YouTuber Shane Luis has tweeted some amazing photos of a new-in-box game development kit for the Nintendo 64’s Disk Drive (64DD), a very rare peripheral never released outside of Japan that played games off proprietary floppy disks. You can (and should!) read look through the whole thread starting with this tweet, but I’m going to share some of the photos here in this article.
Here’s what the box looks like — nothing flashy.
I was asked to verify and photograph a Nintendo 64 Disk Drive (64DD) Development Kit from a private video game collector. The system was new in box and needed to be carefully documented.
This is what it looks like to unbox one. pic.twitter.com/X2PflhtemW
— Shane Luis (@RerezTV) March 24, 2021
Inside that dark blue box on the top right were five 64DD Development Disks, which were a dark blue instead of the gray used for retail games.
The development kit also included a special adapter to let developers plug in two N64 cartridges at once instead of just one. When everything was connected together, here’s what that looked like:
Here’s the 64DD itself, which has a blue trim around the disk slot used to signify it as a development device that matches the color used for the development disks:
The top of the unit is designed to sit directly under a Nintendo 64 console. They connect through the port you can see on the top. On the bottom you’ll find a fastener designed to lock the two together. pic.twitter.com/792Vy8GYZY
— Shane Luis (@RerezTV) March 24, 2021
And here’s the whole 64DD development system connected together and attached to a Nintendo 64. It’s huge! (Though seemingly not as huge as the PS5.)
When combined all together you’re ready to start developing 64DD games!
Unfortunately this system was never used and the 64DD platform failed to take off. If the 64DD was a success who knows what might have happened! pic.twitter.com/GWDjC2J3GA
— Shane Luis (@RerezTV) March 24, 2021
I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to see a 64DD myself since the peripheral wasn’t much of a success (only nine games were released for it), and it only came out in Japan. But these photos might be the next best thing and are just a plain interesting look at something from Nintendo’s past.
Again, I strongly recommend scrolling through the whole thread in full or checking out his album of photos on the Internet Archive.
There’s a giant cargo ship stuck in the Suez Canal. I’m sure you’ve heard, but in case you haven’t, welcome to the first major spectacle the internet has collectively rubbernecked to this degree since those llamas cavorted around an Arizona town in… 2015? Really? Woof.
Anyway, the whole internet loves the stuck boat, especially since it also appears to have charted a very phallic course into the canal before it drifted into its current position. Sure, it’s causing hundreds of other ships to bottleneck, and sure, that will probably inevitably cause some headaches for an already-strained global supply chain. Yes, oil prices are up, and there may be another run on toilet paper as a result, but for now, let us just have this moment, okay?
Stuck boat memes abound, but if you want to keep the closest eye on the beached MV Ever Given, you have a few options. Incredibly, there is no live stream (or even an old-school webcam), so you’ll have to get a bit creative.
My go-to so far has been MyShipTracking, which is basically a version of FlightRadar24 for boats. You get a top-down interactive map to play around with that is updated in near real time, so you can watch all of the little tug and support boats helplessly swarm around the MV Ever Given or check out all of the other ships stuck waiting (or watch them finally decide to bail and go around Africa instead). It also has the easiest access I’ve found to highlight a ship’s prior track, so you can quickly scour the different paths the various boats took to get to this new dead end.
You got this, little buddy.Image: Suez Canal Authority
VesselFinder is another good option with similar capabilities. VesselFinder is also seizing its moment by creating stuck boat content on YouTube, where it has reanimated the cargo ship’s dick-drawing skills as well as its ill-fated passage through the canal.
The Suez Canal Authority has uploaded a few incredibly dramatic videos of the big boat, and I applaud any effort by them to create more.
Then there are the satellite companies, which often take opportunities like this to show off what their tech is capable of, like Capella Space’s eerie radar images of the very stuck boat or Airbus Space’s incredible high-res shots.
So buckle up, folks. The effort to float the big boat and get it moving again could take days, maybe even weeks. Enjoy the memes while they last.
Open up the $69 million NFT that Beeple sold at Christie’s, and you won’t find much. The name of the artwork isn’t there. The name of the artist is missing. And crucially, you won’t even find the actual piece of art.
That’s not a flaw in Beeple’s NFT — it’s just how the system works.
It turns out, the house of cards that is the NFT system is even more precarious than it first appears. NFTs are fundamentally built on trust — trust that a seller won’t screw you over, trust that these tokens magically have value — and that holds true even at the deepest level of the system. Ultimately, you’re buying a collection of metadata defining what you own.
But there’s one significant gap in the system ensuring that an NFT is held together: NFTs use links to direct you to somewhere else where the art and any details about it are being stored. And as anyone who has browsed the internet before should know, links can and do die. So what happens if your NFT breaks down and points to nothing?
“That’s an awfully expensive 404 error for buyers of these NFTs,” Aaron Perzanowski, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University and co-author of The End of Ownership, wrote in an email to The Verge.
NFTs are digital tokens used to buy and sell digital art. But unlike a painting, which can be placed in a buyer’s home, an NFT is more like a piece of paper saying you own something — generally, a digital illustration or a video. Sometimes, a weird-looking cat.
The system usually relies on the Ethereum blockchain, which ensures a few things: it keeps an unalterable record of everyone who has owned the NFT, and it keeps the NFT from ever changing. That means someone who buys an NFT and then resells it can’t misrepresent what they own. It’s all there in the NFT, just how it was when they bought it. You can think of it like the papers that authenticate a thoroughbred: they’re not the horse, but they certify the provenance and history of one.
Very little data is stored directly inside an NFT, though. The NFT includes information on where you can find a description of the artist’s name and the title of the work, but that information is not typically on the blockchain itself. NFTs include information on where you can find the artwork they represent, but the actual artwork is still a link away.
Traditional URLs pose real problems for NFTs. The owner of the domain could redirect the URL to point to something else (leaving you with, perhaps, a million-dollar Rickroll), or the owner of the domain could just forget to pay their hosting bill, and the whole thing disappears. The animation that Grimes sold for $389,000 is primarily sourced to a pair of traditional URLs, which could break down if either of the two different companies (Nifty Gateway, the auction site; or Cloudinary, the web host) went under. As the buyer, this is something you’d have no control over, unless you’re wealthy enough to buy out the entire domain and pay to keep it online.
To solve that problem, many NFTs turn to a system called IPFS, or InterPlanetary File System. Rather than identifying a specific file at a specific domain, IPFS addresses let you find a piece of content so long as someone somewhere on the IPFS network is hosting it. Grimes’ NFT uses this as a backup, and Beeple’s NFT uses this primarily. That means a multitude of hosts, rather than a single domain owner, could be ensuring these files remain online. This system also gives buyers control. They can pay to keep their NFT’s files online. They still have to remember to pay the hosting bill, but they can host it anywhere in the IPFS network.
Still, the system has flaws. The team behind Check My NFT has been looking inside of NFTs to see if their IPFS addresses actually work, and in several cases, they’ve found files that just won’t load. The team found artworks that were temporarily missing from major artists, including Grimes, deadmau5, and Steve Aoki. The files came back online eventually, but only after the team called attention to their absence. The files have to be actively available on the network for the system to work, and unlike with a domain owner, no host has a singular responsibility to do that for files on IPFS.
“One hard drive crashing could lead to permanent loss of the assets,” the Check My NFT team warned in a message to The Verge.
Like a painting, NFTs need to be maintained. If a buyer purchases an NFT that relies on IPFS, it’ll ultimately be on them to ensure the file continues to be hosted and available to the system. If the NFT relies on a traditional URL, then buyers would be in a more precarious position, having to hope that whatever third party currently hosts the file — often the auction site, like with Grimes’ NFT — stays online.
So there’s a very real chance that, some years from now, an NFT will point to a missing file. If that’s the case, how do you prove what it is you actually own? “You’re still at this stage of evolution of blockchain where you need to have a traditional written contract that tells you what you are getting and that’s enforceable against the seller of that asset,” David Hoppe, managing partner at Gamma Law, told The Verge.
But most buyers don’t exactly have that. Despite the buzz around Ethereum’s “smart contracts,” NFTs typically do not include the literal contract a buyer agrees to with the seller of a work detailing what they’re getting and how they can use it. Those rights are typically just built into an auction site’s terms of service. “In many cases, NFTs offer very little beyond a bare claim of ownership of the NFT itself,” Perzanowski wrote.
Buyers could end up in one of two situations: in one case, they own an NFT with a broken link, but they and the rest of the world understand what artwork it used to represent — say, an extremely expensive collage. So long as that image exists somewhere in the world, it’s possible the NFT would retain value as long as the artist, owner, and prospective buyers all agree on what the token is meant to represent. It is, after all, a system built on trust.
In the other scenario, the image has gone missing, and no one can tell what artwork the NFT was originally tied to. If that’s the case, it’s hard to imagine the NFT would have had much value anyway. You can’t sell a painting that’s been burned or a statue that’s been lost. And an NFT with missing art is just that — nothing to look at.
Motorola has added support for two new indigenous languages spoken in the Amazon as part of a larger effort to make technology more accessible. Beginning today, Kaingang and Nheengatu will be among the language options available on Motorola Android devices. Any Motorola phone updated to Android 11 will be able to access the new language options, not just its most expensive models.
“We believe that this initiative will raise awareness towards language revitalization, not only will impact the communities that we’re working directly with, but right now we’re in the process of open sourcing all that language data from Android into Unicode,” Janine Oliveira, Motorola’s executive director for globalization software, said in an interview with The Verge. “And by doing that we believe that we’re going to pave the way for more endangered indigenous languages to be added, not only on Android, but also on other smartphones.”
The Kaingang language comes from an agricultural community of people in southeastern Brazil, and only about half of the community still speaks it, Motorola found. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has designated Kaingang “definitely endangered.” This means that children no longer learn it as their first language at home.
The Nheengatu community of about 20,000 people lives mostly in the Amazon, but only about 6,000 people in the region still speak that language, so UNESCO considers Nheengatu “severely endangered.” That’s the second-most serious category before a language is considered “extinct.” UNESCO classifies a language as severely endangered if it’s spoken by grandparents and older generations, who may not speak it among themselves or to children.
Both of the indigenous communities rely heavily on mobile technology, even though they may not always have reliable internet access, said Juliana Rebelatto, globalization manager and head linguist at Motorola’s mobile business group. “Teachers use their mobile phones in their classroom to teach their curriculum, so now that the phones will be in Kaingang and Nheengatu this will really help with the learning process,” she said.
The Kaingang welcome screen on Motorola.Image: Motorola
The Nheengatu welcome screen.Image: Motorola
It makes sense that Motorola has a focus on Brazil: as of February, it had 21 percent of the market share in the country among smartphone manufacturers, ahead of Apple and second only to Samsung. Rebelatto acknowledged there isn’t necessarily a big return on investment for Motorola by incorporating the indigenous languages into its system; the move isn’t likely to add a huge number of new users for its products.
“We know that for most people it will be just another language in a drop down menu but for the people who speak that language, it’s a big innovation. It is part of the bigger mindset we have about digital inclusion,” she said.
Rebelatto said it was their colleague Robert Melo, Motorola’s internationalization lead, who first realized that there were no Latin American indigenous languages represented in any form of digitalized technology. “We started researching ways that Motorola could change that story,” she said.
The company partnered with the University of Campinas in São Paulo, Brazil, and worked with Professor Wilmar D’Angelis, a researcher in cultural anthropology and indigenous languages. “He has dedicated his life, 40 plus years, into researching languages,” Rebelatto noted, and he proved vital in helping the company narrow down which indigenous languages it would choose.
Motorola’s linguistics team worked with native language speakers of both languages throughout the project, which meant training them on the company’s tools and practices while on a multinational schedule. “We had to ship Lenovo PCs to communities where the mail barely got into,” Oliveira said, all during a pandemic.
But the native speakers were eager to help, Rebelatto added. One of the women who was a translator on the project told them she couldn’t wait for the languages to be available on phones: “She now has all the argument she needs to convince her child to learn their ancestral language, because it will be on the phones they use every day.”
Ozias Yaguarê Yamã Glória de Oliveira Aripunãguá with his daughter.Image: Motorola
Nheengatu speaker Ozias Yaguarê Yamã Glória de Oliveira Aripunãguá worked with Motorola on the project and emphasized the cultural importance of the language. “You must understand that over time, Nheengatu has been weakening more and more, and today, many times, due to discrimination against the language, people are ashamed to use it,” he said in an email to The Verge.
“But you can’t talk about the Amazon without talking about Nheengatu because the two are linked … it’s part of the essence, it’s the core. The soul of the Amazon is Nheengatu,” he said. Seventy percent of fish names are Nheengatu names, and 50 to 60 percent of the city and river names are Nheengatu names as well, Yaguarê added. “There is no way to talk about one without talking about the other.”
The team plans to open source all of the data it collected as part of the project, hundreds of thousands of UI strings, for anyone to use or research the Amazon languages, not only on Android, but other platforms as well. They had to customize a keyboard and are working with Google on the process of including the languages in G-board.
“We don’t intend to stop here,” said Renata Altenfelder, Motorola executive director for brand. “We are putting this as an open source because we truly believe this should be something for everyone to join.” More endangered languages will be added to the project, she added, they just haven’t decided which ones yet.
Rebelatto added that by digitizing endangered languages, the company hoped it would draw more attention to them and motivate other tech companies to consider similar initiatives. The Motorola project, she added, “will allow technology to have its rightful place in the preservation of not only the language but in their traditions, in their culture and their story.”
Wiring code for your Raspberry Pi Pico can fall into two categories. The easy way for new users is to use a version of Python such as MicroPython or CircuitPython. A more advanced way is to write code in C / C++ which is for more confident users.
There is now a third way that we can write code for our Raspberry Pi Pico, and that is via the Arduino IDE, which uses “Arduino Language,” a derivative of C++. Because Arduino has been around for so many years, there’s a ton of pre-existing “sketches” (the Arduino term for programs) and tutorials for it. If you’ve worked with Arduino boards before, you may be very familiar with this powerful IDE and language.
We’ve gone through many different setup processes and found two community created projects that streamline the installation process to just a handful of steps. The first is pico-setup-windows which is a Windows port of the official Pico setup script. The second is Arduino-Pico which adds support for the Raspberry Pi Pico to the Arduino IDE. In this tutorial we show you how to set up your Windows or Ubuntu machine to write Arduino code on your Raspberry Pi Pico
How to Program Raspberry Pi Pico in Arduino IDE for Windows
1. Download the pico-setup-windows installer. This is a fairly large download.
2. Launch the installer.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
3. Ensure that all of the components are selected. This will install approximately 360MB of files and applications to your machine. Including the files necessary for building C/C++ files, Visual Studio Code, and Git version control.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
4. Click Install to install all of the applications. This can take some time, and at times it may appear stuck, but be patient.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
5. Download the Arduino IDE and install it to your machine. We chose v 1.8.13, but the beta of v 2.0 also works.
6. Open the Arduino application and navigate to File >> Preferences.
7. In the additional boards manager, add this line and click OK.
9. Type “pico” in the search box and then install the Raspberry Pi Pico / RP2040 board. This will trigger another large download, approximately 300MB in size.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
10. Go to Tools >> Board >> Raspberry Pi RP2040 Boards and select Raspberry Pi Pico.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
11. Connect your Raspberry Pi Pico and using Device Manager locate the COM port that it is connected to.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
12. Under Tools >> Port, set the COM port for the Raspberry Pi Pico.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
13. Open Files >> Examples >> Basics >> Blink to test that we can write code to the Arduino.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
14. Click on Upload to write the code to the Raspberry Pi Pico. The default Blink sketch will flash the green LED next to the micro USB port on the Raspberry Pi Pico.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The output window will tell us when the upload is complete. Look at your Raspberry Pi Pico and you will see the green LED flashing once per second.
How to Program Raspberry Pi Pico in Arduino IDE for Linux
We used Ubuntu for this tutorial, but the same instructions should work for other Debian based distributions such as Raspberry Pi OS.
1. Open a terminal and use wget to download the official Pico setup script.
2. In the same terminal modify the downloaded file so that it is executable.
$ chmod +x pico_setup.sh
3. Run pico_setup.sh to start the installation process. Enter your sudo password if prompted.
$ ./pico_setup.sh
4. Download the Arduino IDE and install it to your machine. We chose v 1.8.13, but the beta of v 2.0 also works.
5. Open a terminal and add your user to the group “dialout.” This group can communicate with devices such as the Arduino. Using “$USER” will automatically use your username.
$ sudo usermod -a -G dialout “$USER”
6. Log out or reboot your computer for the changes to take effect.
7. Open the Arduino application and go to File >> Preferences.
8. In the additional boards manager add this line and click OK.
10. Type “pico” in the search box and then install the Raspberry Pi Pico / RP2040 board. This will trigger another large download, approximately 300MB in size.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
11. Go to Tools >> Board >> Raspberry Pi RP2040 Boards and select Raspberry Pi Pico.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
12. Connect your Raspberry Pi Pico
13. Run a command to locate the USB device which identifies as a Raspberry Pi Pico. In our case it was ttyACM0.
$ dmesg
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
14. Open Files >> Examples >> Basics >> Blink to test that we can write code to the Arduino.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
15. Click on Upload to write the code to the Raspberry Pi Pico. The default Blink sketch will flash the green LED next to the micro USB port on the Raspberry Pi Pico.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The output window will tell us when the upload is complete. Look at your Raspberry Pi Pico and you will see the green LED flashing once per second.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Raspberry Pi Pico Tutorials:
How to Set Up and Program Raspberry Pi Pico
How To Solder Pins to Your Raspberry Pi Pico
How To Get Wi-Fi, Internet on Raspberry Pi Pico
How to Use an OLED Display with Raspberry Pi Pico
How to Use an Ultrasonic Sensor with Raspberry Pi Pico
Apple has a rocky relationship with some iOS developers because of its seemingly arbitrary decisions over what gets published and when — and now, because of a dumb miss, it’s being accused of putting profits ahead of human rights in Myanmar by the founder of ProtonMail and ProtonVPN, even though that’s probably not what happened.
Proton founder Andy Yen writes that Apple blocked an important security update to the company’s privacy-protecting ProtonVPN software simply because Apple didn’t like the app’s description, specifically this line:
Whether it is challenging governments, educating the public, or training journalists, we have a long history of helping bring online freedom to more people around the world.
If you’re having a hard time finding anything objectionable there, you’re not alone — but Apple told Proton it wasn’t okay to encourage “users to bypass geo-restrictions or content limitations.”
The context here is that VPNs have become a critical tool for protesters in Myanmar to sidestep an huge internet crackdown during the country’s ongoing, bloody military coup. One researcher told Bloomberg that VPN use has increased 7,200 percent since early last month, when the government blocked Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
I’m with Daring Fireball’s John Gruber on this: I highly doubt Apple made a conscious decision to deny ProtonVPN to Myanmar — the company’s smart enough to know how that would look, and it’s not like the app was blocked, just a security update. Yen is an outspoken critic of the App Store now, having told Congress (and The Verge) last year how he’d been strong-armed by Apple.
But the fact it’s just a security update makes the rejection extra dumb,because Apple explicitly said last year that it’d no longer hold up bug fixes because of these arbitrary guideline violations.
Regardless, Apple comes off looking a little like the bad guy here, especially now that ProtonVPN has taken the high road and ceded to Apple’s demands. “Due to the emergency situation in Myanmar, we removed the language about challenging governments which Apple found objectionable, and the app was finally approved,” Yen tells The Verge. Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.
That perception seems like it’s going to be increasingly hard to fight, now that antitrust scrutiny of Apple’s App Store has been heating up in Congress and the courts, with the Epic App Store trial set to begin May 3rd.
It doesn’t help when Apple is seemingly caught breaking its own rules and needing to apologize, particularly when it could be seen as retaliation against an app developer (Yen) who’d previously spoken out. Last year, many other developers weren’t willing to come forward and admit they’d been forced to add in-app purchases to their apps, specifically because they feared retaliation.
(Pocket-lint) – The first generation Mavic Air and the DJI Spark were the two smallest drones in the company’s profuct offering when they first launched. They’ve since been replaced by the Mini and the Air 2, but if you’re looking to get into droning with something small and easy, you could still do worse than picking up one of the older models used.
With DJI having launched the massively popular and very portable Mavic Pro in the second half of 2016 and the palm-sized smaller Spark followed a year later, it was hard to see where the Chinese drone king was going next. Of course, we’ve now seen the Mavic Mini and Air 2 bring the foldable Mavic design down to Spark size.
squirrel_widget_141676
DJI Spark vs. DJI Mavic Air: Design
Mavic Air is foldable, Spark is not
Spark weighs 300 grams
Mavic Air weighs 430 grams
Spark measures 143 x 143 x 55 mm
Mavic Air measures 168 x 184 x 64 mm unfolded (168 x 83 x 49 mm folded)
There are a number of differences in design between the Spark and Mavic Air, but the most important is undoubtedly the foldable arms. Like the bigger Mavic Pro, you can collapse all four of the arms on the Air, while the small Spark has completely rigid arms.
Due to being foldable, the Mavic Air is far easier to carry around in the side pocket of a rucksack – or stowed away in an inner bag compartment – than the Spark. It’s much narrower and thinner than the Spark when folded, but is bigger when unfolded. That said, at 430 grams, it’s heavier than the 300 gram Spark.
Colour choices are less varied with the Mavic Air however, with only Alpine White, Onyx Black and Flame Red available at launch. Spark’s range is more colourful, with Sky Blue, Lava Red, Meadow Green and Sunrise Yellow available alongside the Alpine White.
DJI Spark vs. DJI Mavic Air: Performance
Mavic Air 21 min flight time
Spark 16 min flight time
2km range vs. 4km range
It may have a more portable design, thanks to those foldable arms, but that doesn’t mean the Mavic Air skimps on performance. In fact, in most measurable ways, the Mavic is superior.
DJI’s latest portable drone has an impressive maximum flight time of 21 minutes. That’s a notable upgrade on the 16 minutes you got with the Spark. You can fly it further too. Its 4km remote control transmission range means you can fly it twice as far as the Spark, which has a 2km range.
It’s a similar story with maximum altitude. Mavic Air’s maximum ceiling above sea level is 5,000 metres, while the Spark climbs as high as 4,000 metres and then can’t go any further.
As for speed, you guessed it, the Mavic Air’s top speed is higher than the Spark’s. Mavic Air can get up to speeds of 42mph in Sport Mode. That’s 11mph more than the Spark’s maximum 31mph. Both devices can fly in winds up to 22mph and stabilise themselves.
DJI Spark vs. DJI Mavic Air: Features and Control
Enhanced obstacle avoidance on Mavic Air
ActiveTrack on both
Two new QuickShot modes on Mavic Air
Both drones feature obstacle avoidance systems to stop you from flying head first into trees, or buildings. DJI Spark can detect obstacles up to five meters away using its front facing sensor system. Yet again here, the Mavic Air outperforms the Spark and offers obstacle detection that can reach up to 20 metres away, using the forward and backward dual camera vision systems.
As a bonus, the Mavic Air also has something called an Advanced Pilot Assistant system that helps you avoid or bypass obstacles automatically in more complex environments with more obstacles. Its FlightAutonomy system is upgraded to version 2.0, which means it uses seven onboard cameras and infrared sensors to build a 3D map of its environment. This enables more precise hovering and better performance in flight.
Both drones feature QuickShot video modes, offering predefined flight patterns that keep the subject in the frame to offer cinematic video effects. As you’d probably already guessed, the Mavic Air has more of them. Two more in fact: one called Asteroid and another called Boomerang.
ActiveTrack is another DJI staple, and is featured on both drones, enabling you to set the drone to automatically track a person or object. On the Mavic Air, DJI says that’s it’s been improved and can now automatically detect multiple subjects, and is better at keeping a track on people moving quickly (running/cycling).
DJI Spark vs. DJI Mavic Air: Camera
Spark has 1080p video capture
Mavic Air shoots 4K at 30fps
Spark has 12MP stills and f/2.6 aperture
Mavic Air also with 12MP f/2.6, but with HDR
2-axis gimbal vs. 3-axis
As well as a clear upgrade on design and features, the optics are massively improved on the Mavic Air. In fact, it offers video recording and stills that are up to the same level as some of its much more expensive consumer drones.
The Spark maxes out video recording at full HD resolution, while the DJI Mavic Air can record 4K resolution at 30 frames per second, and with a maximum bitrate of 100Mbps. It can also shoot slow motion 1080p video at 120 frames per second.
As for still photography, both are similar as far as resolution goes. They both have 1/2.3″ sensors, both capable of shooting up to 12-megapixel stills and both with f/2.6 aperture lenses. The big difference is that the Mavic Air has an advanced HDR mode.
Improved optics aren’t the only upgrades made to the camera system. The three axis mechanical gimbal system adds an extra axis, for more stable footage too.
DJI Spark vs. DJI Mavic Air: Price
squirrel_widget_143454
With them both having launched a few years ago now, neither drone will cost too much if you’re happy to go looking for old stock and scour the internet for used versions in good condition.
The Spark is the cheaper of the two usually, but the Air does offer a lot more practicality and shoots better quality video.
DJI Spark vs. DJI Mavic Air: Conclusion
Looking at all the specifications and the features and then comparing prices definitely makes it seem like the Mavic Air is much better value for money than the Spark was when it launched. Considering the Fly More combo with the Spark originally cost £895, while the Mavic Air Fly More combo – despite its much higher performance – was just £949.
You might find there’s not a huge amount of difference between the two price-wise anymore and Mavic Air is a vastly better experience for new flyers.
The best drones: Top rated quadcopters to buy, whatever your budget
Netflix has announced that it will be experimenting with the release schedules of two reality TV shows, The Circle and Too Hot to Handle (via The Hollywood Reporter). Instead of releasing all of the episodes at once, it will release them over the course of a month, with each show having a batch of episodes released on Wednesdays, then releasing the finale by itself at the end of the run. This means you won’t be able to binge all of the episodes in a single weekend… and that may be a good thing.
These shows aren’t the first time Netflix has broken away from the binge model it popularized, in which all of the episodes of a show are released at once. It has released episodes of cooking competition The Great British Baking Show andmusic contest Rhythm + Flow on a weekly basis. With The Circle and Too Hot to Handle, though, Netflix is making a statement that it’s experimenting and trying to give people time to “dissect and dish” the events of the show. In other words, it’s giving people time to gossip about what happened and what could happen next.
There is a benefit to having people talking about your show for a month, rather than only for a weekend. Netflix arguably ran into this problem with The Witcher, with the show’s writing seeming better suited to weekly viewing rather than an eight-hour marathon. That’s especially true for a reality show like The Bachelor, with drama ratcheting up until a big finale. That’s the type of thing you’d want to keep people talking about — and maybe subscribing to your service to see what all the fuss is about.
That’s the type of effect Netflix could be trying to replicate. Reality TV lends itself especially well to a slow burn, keeping the internet buzz alive. Imagine if Tiger King had been released over a month or two, instead of all at once. While The Circle and Too Hot to Handle probably won’t become cultural touchstones like Tiger King did, there is a chance the release schedule will let them become bigger than they would’ve if we had all watched them over a weekend and then moved on.
I’m not trying to say that Netflix will (or should) switch to the weekly release model for its future narrative shows. Yes, Disney was very successful using that model with The Mandalorian and WandaVision, but those shows also had a lot going for them, and Netflix has a history of successfully releasing narrative shows all at once: the aforementioned Witcher series was still well-received, and Stranger Things was an inescapable cultural force for a while there. It’s also worth noting that narrative shows and reality TV are very different formats, and it could make sense to have different release plans for them.
The Circle is a game show about being isolated in an apartment and using only social media to connect with others (weirdly prescient for a show that first aired in 2018), and it will start showing on April 14th, with the finale releasing on May 5th. It seems like Netflix is planning a similar release schedule for Too Hot to Handle, a show where people try to date each other without any PDA, but the company hasn’t released exact details about it yet, other than a release window of “June.”
Valve is launching a dedicated Steam Link app for macOS this week. The app allows Steam users to stream games from a PC to devices with the Steam Link app installed. While the Steam macOS app has offered streaming already, MacRumors points out that this lightweight Steam Link app is just 30MB in size from the Mac App Store compared to the full Steam app, which requires 1GB of storage space.
Steam Link will be useful on Macs, particularly as it’s rare to see big AAA games debut on macOS. Mac users typically have to dual boot Windows, use virtualization apps, or Steam games from a PC to get access to most of the latest titles.
Steam Link launching on macOS follows a Linux version of the app earlier this month, and it now means Steam Link is available on macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and Raspberry Pi. All you need to do is download the Steam Link app, pair your device with a compatible controller, and connect to a PC over your local network to stream PC games.
Valve also rolled out a big update to its Remote Play Together feature earlier this month, allowing Steam users to stream local multiplayer games with friends over the internet.
VPN and privacy lovers may have heard of OVPN before, a popular VPN service provider based out of Sweden that specifically focuses on no trackers when browsing the internet. The company had built a hardware router a few years ago, the OVPNbox based on pfSense, but it had.. less than desirable results and feedback. For one, it cost more than the net sum of the output. People were quick to note that they could build an analogous setup using an x86 processor with OpenVPN. The product seemed too technically out of reach for the average end user, so much so that the customer who could make the most of it could also do something custom entirely. Vilfo was created because of that experience, which the company states outright is fully independent from OVPN and has as its goal the development of a true successor that aims to lower the entry barrier for a VPN router experience for everyone. We take a look at the Vilfo VPN router today, and thanks again to the company for sending TechPowerUp a review sample!
Vilfo has recently brought a product out, the VPN router for homes, which is on display in the preview above. The company is working on a business solution as well, which does peak my interest in terms of how it will differ. Regardless, it has been a while since I have had my hands on a router that has external antennas, which makes it a nice departure from the usual mix of mesh WiFi systems and mobile routers tested to date. This is an all-white router that is on the smaller side of things, with the company taking time to let you know of the powerful processing system inside to handle all the integrated VPN features. We will examine all this and more in this review beginning with a look at the specifications in the table below.
Specifications
Vilfo VPN Router
Processor:
Intel® Celeron
WiFi:
Mediatek MT7612E supporting 802.11a/b/g/n/ac at up to 867 Mbps throughput
It’s not at all controversial to say that internet service sucks in the United States. As part of its plan to update coverage maps in the US, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), in a break from tradition, is finally asking average Americans to report which internet services are actually available where they live.
In the past, the FCC has made these coverage maps with self-reported data from the ISPs themselves, an inherently compromising decision because internet service providers will naturally want to paint the rosiest picture possible. Since the FCC uses these maps as evidence for proposed regulation, it can seriously hinder the FCC’s ability to make sure there’s actual competition in the market and that the internet is being responsibly distributed. For instance, a map might show that you have 11 broadband providers when you actually only have one or two real options.
Now, the FCC will finally go to the people actually using the internet to learn what’s up, though you may need to communicate clearly to be heard. The form the FCC is using for your responses is decidedly rudimentary; it looks like a general complaint form, and doesn’t ask any specific questions about broadband at all (the only reference is in the header). But the FCC says it’s a stopgap on the path to a more detailed and specific reporting tool. For now, perhaps you can take a look at the FCC’s current crappy maps at your address, and tell the FCC whether you actually have the kinds of choices that the ISPs claim you have.
Hopefully, once the Broadband Data Task Force finishes collecting these new data points, we’ll have more accurate maps that show the worrying reality of American internet, and be able to do something about it.
Apple’s HomePod mini smart speaker has an as-yet-undisclosed temperature and humidity sensor in its casing, Bloomberg reports. The sensor’s exact location was confirmed by iFixit, and it appears to be placed away from the speaker’s internal components so it can measure the external temperature. The exact sensor used is a 1.5 x 1.5mm HDC2010 Humidity and Temperature Digital Sensor from Texas Instruments.
Although the sensor isn’t currently usable by HomePod mini owners, according to Bloomberg, Apple has internally discussed allowing the sensor to provide information to other smart home devices like thermostats or fans. This could give smart heating equipment more information about how warm a room is or allow the speaker to trigger a device like a fan if it senses a room has reached a certain temperature. The functionality could work via HomeKit, Apple’s smart home ecosystem, which currently integrates with dozens of internet-connected thermostats.
Amazon has previously included temperature sensors in Echo speakers like its 2020 model, where the sensor can be used to trigger other devices via Alexa routines. Meanwhile, Google sells standalone sensors via its Nest sub-brand, and its Nest Hub announced last week also includes a similar built-in sensor to help monitor your room’s temperature while you sleep.
Although Apple declined to comment to Bloomberg on its report (and did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment), on at least one occasion, it’s included hardware in a device that’s only been officially activated months later. Its 2008 iPod touch included a Bluetooth chip, Bloomberg notes, but it wasn’t able to connect with Bluetooth devices until the year after its release. The hope is that a similar software update may be on the way for the HomePod mini. For those keeping track, major new HomePod firmware tends to release in the fall of each year.
Mustafa Mahmoud 2 days ago Console, Featured Tech News, Online, Software & Gaming
With video games getting larger and larger in file size, and the industry moving towards an all-digital future, the need for a fast and stable internet connection is becoming more necessary by the day. In order to help this along somewhat, Microsoft has now added an option to increase download speeds of games at the expense of multitasking.
As reported by Eurogamer, the latest update as part of Xbox’s Insider Program has added the option to increase the download speeds of games and updates. The drawback to this increase in speed is that players will not be able to play any games while this is occurring. Fortunately, while you will not be able to play other games, the titles will remain suspended and will not need to be closed down completely – meaning that once the download has ended, you can pick right back up where you left off.
The reason for this trade-off is that “Xbox keeps a portion of your connection reserved for any potential online connectivity, which quitting or suspending games will then unlock”. Xbox has marketed itself on offering as much player choice as possible, and this update just adds another feather to this cap. Hopefully those with slow internet speeds can take advantage of this new feature.
KitGuru says: What do you think of this update? Will you use this feature? Is the trade-off worth it? Let us know down below.
Become a Patron!
Check Also
Intel NUC 11 Extreme Compute Element to feature up to Intel Core i9-11980HK
Intel’s next generation NUC is coming soon and recent leaks have given us a good …
Comics have never been bigger: with Marvel TV shows, DC movies, and indie adaptations growing by the day, comic books have never been more prominent in pop culture. This ongoing Verge column recommends comic series new and old, whether you’re a longtime fan or a newcomer.
Sometimes the art and narrative of a comic go hand-in-hand. A horror story might be full of lots of black and reds, while a superhero comic is brighter and cleaner. Paranoia Killer goes in a different direction. The series is a dark thriller, full of violence and serious subject matter, but with a visual style reminiscent of a Nickelodeon cartoon. Somehow, it still works.
What is it? Paranoia Killer is a brand-new series — so far, only the first of four parts is available — that centers on Nathalie Laertes, an FBI agent forced to take on a very strange undercover job: impersonating her twin brother. It turns out that her twin, who she believed to be just a slightly troubled sibling, was actually one of the world’s most infamous hitmen. Surprise!
Nathalie learns all of this when her brother turns up dead, and her boss forces her to impersonate him in order to infiltrate a criminal organization. Part of it is that they’re identical twins, so she has the look down. But they also apparently share some kind of “aura” that makes the whole switch possible. The first issue ends just as things really start heating up, as she heads off to a criminal training facility in the middle of the desert.
The thriller setup has a lot of potential, and I’m hooked after just the first issue. But part of what makes Paranoia Killer so interesting is its contrast in styles. The story is R-rated material; you’ll see characters shot dead in cold blood, and it opens with what appears to be a torture sequence. But it’s coupled with a surprisingly lighthearted art style, with flat colors and lots of clear, simple shapes.
In the first issue’s afterword, creator Victor Santos says this contrast of styles was born partly out of stubbornness. “I went for a more exaggerated cartoon style in this book, I suppose because I’m very stubborn, and I keep reading from time-to-time some critics saying that you can’t do ‘serious things’ with that style,” he writes. Well, so far, he’s made his point; in issue one, the art doesn’t distract but instead gives Paranoia Killer a very distinct vibe.
Who is it by?Paranoia Killer is the brainchild of Victor Santos, a Spanish comics creator who handled every part of the project: story, art, and design. He’s probably best-known for the series Polar, which also happens to be about a hitman.
Where can I read it? Paranoia Killer is the latest release on Panel Syndicate, a creator-run digital platform for comics. So far, it’s featured excellent series like The Private Eye — a story about a future without the internet from Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin, and Muntsa Vicente — and even a Walking Dead spinoff. It’s a great place to find some offbeat stories, like the incredible Umami from Ken Niimura, which might not have a place at more traditional publishers. It also operates under a pay-what-you-want system, letting you support creators however you feel comfortable.
Twitter is planning to establish a legal entity in Turkey to continue operating there under the country’s controversial internet law that took effect last year, the company announced late Friday. Under the law, social media companies that have more than 1 million users must store Turkish users’ data in the country.
Such companies also are required to designate an official representative in Turkey, who must answer requests to take down content that violates privacy within 48 hours. If the companies refuse to comply, they could face fines, advertising bans, and eventually bandwidth reductions that could make the platforms unusable.
“We remain committed to protecting the voices and data of people in Turkey who use Twitter. We will continue to be transparent about how we handle requests from government and law enforcement,” Twitter said in its statement.
Authorities in Turkey fined Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok 40 million liras (about $5.1 million) each in 2020 for failing to appoint the required local representative. Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube have since established the required legal entities in the country. Earlier this year, Twitter was among the social media companies that received a ban on advertising in Turkey under the new law.
The Turkish government says Internet Law 5651, as the legislation is called, is necessary to protect the rights of social media users in the country and to fight online criminal activity. But human rights organizations caution the law is censorship that risks access to information, in a country that the Associated Press notes has a history of restricting free speech.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
