Nintendo transformed its Mario Kart and Pokemon franchises into successful mobile spinoffs, but it looks like another title didn't fare as well. The company has announced that it's ending service of Dr. Mario World, a mobile version of its highly successful Dr. Mario NES game, on November 1st. It will also end sales of "diamonds" used to buy buy more time, pills and power-ups starting tomorrow, July 29th. 

Much like the original, Dr. Mario World is a Tetris-style game that lets you use pills to zap viruses of the same color. Unlike the original, however, everything moves upward so it's more natural to flick things around with one hand on a mobile screen. The mobile game also has a multiplayer mode so you can get friends involved. 

The game was developed by Nintendo in conjunction with Line, Japan's ultra-popular mobile messaging app. It launched on July 10th, 2019, just a hair over two years ago. Nintendo is keeping a vestige of the game on a web page called "Dr. Mario World Memories" that will allow players to look back on their history once the service ends. 

Nintendo launched another mobile, Mario Kart Tour, with multiplayer support in early 2020. That title has reportedly been downloaded 200 million times and seen relatively high earnings for the company. Its most successful mobile game by far, however, is Fire Emblem Heroes, which had reportedly netted up to $656 million as of February, 2020. Nintendo didn't say why it shut down Dr. Mario World, but it wasn't doing great compared to other titles shortly after launch, according to a SensorTower report from early 2020. 

Sony has launched its first vlogging-specific mirrorless camera, the ZV-E10, that borrows a number of features from ZV-1 compact vlogging model. At the same time, it's roughly based on the A5000 and A6000-series APS-C mirrorless cameras, with all the good (and bad) that entails. 

The two biggest advantages of the ZV-E10 over the ZV-1 are the larger 24-megapixel APS-C sensor and interchangeable mirrorless mount. The latter feature opens Sony's range of 60-plus E-mount lenses to vloggers, making the ZV-E10 much more versatile than the fixed-lens ZV-1. The larger sensor, meanwhile, will deliver improved light sensitivity and a shallower depth of field.

The ZV-E10 uses the aging 24-megapixel APS-C sensor found in the A6100 and other recent Sony models. While that delivers sharp, downsampled 4K video at up to 30 fps (or 120 fps 1080p), it's likely to have a serious amount of rolling shutter that's not ideal for its intended purpose. 

On the more positive side, it offers optical and active electronic image stabilization, just like the ZV-1. That should smooth out handheld shooting pretty well, though don't expect miracles for walk-and-talk type vlogging — especially if rolling sensor wobble proves to be an issue. 

Sony

Size-wise, the ZV-E10 is smaller than any of the A6000-series cameras and isn't much larger and heavier than the ZV-1. It lacks an electronic viewfinder, but it's Sony's first APS-C mirrorless camera with a fully-articulating flip-out screen — a basic requirement on any vlogging camera these days. 

The ZV-E10 comes with Sony's latest phase-detect autofocus system, both for video and still shooting. That means you should get incredibly quick subject tracking, along with reliable eye, face and head detect autofocus. It also has an S&Q (slow & quick) feature that lets you record time-lapse and slow motion footage in-camera without the need for any post processing work.

It borrows several vlogging features directly from the ZV-1. The first is called "product showcase," a setting that allows it to instantly focus away from your face and onto an object placed in front of the camera. That's particularly handy for vloggers reviewing products, devices, etc. 

The other is a bokeh switch that instantly sets the lowest f-stop available for lighting conditions. That way, you can have the background as defocused as possible, allowing your subject to stand out clearly. 

The ZV-E10 has a built-in, high-quality three-way microphone (left, right and central channels) that's designed to pick out your voice. That means you can vlog without the need to buy a microphone, though it still won't match the quality and voice isolation of a dedicated shotgun or lapel mic. It also comes with a hotshoe-attached muff to help block wind noise, and if that's not enough, a wind noise reduction setting. It also comes with a microphone input, though not a headphone output. 

Finally, if you're into live streaming, you can connect the ZV-E10 directly to a smartphone and stream directly to YouTube or other services — much as you can with Panasonic's latest GH5-II. It will also work directly as a webcam, streaming both video and audio (not just video like other cameras) so you can take advantage of its high-quality microphone. 

The ZV-E10 will be available in either black or white by the end of August and will cost $700 for the body, or $800 in a bundle including Sony's 16-50mm F/3.5-5.6 power zoom lens. 

Earlier today, Intel unveiled detailed plans for its future chip technology, describing how it plans to catch rivals TSMC and Samsung by 2025. It also revealed that it will start building chips for Qualcomm using its first new transistor architecture in a decade. In addition, the company will supply its packaging tech to Amazon for its AWS data centers. 

Intel's biggest technology leap will happen in 2024 when the company ushers in its RibbonFET and PowerVia technology (below). RibbonFET will be a new kind of "gate-all-around" transistor delivering faster switching speeds in a smaller footprint. PowerVia, meanwhile, will be a backside power delivery system "eliminating the need for power routing on the front side of the wafer" and making chips more efficient.

Intel will manufacture chips for Qualcomm using that 20A process technology, though it didn't say which products it would produce or when. Qualcomm currently uses multiple foundries to build its Snapdragon processors and other chips, used mainly in smartphones and other portable devices. 

CEO Pat Gelsinger first laid out Intel's ambitious foundry plans earlier this year as part of the company's IDM 2.0 strategy, saying it would invest $20 billion in two Arizona fab plants. Now, it needs to deliver on all that if it wants to keep building its own chips, let alone products for companies the size of Qualcomm and Amazon. 

Unlike self-driving cars, autonomous drones can generally get from "A" to "B" safely, but could they beat a human pilot in a drone race? So far the answer has been "no way," but now, researchers from the University of Zurich (UZH) have created an algorithm that allowed an AI-powered drone to beat two human pilots on an experimental race track. The work could lead to more efficient drones for rescues, deliveries and other chores. 

In the past, researchers have built simplified models of quadrotor systems or flight paths to calculate the optimum trajectory. This time, however, they fully accounted for the drone's limitations. "The key idea is, rather than assigning sections of the flight path to specific waypoints, that our algorithm just tells the drone to pass through all waypoints, but not how or when to do that," said PhD student and author Philipp Foehn.

For the AI versus human race, researchers let the human pilots train on the circuit so the comparison would be fair. They set up external cameras to send the drone's exact position to the algorithm in real time. Once both humans and AI were trained, the algorithm beat the humans on every lap and had more consistent performance to boot. 

The research could lead to quicker drones for real-world applications, even in complex environments with multiple waypoints. The next step is to make the system less computationally demanding and allow it work with onboard, rather than external cameras. "This algorithm can have huge applications in package delivery with drones, inspection, search and rescue, and more," said UZH's head of Robotics and Perception Group, Davide Scaramuzza. 

Roads that can charge electric cars or buses while you drive aren't a new concept, but so far the technology has been relatively expensive and inefficient. However, Indiana's Department of Transport (INDOT) has announced that it's testing a new type of cement with embedded magnetized particles that could one day provide efficient, high-speed charging at "standard roadbuilding costs," Autoblog has reported. 

With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), INDOT has teamed with Purdue University and German company Magment on the project. They'll carry out the research in three phases, first testing if the magnetized cement (called "magment," naturally) will work in the lab, then trying it out on a quarter-mile section of road. 

In a brochure, Magment said its product delivers "record-breaking wireless transmission efficiency [at] up to 95 percent," adding that it can be built at "standard road-building installation costs" and that it's "robust and vandalism-proof." The company also notes that slabs with the embedded ferrite particles could be built locally, presumably under license. 

The final phase sounds ambitious, with INDOT saying it would "test the innovative concrete’s capacity to charge heavy trucks operation at high power (200 kilowatts and above)." If the final quarter-mile test track is a success, INDOT will use the tech to electrify an undermined segment of public interstate in Indiana. 

Powering heavy trucks directly from the road without any pollution at an affordable price would be an environmental breakthrough, but there's still a lot of work to do to prove it works. Plenty of other similar efforts are underway, as the UK has committed around $780 million for under-road charging research, for example. Sweden has also tested slot-car like technology that would contain an electrified "rail" embedded into roads. This latest efforts sounds far less complicated, provided it lives up to Magment's claims, 

NASA's InSight lander arrived on Mars in 2018 to learn about its interior by monitoring "marsquakes," and now the project is starting to really pay off. NASA has announced that researchers have mapped the red planet's interior and discovered some big surprises and major differences with Earth. 

The map is the first ever of the interior of another planet. Compared to Earth, Mars has a thicker crust, thinner mantle layer and a bigger, less dense and more liquid core than expected. That in turn suggests that Mars may have formed millions of years before our planet, when the sun itself was still not fully formed. 

"It gives us our first sample of the inside of another rocky planet like Earth, built out of the same materials but very, very different," University of Cambridge seismologist Sanne Cottaar (who wasn't involved in the project) told the Wall Street Journal. “It is impressive.”

Constructing a map from the limited data provided by InSight was no easy feat. The probe only recorded quakes from one location and has just a single seismometer, for one thing. And Mars — while seismically active — didn't have any quakes larger than around 4 on the Richter scale. 

Science

Still, taking that data, along with planet's magnetism and orbital wobbles, scientists were able to create a detailed map. The planet's innermost core was found to have a diameter of around 2,275 miles, larger than previously thought. Given the mass of the planet as a whole, that implies that the iron/nickel core likely contains lighter elements like sulfur, oxygen and carbon. 

The crust, meanwhile, was found to be very old. It was also thicker in Mars' southern highlands and thinner in the northern lowlands, which may have hosted oceans long ago. On average, it's between 15 and 45 miles thick and split into several layers of volcanic rock.

The mantle between the crust and core extends roughly 970 miles below the surface. It's thinner than Earth's and has a different composition which suggests the two planets arose from different materials when they formed. This “might be the simple explanation why we don’t see plate tectonics on Mars,” ETH Zurich geophysicist and study co-author Amir Khan told the New York Times. 

The results has given scientists new insight into not just the inside of Mars, but how rocky planets form in general. That will help them develop new theories about planet formation that could become particularly valuable in the near future, when new instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope will allow astronomers to scan exoplanets around the galaxy. NASA will reveal more about its findings in a live event later today. 

Tesla has launched a new program that will allow Powerwall owners to kick power back to the grid in times of high usage. The "Tesla Virtual Power Plant" is now entering a beta phase, letting customers sign up, albeit without any compensation for the time being. 

When it first announced the program last week, Tesla noted that "the California grid operator forecasts a continued need for Californians to support the grid through 2021." That could be a big understatement, as the grid is expected to be heavily stressed over the rest of the summer because of record high temperatures boosting demand, along with a severe drought that could reduce output from hydroelectric plants. 

Enrollment is now open for "PG&E, SDG&E and SCE customers who own Powerwall and solar," Tesla said in a news release. "Enrolling requires the Tesla app 3.10.14 and a new Powerwall firmware version which will be released soon."

Tesla

So how will it work? Tesla gave an example showing that the app will give you a push notification warning a few hours ahead of any grid stress events. It will also show the time period that the event will impact your Powerwall usage, as shown above.

"Depending on the forecasted severity of the event, your Powerwall may prioritize charging from your solar system in advance of the event to help shift your home’s grid use to earlier in the day," Tesla explained. "If Powerwall fully charges before an event, your solar system will resume powering your home and export any excess power to the grid."

Tesla noted that customers will not be compensated for contributing to the Virtual Power Plant, though it encouraged users to join up for what it called a "public good." However, customers already on net metering programs will be compensated for any power sent back to the grid as usual, Electrek noted. 

People are weirdly fascinated with Blockbuster, even though (or perhaps because) there's only one remaining store in the entire world. You'll soon be able to re-experience that iconic yellow/blue design on PlayStation VR with an upcoming title called The Last Video Store.

It's being developed by RareBird Games, the company behind the extremely weird horror title Sinfeld Remastered. The debut trailer ought to bring out those nostalgic feels, with the rows of DVDs and VHS tapes in a Blockbuster-like store, chilled out employees and an overly bright interior. It might even help you forget that in reality, the best titles were rarely available when you wanted them, and that Blockbuster's real business model was collecting late fees. 

According to the trailer, you'll be able to explore the area around the store or take a night drive around the neighborhood. You'll also be able to engage a "survival mode" that includes "realistic local jobs and bills to pay while managing your video enthusiast hobbies on the side." You can also select cult videos like Evil Dead and Mac and Me and watch them in a theater type environment, though it's hard to see how that would work in the final game, given licensing, etc. 

Given how Sinfeld evolved since the first trailer, it's hard to say what form The Last Video Store may take when it's released — could it also become a horror title, for instance? Adding to the intrigue, the Last Video Store briefly appeared in the announcement trailer for Sinfeld, as GamesRadar notes. There's no other information, so we'll have to wait and see where the rabbit hole eventually leads. 

After criticism from owners, Tesla has reduced the price of a computer update required for its new "Full Self-Driving" (FSD) feature, Electrek has reported. The hardware HW 3.0 update will now cost $1,000 rather than $1,500, a 33 percent drop in price. To get the feature, owners will have to pay a monthly subscription fee of up to $199 on top of that, or $10,000 all in one shot. 

Tesla famously said in 2016 that all its EVs produced going forward would have full self-driving hardware. However, it eventually found that a computer update would be needed on older vehicles and started shipping later models with the new HW 3.0 hardware. However, owners of Tesla models produced between late 2016 and mid-2019 were shocked to get hit with a $1,500 hardware upgrade bill on top of the cost of the FSD upgrade. 

After telling customers they'd be charged $1,500 for the hardware update, Tesla appears to have lowered that to $1,000. As before, you'll need to take your car to an authorized Tesla service center to get the update. 

Much like the "Autopilot," Tesla's FSD system does not offer full self-driving defined as Level 4 or beyond. Rather, it told California regulators that it conforms to SAE Level 2, much like models from Cadillac, Audi and others. Tesla CEO Elon Musk himself said that "there will be unknown issues, so please be paranoid." Consumer Reports, meanwhile, noted that it's "concerned that Tesla is still using its existing owners and their vehicles to beta-test new features on public roads." 

Casio has unveiled a new digital watch made in collaboration with Bandai Namco, paying homage to not one but two digital classics from the late '70s and early '80s. The A100WEPC Pac-Man edition has a design based on the Casio's F-100 digital watch from 1978, and celebrates one of the most famous games of all time: Pac-Man. 

The F-100 was one of the most advanced watches you could buy at the time, offering a stopwatch, digital alarm and calendar features. It was also the first watch with a resin case, as Casio notes in a press release. It's perhaps most famous for being the watch worn by Ripley and other characters from the 1979 movie Alien. 

The A100WEPC reprises that with the same four-button layout. At the same time, the watch face features the Pac-Man and ghost characters, with the center illuminator logo rendered with the Pac-Man font. The face replicates the Pac-Man game screen, while the top watch band is laser etched with a Pac-Man character being chased by ghosts, with the reverse on the bottom band. It comes with special packaging featuring the Pac-Man characters and game score screen. 

Casio's watch isn't the first with a Pac-Man theme, as the $79 Timex T80 x Pac-Man also fetes the retro title. However, since Casio pairs it with a watch design from the same period, it's perhaps a bit more desirable for fans of the game. 

The base AW100WE model, which came out last month, offers water resistance, a 1/10 second stopwatch, daily alarm, hourly time signal, auto-calendar and LED light. It's scheduled to be released in August in Japan for ¥12,100, or about $110 — a relative bargain for enthusiastic Pac-Man fans.