Photo credit: 2 Warps to Neptune
In 1974, Nintendo kicked off their coin-operated arcade era with Wild Gunman. This game required players to step up, pull a handgun from a holster, and face off against some unfriendly live-action gunslingers on a projection screen. Footage came from authentic film reels filmed on site in Japan, capturing the wild west-style shootouts in all their gritty grandeur. Timing was everything here. You could only draw and shoot after your eyes flashed and the word “FIRE” appeared on the screen. Get it right, and you’ll come out on top. If you mess up, draw too soon, or miss your shot, you will lose the duel.

Roughly a hundred units left the factory, the majority of which either stranded in warehouses or fell apart over time due to neglect. Today, just one original cabinet remains intact, and it is kept locked away in a private collection. That meant that for about 50 years, no one outside of that collection had the opportunity to play the game as it was intended. Everything changed when Callan Brown got wind of something unusual. The Canadian arcade collector and repair specialist spotted an eBay listing for the original 16mm film reels used in the Wild Gunman arcade cabinet, reportedly sourced from the warehouse of a retired operator in Saskatchewan. Recognizing their rarity, he moved quickly, placed the winning bid, and brought the reels home for his collection.

Sale

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Brown first had to preserve the reels before sending them to a competent facility in Toronto for scanning. Some of the reels showed scratches and dust from years of intensive use, while others appeared to be in perfect condition. He stored the worst pieces safely while keeping the better frames. Unfortunately, two of the four duel sequences remain absent, but there was enough solid content to bring the basic game experience back.

Brown then began the rebuild by creating a basic scale model on his workshop, but things quickly became out of control. The next thing he knew, he was drafting full-size designs, cutting plywood sheets for the cabinet frame, and assembling it piece by piece. His wife, Natasha, worked hard to hand stitch the cloth side panels so they matched the original design flawlessly. On his 3D printer, the front control panel was crisp and clear, and the LED lights worked. Brown even printed the gun’s body and attached it with infrared sensors that tracked movement in the same manner that classic console controllers did.

A single digital projector now manages film playback inside the cabinet, and everything runs on custom Unity code written by Brown. It reads the player’s time, selects the appropriate film clip, verifies the shot position, and awards a badge if the player hits a clean shot. Insert two quarters into the coin slot, and the machine will scream to life. The attract loop plays on the screen, allowing the user to grab the gun. A gunslinger appears on the screen, his eyes flare, and you receive the command to fire. Draw quickly but not too quickly, and then land that shot as the victory music begins to play. Everything feels just like the original game from the 1970s.

from the not-today,-second-rate-satan dept

Despite a bunch of Republican lawmakers being extremely (and mostly performatively) upset that their communications were accessed during investigations of the January 2021 insurrection attempt, the current version of the Trump administration seems to prefer a clean re-authorization of the surveillance powers it so recently deemed a dangerous part of the “deep state.”

The FISA court recently blessed an extension of this NSA collection, provided the government fixed the most problematic parts of it — that being other IC agencies’ warrantless access to US persons’ communications via “backdoor” searches of the foreign-facing surveillance dragnet.

Trump was having none of this, pressing the GOP to simply give the administration an un-reformed, un-repaired Section 702 that would presumably allow it to engage in the same abuses it was crying about less than a half-decade ago.

Fortunately for every American only allowed to vote by proxy every two-to-four years for surveillance reform, there is still no clean re-authorization on the books. The senator whose name is synonymous with surveillance reform — Ron Wyden — recently had this to say in his Bluesky post:

Update on where things stand on FISA: this deal is a win. We got the House to back down from an 18 month extension, buying us time to negotiate on real reforms. I’ll be fighting like hell for reforms that put your privacy first, and will have more to share soon.

Not that congressional majority leader Mike Johnson wasn’t trying his damnedest to round up GOP support for a clean renewal that would give Trump what he wanted, and very little of what the GOP actually wanted, given its years of complaining about the FBI’s warrantless access to their communications.

Johnson apparently decided he could slip this one past the goal line by holding a couple of quick votes as time ran out on the current congressional session. Here’s James Baratta with the details for The American Prospect:

Johnson’s dazzling play to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by five years ended in an excruciating defeat, as the bill failed after 20 Republicans joined Democrats in striking it down. One major reason it lost was that the warrant language baked into that measure not only would have codified existing law, but also would have made it easier for Section 702–acquired data to be used against Americans in criminal proceedings.

The 200-220 vote was called at 1:22 early Friday morning.

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Baratta’s report refers to this as an “eleventh hour” burst of activity, but it’s actually well past that hour. We’re looking at 13th to 14th hour desperation here, especially since Johnson went back to the well again shortly after this first defeat.

The other shoe dropped during the vote on a rule to consider a clean 18-month extension of Section 702. That rule also failed at 2:07 a.m. in a 197-228 vote.

Given that the average congressional rep is pushing 58, both votes occurred well after bedtime. It’s a testimony to the resistance to clean re-authorization of Section 702 powers that these many reps were still on the floor to shut down Mike Johnson twice.

It also shows that Mike Johnson isn’t actually leading the Republican party. He’s restricted to doing whatever Trump wants, even if that clashes with what many party members want. To get skunked twice in two hours is embarrassing, which means Johnson may not remain majority leader for long, even if Democrats can’t flip the House following the mid-terms.

The good news is this: Congress only has until the end of this month to get a re-authorization passed. If it hopes to prevent this surveillance power from lapsing, Johnson and his fellow surveillance hawks are going to have to make some concessions, which may (finally!) include warrant requirements for searches of US persons’ communications by IC agencies with access to NSA collections.

On the other hand, when push comes to shove, far too many Republicans are willing to be Trump’s doormat and argue against their own interests, along with the interests of the constituents. But this is the most concerted challenge to Section 702 mounted yet. Even the Snowden leaks didn’t manage to get this done. But even if reforms are finally put in place, the public should remember GOP lawmakers did this because they want to shield themselves from domestic surveillance. That it might better protect their constituents is just an unavoidable side effect of their self-interest.

Filed Under: backdoor searches, gop, mike johnson, nsa, section 702, surveillance abuse, trump administration, warrantless searches

Tim Cook is stepping down as the CEO of Apple and transitioning to a role as the company’s executive chairman, effective September 1, the company announced on Monday. John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, will replace Cook as CEO.

Cook’s departure had been speculated upon in recent months. In an era when every other Big Tech company has thrown significant resources at developing advanced AI, Apple is widely perceived as a laggard. Ternus’ old job will fall to Johny Srouji, who was elevated to chief hardware officer from a senior vice president on Monday. Srouji has been instrumental to Apple’s development of custom computer chips.

Cook’s legacy at Apple will be tied to the company’s tremendous financial growth over the past two decades. When he took over as CEO in 2011, the company’s market capitalization was around $350 billion; it is now north of $4 trillion. More than 2.5 billion people around the world used an Apple device as of January, according to the company.

During Cook’s tenure Apple launched both the Apple Watch and AirPods, important anchors for the company’s accessories unit, which generated nearly $36 billion in revenue during the last fiscal year. Its services business, which keeps consumers locked into Apple hardware and now accounts for over a quarter of the company’s total sales, grew from about $3 billion a quarter at the end of 2011 to about $30 billion in the final three months of last year.

But some of the projects developed under Cook, such as Apple’s self-driving car, were less successful. Apple Vision Pro, the company’s delayed foray into virtual reality headsets, was widely considered to be too expensive and failed to gain traction. While Cook expertly managed Apple’s production cycles during the global pandemic and quickly diversified the company’s supply chain when it encountered pressure from tariffs, Cook’s legacy is likely to be that of an operations master rather than a product innovator.

Cook’s dealings with China are also a part of his operational legacy, as China became not only a critical hub of manufacturing but also an important consumer market for Apple. As of last year, Apple held the top spot in smartphone market share in the country, with an estimated 22 percent. In recent years, though, Apple has faced scrutiny over what some lawmakers allege is the use of forced labor involving Uyghur Muslims by its contractors. Apple also reportedly tried to lobby against certain provisions in a 2020 bill that would have prevented forced labor in China.

Cook, like many tech CEOs, has cozied up to President Donald Trump since Trump’s return to the White House—sometimes even standing, grim-faced, beside the president at public events. Cook personally donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration festivities in early 2025. He also appeared at Trump’s inauguration itself, alongside Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. In an odd display of fealty last August, Cook presented Trump with a custom Apple plaque that was nested in a 24-karat gold base. He also attended a private screening of the Melania documentary at the White House, hours after a federal immigration agent shot and killed nurse Alex Pretti during a street protest.

In 2014, the typically private Cook announced that he is gay in an op-ed in Bloomberg Businessweek. At the time, Cook wrote that being gay gave him a deeper understanding of “what it means to be in the minority and provided a window into the challenges that people in other minority groups deal with every day.” His experience had taught him to “rise above adversity and bigotry,” Cook wrote. He also cited concern for children being bullied as a motivation for him to speak out about his own experiences.

The countertop kitchen composter is a lovely vision. Instead of a smelly bucket of vegetable scraps and coffee grounds breeding fruit flies on your counter or attracting rats to your backyard, you could just put it all into a nifty electric gadget, and at some undetermined point in the future, you’ll have a bountiful supply of nutrient-rich compost to use in your garden.

Unfortunately, none of the more popular electric machines quite do this. Even though some of these devices are marketed as “composters” and have instruction booklets and apps detailing all the ways in which one can use compost, the vast majority of kitchen composters are just going to grind up and dry your food scraps. Your waste output will be greatly reduced in volume and will no longer smell, but if you’re hoping to put eggshells and banana peels into a machine and magically scoop out the kind of compost you’d buy at the garden center, that’s just not going to happen.

That said, you can mix small amounts of these grounds into potting soil in very small ratios, or use them as feeder for a “real” compost pile, but most of these machines are meant for those wanting to reduce the volume of food waste their household produces. This is itself a legitimate goal, as cast-off food makes up 24 percent of municipal solid waste, resulting in the release of methane, a destructive greenhouse gas, as it breaks down in the landfill.

Or maybe you’d just like your food grounds to be odor-free and shelf-stable before adding them to your green waste bin for municipal composting or your backyard compost. In any case, despite critics’ cries of greenwashing and corporate astroturfing, there is still value to these devices. They make people more aware of their food waste. They don’t use as much power as you think they would (around 1 kilowatt-hour was typical). And my top pick, the Reencle Prime, even produces something close to compost.

Read on for our assessment, and once you’re done, check out some of our other kitchen-related guides, including the Best Coffee Makers, Best Toaster Ovens, Best Meat Subscription Boxes, and Best Meal Kit Delivery Services.

Updated April 2026: I’ve added the Terra II from GEME and Clear Drop’s Organics Collector to the section of other devices I’ve tried and ensured up-to-date links and prices. I’m currently testing a composter from Airthereal.

Best Overall

Reencle

Prime Electric Composter

As I mentioned above, none of these machines makes truly ready-to-use compost, but the Reencle Prime comes closest to a traditional compost bin. Popular in South Korea years before it appeared in the US, the Reencle arrives with a starter bag of ReencleMicrobe (which can be purchased separately for $65) containing activated carbon, wood pellets, glucose, and a trio of patented microbes ready to chow down. There’s also a prefilled carbon filter that slots into the back.

Reencle Gravity (left) and Prime (right)

Photograph: Kat Merck

At 14 x 15 x 22 inches, the Prime is too large for a kitchen counter, but it conveniently operates much like a heated trash can. The lid can be opened via a sensor at the bottom or a button on the control panel, and in goes your organic matter. That’s it. There are no cycles, tablets, or auxiliary buckets to worry about. Even the app is totally optional. Within hours to days, depending on the item, the scraps are broken down into a material resembling a cross between dirt and sawdust.

The smell isn’t always pleasant, but it can usually be mitigated by using the control panel’s Dry and Purify buttons or by adding what, in composting lexicon, is called “browns”—dry, carbon-rich materials like bread or shredded paper.

Photograph: Kat Merck

The Reencle also tends not to smell when it’s being fed its preferred diet of 1.5 pounds of scraps per day. Unlike other machines, it can also accept meat and dairy. For larger households, there’s the Reencle Gravity ($649), which is a couple of inches taller and can accept 3.3 pounds of waste a day. I also tested this and found it to be significantly quieter than the Prime—not that the Prime is noticeably loud, only about 30 decibels—but the Gravity is nearly silent, which is a nice bonus.

When the volume reaches the fill line, the Reencle grounds can be scooped out, mixed with potting soil at a 1:4 ratio, and left to cure for three weeks (I used a large tub in my garage). Afterward, it can be used for both outdoor and indoor plants. I have used this resultant mix to positive effect both indoors and outdoors.