A little early holiday surprise from Boston Dynamics this week, as Santa suit-wearing electric Atlas performs a backflip. The feat occurs about 13 minutes into a new video, showcasing yet another trick in the humanoid robot’s arsenal. It’s worth noting that – unlike with humans – a robot performing a backflip isn’t necessarily more complicated […]
Apple has yet to complete its transition from LCD to OLED, but will at some point move beyond this to microLED screens. Key supplier Foxconn has announced that it expects to begin mass production of the advanced display tech late next year.
Foxconn made the announcement as it revealed a partnership with Porotech for microLED to be used in future AR headsets …
It's no secret that 2024 saw broadcast, cable, and streaming news outlets struggle to attract a viewing audience with a significant disinterest in the news. That reality was made especially stark by presidential election that saw a 25% ratings decline from the 2020 election cycle across 18 networks. Still, despite changing consumption habits and all...
Happy winter break to all who celebrate! Whatever your holiday is, TVSpy hopes it's the best ever. Personally, we celebrate Festivus. We'll be off Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. In the spirit of the holiday, we give you a multitude of stories from around the country to keep you informed about the good: a Grand Rapids,...
The Barbie Phone, much like the doll it pays tribute to, is a thing of beauty. But like that doll whose proportions, historically, are impossible, the Barbie Phone just isn’t built for the modern world.
Even if the ultra-feminine aesthetic isn’t your thing — and it’s not really mine — you have to hand it to the Barbie flip phone. From the box it comes in, to the interchangeable back plates, rhinestone stickers, and Barbie-fied interface, it’s a delight. The charger and battery are both pink, though they’re a lighter shade than Mattel’s trademarked Barbie Pink (Pantone 219). The phone says “Hi Barbie!” when you turn it on. It’s the definition of committing to the bit.
The breezy fun of the Barbie aesthetic, Pantone 219 or otherwise, is at odds with the actual experience of using the phone. It’s based on one of HMD’s feature phones, and it runs an operating system called KaiOS. The phone is designed for basic connectivity — texting, calling, emails — and even includes a web browser.
According to HMD, in addition to being cute,the nostalgic design and limited feature set are supposed to encourage you to disconnect and spend time with your friends IRL. There are a series of...
An Alaska man who tipped off law enforcement to an airman interested in child pornography was arrested when authorities searched his phone and found virtual reality images of minors. In an interview with law enforcement, the tipster said he also downloaded AI child sexual abuse material but that sometimes “real” ones were mixed in.
According to newly filed charging documents, Anthaney O’Connor, reached out to law enforcement in August to alert them to an unidentified airman who shared child sexual abuse (CSAM) material with O’Connor. While investigating the crime, and with O’Connor’s consent, federal authorities searched his phone for additional information. A review of the electronics revealed that O’Connor allegedly offered to make virtual reality CSAM for the airman, according to the criminal complaint.
The court records say that the airman shared an image of a child at a grocery store and the two individuals discussed how to create an explicit virtual reality program of the minor. Using the code word ‘cheese pizza’ to describe the images, O’Connor allegedly noted that he could make the image for 200 dollars. He told the airman he was creating an online version of a pool where he could place an AI created image of the child from the grocery store.
Text messages from the court case.
Documents say O’Connor possessed at least six AI created images, in addition to half a dozen ‘real’ CSAM images and videos. In an interview with law enforcement last Thursday, O’Connor told authorities that he “unintentionally downloaded ‘real’ images.” Court filings state he also told authorities that he would “report CSAM to Internet Service providers but still was sexually gratified from the images and videos.” A search of his house found a computer in his room and multiple hard drives hidden in a home’s vent. In a detention memo filed yesterday, the Justice Department says an initial review of O’Connor’s computer uncovered a 41 second video of a child rape.
404 Media has previously written about how the creation of AI-generated child sexual abuse material isn’t a “victimless” crime in part because real imagery of real victims can often be mixed in.
A screenshot from the court case.
The Justice Department has stepped up its arrests of individuals possessing AI created CSAM images. In May 2024, Court Watch and 404 Media reported on the first of its kind arrest was made of a Wisconsin man who used “Stable Diffusion to create thousands of realistic images of prepubescent minors”
The U.S. Attorney’s office in Alaska, which is prosecuting the case, declined to comment outside of what was in the charging documents. A lawyer representing O’Connor did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Monday, a federal judge ordered O’Connor be detained pending a further hearing on January 6th.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has responded to a series of massive Marriott and Starwood data breaches, ordering the companies to make no fewer than 13 changes to ensure it can’t happen again.
More than 344 million customers were impacted by three separate security breaches, which revealed personal data that included credit card details and passport information …
No game this year captured the imagination of the Engadget crew quite like Balatro did, and when it came time for each staff member to pitch their favorite games of 2024, everyone – and I mean everyone – wanted to write about Balatro. In the end, rather than forcing everyone to fight for the chance to write about their love of the game, we instead decided to ask the team to write their own individual take on Balatro.
My Steam Deck is a Balatro machine and I love it
My Steam Deck is a Balatro machine at this point, and no, I’m not complaining about this. I’ve broken out my Steam Deck for plenty of games before Balatro and I plan on playing lots more on it in the future, but for now and potentially until I take my final breath, its primary function is joker generation.
First of all, Balatro just feels nice on a handheld device. It’s the kind of game that you can play passively while watching TV or listening to a podcast, or with intense focus as you try to collect jokers, stakes, achievements and stickers on the way to Completionist++. The Steam Deck is the ideal platform for this type of game, because, especially in combination with a comfy PC setup, it allows players to flow between these two states without losing progression. The mobile version of Balatro is rad and the Switch version is peachy, but I started playing on PC and, more than 500 hours later, I’m reluctant to start over on any other platform.
I absolutely love curling up on the couch with Balatro, playing it on the PC at my desk, using it as a distraction on long commutes, and getting a few hands in before bed. The Balatro Machine — uh, I mean, Steam Deck — enables my obsession in a seamless way.
— Jessica Conditt, Senior Reporter
Balatro is a card game you can feel
Balatro is a game you mostly play in your head. There’s a giant array of modifier cards, each with their own effects and consequences, and you work through their permutations like you’re tinkering with a chemistry kit. It’s a game of decisions, all of which are contingent on the decisions you’ve made prior. Some work, most blow up in your face.
This is what makes Balatro engaging, but it’s not my favorite thing about it. What I like most is how tangible it is. How it makes a digital playing card game have any felt impact at all. It’s the little tck and shake each card does when scored. The donk when a joker adds to your multiplier, the way the donks speed up and rise in pitch as buffs and retriggers pile up. The thrrrp of the deck reshuffling. The brief delay upon opening a booster pack to raise anticipation, how the pack disintegrates to emphasize the finality of your decision. The sound of coins colliding when you collect interest or buy something. The fire that burns and rises around your score when you’ve passed the goal in one hand, a dopamine hit within a dopamine hit. The way the air gets sucked out of the trancy music when you inevitably fail.
You are not a character in Balatro. You’re just you, staring at cards set against swirling colors. Yet all of these flourishes go a long way toward sucking you into that vortex, really locking you in it, somehow giving a game that most resembles video poker a sense of physical place. Balatro is, among many things, an A-1 example of economical sound design. The easiest way to dilute it is to play it on mute.
— Jeff Dunn, Senior Reporter
The real Balatro was the joker stickers we earned along the way
I am not an achievement hunter — I’m the sort of person who skips sidequests that aren’t interesting and rarely replays games after finishing them. The one “Platinumed” game in my PlayStation collection is the PS4 version of Resogun, and I have 100-percented precisely zero games on Xbox. Why, then, was 2024 the year that I became obsessed with achieving Completionist++ on Balatro?
I received the Completionist Steam achievement, which you get by discovering every card in the game, after a month with the game. It took me another five months to get Completionist+, awarded to those who beat Ante 8 with every deck on gold difficulty. The one thing left for me to do was the game’s toughest challenge: Competitionist++, which involves getting gold stickers on every joker by beating Ante 8 on gold difficulty with each of them active.
As of writing, Completionist++ is still a distant dream. It’s easy to feel like you’ve mastered the game after beating Completionist+; There are simple joker combinations that can take you past Ante 8 with every deck. Completionist++ strips those safety nets from you, forcing you to beat the game’s hardest level without relying on surefire strategies. While I do occasionally miss my high-score chasing early days with Balatro, this challenge has given the game a completely new dynamic for me, as I figure out how to craft a win out of jokers I considered useless before.
If you’ve made your way through all the stakes and are wondering what to do next, Completionist++ is a challenge worth setting yourself. Just a word of warning: I’ve played for 460 hours across my PC and Steam Deck, and I’ve only unlocked 961 of the game’s 1,200 stickers.
— Aaron Souppouris, Executive Editor
Balatro is a deep, complex game for filthy casuals like me
Some of my friends and co-workers are taking Balatro to some wild extremes. Aaron told me he's unlocked and completed about 95 percent of the game; I meanwhile sit at a paltry 19 percent. Another friend routinely shares quick videos from his runs where he racks up hundreds of millions of points in a single hand with Jokers I can't fathom, while my best single hand sits at a little over 3 million.
The good thing, though? This isn’t discouraging; it’s a feature, not a bug. Balatro has somehow managed to be the kind of game you can sink hundreds of hours into in an all-out quest for completion and mastery. Or you can do as I do and pick it up, play for 30 minutes or an hour a few times a week, and come back to it again with plenty to do when you get the itch.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to get to the point where I’m grabbing a billion points on a single hand, but my gaming time is limited and I usually choose to spend it on the PS5. But one of the great joys of Balatro is that you can go on a bender and play it for hours, and then not come back to it for days or weeks, and then just pick it up and keep making progress. You’re not going to lose any skills or forget your objectives. It’s a casual, pick-up-and-play game that also hides some incredible depth, and games like that don’t come around too often.
— Nathan Ingraham, Deputy Editor
Balatro is an almost perfect mobile port
2024 is unquestionably the year of Balatro. It came out of nowhere to fill our heads with dreams of flush fives and legendary Jimbos. But I think what put it really over the top was when it launched on iOS and Android earlier this fall. Not only did the mobile version cost $5 less than the desktop edition on Steam (or console ports), but there are no intrusive ads or extra purchases anywhere in the game. That's including all the crossover cardbacks (like the ones featuring characters from The Witcher, Cyberpunk 2077 and more) and the big forthcoming update due out at the beginning of next year.
On top of that, there’s essentially no difference in features between the mobile and desktop/console versions. Granted, that’s due in large part to the game being a relatively simple title (at least in terms of graphics). But even so, you’d be surprised how easy that is to mess up. The game boots up nearly instantly and even when you’re smashing antes while pushing your score deep into scientific notation, the system doesn’t get bogged down. Throw in a satisfying interface, support for cloud saves, multiple languages and profiles plus a high contrast option that's great for accessibility, and you've got an app that plays well on practically any device.
In fact, I’d argue that foldables like the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 are the perfect joker-hunting devices. Their large screens feel like a perfect match for Balatro without ever feeling cramped, which happens sometimes on older gadgets with less roomy displays. Text is generally easy to read (though sometimes less so on tiny devices) and there’s plenty of open space to push things around without getting in your own way. I have a few minor complaints you can read about in my longer piece on Balatro's beauty on mobile devices, but as a whole I'm confident I’m going to get more than my money’s worth for years to come.
— Sam Rutherford, Senior Reporter
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/engadgets-balatro-of-the-year-2024-140021833.html?src=rss
All American Airline flights are currently grounded on Christmas Eve due to an unspecified ‘technical issue.’ AA subsidiaries are also unable to fly, and the company says it can’t say when the problem will be fixed …
Update: It was later revealed the problem was a software outage preventing weight and balance calculations. Flights are now resuming …
