Apple’s MacBook Neo is exactly the laptop many budget-conscious people have been looking for. It’s priced under $500 for students ($599 for everyone else), and has decent enough specs to be a great starter laptop for most users. To make it a ‘budget laptop,’ though, a few corners had to be cut. As a result, the MacBook Neo is lacking a few features that you might have come to expect from a MacBook. Here are the biggest trade-offs Apple is making to hit the Neo’s lower price point.
No Touch ID in the base model
The MacBook Neo’s base model doesn’t have a Touch ID sensor, which means you’ll have to type out your passwords every time you need to enter them. Some people might prefer this over using a fingerprint sensor, but I’d rather pay the extra $100 for it. This variant also comes with 512GB of storage, while the base model only has 256GB.
It lacks a backlit keyboard
Traditionally, Apple’s MacBooks have come with backlit keyboards to help you see what you’re typing while you’re in low light. Unfortunately, the MacBook Neo has cut this feature to help save costs, but it won’t make much of a difference in bright environments or to those who don’t look at their keyboards while typing.
You won’t get a True Tone display
Apple’s True Tone display feature automatically adjusts the color and intensity of the display to match the ambient light wherever you are. This means that your display won’t be blindingly bright in low light, and colors will appear more natural across a number of lighting conditions. The MacBook Neo doesn’t ship with an ambient light sensor, though, so don’t expect True Tone support here.
There are no RAM upgrade options
My daily driver laptop is still the M1 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM. I have no complaints about this laptop, but a couple of times, it has slowed to a crawl while running many apps at once. Sometime, I wish I’d spent a bit more to get 16GB of RAM. Unfortunately, there’s no such option for the MacBook Neo. 8GB should be adequate for now, so long as you stick to light use, but it could become an issue in the long run.
Fast charging is missing
Unlike most other MacBooks, the Neo doesn’t support fast charging, and ships with a 20W USB-C adapter. However, that should be good enough to charge the 36.5-watt-hour battery, which is smaller than the M5 MacBook Air’s 53.8-watt-hour battery.
You won’t get any Thunderbolt ports
The MacBook Neo has two USB-C ports (one USB 3, and one USB 2), but neither of these support Thunderbolt. This won’t be a problem for most people, but if you use any Thunderbolt-exclusive accessories such as docks or external displays, they won’t work with the MacBook Neo.
The Force Touch trackpad has been removed
The MacBook Neo’s trackpad doesn’t have Force Touch. This means that the trackpad isn’t pressure sensitive like those on other MacBooks. It won’t support pressure sensitive drawings, multi-touch gestures, or Force clicks.
Other missing features
While I’ve covered the missing features average users are most likely to notice above, there are a few additional cuts that might impact power users especially. Here are the remaining features the MacBook Neo is missing:
Meta is facing a class action lawsuit for false advertising related to its AI glasses following reports about the company’s use of human contractors to review footage captured from users’ glasses. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco, alleges that Meta’s claims about the devices’ privacy features have misled users.
The lawsuit comes after a Swedish newspaper reported that subcontractors in Kenya have raised concerns about viewing footage recorded via Ray-Ban Meta glasses. According to Svenska Dagbladet, workers have reported witnessing “intimate” material, including bathroom visits, sexual encounters and other private details as part of their job labeling objects in videos captured on users’ smart glasses.
“This nationwide class action seeks to hold Meta responsible for its affirmatively false advertising and failure to disclose the true nature of surveillance and its connection to the company’s AI data collection pipeline,” the lawsuit, filed by Clarkson Law Firm, states. The filing names two individuals who live in California and New Jersey who purchased Meta’s smart glasses. It says that both “relied” on Meta’s marketing claims about the glasses’ privacy protecting features and that they would not have purchased them if they knew about the company’s use of contractors. The lawsuit seeks monetary damages and injunctive relief.
A spokesperson for Meta confirmed to Engadget that data from its smart glasses can be shared with human contractors in some cases. The company declined to comment on the claims in the lawsuit.
“Ray-Ban Meta glasses help you use AI, hands free, to answer questions about the world around you,” the spokesperson said. “Unless users choose to share media they’ve captured with Meta or others, that media stays on the user’s device. When people share content with Meta AI, we sometimes use contractors to review this data for the purpose of improving people’s experience, as many other companies do. We take steps to filter this data to protect people’s privacy and to help prevent identifying information from being reviewed.”
What the company doesn’t explicitly say there is that there is no way to use the smart glasses’ “multimodal” featureswithout sharing the captures of your surroundings with the company. As I noted in my review of the second-generation Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses last year: “images of your surroundings processed for the glasses’ multimodal features like Live AI can be used for training purposes (these images aren’t saved to your device’s camera roll).”
So while Meta claims that users’ own recordings are kept private, footage that is captured but not stored locally for users — like video when Live AI is in use — can be sent to contractors who help train the company’s AI models. Meta’s privacy policy doesn’t specifically mention the use of human contractors, though it states that such data can be used for training purposes.
“The undisclosed human review pipeline renders the Meta AI Glasses’ privacy features materially misleading, transforms the product from a personal device into a surveillance conduit, and exposes consumers to unreasonable risks of dignitary harm, emotional distress, stalking, extortion, identity theft, and reputational injury,” the lawsuit says. “Indeed, Meta employees and contractors have described viewing credit card numbers, nudity, sexual activity, and identifiable faces in the footage they reviewed, and reported that Meta’s purported anonymization safeguards do not reliably function.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-hit-with-a-class-action-lawsuit-over-smart-glasses-privacy-claims-182846817.html?src=rss
If your Playdate wishlist is anything like mine (endless), here’s a good excuse to actually go ahead and free some of those games from limbo: Panic is running a two-week-long sale on the Playdate Catalog to celebrate its three-year anniversary. Sure, the majority of Playdate games are pretty cheap as is, but they can still add up when you’re on a wild purchasing spree. Ask me how I know! The sale will be running from March 5 until March 19 at 1PM ET (10AM PT), so take advantage of the discounts while you can.
There are 423 games available in the Catalog now, according to Panic, so if you’re having trouble deciding on which you should go for, I’ve got you covered with a few recommendations right here.
Season Two
If $39 felt like too much to drop on Season Two when it came out last summer, now’s the time to get it. Playdate’s second season had only half the number of games as its first, but it still felt like a much stronger collection. Each of its 12 games is really solid, and there’s plenty of variety in terms of genre and style, from puzzles and hours-long adventures to fast-paced action games that are great for bursts of intense play. And, it comes with Blippo+— an oddball cable TV simulator that’s unlike anything out there right now.
All of these games are worth playing, but there were definitely some standouts from the bunch: The Whiteout, a post-apocalyptic adventure that’ll surely hit even harder now considering the winter we’ve had; the puzzle platformerTaria & Como; the arcade action gameFulcrum Defender; the climbing adventure,Tiny Turnip. I also really enjoyed Dig! Dig! Dino! for something on the chiller side.
Outside Parties
I have not been able to shut up about this game since it came out. It’s unique, it’s creepy, it’s completely engrossing and it really pushes the limits of what the Playdate can do. Outside Parties is a horror scavenger hunt, presenting you with one massive picture to scrutinize and find hidden scenes within, using the crank to adjust the brightness constantly so you can find anything that may be buried in shadow. As you find these targets, more and more of the game’s story comes to light through eerie audio clips. It is such a cool experience and the atmosphere of it all is incredible. You’ll get many hours of playtime out of this one too, with over 150 targets to find and lots of lore to uncover.
Crankstone
A full-blown western for the Playdate! Crankstone is a gallery shooter with minigames mixed throughout, and between the aesthetic, the music and the activities, it’s a lot of fun. You can choose the story mode to get right into the shooting and defending the town from outlaws, or head to the saloon to pick from the handful of mini games individually, including some fast-paced “spot the correct card” deck shuffling games and a few mimicry games involving the crank. It’s like a wild west theme park crammed into the Playdate, which is to say, it’s wonderful.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-playdate-catalogs-3-year-anniversary-sale-is-here-181500105.html?src=rss
Current rumors indicate that the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 may be due for an imminent restock. Considering the effect the current DRAM shortage is having on the market, such a move would be very welcome to budget PC gamers.
The GeForce RTX 3060 may not be ideal for cutting-edge titles at ultra high settings, but it does still have support
Later this evening—Friday morning local time—the new 1.6 L V6 engines that power this year’s crop of Formula 1 machinery will roar into life as practice for the first race of the year gets underway in Melbourne, Australia. After several years in which the teams’ performances converged so much that the sport was determined by finer margins than ever, 2026 sees a comprehensive reset.
The cars are smaller and lighter, and they have different aerodynamic configurations for the corners and the straights. The hybrid systems are more powerful, and each runs on its own bespoke sustainable fuel. There’s even a new way to watch as F1 makes a $750 million move from ESPN to Apple. Over the offseason, throughout the preseason shakedown in Barcelona, and then two three-day tests in Bahrain, plenty of questions have arisen: Are the new technical regulations a mistake? Can we still watch F1TV? And just what the heck is going on, Aston Martin?
400 kW + 350 kW = headaches?
After more than a decade with the same power units—and the same few manufacturers—the sport wanted to attract some new blood. Drawing in more car companies, which have boards and shareholders to answer to, required acknowledging road relevance and some commitment to sustainability and decarbonization. Since OEMs are all about electrification, that meant a greater emphasis on the hybrid side of the power units. And the veneer of environmental responsibility arrives in the form of heavily audited, fully sustainable fuels.
Launching in Early Access today on Quest, Peak Rhythm seeks to refresh the rhythm genre with pulse-pounding music set against a unique climbing mechanic.
To say I like Rhythm games is a cosmic understatement.
I’ve poured thousands of hours into the genre. I helped localize the English release of the Dreamcast cult classic Cool Cool Toon, and spent nine months hounding Masaya Matsuura, creator of PaRappa the Rapper, for an interview. When I had the opportunity to speak with Shawn Layden, former President of Sony Interactive Entertainment America, all we talked about was Vib Ribbon.
There’s no other way to say it. I am obsessed with rhythm games.
So when I say that Peak Rhythm is a very good musical rhythm game, you’ve simply got to trust me.
The Facts
What is it?: Musical rhythm game in VR, where you climb to the beat. Platforms: Meta Quest (reviewed on Quest 3S) Release Date: March 5, 2026 Developer: Zeitlos Interactive Publisher: Impact Inked Price:$12.99
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It’s the Climb
As is typical of many rhythm games, the gameplay hook behind Peak Rhythm is somewhat hard to describe. Despite the developers’ somewhat obtuse explanation that Peak Rhythm is “a VR rhythm-climbing game where music drives momentum,” I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Once I’d spent a few minutes in the game, however, it all began to make sense.
The simplest way to describe Peak Rhythm is to say it’s a game in which you climb in time with the music. You begin each stage standing face to face with a bare climbing wall, upon which handholds appear at various times and in various places. These handholds are color-coded, and surrounded by a ring which closes in time with elements of the game’s music. The goal of Peak Rhythm is to grab the various handholds with the appropriate hand at exactly the right time (when the ring finishes closing).
Pink handholds are meant to be grabbed with your pink (left) hand, while green handholds are meant to be grabbed with your green (right) hand. Handholds may appear above, below, or to your sides, and on more advanced stages, reaching them may require complicated crossovers, leaps, or drops. Blue handholds can be grabbed with either hand, and it’s important to be mindful of what handhold is coming next, after the blue one, so that you have the appropriate hand available when needed.
Grabbing a handhold with the wrong hand or with criminally poor timing will cause you to fall off the climbing wall onto a platform that follows closely beneath (think of it as a rope that doesn’t allow you to fall too far). When this happens, you have to scramble your way back up the wall and grab the next available handhold. The music never stops, so getting back into the groove as quickly as possible is important.
Special handholds also exist to spice things up. There’s a twist mechanic, in which certain handholds require rotation in time with the music. It’s an interesting wrinkle that feels much better in practice than I expected.
The goal of each stage is to grab the handholds at the right time with the correct hand, to scramble yourself along the wall in time with the music. The better you do, the higher you climb in both the game world and on the game’s leaderboards.
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More Than a Feeling
With music and rhythm games, especially in VR, it’s all about feeling. How does the game make you feel? Does the action match with the rhythm? Do you feel like you’re experiencing the music in a meaningful way, and does the gameplay support this?
When I saw Peak Rhythm’s first gameplay trailer, I had doubts. I couldn’t imagine how effectively what I was seeing would translate to a gameplay experience. To be honest, I thought it looked tiresome. By the end of my first climb, I realized I had been wrong.
Peak Rhythm’s gameplay is tight and refined, distilled down to an essential core that feels perfect. The act of lifting and placing your hands to the beat of a song is intuitive and instantly rewarding. The songs are well-designed to complement the gameplay, which is intelligently balanced and consistently interesting. There’s an intangible element here which exists in all of the best rhythm games, which allows you to ebb into and out of a sort of flow state, where the music and gameplay becomes so well-linked that playing the game feels the same as listening to a great album.
The built-in soundtrack features original tracks spanning several genres, including drum & bass, dubstep, and house, with tracks from FEISTLING, Killin’ Void, Ion Diary, and funiel, and while I admittedly hadn’t heard of these artists prior to my time with Peak Rhythm, their tunes are consistently great and the entire set list suits the game perfectly.
On top of all that, Peak Rhythm will get you moving. We’re not talking about Beat Saber levels of activity, but you will burn a few calories, and that’s at least a happy side-effect of playing a fun game.
In addition to the game’s native tracks, Zeitlos Interactive has also developed a beatmap editor with which users can create their own custom stages using their own music files.
This feature immediately puts me in mind of Sony’s Vib Ribbon, which I previously mentioned, a PlayStation game released in 1999 that invented and patented a method for creating custom levels based on the audio files from any CD that the player might insert into the system. While that now-ancient PlayStation game could automatically generate levels from any music file on its own, Peak Rhythm’s custom song system relies on human users to do the work of creating a beatmap and custom stage.
Still, user-generated content hypothetically gives the game near-infinite replayability, plus a sort of custom soundtrack perfectly suited to each players’ unique taste.
The developers have let me know that “the custom song feature works through a standalone desktop app.” And while this hasn’t been published during my pre-release play period, I’m told it should be available at launch, and that a “work-in-progress version is currently circulating within Impact Labs (QA and playtesting).”
Screenshot of Peak Rhythm’s custom level maker desktop app.
Comfort
Peak Rhythm is playable in sitting, standing, and room scale configuration. In addition, there are numerous options for audio levels, comfort, and accessibility, including input adjustments, and selectable offset for player height.
Trouble
All that said, no game is perfect and Peak Rhythm is no exception. The visuals are uninspired. While this graphical simplicity makes the rhythm gameplay more legible, I can’t help but be disappointed by the general lack of visual interest present in the immediate environment, in the backgrounds, in the central starting hub and menus… essentially, everywhere.
We’re supposed to be climbing a skyscraper at night. This should be the coolest looking thing I’ve ever seen. But as it exists today, it’s bland.
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And while the soundtrack is great, as mentioned, it’s still quite limited. This can be forgiven, perhaps, on account of the game’s Early Access status and its allowance for custom songs. But I’m reaching. There simply needs to be more music in this musical rhythm game.
Lastly, there’s no multiplayer. While a multiplayer mode is planned for an upcoming update “shortly after launch,” I can’t review features that don’t yet exist, nor do I know what shape the game’s multiplayer will take. For now, the omission is a notable strike.
It’s the End of the Review As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
On balance, Peak Rhythm is a very good game, and with further development beyond its Early Access period, it could easily become a great one. The team’s planned roadmap is ambitious. We’ll just have to see how closely and quickly they stick to it.
After spending a few days scrambling up its skyscrapers, leaping, reaching, and scampering along with its eclectic (though limited) soundtrack thumping in my ears, Peak Rhythm feels like a favorite album, a game that I’ll return to again and again.
Peak Rhythm is out now in Early Access on Quest for $12.99.
UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.
Puzzling Places, a delightful 3D jigsaw puzzle game, will launch on Steam in April.
Realities.io has announced that their VR jigsaw game, known for turning real-world locations into hand-crafted 3D puzzles, is coming to PC VR for the very first time on April 9 via Steam.
Puzzling Places has previously been available on Quest, PlayStation VR2, Pico and Apple Vision Pro, where it has been very popular and cumulatively amassed over 3,000 user reviews. The Steam release brings the game’s intricate miniature puzzle scenes to a new audience, along with two game modes (Classic Mode or the guided Journey Mode), and adjustable difficulty levels.
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The Steam release has naturally been optimized for VR, but will also be playable as a flat screen experience on desktop and Steam Deck. Cross-device play will allow users to jump from VR to flat screen devices at their leisure.
When Puzzling Places debuted on Meta Quest, our reviewer called it “a resounding success,” and “[…] one of the best and most unique puzzle games on the platform.”
The built-for-Quest puzzle game allows players to piece together full-scale fossils of iconic dinosaurs.
Le Dino Lab is a mixed reality puzzle builder in which players reconstruct fossils of dinosaur skeletons bone by bone. The game uses full hand tracking interaction, allowing fragments of iconic dinosaurs to be examined, rotated, and assembled into complete creatures all within the player’s real-world environment. When a dinosaur is completed, it springs to true life size, driving home the sheer enormity of these ancient creatures.
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The base game is available now and includes five dinosaurs: Tyrannosaurus Rex, Spinosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Styracosaurus, and the airborne Pteranodon.
In addition to today’s release, the game’s developers have announced an upcoming DLC, “Jurassic Giants,” which includes three species from the Jurassic era, and a roadmap for future updates that includes new themed packs, deeper skeletal manipulation, enhanced environmental integration, and more.
We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
If you lose something important, invariably it will happen at the worst possible time—say, your keys disappearing right before you need to leave the house, or you can’t find the remote and the big game is starting. Bluetooth trackers exist to help solve this exact problem, and now is a good time to pick up a bunch of them at a discount: A four-pack Samsung Galaxy SmartTag 2 is currently $44.99 on Woot, compared with $55.99 on Amazon.
The bundle includes four trackers. Prime members get free standard shipping, while everyone else pays $6, though the item does not ship to Alaska, Hawaii, or PO box addresses. Woot lists the deal as running for a little over three weeks or until it sells out, whichever happens first. Price trackers also suggest this deal is about as low as these trackers have dropped.
Each tag weighs less than half an ounce, and Samsung has redesigned the casing to include a larger metal-reinforced loop to make it easier to attach the tracker to bags, bikes, or a pet collar without needing a separate holder, notes this PCMag review. The SmartTag 2 uses Bluetooth Low Energy to connect to your phone when you are nearby, so you can trigger a ring to help track something down around the house. If the item is farther away, the tag can still show its location through Samsung’s SmartThings Find network, which uses nearby Galaxy devices to anonymously update the tag’s location. Some newer Galaxy phones also support ultra-wideband (UWB), which adds directional guidance on the screen, so you can walk toward the tracker once you are close.
The tag itself is IP67-rated, so it can handle rain, dust, or being tossed into a gym bag without much concern. Samsung also uses a replaceable battery that can last around a year, so you won’t need to replace the tracker every time it runs out of power. That said, the biggest catch is that this tracker is built for the Samsung ecosystem, given that it only works with Samsung Galaxy phones or tablets running Android 9 or newer, and it relies on Samsung’s SmartThings Find network. If you use an iPhone or another Android brand, this is not the right tracker for you (Apple’s AirTag works better for iPhones, while Tile Pro is a more flexible option for mixed-device households). For Galaxy users, though, the experience is simple, and the tracking network works well in busy areas.
As part of Epic’s settlement with Google over the Play Store, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney agreed to stop criticizing Google’s app store practices until 2032 and even publicly support the revised policies. The deal also prohibits Epic from pushing for further changes to Google’s platform rules. The Verge reports: On March 3rd, he not only signed away Epic’s rights to sue and disparage the company, he signed away his right to advocate for any further changes to Google’s app store polices. He can’t criticize Google’s app store practices. In fact, he has to praise them. The contract states that “Epic believes that the Google and Android platform, with the changes in this term sheet, are procompetitive and a model for app store / platform operations, and will make good faith efforts to advocate for the same.”
He may even have to appear in other courts around the world to defend this deal with Google, and Google gets to make sure his public statements are supportive of the deal from here on out. And while Epic can still be part of the “Coalition for App Fairness,” the organization that Epic quietly and solely funded to be its attack dog against Google and Apple, he can only point that organization at Apple now. “Google is opening up Android all the way with robust support for competing stores, competing payments, and a better deal for all developers. So, we’ve settled all of our disputes worldwide. THANKS GOOGLE!,” Sweeney wrote in a post on X on Wednesday.
OpenAI is releasing a new model today, and like GPT-5.2 before it, GPT-5.4 is all about professional work. OpenAI is calling GPT-5.4 its most capable frontier model for tasks like coding and data analysis. OpenAI claims the new model produced presentations with stronger, more varied aesthetics and made more effective use of its image generation tools.
It’s also the first model from OpenAI built with native computer-use capabilities, making it better at carrying out tasks across several apps at the same time. When it comes to computer use, one noticeable improvement OpenAI has recorded is the way GPT-5.4 issues mouse and keyboard commands. It’s significantly better at navigating a desktop environment than its predecessor.
When users turn to GPT-5.4 in ChatGPT, where it will now be the default model for the chatbot’s Thinking mode, the system will outline how it plans to tackle a request, giving people the opportunity to tell it to adjust course as it’s generating a response. At the same time, the new model offers better web research capabilities, especially when it comes to “highly specific” queries, according to OpenAI.
“Together, these improvements mean higher-quality answers that arrive faster and stay relevant to the task at hand,” the company states. Separately, OpenAI claims GPT-5.4 is its most factual model yet, noting, relative to GPT-5.2, it’s 18 percent less likely to generate a response with any errors. Here’s hoping it knows not to turn to Grokipedia for information, something its predecessor was known to do.
As mentioned, GPT-5.4 will be available in ChatGPT when users select the chatbot’s Thinking mode, and as GPT-5.4 Pro from the model picker. As such, this isn’t a release for Free and Go users — or even Plus subscribers, for that matter. It’s more for enterprise customers, and developers who rely on the company’s Codex app. On that note, for API customers, OpenAI claims GPT-5.4 is its most token efficient reasoning model to date, though those tokens will cost more than their GPT-5.2 counterparts. For instance, OpenAI is pricing one million input tokens at $2.50, up from $1.75 with GPT-5.2.
The fact that OpenAI has increasingly shifted its strategy to focus on professionals shouldn’t be surprising. When Microsoft announced last September it would add Anthropic’s models to Copilot 365 (where previously it depended exclusively on OpenAI’s systems), there were reports that suggested the company made the decision because it found Claude was better at tasks like generating spreadsheets and presentations. Reporting from The Informationsuggests OpenAI is generating about $25 billion in annualized revenue. However, the company is still far from being profitable, and with more than $1.4 trillion in data center commitments on the books, it’s reliant on funding from investors to keep the lights on. Seen in that context, productivity represents a place where it might have a chance to build a sustainable business.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/i-hope-you-like-spreadsheets-because-gpt-54-loves-them-180000444.html?src=rss
James Gunn and Peter Safran injected a much-needed shot of levity into the DC Universe when they took over the franchise and launched their “Gods and Monsters” chapter. But they’re getting a bit more serious with the latest installment: Lanterns, an eight-episode series that reimagines the Green Lantern mythology as a gritty prestige crime drama/spy thriller in the vein of True Detective and Slow Horses.
The logline says the show will focus on two versions of the Green Lantern who find themselves “drawn into a dark, Earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American Heartland” (i.e., Nebraska). Will it work? We’ll see. This series was barely on my radar before, but the extended teaser that dropped last night is tonally unique for the DCU and so well done that the show now has a place on my must-watch TV list for 2026.
Kyle Chandler plays Hal Jordan, a former test pilot who is nearing his retirement from the Green Lantern Corps. He’s training a new recruit, John Stewart Jr. (Aaron Pierre), to replace him. Nathan Fillion reprises his Superman role as the obnoxious Guy Gardner. The cast also includes Kelly McDonald as Kerry, a small-town family-oriented sheriff; Jason Ritter as Billy Macon, Kerry’s husband; Garret Dillahunt as William Macon, Kerry’s cowboy father-in-law; Poorna Jagannathan as a woman named Zoe; Ulrich Thomsen as Sinestro, a former Corps member who’s gone rogue; and Paul Ben-Victor as an extraterrestrial called Antaan.
Two months ago, a key staffer for Sen. Ted Cruz said in a public meeting that she was “begging” NASA to release a document that would kick off the second round of a competition among private companies to develop replacements for the International Space Station.
There has been no movement since then, as NASA has yet to release this “request for proposals.” So this week, Cruz stepped up the pressure on the space agency with a NASA Authorization bill that passed his committee on Wednesday.
Regarding NASA’s support for the development of commercial space stations, the bill mandates the following, within specified periods, of passage of the law:
It might sound like the stuff of daydreams now, but once upon a time it was briefly the very real intention of Sony and Nintendo to collaborate on a console. Nicknamed the Nintendo PlayStation, the idea was that a new CD-ROM format backed by Sony would be added to the cartridge-based Super NES, resulting in a hybrid console that could play both.
The partnership didn’t last long, though, with Nintendo backing out before it ever really got off the ground, announcing that it would instead be working with Philips. Sony decided to make the PlayStation on its own instead, in an act of revenge that you have to say paid off in the long run, and we never did get to see Crash Bandicoot running around the Mushroom Kingdom. Still, the short-lived Nintendo PlayStation remains a fascinating what-if scenario in video game history, and the USA’s National Video Museum has acquired the original development kit.
BREAKING: The NVM has acquired the mythical Nintendo Playstation! �
This Sony MSF-1 is the OLDEST known existing Nintendo Playstation hardware artifact, and is the original development system for Sony’s planned Super Nintendo CD attachment. It is the ONLY known unit to exist!… pic.twitter.com/9JQyCsFtxc
Codenamed the MSF-1, the device now in the museum’s possession is the oldest known prototype of the console that never was, and according to the Texas-based NVM, likely the only one that still exists. Being a dev kit, it’s unsurprisingly not the most attractive thing to look at, and definitely not something you would guess is designed to play video games if you didn’t know any better. But it’s still a hell of an artifact for the museum to get its hands on.
Presumably very few people outside of Sony and Nintendo would have had access to the MSF-1, but just over a decade ago Engadget was able to test an ultra-rare prototype of what was going to be the consumer product. The same prototype was later sold for more than $300,000 at an auction.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-national-videogame-museum-has-acquired-the-mythical-nintendo-playstation-173529085.html?src=rss
With a number of file-system improvements in Linux 6.19 and more file-system optimizations in Linux 7.0, it’s past due for running some fresh file-system benchmarks. Here is a look at how the prominent file-system contenders are performing on the latest Linux 7.0 development kernel.
Google is living up to its word and posting warning labels for battery-killing apps. 9to5Googlespotted Google’s rollout announcement, which the company previously said would arrive on March 1.
The label says, “This app may use more battery than expected due to high background activity.” If you don’t yet see the warnings, they may not have reached you yet. Google says the banners will “roll out gradually to impacted apps” in the coming weeks.
Play Store battery warning
Google
Warning labels aren’t the only stick in Google’s fight against infringing apps. They may also be excluded from discovery services like Play Store recommendations.
Google’s definition of battery-draining apps centers around Android’s “partial wake lock” mechanism. This service allows an app to keep the phone’s processor running even while the screen is off. There are logical exceptions where apps do need this: audio playback, location access, etc. But the company apparently sees too many abusing that API for other reasons. And Google wouldn’t want people to assume the problem is with the hardware and switch to an iPhone — because then we’re talking about money.
If you’re a developer, Google’s technical documentation offers much more detail. For everyone else, keep an eye out for those Play Store labels and consider steering clear of those apps until their devs clean things up.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/google-begins-calling-out-battery-killing-android-apps-170650936.html?src=rss
