Technology

As a visual artist who also makes beats in the anonymity of my bedroom, I’ve always wondered how Daft Punk managed to craft not only their music, but their visual presence. A masterpiece unto itself, the Daft Punk helmets transform two anonymous musicians into otherworldly beings. Arbiters of funk and electro. Ambassadors of sound. Gods of the synthesizer. You get it. The helmets allow the musicians to detach themselves from reality and bring the audience into their universe. It leaves the musician in mystery, and until today, the genesis of the helmets was a mystery to me too. In a tweet thread by @daft_wub, you can see the whole process from sketch to final, including electrical schematics and initial sculpts of the helmets. They also show the complex wiring that was required to power th...

The other day, I saw a game named Valheim atop the Steam Early Access sales charts, with overwhelmingly positive reviews. Polygon seemed to like the $20 Viking-themed survival game, and I thought friends might like it, too. I wasn’t ready to commit quite yet — I waffled a while before giving it a go. Know who bought it while I was making up my mind? One million other people. On February 10th, just eight days after launch, indie developer Iron Gate announced that Valheim had already sold 1 million copies. Five days after that, Valheim reached 2 million sales. On Friday February 19th, two days after we originally published this post, it hit 3 million sales. Here are a few other facts you might like to know: It has now been the second-most played game on all of Steam at one point, ahead of ev...

Google is changing its policies related to research and diversity after completing an internal investigation into the firing of ethical AI team co-leader Timnit Gebru, according to Axios. The company intends to tie the pay of certain executives to diversity and inclusivity goals. It’s also making changes to how sensitive employee exits are managed. Although Google did not reveal the results of the investigation, the changes seem to be direct responses to how the situation with Gebru went down. After Google demanded that a paper she co-authored be retracted, Gebru told research team management that she would resign from her position and work on a transition plan, unless certain conditions were met. Instead of a transition plan, the company immediately ended her employment while she was on v...

The Audeze Penrose has almost everything I want in a wireless gaming headset. Its high-end planar magnetic drivers deliver rich, balanced sound quality that’s easily superior to other models I’ve tested recently. It’s feature-packed, too, with individual volume and microphone levels, USB-C charging, the option for wired connectivity via 3.5mm, as well as support for simultaneous Bluetooth 5.0 audio connections. As a gaming headset, it’s stacked — which it should be for something that costs $299. After reviewing a headset, I usually can’t wait to return to the familiar, plushy, warm-sounding cans of my own Sony WH-1000XM3, but the Penrose is a joy to listen to. Game audio sounds punchy without being over-delivered, I don’t need to blast the volume to hear subtle details, and even though thi...

Famous video game fighter Chun-Li may not be in the new Mortal Kombat movie, but she and fellow Street Fighter icon Ryu will be playable characters in Fortnite soon. Both Chun-Li and Ryu will be available in Fortnite’s in-game shop on Saturday, February 20th at 7PM ET. Chun-Li and Ryu aren’t the first video game stars to appear in Fortnite this season — fans have also had the chance to pick up skins based on Kratos from God of War and Master Chief from Halo. This entire season of Fortnite has been jam-packed with other crossovers, including Tron, G.I. Joe’s Snake Eyes, two characters from The Walking Dead, soccer kits from real-world teams, and even the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda (who is absolutely adorable in-game). And the game’s last season was a huge Marvel-themed crossover. As unexpect...

As part of BlizzCon Online’s opening ceremony, Blizzard Entertainment announced a new video game anthology that includes some of the earlier titles created by the World of Warcraft developer. Blizzard Arcade Collection is a compilation featuring three titles developed by Blizzard around the early and mid-1990s. Blizzard Arcade Collection includes The Lost Vikings, a puzzle platformer that was originally released on SNES in 1993, back when the studio was known as Silicon & Synapse. The game would also see previous ports on other consoles like the Amiga and Game Boy Advance, and was even made available on PC as a free download on Battle.net. The other games available include another platformer called Blackthorne, which was released originally in 1994 on the SNES, as well as Rock n’ Roll ...

A series of accidentally posted office videos has become an unexpected viral hit on TikTok. The most popular shows a series of municipal employees bidding farewell to their colleague, Connie, against the backdrop of a prairie-hued office space straight out of Parks & Rec. “Congratulations from the Orange County clerk’s office,” says the male deputy clerk, before stepping off to the right. County Clerk Elizabeth Jones steps into the frame: “We wish you the best in your future endeavors.” “We appreciate the good job that you have done for the state of Indiana,” says another, before making room for a fourth. “Goodbye, Connie!” As of press time, more than 40,000 users have liked the video, and it has been viewed more than 300,000 times. The @deputyclerk account, which was only launched yes...

If you know where to look, you can see COVID-19 vaccines starting to save lives in the United States. It’s not in the overall case numbers, though those have been steadily dropping across the United States for weeks. Epidemiologists say there could be a few reasons for that decline: we’re past the holiday seasons surge and people changed their behavior in response to the winter spikes. And by now, many people have antibodies against the virus because of a previous infection. But vaccines probably aren’t a driving factor in that drop — not enough people had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 when the decline started, and vaccination rates are still relatively low. Some groups of people, though, have high enough rates of vaccination that the benefits are starting to show. Connecticut was...

Yesterday, NASA landed a rover named Perseverance on Mars. I, along with 2 million other people, watched the landing happen live on YouTube. It was beautiful. I mean, here’s this little robot dude that’s traveled millions and millions of miles through the barrenness of space, and now it’s just hanging out on Mars taking pics and scientific samples! (Perseverance joins older sibling Curiosity on the surface of the Red Planet. Hope they have a nice time together!) In any case, Perseverance didn’t traverse the vastness of space alone. Ingenuity, a tiny helicopter, tagged along for the ride. As it’s primarily a technology demonstration, Ingenuity’s destiny is to attempt the first powered flight on any planet other than Earth and to hopefully be the blueprint for future Mars missions. It’s also...

It’s been a big couple of weeks for Android fans. First came the leaks. Then Google officially made its Android 12 developer preview available, allowing curious folks to dig in and see what the company has actually been working on. The past couple of days have brought many discoveries of tweaks and features that Android 12 will offer, including some hints at what UI changes may be on the way. First up: stacked widgets, similar to iOS. Mishaal Rahman identified the “expanded smart space” feature, which appears to let users scroll between widgets occupying the same space on the home screen. It’s similar to the Smart Stacks feature introduced in iOS 14, which allows you to “stack” widgets of the same size and scroll between them. A new feature may allow you to swipe across the screen to scrol...

John Carmack has proposed an auction system for popular gaming products like GPUs, the PS5, and Xbox Series X. Carmack, the co-founder of id software, believes “we really would be better off with a transparent auction system directly from the manufacturers and a more efficient market.” This type of auction system could be used to beat scalpers, who wouldn’t be willing to pay inflated prices on highly prized new products. “There would be much indignation at reported prices out of the gate, but removing intermediaries should net out better for consumers in the end,” says Carmack on Twitter. Due to a global chip shortage and incredible demand, the true price of a PS5 was more than $1,000 in December, and RTX 3080s were selling for $1,227 instead of the $699 sticker price. Even older graphics ...

Apple is reportedly developing a new iPhone charging accessory in the form of a battery pack that magnetically attaches to the rear of the device using MagSafe, Bloomberg reports. Although some prototypes have a rubber exterior, the battery pack isn’t thought to act as a protective case like previous iPhone battery accessories from Apple. Alongside details of the new battery case, Bloomberg also notes that the iPhone lineup is unlikely to receive support for reverse wireless charging anytime soon. The battery pack accessory is thought to have been in development for at least a year, but it’s reportedly faced development issues relating to the iPhone’s software thinking that the pack is overheating. Bloomberg notes that Apple is cautious about announcing charging accessories, after it was f...