Tag Archives: Mini’s

Electric Vehicles

2025 MINI Countryman SE ALL4 First Drive: Bigger Crossover, Better Value

In truth, it is robust to argue with the fact that electrical fits the MINI’s spirit — and its possible stomping grounds — so a lot better. For a begin it is charmingly perky, all that torque delivered from the get-go and sending you scurrying away from cease lights and junctions. 

Direct steering errs on the sunshine facet, and although the JCW’s slight sense of remoteness from the highway is current right here, too; it feels much more acceptable in a nimble EV. Multiple ranges of regenerative braking can be found, although MINI buries them in an infotainment menu. A faster solution to change between these ranges, equivalent to by means of steering wheel paddles as different automakers supply, could be good.

Where the 2025 MINI Countryman JCW feels every inch of its increased dimensions, in the meantime, its electrical counterpart shrinks round you. A softer tune for the suspension — to assist deal with that heavier curb weight, amongst different issues — pays dividends each in dynamics and total consolation. The Countryman SE ALL4 feels extra settled within the corners, and it does not threaten to ship you to a chiropractor just like the aggressively-stiff JCW.

2025 Mini Countryman SE ALL4 front wheelChris Davies/SlashGear

On a observe — or in a sequence of sweeping again roads that lacked the aggressively-cavalier oncoming vans commonplace in Lisbon, the place MINI invited SlashGear to check out the brand new Countryman — the John Cooper Works would undoubtedly be quicker and possibly extra rewarding for a eager driver. 

In the actual world, although, the point-and-squirt eagerness of the Countryman SE is simply extra playful. It looks like what it’s: An electrical crossover with added whimsy, fairly than aggressively making an attempt to be each sensible and sporty.

Smartphones

iMessage Comes To Android: Everything You Need To Know About Beeper Mini

Beeper Mini’s beginnings are reasonably extraordinary. Now, Beeper arrived on the scene earlier this 12 months, providing a strategy to cluster all of your messaging apps — comparable to WhatsApp, iMessage, Slack, and Telegram — in a single place. The 15-chats-1-app formulation was fairly darn profitable in itself. Then, in August, a high-schooler going by the alias JJTech arrived on GitHub claiming to have reverse-engineered iMessage. They subsequently reached out to Migicovsky with their pitch for a Mac-free, open-source implementation of iMessage referred to as pypush. As unbelievable because it appeared, Migicovsky was bought on the thought, and JJTech promptly handed over the reins to the parents over at Beeper whereas nonetheless being part of the mission.

So started the journey of Beeper Mini. As talked about above, Beeper Mini would not depend on a system of Mac relays to trick Apple servers into believing {that a} message is originating from an Apple machine. Instead, it depends on the very foundations of an Apple system that dictates push notifications. The firm calls it Apple Push Notification Service (APNs). It is bidirectional and handles the supply chain for iMessage. After latching on to the APN hyperlink, pypush proceeds with the registration course of, the place Apple requires validation knowledge, which basically asks for proof that an iMessage token request originated on an Apple machine.

Pypush depends on an identical machine serial identifier format as instruments like Hackintosh, which implies the identifiers are reputable and validation is with none shady loopholes. Notably, Beeper Mini additionally retains end-to-end encryption intact, a secure strategy to guarantee customers that they do not have to fret about safety when texting from an Android telephone over the iMessage line to succeed in an iPhone person—an in depth breakdown of how all that transpires will be discovered here.