When Lego announced its near 1:1, 421-piece Nintendo Game Boy set I wrote that it was charming, but “sadly not playable.” Now that it has started shipping (as of yesterday), creator Natalie the Nerd proved me 100 percent wrong. She added the power to play genuine Game Boy cartridges, using real hardware and not an emulator, according to her post on Bluesky and a story on The Verge.
The project was right up Natalie’s alley as she specializes in circuit board design, having even created a transparent one for another Game Boy project. To make the Lego Game Boy run, she created a custom circuit board with Game Boy chips soldered on, including working buttons. She then added the “smallest screen kit on the market,” she told The Verge, removing a few bricks to make it fit. You won’t even have to worry about batteries as it has a USB-C port to run everything.
Natalie the Nerd
It’s fully functional but not quite complete — on Bluesky, Natalie pointed out that the A and B keys are currently held in by an elastic band. To fix that, she plans to 3D print a lego piece that will hold a custom PCB for the buttons. Once it’s all ready, she’ll share her designs as she has with past products. “I am going to release it once I am happy with it,” she wrote on X.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/a-creator-has-made-legos-non-playable-game-boy-set-playable-120044617.html?src=rss
This week my team (Coalition Delusion, racing in the ZRL B1 Development Lime division), took on 8 others in the only scratch race of Round 1. Having raced the course before, I knew it would push me to the limit with its three climbs.
Could I hang on to the front group so I could contest the finish? Only one way to find out…
Planning, Warmup, and Man Flu
As usual, my team was on Discord chatting about the race in the days leading up to the big throwdown. This one was pretty straightforward: a scratch race with three climby bits and a short uphill finish. Each rider’s goal was simply to survive the climbs in the front group, and regardless of whether that happened or not, to finish as high as possible from whatever group we were in at the end.
I got on the bike with plenty of time before the 10am PT race, giving me a full half hour to wake up the ol’ ticker and spin up the legs so I could be ready for what was sure to be a hard start. I was already one dirty chai and a few pieces of Neuro caffeine gum into my warmup by the time I got on the bike, so I was nicely caffeinated. I had also rubbed PR Lotion into my legs to keep the burning at bay.
My Warmup “Stack”
There was just one hitch in my raceday plans: I was getting sick. The night before, I’d noticed a sore throat, then the morning of the race I woke up with that flu feeling. You know the one, where your arm hair is sore to the touch? I felt a bit feverish and generally sore, but I could tell it hadn’t hit me fully, and I didn’t want to make my team scramble for a sub at the last minute. So I soldiered on, hoping t wouldn’t affect me too much.
A Sketchy Start
I almost lost the race before it even began.
I was running an odd trainer/power meter setup, because I’m still testing the Wahoo KICKR Core 2. I had noticed it was reading extra low recently (3% or so below my Assioma pedals), so I decided I would pair the Assiomas as my power source, but also pair the Core 2 as resistance and cadence so I could use virtual shifting.
That would have worked fine – except I decided to dual record it by booting up a Zwift session on another PC and connecting my test account to it, pairing the Core 2 as power source so I could record the Core 2’s data.
I could have sworn this had worked fine the week before. And it seemed to work fine during my warmup (although looking at my video below, it actually wasn’t working there either. I just hadn’t noticed.)
I didn’t notice the problem until 2 minutes before the race started. Here’s the full play-by-play, pieced together by watching my race video.
-2:00: Re-pair trainer as Resistance and Cadence. Virtual gearing shows again on HUD.
-1:28: Virtual gearing disappears. But I don’t even notice, because I’m faffing around changing my virtual socks. Seriously.
-0:16: I finally notice virtual gearing is gone, and bring up the pairing screen again to re-pair. (I also grab my other keyboard and close the Zwift session I have going with my test account, assuming this is causing the issue. No dual recording today!)
0:00: The race begins, and I’m thinking I’ve fixed things just in time.
0:05: I quickly realize the game has me in gear 15, but I can’t change gears using either my Zwift Play or Click v2 controllers, both of which show up as paired.
0:25: As the pack hits the opening climb hard, I’m pedaling about as fast as I can (although RPM shows 67-68 on the HUD, oddly, while showing 0 rpm from the Core 2 on the pairing screen). I pull up the pairing screen again to confirm everything looks right. It does.
0:33: Everyone gets a surprise burrito powerup… the first of several on the day (more on that below). The burritos begin flying within seconds. This is an unwelcome addition to my race.
0:45: My virtual gear disappears from the HUD. I trigger my burrito from my Play controller, (which apparently can trigger powerups but not gear changes).
0:50: Pull up the pairing screen again. Core 2 is not paired. Pair it again. Back to gear 15.
1:07: I pull up the pairing screen again and unpair all the Play and Click controllers, re-pairing them. That’ll fix it, right?
1:20: It didn’t fix it. In fact, my virtual gearing has disappeared again. I hit “A” on my keyboard once more to enter the pairing screen, which shows the Core 2 not paired once again. I pair it again.
1:27: No dice. Still no virtual shifting showing. I’m in 39th place, sitting in the back of the front pack. Pedaling like mad. Keeping silent on Discord, though, because there’s nothing my teammates can do to help. Gotta get this sorted.
1:39: Bring up the pairing screen again to double-check what I have connected. It’s all correct. But I disconnect and re-pair the Core 2 as resistance yet again, for good measure.
2:04: I decide to use my bike’s mechanical shifting to drop a couple of gears (I’m currently using a cassette, not the Zwift Cog). This should work until I’m on an easier section where I can maybe get virtual shifting working again.
2:49: In a stroke of genius, I decide to power cycle the Core 2. Then quickly realize I may have made a terrible mistake, as all trainer resistance goes away, and I’m forced to pedal at max cadence. I also get a warning popup on my screen: “Heads up! You currently don’t have a smart trainer paired. Pair a Zwift Ready trainer to enable virtual shifting.” Thanks, Zwift.
3:05: I mechanically shift to my hardest gear, to give myself a bit more resistance to push against until the trainer comes back online. I naively hope that the trainer will automatically re-pair, and virtual shifting will be restored. (This doesn’t happen.)
3:12: Bring up the pairing screen once more. Pair the trainer as resistance.
3:21: My virtual gearing pops up: and I’m in gear 24. The hardest. Possible. Gear. It’s like an instant spiral of death, and I stand up and hammer as I quickly shift down using my Play controllers.
3:35: I get down to gear 14 and a comfortable cadence. So far I’ve averaged 383 watts in the race.
3:55: The Core 2/Zwift recalibrates my gear ratio and resistance drops noticeably. My cadence jumps up to compensate, and I shift to a harder gear. I’m still in the front group. We’re ready to race!
Once my trainer/gearing were straightened out, we were essentially on the long descent/flat to Urukazi. So I sat in and conserved as much as possible, knowing there was hard work up the road.
Surprise Burritos
I’m 100% sure the burrito is the most hated powerup on Zwift. And I’m also sure the only thing worse than getting burritoed when you expect it is getting burritoed by surprise.
Due to some sort of configuration error, our race (and I assume many others’) awarded everyone burritos at unexpected locations. We got one just before riding through the virtual start/finish arch for the first time. Then again just before passing the Mech Isle start pens (near the location of virtual start/finish arches for other routes, I believe). One of our riders said they got a second one not long after (I can’t confirm since I hadn’t used the one I had). And watching my video replay, I discovered there was another awarded 80 meters from the finish line, just after the planned one at the lap arch!
All of these extra burritos had the effect of making the race harder. And in fact, they may have been what ultimately dropped me from the front pack.
After our long descent and flat, we hit the next key climb on the route: the corkscrew climb up to the Shisa Sprint.
I fought back to a decent position near the back of the front group with just a few hundred meters left, despite a dangling burrito taking away the group draft that would have otherwise sucked me into the front group.
But just as I got in touch with that group, two more burritos were activated. That front group began to pull away, and a gap opened up.
In the heat of the race, close to my limit at the top of the climb, I didn’t notice this was happening. I saw the pack stretching, but figured it would come back together on the flat and descent that would follow. So as we finished the climb and picked up speed heading into the Shisa Sprint, I sat in my pack of ~8 riders that was dangling off the end of a messy line.
Sauce was still showing all of us together as a front group of 21. But the situation on screen was very different. As we went through the Shisa Sprint, the riders ahead coalesced into two groups. I was in the third with teammate Fabian, and we were 5 seconds behind the middle group which was pushing to rejoin the front.
This is where we should have pushed to rejoin. But we didn’t. I didn’t. And that middle group soon joined the front group, which quickly rode away from us along with any hope of a top finish.
The Finish
We had only Chris F in the front group of 15, which didn’t bode well for us. Fabian and I were in the chase group, and the rest of the team was behind. Based purely on these numbers, I knew that a team win wasn’t probable today. But all we could do was finish as high as possible.
The rest of the race was rather unremarkable from my vantage point, apart from the final sprint. Fabian and I came into the finish in a group of 7, with feather powerups. I decided I would use the feather as I went through the lap banner, then use the burrito if it seemed like it might help.
I ramped up the power and activated the feather as we went through the arch with ~450 meters to go, and quickly found myself on the front of the group with Wegert (a strong rider from VGG) chasing. I thought I had timed it perfectly, activating my burrito as soon as the feather ran out so Wegert would lose any drafting advantage. I even eased a bit, figuring I wanted to keep Wegert under the power of my burrito.
But I didn’t see LM from the ART team flying up behind me in a perfectly-timed feather-powered effort. And with 50 meters to go, he flew past. I finished 16th on the day.
When the dust settled, my team came in 2nd on the day behind Atom Racing Team (ART). Well done, ART!
Teammate Chris Fockenberg was our top finisher, coming in 8th. Our team’s newest member, Fabian Streit, finished in 20th (3rd best on the team) – nicely done.
We lost to ART by only 4 points. Such a narrow margin! If two of our riders had just finished 2-3 places higher, we could have taken the win. But hindsight is 20/20.
The good news is, we still sit squarely in 1st for Round 1, with just one race left:
Watching my video and thinking through the race, there were definitely mistakes made on my part. With the benefit of hindsight, here’s what I would do differently:
Avoid all the trainer malfunction silliness by paying attention during my warmup. This would have taken some early stress out of the race.
Push harder to be near the front on the climb to the Shisa Sprint, to avoid some of those draft-stealing burritos.
Push to close the gap to the next group on the descent that followed. (I think I could have managed it, although it would have been tough.)
That said, there was a tiny silver lining to the trainer issues I had at the start. Teammate Chris, our strongest rider on the day, told me this after he learned how the first few minutes of my race went:
“What a first few minutes you had! Those trainer issues and the massive gear 24 resistance you faced . In a way you helped me out, because I was hurting like hell going up there and noticed that you were behind me towards the top of the climb and over the climb. As you’re one of our stronger riders, in my head I thought, “Ah well if Eric is ok to sit near the back of the pack then maybe I shouldn’t worry too much,” and thus stopped panicking and didn’t destroy myself to get near the front. So, thanks I guess to your trainer? Great job working through all that though whilst trying to re-pair everything!”
To be clear, I wouldn’t call what happened a malfunction of the Core 2, or even Zwift. I’m sure it was caused by my having the Core 2 paired to two simultaneous Zwift sessions, which is not exactly an approved use case.
Coalition Delusion finished our race with the traditional Discord team pic:
Your Thoughts
How did race #3 go for you? Did you receive some surprise burritos, and did they impact your race? Share below!
Giant has taken several steps to try to resolve the embargo preventing its products made in Taiwan from entering the USA, according to a statement released today.
On 24 September, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced a Withhold Release Order (WRO) on any bicycles, bicycle parts and accessories manufactured by Giant in Taiwan after an investigation that found alleged forced labour.
“Giant Group has been committed to openness and transparency, and has taken multiple actions,” the statement says.
Giant says that on 29 September it formally engaged with CBP through its US legal counsel and will arrange an official meeting in the near future.
“On September 30, Giant submitted formal letters to Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Labor, and Ministry of Economic Affairs, reporting the progress up to date and respectfully requesting assistance,” adds Giant.
Giant also says it is “actively communicating” with key international partners to safeguard its supply chains and market confidence.
Giant has already taken “concrete actions” in the last year to address potential labour rights violations. Sterling Lorence
The source of CBP’s allegations of forced labour is unclear. “CBP has never conducted any on-site investigation at Giant Group’s Taiwan manufacturing factory, nor have any of our departments or personnel been contacted by CBP for interviews or inquiries,” Belinda Yeh, a Giant PR specialist, told trade publication Bicycle Retailer.
The only public report on labour conditions at Giant’s facilities in Taiwan is by investigative journalist Peter Bengtsen, who told BikeRadar that debt bondage “is the rule, not the exception, for migrants employed in Taiwan’s bicycle and other industries”.
But after the suspension on imports was revealed, Giant says it has taken “concrete actions” in the last year to address potential labour rights violations, which includes implementing a zero recruitment fee policy and upgrading its employee housing.
Taiwanese Labor Front, an activist group, released a statement on 25 September, which said this is the first time CBP has accused a Taiwanese company of forced labour.
“Taiwanese companies generally lack awareness of human rights risks, particularly regarding the internationally recognized issue of forced labor. This not only fails to meet the expectations of European and American legislative trends, but also risks being gradually excluded from the international market,” the group explained.
Giant says it appreciates the concern and support from the public regarding the import ban.
“Upholding our principles of openness, transparency, and accountability, we will proactively report progress to regulators, partners, and the public, and ensure that all related issues are properly addressed in accordance with international standards,” it said.
For the last month, NASA’s interim administrator, Sean Duffy, has been giving interviews and speeches around the world, offering a singular message: “We are going to beat the Chinese to the Moon.”
This is certainly what the president who appointed Duffy to the NASA post wants to hear. Unfortunately, there is a very good chance that Duffy’s sentiment is false. Privately, many people within the space industry, and even at NASA, acknowledge that the US space agency appears to be holding a losing hand. Recently, some influential voices, such as former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, have spoken out.
“Unless something changes, it is highly unlikely the United States will beat China’s projected timeline to the Moon’s surface,” Bridenstine said in early September.
Apple seems to be releasing its next Vision Pro with M5 chip soon, but according to a new report from Bloomberg’sMark Gurman, the company may have shelved plans for a follow-up headset that’s cheaper and lighter in favor of releasing smart glasses set to compete with Meta.
The News
According to previous rumors, Apple was developing a Vision Pro follow-up more squarely aimed at consumers—often referred to as ‘Vision Air’ (codenamed ‘N100’). Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported in September that Vision Air was expected to be “over 40% lighter and more than 50% cheaper” than the current Vision Pro, putting the device at less than 400g and less than $1,750.
Notably, a hardware refresh of Vision Pro featuring Apple’s latest M5 chip is likely releasing soon, according to recent FCC filings, although its 600g weight and $3,500 price tag are likely to remain the same.
Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses & Neural Band | Image courtesy Meta
Now, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman maintains Apple is putting Vision Air on hold, citing internal sources. Instead, Apple is reportedly shifting resources to accelerate development of smart glasses, which aim to take on Ray-Ban Meta and the new Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses.
Gurman reports that Apple is pursuing at least two types of smart glasses: an audio-only pair codenamed ‘N50’, which are meant to pair with iPhone, and ostensibly compete with Meta’s fleet of $300+ smart glasses built in partnership with EssilorLuxottica. Apple is reportedly set to preview N50 as soon as 2026, with a release by 2027.
A second pair is said to contain a display, similar to Meta Ray-Ban Display, which launched late last month in the US for $800. In contrast, Apple’s display smart glasses were expected to release in 2028, however the company is reportedly fast-tracking the device’s development.
Both versions are said to emphasize voice interaction and AI integration, and offer multiple styles and a new custom chip to power the devices.
My Take
The shifted development timeline feels a little out of character for Apple, which typically enters segments after a technology is generally proven. Apple didn’t invent the smartphone, smart watch, laptop, or desktop, although it owns a significant slice of each in 2025 thanks to its unique brand of ‘ecosystem stickiness’ and inherent cool factor.
The entrance of Meta Ray-Ban Displays however marks an important inflection point in the race to own the next big computing paradigm. Smart glasses with displays aren’t the end destination, but they are an important stepping stone along the way to all-day augmented reality. And a strong foothold in AI is integral.
“Let’s wait and see what Apple does” has been a pretty common thought process when it comes to emergent tech—something people have been saying for years in VR. The big hope was Apple would eventually swoop in, redefine VR for the masses, and make the best version of it with their first device.
Vision Pro (M2) | Image captured by Road to VR
But Vision Pro isn’t the first-gen iPhone (2007). While a lighter, cheaper version could address pain points, it would still have a hard time not drawing direct comparisons to Meta devices 5-10 times cheaper.
But AI isn’t one of those technologies you can afford to sleep on, if only from a user data collection perspective. In contrast to its biggest competitors, Apple has notably lagged in AI development, having only released its Apple Intelligence platform in late 2024 to counter Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Apple needs to play catchup.
While Apple is expected to release a rebuilt Siri this year to power its hardware ecosystem, smart glasses are the tip of the AI spear. Even without displays, wearing an always-on device represents a treasure trove of data and user behavior that companies will use to improve services, figure out what works and what doesn’t, and ultimately build the next big platform that companies have been salivating over: all-day AR glasses.
That’s the real battle here. Not only does Apple need smart glasses to compete in the next computing paradigm, but they also need them to bridge a very real component price gap. Economies of scale will eventually bring fiddly components down in price, like the extremely expensive and difficult to manufacture silicon carbide waveguides seen in Meta’s Orion AR prototype revealed at last year’s Connect, which cost the company $10,000 each to build. Companies also need to create parts capable of fitting into a glasses form factor, with smart glasses representing an important first testing ground.
After many months of preparations, the Alpine Linux development team announced today that they have decided to adopt a /usr-merged file system layout for future Alpine Linux releases.
Google has laid off over 100 employees in design-related roles, including user experience research and cloud design teams, as part of broader cost-cutting measures to prioritize AI infrastructure. CNBC reports: Earlier this week, the company laid off employees within the cloud unit’s “quantitative user experience research” teams and “platform and service experience” teams, as well as some adjacent teams, according to internal documents viewed by CNBC. The roles often focus on using data, surveys and other tools to understand and implement user behaviors that inform product development and design. Google has halved some of the cloud unit’s design teams, and many of those affected are U.S.-based roles. Some employees have been given until early December to find a new role within the company.
Crowd Supply recently featured the SigCore UC, an upcoming universal industrial I/O controller that combines rugged hardware with open-source software for engineers, researchers, and educators seeking a flexible control and data acquisition platform. Unlike typical development boards or expansion modules, SigCore UC arrives as a complete, ready-to-deploy solution. It is capable of handling real-world voltages, […]
Scientists have discovered complex organic molecules within the icy plume erupting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus, strengthening the case that its hidden saltwater ocean may harbor the conditions for life. The Guardian reports: The sixth largest of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus has become one of the leading contenders in the search for bodies that could harbor extraterrestrial life, with the Cassini mission — which ended in 2017 — revealing the moon has a plume of water ice grains and vapors erupting from beneath the surface at its south pole. The phenomenon has since been captured by the James Webb space telescope, with the plume reaching nearly 6,000 miles into space. The source of this material is thought to be a saltwater ocean that lies beneath the moon’s icy crust.
Now researchers studying data from the Cassini mission say they have discovered organic substances within the plume, with some types of molecule detected there for the first time. Dr Nozair Khawaja, a planetary scientist at Freie University Berlin and lead author of the work, said the results increased the known complexity of the chemistry that is happening below the surface of Enceladus. “When there is complexity happening, that means that the habitable potential of Enceladus is increasing right now,” he said. Writing in the journal Nature Astronomy, Khawaja and colleagues reported how their previous work had revealed the presence of organic substances and salts within ice grains found in a ring of Saturn, known as the “E-ring,” that is composed of material ejected from Enceladus. […]
While the new findings do not show that there is life on Enceladus, Khawaja said they indicate there are complex chemical pathways at play that could lead to the formation of substances that could be biologically relevant. The results, he added, support plans by the European Space Agency (ESA) to investigate the moon for signs of life. “I think all the signals are green here for Enceladus,” Khawaja said. The findings add momentum to ESA’s proposed mission to directly search for biological signs around 2042. According to the ESA, the mission will consist of an orbiter around Enceladus that will also fly through the plumes, as well as a lander that will touch down in the south pole region of the moon.
OpenSSL 3.6 has been officially released today as a major update that introduces many new features and improvements for this open-source, cross-platform, and free software library that provides secure communications over computer networks for applications and websites.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Thinking Machines Lab,a heavily funded startup cofounded by prominent researchers fromOpenAI, has revealed its first product — a tool called Tinker that automates the creation of custom frontier AI models. “We believe [Tinker] will help empower researchers and developers to experiment with models and will make frontier capabilities much more accessible to all people,” said Mira Murati, cofounder and CEO of Thinking Machines, in an interview with WIRED ahead of the announcement.
Big companies and academic labs already fine-tune open source AI models to create new variants that are optimized for specific tasks, like solving math problems, drafting legal agreements, or answering medical questions. Typically, this work involves acquiring and managing clusters of GPUs and using various software tools to ensure that large-scale training runs are stable and efficient. Tinker promises to allow more businesses, researchers, and even hobbyists to fine-tune their own AI models by automating much of this work.
Essentially, the team is betting that helping people fine-tune frontier models will be the next big thing in AI. And there’s reason to believe they might be right. Thinking Machines Lab is helmed by researchers who played a core role in the creation of ChatGPT. And, compared to similar tools on the market, Tinker is more powerful and user friendly, according to beta testers I spoke with. Murati says that Thinking Machines Lab hopes to demystify the work involved in tuning the world’s most powerful AI models and make it possible for more people to explore the outer limits of AI. “We’re making what is otherwise a frontier capability accessible to all, and that is completely game-changing,” she says. “There are a ton of smart people out there, and we need as many smart people as possible to do frontier AI research.” “There’s a bunch of secret magic, but we give people full control over the training loop,” OpenAI veteran John Schulman says. “We abstract away the distributed training details, but we still give people full control over the data and the algorithms.”
Renewables generated 54% of the EU’s net electricity in Q2 2025, with solar power emerging as the leading source at nearly 20% of the total mix. Electrek reports: According to new data from Eurostat, renewable energy sources generated 54% of the EU’s net electricity in Q2 2025, up from 52.7% year-over-year. The growth came mainly from solar, which produced 122,317 gigawatt-hours (GWh) — nearly 20% of the total electricity generation mix. June 2025 was a milestone month: Solar became the EU’s single largest electricity source for the first time ever. It supplied 22% of all power that month, edging out nuclear (21.6%), wind (15.8%), hydro (14.1%), and natural gas (13.8%). […]
In total, 15 EU countries saw their share of renewable generation rise year-over-year. Luxembourg (+13.5 percentage points) and Belgium (+9.1 pp) posted the most significant gains, driven largely by solar power growth. Across the EU, solar made up 36.8% of renewable generation, followed by wind at 29.5%, hydro at 26%, biomass at 7.3%, and geothermal at 0.4%.
A relatively new spacecraft company, Inversion, revealed its new “on demand” delivery vehicle Wednesday evening during a splashy ceremony at its factory in Los Angeles.
The company said it is building the Arc spacecraft to provide a capability to the US military to deliver as much as 500 pounds (225 kg) of supplies almost anywhere in the world, almost instantaneously.
“The nominal mission for us is pre-positioning Arcs on orbit, and having them stay up there for up to five years, able to be called upon and then autonomously go and land wherever and whenever they’re needed, being able to bring their cargo or effects to the desired location in under an hour,” said Justin Fiaschetti, co-founder and chief executive of Inversion, in an interview with Ars before the event.
Forlinx Embedded has introduced the OK3506-S12 Mini, a compact single board computer built around the Rockchip RK3506J processor. The board is intended for industrial applications that benefit from modest power consumption, stable operation, and long-term supply availability. The system-on-module integrates the RK3506J, which combines three Cortex-A7 cores running at up to 1.5GHz with a Cortex-M0 […]
Researchers have unveiled two new hardware-based attacks, Battering RAM and Wiretap, that break Intel SGX and AMD SEV-SNP trusted enclaves by exploiting deterministic encryption and physical interposers. Ars Technica reports: In the age of cloud computing, protections baked into chips from Intel, AMD, and others are essential for ensuring confidential data and sensitive operations can’t be viewed or manipulated by attackers who manage to compromise servers running inside a data center. In many cases, these protections — which work by storing certain data and processes inside encrypted enclaves known as TEEs (Trusted Execution Enclaves) — are essential for safeguarding secrets stored in the cloud by the likes of Signal Messenger and WhatsApp. All major cloud providers recommend that customers use it. Intel calls its protection SGX, and AMD has named it SEV-SNP.
Over the years, researchers have repeatedly broken the security and privacy promises that Intel and AMD have made about their respective protections. On Tuesday, researchers independently published two papers laying out separate attacks that further demonstrate the limitations of SGX and SEV-SNP. One attack, dubbed Battering RAM, defeats both protections and allows attackers to not only view encrypted data but also to actively manipulate it to introduce software backdoors or to corrupt data. A separate attack known as Wiretap is able to passively decrypt sensitive data protected by SGX and remain invisible at all times.
After just two days, Meta Ray-Ban Display is now sold out in almost every store it was available in.
Restocks are “coming”, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth says, and the company plans to double the number of stores where the glasses are offered.
What Is Meta Ray-Ban Display?
Meta Ray-Ban Display does everything the regular Ray-Ban Meta glasses do, except it also has a small fixed HUD (heads-up display) in the right lens, with an interface that you interact with using finger gestures detected by the included Meta Neural Band.
Meta Neural Band works by sensing the activation of the muscles in your wrist which drive your finger movements, a technique called surface electromyography (sEMG). The wristband includes haptic feedback, has an IPX7 water resistance rating, and Meta claims it should get around 18 hours of battery life.
Meta Ray-Ban Display’s monocular HUD has a field of view of around 20 degrees diagonal, brightness of up to 5000 nits, and resolution of 600×600, providing 42 pixels per degree, which is higher than Apple Vision Pro. The display has just 2% light leakage, meaning other people nearby essentially won’t be able to see it.
Here’s what you can use the display for:
Meta AI with Visuals, including step-by-step directions.
Messaging & Video Calling via WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, as well as notifications for phone messages.
Preview & Zoom for capturing photos and videos with the built-in camera.
Pedestrian Navigation via a minimap in 28 cities.
Live Captions & Translation for the person you’re looking at.
Music Playback, including the ability to seek and skip tracks.
Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses weigh 69 grams, compared to 52 grams for the regular Ray-Ban Meta glasses, and 45 grams for their non-smart equivalents. They’re also noticeably bulkier, with thicker frames and temples. But this is the tradeoff of adding a display.
The company claims that the glasses should get around six hours of battery life in normal use, but we’ll need to get our hands on them for a review to verify that in the real world.
In a software update set for December, Meta says Meta Neural Band will even let you enter text by swiping the letters with your index finger on a physical surface.
Here’s Bosworth’s full statement from Threads about the Meta Ray-Ban Display launch:
“Meta Ray-Ban Display is off to a flying start! Almost every store we’ve stocked across the country has sold out and demos are almost fully booked out through November. Love to see such a strong reaction to a killer product, working hard to get more pairs into people’s hands sooner.
If you haven’t been able to buy or book a demo yet, hang tight! Restocks are coming and if stores sell out they can get you waitlisted or place a backorder. This month we’ll double the number of locations to boost capacity. We’re doing all we can to get you more ways to buy.
For people asking why demos are required: between display glasses and the neural band, these are two pieces of tech that almost nobody has ever experienced before. As they first roll out we want to make sure people get the right fit and the best introduction before buying.
We were already excited about the product but I’ll be honest this response has been stronger than we expected so we are working to catch up!”
The statement comes as many early adopters have struggled to acquire Meta’s first smart glasses with an in-lens display.
The $800 glasses and their included sEMG wristband are only available in the US, and only in select Best Buy, LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, and Ray-Ban stores in key cities, as well as the Meta Lab.
While some stores have allowed anyone walking in to purchase Meta Ray-Ban Display, many have required an appointment. And by launch day, appointments were already booked out to mid-October in most locations, and even November or December for some. Now, most are booked out until December.
Photos captured by UploadVR’s Don Hopper at his local Best Buy in Springfield Missouri.
For those hoping to just walk in and buy, even finding the right store has been a challenge. Many hopeful buyers, including UploadVR’s Don Hopper have described arriving at their local Best Buy, LensCrafters, or Sunglass Hut to find empty shelves and confused managers unsure when even initial stock might arrive.
UploadVR’s Ian Hamilton, on the other hand, was able to secure one of the last units in New York City on launch day, but only by biking across the city from store to store. And he was told that only two of the three band sizes were available.
To what degree these issues are caused by production bottlenecks, availability of trained staff, and greater than expected demand, only Meta knows. But for many eager early adopters, Meta Ray-Ban Display has seen a chaotic start, and arguably a paper launch. This is not (yet) a widely available product.
. In a way you helped me out, because I was hurting like hell going up there and noticed that you were behind me towards the top of the climb and over the climb. As you’re one of our stronger riders, in my head I thought, “Ah well if Eric is ok to sit near the back of the pack then maybe I shouldn’t worry too much,” and thus stopped panicking and didn’t destroy myself to get near the front. So, thanks I guess to your trainer? 
Great job working through all that though whilst trying to re-pair everything!”
