⚡ 26OCT2025 - Status Less Than Quo

Happy Sunday everyone!

This week, I've been reading about the surprising history of pad thai, kinda digging the new Toyota Land Cruiser FJ that's woefully not coming to the U.S. anytime soon, loving the look and concept of this Analog + Digital Espresso Timer Watch, watching season 2 of No One Wants This, pre-ordered a $100 bill and some hot sauce for $14, and marveling at this mod to turn a Lego Game Boy replica into a functioning retro gaming system.

Note that some of the links in this issue of the Hiro Report are affiliate links and may earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you.

On to the good stuff!

👟 RunBuds for iOS - RunBuds is a fun, indie take on social running apps, letting you watch both yours and your friends' runs on a track. You can also set up group goals, like collectively running a certain cumulative distance by a deadline. I'm not running much these days (more into rucking), otherwise I'd be all in on this.

⌚ James Brand x Timex Watch - Thanks to Adam for flagging this gorgeous GMT field watch from Timex and The James Brand. It uses a super reliable Miyota 9075 automatic GMT movement, letting you track the time in two different time zones at once, and has the perfect amount of color pops for my liking. I have a few knives and tools from The James Brand and have always been really pleased with them—they look great and hold up to regular heavy use.

🏴‍☠️ Hacktivate - Shout out to Andrew for flagging this cool educational game/simulator that teaches you the real-life fundamentals of offensive hacking, encryption, decryption and more. Even if you're not into cybersecurity, you'll probably enjoy the puzzles and challenges. Best of all, you can try it for free, and then it's a one-time payment to unlock it for playing on your Mac, iPad, and iPhone. I'm having a blast with it.

🖼️ Aura Ink - Aura released an interesting new take on their fantastic digital photo frames this week, this time using color e-ink in its display, giving a more analog, paper look to your photos. The large 13.3" e-paper frame looks to be pretty high resolution and can run for up to three months on a single charge, letting you mount it on a wall amongst your other pictures. We have had several different digital photo frames, but the ones from Aura have easily been our favorite.

📷 Leica M EV-1 - Leica released a new version of their iconic M-series cameras, this time ditching the glass rangefinder in favor of an electronic viewfinder. While it can be seen as a controversial move if you forget that no one is forcing you to buy this camera, I think it's a really savvy move to increase the accessibility of the Leica M range. Like all Leicas, the new camera is gorgeous and costs an insane amount of money. Even if you have no interest at all in this camera, I highly recommend watching YouTuber GxAce's fantastic review that is almost more of a time-traveling cyberpunk documentary than a camera review.

That's it for this week—may your status be a little less quo than usual.