Be My Eyes, the accessibility app for mobile devices that puts blind and low-vision people on a live video call with a sighted guide, will help Microsoft train its AI. Be My Eyes will provide anonymized video data to improve scene understanding in Microsoft’s accessibility-focused AI models.
The data sets Be My Eyes gives Microsoft will include “unique objects, lighting and framing that realistically represents the lived experience of the blind and low vision community.” The goal is to make Microsoft’s AI more inclusive for people with vision disabilities.
The companies say all personal info has been scrubbed from the metadata. The provided data won’t be used for advertising or any purpose other than training Microsoft’s AI models.
Although this is Be My Eyes’ first such data partnership, it’s worked with Microsoft before by incorporating its Be My AI tool into Microsoft’s Disability Answer Desk. As its name suggests, Be My AI is the company’s GPT-4-powered spin on an assistance product. In that case, it helps people with vision disabilities navigate Office, Windows and Xbox.
Be My Eyes also struck a deal with Hilton earlier this month. In that case, dedicated hotel staff help blind and low-vision lodgers do things like adjust their thermostats, make coffee and raise or lower their blinds. A previous 2023 partnership between the two companies helped train the Be My AI model.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/microsoft-recruits-accessibility-app-to-make-its-ai-more-useful-to-blind-and-low-vision-users-130006439.html?src=rss
In a barrage of Kindle hardware, Amazon might have something for anyone looking to upgrade from a basic Kindle. The biggest reveal might be the Kindle Colorsoft, its first reader with a color display. Amazon tried to ensure the reader has a good color and black-and-white experience, with high contrast, high resolution and high clarity whether you're looking at a color image or a black-and-white page. Amazon uses nitride LEDs, which work with the company’s algorithm to enhance color and brightness without washing out images.
Judging by the press images (and the demos we went to), these seem primed for graphic novels and comics. If you’re looking for something to digitally house your comics and manga, the Kindle Colorsoft will cost you $280 and start shipping on October 30.
With the original Scribe, Amazon got a lot of the basics right. It nailed latency and smoothness of the writing experience, but writing notes on your ebooks was a bit janky. Now, when you write on a page, the Scribe will generate a box for your notes. This box is embedded in the text, with the book’s words rearranging and flowing to accommodate it. However, it’s still not a simple ‘draw on the page’ solution. The Kindle Scribe will be available in December, starting at $400.
Analogue says it’s nailed its most complicated project yet: rebuilding the Nintendo 64 from scratch. Once again, the Analogue 3D has an FPGA (field programmable gate array) chip, coded to emulate the original console on a hardware level. We’re promised support for every official N64 cartridge ever released, across all regions, but with some major upgrades. The Analogue 3D supports 4K output, variable refresh rate displays and PAL and NTSC carts. The company is also making Original Display Modes to emulate your CRT TV of yore.
Prada and Axiom Space teamed up to design a new spacesuit, and NASA is now ready to reveal the look. This is the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit, white with red and gray accents for a bit of color and excitement. The suit is almost finished, having undergone testing and simulations at Axiom Space, SpaceX and NASA facilities. It should enter a final review in 2025.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-amazon-finally-made-a-kindle-with-a-color-display-111533015.html?src=rss
Update, October 18, 5PM ET: District Judge James Donato has granted an administrative stay. This effectively puts Donato's prior order, which was due to come into effect shortly, on pause until the 9th Circuit's resolves Google's stay motion. In a statement given to Engadget, a Google spokesperson said:
"We’re pleased with the District Court’s decision to temporarily pause the implementation of dangerous remedies demanded by Epic, as the Court of Appeal considers our request to further pause the remedies while we appeal. These remedies threaten Google Play’s ability to provide a safe and secure experience and we look forward to continuing to make our case to protect 100 million U.S. Android users, over 500,000 U.S. developers and thousands of partners who have benefited from our platforms.”
The original story follows.
Google has formally filed a motion [PDF] asking the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to put a pause on the order that forces the company to open the Play store to competitors. If you'll recall, Google lost an antitrust lawsuit filed by Epic Games after a federal jury found that the company held an illegal monopoly on app distribution and in-app billing services for Android devices. Earlier this month, US District Judge James Donato ordered Google to allow third-party app stores access to the Google Play app catalog and to make those stores downloadable from its storefront. Now, Google is asking the court for a stay on that order while it's appealing the Epic antitrust lawsuit decision, saying that it will expose 100 million Android users in the US to "substantial new security risks."
The company called the order "harmful and unwarranted" and said that if it's allowed to stand, it will threaten Google's ability to "provide a safe and trusted used experience." It argued that if it makes third-party app stores available for download from Google Play, people might think that the company is vouching for them, which could raise "real risks for [its] users." Those app stores could have "less rigorous protections," Google explained, that could expose users to harmful and malicious apps.
It also said that giving third-party stores access to the Play catalog could harm businesses that don't want their products available alongside inappropriate or malicious content. Giving third-party stores access to its entire library could give "bad-intentioned" stores a "veneer of legitimacy." Moreover, it argued that allowing developers to link out from their apps "creates significant risk of deceptive links," since bad actors could use the feature for phishing attacks to compromise users' devices and steal their data.
One of court's main proposed changes is to allow developers to remove Google Play billing as an option, allowing them to offer their apps to Android users without having to pay the company a commission. However, Google said that by allowing developers to remove its billing system, it could "force an option that may not have the safeguards and features that users expect."
In its filing, Google emphasized that the three weeks the court gave it to make these sweeping changes is too short for a "Herculean task." It creates an "unacceptable risk of safety" that could lead to major issues affecting the functionality of users' Android devices, it said. The company also questioned why the court sided with Epic in its antitrust lawsuit, whereas it sided with Apple in a similar case also filed by the video game company. "It is pause-inducing that Apple, which requires all apps go through its proprietary App Store, is not a monopolist, but Google — which built choice into the Android operating system so device makers can preinstall and users can download competing app stores — was condemned for monopolization."
Epic Games provided Engadget with the following statement: "The jury’s verdict and the court’s injunction were clear: Google’s anticompetitive Play Store practices are illegal. Google is merely fear mongering and falsely using security as a pretext to delay the changes mandated by the court. This is Google’s last ditch effort to protect their control over Android and continue extracting exorbitant fees. The court’s injunction must go into effect swiftly so developers and consumers can benefit from competition in the mobile ecosystem."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-wants-to-put-the-consequences-of-its-epic-antitrust-ruling-on-pause-during-appeal-020354621.html?src=rss
Newly unsealed grand jury documents revealed that two Sudanese nationals allegedly attempted to launch thousands of distributed denial of services (DDoS) attacks on systems across the world. The documents allege that these hacks aimed to cause serious financial and technical harm to government entities and companies and even physical harm in some cases.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) unsealed charges against Ahmed Salah Yousif Omer and Alaa Salah Yusuuf Omer that resulted in federal grand jury indictments. The two are allegedly connected to more than 35,000 DDoS attacks against hundreds of organizations, websites and networks as part of a “hacktivism” scheme as part of the cybercrime group Anonymous Sudan and a for-profit cyberattack service.
Even though Anonymous Sudan claimed to be an activist group, the pair also held some companies and entity’s systems for ransom for rates as high as $1,700 per month.
Both face indictments for their role in the coordinated cyberattacks including one count each of conspiracy to damage protected computers. Ahmed also faces three additional counts of damaging protected computers and could receive a statutory maximum sentence of life in federal prison, according to court records filed last June in the US Central District Court of California.
The brothers’ activities date back to early 2023. The two used a distributed cloud attack tool (DCAT) referred to as “Skynet Botnet” in order to “conduct destructive DDoS attacks and publicly claim credit for them,” according to a DoJ statement. Ahmed posted a message on Anonymous Sudan’s Telegram channel, “The United States must be prepared, it will be a very big attack, like what we did in Israel, we will do in the United States ‘soon.’”
One of the indictments listed 145 “overt acts” on organizations and entities in the US, the European Union, Israel, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Skynet Botnet attacks attempted to disrupt services and networks in airports, software networks and companies including Cloudflare, X, Paypal and Microsoft that caused outages for Outlook and OneDrive in June of last year. The attacks also targeted state and federal government agencies and websites including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Pentagon and the DoJ and even hospitals including one major attack on Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles causing a slowdown of health care services as patients were diverted to other hospitals. The hospital attack led to the hacking charges against Ahmed that carry potential life sentences.
“3 hours+ and still holding,” Ahmed posted on Telegram in February, “they're trying desperately to fix it but to no avail Bomb our hospitals in Gaza, we shut down yours too, eye for eye...”
FBI special agents gathered evidence of the pair’s illegal activities including logs showing that they sold access to Skynet Botnet to more than 100 customers to carry out attacks against various victims who worked with investigators including Cloudflare, Crowdstrike, Digital Ocean, Google, PayPal and others.
Several Amazon Web Services (AWS) clients were among Anonymous Sudan’s victims as part of the hacking-for-hire scheme, according to court records and an AWS statement. AWS security teams worked with FBI cybercrime investigators to track the attacks back to “an array of cloud-based servers," many of which were based in the US. The discovery helped the FBI determine that the Skynet Botnet attacks were coming from a DCAT instead of a botnet that forwarded the DDoS to its victims through cloud-based servers and open proxy resolvers.
Perhaps the group’s most brazen and dangerous attack took place in April of 2023 that targeted Israel’s rocket alert system called Red Alert. The mobile app provides real time updates for missile attacks and security threats. The DDoS attacks attempted to infiltrate some of Red Alert’s Internet domains. Ahmed claimed responsibility for the Red Alert attacks on Telegram along with similar DDoS strikes on Israeli utilities and the Jerusalem Post news website.
“This group’s attacks were callous and brazen — the defendants went so far as to attack hospitals providing emergency and urgent care to patients,” US Attorney Martin Estrada said in a released statement. “My office is committed to safeguarding our nation’s infrastructure and the people who use it, and we will hold cyber criminals accountable for the grave harm they cause.”
Update, October 16, 7:25PM ET: This article was modified after publish to make clear that AWS clients, rather than AWS, were the target of Anonymous Sudan.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/two-sudanese-brothers-accused-of-launching-a-dangerous-series-of-ddos-attacks-215638291.html?src=rss
Sony makes some of the best headphones around at the higher end but it has a broad range of options available at other price points as well. Our pick for the best wireless headphones is the company's WH-1000XM5, which will typically run you $400. If you can't swing that, the mid-range ULT Wear headphones are a decent option, especially since they're on sale. They've dropped to $148, which is $52 off the regular price of $200. That marks an all-time low price for this model.
These are the first headphones to use ULT Power Sound, a new iteration of Sony's Extra Bass lineup. So it's safe to say you can expect plenty of oomph on the low end with the ULT Wear.
In fact, we believe that Sony has done a better job of implementing its bass boost tech here than in previous models. We gave the ULT Wear headphones a score of 78 in our review, highlighting the comfortable design, generally strong audio quality and improvements to active noise cancellation.
However, the ULT boost feature can prove to be a bit much. We felt that the ULT 2 setting, which delivers deeper bass and more powerful all-round audio, didn't sound all that good and was somewhat overbearing on the low end. The sound can get muddy in some other instances, such as when playing metal and synth-heavy electronica.
As you might expect, the ULT Wear doesn't have all of the same features as Sony's higher-end headphones. But it does have a number of nifty functions. Putting an open hand over the right ear cup activates Quick Attention mode, which lowers the volume. Sony's Adaptive Sound Control tool can automatically adjust settings based on your activity or location. Other features include 360 Reality Audio with head tracking and 30 hours of battery life.
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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/sonys-ult-wear-wireless-headphones-are-down-to-a-record-low-price-200721256.html?src=rss
Airline travel can get expensive and sometimes you don’t wanna wade through various options to find the lowest price. You just need the cheapest flight available and you don’t care who’s offering it.
Google added the tab to its Flights search engine that will cut your flight schedule search to the chase and just show you the “cheapest” options available, according to the official blog. So instead of wading through various fees and features, you can just view the cheapest options available from airlines and third-party airline booking sites.
The new feature is available starting today for US flights. Google will roll out the “cheapest” tab globally over the next few weeks.
The cheapest options for flights often involve what Google calls “creative itineraries” like longer than usual layovers and self-transfers from flight to flight. What we call them can’t be reprinted here. These inconveniences that make flights cheaper will now be listed under one tab.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-flights-now-has-a-cheapest-tab-190035611.html?src=rss
Panos Panay has a Diet Coke problem. It’s a topic that quickly came up when I walked into the small interview room, after he offered me a choice of beverages and I said my partner has a similar addiction. After a quick conversation on the advantages of drinking plain water over diet colas, I knew his wife, like me, advocates for less soda, but I still knew nothing of how much the man actually consumed a day.
The room was drenched in sunlight, with various neutral and pastel pink couches and armchairs laid out in a vague semicircle facing an unassuming elevated platform. Around the stage were neatly planted assorted greenery with lavender and what looked like baby’s breath lending a general softness to the scene.
There was a leather stool on the stage that looked just big enough to perch on but not comfortable enough to actually rest, and next to it was a smaller wooden end table where a solo water bottle sat. Panay did not once sit during his 38-minute presentation. Clad in a black collared shirt, black jacket, black jeans and black shoes with a brown trim, Panay brought his typical sentimental delivery to the Kindle launch event.
As usual, he didn’t shy away from mentioning his family, showing a carefully taken picture of his daughter Bella reading a Kindle on a couch. He called out members of the media by name, saying hello to Lance Ulanoff in the front row and asking David Pierce if he could hear. At one point, he walked over to the middle row to hand a new Kindle off to tech Youtuber Jacklyn Dallas, asking her to tap repeatedly on the screen to scroll through pages and see for herself how much faster he believed it was.
Amazon
I say all this to impress on you that the Panos experience is one that’s inviting, engaging and can even lull you into feeling so charmed that you might overlook the fact that he repeatedly calls the Kindle Scribe a 2-in-1. It was certainly enough to give me more patience than I normally would have for a tech leader that had spent almost a third of his presentation talking about the Kindle’s history and where it fits into people’s lives. Instead of thinking “get on with it, I want to hear about the new devices without all this preamble,” I simply laughed at the jokes, made eye contact and related to the personal anecdotes. And though I knew we were past the 38 minutes he had promised the speech would last, I didn’t mind that he was still talking.
I was able to question him about 2-in-1s when we sat down to talk, though. The term brings to my mind the image of Surface tablets and iPads, not to mention the Surface Duo and Surface Neo that Panay launched at a remarkably similar Microsoft event years ago. Kindles? Not so much. But according to Panay, the Kindle Scribe “does two things, and it does it remarkably well. Turns out, it only does two things.”
People want to read on their Kindles, but they also want to write in books. “Both experiences have to stand on their own in a great way,” he added. “You can buy this device for writing, or you can buy this device for reading and then you can bridge it.”
But if a device tries to be too much, it might get too complicated. When I asked what was next for the Kindle Scribe and what challenges it faces, Panay said “You’ve got to be careful not to make it a Swiss army knife. That’s probably the biggest challenge — what it’s not gonna be.”
Panay explained that “at Amazon, the focus on the customers is off the charts,” saying the team talks to users, reads reviews and studies how people use their products to better understand needs. “Fundamentally, for this team, [it’s to] know what the customer needs, be passionate, make sure you deliver it.”
“Let’s not try and reinvent things that people don’t need reinvented.”
The approach Panay has brought over to Amazon is one that considers his history at Microsoft (and his entire life). He never explicitly mentions this, but I cannot help wondering if he’s learned anything from that company announcing the Surface Neo dual-screen laptop and not actually releasing it.
Panay also said that in getting to understand customers’ needs, Amazon also has to try to predict what they might want. “You also have to understand where the technology is headed and you have to have roadmaps,” he said. “You have to have invention and creation that sets you up for where it’s headed, so when people land, they have the next thing they need and hopefully it was your product that got them there.”
“Let’s not try and reinvent things that people don’t need reinvented.”Panos Panay
That desire to predict trends makes me nervous, especially at a time when every major company is rushing to stuff generative AI features into their products. How should companies like Amazon resist the urge to jump on bandwagons and avoid making products that ultimately are the result of useless hype? To Panay, the answer is patience.
“Patience is everything,” he said. “What is the right thing for the product at the right time? How is it useful? How is it elegant?” He acknowledged that “we’re at a time where AI for sure is transformational. This is not a fad.” There are things AI can bring to the Kindle Scribe and other products that could elevate them. But “making it useful for everyone is important to me, and making it simple.”
There are just two AI-based notebook features for the Kindle Scribe, and they basically read your scribbles and convert them to something more legible and digestible. They’re not groundbreaking concepts — I’ve seen at least 5 different companies launch summarization tools in the last year. But Panay made it clear through personal anecdotes on stage that these are important to him and his staff. He doesn’t want to let people see his handwritten notes, but he will let them see the version tidied up by AI. Whether the rest of the world’s Kindle users will find these helpful, I’m less certain.
For now, Panay wants to perfect the Kindle Scribe experience. “You can never make anything perfect, I’m never satisfied. But it’s so close right now… to feeling like paper, to feeling like an eraser, to feeling like you’re writing, to no distractions in your way.” He called it his favorite child during the presentation (but later saying that he felt guilty doing that).
There are plenty of other children in the Amazon hardware family that Panay oversees. He’s not only in charge of the four Kindles launched today, including the new color ereader called the Colorsoft, but the company’s smart home, robotaxi, satellite, consumer robots and Alexa products, as well as Fire TVs and tablets, too.
“It's an eclectic group of products at some level, but it's actually quite a connected one at the same time.” There’s also stuff that Panay couldn’t yet talk about on the record, but he said there’s “so much magic yet to be shared with the world.” In a more realistic manner of speaking, it’s about seeing these things “connected in a way that can make a difference for people’s lives every day in their homes and outside of the home.”
Cherlynn Low for Engadget
There are other ways the Kindle Scribe could evolve that wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination, either. The most obvious is getting a color display, and Panay agreed “it’s not a stretch at all, probably” before going on to say he can’t discuss future roadmaps. But I can certainly speculate.
While it’s interesting to see Amazon come up with a whole new name for the Colorsoft, indicating that it’ll perhaps be a separate product line, it would make sense for the Colorsoft to be a one-off and for the color panels to get integrated into other existing Kindles in future.
Another potential technological change to Kindles is making them foldable. To that end, Panay simply said “It’s an interesting concept.” When I pointed out that he’s no stranger to folding devices, he acknowledged “I’m definitely not,” before adding that “we have a ton of concepts in the lab.”
Crucially, though, he reiterates he doesn't “want to create tech for the sake of creating tech.” If the idea is right, Panay is open to considering it. “But right now, keeping it simple is where we’re at.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/panos-panay-on-launching-his-first-products-since-moving-to-amazon-163024504.html?src=rss
A year after it was first teased, Analogue says it’s nailed its most complicated project yet: rebuilding the Nintendo 64 from scratch. The Analogue 3D will ship in Q1 2025 — it was originally slated for 2024 — and pre-orders start on October 21 at $250.
Like all of the company’s machines, the Analogue 3D has an FPGA (field programmable gate array) chip coded to emulate the original console on a hardware level. Analogue promises support for every official N64 cartridge ever released, across all regions, with no slowdown or inaccuracies. If it achieves that goal, the Analogue 3D will be the first system in the world to perfectly emulate the N64, though other FPGA and software emulators get pretty close.
The company has been selling recreations of retro consoles for over a decade, starting with high-end, bespoke takes on the Neo-Geo and NES. Over time it’s gradually shifted over to more mass-market (though still high-end) productions, with versions of SNES, Genesis and Game Boy all coming in at around the $200 mark. All of the company’s systems support original physical media, rather than ROMs.
Analogue’s original unique selling point was its use of FPGA chips. Rather than using software emulation to play ROMs, Analogue programs FPGA “cores” to emulate original console hardware, and its consoles support original game media and controllers. Compared with software emulation (especially in the early ’10s when Analogue got started), FPGA-based consoles are more accurate, and don’t suffer from as much input lag.
FPGA emulation has come a long way over the past decade. Where Analogue was once the only route into the world of FPGAs for most people, there’s now a rich community of developers and hardware manufacturers involved. The open-source MiSTer project, for example, has accurately emulated almost every video game thing produced up to the mid ’90s. And plenty of smaller manufacturers are now selling FPGA hardware for very reasonable prices. The FPGBC is one good example: It’s a simple DIY kit that lets you build a modern-day Game Boy Color for a much lower price than an Analogue Pocket.
A DE10-Nano board produced by Terasic.
Terasic
Amid all these developments, Analogue occupies a strange spot in the retro gaming community, which has evolved into an open-source, people-powered movement to preserve and play old games. It produces undeniably great hardware that doesn’t require expertise to use, but its prices are high, and its limited-run color variants of consoles like the Pocket have both created FOMO in the community and been a consistent target for scalpers. Analogue is, in many ways, the Apple of the retro gaming hardware space.
With that said, it’s hard to deny that the Pocket has brought more players into the retro gaming world and attracted talent to FPGA development. And if Analogue comes through on its promise here, the Analogue 3D will be another huge moment for video game preservation, and could be the spark for another half-decade of fantastic achievements from the FPGA community at large.
Breaking the fifth-gen barrier
While the FPGA emulation of the first few video game generations is largely a solved problem, there’s a huge leap in complexity between the fourth generation (SNES, Genesis, etc.) and the next. Strides have been made to rebuild the PlayStation, Saturn and N64 in FPGA, but there is no core for any fifth-gen console that has fully solved the puzzle. The current state of the MiSTer N64 core is pretty impressive, with almost every US game counted as playable, but very few games are considered to run flawlessly.
So how did Analogue solve this? The studio does have a talented team, but it importantly has a leg-up when it comes to hardware. The Analogue 3D has the strongest version of the Intel Cyclone 10GX FPGA chip, with 220,000 logic elements. For context, the MiSTer project’s open-source DE-10 board has a Cyclone V FPGA with 110,000 logic elements, while the Analogue Pocket’s main FPGA offers 49,000 elements. There’s a lot more to an FPGA than its logic elements, but the numbers are illustrative: The 3D’s FPGA is undoubtedly the most powerful Analogue has ever used, which clearly gave it more flexibility in designing its core.
While we can’t verify Analogue’s claim of 100 percent compatibility by looking at a spec sheet, the company does have a good track record of programming fantastic FPGA cores, so it’s likely it’ll get incredibly close.
Kris Naudus for Engadget
Of course, if you just wanted to play N64 games accurately, you could plug an N64 into any TV with a composite or S-Video connector, or use one of many boxes that converts those formats into HDMI signals that modern TVs require.
The problem with running an N64 on a modern TV is that its games run at a wide range of resolutions, typically from 320 x 240 up to (very rarely) 640 x 480, the max output. There are countless oddball resolutions between, and some games run below 320 x 240. This is a nightmare for modern displays. Some will scale to a full screen very nicely — both of the common resolutions I listed multiply neatly to 4K, albeit with pillarboxing. The situation gets more confusing with PAL cartridges, which can run at fun horizontal resolutions like 288 and 576. There’s also the issue that the vast majority of these games were designed with the CRT displays of old in mind, taking advantage of the quirks of scanlines to, say, make a checkerboard pattern look translucent.
This makes playing N64 games on a modern TV a bit of a hassle. There are fantastic retro upscalers like the RetroTINK series, but when plugging in a game for the first time, you wind up deciding between integer and “good enough” scaling, dealing with weird frame rates and tweaking blending options to get the picture just right. Many people enjoy this fine-tuning and customization aspect, and all power to you! But it's undoubtedly a barrier to entry, and much of the hard work done on upscaling has been focused on 2D gaming, rather than 3D.
Analogue says its scaling solution will solve many of these issues. The Analogue 3D supports 4K output, variable refresh rate displays, and PAL and NTSC carts. On top of those basics, it’s building out “Original Display Modes” to emulate the CRT TVs and PVMs of old. Calling ODMs filters feels a little reductive, as they’re a complicated and customizable mix of display tricks, but essentially you pick one and it changes the way the picture looks, so….
ODMs were used effectively on the Analogue Pocket to emulate various Game Boy displays. Perhaps the most impressive example is a Trinitron ODM that came to the Pocket in 2023 that, when used with the Analogue Dock, does a pretty incredible job of turning a modern TV into a high-end Sony tube TV. We don’t have a ton of information on which ODMs are coming to the 3D, but I will share the very ’90s ad for the feature below:
Analogue
The final piece of the image-quality puzzle is frame rate. The N64’s library is full of some spectacularly slow games. My memory may be scarred from growing up in a PAL region, which meant, while the US and Japan’s NTSC consoles were outputting a blistering 20 fps, I was chugging away at 16.66 fps. But even in the idealized NTSC world, lots of games outright missed their frame rate targets comically often. As an example, the majority of Goldeneye’s single-player campaign plays out between 15-25 fps, while a four-player match would typically see half that number. And let’s not speak of Perfect Dark.
These glacial frame rates are far less noticeable on a CRT than they are on modern displays with crisp rows of pixels updating from top to bottom. While the ODMs go some way to replicating the feel of an old TV, they can’t change the underlying technical differences. The Analogue 3D does support variable refresh rate output, but that won't do much when a game is running at 12 fps, and instead is intended to help the system run like the original N64 did at launch.
In its initial press push last year, Analogue told Paste magazine that you’ll have the option to overclock the 3D’s virtual chips to run faster — "overclocking, running smoother, eliminating native frame dips" — but the company hasn't mentioned that in its final press release. Instead, Analogue CEO Christopher Taber told Engadget that its solution "isn't overclocking, it's much better and more sophisticated." It revolves around Nintendo's original Rambus RAM set up, which is often the bottleneck for N64 performance. Solving this bottleneck "means that games can run without slowdown and all the classic issues the original N64 had," he explained.
By default, though, the Analogue 3D is set up to run exactly like original hardware, albeit with the RAM Expansion Pak attached. "Preserving the original hardware is the number one goal," Taber explained. "Even when bandwidth is increased, it’s not about boosting performance beyond the system’s original capabilities — it’s about giving players a clearer window into how the games were designed to run."
Analogue
The hardware
Analogue has a rich history of making very pretty hardware, and the Analogue 3D is clearly no exception. As with the Super Nt, Mega Sg, and Duo, the 3D calls back to the basic form of the console it’s based on, while smoothing out and modernizing it somewhat. It’s an elegant way to pull on nostalgia while also being legally distinct enough to avoid a lawsuit. (Analogue’s FPGA cores and software also don’t infringe on any Nintendo IP.)
The Analogue 3D has a similar shape to the N64, but the front pillars have been erased, the four controller ports match the housing and the power/reset buttons are slanted inwards to point toward the cartridge slot. Despite the tweaks, it still undoubtedly evokes a Nintendo 64. Around the back, you’ll find a USB-C port for power, two USB ports for accessories like non-standard controllers, an HDMI port and a full-sized SD card slot.
Analogue
A new operating system from Analogue, 3DOS, will debut with the system. It looks like a blend of the AnalogueOS that debuted on the Pocket and the Nintendo Switch OS, with the homescreen centered on a large carousel of square cards. The screenshots Analogue provided show options for playing a cartridge, browsing your library or viewing save states and screenshots. Some N64 games have the ability to save data to the cartridge, while others rely on a Controller Pak, but the ability to quickly save progress as a memory, as introduced with the Pocket, will be useful nonetheless. 3DOS can also connect to the internet over the console’s built-in WiFi chip for OS updates, which is a first for Analogue.
While you can browse your library in 3DOS, you won’t actually be able to load any game that isn’t physically inserted into the cartridge slot: The Analogue 3D only plays original media. It’s also worth noting that the Analogue 3D also doesn’t have an “openFPGA” setup like the Analogue Pocket did, which opened the door to playing with a wild array of cores that emulate various consoles, computers and arcades. It doesn’t usually take long for someone to jailbreak Analogue consoles to play ROMs (or other cores) via the system’s SD card slot, but this is not officially supported or sanctioned by Analogue.
The console comes with a power supply (with a US plug), USB cable, an HDMI cable and a 16GB SD card. As per usual, no controller will be packed in — it’s up to you if you want to use original hardware or something more modern. I managed to make at least one reader extremely mad (I’m sorry, Brucealeg) last time I wrote about the Analogue 3D and called the N64 controller a mistake. Personally, though, it feels really rough using one in 2024.
Analogue/8BitDo
If you enjoy the three-paddled original controller, the 3D has four ports for you, and the system will also support the myriad Paks that plug into those controllers. For everyone else, there's Bluetooth Classic and LE support along with two USB ports for wired controllers. Accessory maker 8BitDo has created what seems to be a variant of its Ultimate controller specifically for the Analogue 3D. (Analogue's CEO, Taber, is also 8BitDo’s CMO, and the companies have collaborated on controllers for many consoles at this point.)
The 8BitDo controller looks like a fairly happy middle ground between old and new, with an octagonal gate around the thumbstick, and nicely raised and sized C-buttons. It has a Rumble Pak built in, which works on both the Analogue 3D and Nintendo Switch. It’s available in black or white hues that match the console, and sells separately for $39.99.
Pre-orders for the Analogue 3D open on October 21 at 11AM ET, with an estimated ship date of Q1 2025. It’s unclear how many will be available, but if past launches are any indication, you should be ready to click buy as close to 11AM as possible if you want a hope of being in the first wave of shipments.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/analogues-4k-remake-of-the-n64-is-almost-ready-and-its-a-big-deal-150033468.html?src=rss
Sure, a sleek, modern device is great, but there's something so delightfully wholesome about a design that calls back to foregone times. Such is the case for 8Bitdo's Retro Mechanical Keyboard, a clickety-clackity device that looks like it belongs in another decade. Right now, the keyboard is on sale at Woot for $60, down from $100 — a 40 percent discount. You can get it for this all-time low price on Woot for the next three days or until it sells out.
The 8Bitdo Retro Mechanical Keyboard is a solid choice in its own right, but its the look that really sold us. We added it to our list of best retro gaming gifts last year since it's a much more fun way to get someone that keyboard they've been needing without feeling like your gift is boring and practical.
This keyboard may not be the very best option, technically (see our favorite gaming keyboards here) but it's more than just a pretty (or should we say funky?) face. The 8Bitdo Retro Mechanical Keyboard is a tenkeyless style board with bluetooth connection, 2.4Ghz wireless modes and USB connectivity. It also comes with two big red buttons that you can program to any keyboard function. Use it with Windows or Android devices and feel transported to another time as you clack away.
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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/8bitdos-retro-mechanical-keyboard-is-on-sale-for-60-right-now-143549835.html?src=rss
Yesterday, Adobe announced its new Firefly Video Model, a generative AI model for video editing developed by the company, along with Generative Extend, a Premiere Pro feature. Today, Adobe is teasing some experimental photo and video editing tools for PhotoShop and Premiere Pro. Since they’re part of Adobe’s “sneaks” previews, they’re still being tested and no launch dates are available.
There are a total of nine features, and we’ll start with Project Perfect Blend for PS, which improves natural blending and makes shadow casting more realistic, creating more lifelike images. Project Clean Machine removes photo flashes, fireworks and objects blocking the camera’s view.
One feature that stands out is Project In Motion, which lets users transform custom shape animations into video by entering a prompt, while Project Know How is a content authenticator tool that can search for a video file’s source online.
Project Turntable lets users rotate 2D vector art in 3D, thereby allowing the 2D vector art to face a direction of their choice. The generative AI model fills in any blanks to create presentable 3D vector art.
Another standout tool is Project Super Sonic, which generates sound effects via prompts or clicking on objects in a video. The latter method can create sounds without typing prompts into the generative AI model. Project Super Sonic seems helpful for people looking to design the sounds they want.
Adobe is also working on Microsoft Copilot integration in Project Scenic. This tool creates 3D scene layouts using Copilot prompts, and the camera and objects in the layout can be tweaked.
Project Remix A Lot leverages generative AI to create images in various shapes and sizes, all fully editable. In other words, users can “remix” creations into shapes they like, including unusual ones.
Finally, we have Project Hi-Fi. With this tool, it’s possible to transform sketches and concepts into high-quality images. These images can easily be dragged into PhotoShop for editing.
If you’re curious about Adobe’s latest Sneaks, you can see and hear more about them all over on Adobe’s YouTube page.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/adobes-latest-sneak-previews-of-upcoming-features-include-ai-sound-generation-and-image-remixing-143019039.html?src=rss