Google’s interactive Doodle today celebrates the life and accomplishments of video game pioneer Gerald “Jerry” Lawson on what would have been his 82nd birthday. The Doodle lets you play five retro pixel-art platformers in your browser — with two even letting you play as Lawson. The Doodles’ creators want to inspire young people to follow in his footsteps, and it includes a built-in level editor and creator to nudge them on that path.

Lawson was known as the “father of the video game cartridge,” which he developed as Director of Engineering and Marketing at Fairchild Semiconductor. In 1976, the company released the Fairchild Channel F home console, with Lawson serving as lead developer. The Channel F (the “F” stood for “fun”) was the first system with interchangeable game cartridges, a novel concept in an era when games were permanently coded into hardware. Interchangeable ROM-based cartridges were a massive breakthrough that let users build entire libraries rather than playing one game ad nauseam.

Google

Today’s Doodle includes games from guest artists and game designers Davionne Gooden, Lauren Brown and Momo Pixel. “The concept starts with the player as a little Jerry Lawson,” explained Brown. “This takes us through anecdotes about Jerry’s life, parts of his journey that he went about to create the cartridge. Once you complete the level, you then get to create your own game with an editor that allows you to reimagine the level design and innovate like Jerry Lawson did.”

Along with the cartridge advancement, Lawson’s Channel F was the first console with an eight-way joystick and a pause menu. Although it wasn’t a commercial success, Channel F’s innovations would influence later systems that dominated home gaming over the following decades — it was a predecessor to platforms like the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo Entertainment System. Even in today’s world of always-online digital games, the top-selling console — the Nintendo Switch — still (optionally) uses a form of cartridges.

Lawson faced considerable challenges during his early years at Fairchild as an African-Amercan man in a field that wasn't known for being racially diverse. He noted that working as an engineer as a 6-foot-6-inch Black man would surprise people, with some reacting with “total shock” when they saw him for the first time. Additionally, he was one of only two Black members of the Homebrew Computing Club. This group included Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, along with other Silicon Valley pioneers.

The Estate of Jerry Lawson

After his innovations at Fairchild, Lawson left in 1980 to start his own company, VideoSoft, one of the first Black-owned video game development firms. VideoSoft closed five years later, and Lawson consulted engineering and video game companies for the rest of his career. He passed away in 2011 at 70 from diabetes complications.

“When people play this Doodle, I hope they’re inspired to be imaginative,” said Anderson Lawson, Jerry’s son. “And I hope that some little kid somewhere that looks like me wants to get into game development. Hearing about my father’s story makes them feel like they can.”

Google tweeted today that it’s beginning to process refunds for Stadia hardware bought on the Google Store. The company announced in September that its cloud gaming service was joining the long list of projects buried in the “Google graveyard.”

Google is refunding purchases for the Stadia controller and bundles that included a Chromecast Ultra with the WiFi-connected gamepad. Earlier this month, it began reimbursing users for Stadia game purchases, ensuring most users recoup the money they’d sunk into the service. However, Google isn’t refunding subscription fees for Stadia Pro (its answer to PS Plus and Xbox Game Pass) or Stadia hardware bought from Best Buy.

The company says it will process the refunds automatically. It expects most of them to complete by the time the cloud-gaming service shuts down on January 18th. If the company can’t refund your original form of payment automatically, it will email you through the Google account you used for the purchase(s).

Although Stadia’s demise disappointed its small but devoted band of enthusiasts, the shutdown wasn’t exactly shocking. The writing had been on the wall since the company began scaling back its investment in the platform barely over a year after its launch.

Sony's December free games for PlayStation Plus Essential include Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. Subscribers can play remastered versions of the classic trilogy at no extra charge. The collection, released in May 2021, includes Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 with modernized 4K graphics and tighter gameplay.

Developer BioWare saved the biggest upgrades for the 15-year-old original. While the non-remastered version is nearly unplayable by modern standards, the remaster is friendlier for modern gamers with more consistent weapon accuracy, tighter camera controls, a dedicated melee button and snappier combat. BioWare also tweaked its handling of the trilogy’s endings, ditching the original approach that required a separate app download to get the best finale. In the new version, your final outcome is based exclusively on your decisions across all three titles.

Other free PS Plus Essential games for December include third-person platform fighter Divine Knockout: Founder's Edition and open-world RPG Biomutant. In addition to new free games added each month (yours to keep as long as you remain subscribed), PlayStation Plus Essential gives you access to online matchmaking in paid titles. The service costs $9.99 per month or $59.99 per year. It replaced the standard PS Plus earlier this year, when Sony added more expensive Extra and Premium tiers to compete with Xbox Game Pass.

’Tis the season for music apps’ “year in review” rewinds that let you relive the songs and artists you streamed from the past 12 months. Only a few hours after the revamped Apple Music Replay arrived, YouTube Music announced its 2022 Recap, which begins rolling out today for iOS and Android.

This is only the second year Alphabet’s music service has offered its personalized retrospective, and this time, you’ll find it in both YouTube Music and the main YouTube app. Unfortunately, it isn’t yet live on our devices, but once it’s fully available, you’ll find it by visiting the Recap landing page in YouTube Music or searching for “2022 recap” in YouTube.

Like last year’s edition, the 2022 Recap displays your most-streamed artists, songs, music videos and playlists. Additionally, this year’s version adds a few new stats. These include Top Trends (highlighting artists you listened to before most other people), Identity (assigning you a “music personality” based on your musical selections) and Hard-to-Find Content (noting YouTube-exclusive streams like remixes and live performances).

Like other companies' annual rewinds, YouTube Music uses a story-style format with cards you can tap through or share. You can share your personalized recap by tapping the arrow at the bottom of each story. Exclusive to the YouTube Music app, you’ll also find shareable cards showing your most-streamed songs from each season. And if you want to personalize it further, you can add a slideshow of Google Photos images from each corresponding season.

With Apple and YouTube’s music rewinds now available, Spotify Wrapped likely isn’t far behind. It typically launches in early December, so we could see that as early as this week.

Tools like DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, which generate images based on a few lines of text, briefly set social media ablaze this year. But Amazon’s entry into the AI art world is a bit different. Create with Alexa lets children guide the creation of animated stories using a few kid-friendly prompts.

Since Create with Alexa is visual storytelling, it’s only available on Echo Show devices, not the company’s audio-only speakers. Amazon says it works whether the device is in Amazon Kids mode or not.

To create a new story, your child would begin by speaking, “Alexa, make a story,” and then following several prompts. The AI then generates an illustrated five-to-ten-line narrative — including animations, sound effects and music — built around their answers.

Amazon’s generative AI has a narrow scope at launch, with only three themes available: “space exploration”, “underwater” and “enchanted forest.” After picking one, children choose the story’s hero from options like “an astronaut named Speedy” or “an alien named Fuzzy.” Your child can then pick a color scheme and a tonal description like silly, happy or mysterious. Afterwards, they can save their stories to watch again later or share them with friends and family.

Amazon

This isn’t a case of Alexa splicing together ready-made scenes. Amazon says no two AI-created stories will be the same, even if your child repeats the process with identical prompts

According to Amazon, Create With Alexa includes safeguards to ensure the feature only produces kid-friendly content. “From the get-go, we used carefully curated data sources to train AI models,” Eshan Bhatnagar, head of product for Alexa AI, said in a blog post today. “We have multiple guardrails such as content filtering and curated prompts to ensure this experience is both delightful and safe.” Additionally, Create with Alexa requires parents to enable the feature before their kids can use it.

Create With Alexa arrives in an atmosphere of uncertainty surrounding Amazon’s voice assistant. Earlier this month, the retail giant confirmed it had begun laying off employees, reportedly slashing around 10,000 jobs. Its Devices & Services division, which handles Echo Show and Alexa, reportedly bore the brunt of it. In October, Amazon also killed off Glow, its kid-focused video-calling device.

Create with Alexa is available on Echo Show devices starting today in the US. However, it’s only available in English and the United States at launch.

If you want smart temperature controls without breaking the bank, you may want to look at the Amazon Smart Thermostat, on sale right now for $42. That's 30 percent off its retail price of $60, matching an all-time low. Considering the thermostat is much cheaper than its big-name competitors even when it isn't on sale, this Black Friday deal provides an unparalleled bang for your buck.

Amazon's thermostat lacks some bells and whistles. For example, it doesn't have a built-in microphone and speaker, or support remote sensors. It also doesn't work with Google Assistant or Apple HomeKit. But if Alexa is already your smart home platform of choice, Amazon's thermostat is a dirt-cheap option that works with most existing 24V HVACs (the most common for residential systems).

For an entry-level offering, it offers a surprisingly sleek and modern design. Its rounded-rectangle shape is similar to ecobee's offerings, while its color scheme mirrors Google Nest products.

Amazon partnered with Honeywell Home for the thermostat, which lets you create routines, set temperatures manually (including remotely), or lets Alexa handle it for you. Additionally, it's Energy Star-certified, and Amazon claims it can save you around $50 on your power bills each year. After signing up, Amazon will even send you an email with details about available rebates from local energy providers.

Installation should be easy, but Amazon includes a "check compatibility" tutorial on the product page that guides you through various details to ensure it will work. One crucial point to check is whether your existing thermostat setup has a C-Wire. If not, you'll want to choose the bundle that includes an adapter.

Get the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers by following @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribing to the Engadget Deals newsletter.

The European Space Agency on Wednesday selected the world’s first astronaut with a disability. John McFall, whose right leg was amputated at age 19, is the first recruit for a new program investigating accommodations for astronauts with disabilities.

The agency called for applications in March 2021, seeking people with disabilities who could pass stringent physical and psychological testing but were limited by a lack of hardware accommodations. The program will investigate the changes and costs required to send astronauts with disabilities into space. The ESA chose McFall out of 257 entrants, and describes him as the world’s first “parastronaut.” And next spring, he will enter the 12-month training program at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany.

“I’ve always been hugely interested in science generally, and space exploration has always been on my radar,” said the 41-year-old McFall on Wednesday. “But having had a motorcycle accident when I was 19, like wanting to join the armed forces, having a disability was always a contraindication to doing that.”

After McFall’s accident and amputation, he learned to run again and won a bronze medal in the 100-meter dash at the 2008 Paralympic Games. In addition, he earned several medical degrees and was a Foundation Doctor in the British National Health Service from 2014 to 2016. McFall currently works as a trauma and orthopedic specialist in South England.

“In early 2021 when the advert for an astronaut with a physical disability came out,” said McFall, “I read the person specifications and what it entailed, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is such a huge and interesting opportunity.’ And I thought that I would be a very good candidate to help ESA answer the question they were asking: ‘Can we get someone with a physical disability into space?’ And I felt compelled to apply.”

God of War: Ragnarok has sold more copies in its debut week than any other first-party PlayStation title, according to the official PlayStation Twitter account. Sony says the game tallied 5.1 million sales through its first week, placing it ahead of The Last of Us Part II, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Ragnarok’s predecessor, God of War (2018).

The AAA action-adventure epic, released on November 9th, has become a commercial and critical darling. In addition to moving tons of copies, it currently holds a 94 percent score on Metacritic, based on 135 critic reviews. That’s the same score as the previous game. Our review of the PS5 version of Ragnarok commended the satisfying combat with the Leviathan Axe and Blades of Chaos, majestic set pieces and surprising twists. And our own Nate Ingraham thought the more varied enemies were a huge improvement over the 2018 title. His one serious reservation was with the narrative which he found overly long, and at times seemed bogged down by a lack of editing.

Comparing sales with past Sony exclusives isn’t always apples-to-apples. The company has used various periods of time for different games, presumably to fit the moment’s PR needs. For example, it announced first-three-days sales for The Last of Us Part II (four million in 2020), Marvel’s Spider-Man (3.3 million in 2018) and God of War (3.1 million in 2018). However, Ragnarok’s first-week sales nearly doubled those of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, which sold 2.7 million during its first week in 2016.

When you think of podcast recording, you probably picture someone sitting in a studio with a Neumann microphone that costs more than your rent. Spotify wants to change that, making podcast creation something you can do in noisy environments and without expensive gear. The company's one-button voice isolation feature, Podcast Audio Enhancement, debuts today in Spotify's Anchor app for podcast creators.

The feature requires a single button press in the Anchor app. Doing so drowns out background noise, bringing your voice to the forefront. So if you want to record your latest episode on a crowded convention floor or at home with barking dogs or crying babies, you theoretically can, though we can’t say how effective it is just yet. In addition, the Anchor app lets you toggle the feature on and off during playback to compare the results.

Spotify isn't the only Big Tech company to invest in voice isolation, as AI advances lead to better filtration without expensive dynamic microphones. For example, Zoom and Google Meet offer background noise reduction tech in virtual-meeting apps. But Spotify trying to improve audio to the point where it’s good enough to release as a podcast feels a bit tougher than just clearing things up on a video call.

After facing a Joe Rogan PR crisis earlier this year, Spotify continues its push to make itself a one-stop shop for podcast listening and creation. The push began in 2017 and accelerated in the following years as it became more evident how lucrative podcasts can be. The streaming service acquired publishing companies, struck a now-defunct deal with the Obamas and snatched up online production tools like Soundtrap. Spotify bought Anchor in 2019 for over $150 million and has since used it to make podcast creation as simple and effortless as possible.

Gamers with prepaid phones can finally play Overwatch 2. An Activision Blizzard community manager announced the changes on Thursday, reversing an overzealous anti-cheating move that had made it harder for new players to check out the game. The reversal came in the first-person shooter’s latest patch and is effective immediately.

Ahead of the game’s free-to-play early access period, which launched on October 4th, Blizzard had outlined a series of moderation tools to prevent cheating and smurfing, including the postpaid number requirement. Banning prepaid numbers from SMS verification may have been a well-intended move to reduce toxic behavior, as it’s much cheaper and easier for cheaters and trolls to set up prepaid numbers than postpaid ones. But unfortunately, it also blocked prepaid users acting in good faith from playing the game.

Blizzard’s other moderation tools are still in effect. Every Overwatch 2 player needs to connect a phone number to their Battle.net account to play, and that number can’t be tied to another account. You still can’t use VOIP, WiFi, text-only and internet phone services to verify your account, so you can forget about dusting off that old Google Voice number as a workaround. If you played the original Overwatch, you don't need to worry about SMS verification. Other moderation tools still in effect include audio transcriptions for reported voice chat recordings and automated review tools for poring through the resulting text.

It’s been a rocky launch for Blizzard’s online first-person shooter. In addition to blocking prepaid users, Blizzard said a DDoS attack left players stuck in a queue behind tens of thousands of other gamers. Bugs have also riddled the game’s early-access period, including missing items and currency, sections not populating and other areas becoming inaccessible. Soon after, Blizzard announced freebies to compensate players for the troubled rollout.