the oil,” she says, “because when you have little burned pieces, that will degrade the oil faster.”

After frying: cool, strain, and store

Once you’re done frying, managing the oil for future use is simple. “First, you let it cool,” says Underwood. Don’t try to speed up the process by refrigerating it; just let it sit until it cools to room temperature.

Straining it is also straightforward and can be done with whatever you already have on hand. “I use a fine mesh strainer,” Underwood says. “People also use cheesecloth or a coffee filter. You just want to strain it and get out all those teeny particles.” Some micro particles may still be visible in the oil after straining, but they will settle once the oil is stored, and it is easy to prevent them from transferring into a pot the next time you want to use it.

Finally, Underwood suggests transferring the oil to a clean and dry container. “It’s very important that it doesn’t have any residual water in it,” she says, “and then just put a lid on it, tightly sealed, and keep it away from heat and light.” If you don’t plan to use it immediately, you can store it in the refrigerator, but any place with a consistent temperature and away from light works.

Considerations for reusing oil

There’s nothing special that needs doing in order to use preused oil the next time, but bear one thing in mind: “Just be aware that it would now carry allergens from anything that you previously cooked in it,” says Underwood, which is essential to know if you’re cooking for other people.

Since that can be hard to track over multiple uses, “Always label and date it,” she suggests. “I just put a piece of tape on it with the date and the number of uses. And I also actually put what was fried in it,” she says, which can help keep track of potential allergens.

It also helps keep potentially odd flavors out of whatever you cook next, as certain items like seafood or onion rings can impart flavor into the oil. “I don’t typically like to fry a savory thing and then fry a sweet thing,” says Underwood. “Like I wouldn’t make schnitzel and then use that oil for a donut.” 

If you’re unsure whether an oil is still good to use, let your nose guide you to suss out if something is funky. If you’re not confident in your sniffing ability, Underwood advises smelling unused oil of the same type first, then smelling the used oil for comparison. You can use frying oil at least two or three times, maybe more if it was only used for light-flavored things that didn’t impart many particles and was never overheated.

Read more: An Expert Explains When to Use Certain Cooking Oils

Benefits of reusing oil

The biggest benefit of reusing frying oil is the savings in every possible regard — you save money, and it’s a much more environmentally friendly practice across the board. “When you’re reusing any product, then you’re lowering the demand for things like production, packaging and transport,” Underwood says. “I don’t think that we think about that big picture very much, but if we were all reusing it, it would reduce those demands on the environment.”

Each time you reuse oil, it also diminishes in volume a bit. In my experience, at least with shallow frying, you can use the same batch of oil until, after a few uses, nothing remains to discard — the ultimate win.

Pamela Vachon

Contributor

Pamela is a freelance food and travel writer based in Astoria, Queens. While she writes about most things edible and potable (and accessories dedicated to those topics,) her real areas of expertise are cheese, chocolate, cooking and wine. She’s a culinary school grad, certified sommelier, former bartender and fine dining captain with 10 years in the industry. When not sitting at the keys, she leads in-home cheese classes, wine tastings and cocktail demonstrations.

See full bio

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Jason Dessen cannot seem to get away from the Box, even when there isn’t one in front of him. In Dark Matter Season 2, Episode 4, Jason finishes a shift at the bar and, after stepping outside, reaches for the door to go back in. For a moment, it isn’t the entrance to the pub anymore. He sees himself opening the familiar door of the Box, with the corridor behind it, before reality settles back into place.

It is a brief moment, but an effective one, particularly after Episode 3 had Jason painstakingly dismantling the machine in the hope of finally putting some distance between his family and the multiverse. The physical Box can be taken apart; Jason’s relationship with it clearly cannot. More than that, seeing an ordinary rectangular doorway suddenly become its entrance makes us wonder about something Dark Matter has largely trained us to accept without question: why was the gateway to infinite realities a box in the first place? Why not a circle, a sphere, or the kind of glowing portal science fiction has taught us to associate with travelling somewhere impossible?

The answer begins much earlier than the Apple TV series.

The Box came before Blake Crouch knew what it did

When Blake Crouch was developing the 2016 novel on which the series is based, the shape wasn’t the conclusion to some elaborate piece of quantum theory. The image came first. “I had the image of a box in a warehouse, with a door on it. And that was it,” Crouch said of the idea that eventually became Dark Matter. He was brainstorming the novel in 2014, after spending years circling quantum mechanics and looking for the right story to connect to it.

A box creates an unmistakable boundary, which makes it a particularly useful object for a story built around lives that can branch into almost endless possibilities. Something is either inside it or outside it, and crossing that threshold becomes an event in itself. Crouch didn’t need the fictional physics to demand a cube; he needed an object that could make the act of entering another possibility feel physical.

The science behind the Box is fictional, but its basic idea grows out of a familiar quantum concept. Jason’s original research involved a much smaller cube intended to shield a tiny physical object from observation and external stimuli, keeping it in what he describes as an undetermined “cat state.” Jason2 succeeds where he did not and scales the concept until the experiment is large enough to contain a human being. The Box becomes the physical expression of an experiment built around observation, uncertainty and the possibility that more than one outcome can exist.

A hard-edged cube also gives the story something almost paradoxical to work with. Its dimensions are fixed, its walls are solid, and its boundary is obvious. Inside it, however, Dark Matter places a corridor that seems to have no meaningful end, with doors leading to realities that can differ wildly from the one left behind. The most ordinary-looking object in the story consequently becomes the entrance to something that cannot be contained by its physical dimensions.

Schrödinger’s cat makes the shape more interesting

The obvious reference is Schrödinger’s cat, the famous thought experiment in which a cat is sealed inside a box with a quantum event that can determine whether it lives or dies. Until the system is observed, the thought experiment imagines the cat occupying both possible states.

Dark Matter effectively puts the observer inside that experiment. Jason doesn’t stand outside the Box wondering which state exists on the other side. He enters it, becomes part of the experiment, and encounters a corridor through which different outcomes can be reached. The Box turns a thought experiment about mutually exclusive possibilities into the architecture of the series itself.

The visual contradiction is what makes the idea especially effective. A cube is rigid, finite and easily understood. It has fixed dimensions, hard corners and an obvious boundary between inside and outside. Dark Matter, meanwhile, places something apparently limitless within it. Once the drug takes effect, the enclosed space gives way to a corridor whose doors can lead to an extraordinary number of realities.

A circular portal would immediately communicate its purpose. Science fiction has spent decades teaching audiences that a glowing ring, tear or doorway is shorthand for travel between places that should not be connected. The Box carries a different suggestion. From the outside, it looks like an industrial object that could plausibly be sitting in an abandoned warehouse. Its strangeness only begins once the door closes.

Every door inside the Box also turns the mechanics of the multiverse into a question of choice. Jason can see other versions of his life, but seeing them does not make choosing between them easier. Each possibility carries its own consequences, and the person standing in the corridor still has to decide which one is worth entering.

Season 2 has changed what the Box represents

In Season 1, the Box was primarily a means of movement. Jason needed it because every journey through it offered another chance to find Daniela, Charlie and the world from which Jason2 had removed him. However frightening the realities behind its doors became, the machine still represented a possible route home.

In the current season, the relationship has become much less comfortable. Jason has his family again, yet the Box remains at the centre of their instability. His fixation with the machine is now affecting the life he fought to recover, and dismantling it becomes an attempt to impose some kind of final boundary between his family and the multiverse.

Episode 4 pushes that idea somewhere more personal. Jason no longer needs to be physically inside the Box for its presence to follow him. An ordinary doorway briefly becomes its entrance, turning something completely familiar into a reminder of the place he has spent so much of his life trying to escape. The image works because Jason’s problem is no longer simply the machine itself. He has begun to carry the Box with him.

The object can still function as a laboratory and a doorway, but its meaning has expanded. For Jason, it has also become a kind of prison, because destroying the physical machine cannot erase what happened inside it or the lives he has seen on the other side. A story about infinite possibilities has consequently given its central character a strangely finite problem: he cannot simply choose a different reality and leave the consequences behind.

Crouch may have started with nothing more complicated than the image of a mysterious box in a warehouse, but Dark Matter has spent two seasons turning that simple shape into the physical language of its entire story. It contains the experiment, separates Jason from the world he knows, opens onto lives that should never have been accessible, and now follows him even when he isn’t anywhere near the machine. The Box was always about crossing a boundary, but Jason’s experience suggests that some boundaries become much harder to cross back over.

The latest episode makes the idea particularly clear. Jason can dismantle the machine and try to build a life outside it, but the Box has become part of how he sees the world. For a character who spent so long trying to find the right door, the more unsettling possibility may be that he can no longer look at an ordinary one without wondering where it might lead.