ArduinoMania

Some Android users are getting an update that could literally save their lives one day. Android users who have a device with the Personal Safety app can now opt-in to sharing medical information with first responders when calling or texting 911. The feature has been available for iPhone and Apple Watch users since the rollout of iOS 13.5 in 2020.

Android users can add information such as caller name, allergies, emergency contacts and preexisting medical conditions. "This is when the information you put inside your phone becomes useful to 911," Tenea Reddick, ECC director at Baltimore City Fire Department, said in a statement. "This information is available to use before the dispatch, and before the responders arrive. It saves so much time because we already know what we're responding to and what we need." The feature is especially beneficial if the person contacting 911 is unable to communicate.

For now, this feature is only available on Androids with the Personal Safety app, such as the Nothing Phone 1 and the Google Pixel 4 through Google Pixel 8 Pro. Anyone with these devices can enable the new feature by going to the "Your info" section of the Personal Safety app. From there, they can click "Emergency info access" and then "Share during emergency call." 

Android and Apple's services are run by RapidSOS, a safety platform that securely shares critical information in times of crisis to over 16,000 911 and field responder agencies. Apple users can access Medical ID, a feature in the Health app that, similar to Android's Personal Safety app, stores information such as blood type, emergency contacts, allergies and preexisting medical conditions. RapidSOS shares this data with first responders, who can also determine a person's location if they call 911 in an area with Enhanced Emergency Data services. Android users have also had the ability to send location data through RapidSOS since 2018. 

Apple built more iPhone 15s in India than any past model and it plans to continue that trend. The company will shift a quarter of its iPhone production — more than 50 million phones — to the nation within the next two to three years, The Wall Street Journal reported. China would still remain the largest iPhone supplier by a good margin, though.

Foxconn and other Apple suppliers reportedly believe that the push into India has been proceeding well, so they're setting the stage for future expansion. The company proceeded slowly at first due to infrastructure problems and powerful unions that have helped set more restrictive labor rules — pushing back against 12-hour work days, for example.  

India's commerce minister said at the beginning of 2023 that Apple planned to build 25 percent of its phones in the nation, but there was never any timeframe attached to that. Two to three years would represent a fairly dramatic ramp-up, considering that the iPhone 15 marked the first time it had released a model made in India on launch day. 

It's also been known that Apple contractor Foxconn would manufacture more iPhone 15s than past models its facility in Tamil Nadu, India. It's part of Apple's plan to diversify manufacturing in the face of supply chain risks due to tensions between the US and China. Foxconn is currently building a plant in the southern Karnataka state expected to open in April 2024, and has another megaplant on the drawing board as well, according to the WSJ's sources. 

To date, Apple has only built a small percentage of its iPhones in India, and production previously lagged behind China by up to nine months. That changed with the iPhone 14, which started manufacturing the same month as in China, and iPhone 15s built in India were available in stores at launch. 

Relations between US and China are delicate at the moment, with the US recently taking measures to block access to advanced technology in the nation. Apple continues to stress the nation's importance, though, with CEO Tim Cook having traveled there twice in 2023. Apple also sells a large number of phones in China, accounting for about 19 percent of its total revenue — while stressing that all phones in sold China through authorized channels are also built in China and use local suppliers. 

‘Tis the season for gift giving, and what better to give than a newfound love for hacking, soldering, and blinkenlights? In order to spread cheer and education at the local hackerspace, [Tom Goff] created this festive tree circuit board that can either sit in a stand to be admired, or worn as jewelry. The resistors are even designed to look like candy canes hanging from the boughs.

The brains of this festive little tree is an ATmega328P, which you probably recognize as the microcontroller that powers the Arduino Uno. Although this circuit has none of the extra bits you’d find on an Uno, not even a crystal oscillator, it can still be programmed with Arduino and use the 8 MHz internal clock.

[Tom] has provided good, thorough instructions, especially for the sticky bit of setting up the IDE to program using the 8 MHz internal clock. So even if you’re nowhere near Norwich Hackerspace, you can join in the fun. Be sure to check out the video after the break, wherein [Tom] walks through designing the PCB using Inkscape and Fritzing.

Want to whip up a little something for the hackerspace wall? Check out this Sierpinski Christmas tree.

Remember the 20th anniversary limited edition PlayStation 4? No, I didn't get one, either. But what if Sony were to port that same sweet retro look from the PS1 to the PS5? Look no further than the farewell gift which SIE (Sony Interactive Entertainment) President and CEO Jim Ryan — who is retiring in March 2024 — received yesterday.

In a photo posted by Yuichi Haga, the Global Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Lead at SIE, the "one of a kind" PS5 console — not the slim model — was customized with the PS1's retro gray finish, along with the classic quad-color "PS" logo. Even the DualSense controller was given a DualShock 1 makeover, complete with a cable and a cute plug cover that goes over the PS5's front USB-C port. Ryan's team went the extra mile to make a special packaging design — one that pays homage to the PS1's box art.

At yesterday's thank-you party, the outgoing PlayStation boss was honored by many industry legends, including the "father of PlayStation" Ken Kutaragi, Gran Turismo's Kazunori Yamauchi, Team Asobi's Nicolas Doucet and, of course, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida. PlayStation's BAFTA-winning indies lead, Shuhei Yoshida, was notably absent as he had to attend The Game Awards (while nabbing the "Games for Impact" award on behalf of Awaceb, the developer behind indie title, Tchia).

It's unclear as to whether us mere mortals will get to own a version of this special edition PS5, but considering that it'll be PlayStation's 30th anniversary next year, perhaps Sony will consider making one for the PS5 Slim then?

Google is counting on its very own GPT-4 competitor, Gemini, so much that it staged parts of a recent demo video. In an opinion piece, Bloomberg says Google admits that for its video titled "Hands-on with Gemini: Interacting with multimodal AI," not only was it edited to speed up the outputs (which was declared in the video description), but the implied voice interaction between the human user and the AI was actually non-existent. 

Instead, the actual demo was made by "using still image frames from the footage, and prompting via text," rather than having Gemini respond to — or even predict — a drawing or change of objects on the table in real time. This is far less impressive than the video wants to mislead us into thinking, and worse yet, the lack of disclaimer about the actual input method makes Gemini's readiness rather questionable.

It comes as no surprise that Google denies any wrongdoing here, as it referred The Verge to an X post written by Gemini's co-lead, Oriol Vinyals, which says "all the user prompts and outputs in the video are real," and that his team made the video "to inspire developers." Given the industry and authorities' attention on AI lately, perhaps the tech giant should be more sensitive about its presentations in this field.

ByteDance's TikTok has been facing a tough time over its handling of Israel-Hamas war content and related hate speech, but it is now stepping up with some new initiatives. On the moderation side, the social platform is rolling out new comment filtering tools, with the most notable one being "Comment Care Mode," which supposedly automatically filters comments that are deemed similar to the creator's previously reported or deleted ones. Another new feature helps nix comments made by accounts that are not in the creator's following or follower list. The company aims to increase new users' awareness of these tools via a prompt after their first video upload, and in the long run, it'll set up a product beta testing program to get direct feedback from creators.

TikTok has also set up a new anti-hate and discrimination task force, in the hopes of proactively spotting antisemitism, Islamophobia and other hate trends before they get out of hand. The team will work with experts on improving training for moderators to better address hate speech, and it will expand its managed creator communities to Jewish plus other inter-faith communities, as well as API and LGBTQ+, next year. 

The Information added that TikTok plans to expand access to its research APIs to civil society groups — as the likes of the Anti-Defamation League have been requesting for years, apparently — so they can better understand the types of content spreading on TikTok. This comes in stark contrast to how X — well, Elon Musk, mostly — limited social media researchers' access to its platform, while it continues to deny any wrongdoing over accusations of antisemetic content.

While TikTok's stepped-up efforts may not convince those who still accuse its algorithm of bias, the platform has at least continued removing a staggering amount of offending content. The latest figure on removed videos in the conflict region has hit 1.3 million, between October 7 and November 30. These included "content promoting Hamas, hate speech, terrorism and misinformation."

The first Final Fantasy XVI DLC was not only announced at the Game Awards 2023; it’s already available on the PlayStation Store. Echoes of the Fallen, set before the base game’s final battle, is out now, while a second DLC installment, The Rising Tide, arrives in spring 2024.

The PlayStation blog says Echoes of the Fallen “unlocks a whole new story, battles, weapons, accessories, level cap and more.” You’ll follow Clive and the gang as they run into “a group of suspicious traders,” which points them to an abandoned Fallen tower, the Sagespire. “Terrible secrets” lie in store.

A bonus awaits those who buy Echoes of the Fallen or the game’s Expansion Pass, in the form of the Buster Sword from Final Fantasy VII. In addition, it adds the “Away (1987)” Orchestrion Roll, unlocking a chiptune version of the song as new hideout background music.

As for The Rising Tide, Square Enix promises a climactic confrontation between Clive and Leviathan, the legendary Eikon. In addition, if you haven’t played the base Final Fantasy XVI game yet, it’s discounted on the PlayStation Store through December 11.

Monster Hunter is one of Capcom's biggest franchises at this point, so of course the company has been cooking up another mainline entry. It's called Monster Hunter Wilds and it's coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC in 2025. 

The trailer shows the player character and several creatures trying to escape a dust storm before lightning strikes. The air then clears to reveal a lush landscape teeming with wildlife. There wasn't a whole lot else to the announcement clip other than the appearance of a dragon, but hey, it looks pretty and it gives fans of the series something to look forward to. 

Series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto said at The Game Awards his team plans to show off much more of the game in the summer of 2024. In the meantime, fans can keep themselves occupied with the likes of Monster Hunter Now and a Monster Hunter crossover that's set to go live in Exoprimal next month. 

Xbox-only gamers have had to patiently bide their time until Baldur's Gate 3, one of the biggest titles of 2023, hit Microsoft's consoles. The RPG came out of early access on PC in August and it landed on PS5 the following month. However, technical issues held up the Xbox Series X/S version until now. 

Developer and publisher Larian Studios had pledged to release the Xbox version by the end of the year and said it would reveal the exact date at The Game Awards. True to its word, Larian announced that the Xbox version of Baldur's Gate 3 is out right now. 

Along with Alan Wake 2, Baldur's Gate 3 had the most nominations (eight) of any title at The Game Awards 2023. It ultimately won four: Best Role Playing Game, Best Community Support, Best Multiplayer Game and the big one, Game of the Year.

The Xbox delay was due to a technical problem with the Series S. As Larian's director of publishing Michael Douse wrote in July, "We cannot remove the split-screen feature because we are obliged to launch with feature parity, and so continue to try and make it work.” However, Larian said the following month that, after meeting with Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer. it had found a solution that would allow it to support split-screen on Series X but not Series S.

UK indie studio Hello Games is building something that it's calling "more ambitious" than No Man's Sky. The studio's next game is Light No Fire, and it brings procedural generation to an entire planet on an incredibly detailed scale.

Light No Fire is an open-world exploration and community-building game set on a planet the size of Earth, blending RPG elements with sandbox survival. It's a multiplayer experience on an ancient and fantastical planet, with climbable trees, hills and mountains, and secrets to discover at every turn. It's "the first real open world," according to Hello Games co-founder Sean Murray. 

Light No Fire has been in development for five years, by about a dozen developers at Hello Games. In the title's first trailer, it looks like the team took an entire planet from No Man's Sky and filled it completely with life, resources and mysteries. 

There's no release date for Light No Fire and no confirmed platforms, and the game was kept in complete secrecy until its reveal at The Game Awards on December 7.

Hello Games is synonymous with No Man’s Sky, a sprawling and incredibly popular space-exploration sim that landed in 2016 and only got better with time. But before the indie studio scored a huge marketing deal with Sony for No Man’s Sky — before one of its founders was meeting with Steven Spielberg and appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — Hello Games was known for the cartoony sidescroller Joe Danger.

UK developers Ryan Doyle, Grant Duncan, Sean Murray and David Ream founded Hello Games in 2009, after quitting their jobs at major studios like EA and Criterion. This was before the modern indie boom, at a time when XBLA was just getting started and Steam had only a handful of indie games.

"Actually breaking away and doing your own thing was a stupid thing to do at the time," Murray told me in 2016.

For nine months, the Hello Games quartet worked on Joe Danger, a 3D sidescroller starring a happy-go-lucky dirtbike daredevil, and they tried to lock down a publisher. No one was interested.

"Everyone turned us down," Murray said in 2016. "Sony turned us down, and Microsoft and so many places."

Out of money and resigned to giving up on their indie dreams, Doyle, Duncan, Murray and Ream went to the pub.

"We came up with this stupid idea," Murray said. "I had a house, and so I sold my house to pay for the rest of development. … The way I looked at it was like, I had bought that house because I had worked at EA, so it was like blood money. Like a blood diamond. You gotta sell that; that's bad karma."

And he really did. Built on loans and the money from Murray’s house sale, Joe Danger came out on June 9, 2010, and it was a hit. Hello Games followed it up with Joe Danger 2: The Movie in 2012. By then, the studio was an established indie hit-maker and it had relationships with major publishers. In December 2013, the team revealed something entirely unexpected: No Man’s Sky, a multiplayer game the size of the universe and filled with galaxies of procedurally generated planets to explore.

Hello Games

The next summer, No Man’s Sky had a tentpole moment at Sony’s E3 press conference, and the AAA marketing machine was activated. Sony leaned heavily on Hello Games to bolster its image as an indie curator, and over the next two years, the buzz around No Man’s Sky reached astronomical heights. Spielberg, Colbert, Kanye West and Elon Musk all got involved in their own ways, and No Man's Sky was a household name years before it launched.

By the time the game came out, it was impossible for it to live up to the hype. No Man’s Sky promised a universe of procedurally generated planets to explore, teeming with minerals and creatures and other players to encounter, but at launch on August 9, 2016, it was buggy and empty. The bones of a fantastic game were there, but some players felt so misled by Sony's intense marketing campaign that they filed a lawsuit against Hello Games.

The team kept working on No Man’s Sky, releasing bug fixes, updates and expansions, including a VR version. Over the years, the vision that players were initially sold clarified in-game, and the online rage died down until it was fully replaced by admiration. Since launch, No Man’s Sky has won multiple high-profile awards, including Best Ongoing Game at The Game Awards 2020. This year, it’s nominated at The Game Awards in the Best Community Support category.

Hello Games

"It's become so much simpler two years out from launch," Murray told me in 2019. "At launch, we were so focused on trying to please the partners that we were working with, trying to market our game, trying to live up to expectations that we were really struggling to meet."

No Man’s Sky in particular is Murray’s brainchild, and he was the face of the game as it rose and fell and rose again in public perception. He and the rest of the Hello Games team — which is bigger than four developers nowadays — have kept silent about their internal projects, and it’s easy to understand why.

"They are super talented and I didn't want to just move on and let that be their legacy," Murray said in 2019. "It's really nice for them to be able to say to people, 'I worked on No Man's Sky,' and people to be really happy and positive about it now. That is something that they deserved."

This history makes today’s reveal of Light No Fire even sweeter. Fourteen years after that fateful night in the pub, Hello Games is a testament to persistence.