Remember in the early 2000s? Remember the “golden age” of TV?

TV’s golden age probably started with The Sopranos in 1999, but it really got rolling with shows like The Wire, Lost and Deadwood in the mid-2000s. Big-time productions that could match Hollywood in terms of budget and scale. 

But that was just the beginning. TV kept steamrolling. Toward the end of the decade it was Breaking Bad and Mad Men, later it was Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead. Eventually, the idea that television played second fiddle to the cinematic experience began to erode and collapse.

Television was king.

But the golden age of TV never really ended. It just kept going to the point when the phrase golden age stopped making sense. “Prestige TV,” or whatever you want to call it, was just the new normal: content that pushed the boundaries of what was possible. New ideas, great writing, world-class performances. This quality is baseline now. There are fully grown adults who have literally zero understanding of what it was like to scramble for scraps via shows like Twin Peaks or The X-Files.

For the last 20 years we’ve been swamped with incredible television. Drowning in it. 

The year 2021 was one of the best for TV that I can remember. Ever. Yellowjackets, Station Eleven, The White Lotus, Succession, Dopesick, Arcane, Midnight Mass. That’s before we even start talking about the superhero shows they keep dropping on Disney Plus. 

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That’s just one year! ONE SINGLE YEAR!

Incredibly, 2022 hasn’t let up. Which brings us — finally — to the show I want to talk about now: Severance.

Severance is a sci-fi show on Apple TV Plus, set in a barely explained universe where a process called “severance” allows employees to split themselves into two discrete entities: A work self, who exists during office hours only, and a home self, who’s completely divorced from work. The work self has no understanding or memories of what goes on outside the office, and vice versa. 

At its core Severance is a high concept show acutely focused on exploring that original idea — of split lives and artificially enforced, physically induced work-life balance. But despite its unique high concept, Severance also plays on the tropes established over the past 20 years of prestige television.

It operates on a number of levels. Severance is undoubtedly a “mystery box” show, like Lost. There’s a central mystery to be solved, and the show drip feeds the audience information, playing to the Reddit sleuths who love to figure out the twists before they unfold. 

But Severance subverts that by also being… extremely funny. It never takes itself as seriously as a show like Westworld. It never wallows in its own self-importance. In many ways Severance takes its cues from (but also parodies) shows like The Office, which celebrate the day-to-day grind of office life. The casting of Adam Scott, who spent years on Office-like Parks and Recreation, plays a crucial role here and helps play up the disparity. Severance features a stripped back, minimalist office much like the one you might see on Parks and Recreation, but not all is what it seems.

That’s what makes Severance special. It gets to be compelling like Lost and funny like The Office. It gets to wax lyrical about the human condition, but also manages to parody the era it’s part of. In many ways Severance is the first post-prestige TV classic. It does everything.

Severance isn’t flashy, it doesn’t have to establish its greatness with self serious monologues or soaring orchestral soundtracks. It’s a show that gets to have its cake and eat it. Severance is informed by the classics that preceded it but feels distinct from them. A show that swallows and digests everything we’ve been consuming for the past 20 years and vomits it up as a fully formed, barf masterpiece that subverts the type of television we’ve become accustomed to over the past two decades.

Yet Severance is only one season deep. Promising shows have fallen apart before. Even a show as fully formed as Severance could crumble beneath audience expectations. They could screw it up. 

But I have a lot of faith in Severance. It has the example of shows like Lost and Westworld to learn from. We know what could go wrong. If Severance keeps its narrative tight, and stays true to what made the show so compelling to begin with, we could be witnessing greatness. At the very least, Severance is my favorite show of 2022 so far and — for my money — the best show on Apple TV.

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Dodge revealed Wednesday an EV concept that looks — and even sounds — like the gas-powered Charger muscle car that will be discontinued next year.

The two-door Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept — the Daytona name a nod to its gas-powered ancestor’s 200 mph NASCAR track milestone — is not just a design exercise, according to the Stellantis brand. The Charger EV concept unveiled at M1Concourse in Pontiac, Michigan during Dodge Speed Week event series is a placeholder of sorts for the production version coming in 2024. Dodge has been talking about this day since at least last summer, but now consumers are starting to see exactly what the automaker has in mind.

It’s unclear just how much of the concept shown Wednesday will make it to the final production version. A company spokesperson did tell TechCrunch that “we call it a concept … it is very close to production.” Which means it’s worth taking a closer look at the concept that will replace the gas-powered version.

Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept

Like so many concepts, the automaker didn’t share details on pricing. It did share lots of specs and design details, which clearly uses some of the original Dodge Charger DNA.

Dodge emphasizes three main areas that it says will “rewrite the rules” of the battery electric segment: a front R-wing that acts as an aerodynamic pass-through, a multi-speed transmission with electro-mechanical shifting and finally, an exhaust that can reach 126 decibels. Yes, the automaker put an “exhaust” on an EV and gave it a dB that will make it as loud as a Hellcat-powered Dodge by pushing sound through an amplifier and tuning chamber located at the rear of the vehicle.

The Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept’s R-Wing is an homage to the original Charger Daytona design. It is incorporated into the hood and allows air to flow through the front opening, enhancing downforce. Image credit: Dodge/Stellantis

Tim Kuniskis, CEO of the Dodge brand under Stellantis, didn’t mince words in a statement when he said “Charger Daytona does more than define where Dodge is headed, it will redefine American muscle in the process.”

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That’s an ambitious target and Dodge’s bar for success appears to start with the upcoming EV exceeding the power, performance and sound of the gas-powered Dodge SRT Hellcat.

Like its gas-powered brethren, the propulsion system in the Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept even gets some special branding. The 800v propulsion system, dubbed Banshee, makes the EV faster than a Hellcat in all key performance measures, according to Dodge.  The Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept also has a standard all-wheel drive and on push-button on the steering wheel called PowerShot that will produce an extra burst of horsepower.

Dodge Charger Daytona SRT EV Concept has an lluminated three-pointed Fratzog badge, Image credit: Dodge/Stellantis

Dodge pulled from its past when it designed the Charger EV concept even though it has lots of modern elements, like the R-wing, a more aerodynamic shape and its panoramic glass roof. Some of the historical nods include a white illuminated three-pointed Fratzog badge that was originally featured on Dodge muscle cars from 1962 through 1976. Then there is the front grille with its vertical details that are reminiscent of the 1968 Dodge Charger. The automaker’s designers took that 1968 grille design and pulled into the interior textures as well.

Inside the vehicle are many of the modern touches one expects in a new EV, including a 12.3-inch center screen, a curved 16-inch instrument cluster and a 8-by-3-inch Head-up Display (HUD).

Facepalm: Many users rely on VPNs to keep their connections secure and private, and a significant chunk of those connections likely come from iPhones and iPads. It should be of significant concern then if no VPNs work as advertised on Apple’s operating system.

This week, a security researcher and blogger reiterated his claims that all VPNs on iOS are broken. According to researcher Michael Horowitz and ProtonVPN, every VPN on iOS has been leaking data for at least the past two years.

The core of the problem is that when a user activates a VPN on an iPhone or iPad, the device won’t first terminate all internet connections before restarting them within the VPN tunnel. Because of this behavior, while the VPN may route some connections through its servers to hide a user’s real IP address, connections outside the tunnel could leak a device’s IP address or other data.

ProtonVPN publicized the issue and reported it to Apple in 2020, but Horowitz’s recent tests show that it remains unresolved in the latest versions of iOS and iPadOS (15.6). Horowitz found that the problem affects ProtonVPN, WireGuard, Windscribe, and others, showing that the vulnerability lies with iOS itself. Apple and Proton have suggested a few workarounds, but Horowitz’s tests show that likely none are foolproof.

One solution is to use Apple’s Always-on VPN feature, which ensures the VPN tunnel is always active before outside connections can start. However, this requires deploying device management – a complex process that isn’t accessible to most users.

In late 2020, Apple added the ability for iOS VPNs to incorporate a kill switch to stop all connections when a VPN fails. However, Horowitz’s tests still showed non-VPN connections getting through after enabling the feature.

Proton suggested turning on airplane mode after activating a VPN to shut off all of a device’s connections, then switching off airplane mode with the VPN still engaged which should restart connections inside the tunnel. Airplane mode, however, might not stop all prior connections, as users can control Wi-Fi settings independent of it, possibly confusing the process.

Ultimately, Horowitz advises against trusting any VPN on Apple iOS devices. Instead, users may want to operate a VPN from the router to protect the entire network if individual devices leak data. A secondary router dedicated to VPN connections is ideal.

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