Category: Technology

Google’s interactive Doodle today celebrates the life and accomplishments of video game pioneer Gerald “Jerry” Lawson on what would have been his 82nd birthday. The Doodle lets you play five retro pixel-art platformers in your browser — with two even letting you play as Lawson. The Doodles’ creators want to inspire young people to follow in his footsteps, and it includes a built-in level editor and creator to nudge them on that path.

Lawson was known as the “father of the video game cartridge,” which he developed as Director of Engineering and Marketing at Fairchild Semiconductor. In 1976, the company released the Fairchild Channel F home console, with Lawson serving as lead developer. The Channel F (the “F” stood for “fun”) was the first system with interchangeable game cartridges, a novel concept in an era when games were permanently coded into hardware. Interchangeable ROM-based cartridges were a massive breakthrough that let users build entire libraries rather than playing one game ad nauseam.

Today’s Doodle includes games from guest artists and game designers Davionne Gooden, Lauren Brown and Momo Pixel. “The concept starts with the player as a little Jerry Lawson,” explained Brown. “This takes us through anecdotes about Jerry’s life, parts of his journey that he went about to create the cartridge. Once you complete the level, you then get to create your own game with an editor that allows you to reimagine the level design and innovate like Jerry Lawson did.”

Along with the cartridge advancement, Lawson’s Channel F was the first console with an eight-way joystick and a pause menu. Although it wasn’t a commercial success, Channel F’s innovations would influence later systems that dominated home gaming over the following decades — it was a predecessor to platforms like the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo Entertainment System. Even in today’s world of always-online digital games, the top-selling console — the Nintendo Switch — still (optionally) uses a form of cartridges.

Lawson faced considerable challenges during his early years at Fairchild as an African-Amercan man in a field that wasn’t known for being racially diverse. He noted that working as an engineer as a 6-foot-6-inch Black man would surprise people, with some reacting with “total shock” when they saw him for the first time. Additionally, he was one of only two Black members of the Homebrew Computing Club. This group included Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, along with other Silicon Valley pioneers.

After his innovations at Fairchild, Lawson left in 1980 to start his own company, VideoSoft, one of the first Black-owned video game development firms. VideoSoft closed five years later, and Lawson consulted engineering and video game companies for the rest of his career. He passed away in 2011 at 70 from diabetes complications.

“When people play this Doodle, I hope they’re inspired to be imaginative,” said Anderson Lawson, Jerry’s son. “And I hope that some little kid somewhere that looks like me wants to get into game development. Hearing about my father’s story makes them feel like they can.”

 

The largest radio telescope in the southern hemisphere has joined the search for technosignatures, signals that indicate the presence of technology developed by extraterrestrial intelligence. A new instrument utilized by the MeerKAT radio telescope, which is in a remote region of South Africa, will increase the number of targets that Breakthrough Listen can observe by a factor of 1,000.

A team of engineers and astronomers involved with Listen, an initiative that’s seeking signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life, spent three years working on the instrument, which is said to be the most powerful equipment ever deployed to aid the search for technosignatures. The instrument is integrated with MeerKAT’s control and monitoring systems.

Listen is already employing the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia, the Parkes Telescope in Australia and others in its hunt for technosignatures. What’s different about MeerKAT is that there’s no need to physically move its antennas. Its 64 dishes can monitor an area of the sky 50 times larger than what GBT can view at once.

“Such a large field of view typically contains many stars that are interesting technosignature targets,” Listen principal investigator Dr. Andrew Siemion said in a statement. “Our new supercomputer enables us to combine signals from the 64 dishes to get high resolution scans of these targets with excellent sensitivity, all without impacting the research of other astronomers who are using the array.”

Along with being able to monitor a larger area of the sky at a given time, the ability to scan 64 objects at once will help Listen to detect and dismiss interfering signals from spacecraft launched by humans, such as satellites. One of the first targets that the new instrument will observe is Alpha Centauri. In 2020, Listen detected an odd radio signal coming from Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our sun and a member of the Alpha Centauri system.

“It will take us just two years to search over one million nearby stars,” Listen project scientist Dr. Cherry Ng said. “MeerKAT will provide us with the ability to detect a transmitter akin to Earth’s brightest radio beacons out to a distance of 250 light years in our routine observing mode.”

 

Geoff Keighley and his team might be focused on The Game Awards, but they’re also looking ahead to their next gaming event. The fourth edition of Summer Game Fest’s live kickoff show, which will have a live audience for the first time, will take place on June 8th. 

Keighley was involved with E3 for 25 years, though he backed out in early 2020 (before the Entertainment Software Association canceled that year’s edition). Three years later, the two events are set to go toe-to-toe.

The long-running expo hasn’t held an in-person event since 2019. The 2020 and 2022 editions of E3 were called off, though it went ahead as an online-only event in 2021. E3’s partner showcases start on June 11th with the in-person component of the show (which PAX operator ReedPop will run) slated for June 13th to 16th.

The Summer Game Fest showcase will take place at the 6,000-capacity YouTube Theater, a 20-minute drive from E3’s Los Angeles Convention Center home base. As ever, the former will feature world premieres, gameplay demos and other announcements. Unless you want to attend Summer Game Fest in person, you won’t need to buy a ticket as you can watch the event live on the likes of YouTube and Twitch. It’s not yet clear if publishers and studios will offer hands-on demos, as is the case at E3.

 

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet launched with plenty of glitches, to put it mildly, but the developers are at least trying to make amends. Alongside an update, Nintendo said it was aware of performance problems and was taking player feedback “seriously” as it planned fixes. The patch both introduces Season 1 of Ranked Battles and addresses numerous bugs, including inconsistent music playback during key events.

The creature-collecting game routinely suffers from poor frame rates, particularly in busy areas like cities. It’s also common to encounter crashes, visual flaws and showstopping bugs like getting stuck in the terrain. Autosaves lessen the sting, but this still isn’t the polished experience you expect from first-party Switch titles. The sometimes mediocre graphics don’t help, either.

Not that Nintendo is likely worried about the flaws affecting sales. As IGNnotes, Nintendo recently boasted that Pokémon Scarlet and Violet sold a combined 10 million copies worldwide in their first three days. The feat made them the fastest-selling Nintendo game on any of the company’s platforms. Japan’s Pokémon fandom played a major role, as domestic sales topped 4 million in those early days.

Those numbers also suggest Nintendo is still faring well against its biggest console rivals. Sony’s fastest-selling PlayStation game, God of War: Ragnarok, ‘only’ managed to move 5.1 million copies during its first week. That’s not completely shocking given the brutal brawler’s narrower audience, and Sony is unlikely to complain much when third-party releases like the Call of Duty series routinely sell well. However, it’s telling that the Switch can still rally massive demand five years later.

 

Microsoft has revealed its first wave of Game Pass additions for December and the headliner is a major game that debuted earlier this year — Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. You’ll be able to play through all nine core films in the Star Wars franchise and you can choose which trilogy to begin with. It’s maybe the best Star Wars game I’ve played. It’s gorgeous, the gameplay is a blast and it’s very funny, with clever twists on many of the series’ most memorable moments. It’s coming to Game Pass on December 6th and you can play it on Xbox, PC and Xbox Cloud Gaming.

A few games have joined Game Pass today, including Eastward, a charming indie RPG that debuted last year. It has a lovely art style that takes inspiration from Earthbound. Both that and The Walking Dead: The Final Season are now available on Game Pass via console, PC and the cloud. Also hitting PC Game Pass today is Totally Reliable Delivery Service, a ragdoll physics game about terrible package couriers.

Looking further ahead, Hello Neighbor 2 (console, PC and cloud) will hit Game Pass on December 6th, followed by Chained Echoes (all three platforms) two days later. An Xbox One version of Metal: Hellsinger will be available on Game Pass on December 8th too — subscribers can already access it on Series X/S, PC and the cloud.

One of the last big Xbox exclusives of the year, High On Life, will arrive on Game Pass on December 13th. The sci-fi first-person shooter from Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland is coming to console, PC and cloud gaming. “Alchemist simulator” Potion Craft will be available on console and PC via Game Pass on the same day. On December 15th, subscribers can check out Hot Wheels Unleashed – Game of the Year Edition (which I’ve heard great things about) and puzzle-platformer Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan on console, PC and Xbox Cloud Gaming at no extra cost.

On the other side of the coin, several games are leaving Game Pass on December 15th, so you have a couple more weeks to check them out before you’d need to buy them (though you’ll get a 20 percent discount if you’re a Game Pass subscriber). The titles that will soon depart the library are:

Aliens: Fireteam Elite (cloud, console and PC)

Breathedge (cloud, console and PC)

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age (cloud, console and PC)

Firewatch (cloud, console and PC)

Lake (cloud, console and PC)

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 (cloud, console and PC)

Neoverse (cloud and console)

Race with Ryan (cloud, console and PC)

Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth (cloud, console and PC)

Rory McIlroy PGA Tour (console) 

Transformers: Battlegrounds (cloud, console and PC)

 

Don’t worry if you missed Samsung’s Black Friday TV sales — there are still good deals to be had. Woot is running a sale on Samsung’s 2022 Frame TVs that includes some of the best prices we’ve seen. The best value is the 50-inch model, which is down to $870 — a healthy 33 percent off. You’ll see steep discounts across the range, though, including the sweet-spot 55-inch and 65-inch models (now $1,100 and $1,490). Even the gigantic 85-inch version has dropped to $2,998 versus the usual $4,298.

Buy 2022 The Frame TV (50-inch) at Woot – $870

The appeal, as with past Frame models, is turning your TV into a piece of living room art. Wall-mount your set (the kit is included) and it becomes a dynamic painting when you’re not using it. You can even use custom bezels to help it match your decor. The 2022 version is a big leap forward for the series with a more canvas-like matte display that cuts reflections. The color-accurate 4K HDR picture (1080p on the 32-inch set), game mode and voice assistant support also ensure that you won’t compromise much to get always-on artwork.

If there’s a catch, it’s that there are extra costs involved in getting the Frame TV’s look just right. You’ll need Art Store purchases or a subscription to get world-famous paintings from Da Vinci or Van Gogh, and those custom bezels add to the cost. With that said, these prices are low enough that you might justify spending extra to see your favorite artwork in between streaming video marathons.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

 

Disney researchers have developed an artificial intelligence system that seemingly makes it far easier to make an actor appear younger or older in a scene. While artists will still be able to make manual adjustments to make sure the effect looks as realistic as possible, the AI tool could take care of most of the heavy lifting. It’s said to take the AI just five seconds to apply the aging effects to a single frame.

Re-aging an actor is typically an expensive and laborious process that requires artists to go through a scene frame-by-frame to manually change the character’s appearance. Attempts have been made in the past to automate the process with neural networks and machine learning. Disney’s researchers note that, while they might work well for still images, other systems “typically suffer from facial identity loss, poor resolution and unstable results across subsequent video frames.” They claim their solution offers “the first practical, fully-automatic and production-ready method for re-aging faces in video images.”

The team wrote in a paper that it would be impossible to train the FRAN (face re-aging network) neural network on a dataset of real people. That would require pairs of images showing a subject with the same facial expression, pose, lighting and background at two different and known ages. Instead, the researchers created a database of several thousand randomly generated faces. They re-aged those synthetic faces using existing machine learning aging tools, then fed the results of that process into FRAN.

The neural network can analyze a headshot and predict which parts of a face would be affected by aging and then it applies effects like wrinkles or skin smoothing as a layer on top of the original face. As Gizmodo notes, the researchers claim this approach allows FRAN to re-age the performer with their identity and appearance intact, even when their head or face is moving around or the lighting changes in a shot. Unlike with other methods, FRAN doesn’t require an extra face alignment step either.

There are many good reasons why Disney would want to develop such a tool. It could lessen visual effects artists’ workloads and speed up the process, for one thing. In addition to helping productions without blockbuster budgets age their actors up or down, it might help keep ballooning budgets in check. A significant chunk of The Irishman‘s budget, which reports suggest was as much as $200 million, went toward making Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci look younger.

Disney has been de-aging performers in its own projects, notably with Mark Hamill in Star Wars. When Harrison Ford returns as Indiana Jones next summer, he’ll also look a little younger than you’re used to seeing him — at least for the opening sequence. Disney’s new re-aging tool should make it faster for effects artists to take years off such performers’ faces in the future.

 

I don’t know about your LinkedIn experience, but each time I visit the website I find my inbox flooded with messages. Most aren’t even worth reading, but a few inevitably promise new career opportunities and the chance to work with interesting people.

LinkedIn wants to make it easier to find those messages quickly. Starting today, the social network is rolling out a new feature called Focused Inbox. It separates your inbox into two tabs titled “Focused” and “Other.” A machine learning algorithm will then do its best to flag messages that include the most relevant outreach to you and push them to the top of the Focused tab. If you don’t find the feature useful, you can switch to the old interface at any time.

LinkedIn’s hope is that the feature helps people be more productive. The Focused Inbox comes at a time when the company says more of its users are turning to its instant messaging feature to communicate. In the last year, LinkedIn says it has seen a 20 percent increase in those types of chats.

 

The price of entry into the world of modular synthesis has been trending downward for sometime. Moog even recently released the Mavis, a DIY Eurorack-compatible synth for just $350 – a shockingly low price from the company. But Cre8Audio seems to think that prices haven’t come down fast enough. It has been setting the pace in an incredible race to the bottom – and I don’t mean that as a bad thing.

In May, Cre8Audio announced the East Beast and West Pest – its first pair of self-contained synths for just $250. They’re some of the cheapest analog semi-modular synths that I’m aware of, save for the Korg Volca Modular, which is sort of a weird dead end on the synth family tree.

What they share

Unsurprisingly, the East Beast and West Pest have a lot in common. The basic chassis is the same, both have a 20-point patchbay, a 32-step sequencer, an arpeggiator, a one-octave keyboard, an LFO and a digital multi-mod tool. Even the core oscillator is very similar, with the West Pest having most of the same waveshapes and a slightly “buzzier” tone. It’s the rest of the sound-shaping modules that set the two apart from each other, with the East Beast and West Pest predictably leaning into East Coast and West Coast synth styles, respectively.

The build quality on both is about what you’d expect from something at this price point. There’s a lot of plastic and don’t seem like they’re designed with the rigors of your life in mind. They don’t feel cheap or toy-like, though; they just feel like what they are: entry level synthesizers. The larger knobs are easier to handle than the tiny ones on a Volca and the overall package feels a touch more robust than an IK Multimedia Uno. They’re also a lot more fun looking than those instruments. I know that the almost comicbook-esque aesthetic here won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I quite enjoy it. It’s playful and a bit silly, and let’s not forget – synths should be fun.

The keyboard is a welcome inclusion, perfect for auditioning patches or punching in sequences and arps. But, like the one on Moog’s Mavis, I wouldn’t want to actually rely on it for performance. The keys are small and a little wobbly. Plus most of the keys have two additional shift functions for controlling various features.

Honestly, the better bet is to use an external controller and set the built-in keyboard to default to the yellow / green functions instead. This is made easier by the fact that both the East Beast and West Pest have MIDI inputs and MIDI to CV converters for controlling other parameters. That’s not unheard of on a budget semi-modular synth, but it’s not a given either. Even some of Moog’s more expensive instruments like the DFAM don’t have MIDI support. I will make one minor note here though, MIDI notes were quite a few octaves higher than expected straight out of the box and I was initially a bit confused until I found the instructions for changing the octave offset in the manual.

One of the more unique shared features is the digital multi-mod tool. Since they only have one LFO and one envelope generator (or “dynamics section” in the case of the West Pest), this gives the instruments an extra set of controls to draw on. This can be an additional LFO, envelope, random generator or MIDI-to-CV output. There are some limitations, for instance you can only map a single MIDI CC, and the envelope is a simple decay envelope with seven preset rates, but it’s a nice addition nonetheless.

It’s a similar story with the sequencer and arpeggiator. They get the job done, and I’m glad they’re here, but both are pretty basic. The arpeggiator only has two modes – as played and random. While the sequencer can be 32 steps, you basically just add notes to the end until you’re happy with it. If you make a mistake your only option is to clear the whole thing and start over.

While dialing in basic sounds and patches is pretty straightforward, there are a bunch of options and features hidden behind those shift functions. And navigating them isn’t always intuitive. Obviously, I’m not expecting a giant display with detailed graphics on a $250 synth, but the “4-bit display” (read: four LEDs in a line) can feel arcane at times. I’ve had both for over a month now and I still have to refer to the manual to remember that the first two LEDs mean I’m dividing the clock by two for the LFO; or that the first, third and fourth lights mean I’ve set the swing to 64 percent. This is obviously not a deal-breaker by any means. But if you’re the type of person who proudly refuses to read manuals you might feel frustrated at times.

East Beast

Let’s dig into the more “normal” of the two instruments. This is probably what most people envision when they think of a synthesizer. A big rich oscillator, a filter for shaving off harmonics and an ADSR envelope for controlling amplitude. While this doesn’t really sound like a Moog, it clearly shares a similar lineage.

The multi-mode filter and oscillator are straight from boutique synth makers Pittsburgh Modular which gives this decidedly budget affair some serious street cred. The oscillator has sine, triangle, saw and square waves, and you can combine two of them to deliver thicker, more unique sounds when needed. It’s something that Pittsburgh Modular has been perfecting for around 10 years. It does sound pretty massive.

Being a mono synth, you’re not gonna get compelling pads out of the East Beast, but it shines as a lead and bass machine. It can do big room shaking low end, thick creamy solos and delicate high-end plucks. It even has pulse width modulation for the square wave, which gets you wonderful video game noises, and FM for harsher, more bell-like tones. I actually think it’s at its best playing softer leads, using the filter to shave off a lot of the high end.

The filter is probably the star of the show, by the way. Often it’s what brings the most character to the sound of a synth, and this one delivers. It’s variable state, going from low pass, to band pass to high pass. But it can also combine those in interesting ways. It does acid bass lines and nasal reedy sounds. There’s a reason the filter cutoff knob is about four times larger than all the other controls on the front panel: It’s probably the most powerful tool here for shaping your sound.

Both Cre8Audio and Pittsburgh Modular like to brag that this unique filter has “no dead spots”, that it’s really “all one large sweet spot”, and you know what, they’re probably right. I had a real hard time making this filter sound bad. No matter how much you crank the resonance, in every mode, even with the filter mod set to ludicrous levels, it’s surprisingly musical. It doesn’t self-oscillate, which might be a bummer for some, but it doesn’t bother me too much.

West Pest

The West Pest is sort of like the East Beast’s hippy cousin. It’s a tad strange, and has to do everything a little differently, but it’s no less compelling – just a bit tougher to tame. It has many of the same features and a very similar oscillator, but it trades the variable state filter and ADSR envelope for a lowpass gate and adds a wave folder.

I’d venture to say that, similar to the East Beast, the Pest is most comfortable with bass and plucky leads. But the timbre is completely different. It’s more aggressive and sharp, trading in the creamy goodness of its counterpart for the plasticky weirdness more often associated with Buchla synths.

Because it travels in less familiar territory, it can feel a little harder to make work in an arrangement. But, it can be a more satisfying solo instrument. Both synths have robust randomization features, including randomly cycling through oscillator waveforms and generative sequencing capabilities, but those feel more at home on the West Pest.

Setting the digital mod tool to random, and connecting it to the release mod jack will alter how long notes ring out. Then using the random pattern generator with morphing will play a continuously evolving sequence. And then you can get the oscillator wave to change for every note, giving you something truly unpredictable. Feed that through an epic reverb pedal and you’ve got a custom, soothing soundtrack for working or reading to.

Yes, you could accomplish a similar thing with the East Beast since it has most of the same randomization tools (save the release mod), and it’s probably the more versatile instrument, but I find the results on the West Pest more pleasing. And, honestly, this is one of the ways I often use synths in my studio – passively as a sort of fidget toy or to set a mood while I plug away on editing articles for Engadget.

With other gear

The one thing I will say is that the West Pest does need a little external help to shine, more so than the East Beast. Its rubbery bass sounds are pretty usable on their own, but once you start getting into the higher frequencies, reverb and delay become a must.

But what you’re probably more interested in is how they interact with other modular gear. The 20-point patchbay makes it simple to integrate into a larger Eurorack (or compatible) setup – whether these are your gateway drug or just the latest symptom of your incurable GAS (gear acquisition syndrome).

I would say the patchbay is probably where you make the most trade-offs here, though. While there are indeed 20 patch points (evenly divided between ins and outs), four of them are dedicated to MIDI functions and one is the audio output. So that leaves 15 points for internal patching. Now, that both of these act as a MIDI to CV interface is extremely useful, and can simplify controlling other gear that isn’t MIDI compatible. For instance, you could feed MIDI from your computer to the West Pest then pass those controls on as CV to something like Moog’s Mavis. But it does eat into the options available to you for sound design on board.

It would be great to have access to the LFO rate or resonance level on the patch bay, for example. Or to have a few utilities like a mult. Cre8Audio crams a lot of versatility into the patchbay, through the multi mod tool, which gives you an extra envelope, LFO or a random generator, though it also has limitations. There’s enough power here to get you exploring the basics of patch design, but you’ll probably start wishing for a few more ins and outs sooner than later.

Wrap-up

The East Beast and West Pest are both undeniably impressive values. At this price point there’s simply nothing like them on the market. They are usable and musical semi modular synths with unique and compelling features. What’s more they’re easy to integrate with other modular gear, and you can even take them out of their cases and mount them in a larger Eurorack set up. They’re near ideal choices for someone that’s looking to learn synthesis.

That is different from saying they’re an ideal first synth, full stop. If you’re just looking to pull up some great sounding presets and get on with your day, these are not for you. Cre8Audio’s instruments demand exploration and experimentation. And recalling a patch will require you to take copious notes. However, if you’ve ever watched a YouTube video of someone’s monstrous modular rack with unbridled jealousy, these are a good place to start your journey.

 

Google is quickly joining Apple in recognizing the top apps of the year. The company has announced the Google Play Best of 2022 awards, and this year’s biggest winners clearly reflect the cultural zeitgeist. The best Android app of the year is Wombo’s Dream, an AI art generator — yes, one of the trendiest technologies of the year took top honors. The user’s choice winner, meanwhile, is the social media phenomenon BeReal.

Respawn swept the top game awards. Apex Legends Mobile won both Google’s nod as well as the user’s choice pick. Todoist is Google’s favorite app for Wear OS smartwatches, while Pocket’s reading tool is the top tablet-friendly app. The best software for good was The Stigma App, a community platform dor discussing mental health.

Notably, Google significantly expanded the categories this year — if partly to promote its own platforms. There’s now awards for Chromebook-friendly apps, including best app (the music maker BandLab) and best game (the metaverse-like Roblox). Very Little Nightmares is Google’s favorite Play Pass game. The game list has expanded, too. The Android port of Papers, Please won the best story award, while the gacha game Genshin Impact took the distinction of the best ongoing game.

As with Apple, Google’s year-end list is as much about driving downloads as anything else. The internet giant’s Best of 2022 section on the Play Store is effectively a one-stop shop for Android and Chromebook newcomers looking to expand their app libraries. However, it does give a feel for the cultural pulse of a mobile world where AI, the metaverse and online gaming dominate.