Walmart has seen enough from X. The retailer, America’s single biggest employer and largest company by revenue, toldReuters on Friday it’s no longer advertising on the platform formerly known as Twitter. The departure follows owner Elon Musk amplifying antisemitic posts and flinging expletives at fleeing advertisers. “We aren’t advertising on X as we’ve found other platforms to better reach our customers,” a Walmart spokesperson told Reuters.
Walmart’s exit adds to a growing list of companies that have pulled ads from the platform. Apple, Disney, IBM, Comcast and Warner Bros. Discovery are among the businesses no longer buying ads on X. A group of advertisers toldThe New York Times on Thursday their temporary pauses will likely become permanent. “There is no advertising value that would offset the reputational risk of going back on the platform,” Lou Paskalis, CEO of marketing consultancy AJL Advisory, told the paper.
X’s former advertisers had no shortage of reasons to jump ship. Musk’s latest series of self-inflicted wounds began when the billionaire appeared to endorse and amplify a post falsely claiming Jewish communities were stoking hatred against white people. Musk replied to the user who spewed the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, saying their comments reflected “the actual truth.”
Michael M. Santiago via Getty Images
Watchdog group Media Matters then published a report showing ads from well-known brands placed next to antisemitic content. X responded by suing the organization, accusing it of “knowingly and maliciously [manufacturing] side-by-side images depicting advertisers’ posts on X Corp.’s social media platform beside Neo-Nazi and white national fringe content.”
Musk’s attempt to smooth things over only made things worse. After apologizing for amplifying the antisemitic content at The New York Times’ DealBook event, he told advertisers backing off of the platform to “Go fuck yourself.” His company now potentially stands to lose $75 million.
Walmart employs around 1.6 million people in the US. The retailer made $611 billion in revenue in the 2023 fiscal year.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/walmart-says-its-no-longer-advertising-on-x-215940504.html?src=rss
Enlarge/ Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel during a House Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee hearing on March 31, 2022, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Kevin Dietsch )
A federal program that provides $30 monthly broadband discounts to people with low incomes is expected to run out of money in April 2023, potentially taking affordable Internet service plans away from well over 20 million households.
For months, supporters of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) have been pushing Congress to give the Federal Communications Commission more funding for the program. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel urged lawmakers to act yesterday during a House Communications and Technology Subcommittee hearing.
In an opening statement, Rosenworcel said the ACP is providing discounts for over 22 million households. The FCC expects that number to reach 25 million by April, when the program would run out of money.
OpenAI is delaying the launch of its GPT Store, a marketplace of customizable GPTs, until 2024, according to a memo seen by Axios. Sam Altman told an audience at DevDay that the GPT Store would launch in November.
Enlarge/ An artist’s impression of a human and a robot talking. (credit: Getty Images | Benj Edwards)
In a preprint research paper titled “Does GPT-4 Pass the Turing Test?”, two researchers from UC San Diego pitted OpenAI’s GPT-4 AI language model against human participants, GPT-3.5, and ELIZA to see which could trick participants into thinking it was human with the greatest success. But along the way, the study, which has not been peer-reviewed, found that human participants correctly identified other humans in only 63 percent of the interactions—and that a 1960s computer program surpassed the AI model that powers the free version of ChatGPT.
Even with limitations and caveats, which we’ll cover below, the paper presents a thought-provoking comparison between AI model approaches and raises further questions about using the Turing test to evaluate AI model performance.
British mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing first conceived the Turing test as “The Imitation Game” in 1950. Since then, it has become a famous but controversial benchmark for determining a machine’s ability to imitate human conversation. In modern versions of the test, a human judge typically talks to either another human or a chatbot without knowing which is which. If the judge cannot reliably tell the chatbot from the human a certain percentage of the time, the chatbot is said to have passed the test. The threshold for passing the test is subjective, so there has never been a broad consensus on what would constitute a passing success rate.
According to Axios, OpenAI is delaying the launch of a GPT store until early next year. The store was expected to open last month. From the report: OpenAI’s announcement of custom GPTs and the accompanying store was a highlight of last month’s DevDay conference. “We are now planning to launch the GPT Store early next year,” OpenAI said in the memo. “While we had expected to release it this month, a few unexpected things have been keeping us busy!”
For now the custom GPTs can be shared directly via a link. With the store, developers will be able to distribute them more broadly and OpenAI has also said it plans to share some revenue it gets from ChatGPT Plus subscriptions with those who create popular GPTs, though it has yet to release details. “In the meantime, we will have some other great updates to ChatGPT soon,” the company told developers. “Thank you for investing time to build a GPT.”
The final month of 2023 is here, and with it, one more batch of Lego sets to tempt your wallet (or get stuck under the Christmas tree). From big hits in the Modular Buildings line to Shadow the Hedgehog’s Lego debut, there’s something for everyone, even if there’s not all that many new kits.
The Game Awards got it wrong this year. One of the titles nominated for Best Independent Game, Dave the Diver, was produced by Nexon, one of the largest video game studios in South Korea. No matter how hard you squint, it is not indie. Dave the Diver is an excellent pixel-art game about deep-sea fishing and restaurant management, but it was commissioned and bankrolled by Nexon subsidiary Mintrocket, with billions of dollars and decades of experience at its back.
When The Game Awards nominees were announced on November 13, fans were quick to point out the error, and the recurring debate over what “indie” means was reignited. Taehwan Kim, Nexon’s overseer of Mintrocket, weighed in on November 14, saying Dave the Diver “may look like an indie, but it’s not necessarily the case.” The official tweet listing the nominees for Best Independent Game now carries a reader-generated context tag reading, “Dave the Diver is not an indie game. Mintrocket, the game’s developer, is a subsidiary of Korea’s biggest game company Nexon. They are not independent in any sense of the word.”
Nexon
A discussion around the definition of “indie” bubbled up throughout November, but it raised more questions than it answered. One common conclusion was that the media outlets who voted Dave the Diver into the independent category were fooled by its pixel art, a style that’s associated with indie games. During a live Q&A on Twitch on November 26, The Game Awards organizer Geoff Keighley argued that “independent” was a broad term with an unknowable definition, before essentially saying Dave the Diver’s inclusion in the indie category was the jury’s fault.
Specifically, Keighley said the following: “It’s independent in spirit and [it’s] a small game with a, I don’t know what the budget is, but it’s probably a relatively small-budget game. But it is from a larger entity, whereas there are other games on that list that are from much smaller studios. Even like Dredge I think is published by Team17, so is that independent or not because you have a publisher? It’s a really complicated thing to figure out and come up with strict rules around it, so kinda we let people use their best judgment. And you can agree or disagree with the choices, but the fact that Dave the Diver was on that list meant that, out of all the independent games the jury looked at, or what they thought were independent games, that was one of the top five they looked at this year.”
The jury comprises 120 media outlets (Engadget has traditionally been one of these, but we did not participate in voting this year and look what happened), so Keighley is chalking the mistake up to mass hysteria and moving on. Meanwhile, there’s still little consensus on what constitutes an indie game, at The Game Awards or elsewhere.
Nexon
I’ve reported on video games for 13 years and indies are a central theme of my coverage. I ran The Joystiq Indie Pitch back in the day, and I’ve made a concerted effort to write about smaller games from creators working outside of the mainstream machine, because these are the experiences that speak to me personally. The indie scene is the source of the industry’s magic. This isn’t just a debate about language — “indie” is a distinction that identifies which games and teams need outside support to survive and expand on their innovations. Understanding the label can help players make decisions about where to spend their money, the lifeblood of any game-development studio.
All that to say, the debate over the definition of “indie” is not new, but it is constantly changing, and it’s something I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating. So, I’m here to offer guidance on the question of what makes an indie game or studio indie. It is a weirdly complicated topic and my approach is one of many, but the loose framework I use could help resolve some common, recurring arguments.
Basically — it’s all about the system, man.
I’m joking, but also I’m not. Generally, when I’m trying to decide whether something is actually indie, I rotate through three questions:
Is the team on the mainstream system’s payroll?
Is the game or team owned by a platform holder?
Do the artists have creative control?
The first question is about identifying where a studio’s money is coming from and what kind of support a game has outside of sales. If a team is wholly owned by another company of any size, it is not indie. We’re not talking about publishing deals; this opening question is about acquisitions or subsidiaries of bigger studios. Dave the Diver is a prime example here — it’s developed by Mintrocket, a subsidiary of Nexon that was created just to develop more contained, experimental games for the publisher. Dave the Diver is definitely not indie, and we’re only on question one.
The second query feeds into the first, and it’s helpful in making fine distinctions about games that exist in gray areas. What about something like Cyberpunk 2077? It’s a big-budget game built by CD Projekt RED (CDPR) — a studio that, at first glance, seems like it could be indie. However, there are two factors that take it out of the running for me. First, CD Projekt, the umbrella organization that supports CDPR’s game-making, is a publicly traded company with shareholders and a board to answer to. Second, CD Projekt is the owner of GOG, a distribution hub that allows the studio to sell its own games and DLC outside of Steam and the Epic Games Store. This ability to sell directly to players at massive scale takes CD Projekt out of the indie realm. Generally, companies with the most influence and money are console makers and platform holders like Valve, Xbox, PlayStation, Epic Games, Ubisoft, EA, and, yes, CD Projekt. They are the AAA system, and anything they own is not indie.
Nexon
Lastly, on to publishers. Sorry, Keighley, but securing a publisher has very little to do with whether a game is indie nowadays. We’re blessed in 2023 to have a thriving indie industry constantly pushing against the AAA complex with different goals, more diverse voices and a broader sense of innovation — and publishing is a big part of this system. Today, indie-focused publishers (of which there are many) tend to include clauses that protect a developer’s creative vision, preventing the larger company from interfering with artistic decisions and keeping the game indie to the core. Once upon a time, it might’ve made sense to only consider self-published games indie, but that era is long gone.
The indie scene has evolved massively since the early 2010s, when games like Braid, Super Meat Boy and Fez were carving out the market’s modern form. Back then, self-publishing was all the rage for independent developers because it was often their only option, and as a result there were more distinct lines between AAA, AA and indie games. Devolver Digital found its first breakout hit as an indie publisher with Hotline Miami in 2012, and that’s around the time the floodgates opened. In 2014, as the industry’s largest companies started funding and publishing programs for them, the number of indie games skyrocketed across platforms including Steam (remember Greenlight?), the App Store, Xbox, PlayStation and Ouya (RIP).
Today, indie games come standard on every console. There are multiple indie-focused publishers, including Devolver, Annapurna Interactive, Panic, Raw Fury, Team17 and Netflix, and most of them offer complete creative freedom as a main selling point. Meanwhile, platform holders like Sony and Xbox are hungry to sign distribution deals with developers of all sizes in an effort to score exclusives and pad their streaming libraries. It’s the most stable (and crowded) the indie scene has ever been. Having a publisher has no bearing on whether a game is indie.
Being owned by a publisher, however, changes everything (see question one). This is more of a concern than ever, as platform holders like Microsoft, Sony and Epic Games have recently been buying studios they like, no matter their size. Hell, even Devolver has dipped its toes in the acquisition pond recently — which, yeah, means those teams are no longer indie.
Nexon
The “indie” label is transitory. Certain studios can be indie but an individual game may not be, and plenty of small companies flow between states as they age and take advantage of growth opportunities. Bungie, for example, started out as an independent outfit, then it was absorbed by the AAA complex under Xbox, and then it broke free and was briefly indie again, before Sony pulled it back into the mainstream system’s cold embrace.
So, yeah, that’s my way of determining if a game or studio is indie. By all means, take my triplet of questions and have fun trying to break the logic — it probably won’t take long. There is no perfect structure here and there are plenty of outliers within my own framework. Alan Wake II, according to my questions, would be considered an indie game — but its developer, Remedy Entertainment, is a publicly traded company, which brings shareholders and a board of directors. This pushes the studio and the game into The System for me, but honestly, I’m still unsure about those labels as I type this. That’s OK — when all else fails, look inside your game-loving soul and ask, can this team exist without my support? (Alan Wake II, for what it’s worth, is a delicious and unique experience that’s worth playing, regardless of your feelings on Remedy’s shareholders).
Does Mintrocket need my support to keep Dave the Diver and its creative team going? Probably not, and definitely not in the same way as Larian Studios, the independent developer and publisher of Baldur’s Gate 3. Baldur’s Gate 3 is an excellent, expansive 3D adventure from an indie studio and it’s up for Game of the Year at The Game Awards, but it was snubbed in the Best Independent Game category. Meanwhile, Dave the Diver, a cute title backed by billions of dollars, is up for the indie award, but not Game of the Year. It seems like The Game Awards jury made the classic mistake of seeing pixel art and immediately calling it indie. That’s an unforced error, but it reveals one point where we can all agree:
Indie is not an aesthetic.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-game-awards-raises-an-old-question-what-does-indie-mean-205211035.html?src=rss
Google’s new generative AI experiment lets you create music “inspired by” over 100 instruments worldwide. Instrument Playground starts by asking for a simple prompt containing a musical instrument’s name, optionally preceded by an adjective like “upbeat,” “strange” or “gloomy.” It will then spit out a 20-second audio clip as a starting point to compose (often extremely offbeat or abstract) music that may or may not include the sound of the specific instrument you entered.
Simon Doury, an Artist in Residence at Google Arts & Culture Lab, designed the experiment. It taps into Google’s MusicLM, a text-to-AI tool it made available to the public in May.
Instrument Playground invites you to “choose one of over 100 instruments from around the world you’d like to play,” suggesting some lesser-known to Americans like the veena from India, dizi from China or mbria from Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, prefixing your instrument prompt with an adjective lets you suggest styles like “moody,” “happy” or “romantic.”
The experiment works less literally than you might expect. For example, “angry tuba” doesn’t generate the aggressive brass solo you’d expect. Instead, it sounds more like a synthesized pipe organ with tuba aspirations. Similarly, “strange didgeridoo” came out like an ominous section of a Hans Zimmer score. The results seem like abstract compositions with layers of sound that (sort of) capture the feeling — more than the specific sound — of the prompt.
It also rejects some adjectives for inexplicable reasons. When I enter “quirky” or “psychedelic,” an error pop-up tells me it doesn’t allow prompts referencing specific artists.
Once the experiment generates a clip you like for a starting point, you can choose from “Ambient,” “Beat” and “Pitch” to control different aspects of the composition, turning it into something more uniquely yours. If you want to add more instruments (or whatever sounds it makes in response to instrument-based prompts), an advanced mode opens a sequencer to layer and loop up to four tracks for your oddball musical masterpiece. Finally, you can download a .wav file of your track once you’re happy with it.
Google included the following holiday-themed example to inspire you to get started. If that looks like something you want to play with, you can visit Instrument Playground and log in with your Google account to begin composing.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-new-ai-experiment-composes-abstract-musical-clips-inspired-by-instruments-203732054.html?src=rss
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: City lawmakers in Brazil have enacted what appears to be the nation’s first legislation written entirely by artificial intelligence — even if they didn’t know it at the time. The experimental ordinance was passed in October in the southern city of Porto Alegre and city councilman Ramiro Rosario revealed this week that it was written by a chatbot, sparking objections and raising questions about the role of artificial intelligence in public policy. Rosario told The Associated Press that he asked OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT to craft a proposal to prevent the city from charging taxpayers to replace water consumption meters if they are stolen. He then presented it to his 35 peers on the council without making a single change or even letting them know about its unprecedented origin.
“If I had revealed it before, the proposal certainly wouldn’t even have been taken to a vote,” Rosario told the AP by phone on Thursday. The 36-member council approved it unanimously and the ordinance went into effect on Nov. 23. “It would be unfair to the population to run the risk of the project not being approved simply because it was written by artificial intelligence,” he added. […] Keeping the proposal’s origin secret was intentional. Rosario told the AP his objective was not just to resolve a local issue, but also to spark a debate. He said he entered a 49-word prompt into ChatGPT and it returned the full draft proposal within seconds, including justifications.
“I am convinced that … humanity will experience a new technological revolution,” he said. “All the tools we have developed as a civilization can be used for evil and good. That’s why we have to show how it can be used for good.” And the council president [Hamilton Sossmeier], who initially decried the method, already appears to have been swayed. “I changed my mind,” Sossmeier said. “I started to read more in depth and saw that, unfortunately or fortunately, this is going to be a trend.”
Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Japanese casino mogul Kazuo Okada is out in the cold once again with another major legal defeat, while those whom he regards as his betrayers have been on a winning streak.
Billionaire Okada’s ill fortunes began in early 2017 when he was accused of embezzlement at his own Universal Entertainment Corporation. His ex-wife and own children voted him out of authority over the pachinko and gambling company which he had founded.
After a long series of legal defeats in Japan and elsewhere, Okada finally scored a stunning victory in late April 2022 when the Supreme Court of the Philippines issued a shocking order that Tiger Resort, Leisure & Entertainment, Inc. (TRLEI), the management company for the Okada Manila casino resort (which is owned by Universal), was obliged to restore the company leadership to the state that it was in before Okada had been removed.
Okada, however, overreached by ordering a dramatic invasion and physical occupation of Okada Manila, compete with thugs dragging rival Japanese businessmen out of the building by force. This occupation was overturned–again by force–three months later when the other side sent in security guards backed by the Philippine National Police.
This week Universal announced that it has now won the legal battle completely; the Supreme Court has reversed its order of April 2022, thus denying Okada any authority over TRLEI and Okada Manila.
“With this resolution, this litigation has been concluded,” Universal announced in a press release.
Tokyo-based Universal is has been riding high. In September it defeated a lawsuit launched by prospective partner 26 Capital Acquisition Corporation over a October 2021 agreement which would have seen the Okada Manila casino resort listed on the Nasdaq stock market in New York. 26 Capital Acquisition Chairman and CEO Jason Ader had become aggrieved when Universal delayed and eventually pulled out of the merger agreement, citing alleged misconduct on the part of the Miami-based special purpose acquisition company.
A Delaware court came down firmly on Universal’s side, agreeing that 26 Capital had “engaged in conduct that should not be rewarded” and therefore ruled that Universal was free to terminate the unwanted merger agreement.
In September, 26 Capital announced its own liquidation.
Broadcom announced back in May of 2022 that it would buy VMware for $61 billion and take on an additional $8 billion of the company’s debt, and on November 22 of 2023 Broadcom said that it had completed the acquisition. And it looks like Broadcom’s first big move is going to be layoffs: according to WARN notices filed with multiple states (catalogued here by Channel Futures), Broadcom will be laying off at least 2,837 employees across multiple states, including 1,267 at its Palo Alto campus in California.
As Channel Futures notes, the actual number of layoffs could be higher, since not all layoffs require WARN notices. We’ve contacted Broadcom for more information about the total number of layoffs and the kinds of positions that are being affected and will update if we receive a response. VMware has around 38,300 employees worldwide.
The WARN notices list the reason for the layoffs as “economic,” but provide no further explanation or justification.
A woman was photographed standing in front of two mirrors with an iPhone camera, but the actual photo shows three completely different arm positions. The arms are in different locations in mirror number one, mirror number two and in actual real life. Is it Photoshop? Is it a glitch in the Matrix? Did the woman take a 25-year trip inside of Twin Peak’s black lodge? No, it’s just a computational photography error, but it still makes for one heck of an image.
It all comes down to how modern smartphone cameras deal with photography. When you click that camera button, billions of computational operations occur in an instant, resulting in a photo you can post online in hopes of getting a few thumbs up. In this case, Apple’s software didn’t realize there was a mirror in the shot, so it treated each version of the subject as three different people. She was moving at the instant the photo was taken, so the algorithm stitched the photo together from multiple images. The end result? Well, you can see it above.
Smartphone camera software always pulls from many images at once, combining at will and adjusting for contrast, saturation, detail and lack of blur. In the vast majority of cases, this doesn’t present an issue. Once in a while, however, the software gets a tad bit confused. If it was three different people, instead of one with a mirror, each subject would have been properly represented.
This is something that can actually be recreated by just about anyone with an iPhone and some mirrors. As a matter of fact, there’s a TikTok trend in which folks do just that, making all kinds of silly photos and videos by leveraging the algorithm’s difficulties when separating mirror images from actual people.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/what-did-an-iphone-camera-do-to-this-poor-womans-arms-201507227.html?src=rss
The biggest experimental nuclear fusion reactor in operation was inaugurated north of Tokyo today, as scientists continue to plug away at making nuclear fusion a viable source of the world’s energy.
Enlarge/ Density waves in a Bose-Einstein condensate. (credit: NASA)
In the basement of Kirchhoff-Institut für Physik in Germany, researchers have been simulating the Universe as it might have existed shortly after the Big Bang. They have created a tabletop quantum field simulation that involves using magnets and lasers to control a sample of potassium-39 atoms that is held close to absolute zero. They then use equations to translate the results at this small scale to explore possible features of the early Universe.
The work done so far shows that it’s possible to simulate a Universe with a different curvature. In a positively curved universe, if you travel in any direction in a straight line, you will come back to where you started. In a negatively curved universe, space is bent in a saddle shape. The Universe is currently flat or nearly flat, according to Marius Sparn, a PhD student at Kirchhoff-Institut für Physik. But at the beginning of its existence, it might have been more positively or negatively curved.
Around the curve
“If you have a sphere that’s really huge, like the Earth or something, if you see only a small part of it, you don’t know—is it closed or is it infinitely open?” said Sabine Hossenfelder, member of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. “It becomes a philosophical question, really. The only things we know come from the part of the Universe we observe. Normally, the way that people phrase it is that, for all we know, the curvature in this part of the Universe is compatible with zero.”
Meta is failing to stop vast networks of people using its platform to promote child abuse content, a new report in The Wall Street Journal says, citing numerous disturbing examples of child exploitation it uncovered on Facebook and Instagram. The report, which comes as Meta faces renewed pressure over its handling of children’s safety, has prompted fresh scrutiny from European Union regulators.
In the report, The Wall Street Journal detailed tests it conducted with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection showing how Meta’s recommendations can suggest Facebook Groups, Instagram hashtags and other accounts that are used to promote and share child exploitation material. According to their tests, Meta was slow to respond to reports about such content, and its own algorithms often made it easier for people to connect with abuse content and others interested in it.
For example, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection told the paper a “network of Instagram accounts with as many as 10 million followers each has continued to livestream videos of child sex abuse months after it was reported to the company.” In another disturbing example, Meta initially declined to take action on a user report about a public-facing Facebook Group called “Incest.” The group was eventually taken down, along with other similar communities.
In a lengthy update on its website, Meta said that “predators are determined criminals who test app, website and platform defenses,” and that it had improved many of its internal systems to restrict “potentially suspicious adults.” The company said it had “expanded the existing list of child safety related terms, phrases and emojis for our systems to find” and had employed machine learning to uncover new search terms that could be potentially exploited by child predators.
The company said it’s using technology to identify “potentially suspicious adults” in order to prevent them from connecting with each other, including in Facebook Groups, and from seeing each other’s content in recommendations. Meta also told The Wall Street Journal it “has begun disabling individual accounts that score above a certain threshold of suspicious behavior.”
The social network is facing a growing backlash over its handling of child safety. The Wall Street Journal also recently reported that Instagram Reels recommendations are serving content aimed at people who “might have a prurient interest in children.” Dozens of states recently sued Meta for allegedly harming the mental health of its youngest users, and failing to keep children younger than 13 off its apps. Mark Zuckerberg will no doubt face intense questions about these allegations next month when he appears at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing focused on child safety online. His counterparts from TikTok, Snap, X and Discord are also slated to testify.
Meanwhile, Meta is also facing new pressure from regulators abroad. European Union officials are using a new law to probe the company’s handling of child abuse material, following The Journal’s report. The company has been given a December 22 deadline to turn over data to the bloc.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/metas-apps-are-still-promoting-child-predation-content-report-finds-195357362.html?src=rss
The acclaimed Analogue Pocket multi-system portable handheld console is a bona fide hit. It’s so popular, in fact, that it’s been sold out for weeks. Have no fear, would-be purchasers. Analogue just announced a major restock. The consoles will be available to buy on December 4 at 11AM ET. The company promises that these orders will arrive in time for the holidays.
This restock only applies to the original black and white designs, and not those nifty limited edition colors, most of which remain sold out. If you miss the window on December 4, the company is doing another restock on December 8 at 11AM ET, but those won’t ship until February.
Analogue also announced a new operating system for the console, set to arrive in the next few days. Analogue Pocket OS v.1.2 fixes a bunch of bugs, adds support for new controllers, updates the music-making app Nanoloop and allows for new openFGPA developer tools. That’s just the first update. Analogue Pocket OS v2.0 arrives before the end of the month and gives third-party developers access to the original display modes, like the iconic Game Boy aesthetic, among other features. These updates follow last year’s OS v1.1.
It’s not just the Pocket getting some love. The Analogue Duo is finally shipping on December 11, three years after the original announcement and over six months after pre-orders went live. The Duo is an all-in-one system that promises to play every TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine title, even Bonk’s Adventure, a game that gave me no end of stress in childhood for obvious name-related reasons. The Duo plays both cartridges and compact discs. It’ll even run games that originally required the Arcade RAM add-on included as part of the Japan-only SuperGrafx console. Again, Analogue promises deliveries by the holidays.
The company’s also selling a limited-edition white dock for the Pocket, which also goes on sale December 4. However, this freshly-hued dock is more expensive than the original black model, at $130 instead of $100.
It’s not all good news for fans of retro gaming. Analogue announced a delay for the Pocket Adapter Set until February. This set adds new consoles to the lineup, so the system will be able to play TurboGrafx-16 cartridges, Neo Geo Pocket Color cartridges and Atari Lynx carts.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/a-big-analogue-pocket-restock-is-coming-but-cart-adapters-are-delayed-again-191423716.html?src=rss
Godzilla Minus One stomps into U.S. theaters today, so director Takashi Yamazaki probably already has a lot on his plate right now. But goddammit, the man wants to do a Star Wars movie, and now I can think of nothing more perfect.
Telegram has released a major update for its iOS and Android apps that includes an array of new and upgraded features. Since last year, Telegram Premium users have been able to get transcriptions of voice and video messages and now the platform is opening up that feature to everyone, albeit on a more limited basis. Free users will be able to convert two messages per week into text. Just hit the →A icon on a voice message and you’ll get a text version of the memo. Telegram notes that it’s rolling out this feature gradually, so you may not have access to it right away.
Elsewhere, Telegram is looking to improve channel discovery. Whenever you join a channel, you’ll see a selection of similar public channels. Telegram is basing these recommendations on similarities in subscriber bases. You’ll be able to view these recommendations at any time by going to a channel’s profile.
Telegram
You can now include a video comment or reaction with a story. You’ll have the ability to resize this video message and move it around the screen. You can add a video message, a feature that takes a page out of the TikTok playbook, by holding down the camera icon in the story editor to capture a selfie clip. You can adjust the volume by holding a finger on the video track at the bottom of the screen.
Reposting someone else’s story is now a cinch too. Just tap the share button on a story, then you’ll have the option to repost it. Only stories that have their visibility set to public can be reposted. You can add a video comment to reposted stories too.
Elsewhere, Premium users can set up their profiles with unique color combos, everyone can apply custom wallpapers to each individual chat (Premium users can set the same wallpaper for both participants) and channel admins can customize the emoji that appear as reactions. In addition, any Telegram app can now detect a coding language in messages and highlight the syntax with proper formatting.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/telegram-now-offers-all-users-limited-transcriptions-of-voice-messages-185114448.html?src=rss
