The Nintendo Switch OLED is due to hit store shelves on October 8th, and we’ve been able to get some face-to-face time with the new hardware. Our Kris Naudus says the new machine is beautiful in a way previous pieces of Nintendo hardware have never been.

Obviously the biggest feature worth discussing is that gorgeous new 7-inch OLED display, which is brighter, crisper and lovelier than its predecessor. Then there’s the new kickstand that stretches across the back of the device for better balance, reliability and adjustability.

Nintendo

At the same time, Naudus got to play Metroid Dread, a de-facto launch title for the refreshed console. The 2D-side scroller is heavy on horror, and one of the best tactics the main character, Samus Aran, can employ to survive is to just run the hell away from whatever unspeakable monster attacks.

To get on, Samus uses some new tech, including a spider magnet that lets her cling to ceilings. Oh, and she’s now packing a cloaking device so she can sneak past those unquenchable horrors — but she can only use it in short bursts.

— Dan Cooper

Facebook is ‘pausing’ work on Instagram Kids app amid growing scrutiny

For all the obvious reasons.

Facebook is “pausing” work on Instagram Kids to consult with parents, experts and policymakers. The project, which politicians on both sides of the aisle agree is a terrible idea, has come under sustained criticism since its existence was revealed. Instagram head Adam Mosseri said the pause really is a pause, since Facebook knows there is a real problem of tweens lying about their age to access the full-fat version of the app.

This will not, however, placate critics of the company and the effects its platforms have on younger children. The volume of which has intensified after WSJ reported Facebook’s own internal research said Instagram had a toxic effect on kids’ mental health. (Facebook claims the data, while true, has been misrepresented and has pledged to release more of its own internal research to counter.)

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YouTube TV may drop 14 NBC Universal channels over a contract dispute

Corporate wrangling over cash makes cord-cutting so relaxing.

NBC Universal and YouTube are now publicly fighting about how much cash NBC gets from YouTube TV’s service fees. The pair are recruiting users to aid their causes, with NBC saying YouTube TV users risk losing NBC, USA, Bravo, CNBC and Telemundo (among others) if the Google-owned video service doesn’t pay up. YouTube, meanwhile, has told users it’ll cut the monthly price by $10 a month if those channels do wind up going.

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Uno Synth Pro review: IK Multimedia shows it's serious about hardware

This is an analog synth worth checking out.

Terrence O'Brien

IK Multimedia’s first Uno Synth was a surprise, coming as it did from a company with a pedigree in MIDI controllers rather than synthesizers. It didn’t get it entirely right the first time, but there was enough promise in IK’s premise for it to justify a second go. Managing Editor Terrence O’Brien has spent some time with the improved Uno Synth Pro Desktop, a $400 replacement for the original model. There’s plenty of detail in his full review, but it seems that while IK hasn’t buffed out all of the original’s faults, the sounds are so good, you won’t care.

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'Babylon 5' is getting a reboot

Series creator J. Michael Straczynski is back, too.

Warner Bros. / Babylonian Productions

The CW has started work on a potential reboot of seminal ‘90s TV series Babylon 5 with original creator J. Michael Straczynski back running the show. Originally airing between 1993 and 1999, Babylon 5 helped build the world of Peak TV as it exists today. If you thought Game of Thrones invented long-running plot lines, tireless internet speculation and a lengthy, novelistic series of plot arcs, think again. And Babylon 5 managed to do this on a budget that would have made the makers of General Hospital reconsider if it was worth getting out of bed in the morning.

Of course, you might argue some of B5’s plot lines were a little bit fantastical, even for a sci-fi series. One of the biggest story arcs the series ran was the takeover of the Earth government by a xenophobic and paranoid president who was aided by a shadowy foreign power. Escapism! This may also go some way to redressing the way (parent company) Warner Bros treated B5 both during its original run and in its digital second life, which I’ve covered pretty extensively over the last few years.

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The biggest news stories you might have missed

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Apple details 3D maps rollout plan for iOS 15

Beyond Meat's plant-based 'chicken' tenders are coming to grocery stores

'Life is Strange: Remastered Collection' will arrive on February 1st, 2022

Since 2019, Sign in with Apple has allowed iPhone and Mac users to protect their privacy by allowing them to generate random email addresses when they need to access a new website, service or app. It’s one of those small features that can have an outsized impact, and now something similar is coming to 1Password.

The company has partnered with email host Fastmail to introduce a feature called Masked Email. Like its Apple counterpart, the tool allows you to create unique email addresses for your logins. You can create the aliases directly within the 1Password app, which means you can access the tool on all platforms where the password manager is available.

Just how much the ability to hide your email can do to help safeguard your online privacy can’t be overstated. The vast majority of privacy breaches start with phishing emails. You’re far less likely to click on a suspicious link or inadvertently share your personal information if you don’t get one of those messages in the first place.

A new trojan called BloodyStealer is targeting gamer's accounts on EA Origin, Steam, Epic Games, GOG and other services, according to Kaspersky researchers. The malware can scrape session data and passwords, along with information like bank card details, device data, screen shots and uTorrent files. "What struck us was that most of the listed programs are game-related, which suggests that gamer accounts and their contents are in demand on the underground market," Kaspersky's Julia Glazova wrote in a blog post. 

BloodyStealer is relatively cheap at $10 per month or around $40 for a lifetime license. Apparently the primary attack target is logs, or databases containing info used to access accounts. Those can then be offered to buyers via Telegram or a malware panel. In one example, Kaspersky showed a screenshot of a seller with 65,600 logs broken down by region, available for $150. They can also be sold individually — accounts with plenty of games, add-ons and expensive items are particularly valuable. 

The trojan stood out to researchers for its clever construction, using anti-debugging tools that make it hard to reverse engineer. Information is sent as a ZIP archive to a command-and-control (C&C) server, protected against DDoS and other types of web attacks. 

Kaspersky noted that it's seeing the malware around the globe and provided tips to avoid falling victim. It recommends buying apps only from official sources (not torrents) to avoid malware. It also recommends protecting your account with a strong password and, preferably, two-factor authentication. At the bottom of the post, it also provides guides to maxing out each platform's security settings.

The Void, which created in-person VR experiences but was forced to shutter its business last year during the pandemic, may be coming back. A former investor may be planning to relaunch it with key employees after acquiring the IP and other assets, according to a report from Protocol. 

In its heyday, The Void counted investors like Disney and Comcast, and created high-profile VR titles like Avengers: Damage Control, Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire and Ghostbusters: Dimension. It created theme park-type centers that allowed visitors to don VR headsets, backpacks and tactile vests to explore VR worlds complete with real-life touches like functioning doors and other props. 

Unfortunately, the company's choice to launch in high-end malls saddled it with debt, and the pandemic eventually forced it to close. After seeking protection from creditors, it transferred assets to a holding company which planned to resell them or relaunch after the pandemic. It ended up doing the former, selling its business to a company called Hyper Reality Partners (HRP) earlier this year.

HRP has reportedly signed key employees who previously worked for The Void, including its Chief Creative Officer Curtis Hickman and VPs of Content Jason Howard and Steve Shaiken. According to a placeholder page on the site, "The Void [and HRP] are now entering a period of rapid expansion and are looking for more talented team members to join us. This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of VR and the entire entertainment industry." 

In its prior incarnation, The Void spent millions developing its own Oculus-based headset, VR backpacks and accessories. However, it supposedly plans to relaunch with new equipment, possibly because the old gear has been made obsolete by lighter devices and new standalone headsets. It's reportedly also looking to open its own, larger venues with non-VR attractions along with food and beverage services. There's no timeline for that yet, but its first new location will reportedly be in Las Vegas. 

Ableton Live 11 landed earlier this year, and the first major update to the DAW appears to be imminent. And it's little surprise that the big news for Live 11.1 is the addition of support for Apple's M1 chips. Being one of the the most popular music production suites, getting up and running natively on Apple silicon is pretty important for Ableton. The company notes that, if you're already on the beta track, the autoupdater will not automatically download the M1 version — you'll need to grab the installer from Centercode.

There are a few other small improvements to Live as well. The most obvious will be the new Shifter device which is a real-time pitch shifting effect. It's monophonic, but has features like an LFO, glide, envelope and delay for further manipulating your sound. 

There are also two new Max for Live tools: Align Delay and MIDI Shaper. Align Delay compensates for lag while MIDI Shaper is for generating modulation.

Finally there are some minor tweaks to comping and clip handling as well. 

Ableton Live 11.1 is available now as a public beta. But I wouldn't expect it to be too long before the update makes it way to a stable release.

I’ve admitted before that I am a sucker for strange, and often gimmicky, musical devices. A giant touchpad with swappable silicone playing surfaces? Sign me up. A bisected grapefruit that you tilt and smack? I’ll take two. So, an app that lets you play a synthesizer simply by humming a melody was clearly going to grab my attention.

Dubler first debuted last year as a packaged deal: a custom designed USB microphone and an app that turned your beatboxing, singing or any other audio really into MIDI data. With the launch of Dubler 2, Vochlea is making the special mic optional. The new app allows you to quickly and easily calibrate it to work with any microphone or audio source of your choice. But I want to be frank about something right off the bat: Dubler works best with its own special microphone.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

When I tested Dubler using both an SM57 and an SM58 run through a Focusrite 2i4 the results were decidedly mixed. The MIDI data was always a little messier, there was more noticeable latency and the pitch tracking just wasn’t as good. The latency was mostly an issue when using Dubler to trigger drums. With the buffer size in my audio settings at 128 samples it was almost impossible to keep a rhythm as the drum hits came just a little too slow and kept throwing me off.

If you use the dedicated mic sold by Vochlea, though, the story is a bit different. In fact, Dubler 2 is quite impressive. There is basically no noticeable latency. Pitch tracking is surprisingly accurate. And the resulting MIDI data is reasonably clean… or at least as clean as the source. Which I suppose is one of the first things I should lay out: If you can’t carry a tune, Dubler is only going to be so useful. My vocal skills are borderline nonexistent under the best of circumstances. But the onset of fall allergy season has made things significantly worse. (I would describe my current vocal style as chain-smoking donkey.) Could I get Dubler to spit out something resembling a melody? Sure. But it wasn’t always easy and I had to clean up a lot of MIDI after the fact.

So, I did what any smart person would do: Enlist the help of their sister who has spent a good chunk of her life singing and training with vocal coaches.

Vochlea

The difference was immediately obvious. Where Dubler often struggled to figure out what was going on with my flat unsteady humming it was generally able to follow my sister’s vocal histrionics without much issue. You can tell Dubler to automatically snap notes to a particular scale which I highly recommend regardless of your skill level. But even in chromatic mode the app was able to pretty accurately identify notes my sister sang and even follow along the vibrato of her voice fairly well.

To get truly usable results out of Dubler though, you’ll need to learn to use it properly. While it’s fun to belt out a melody or clumsily beatbox your way through a drum part there are a lot of tricks to making the most of the app. For one, you’ll need to tailor your vocal sounds so that the app can recognize them easier. This is especially true of the drum triggers. Simple beatboxing is probably going to trip up the software unless you’re really good. Sounds like “ti” “ts” and “ta” will often get mixed up, so it’s better to use more distinct sounds that you might not reach for if you were actually trying to beatbox, like “ka”. It’s also best if you keep the number of triggers you use to three or four. You can program up to eight, but it’s hard to make varied enough sounds for it to be useful.

The same is true for melodies too. If you just hum with your lips closed, Dubler will struggle more to tell when you’ve changed notes and you’ll end up with messier data. It’s better to go with percussive sounds like “da” to help separate notes from each other.

Vochlea

You can also put Dubler in chord mode which I actually found was a fun and interesting way to come up with new progressions when I was feeling stuck. But perhaps my favorite feature is the ability to turn vowel sounds into MIDI CC information. That means that if you held a note and slowly shifted it from an “ooo” to an “aaa” you could cause the filter to open up. It’s difficult to control these features though, and it was better for creating strange and interesting noises than actual music.

If you’re vocally inclined then Dubler holds a lot of promise as a musical sketch pad. I sometimes struggle to turn what I hear in my head into melodies on a keyboard or guitar and humming it might be the quickest and easiest way to get an idea out.

While the ability to use the app with your own mic is appealing, right now the calibration seems like it could use a little work. That being said, my microphones are old and have seen a lot of abuse. And it’s not like the SM57 is known for its perfect vocal fidelity. I’d probably have better luck if I had SM7B fresh out of the box to test with. But I had to make due with what I had. And, what I had, wasn’t as good as Vochlea’s Dubler Studio mic when it came to capturing clean MIDI data. The software is pre-tuned for that mic and there’s fewer variables to contend with.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

Which leads us to our final point: price. Dubler is not cheap. And that’s not surprising. While Vochlea isn’t the first or only company to try turning audio into MIDI, it’s still not a simple task. So you’d have to be pretty committed to the idea of singing to control your synths to drop $329 on the Dubler Studio Kit or even the $249 for the app on its own ($78 to upgrade if you own the original Dubler already). For someone like myself, it’s a tough sell. But for a vocalist who wants to start dabbling in the world of music production and synthesizers (even just for idea generation) without having to learn a whole new instrument I can certainly see the appeal.

Nintendo has confirmed that it will expand its Super Nintendo World theme park at Universal Studios Japan with a new Donkey Kong section. The new zone, which is reportedly already under construction, is set to open sometime in 2024 and will expand the park size by 70 percent, Nintendo said. 

"The area will feature a roller coaster, interactive experiences and themed merchandise and food," Nintendo wrote in a press release. "Guests will be able to take a walk on the wild side through the lush jungles where Donkey Kong and his friends live."

Super Nintendo World opened in March of 2021 after a delay due to COVID-19, with mask-wearing, temperature checks and hand sanitizer requirements in place. However, a surge in the pandemic prompted a temporary closure a month later. As it stands now, travel to Japan is banned for tourists and other travelers. 

Nintendo plans similar attractions at the Orlando, Hollywood and Singapore Universal Studios parks. Key attractions at the Japan park are the Mario Kart: Kuppa's Challenge rollercoaster and Yoshi Adventure. Guests also get a "Power-up Band" that lets them collect coins and have other interactive experiences. 

"I am very happy to be able to make the world of Donkey Kong a reality following the world of Mario," said Nintendo Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto. "I am looking forward to creating a thrilling Donkey Kong experience with the amazing team at Universal. It will take some time until it is completed, but it will be a unique area for not only people who are familiar with Donkey Kong games, but for all guests."

You haven't had much choice for compact keyboards these days — many of them are mechanical keyboards aimed at gamers and hobbyists, and Apple's Magic Keyboard doesn't make much sense for non-Apple users. Logitech might have a more viable alternative for some people, however. It just introduced an MX Keys Mini wireless keyboard that shrinks the original MX Keys design into a tiny, minimalist footprint.

The MX Keys Mini doesn't include a number pad or other perks from a full-size keyboard, but it does preserve the "Perfect Stroke" system that combines non-mechanical switches with dished keys that can improve your typing accuracy. There are even a few new functions you won't get in the larger keyboard, including a dictation key for Macs and Windows PCs, a microphone mute toggle and an emoji key.

The Mini supports Android, ChromeOS, Linux, iOS and iPadOS using either Bluetooth or a USB receiver, with pairing for up to three devices. USB-C fast charging will help if you need a few more hours of typing in a pinch.

The MX Keys Mini is available now for $100 in dark gray, pink and silver colors. That's not a huge drop from the $130 price of the full MX Keys, but it's on par with the no-frills Magic Keyboard. It's arguably a better buy if you prefer the ergonomics of Logitech's keyboard, don't like the feel of mechanicals or just want a keyboard you can easily shuffle between platforms.

2Africa, a subsea cable project funded by Facebook and several telcos, will become the longest subsea cable system ever deployed by the time it's finished. The social network has announced that the consortium of companies behind the initiative has decided to add a new segment to the structure called 2Africa Pearls, which will connect Africa, Europe and Asia. 

When Facebook first announced the project, it said 2Africa will lay down 37,000 km (22,990 miles) of cables on the ocean floor. Last month, the company also announced that the consortium is extending the cable's reach to four more branches in Seychelles, the Comoros Islands, Angola and the south-eastern part of Nigeria. This new segment would bring its total length to over 45,000 km or 28,000 miles. 

As its name implies, the 2Africa initiative's goal is to provide internet connectivity to people living in Africa, which is currently the least connected continent. This extension adds landing sites in India (Mumbai), Pakistan (Karachi), Oman (Salalah and Barakah), UAE (Kalba and Abu Dhabi), Qatar (Doha), Bahrain (Manamah), Iraq (AlFaw), Kuwait (Kuwait) and in Saudi Arabia (Khobar). 

2Africa

In Facebook's announcement, Kevin Salvadori, the company's VP of networking infrastructure, said the full structure would serve more people than the consortium first intended. While the original 2Africa project was only meant to provide connectivity to 1.2 billion people, the addition of Pearls would allow the cable to serve a total of 3 billion people. He wrote:

"The past 18 months have highlighted the importance of connectivity as billions of people around the world rely on the internet to work, attend school, and stay connected to people they care about. We continue to invest in subsea cables in Africa and beyond, as communities and businesses flourish when there is widely accessible internet."

Google Meet's latest beta feature could help make video conferences with foreign clients, partners, students and employees go more smoothly. The tech giant has started testing live translated captions for the program, which is a step up from Meet's standard live captions. It will initially support meetings conducted in English that it can translate into Spanish, French, Portuguese and German. 

In addition, the feature's current iteration is only available for meetings organized by Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus and Teaching & Learning Upgrade users. Interested administrators will have to apply for access before the feature appears in their meetings. To enable it, users will have to switch on Captions in Settings and set it to English before toggling on Translated Captions underneath. They can then choose one of the translated language options.

Google

"Translated captions helps Google Meet video calls to be more global, inclusive and effective by removing language ability as a barrier to collaboration. By helping users consume the content in a preferred language, you can help equalize information sharing, learning, and collaboration, and make sure your meetings are as effective as possible," Google wrote in its announcement.

The tech giant didn't say whether it's working on providing translations for meetings conducted in Spanish, French, Portuguese and German instead. It also didn't mention a timeline for when the feature will become more widely available — we'll just have to wait for more announcements in the future.