While we have talked about the possibilities of writing a Vulkan Wayland compositor and there was even a short-lived Vulkan renderer for KDE’s KWin, it’s also possible to write a X11 window manager around the Vulkan interfaces…
Source: Phoronix – Chamferwm: A Vulkan-Powered X11 Window Manager
Some analysis from research firm MIDiA: Earlier this month Electronic Arts (EA) reported disappointing quarterly results, now Activision has laid off nearly 800 staff, mostly in marketing and sales. As MIDiA has reported multiple times before, engagement has declined throughout the sector, suggesting that the attention economy has peaked. Consumers simply do not have any more free time to allocate to new attention seeking digital entertainment propositions, which means they have to start prioritizing between them.
This downward trend in engagement has persisted for a while now, and the latest quarterly results from some major games publishers confirm that a revenue slowdown will ultimately follow consumer behaviour. Arguably sooner than most of the games industry would have thought. Publishers will be quick to blame declining engagement and revenues on Fortnite. While the title indeed intensified the manifestation of the peak attention economy dynamics among gamers, the coming slowdown is part of a much bigger challenge — how to capture attention in an increasingly attention-scarce landscape.
Top publishers are facing several headwinds at the same time. Fortnite is only one of them, and arguably one of the less harmful ones to the long-term outlook of the games industry: Fortnite’s model utilises the attention economy dynamics: It’s a high-grade gaming experience and it’s free to play, which means there is little barrier for consumers to allocate attention to, compare to its paid counterparts. While it has undoubtedly cannibalised some revenue and engagement from other major publishers, Fortnite engagement still contributes to the bottom line of the global games industry. More gamers engage with games videos and events than Fortnite: Not only is engagement declining across mobile, PC and console gaming, at the same time, video is winning the race against gaming in capturing attention on multipurpose devices such as PC.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Major Games Publishers Are Feeling The Impact Of Peaking Attention
It is a routine emotion in 2019 to urgently wish, four or five times in a day, to be launched not simply into space but to the very edge of the universe, as far as it is possible to get from the fever dream of bad weather, busted trains and potentially cancerous thigh lesions that constitute life on Earth. But what…
Source: Gizmodo – What’s at the Edge of the Universe?
Unless you’re a staunch advocate for your kids having zero screen time, at some point you’re going to distract them with a mobile device. But instead of putting your expensive, fragile smartphone in their hands, LeapFrog’s new RockIt Twist is like a baby’s first Game Boy that makes gaming more accessible with a bunch…
Source: Gizmodo – Baby’s First Game Boy Teaches Your Kids the Joys of Gaming With Physical Buttons
Sony launched its subscription plans for PlayStation Now, a service that lets you download and stream games from an ever-growing library, on January 13th, 2015. Since then, a lot has changed. The company has added PS4 blockbusters and PS2 classics to…
Source: Engadget – PlayStation Now still isn’t good enough
It’s President’s Day! The day officially honors the birthday of the nation’s first President, George Washington. In fact, the holiday is technically called Washington’s Birthday. It’s a federal holiday, which means not only will a lot of people have the day off from work on Monday (3-day weekend FTW!), a lot of…
Source: LifeHacker – What’s Closed on President’s Day
This week on Hack Your City, we’re not taking hacks for one city—we’re taking hacks for all of them. We want your tips on taking public transit, wherever you live. For example! In New York, a free ride on the Staten Island Ferry is a well-known alternative to a trip to the Statue of Liberty. But a less appreciated…
Source: LifeHacker – Tell Us Your Public Transit Hacks
Humanity uses a lot of energy, and while solar power here on Earth is doing a reasonable job of contributing to the power mix, scientists have long hypothesized that solar power gathered from space itself would be an altogether more effective scenari…
Source: Engadget – China wants to put a solar farm in space by 2025
The Swedish furniture giant keeps ploughing ahead.
Source: TreeHugger – Ikea buys up 25% of German offshore wind farm
As Samsung, Huawei, and Motorola rush to release their foldable smartphones, one notable company is sitting out the trend. LG says it’s scrapping plans to release a bendy handset, reports The Korea Times, and will instead launch a 5G version of its f…
Source: Engadget – LG won’t release a foldable smartphone anytime soon
Enlarge / Being the result of a glitch doesn’t make MissingNo any less real to players—or researchers. (credit: Nintendo / Wilma Bainbridge)
In my flowery ring binder of Pokémon Red and Blue cheats, there was one set of instructions that spoke to my eight-year-old self most of all. I’d heard from friends (and many, many GeoCities pages) that ‘the MissingNo cheat’ could destroy your game—but it could also get you unlimited Rare Candy. This seemed like a fair trade to me.
The first Pokémon games for the Game Boy included 151 Pokémon (including the ultra-rare Mew, if your parents were long-suffering enough to drive you to one of the Nintendo promo events where it was distributed). But by following a seemingly random series of steps, players could encounter a 152nd Pokémon, MissingNo (Missing Number), which took the form of an L-shaped block of pixels.
The utter strangeness of MissingNo fascinated me, my childhood friends, and a bunch of other kids on the Internet at the time. But what I didn’t know then was that it would eventually also catch the interest of sociologists, who were intrigued by the mythology players had created around the Pokémon and the way that the glitch changed our relationship to the games.
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Source: Ars Technica – The mythos and meaning behind Pokémon’s most famous glitch
Ray Romano was not kidding when he titled his very recent standup special Right Here, Around the Corner. It gives me no joy to tell you that a mere two weeks after said special dropped (if anything that Ray Romano produces could be said to have “dropped”), Ray is has come back Around the Corner and he’s Right Here,…
Source: LifeHacker – What’s Coming and Going From Netflix the Week of February 18, 2019
Less work doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
Source: TreeHugger – Why people afraid of raising the minimum wage are missing the point
Amazon’s $10 video game preorder credits seem to have gone the way of the dodo, but that doesn’t mean you can’t save a few bucks. Super Mario Maker 2 for Switch is discounted to $56 right now, and a $1.13 coupon brings it down to $55. That’s not a huge price drop, obviously, but as far as first party Nintendo games…
Source: Kotaku – Amazon Constructed a Super Mario Maker 2 Preorder Discount
Build a mini version of one of history’s most iconic personal computers with Lorenzo ‘Tin Cat’ Herrera and his Commodore PET Mini, which is based on the Commodore PET model 8032.
Commodore PET Mini Retrowave intro
3D Print your own Commodore PET Mini retro computer with a Raspberry Pi and Retropie for retro gaming or retro emulation. Fully documented DIY project: https://commodorepetmini.com The Commodore PET is one of the most iconic-looking computer of the 70’s, it reminds us of an era of frenetic innovation, harsh competition and bold design choices that shaped the computer industry as we know it today.
Presented to the world in 1977, the Commodore PET represents a truly iconic piece of computer history: it was the first personal computer sold to the general public. With a built-in keyboard, screen, and cassette deck, and an introductory price of US$795 — roughly $3287 today — it offered everything a home computer user needed. And it beat the Apple II to market by a few months, despite Jobs and Wozniak offering to sell their Apple II technology to Commodore in September 1976.
Commodore was also the first company to license Microsoft’s 6502 BASIC, and in the 1980s the Commodore became a staple in many school classrooms, bringing about a surge in the numbers of future computer engineers — a few of which now work in the Raspberry Pi Trading office.
The Commodore PET model was discontinued in 1982, then resurrected briefly in 1986, before finally stepping aside to make way for the popular Commodore 128, 1571, and 1581 models.
Based on the Commodore PET model 8032, Lorenzo Herrera’s 3D-printable remake allows users to fit an entire computer — the Raspberry Pi — inside a miniature iconic shell. Lorenzo designed this case to house a working screen, and once you connect the Pi to a Bluetooth keyboard, your Commodore PET Mini will be fully functional as well as stylish and cute as a button.
You’ll need access to a 3D printer to build your own — all parts are listed on the project’s website. You can also purchase them as a kit directly from Lorenzo if you want to save time on sourcing your own.
To build your own Commodore PET Mini, start by visiting its official website. And if you don’t own a 3D printer, search online for your nearest maker space or 3D printing service to get the parts made.
We’re definitely going to be building our own here at Raspberry Pi, and if you build one for yourself, or use a Raspberry Pi in any iconic computer rebuild, let us know.
The post Build your own Commodore PET model 8032 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
Source: Raspberry Pi – Build your own Commodore PET model 8032
When it comes to Apple rumors, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is often the go-to person with highly accurate “reads” on the the company’s future product plans. Kuo has published a research note that talks about what he predicts we will see from Apple in 2019. One of the products will see Apple stepping back into the display realm that it vacated back
Source: Hot Hardware – Apple Rumors Point To 31.6-inch 6K Display And All-New 16-inch MacBook Pro For 2019
Enlarge (credit: Samsung)
Samsung Unpacked 2019 will kick off Wednesday, February 20, at 11am Pacific (2pm ET) in San Francisco. We’re going to hear all about Samsung’s Flagship lineup for 2019, which includes the Galaxy S10 in many variants.
We already have a huge post here outlining what to expect, but the highlight of the event will be the Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus. These devices are expected to bring a number of advancements to mainstream smartphones. They will be one of the first device families to feature the Snapdragon 855 SoC, Wi-Fi 6, and an ultrasonic in-screen fingerprint sensor. There’s also a slick new “hole punch” camera cutout in the display, along with slim bezels, which means the displays are getting even bigger.
We’re also getting way more than just the S10 and S10 Plus. There’s expected to be a cheaper version of the Galaxy S10 called the “Galaxy S10e,” and we might get a look at the upcoming 5G version. Samsung has also spent some time teasing that “The future of mobile will unfold” at the event, which means we’ll hear a bit more about the company’s upcoming foldable smartphone (the Galaxy F?).
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Source: Ars Technica – Liveblog: The Samsung Galaxy S10 launch happens Wednesday, February 20
While Linux 5.0 isn’t even out yet, there are a lot of changes building up for the Linux 5.1 cycle that have us excited…
Source: Phoronix – The Many Changes Lining Up So Far For The Linux 5.1 Kernel
It might not have the name recognition of a Roomba, but this iLife robotic vacuum packs in much of the same features in a crazy affordable $112 price tag.
Source: LifeHacker – Just Give In and Buy a Robotic Vacuum Already; It’s Only 2 Today
Despite steps taken to counteract problematic material YouTube is still a hotbed of hoaxes and fake news — a problem that’s become so prevalent the site recently announced it is changing its AI in a bid to improve matters. But now the scope of the p…
Source: Engadget – Researchers blame YouTube for the rise in Flat Earthers
