ArduinoMania

X’s firing of an employee who pushed back against a return-to-office policy imposed by Elon Musk last year was illegal, the National Labor Relations Board alleges. In what Bloomberg reports is the NLRB’s first formal complaint against X Corp., filed on Friday, the labor board accused the company of retaliating against software engineer Yao Yue for attempting to organize workers in the wake of the new policy. After Musk gave then-Twitter employees an ultimatum in November 2022 to return to the office, Yue urged others not to resign in response but instead “let him fire you.”

Musk at the time had told employees, “If you can physically make it to an office and you don’t show up, resignation accepted.” Yue was fired five days after tweeting about it and writing a similar post on Slack. In terminating her, the complaint filed by a San Francisco branch of the NLRB alleges the company violated federal labor law by “interfering with, restraining, and coercing employees” exercising protected rights, according to CNBC. A hearing is now set for January 30.

The formal NLRB complaint may be a first for X, but accusations of retaliation against employees are nothing new for a Musk-helmed company. In early 2023, Tesla workers in Buffalo, New York accused the company of firing them for unionizing, and eight SpaceX employees filed a complaint with the NLRB in 2022 claiming they were terminated for criticizing Musk.

You may have to pay a bit more for NVIDIA's cloud gaming service starting on November 1. The company has raised the subscription prices for GeForce Now in Canada and Europe "to account for increased operational costs in those areas." To be exact, if you're paying in CAD, GBP, EUR, SEK, NOK, DKK, CZK or PLN, expect to get hit by price adjustments next month. In Canada, for instance, the $10 Priority tier will cost $14 per month. Meanwhile, the Ultimate tier, which grants you access to servers with RTX 4080 GPUs, 240 fps gameplay and full support for hardware-based ray tracing, will cost $6 more at $26 per month. 

If you're in the UK, you'll have to pay £2 more for the UItimate tier. It's also an additional €2 if you're paying in Euros. As you can see, the amount you'll have to add depends on your region, but there is a way to lock in the service's current pricing for the next half year: Simply pay for a 6-month membership before November 1. Take note that a 6-month Ultimate membership will cost $40 more in Canada and £20 more in the UK when the new prices take effect next month. 

You can also purchase membership gift cards within the next couple of weeks at their current prices. NVIDIA says it will adjust gift card pricing after November 1, as well, but it will honor cards purchased before that even if they're redeemed at a later date. If you got into the service early and are a "Founder" member, though, don't worry — the price hikes don't apply to you, and you can continue paying your current rates. 

NVIDIA

EU Commissioner Thierry Breton has been sending warning letters to online platforms, reminding them of their duty to address disinformation going around regarding the Israel-Hamas war. Now Breton has written a letter addressed to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, reminding him of the company's "precise obligations regarding content moderation under the EU Digital Services Act." Specifically, Breton is asking Alphabet to be "very vigilant" when it comes to Israel-Hamas-related content posted on YouTube. 

The European Commission has been seeing a "surge of illegal content and disinformation" being disseminated via certain platforms, he said, telling Pichai that Alphabet has an obligation to protect children and teens from "violent content depicting hostage taking and other graphic videos." Breton also warned Pichai that if Alphabet receives notices of illegal content from the EU, it must respond in a timely manner. Finally, he reminded the CEO that the company must have mitigation measures in place to address "civic discourse stemming from disinformation." The video-sharing service must also adequately differentiate reliable news sources from terrorist propaganda and manipulated content, such as clickbait videos. 

YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi told The Verge that the service has "removed tens of thousands of harmful videos and terminated hundreds of channels" following the attacks in Israel and the "conflict now underway in Israel and Gaza." The platform's systems, she added, "continue to connect people with high-quality news and information." She also said that YouTube's teams are "working around the clock to monitor for harmful footage and remain vigilant to take action quickly if needed on all types of content, including Shorts and livestreams."

Breton was the same the official who had previously sent Elon Musk an "urgent" letter about the spread of disinformation on X amid the Israel-Hamas war. He called out the spread of "fake and manipulated images and facts circulating on [the platform formerly known as Twitter] in the EU, such as repurposed old images of unrelated armed conflicts or military footage that actually originated from video games." X CEO Linda Yaccarino published the company's response a day later, claiming to have removed or labeled "tens of thousands of pieces of content" and to have deleted hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts from the platform. Even so, the European Union still opened an investigation into X for the lackluster moderation of illegal content and disinformation related to the war.

The EU commissioner also sent Meta a stern letter, voicing similar concerns about misinformation on its platforms. Meta responded by saying that "expert teams from across [ts] company have been working around the clock to monitor [its] platforms while protecting people's ability to use [its] apps to shed light on important developments happening on the ground." Breton sent TikTok a letter about disinformation spreading on its platform related to the Israel-Hamas war, as well, giving the company 24 hours to explain how it's complying with EU law. 

In addition to asking YouTube to keep a close eye on Israel-Hamas disinformation, Breton also tackled the issue of election-related disinformation in his letter. He is asking the service to notify his team of the measures it has taken to mitigate deepfakes "in light of upcoming elections in Poland, The Netherlands, Lithuania, Belgium, Croatia, Romania and Austria, and the European Parliament elections."

If you solder (and we know you do), you absolutely need ventilation, even for that lead-free stuff. Fortunately, [tinyboatproductions] has gotten into air quality lately and is here to help you with their snappy 3D printed air-filtering design.

At the heart of this build is a 120 mm notoriously-quiet Noctua fan coupled with a carbon filter. It does what you’d think — position the fan the right way and it sucks the air through the filter, which catches all those nasty particles.

The only problem is that the Noctua uses PWM, so there’s no governing it with a just potentiometer. To get around this, [tinyboatproductions] introduced an Arduino Nano and a buck converter, both of which were admittedly a bit overkill. Now the speed can be controlled with a pot.

Once control of the fan was sorted, [tinyboatproductions] decide to add an OLED display to show the fan speed and power condition, which is a nice touch. Be sure to check out the build video after the break.

If this doesn’t have quite enough features for you, here’s one that’s battery powered.

There are a few “Will it run” tropes when it comes to microcontrollers, one for example is “Will it run Doom?“, while another is “Will it run Linux?”. In one of the lowest spec examples of the last one, [gvl610] has got an up-to-date Linux kernel to boot on a vanilla Arduino Uno. And your eyes didn’t deceive you, that’s a full-fat kernel rather than the cut-down μClinux for microcontrollers.

Those of you who’ve been around a while will probably have guessed how this was done, as the ATmega328 in the Uno has no MMU and is in to way powerful enough for the job. It’s running an emulator, in this case just enough RISC-V to be capable, and as you’d imagine it’s extremely slow. You’ll be waiting many hours for a shell with this machine.

The code is written in pure AVR C, and full instructions for compilation are provided. Storage comes from an SD card, as the ATmega’s meagre 32k is nowhere near enough. If you’re having a bit of deja vu here we wouldn’t blame you, but this one is reputed to be worse than the famous 2012 “Worst PC Ever“, which emulated ARM instead of RISC-V.

Thanks [Electronics Boy] for the tip!

Valve has warned Counter-Strike 2 players that AMD’s latest graphics driver could get them banned. The problem lies in AMD’s Anti-Lag+ feature, which triggers the Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) system, duping it into mistaking the driver’s low-latency mode for cheating.

The problem lies in Anti-Lag+ intercepting and redirecting Dynamic Link Library (DLL) functions. VAC views DLL reroutes as cheats (in other cases, they often are), which could lead to getting booted from Counter-Strike 2.

A Reddit thread about the issue claims “many players” have reported receiving VAC bans from using the latest AMD driver (23.10.1). “It seems that VAC is banning everyone BUT the cheaters,” quipped u/Volfong in the thread. “Can confirm I got banned today and Anti-Lag+ was turned on,” wrote u/trkemrasr. “They better reverse this shit quickly.”

Valve plans to do just that. “Once AMD ships an update we can do the work of identifying affected users and reversing their ban,” the publisher posted on X (formerly Twitter).

Until the problem is resolved, Valve recommends turning off Anti-Lag+ in the graphics card settings. If you haven’t changed the default, you can disable Anti-Lag+ with the hotkey of Alt+L. You can double-check the shortcut’s setting by opening AMD Radeon Software, clicking on the gear icon and choosing Hotkeys from the sub-menu. Selecting the existing hotkey for Anti-Lag+ allows you to customize it.

Engadget has contacted AMD for comment and will update this article if we hear back.

Counter-Strike 2 launched in September after months of hype. The update, which replaced Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on Steam, adds upgraded graphics and maps alongside more realistic smoke. The game uses Valve’s Source 2 engine for improved lighting, clearer textures and updated geometry. You’ll need a somewhat modern Windows machine to play it as Valve says it has no plans to bring the sequel to macOS or older PCs.

Several weeks after Nintendo revealed Charles Martinet will no longer voice Mario, the company has confirmed the identity of the actor who'll play its most famous character for the foreseeable future. Kevin Afghani is the new voice of Mario Mario and Luigi Mario in Nintendo's games.

"Incredibly proud to have voiced Mario and Luigi in Super Mario Bros. Wonder," Afghani, who was perhaps best known until now as the voice of Arnold in Genshin Impact, wrote on X. "Thanks to Nintendo for inviting me into the Flower Kingdom!" Nintendo confirmed to Polygon that Afghani is voicing the characters and will have the honor of being the first actor to portray Elephant Mario.

Fans noticed something different with Mario's voice when the first trailer for Super Mario Bros. Wonder, which arrives on October 20, emerged over the summer. They noticed a difference in Wario's voice in a WarioWare: Move It! clip too. It's not yet clear who's playing Mario's arch-rival in that game.

Martinet, who is 67, was the man behind Mario's "wahoo!" and "here we go!" exclamations for well over two decades in games and since 1991 at trade shows. He's played several other characters in the Mario-verse during that time, including Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, Baby Luigi and Baby Mario.

But whether it was Martinet's decision or Nintendo's, it was evidently time for a change. Martinet will continue to work with Nintendo as a “Mario Ambassador,” which will see him "continue to travel the world sharing the joy of Mario."

The Evil Within will be free next week on the Epic Games Store. The nearly decade-old title is a survival horror game from Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, who left Bethesda earlier this year. The game will be free to claim on Epic from October 19 to 26.

The game puts you in the shoes of Detective Sebastian Castellanos as he finds himself sucked into a macabre world full of nightmarish monsters and traps. The Evil Within’s action unfolds in a third-person perspective as Castellanos uses stealth and whatever weapons and resources he can scrap together to unravel the mystery of his environment and the villainous Ruvik. The highly intelligent antagonist toes the line between madman and tortured soul as he helms the STEM machine, a complex device that can link human minds together in a virtual world.

Although some players and reviewers chided the title’s uneven plot and archetypal (sometimes bordering on generic) enemies, it could be seen as something of a modern cult classic for horror fans and Mikami devotees. You can add the game (typically $20 these days) to your account for free next week in the Epic Games Store.

The world of ants is a mysterious one, as we’re still learning new stuff about the most populous insect on Earth. Soon we’ll be able to get a more hands-on approach with everyone’s favorite picnic-ruiners, thanks to the forthcoming insect sim Empire of the Ants. The game’s based on the hit sci-fi book series and has you controlling a heroic ant to protect your massive colony.

Publisher Microids and developer Tower Five just dropped a trailer and these are perhaps the most photorealistic ants ever seen in a video game. As a matter of fact, the whole trailer’s teeming with eye candy, which makes sense given the title was built using Epic Games’ powerful Unreal Engine 5. Plus it’s not just one or two ants on screen, as in-game footage shows hundreds of the little buggers doing their thing, complete with a photorealistic forest down to the pebbles and dirt on the floor.

As for gameplay, the devs liken it to a real-time strategy title, with some 3rd-person adventuring peppered throughout. The makers say that “strategy planning, exploration, combat skills, but most of all, setting up local wildlife alliances will be necessary to survive the many challenges awaiting.”

The developers tout scalable difficulty levels to suit players of varying skill, a day-night cycle and gameplay that changes depending on the season. Each season will present players with different attributes, adding some light RPG elements, impacting “speed, resistance, buffs and more,” according to an email sent to Engadget.

There’s no release date yet, other than sometime in 2024, but the game’s coming to both PC and unnamed consoles (likely PS5 and Xbox S/X.) Publisher Microids previously released a smaller-scale adaptation of Empire of the Ants, back in 2000. Developers Tower Five previously worked on the strategy game Lornsword Winter Chronicles and the ill-fated 2020 remake of XIII.

One of the biggest unanswered questions regarding Microsoft's $67.8 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard concerned the role of Bobby Kotick at the company. Now that the deal is finally complete and the publisher is officially a part of Microsoft, the future of the Activision Blizzard CEO is a little clearer.

In a memo to employees, Kotick wrote that he is "fully committed to helping with the transition." He'll remain at the helm "through the end of 2023" and he'll report to Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer. "We both look forward to working together on a smooth integration for our teams and players," Kotick wrote.

Kotick is widely expected to step down from the role he has held for over three decades as soon as January 1, though Activision Blizzard has declined to confirm an exact date for his departure. In any case, his contract runs until April.

Other changes are expected at the top of Activision Blizzard. In his own memo to the publisher's staff, Spencer wrote that "we will share more updates on our new organizational structure in the coming months."

Kotick shaped his company into a financially successful enterprise after leading a group of investors to buy Mediagenic for a bargain-basement price in 1991. He restructured the company and restored its previous name of Activision. In 2008, following a string of successful games, acquisitions and investments, Kotick engineered a merger with the games division of Vivendi, which owned Blizzard.

However, Kotick's stewardship of the company has long been a controversial one. As far back as 2010, Kotaku called him "the most hated man in video games," partly because of the perception that Kotick places a heavy focus on monetizing Activision Blizzard's games as much as possible. That's not to mention his reported treatment of employees at his various companies.

Over the last few years, observers have been paying more attention to Activision Blizzard's culture under Kotick. In 2021, the California Civil Rights Department, sued the company, alleging that it fostered a culture where discrimination and widespread harassment were rife. Later that year, a report by The Wall Street Journal indicated that Kotick had long been aware of sexual misconduct and assault allegations at Activision Blizzard, and that he neglected to share some of those (or details about settlements that were agreed with alleged victims) with the board.

The report led to many Activision Blizzard workers walking out and demanding Kotick's resignation. The following year, months after Microsoft made its blockbuster bid for Activision Blizzard, the publisher's shareholders voted to let Kotick keep his board seat.

In fact, the turmoil over Activision Blizzard's toxic workplace culture (and resulting pressure on the company that sent its stock tumbling) was what prompted Microsoft to buy the company. Kotick had claimed that Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV delays resulted in a fall of the stock price. But workers pushed back on those assertions.

Overwatch producer Tracy Kennedy claimed in early 2022 that Kotick pushed "random projects" onto the development team. Kennedy said the team worked overtime only to see those projects canceled and that "entire teams are turning over" and blaming Kotick.

It's not only at Activision where Kotick has spurred controversy. In 2007, the flight attendant of a private jet he was co-owner of sued him. The attendant alleged that, after she informed the plane's other owner that the pilot had sexually harassed her, Kotick fired her. The case resulted in a $200,000 settlement for the flight attendant.

Kotick has long been one of the highest-paid CEOs in North America and he's not exactly going to be retiring with only a nice watch to show for his time at Activision Blizzard. A report last year suggested that he stood to make $375.3 million from the sale to Microsoft. He's also expected to receive a golden parachute payment of $14.6 million when he departs.