Introducing the world’s smallest way to play ‘Donkey Kong’
Once upon a time, video games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong were the absolute height of entertainment technology, imperfect pixels packed into six-foot-tall cabinets in arcades and pizza shops around the world. Now, those same games run on a machine that fits inside a teacup. Adafruit tinkerer Phillip Burgess created the world’s smallest Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator cabinet using a Raspberry Pi Zero computer, 0.96 inch RGB OLED displays and an audio amplifier. It’s fully playable and totally adorable.
The tiny MAME cabinet was a spontaneous weekend project and it’s not as polished as Adafruit’s serious endeavors, nor is it a complete kit that the company sells. However, Burgess published a fairly detailed guide that includes the hardware and software tricks he used to create the teacup cabinet. The project’s final dimensions are 67.2 mm tall, 33.6 mm wide and 35.8mm deep.
“Could it go smaller? Undoubtedly!” Burgess writes. “Other than clipping the corner off the audio amp board, these are all stock parts and no extreme measures were taken to further reduce their volume, Ben Heck-style.”
Burgess says that actually playing Pac-Man, Donkey Kong or Xevious on the teensy machine is wildly impractical. The screen’s resolution is extremely coarse and definitely not conducive to twitchy movements.
“I suspect a lot of the ‘playing’ is just muscle memory from past experience,” Burgess says. “Honestly the whole thing’s a bit gimmicky for the sake of smallness. Sharing it for a laugh.”
Source: Adafruit
The best of the Tokyo Game Show 2016
The biggest gaming show outside of the US, the Tokyo Game Show has a different atmosphere that;s all its own. While it’s contracted and shrunk over the last few years, the heat and interest in virtual reality has reinvigorated the show — despite the lack of an official Xbox or Nintendo presence. Sony may have already revealed two new consoles in the last month, but it wanted to remind everyone that it’s got a VR headset coming out. In short: lots of VR, PlayStation and domestic-centered games, sprinkled with just enough weird.
A police robot disarmed a violent suspect in Los Angeles County
Last week, on September 8th, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department successfully used a remote-controlled bomb squad robot to snatch a rifle out from under an armed and violent suspect. The standoff between the suspect and an armored SWAT team lasted for more than six hours, but concluded without a single shot fired. “The robot was a game changer here,” Capt. Jack Ewell told the LA Times. “We didn’t have to risk a deputy’s life to disarm a very violent man.”
According to the Times, the whole thing began with sheriff’s deputies in Lancaster, CA in pursuit of 51-year-old Brock Ray Bunge, suspected of robbing two people and attempting to kill another. A police helicopter tracked Bunge until he holed up behind a dirt bank covered by shrubs and wire fencing, where he stayed for six hours while SWAT teams stood by. When he refused to surrender, deputies sent in the robot for a closer look and noticed Bunge’s rifle was laying at his feet. From the Times:
To seize the firearm, they hatched a plan that relied on distractions. Deputies in an armored vehicle approached to the front of Bunge, yelling at him through a public address system to surrender. A helicopter whirred overhead.
From behind, the olive-colored robot approached and extended its claw into Bunge’s hideout.
“The robot was able to move up and grab the gun without him noticing,” Ewell said. “He never knew it happened.”
The robot’s operators managed to snatch the gun away simply by putting the robot in reverse and backing away. The suspect only notice his rifle was missing when the bomb robot was sent back to remove the wire fencing, at which point Bunge immediately surrendered.
While this particular standoff ended without any additional violence, that hasn’t always been the case in the past. Back in July, police in Dallas armed a similar ANDROS bomb-disposal robot with an explosive device they used to kill a suspect who was accused of murdering five police officers and injuring seven others. That case appeared to mark the first time time in US history that authorities used a drone or robot to kill a citizen. On the other hand, in 2015, negotiators in San Diego literally talked a man with a knife down off of a ledge by sending in a bomb robot to deliver him a pizza.
Via: Popular Science
Source: LA Times
iPhone 7 teardown reveals the Intel modem inside
Back in June, Intel mobile exec Navin Shenoy told Engadget that despite cancelling its mobile-focused SoFIA chip, the company is “not done experimenting and looking for opportunities to do something different” and some evidence of that is now available. The iPhone 7 just launched, so naturally the teardown artists at Chipworks pulled a US-bound A1778 model apart only to find an Intel-built modem, RF transceiver and power management chips inside. This confirms an earlier Bloomberg rumor that Intel would replace Qualcomm in some versions of the phone (iFixit found a Qualcomm modem in the iPhone 7 Plus it took apart).
Chipworks
Navin Shenoy, mobile-client VP, Intel:
The modem, we think, is going to be crucial; 4G and 5G modems are going to get increasingly complex, and there’s going to be fewer and fewer companies in the world that can do it. You’ve seen companies like Broadcom, Marvell and NVIDIA get out of the modem. We’re to the point now where it’s a very scarce asset, and an increasingly valuable one.
More importantly, grabbing a deal for the modem could be just the start of Intel’s refocused mobile ambitions. Last month the company revealed it has obtained a license to manufacture ARM chips, so if all goes well it could eventually replace the processor space currently dominated by companies like Qualcomm and Samsung.
LG is already preparing to build a “world-class mobile platform” using Intel’s 10nm tech, while VR and AI-processing could be other opportunities. It’s been over a decade since Apple switched to Intel’s x86 hardware for its computers, and now there’s at least the possibility of a similar team-up for mobile devices in the future.
Source: Chipworks, iFixit
The iPhone’s hardware may be closed, but iOS is more open than ever
By removing the headphone jack, Apple made the iPhone 7 the most closed computer it has ever built. Steve Jobs always seemed interested in hiding the gross underbelly of computers away from consumers, and Apple has been moving in that direction for years with the iPhone, iPad and Mac.
That’s only from a hardware perspective, though. With iOS 10 now in the hands of iPhone owners everywhere, it’s worth stepping back and appreciating how much more open iOS is now than it was three years ago. iOS 7 may have ushered in a huge visual overhaul, but it was nearly as locked down as the previous versions, but the next year Apple started opening things up. By now, iOS is nearly as open as Android — at least in ways that matter to most users.
The best example of that openness can be found in one of Apple’s most important services: iMessage. For years, it’s been an excellent but utilitarian app, focused on sending text and pictures quickly and reliably. But iMessage in 2016 is almost indistinguishable from how it looked in 2013, when iOS 7 came out. Now, you can slap ridiculous stickers all over your messages, draw on photos, send your heartbeat and — most importantly — use other apps from inside iMessage. You can pay friends with Venmo, play Words With Friends and make restaurant reservations with OpenTable, all from the messages interface. And that’s just a handful of apps that were available on day one.
This embrace of third-party developers into all corners of your iPhone is probably the most significant change Apple has made to iOS since it launched. Yes, you’ve been able to load up third-party apps since 2008, but for years your home screen was the only place those apps lived.
Things changed in 2014 with the launch of iOS 8. For the first time, the OS had its own answer to Android’s vaunted “share” pane that let you easily move content between apps, whether they were first- or third-party options. It was finally easy to share websites, notes, photos, videos and so forth with any other app you had installed. You didn’t need a kludgy bookmarklet to save an article to Pocket; you could just hit the share button and just add it.
iOS 8 also introduced third-party keyboards, the ability for photo apps to edit images right in the camera roll and third-party widgets in notification center. All of these were features that had long been on Android, but many iOS users had just assumed such deep access for third-party apps would simply never happen.
Apple has since proved its commitment to opening up iOS, particularly with the latest release. Aside from the Messages revamp, Apple has opened up Siri to third-party apps for the first time. That’s another huge shift for the company, as the voice assistant previously only played nice with Apple’s own apps and services.
You can ask Siri to call you an Uber or Lyft, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you could soon ask it to play specific songs or albums from Spotify instead of Apple Music. Maps similarly allows you to take actions with relevant apps right inside it. You can make reservations on OpenTable when searching for a restaurant, or hail a Lyft while looking up directions to a location.
Of course, iOS still isn’t quite as open as Android. You can’t set a different default browser, messaging app or email app, although you can remove many of Apple’s pre-installed apps for the first time ever. And while iCloud Drive lets you see and share files between your Mac and iPhone pretty easily, iOS still doesn’t have a “traditional” file system (and probably never will). I don’t expect Apple to let you install a BitTorrent downloader any time soon, either; you’ll still need to go through the more stringent App Store to add new apps. And you can’t customize the way iOS looks at all. From a visual standpoint, what Apple says goes.
But despite legitimate concerns about Apple’s hardware being more locked-down than ever, I don’t think the company is looking to limit what users can do with its devices, at least not like it did back in the Steve Jobs era. On the contrary, iOS is more open to third-party developers than ever before — and that makes it an even better place for users too. The fun now will be seeing what developers do with that newfound freedom.
Dyson Supersonic hairdryer solves many of my mane problems
My nightly getting-ready-for-bed ritual takes an excruciating hour or so. (I know, so high-maintenance… ugh!) Most of that is spent blow drying my thick, long hair. So when Dyson promised it could significantly cut my drying time (perhaps in half, I was told), I was extremely intrigued.
The new Dyson Supersonic, which is available online via Dyson’s and Sephora’s websites, is a fancy new hairdryer that actually contains a microprocessor to monitor air temperatures. This way, you can get way hotter air without damaging your tresses as much. I brought one home last night to see if it lived up to its claims and the short answer is yes, mostly.
First of all, the Supersonic’s futuristic looks make it a hairdryer worthy of my techie rep. It’s basically a cylinder on a stick, and, unlike with conventional dryers, you can see through both ends of the Supersonic’s head. Two buttons on this ring let you control heat and air flow, with little LED indicator lamps showing how high on the three-stop spectrum you are. It’s altogether gorgeous, especially in the black and purple color option.
In the cylinder lies an air multiplier (basically a bladeless fan) that Dyson made and uses in its other products, including its air purifier and heater. Without those blades, I no longer had to worry about getting caught in the device; the Supersonic won’t eat your hair. I was impressed and seriously relieved when not a single strand of my hair got stuck after I recklessly dangled some strands of hair near and into the dryer’s head.
Because the air multiplier draws in so much air, Dyson could use a motor that is six times smaller, three times lighter and three times more powerful than those in traditional dryers, said the company’s head of product development Tom Crawford. This is the same V9 motor that the company also uses in its vacuums. I can’t tell the exact differential between the streams from the Supersonic and my regular hairdryer, but Dyson’s device certainly felt much stronger and had a hotter, more concentrated jet of air. The downside is you’ll need to clean out the handle and its filter once in awhile, and the flow lights on the head will flash to let you know when it’s time.
Dyson also weighted the Supersonic so that it’s not top heavy like some of its rivals, making it easier to manoeuvre. This was true in my experience, but I found the device’s massive 9-foot long cord incredibly unwieldy in my teeny tiny bathroom. It also added to the weight of the overall system when coiled up. However, Dyson said it did that because “one of the biggest complaints about hair dryers is that the cords aren’t long enough,” which I guess is a fair point if you’re using these appliances outside a bathroom.
But let’s get to the Supersonic’s biggest selling point. Because of the improved air flow with the air multiplier and the onboard microprocessor that monitors the temperature of exiting air, Dyson was able to better control the heat it was producing. This prevents the wind from getting too hot, which could really damage your mane. Plus, the company also integrated an ionizer to neutralize static and reduce flyaways. After my one at-home blowout, I did notice that my hair appeared slightly smoother and less bushy than it normally would. And thanks to the stronger jet of air, I did shave a few minutes (about 5-10) off my drying time. That’s not the giant timesaver I was hoping for, but I also stupidly kept the air flow on level 1 for most of my session. I’d probably get a quicker result if I had started out on the highest level (3, if you must know).
I initially balked at the $400 price tag (I’m a cheapo who’s used to buying off-the-pharmacy-shelf hairdryers for $40), but I paused after Crawford asked me, “How long do you expect your hairdryer to last?” And admittedly, none of my affordable alternatives have lasted longer than a year, whereas Crawford said the Supersonic was designed to last for 10 years. Also, each Supersonic comes with 3 easy-to-snap-on magnetic attachments, including a diffuser for drying curly hair, which makes the exorbitant cost just slightly more palatable.
If you’re like me and blow dry your hair almost every day and, unlike me, have a few hundred bucks to drop, the Dyson Supersonic could very well be a blessing to your daily routine. Otherwise, a $40 option is probably good enough.
House committee: Snowden is a ‘serial exaggerator and fabricator’
The US House of Representatives’ intelligence committee just releasing a statement condemning Edward Snowden and recommending he be extradited to face justice. After two years spent reviewing the 1.5 million documents he stole and interviewing experts, their report rejects his whistleblower claims and attempts to poke enough holes in his story to portray him as a dangerous liar. Obviously, the government has incentive to downplay his leak’s accomplishments and hammer home their threat to the country, but with the ACLU and Amnesty International calling on Obama to pardon Snowden, it’s critical to look past the static of competing narratives.
As expected, the intelligence committee’s 36-page report is classified “to avoid causing further harm to national security,” so we have to make do with its publicly-available summary. Its points are fourfold:
- That the “vast majority” of documents he stole (most of which he has not leaked) expose military, defense and intelligence secrets instead of programs concerning public privacy
- That, according to their definition, he is not a whistleblower
- That he had a spat with his NSA managers
- And that he lied about or exaggerated multiple events in his past
While the third is very out-of-place, and probably inserted to imply that the tiff motivated his decision to leak documents, the others are serious claims.
The review concluded that the stolen materials contain secrets that protected American troops and “provide vital defenses against terrorists and nation-states.” Further, they hindered intelligence-gathering and ruined certain information streams. Snowden says he has not yet shared the full document cache with anyone, which Reuters cites as being closer to 200,000 or 300,000 than the 1.5 million claimed by the committee’s report.
But according to the report, a Russian defense and security committee claims that he shared some or all of the documents with them. The committee especially took issue with his practice of leaking data online, where any of America’s enemies can find it. The full expenditure of mitigating damage from the leaks, they conclude, has cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars and could eventually tally up to billions.
They also don’t believe Snowden fits the bill of whistleblower because he didn’t disclose classified info showing “fraud, waste, abuse, or other illegal activity” to law enforcement or oversight personnel, like Congress. The committee claims they found no evidence he took official efforts to express his concerns up the chain of command or to the committee themselves, who would have afforded him whistleblower protections. They do concede that Snowden sent a much-discussed email to NSA attorneys questioning the accuracy of a training exam that seemed to suggest Executive Orders superseded existing laws.
But whether Snowden communicated other concerns is a complex question. If we take the Intelligence Committee’s report at its word, then it’s simple: He didn’t. But an extensive review of documents and emails VICE received after a FOIA request shows an internal scramble by the NSA to ensure there wasn’t any. This was before a Vanity Fair story in April 2014 and an NBC interview that followed in May 2014.
As for the committee report’s insistence that Snowden would have been protected under whistleblower laws as a contractor (had he gone through the right channels to qualify as such), and that he would have known how to report his concerns — that’s fuzzy too. According to VICE, even the NSA director at the time, General Keith Alexander, was not sure whether contract employees had such protections when Snowden testified before the European Parliament in March 2014. The Washington Post was similarly uncertain whether he would have been immune from reprisals under then-current laws.
It’s also unclear whether Snowden knew how to report concerns. In a Q&A sheet supplied by the NSA to the White House and DoJ in May 2014, the agency maintained that his positions would have required him to complete a basic training course, “NSA/CSS Intelligence Oversight Training,” with appropriate reporting instructions. But it stops short of explicitly stating that Snowden completed the course.
Further, the Q&A notes that while the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) where Snowden should have brought his requests did send regular all-agency emails urging employees to report. But almost all pushed for them to look for waste, fraud, resource mismanagement and abuse of authority — municipal concerns, not legal or procedural ones. It was only in spring 2014, almost a year after Snowden first leaked documents in May 2013, that the OIG’s notices changed to urge reporting on “possible violations of law, rules, or regulations.” The Q&A document is really also a map of all the policies put in place in response to the Snowden leaks, VICE points out, including the Privacy and Civil Liberties Office created in August 2013.
Finally, the intelligence committee report emphasizes several irregularities and exaggerations Snowden made over time. He claimed to have left Army basic training due to broken legs, but he’d washed out due to shin splints. He also stated he’d gotten an equivalent to a high school degree, but hadn’t. He said he’d worked for the CIA as a “senior advisor” but the report asserts he was an entry-level computer technician. He doctored performance evaluations, according to the committee, and exaggerated his resume and stole answers to an employment test to get new positions at the NSA. While the above would certainly qualify Snowden as a boastful employee that allegedly did unethical things to get employed, it’s too irregular to paint a pattern of substantial unlawful deception.
The report’s summary closes reprimanding the NSA and intelligence community for not doing enough to prevent another leak of this magnitude. While it admits that completely eliminating the chance of another Snowden is impossible, more should be done to improve security of people and computer networks. But the real rebuke seems aimed at the people, a pre-emptive strike to saturate society with scathing criticism of the infamous leaker as Oliver Stone’s Snowden biopic opens in theaters today.
Source: The US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee
Grammar Snob stickers for iMessage are ready to ruin your friendships
Apple added support for third-party apps right in iMessage as part of the iOS 10 release, and thus far the obvious use for this feature has been stickers. Everyone loves slapping stickers in their messaging apps. But, lest we forget, iMessage is primarily an app for communicating with words. And it’s entirely possible that some of your friends don’t use there words well. If that’s the case, consider the Grammar Snob sticker pack: it’s a bunch of red-pen corrections for common mistakes that you can slap on you’re friends’ errant chat bubbles.
My first Sticker Pack for iMessages on iOS 10 is now available! Grammar Snob #grammaredhttps://t.co/EtwF5VcWWX pic.twitter.com/wCATHoH6FN
— John Haney (@johnhaney) September 15, 2016
Besides the obvious one (to / too / two, your / you’re, we’re / were and so on), the pack also offers some corrections for commonly misspelled words like espresso, figuratively and more. There are also a bunch of generic cross-out and insertion stickers, so you can really fix the horrible messages your friends send you. The app will set you back a buck on the iTunes Store, and it’s probably the smartest use of stickers we’ve seen thus far.
Of course, just be aware that being a grammar snob is often the quickest way to make your friends ignore you completely. Still might be worth it, though.
Via: The Verge
Source: Grammar Snob (iTunes)
Apple Ordered to Pay $22 Million to Patent Firm Acacia Research
A federal jury in Tyler, Texas has ordered Apple to pay $22.1 million to patent firm Acacia Research for violating U.S. Patent No. 8,055,820, related to cellular network technologies, according to court documents filed electronically this week. The monetary award is a running royalty for Apple’s infringement through March 2016.
The jury said Apple did not prove with clear and convincing evidence that any asserted claims of the patent are invalid as obvious or based on improper inventorship. Apple’s infringement was found to be willful, which in patent litigation means the patent holder can request that the judge enhance the damages by up to three times, or up to roughly $66.4 million in this particular lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed in January 2014, accused Apple of selling multiple products that infringe upon the patent, including the iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPad 3, iPad 4, iPad Air, iPad mini, and iPad mini 2. U.S. Patent No. 8,055,820, titled “apparatus, system, and method for designating a buffer status reporting format based on detected pre-selected buffer conditions,” is highly technical and at one point was assigned to Nokia.
AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Boost Mobile were also named as defendants for selling the infringing iPhones, but none of the carriers were named in the jury verdict. U.S. Magistrate Judge K. Nicole Mitchell presided over the case in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas, a popular region for non-practicing entities like Acacia Research and VirnetX to bring patent litigation against companies like Apple.
Acacia Research, based in Newport Beach, California, says it has returned over $705 million to patent owners. The corporation creates a subsidiary company for each set of patents it enforces through litigation, including Cellular Communications Equipment, LLC in this particular Apple lawsuit.
Our partnership with patent owners is the cornerstone of our corporate strategy. Acacia is an intermediary in the patent marketplace unlocking financial value in patented inventions.
Apple has not confirmed if it will appeal the decision.
Tags: lawsuit, patent
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Energy Bar review: The coolest way to check your battery
Your battery indicator. Probably the most boring aspect of any smartphone. In fact, I bet the only time you notice it is when you’re phone reaches 15%. For most of us, our battery icons do not do a good job in showing just how much juice is left in our phone.
Sure, you can toggle an actual battery percentage to appear in your notification bar, but that takes up valuable space. And if you have the percentage displayed in the icon itself, the number is no readable at a glance. Haven’t you always wanted a freaking glowing bar at the top of your screen so you could always tell your battery level at a glance? No? Well finish the review, and I bet you’ll want one.
Haven’t you always wanted a freaking glowing bar at the top of your screen so you could always see your battery level at a glance? No? Well, finish this review, and I bet you’ll want one.
Setup
Before we take a dive into the Energy Bar app, let’s take a second to discuss the super straightforward setup. The app is free to download, and once you have it installed, you just need to enable it in the app. It will also take you to the Accessibility menu of your phone where you will also need to enable Energy Bar.
Experience
So what is Energy Bar all about? Its description calls it a pulsating energy bar, which sounds like the most annoying thing you could ever experience. But let me assure you that it is far from annoying.
Once enabled, it appears as a glowing bar across the top of your screen. As your phone’s battery diminishes, the bar moves to indicate how much charge is remaining. While it does not give any precise numbers, the bar does provide the easiest way to check your battery with a glance.
From my experience using Energy Bar, I found that it was quicker for me to tell how much battery was left using this rather than the stock battery indicator. How many times have you needed to know your exact battery percentage anyway?
When you are charging your device, you will also get a nice animation with segments of the bar being added as long as you have your device plugged in.
In the Energy Bar app, you will find several options for customizing the bar. First, you can choose between Normal Bar and Status Bar. The latter will replace your notification bar with the Energy Bar for a unique look. If you stick with Normal Bar, you can then decide how thick you want it to be.
You can also change the origin of the bar if you would like it to begin in the middle or right of your screen. The one setting I highly recommend selecting it to Auto Hide the bar for fullscreen apps. This way, any time you are using an app that takes up the entire screen of your phone, the Energy Bar will disappear along with the notification bar.
Under Color Configuration, you can let your creativity flow and change the color of your battery bar. You can separate the bar into segments of different colors so that once your battery passes a certain percent, the bar changes colors, too. This option makes seeing your battery percentage with a quick glance even easier.
If you would rather have your bar move as a gradient from one color to the next as your phone loses battery, you can select that option instead.
Here comes my biggest complaint with Energy Bar. While the most important settings like Auto Hide on fullscreen and bar thickness are included with the free version, more advanced settings like Status Bar mode and Gradient bar color are only usable after you pay. Unlocking all the features will cost you a whopping $1.99.
Final Thoughts
For many, I imagine the free version of Energy Bar will be enough. But those of you looking for more creative freedom might have pause when it comes time to pay. I personally stuck with the free version, but $1.99 isn’t a bad price to pay for an app like this. The paid version is ad-free, as well. Energy Bar adds an extra level of convenience to your phone as I believe all customization apps should, and I recommended it with the highest of praise.
Get your glow on!
AIVAnet 