Take that, Chicago West! Kim Kardashian proved she’s a force to be reckoned with in the kitchen by making apple pie with North West in a new TikTok.
Take that, Chicago West! Kim Kardashian proved she’s a force to be reckoned with in the kitchen by making apple pie with North West in a new TikTok.
NVIDIA just officially released the 2008 fan-made Portal mod, Portal: Prelude. The company dropped it on Steam and, what’s more, it’s free for anyone who has the original game. This isn’t a drab re-release, as the updated release features new textures, full ray tracing, DLSS 3 for increased performance, NVIDIA Reflex for decreased latency and RTX IO for quicker load times.
NVIDIA also dropped a GeForce Game Ready Driver to simplify setup. All of the changes to the remaster were done by modders, keeping with the spirit of the original release, via the company’s forthcoming RTX Remix creator toolkit. NVIDIA also hired famed modders to modernize assets and improve the lighting.
For the uninitiated, Portal: Prelude was originally released back in 2008 and developed by modders. It acts as a prequel to the original game and is set before the time of GLaDOS. The game offers a ten-hour campaign with nearly 20 test chambers, a fully voiced story and mechanics that go beyond the first Portal. It continues to be the highest-rated Portal mod, and there’s no shortage of competition.
This remake took eight months of dev time and acts as a showcase for the aforementioned modding toolkit, RTX Remix. Portal: Prelude is available right now on Steam and won’t cost you anything, as long as you have the original Portal, so get downloading.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nvidia-drops-remake-of-fan-favorite-mod-portal-prelude-on-steam-for-free-130050799.html?src=rss
A Canadian air cargo startup called Ribbit is planning to test pilotless flights for deliveries in remote areas of the country, Northern Ontario Business has reported. The company signed a $1.3 million contract with Transport Canada and Innovative Solutions Canada to start autonomous test flights “over the next 12 months,” the company said.
“Many rural and remote areas are served by larger airplanes that fly infrequently,” CEO Carl Pigeon said in a press release earlier this month. “Ribbit takes a smaller aircraft and uses autonomy to drastically change the unit economics of that plane. This lets us offer reliable next-day or two-day service and improve supply chains.”
The company is starting small with two-passenger recreational-style aircraft. It plans to remove the seats to open up room for cargo, then make the aircraft fully autonomous using remote control software and hardware. The idea began as a project from University of Waterloo students, including co-founders Jeremy Wang and Carl Pigeon. Ribbit said its aircraft would use remote pilots to monitor progress, communicate with air traffic controllers and generally provide a backup.
The company has already signed contracts with retailers and wholesalers, including locally owned businesses that serve the province. The aim is to fill a demand for timely delivery of food, medical items and more. “The goal is really to try and improve that transportation link so that we can get food and other perishables, time-sensitive items, medical supplies, etcetera, into these communities at a lower price to the end consumer more reliably, and more frequently,” Wang told Northern Ontario Business.
There are a number of competitors in this space already, most notably Xwing, which has already performed autonomous gate-to-gate commercial cargo flights. That company is using much larger aircraft, namely converted Cessna Grand Caravan 208B utility planes fitted with Xwing’s Autoflight software. Another competitor in the space is Reliable Robotics (founded by former SpaceX and Tesla engineers), which has also run successful remotely piloted cargo tests.
Ribbit is smaller than those players, but it knows its customers and the region well. “Be it air cargo, asset monitoring, or maritime patrol, we have identified several applications for the technology,” Wang said. “Customers appreciate our ability to understand their operations deeply—then reimagine them with autonomy.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/startup-will-test-self-flying-aircraft-in-remote-regions-of-canada-131542988.html?src=rss
Ahead of Khloé Kardashian’s son celebrating his first birthday, she shared a video of baby Tatum crawling across the floor of her luxurious home.
Ahead of Khloé Kardashian’s son celebrating his first birthday, she shared a video of baby Tatum crawling across the floor of her luxurious home.
Get ready to do a double-take! The Rybka Twins will be auditioning for ‘AGT’ during the July 18 episode. Get to know these talented twin acrobats.
Get ready to do a double-take! The Rybka Twins will be auditioning for ‘AGT’ during the July 18 episode. Get to know these talented twin acrobats.
As our homes continue to get smarter, so does the need for additional precautions across devices. Now, the federal government is taking steps to make it easier for you to know the safety of certain devices. The Biden-Harris administration has announced the “US Cyber Trust Mark” program, which would certify and label Internet of Things (such as baby monitors and alarm systems) with powerful cybersecurity.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will determine the necessary cybersecurity qualifications for consumer-grade routers by the end of 2023. Bad actors can manipulate consumer-grade routers without strong security in place for eavesdropping and cyber attacks on other devices. Its criteria will determine if a product should be labeled and certified, using factors like incident detection capabilities and strong default passwords. At the same time, the US Department of Energy is working with National Labs, among other partners, to determine the best path forward to classify smart meters and power inverters as meeting cybersecurity requirements.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is filing for a national trademark to put on all certified items, and it plans to create a QR code that links to a database of products. “We knew that we didn’t want to create a label that said this product had been certified and secured and then stayed secure forever,” a White House official told reporters. “The QR code will give you up-to-date information on the ongoing adherence to cyber security standards.” Companies such as Logitech, Best Buy, Samsung Electronics and Amazon have expressed their support and intentions to improve cybersecurity in their product offerings.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-us-government-wants-to-label-secure-iot-devices-with-a-cyber-trust-mark-114551964.html?src=rss
The Neopets Team has huge plans for the once-beloved virtual pet website in hopes that it could finally catch up with the times. In a lengthy post on Medium, the team has announced that a new Neopets website is coming on July 20th. It’ll still live on the same URL, but it’ll contain all the brand’s announcements and links to all its different games and products. The people behind the revamp are currently trying to resolve bugs and mobile browser compatibility issues. They’re also exploring the use of Ruffle, a Flash player emulator, to make old Flash-based Neopets games playable again.
The company that owned Neopets planned to create an animated show based on the once-beloved virtual pet website, but it failed to release the series before it shut down. In its announcement, the Neopets team has revealed that it’s under new leadership and has raised over $4 million in funding for its future projects. The team members definitely seem optimistic for the future of the brand.
In fact, the team doesn’t intend to stop with a revamped website. Apparently, it has decided to transition to a mobile app and to build a social life-simulation game called World of Neopets from the ground up. At the moment, the plan is to develop a game from the perspective of a Neopet. Players will be able to decorate their homes, explore lands in 3D and play mini-games with their friends, akin to titles like Animal Crossing. It sounds like the project is still in its very early stages, though, and it remains to be seen if it will materialize.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/neopets-is-fixing-its-flash-games-and-working-on-a-social-life-sim-mobile-app-121509727.html?src=rss
Canon’s mirrorless EOS R mirrorless camera family now sits at a healthy 11 members, but most of those to date have been high-end models priced at over $1,000. Recently, though, the company has been wooing budget-minded shoppers with models like the $480 R100 and the subject of this review – the $680, 24-megapixel R50.
The R50 uses a 24-megapixel APS-C sensor from the $980 EOS R10, so image quality should be on par. Otherwise, you can think of the R50 as an RF-mount version of the older M-mount M50 Mark II – but with updates like uncropped 4K that make it better for creators. At the same time, it’s even lighter and smaller, so it’s ideal for travel, street photography and more.
Where the $480 R100 is aimed at the bottom end of the mirrorless market, the $680 R50 is targeting users a bit more serious about photography and content creation. Does it have enough going for it to entice such users? Let’s take a look.
The EOS R50 is diminutive in both weight and size, weighing in at just 375 grams with a battery and memory card. With a similarly light and small lens, like the 18-45mm kit or the new 28mm pancake model, it can easily slip into a small bag. Travelers and tourists will often settle for a smartphone rather than lugging around a heavy camera, but the R50 removes that barrier.
There’s a price to be paid in terms of usability, however. It has a relatively small grip that’s effectively unusable with large lenses, though it does have a nice rubber material so it shouldn’t slip out of your hands.
The R50 is also lacking in controls compared to other models. It has just a single dial to change settings, meaning you have to hit the exposure compensation button to toggle between shutter speed and aperture in manual mode. But since the camera is designed for beginners used to smartphones, it’s essentially designed to be controlled by the touchscreen. That works well enough, but the main menu items are a little small and fiddly.
The 2.95-inch touchscreen is nice though, with a relatively high 1.6 million dot resolution. As with all other Canon EOS R cameras, it fully articulates, making it useful for selfies and vlogging. The electronic viewfinder is on the low end though, being relatively small and with a low 2.36-million dot resolution.
With the same small battery as the EOS R10, it gets just 370 shots on a charge – perhaps the camera’s biggest weakness. It is, however, a significant improvement over the 305 shots you get with the original M50 II. Other features include a mic but no headphone port, a single slow UHS-I card slot, USB-C and micro HDMI ports and yes, a built-in flash that’s perfect for its target market.
One significant problem with budget-oriented cameras is the lack of a good autofocus system – something that’s crucial for camera novices. Luckily, the R50’s hybrid phase-detect autofocus is very solid. A simplified version of the AF from high end cameras like the R3, it tenaciously follows subjects and captures sharp photos.
It can track eyes, faces and heads, along with animals including dogs, cats, birds and horses. It also tracks vehicles like race cars, bicycles, trains and airplanes. You can either let the system choose a subject, or tap the touchscreen to select it yourself.
Performance is a little less dependable for animals and vehicles than it is for people. And subject tracking will often drop the subject if you’re too far away from it. But overall, the AI system is dependable, particularly with people.
That serves it well for burst shooting, which is surprisingly fast for such a small camera. It can grab frames at up to 12 fps in mechanical shutter mode or 15 fps in silent electronic mode. However, you’re limited to 42 JPEG images in a burst and just 7 uncompressed RAWs, due to the small buffer and slow memory card slots.
On top of the usual manual and auto shooting modes, the R50 has creative settings for beginners including something called A+ Advanced Auto. If it detects a scene that’s tricky to shoot due to high contrast or darkness, it takes four shots and combines them into a single JPEG image, much like smartphones have done for years. The results can be pleasing, but may also look overprocessed.
As you’d expect, there’s no in-body stabilization, so you’ll need to rely on optically stabilized lenses for that – and there are only two of those in the APS-C lineup. Those only deliver 4 stops of shake reduction, but it’s enough to allow for sharp shots at 1/10th of a second or so. When using the silent shutter function, beware that some rolling shutter effect is present, but it’s reasonably well controlled.
As the R50 shares the R10’s 24-megapixel sensor, photo quality is nearly the same. For normal shooting, I saw color accurate photos with skin tones leaning on the warm side as is typical with Canon’s color science. JPEGs strike a good balance between sharpening and noise reduction, while RAW files allow for a decent amount of room to tweak images.
Low-light performance isn’t amazing, though. ISO 6400 is pretty much a hard limit, and even then you won’t have a lot of room to boost blacks without getting tons of noise. And you don’t have in-body stabilization to help at low shutter speeds.
Luckily, the R50 does have a built-in flash that can fill in if you’re lacking light. Just make sure to dial the illumination levels down in the settings to avoid blowing out your subject.
Where the EOS R10 offers cropped 4K 60p video, the R50 is limited to 4K 30p. Luckily, that is uncropped, however, and supersampled from 6K. You’re limited to 1080p for slow-mo, but luckily it can shoot up to 120fps, though 60fps is considerably sharper.
It’s the cheapest camera on the market by far with 10-bit mode via the HDR PQ mode, though the footage requires some tweaking for normal usage. A C-Log mode that might boost dynamic range isn’t available, but it’s not really necessary for its intended market segment.
For a relatively small and cheap camera, the R50 offers excellent video quality. The oversampled video is very sharp, and colors are accurate and human friendly. The fact that 4K video isn’t cropped is a huge plus for vloggers.
The autofocus is also outstanding for a camera in this price bracket, with tenacious tracking that keeps focus sharp in most circumstances. It also has a “close-up demo mode” that works much like Sony’s product showcase mode, quickly switching focus from your face to any object you bring up to the camera.
The digital stabilization is OK for walking and talking, as long as you try to move smoothly. All of these things make the R50 an excellent camera for vloggers and content creators ready to step up from a smartphone.
With the R50, Canon has found a good balance between power and affordability. Where the R10 has a lot of competition at its higher $980 price point, the $680 R50 has only a few rivals
Its main competition is Sony’s $700 ZV-E10, which is slightly better for vlogging but not as good for photography. Another option is the $700 Nikon Z30, which offers a similar feature set but lacks an EVF and has less reliable autofocus.
If those models are too much, Canon just released the $480 R100, the least expensive new mirrorless camera on the market. Content creators may lean toward the Sony ZV-E10, but if you’re looking for a solid hybrid camera that can do everything, Canon’s R50 is a great choice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/canon-eos-r50-camera-review-123006238.html?src=rss
In a raw new video, Selena Gomez gave fans a look inside her songwriting process for her 2019 Justin Bieber-inspired hit, ‘Lose You To Love Me.’
In a raw new video, Selena Gomez gave fans a look inside her songwriting process for her 2019 Justin Bieber-inspired hit, ‘Lose You To Love Me.’
BJ Griffin is bringing his multitude of talents to the ‘AGT’ stage in the July 18 episode. Here’s what you need to know about this contestant who will surely be a standout.
BJ Griffin is bringing his multitude of talents to the ‘AGT’ stage in the July 18 episode. Here’s what you need to know about this contestant who will surely be a standout.
