ArduinoMania

Who says you can’t teach an old robot new tricks? Nobody, actually. That saying is about dogs. But it applies to robots too, at least judging by the way this late-90s industrial beast was put to use in a way it was never intended: as a giant CNC router.

The machine in question is an ABB IRB6400, a six-axis, floor-mounted industrial machine that had a long career welding at a Eurorail factory in Austria before [Brian Brocken] made its acquaintance. He procured the non-working machine — no word on what he paid for it — and moved the 2-ton paperweight into his shop, itself a non-trivial endeavor. After a good scrubbing, [Brian] tried to get the machine started up. An error prevented the robot controller from booting; luckily, there’s a large community of ABB users, and [Brian] learned that one of the modules in the controller needed replacement.

After fixing that — and swapping out the controller’s long-dead backup batteries, plus replacing the original 1.44 MB floppy drive with a USB drive — he was able to bring the machine back to life. Unfortunately, the limited amount of internal memory made it difficult to use for anything complicated, so [Brian] came up with an application to stream coordinates to the controller over a serial port, allowing for unlimited operation. With that in place, plus a simple spindle mounted to the robot’s wrist with a 3D printed adapter, [Brian] was able to carve foam blocks into complex shapes. The video below shows everything from delivery to first chips — well, dust at least.

This build seems to be a significant escalation from [Brian]’s previous large-format CNC machine. He must have something interesting in mind, so stay tuned for details.

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Since 2017, Jade – aka the face of the Lofi Girl YouTube channel – has been a near-constant companion for fans of quiet, contemplative music. Now, she is missing. At approximately 1PM ET, Jade and her ginger tabby simply disappeared, and not since a false copyright claim took down the YouTube channel for a few days last year has the Lofi Girl fandom been this abuzz.

In her absence, the stream began to slowly zoom in on a window found on one of the buildings opposite Jade’s home. A blinking blue light produced a morse code that fans found points to www.lofiworld.com. As of the writing of this article, there’s not much to see. Clicking the “Launch” button redirects you to a second Lofi Girl stream that’s playing ambient music. The stream features a clock that’s counting down to April 11th at 1PM ET. Outside of that, there’s not much to go on. The room is bathed in blue light and filled with early aughts memorabilia, including a Gunpla model from Mobile Suit Gundam Wing and a Nintendo GameCube. What it all points to, no one knows yet other than an elaborate marketing campaign.

Earlier in the day, Team AMW, the marketing agency that represents the Lofi Girl channel, published a press release promising a “surprise” on April 11th that would take the channel’s “immersive experience to new heights.” As Polygon notes, there’s already official Lofi Girl merch you can buy, so there’s probably something more involved on the horizon. Either way, we’ll find out how this mystery ends tomorrow.

Konami announced today that the latest installment in the long-running Bomberman franchise arrives this September. Super Bomberman R 2, initially revealed last year, marks the series’ 40th anniversary by taking the foundations of its 2017 predecessor and adding level-building and a wacky 15 vs. 1 mode.

For this installment, Konami added Castle mode, featuring “attack vs. defend” gameplay where you try to overtake or protect a fortress. Teams of 15 will try to open all the treasure chests to unlock passages into the castle; the lone keeper tries to keep at least one locked before the game’s end. It looks every bit as chaotic as you’d imagine. In addition, the returning game modes include Standard (classic gameplay), Story mode (a single-player adventure), Battle 64 (battle royale) and Grand Prix (“compete for crystals and knock out other players”).

Meanwhile, the new Stage Editor lets you create and share your Castle mode stages. Following the trend set by franchises like LittleBigPlanet and Mario Maker, Konami envisions a robust community of online creators giving you virtually unlimited content.

Super Bomberman R 2 launches on September 12th (although digital versions arrive a day later) and is available for pre-order now. It will support the Nintendo Switch, PS 5/ 4, Xbox Series X / S, Xbox One and Steam.

For the first time, the US Federal Trade Commission has fined an organization for “review hijacking.” In February, the agency accused The Bountiful Company, maker of the Nature’s Bounty brand of vitamins, of deceiving consumers. Between 2020 and 2021, Bountiful abused a feature of Amazon to make it seem like some of its newer supplements had higher product reviews and ratings than they did in reality.

If you have ever bought something on Amazon, you’ve almost certainly interacted with the feature Bountiful attempted to game. Some listings include a set of icons that highlight different “variations” of that same product. For example, if you visit the page for Sony’s popular WH-1000XM5, the feature will highlight that the headphones are available in three different colors. By design, Amazon designed this feature to be narrow. Sellers are supposed to use it to showcase that a product they offer is available in a different color, size, quantity or flavor.

That’s not what The Bountiful Company did. According to the FTC, Bountiful used the feature to give newer products a boost from older, more well-established ones with different formulations. In one internal email the agency obtained, Bountiful lamented that “people did not love” one of its new vitamins but noted sales “spiked the second we variated the pages and they continue to grow.”

On Monday, the FTC said it voted unanimously to approve a consent order that carries a $600,000 fine for Bountiful and bars the company from employing such tactics in the future. “Boosting your products by hijacking another product’s ratings or reviews is a relatively new tactic, but is still plain old false advertising,” said Samuel Levine, the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

“There’s no place for fraud in Amazon’s store. We have proactive measures in place to prevent listing abuse and we continuously monitor our store,” an Amazon spokesperson told Engadget. “Our policies prohibit reviews abuse including offering incentives like gift cards to write positive reviews. We suspend, ban, and take legal action against those who violate these policies and remove inauthentic reviews.”

According to Amazon, “more than 99 percent” of the products people view on its marketplace “contain only authentic reviews.” If you find what you think is a fake review, the company recommends tapping the “Report” button so it can investigate and take action. The spokesperson added Amazon would continue working with FTC and other enforcement agencies to combat fraudsters.

Don't count on your Twitter Circle tweets being limited to a close-knit group, at least for the time being. Users have discovered a bug that exposes at least some private Circle posts to outsiders. They frequently show up in followers' For You recommendations, but some say the content is reaching total strangers. As you might imagine, that could be problematic if you're discussing a sensitive topic or want to minimize potential harassment.

Twitter is unavailable for comment as it has disbanded its public relations team. Creator Theo Brown tellsTechCrunch Twitter may be failing to filter Circle tweets out of its recommendation system before they're shared with other users.

Circles have been glitchy for months, but the flaws aren't known to have shared tweets with people outside a Circle. They sometimes haven't included the label indicating their Circle-only status, even if it was clear they couldn't be shared elsewhere. This is considerably worse — you now can't trust that a private post will stay that way.

Twitter has dealt with a growing number of technical issues since Elon Musk bought the company and laid off many employees. There have been multiple outages, troublesome API changes and confusion over feature rollouts and removals. While these hiccups aren't necessarily prompting a user exodus, they don't help at a time when the social media giant is reportedly struggling to keep advertisers and turn a profit.

The Strong National Museum of Play in New York unveiled an absolutely massive Donkey Kong arcade cabinet that's nearly 20 feet tall. Donkey Kong is co-starring in the biggest movie in the world right now, so it is only fitting that he also gets an equally gargantuan arcade cabinet.

The museum indicated in a tweet that Nintendo actually helped out with the massive cabinet, which makes sense as the company is protective of its IPs. Donkey Kong, after all, was the first appearance of a certain Italian plumber, even if he went by the names Jumpman and Mr. Video back then.

The impressively large arcade cabinet will be available for actual play by museum visitors once it is fully installed on June 30. As you can see in the design, there is a control interface at a normal height so you don’t have to climb a ladder to reach the joystick and buttons. 

This could be the tallest arcade cabinet in the world, but there has been no formal proclamation to that end. In any event, it is certainly bigger than the 16-foot high NBA Jam cabinet that overlooked CES 2020 and the similarly-sized Tetris cabinet that holds the current Guinness world record.

The Strong National Museum of Play is dedicated to gaming in all of its many forms and is home to the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Every year, the museum inducts new games into this hall of fame, with 2022 getting stone-cold classics like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Dance Dance Revolution.

Like Vecna's creepy, encroaching tendrils, the Stranger Things universe is continuing to expand. Netflix has announced an animated series based on one of its biggest hits. The company hasn't revealed many details about the latest spin-off just yet. Glitch Techs and Fanboy & Chum Chum creator Eric Robles and Flying Bark Productions are developing the animated series. Stranger Things creators the Duffer brothers and producer Shawn Levy are also involved.

"We’ve always dreamed of an animated Stranger Things in the vein of the Saturday morning cartoons that we grew up loving, and to see this dream realized has been absolutely thrilling," the Duffer brothers told Variety in a statement. "We couldn’t be more blown away by what Eric Robles and his team have come up with — the scripts and artwork are incredible, and we can’t wait to share more with you! The adventure continues…"

The original show has been renewed for a fifth and final season, but that and the animated show are far from the only Stranger Things projects in the pipeline. A VR game is slated to arrive later this year, while a stage show prequel is set to debut on London's West End in late 2023. Netflix also announced a live-action spin-off show last year.

The Duffer brothers certainly have a lot of plates in the air. Along with Stranger Things, they're working on a live-action Death Note series (following a separate movie that hit Netflix several years ago), as well as an adaptation of The Talisman, a book by Stephen King and Peter Straub.

The PC market has been reeling for months, but it just got worse. Both Canalys and IDC estimate that worldwide computer shipments dropped between 29 to 33 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2023. That's a steeper drop than during the holidays, and this time none of the major brands escaped the worst of the downturn. Second-place HP escaped relatively lightly with a 24 percent drop in shipments, while fourth-place Apple felt the most pain with a drop of more than 40 percent. ASUS, Dell and Lenovo all took a roughly 30 percent hit.

The explanations may sound familiar. Customers are reluctant to buy PCs in a turbulent economy where inflation is running wild, and the pandemic-era boom in remote work is still winding down. People either can't afford new machines or already have ones that are good enough. There's no comment on why Apple struggled more than its peers, but it generally targets the high-end market and is more vulnerable to poor economic conditions. TechCrunch also notes that Apple's transition to in-house chips helped it avoid the tough times that Windows vendors faced in recent years, but that the honeymoon period may be over.

Analysts are optimistic. Canalys believes this is the worst drop the PC market will see in 2023, while both research groups expect to see recovery as soon as the second half of 2023. Old computers will be due for upgrades, including Chromebooks at schools, while businesses will update to Windows 11 systems. IDC also sees the slowdown as giving manufacturers a chance to move some production outside of China.

There's still a note of caution. IDC warns that the PC industry could be in for a "slog" if recessions continue into 2024. Although the sharpest declines may be over, it could take a long time for the market to bounce back. Don't be surprised if brands play it relatively safe with computers they know are likely to sell, rather than experimenting with unusual designs.

Microsoft and Snap have teamed up to bring Snapchat Lenses to Teams. The next time you hop onto a call with colleagues or friends, you'll be able to pick from one of 26 popular Lenses to add some visual flair to your video chats. You'll be able to turn yourself into a cartoon character, add virtual snow and slap a variety of backgrounds onto your webcam feed. That said, it's probably best to make sure you don't accidentally leave a Lens on during more serious conversations. 

Snap and Microsoft say the library of Lenses will rotate to keep things fresh. You can switch on a Lens in Teams by selecting the Video Effects option, then Snapchat. The companies tapped into Snap's Camera Kit (a software development kit) to bring the latter's augmented reality tech to Teams.

Microsoft previously used Camera Kit to add Snap's AR features to its video learning platform, Flip, where educators try to kickstart video discussions among students by providing them with prompts. According to Snap, since Microsoft added the integration to Flip, teachers and students have been 60 percent more likely to post videos to the platform.

Snap used to have its own desktop app that enabled folks to use Lenses on third-party video calling services. However, the company shut down the app, Snap Camera, earlier this year.