Game Boy mining Bitcoin (Image credit: stacksmashing/YouTube)
Nothing is safe from cryptocurrency mining — not even 32-year old tech. YouTuber stacksmashing (via TweakTown) has successfully repurposed his old Game Boy to mine Bitcoin. The mod won’t turn you into a millionaire overnight, but it does prove that you can teach an old dog new tricks.
First of all, the modder used a standard USB flash card to load the his compiled ROMs onto the Game Boy. If you’re interested in the software aspect of the project, the YouTuber explains it pretty thoroughly in his video.
An internet connection is one of the most basic requirements for mining cryptocurrencies. Since the Game Boy lacks wireless connectivity, the handheld gaming console is unable to communicate with the Bitcoin network without the help of a middle man. That’s where the $4 Raspberry Pi Pico comes in to the rescue.
The YouTuber modified a Nintendo Game Link Cable to serve as the highway for communication. The problem is that the voltage requirements for the Raspberry Pi Pico and the Nintendo Game Link Cable are completely different. The Raspberry Pi Pico operates at 3.3V, while the Nintendo Game Link Cable utilizes 5V logic levels. As a result, the modder implemented a simple four-channel, bi-directional logic shifter to do the voltage translation.
The bi-directional functionality isn’t necessary, but it’s what the stacksmashing had at hand. The final setup finds the Game Boy connected to the Raspberry Pi Pico through the logic shifter with the Pico attached to a PC, which is where the Internet connection comes from.
The Game Boy is equipped with an 8-bit Sharp LR35902 processor clocked at 4.18 MHz. The chip puts up a performance of approximately 0.8 hashes per second. For comparison, modern ASIC miners typically offer up to 100 terahashes per second. Therefore, the Game Boy is only 125 trillion times slower.
The calculations reveal that it would only take a couple quadrillion years to eventually mine a single Bitcoin. On the bright side, ASIC miners are power-hungry monsters, while the Game Boy runs on four triple-A batteries.
We love the Raspberry Pi and would do anything to elevate its status when it’s rightly deserved but we can’t top the efforts of the Project Horus team who recently launched a Pi Zero into the Earth’s stratosphere. Not only did they take our favorite SBC to a new level but they also used it to stream a live video of the journey to viewers around the world.
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(Image credit: Horus 55)
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(Image credit: Horus 55)
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(Image credit: Horus 55)
The project is officially called Horus 55. It relies on a main component known as the DVB-S Payload, developed by makers Mark VK5QI and Peter VK5KX over the past year. It’s attached to a weather balloon and designed to transmit flight data in real-time. Inside is a Raspberry Pi Zero W, making this one of the best Raspberry Pi projects we’ve ever seen leave the troposphere.
The Pi Zero was used to capture video input for transmission back to the ground station. It didn’t take much to make the unit mobile, the Raspberry Pi system was powered using eight AA batteries.
According to the Horus 55 website, the flight video was live-streamed to YouTube where hundreds of viewers got a first-hand view of the experiment. Once the balloon ruptured, the payload came crashing back to Earth. Viewers were able to see part of the descent in real-time. The unit landed on private property, but the owners were kind enough to allow the team to retrieve their hard work.
(Image credit: Horus 55)
The project results were posted and show some interesting details including the Pi temperature fluctuations alongside the altitude. The Raspberry Pi Zero maintained a temperature between 20°C and 40° C between ground level and an altitude of over 100,000 feet. Check out the full flight video from the team on Vimeo.
I had to take a break from streaming Hannibal because I’m about halfway through season 3 and I don’t want it to end (also it’s just too intense for a binge watch, let’s be real). But I just watched the first episode of The Irregulars — loosely based on the Baker Street Irregulars from the Sherlock Holmes books— and so far it’s really good, especially if you are like me and appreciate seeing an established story retold from the point of view of another character (or in this case characters).
A good batch of trailers this week, with that James Gunn movie everyone’s talking about and a Netflix flick about a group of astronauts headed to Mars who — surprise!— have an extra person aboard their ship.
The Suicide Squad
Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Viola Davis, and Sylvester Stallone (seriously the cast is huge) star in The Suicide Squad. The trailer is age-restricted (and the blank screen looked weird as an embed, which was why I went with a tweet of the video above instead) since the movie is rated R, so you’ll have to watch on YouTube after you verify you are old enough to watch a violent super villain movie trailer with a Steely Dan song playing in the background (which got the very old song trending). The much-ballyhooed, heavily anticipated The Suicide Squad comes to theaters and HBO Max on August 6th.
Stowaway
The three-person crew of a spaceship headed to Mars discovers an engineer unexpectedly (and unintentionally) has joined them. That’s problem one. Problem two: the ship’s life support system has been badly damaged and there’s only enough oxygen for three people. Dilemma! Anna Kendrick, Daniel Dae Kim, Toni Collette, and Shamier Anderson star in this space thriller (a bona fide genre now) that hits Netflix April 22nd.
Made for Love
This adaptation of Alissa Nutting’s novel tells the story of Hazel Green, whose controlling, creepy tech billionaire husband implanted a chip in her brain that lets him track her movements, feelings, and thoughts. Yes, I too shuddered to think how not-unlikely this scenario may be soon enough. Cristen Milioti stars as Hazel, and Billy Magnussen is husband Bryan, and (I guess for some comic levity?) Ray Romano plays Hazel’s father. Made for Love premieres April 1st on HBO Max.
The Nevers
This is the first full trailer of the HBO Max series about a group of women in Victoria-era England who suddenly have unexpected super powers. If you’ve heard of it but aren’t sure why, it may be the off-screen problems with creator Joss Whedon. He stepped away from the project six episodes in citing exhaustion (however, in addition to accusations of “abusive” behavior from actor Ray Fisher on the set of Justice League, several actresses from Buffy the Vampire Slayer have since come forward saying Whedon created a toxic work environment on that show). HBO opted to move forward with at least the first six episodes under a new showrunner and executive producer. The Nevers will debut April 11th on HBO Max.
Balan Wonderworld, a new game from two of the original creators of Sonic the Hedgehog, is out today. But before you jump into the game, make sure you’ve installed its day one patch. It fixes sequences in a “potential flashing bug” that could present a seizure risk. On Thursday, a video of the game’s final boss fight was uploaded to YouTube, and in it, there are occasional moments where the entire screen is taken over by rapid white flashes without warning.
“We have received reports of a photo-sensitive epilepsy risk from a potential flashing bug if playing the game un-patched,” the Balan Wonderworld account said on Twitter. “The Day 1 Patch prevents this issue as well as enhances the overall play experience.”
Please ensure that you install the Day 1 Patch before playing.
We have received reports of a photo-sensitive epilepsy risk from a potential flashing bug if playing the game un-patched.
The Day 1 Patch prevents this issue as well as enhances the overall play experience.
— Balan Wonderworld (@balanwworld) March 26, 2021
The patch comes after Game Informer editor Liana Ruppert wrote about the dangerous video on Thursday. You might recognize Ruppert as the person who wrote about experiencing a grand mal seizure while playing Cyberpunk 2077ahead of its release, which led developer CD Projekt Red to release a patch a day after the game’s launch making changes.
Ruppert said people informed her of the Balan Wonderworld video on Thursday, and when she began watching it, “I immediately had to shut it off. Instantly, my right side dropped, and I could feel the onset of an episode.”
She then made a PSA on Twitterabout the video and heard some scary stories from others who watched it — even from people with no prior history of epilepsy.
Since that tweet went live, I’ve had numerous people reach out, including developers and other QA devs, saying that they aren’t even epileptic, but they felt “odd” after watching. My husband, who had no prior issues with epilepsy or neurological triggers, complained of feeling dizzy before he threw up. Several others reported the same.
I also watched the video in question yesterday and again while writing this article. My eyes have hurt for nearly an hour, and my stomach is a little upset even after just watching it in a small window on YouTube. I can see how someone at risk of seizures might be particularly vulnerable if they were playing the game on their TV at home and this bug happened. (I am not linking to the video because, in my opinion, it is just that bad.)
Typically, there are many opportunities to catch this kind of bug, such as in QA testing or through the platform certification process. Somehow, though, this seeminglydangerous bug seems to have slipped by all of those potential checks.
I will give the Balan Wonderworld developers and publisher Square Enix some credit since they’ve already addressed the issue with the day one patch. And CD Projekt Red also acted swiftly to fix Cyberpunk 2077. But these shouldn’t have been issues in the first place, and developers, publishers, and platform holders need more stringent processes to ensure that their games don’t present health risks.
Warner Bros. has released the first trailer for The Suicide Squad, the sequel to 2016’s Suicide Squad (no The). Unlike the extremely grimdark Zack Snyder’s Justice League (and the potentially even more grimdark black-and-white version of the film, Zack Snyder’s Justice League: Justice is Gray), The Suicide Squad looks to be filled with color and humor, at least based on this first trailer.
Here’s the trailer, which you may have to watch on YouTube because it is age-restricted.
I’m getting some serious Guardians of the Galaxy vibes from The Suicide Squad’s trailer — which makes sense, given that both movies are directed by James Gunn. I love the first Guardians movie, so I’m hoping Gunn brings some of the humor and heart from that film to The Suicide Squad.
The movie features a huge cast, including Margot Robbie reprising her role as Harley Quinn, Idris Elba as Bloodsport, and John Cena as Peacemaker. Sylvester Stallone also stars as King Shark, a giant, walking, talking shark.
The movie hits theaters and HBO Max on August 6th.
If you’ve ever wished your face mask had more tech, you might not have to wait too much longer. Razer confirmed this week that its RGB-clad, voice-modifying face mask will eventually be a real Razer product you can buy.
Razer first showed off a prototype of Project Hazel during the CES 2021 tech trade show in January. This week, during The Tom’s Hardware Show livestream, Mike Scharnikow, Razer senior marketing manager, confirmed that Razer is moving forward with Project Hazel and its robust set of tech.
“We’ve had a lot of great…feedback on this from CES as a prototype, and it’s something that we’re actually moving out of the prototype stage on, and out of the concept stage and taking this on the path to productization,” Scharnikow told Tom’s Hardware.
Scharnikow demoed the mask, which is N95-compliant with active air ventilation. Not all tech concepts come to market. And if they do, they sometimes look different from the prototype. But Razer seems to be moving forward with a lot of the features detailed on the Project Hazel prototype, like a speaker array that uses Razer’s voice amplifier tech to ”take your voice from inside the mask and recreate it out in a very crisp, clear, natural manner to the outside world,” Scharnikow said. There’s also customizable RGB that can provide battery information and a silicone band to seal the mask against your face to prevent glasses from fogging up.
Razer is known for making some of the best gaming keyboards and other PC gaming-focused products, but Scharnikow pointed out that it’s been involved in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic as well, including converting some of its manufacturing facilities to make masks and donating over 1 million masks to medical facilities.
(Image credit: Razer)
So far we’ve seen Project Hazel in black or white, but if it’s successful we may see additional options. Scharnikow noted that Razer has a history of bringing new color options to its products.
“First we want to get this out, make sure it’s a great product, make sure it’s something that our fans and our customers love and are really using in the best way possible. And then we can figure out ways to put different colors on it for personalization and the like,” the exec told us.
Scharnikow couldn’t share a release date for Project Hazel but said those details will be available in “the coming months.”
Still don’t believe Project Hazel will really hit shelves? Well, Scharnikow isn’t the only one talking about the mask. Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan also told Yahoo Finance this week that Razer is “going to proceed in making it a reality and ship the smart mask.”
Watch the full video above for more from Razer’s appearance on The Tom’s Hardware Show, including what’s up with that RGB toaster.
You can catch The Tom’s Hardware Show every Thursday at 3 p.m. ET on YouTube, Facebook, Twitch and as a podcast.
You’ve probably seen the acronym “DLSS” appearing in more gaming and tech stories recently. You might know that it’s an Nvidia graphics thing, and that it might be coming to the new Nintendo Switch console that’s rumored to release later in 2021, according to a report from Bloomberg. But, really, what is it, and why does it matter?
DLSS stands for deep learning super sampling, and it’s a way for Nvidia’s RTX graphics cards to work smarter, not necessarily harder, by running games at a lower resolution, then using dedicated AI cores to improve visual quality with less of the usual performance cost. The deep learning component works on the fly to make your game look as if you haven’t lowered its resolution at all. This feature only works with supported PC games, of which there are over 20 at the time of publishing, including Cyberpunk 2077, Fortnite, Monster Hunter World, Control, and others.
On PC, the technique has proven itself to yield a sizable performance boost. Especially with the advent of ray tracing tech, DLSS has been a boon for letting gamers experience all of the latest visual effects on high-resolution displays without having to shell out an exorbitant amount for a GPU. It’s available for GPUs that (nominally) cost just a few hundred dollars, like the RTX 3060, as well as the previous-gen RTX 20-series cards (not that you can find any of them available right now). For a device like the Nintendo Switch that can’t cram in that much horsepower to begin with, you can imagine why it might be an amazing fit.
Nintendo’s current Switch uses a shrunken-down version of Nvidia’s Tegra X1 system-on-a-chip from 2015. Most games run at sub-1080p resolution when docked and usually less than the 720p resolution of the Switch’s display when in portable mode. Developers for the Switch are already used to making some sizable compromises to get their games working well on the portable console.
Doom Eternal running on the Switch.
Panic Button’s porting work on Doomand Doom Eternal, for instance, heavily rely on visual tricks like dynamic resolution, motion blur, and lower-fidelity textures to mask the Switch’s inherent weaknesses compared to other consoles — and to get them running at a playable 30 frames per second even on the Switch’s 720p screen, much less 4K. Other games struggle to come close to rendering at that resolution — Wolfenstein: Youngblood usually runs at a 540p resolution in portable mode, according to Digital Foundry — and even Nintendo’s own The Legend of Zelda:Breath of the Wild has notable slowdown, though the company has a few other shining examples that manage 60 frame-per-second gameplay.
With all of this context in mind, the recent rumors that the next Switch will tap DLSS to help it avoid those compromises has me excited. We don’t know whether Nvidia truly plans to stick an RTX-style graphics chip with Tensor Core AI processors into a Switch just to achieve DLSS, but doing so would make the next generation of Switch games (and perhaps preexisting games) look and run much better, whether in portable mode or displaying a higher resolution while docked.
Of course, games on the Nintendo Switch would likely need to be individually patched to support DLSS, like the fairly small amount of games on PC have been. If games that have DLSS support on PC get a Switch port, will that DLSS work carry over, I wonder? Or, unlikely as it seems, can Nintendo and Nvidia work together to make every game compatible with DLSS in some way to ensure boosted performance across the board?
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
DLSS 2.0 is the current version that’s available on PC, and it brought better performance and efficiency of RTX AI cores versus the first iteration. TweakTowncites a YouTube video from channel Moore’s Law is Dead claiming that a newer DLSS 3.0 version could be in development for GPUs built with the latest Ampere architecture. It’s said to automatically deliver AI enhancements to any game with temporal anti-aliasing (a technique that removes the flickering aliased edges of textures — especially when the camera is in motion), not just the games that have been patched for support. If true, it could make Nintendo’s job a lot easier bringing DLSS features to more games.
To get a sense of how the next Switch could benefit from DLSS without requiring immensely powerful hardware, check out this informative video below that the folks at Digital Foundry put together. It focuses on the game Control running with DLSS enabled at different resolutions. The bit that really stood out to me was when it showed just how good DLSS can make a 540p rendering of the game look when reconstructed into a 1080p image with ray tracing effects and everything set to ultra settings. I’ve time-stamped the video to that exact location.
If that’s what a PC can do with 540p, a Switch with DLSS might not need a huge overhaul to make its own collection of sub-720p games look a lot better than they do today, particularly on the Switch’s relatively small screen where DLSS’s minor wrinkles might be even easier to forgive than they are on a PC monitor. If it gets additional graphical muscle, it’s not a stretch to imagine today’s games competently running at a simulated 4K when docked to a TV as well. This kind of thing would be perfect to showcase at the launch of the sequel to Breath of the Wild, Splatoon 3, or Metroid Prime 4.
Since the original Nintendo Switch launched, 4K TVs have become more widely adopted. So, it’ll make sense if Nintendo wants to use hardware that’ll look better on modern televisions. And whatever the company chooses to put in its next Switch, it’ll ultimately still be a mobile processor with limitations compared to what the likes of the Xbox Series X and PS5 can do. Though, hopefully, it will be enough to ensure that future Switch games look far better than they currently do for years to come.
Have you ever wanted to play a sound effect when someone enters the door? Using a Raspberry Pi, some speakers, and some ingenuity you can make your life closer to one of my favourite shows – Seinfeld. This Raspberry Pi project is great for beginners and introduces you to the concept of using the GPIO (general purpose input-output) pins.
If you’re not a Seinfeld fan, you can always replace the audio with another sound of your choosing. Here’s how to build a Raspberry Pi machine that plays a custom sound effect when a door is opened.
What You’ll Need For This Project
Raspberry Pi 4 or Raspberry Pi 3 with power adapter
8 GB (or larger) microSD card with Raspberry Pi OS. See our list of best microSD cards for Raspberry Pi.
Desktop speakers or a megaphone with a 3.5mm input and 3.55mm cable
Speaker wire, any gauge, at least a few feet in length
Aluminum foil
Electrical tape
Male to female jumper cables (2)
Wire strippers or scissors
Monitor or Projector with HDMI and power cables. (Optional)
How to Turn Raspberry Pi into an Electronic Door Chime
Before you get started, get your Raspberry Pi set up. If you haven’t done this before see our article on how to set up a Raspberry Pi for the first time or how to do a headless Raspberry Pi install (without the keyboard and screen). For this project, we recommend a headless Raspberry Pi install.
1. Install the lower-level dependencies we need to play audio files and make our code run by entering the following commands in a terminal window.
2. Set the 3.5mm audio output to be the default audio output in raspi-config. You do this by launching raspi-config (entering sudo raspi-config at the command prompt) and navigating to System Options -> Audio -> Headphones 1. The pi allows for audio to be outputted to either the 3.5mm analog output, or over the HDMI port. If you do not have a monitor attached, Headphones may be the only option.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
3. Enable auto-login in raspi-config by navigating to System Options > Boot / Auto Login > Console Autologin. When the raspberry pi restarts, it will automatically log in (which we’ll need to run our scripts).
4. Click finish to exit the raspi-config menu, and reboot your raspberry pi (either through the prompt, or the console).
sudo reboot
5. From your home directory, clone the sample code using git.
6. Plug your speakers into your Raspberry Pi, and test them by playing your audio file. You should hear sound from your speakers.
mpg321 /home/pi/doorbell/audio/audio_0.mp3
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
7. Adjust your pi’s volume with the alsamixer command, or if your external speakers have a volume knob, on there too. Use the arrow keys to adjust the volume, and Ctrl + C to exit.
alsamixer
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
8. Test the script. Connect one jumper wire to board pin 12 (GPIO pin 18), and a second to ground. Then run the python command below. Once it’s running, touch (short) the two jumper wires together for a second or two, then release them. If all goes successfully, the console will output “playing audio_0.mp3” and you should hear the sound over your speakers.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
python3 /home/pi/doorbell/app.py
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
9. Download or copy a few short mp3 files you’re looking to play. In my case, I took a few recordings from YouTube and copied them over to the Raspberry Pi into the audio directory using SCP. However, I could have also used Chromium on the Pi to download or copied files over using VNC or FTP. Any mp3 files placed in /home/pi/doorbell/audio directory will be randomly selected when the door opens or closes.
10. Tape a small, rectangular piece of aluminum foil to the door.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
11. Cut a piece of speaker wire long enough to stretch from your Raspberry Pi to the door.
12. Strip the wire on both ends
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
13. Tape one end to the door frame so that when closed, the piece of aluminum foil closes the circuit. It is also possible to use a reed switch instead of aluminum foil.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
14. Connect the other ends of the speaker wire to the jumper cables using solder or electrical tape.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
15. Add the script to /etc/rc.local so it runs automatically when the Raspberry Pi restarts.
sudo nano /etc/rc.local
# Add the following line before the last line (exit 0)
python3 /home/pi/doorbell/app.py &
16. Restart the Raspberry Pi
17. Test your project by opening or closing the door.
If all goes well, you should hear a random sound from the audio directory.
Congressional “Big Tech” hearings often follow a three-step formula.
Step one: lawmakers demand that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai answer questions simply with “yes” or “no.” (Sample: “Is YouTube’s recommendation algorithm designed to encourage users to stay on the site?”)
Step two: the aforementioned CEOs inevitably say something else, either to inject some legitimate nuance or to dodge obvious, unflattering answers with vague platitudes. (Sundar Pichai’s response to the above question: “Content responsibility is our number one goal.”)
Step three: lawmakers point out that they’re avoiding the question and mock them. (Sample, from Rep. Billy Long of Missouri: “I’m going to ask you a yes-or-no question. Do you know the difference between these two words: ‘yes’ and ‘no?’”)
Later today, my colleague Makena Kelly will publish a breakdown of “Disinformation Nation,” a marathon House of Representatives hearing about social media, extremism, and misinformation. But to massively oversimplify, just imagine several hours of that three-step process — and that Jack Dorsey is clearly, obviously sick of it all.
While Pichai and Zuckerberg have mostly stuck to answering questions, Dorsey has started openly tweeting through the hearing — favoriting other people’s commentary, sending passive-aggressive quote tweets wishing the questions were better, and trolling Congress with a Twitter poll.
Jack Dorsey, for what it’s worth, answered “yes” to Long’s question. And on Twitter, “yes” is winning by a margin of 65.5 percent to 34.5 percent — but depending on how much longer this hearing lasts, there’s plenty of time for that to change.
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.
MrBeast said last year that he wanted a way to invest in up-and-coming creators, help them blow up, and get a cut of their business in return — and today, he’s announcing a plan to do just that.
The hit YouTuber, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, is launching a $2 million investment fund that will offer creators up to $250,000 in exchange for a stake in their channels. The fund is part of a new company called Creative Juice, in which Donaldson is an investor, and which was announced this afternoon in The Information.
“We’re gonna make sure we find [creators] that actually need a giant cash inflow and aren’t just trying to go buy a Lamborghini,” Donaldson told The Information.
Juice is going to change so much you guys don’t even understand. Genuinely excited 🙂
— MrBeast (@MrBeast) March 24, 2021
Details about the investment fund are limited right now. Creative Juice hasn’t said when it will launch or what type of creators it’s looking to invest in. Donaldson said the idea is to help YouTubers “pour gas on the fire” the way a business might by raising an influx of cash once they’re already growing quickly.
MrBeast is one of the biggest creators on YouTube. He has nearly 56 million subscribers and gets tens of millions of views per video (his most recent, posted a week ago, already has 35 million views). He’s known for pulling off goofy, supersized stunts — like making a “2,000 gallon” cereal bowl — but mainly, he’s known for giving away cars, houses, and cash as part of his videos.
The investment fund is just one part of what Creative Juice plans to offer. The company is developing tools to help creators track their performance across platforms. Investors are calling it “Square for creators” and say it plans to launch a suite of products to help creators operate more like small businesses.
Like when I see a channel that I think will blow up, I wish I could just like buy shares in it or something lol
On paper, using a website to schedule your vaccine appointment seems like an easy way to gain access to much needed COVID-19 immunizations. But a new investigation from The Markup shows that state-run vaccine websites are slow to load on mobile devices, compounding what can be an already intimidating sign-up experience for people who are less comfortable online.
The Markup conducted its performance tests using Google’s open-source Lighthouse tool, in this case relying on the tool’s ability to measure the time it takes for a site to load and be functional. For this test, The Markup focused on the performance of the mobile version of sites on the Chrome browser and conducted the tests from three separate locations (New York, Texas, and California). Nevada’s state vaccine site was the slowest to load, taking 15.7 seconds to fully load in comparison to the fastest (Puerto Rico) at 1.4 seconds, and the average (Colorado) at 5.9 seconds.
The spread of state vaccine site loading times.Image: The Markup
The causes for these slowdowns vary, but in the case of the Nevada site, The Markup suggests that an abundance of interactive, embedded content could be contributing to the slowness:
Nevada’s vaccination page features several embedded YouTube videos and Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts that offer public health information, featuring health professionals answering common questions in both English and Spanish. Our tests show that Nevada’s page has the lowest average performance score of all the sites we examined.
All of that extra information is great, but I think the confusion also arises for less web-literate people because these sites don’t work like scheduling a traditional doctor’s appointment over the phone. Being presented with a bunch of links from the original site out to other vaccine provider’s websites was intimidating for my grandparents — who often worry about getting “lost” online — and I imagine it would be for many others.
The situation is reminiscent of other times government organizations have been tasked with building out essential online infrastructure, like the rollout of healthcare.gov. The federal site’s issues have since been resolved, and state health departments are working at a much smaller scale, but some of the problems are similar. It’s not that these departments are incapable of making a website, it’s that time and resources are stretched thin, and many of them have never really been tasked with a project so huge. “They’ve never required the infrastructure that they do now,” Ohio State University health services professor Tory Hogan tells The Markup.
Third-party solutions have sprung up in response to these inadequacies, from startups focused on connecting people with leftover vaccine doses like Dr. B, to independent vaccine hunters booking appointments for strangers. But there’s no one solution, at least not until President Biden’s promised vaccine finding website launches on May 1st. Here’s hoping that website works better.
Amazon is coming out with a third generation of its Alexa Voice Remote, and it includes some unwelcome new buttons that will take you to the Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney Plus, and Hulu apps. If you’re one of the people who subscribes to and regularly uses all of those exact streaming services, this remote could be a nice upgrade. But for everyone else, the buttons will only add friction and annoyance to the Fire TV control experience.
We here at The Verge have talked about why we don’t like these buttons before. They turn your remote into a canvas for permanent advertising for services you may not even use, and they take up space that could be used for buttons that take you to services you do use. If you, say, don’t subscribe to Disney Plus or Hulu, then the buttons are, at best, useless to you and, at worst, waiting to be accidentally pressed, leaving you to back out of an app that’s begging you to subscribe.
The obvious alternative is to make the buttons mappable to the services you use and not put permanent branding on them. If the remote instead came with four buttons you could use to open your preferred streaming services, this would be a very different story. Alas, it is not. But hey, now the voice control button is an Alexa button for even more branding! (I will concede that this isn’t that bad, given that it was already called the Alexa Voice remote.)
The previous generation of the remote (which is still for sale), minus the branded buttons. Image: Amazon
I don’t want to make it sound like a few annoying buttons (that could actually be useful to some people) are the end of the world or that this new remote has no redeeming qualities. There’s actually one more new button that takes you to a “guide” showing you a cable-esque timeline of all the content available from the live providers you have, such as Sling, Hulu, or YouTube TV.
Unlike the branded ones, it’s small and not brightly colored, so it’s easy to ignore if you don’t need it (and it won’t be as prone to accidental presses). I just wish remote manufacturers would let us choose the functions we want on our remotes, especially since the streaming service landscape is ever-changing, and people have taken to subscribing to one service for a few months then switching to another.
YouTube says the platform will not remove a controversial live-streamed video of a mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado, despite criticism of the streamer’s tactics and commentary.
“Following yesterday’s tragic shooting, bystander video of the incident was detected by our teams. While violent content intended to shock or disgust viewers is not allowed on YouTube, we do allow videos with enough news or documentary context,” YouTube spokesperson Elena Hernandez told The Verge. “We applied an age restriction to the content and will continue to monitor the situation.”
The live stream was broadcast from around the King Soopers supermarket in Boulder; according to Vice, it reached a live audience that peaked at around 30,000 people and has since been viewed around 585,000 times. The streamer, Dean Schiller, began recording inside the supermarket soon after the attack. He continued recording from outside for more than three hours, despite police requests for him to leave.
Schiller has identified himself in the past as a citizen journalist, and in 2019, he and another videographer were arrested and jailed for filming around the Boulder County Jail, following a series of videos that captured alleged police misconduct. But as Vice notes, Schiller has been criticized on several fronts for the shooting video. Some video commenters called him out for not dialing 911 or attempting to help people fleeing the building, while some other news outlets and anti-extremism researchers criticized him for speculating on the shooter’s motives, revealing police tactics, and briefly filming the bodies of victims.
Yesterday’s shooting in Boulder left 10 people dead, and a police spokesperson said the alleged killer was taken into custody after being shot in the leg by a police officer. Police have not offered a motive for the attack.
Videos of murder have created a quandary for social network moderators who are tasked with distinguishing between meaningful journalism and content that could inspire copycat attacks or play into a killer’s search for publicity. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube have scrambled to remove video directly recorded by mass shooters, including a 2019 attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. But they’ve also been criticized for removing video documenting newsworthy events like police shootings.
Platforms have also responded by surfacing trusted news outlets or by limiting the reach of controversial posts, even if they’re not banned outright. But YouTube didn’t outline any specific steps it had taken on Schiller’s video beyond requiring users to log in and verify their age before viewing it.
The video also plays into long-standing questions about how journalists should responsibly cover violence. While some YouTube comments called the video a negative byproduct of social media reporting, others drew parallels with sensationalist coverage in older mediums like TV news — comparing Schiller to the protagonist of the 2014 film Nightcrawler.
Traditional media outlets have gradually reevaluated their playbook for reporting on mass shootings in recent years. That includes trying to avoid an inordinate focus on the shooter or unsubstantiated speculation about their motives, particularly in the early stages of an incident, when very little is known about the attack. Some best practices also include avoiding graphic violence that’s posted without a clear purpose — and could add to the trauma of people who have survived the shooting.
A YouTuber by the name of Vassi Tech has received his unlocked Core i9 Intel Rocket Lake desktop CPU a week prior to the official launch, which means we have new unboxing footage showing off Intel’s weird new packaging and what you can expect to get with your chip.
Vassi Tech unboxed is the Core i9-11900K, which is the top-of-the-line Rocket Lake CPU, and it has a box to match. While a post from Intel shows that other Rocket Lake boxes will have typical rectangular shapes, the i9-11900K instead has a jagged, angular outer appearance with stylized transparent plastic that resembles an iceberg on the inside.
This marks the latest in a trend within Intel’s latest processor generations to make the box for its best CPU stand out visually. Note the trapezoidal elements in the i9-10900K box or the d20 look on the i9-9900K box.
Aside from the box design, there’s not too much else here to surprise you. You will get some stickers with the new Intel logo on them and an instruction booklet with your processor, but don’t expect a free cooler or the like because Intel doesn’t include a cooler with its unlocked chips.
If you’re a collector, though, the box definitely stands out. Especially since the top of the box mentions that Intel is an official partner of the Olympics, which is a bit amusing to see as the fate of the Tokyo Olympics is still uncertain after the pandemic.
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