Oct 07
Amazon is putting its rectangular, rolling robot out to pasture. Scout, the chaperoned, 6-wheeled delivery bot, which has been in testing since 2019, will no longer be further tested or developed, according to reports from multiple outlets.
Oct 07
Spotify may be tempering its podcast push. A TechCrunchsource claims the streaming service is cutting 11 original podcasts from its Gimlet and Parcast studios, including How to Save a Planet, Crimes of Passion and (in the second quarter of 2023) Horoscope Today. The cancellations will also involve layoffs of “less than” 5 percent of Spotify’s podcast team, with some workers moving to other podcasts.
The company said it doesn’t comment on employee changes. The shakeup has also seen Spotify assign new managing directors for both Gimlet and Parcast, the source said. Spotify Studios and The Ringer remain untouched.
This is the first time Spotify has axed multiple podcasts at the same time. While the reported insider didn’t know the exact reasoning behind the move, it’s thought that the service is dropping underperforming shows to help it concentrate on full-fledged exclusives, ranging from existing hits like Batman Unburied through to upcoming projects.
A pruning effort like this isn’t surprising, if true. Spotify has over 500 original and exclusive podcasts, and they’re not all guaranteed to build strong audiences. The strategy could not only help Spotify improve its focus, but cut costs at a time when many tech companies are either slowing new hires or laying off staff in droves.
Oct 07
In many ways the $2,059Pērkons seems like the drum machine sibling of Erica Synths’ SYNTRX. It’s not just that they share a chassis and knobs. But they’re both pricey, niche instruments that focus on having a unique character, rather than cramming in as many features as possible. But, while they’re both compelling yet impractical devices, that’s where the similarities end.
Talking about using Pērkons is going to get very complicated, very quickly. So let’s ease into things by talking straight specs. It’s a four-voice digital drum machine with multiple different sound engines and algorithms per track, paired with analog multimode filters and drive. There are four 16-step sequencer tracks with four different shuffle algorithms, ratchets and probability settings. In addition to a master output, headphone output and master send and return effect jacks, there are also individual outputs for each voice, along with separate sends and returns and trigger inputs for each, not to mention MIDI In and Out. Plus an analog bucket brigade delay (BBD), an optical compressor and an LFO.
Terrence O’Brien / Engadget
In short, there’s a lot of sound shaping power here. Sure, it doesn’t have microtiming, and you have to chain multiple patterns together if you want to have more than 16 steps, but there’s still a decent number of features to take advantage of.
The four voices don’t have prescriptive uses, but some are better for certain sounds than others. And each has a unique set of engines with multiple modes. For instance, voice one has a wavefold drum, a wavetable drum and a simple drum algorithm. The mode switch then chooses between three different transients for the fold drum, three different wavetables or three different simple waveshapes depending on the algorithm chosen. And each algorithm has different controls assigned to the parameter one and two knobs.
Terrence O’Brien / Engadget
This basic setup is spread across all four voices, just with different algorithm options. So while voice one and two work better for kicks and toms, voice three is your best bet for claps and snares, and voice four is ideal for high hats and cymbals.
I feel like it’s important to pause here and point out that, while I may say things like “best for snares,” these are not typical drum sounds. Don’t come to Pērkons expecting 808 kick — you’re not gonna get them. But, that’s part of its appeal. It doesn’t sound like other drum machines and it oozes character. That’s quite refreshing in an age of countless clones and rehashes that simply try to repackage beloved sounds of the past.
That character and unique timbre might put some people off, though. Even I initially was underwhelmed with what I was coaxing out of the Pērkons my first couple of days with it. But once I stopped trying to bend it to my will, and simply let it do what it was designed to, I came around pretty quickly. Those sounds are decidedly digital and err towards the aggressive end of things. Do you dig ‘90s industrial music? You’re gonna like Pērkons. Digital hardcore? Have I got the drum synth for you.
In fact, after years of mostly making more laidback and ambient styles of electronic music, I found myself dialing in harsh, blown-out guitar tones, a la Nine Inch NailsBroken to jam along with Pērkons. I was transported back to my high school days of black t-shirts and long greasy hair. And I wasn’t mad about it.
The one tip I have is, keep that drive knob pinned and be generous with the compressor. I think part of why I was a bit lukewarm on it at first was because I was trying to be subtle and judicious with dialing in those effects. Which, frankly, it was probably pretty stupid of me to expect subtlety from a drum machine named after the Baltic god of thunder.
Once you accept the sound palette at your disposal, you have to come to grips with the technical functions of Pērkons. This is where things can get a little messy. While programming in a basic 16-step drum pattern and playing it back is relatively simple, some of the more advanced functions aren’t always that intuitive. At least at first, I’d highly recommend keeping the manual handy. Even if just to reference what the parameter knobs are controlling for each voice mode.
Terrence O’Brien / Engadget
The Pērkons is decidedly old school in its approach to interface design. There’s no screen or menus to dive through. Instead, almost all of the machine’s functions from the sequencer playback mode, to the shuffle percentage to the LFO target, are controlled via the 64 step buttons or four trigger buttons. This means that basically anything beyond simply inputting individual drum hits requires pressing some combination of two or three buttons simultaneously.
For example, if you want to set the probability that a particular step will play you have to hold down the step you want to change, the probability key and one of the four trigger buttons to select a percentage (10, 25, 50 or 90 percent). The benefit is that, since you don’t have to do any menu diving, it’s simple to manipulate a pattern while it’s playing. And once you figure out the basics of how the interface works, it’s pretty easy to grasp since everything is labeled. The downside is that some things have relatively limited options, like probability. If you want to have a step to have a 33 or 75 percent chance of playing, you’re out of luck. Similarly, shuffle is in predetermined percentages, though those aren’t labeled.
Terrence O’Brien / Engadget
You also have to be careful to hit the buttons you want in the right order. If you press the pattern / ratchet button before you start holding down a particular step, then you’re not going to add a ratchet, you’re going to change patterns. And if you haven’t saved the one you were currently working on, it will be gone for good. Pērkons can be fun, but it can also be very unforgiving.
Even though the interface is old school, Pērkons does have a number of new-school features to help keep it from being too robotic. In addition to shuffle and probability, you can change the length, add accents, multiply or divide the tempo, select one of four “grooves” and choose one of four different playback modes: forward, backward, ping-pong or random. And each of these can be done on a per-track basis. So you can make track four only 13 steps long and ping-pong from beginning to end and back at half speed, while track one plays at double speed with a 50-percent shuffle and track two has a unique groove but is only eight steps long.
All of these options are welcome, but can feel a bit unwieldy to manage at times. The lack of a robust menu system is both a gift and a curse. While it keeps everything at your fingertips, it also means you have to remember a bunch of button combinations to change or review settings.
Another thing worth discussing is that, while Pērkons is primarily a drum machine, it’s also a synthesizer. But, don’t expect to plug in a keyboard and play funky basslines. Instead, it’s best approached as a drone instrument. You can’t play the voices chromatically, at least on the current firmware. That said, if your ear is good enough, you can tune each step individually to create a bassline.
Changing the parameters for each step is simple too. You just hold the target trigger button and start turning knobs. It functions almost exactly like parameter locking on unabashedly modern instruments from the likes of Elektron. If you’d prefer to tweak things on the fly, you can just press record and start turning knobs to record automation. You can even change the algorithms and voice modes on a per-step basis, which really broadens the variety of sounds at your disposal in a given pattern.
Terrence O’Brien / Engadget
The most important thing, though, is that Pērkons is an absolute delight to play. Frustrations with some of the interface aside, it lends itself towards live tweaking. And the hardware, just like with its distant sibling the SYNTRX, is incredible. The trigger keys on the right feel like they’re ripped straight from an IBM Model M. The individual step buttons have an insanely satisfying click. And the knobs have basically the perfect amount of resistance. All of this is in a large, metal body with wooden cheeks that feels like it was built for the express purpose of being abused.
All of that being said, I can’t simply recommend that anyone rush out and buy a Pērkons. It definitely caters to a particular audience. And its $2,059 asking price means you need to be really invested in that more aggressive aural aesthetic. While it does pack a lot of features and connectivity for the money, they’re definitely targeted more at a professional audience than the casual bedroom producer. But, if you’re looking for something rugged, wholly unique and powerful enough to explode a few heads with a thunderous kick, the Pērkons might be the perfect drum machine for you.
Oct 07
The agency said the change will “reduce the reporting burden on states and jurisdictions, and maximize surveillance resources.”
Oct 07
Aerial Images Show Alarming Extent of Hurricane Ian's Devastation in Florida
Posted in: Today's Chili
Hurricane Ian tore across Florida last week, killing at least 105 people in the state and leaving destruction in its wake. Hundreds of thousands of households remain without electricity, and multiple counties are under boil water notices after the storm damaged crucial infrastructure.
Oct 07
Acer has unveiled a new lightweight laptop that targets on-the-go professionals in a world where more and more people are choosing to work from home or away from the office. The Swift Edge is a 16-inch OLED laptop with a magnesium-aluminum chassis that’s only 0.51-inch thin and only weighs 2.58 pounds. That’s lighter than the 13.6-inch M2 MacBook Air that weighs 2.73 pounds or the 16-inch LG Gram that weighs 2.62 pounds.
Its screen is a 4K OLED display with a 60Hz refresh rate, surrounded by a narrow bezel that gives it a 92 percent screen-to-body ratio. The model is powered by AMD Ryzen 6000 and Pro 6000 processors that come with integrated RDNA2 graphics, allowing users to play modern games in 1080p. It also comes with 16GB of LPDDR5 memory that’s upgradable to 32BG and either 512GB or 1TB of SSD storage. The device’s 54 Wh 3-cell battery can last up to 10.5 hours based on the company’s video playback tests and up to 8.5 hours based on its web browsing test results.
Other features include an FHD (1,920 x 1,080) webcam and support for Microsoft’s Pluton security processor architecture, which provides additional protection for Windows 11 PCs. In addition, the laptop has a fingerprint reader and a Noble Wedge Lock slot. Acer’s first Swift Edge laptop will be available this month in North America for prices starting at $1,500. In Europe, Middle East and Africa, prices begin at €1,499, while in China prices start at RMB 7,999.
Oct 07
Cinewhoop drones are all the rage right now, as they can dive and twist and speed through unreachable places to produce spectacular footage. DJI has jumped on that trend with the Avata, an FPV drone that’s far removed from the company’s speedy DJI model actually called the FPV. Instead, the Avata is more about agility and has propeller guards that make it safe to fly around people.
It’s available with the new Goggles 2 that are smaller and lighter than the Goggles V2 that come with the DJI FPV drone. You can also get it with an updated Motion Controller that lets you steer the Avata by moving your wrists.
The system could help drone users get into the world of FPV and cinewhoop, but it isn’t cheap at $1,388 with the Goggles 2 and Motion Controller. To find out how it compares to the FPV and other drones, I enlisted my drone pilot friend Samuel to test it in a number of challenging scenarios.
Body
The Avata doesn’t look like any of DJI’s other consumer drones. To fly indoors, around people or in tight spaces, it has prop guards and a small, 7-inch square by 3.1-inch high body. At 410 grams it’s much lighter than the FPV, but a bit heavier than the 249-gram Mini 3 Pro. As such, it requires registration or a license in Europe, the US and many other countries.
The batteries use a flexible connector designed to limit crash damage. DJI claims up to 18 minutes of flight time, but we generally got around 10-12 minutes, or even less if we flew it extremely fast. That’s still good for an FPV drone (most are under 10 minutes), but DJI should be a bit more realistic in its marketing.
The Avata’s battery charges in about 45 minutes, and you can get two extra batteries and a charger with the $279 Fly-More kit. Samuel indicated that if he bought one for his photography business, he’d get six batteries at a minimum.
Steve Dent/Engadget
I’d also buy the largest microSD cards possible, because the slot tucked underneath is extremely awkward to access – particularly when removing a card. The USB-C port for transfers and charging is equally hard to get to. DJI normally excels with these types of features, but these are honestly serious design flaws. On the plus side, the Avata has 20GB of internal storage that can serve in a pinch.
Underneath are two time-of-flight sensors that can detect and map ground obstacles. However, the Avata doesn’t have any forward-facing sensors, so its main protection is the prop guards and rugged design.
The Avata Pro View Combo ships with the DJI Motion Controller as the only way to fly the drone. You can also use the FPV Remote Controller 2, but it’s sold separately for $200.
Also included in that bundle are the new Goggles 2 – not to be confused with the Goggles V2. They’re smaller and lighter than the latter, and use micro-LED instead of OLED panels, with 1080p resolution for each eye compared to 810p on Goggles V2. You can use the V2 with the Avata and FPV, but the Goggles 2 only work with the Avata.
The extra sharpness and small size are nice, but you can’t wear glasses underneath the Goggles 2. Instead, they have built in diopters to correct your eyesight. If you have astigmatism, DJI includes lens mountings that you can send back to have your prescription made.
Samuel wasn’t crazy about the diopter. While they gave him a clear view, he often had to remove the headset to see the drone, which meant he needed to put his glasses back on. He found the Goggles V2 easier as he can wear his glasses underneath.
The Goggles 2 let you fly the Avata with no mobile phone, as they have a mini-version of the DJI Fly app built-in. If you want to let others have a view, you can connect a smartphone via USB-C port on the side, though. The Goggles 2 control the Avata via DJI’s Ocusync O3, providing a 50Mbps video feed from up to 6.2 miles away. However, we noticed that the Goggles V2 provide a stronger feed over a longer distance, probably because of the larger antennas.
Performance
Steve Dent/Engadget
The Avata is a blast to fly, but it’s not as fast as some FPV drones. It tops out at 60 MPH in manual mode, well under the 87 MPH of DJI’s FPV. And that’s in manual mode – sport and normal modes are considerably slower at 31 MPH and 18 MPH, respectively.
It has awesome maneuverability though, letting you fly in places you’d never take another drone. We took it around handball players during a practice, between our legs, through the small gap in a sign, around a castle rooftop and indoors with people and fragile things around. It’s also tough. We had a number of crashes that would have killed an open-prop drone. It can also bounce off a person without doing them any harm.
Considering that the Avata might be the first FPV drone for many people, selling it with the Motion Controller is a good idea – but not as the only option. DJI should also sell a bundle with the FPV Controller 2, which offers more precise control for advanced users. As it stands now, you have to pay an extra $199 to get it.
The Motion Controller is easy to use – you simply point it where you want to fly and pull the trigger to speed up. To climb, tilt the controller upward and apply power, and reverse that for descents. A large button on top brings it to a hover, and the red button lets you take off and land.
Steve Dent/Engadget
It has some limitations, though. You can’t transition vertically or fly backwards with the Motion Controller, so you have to use a button to land. It also lacks precision, especially indoors. In fact, we found that without a GPS lock inside, the Avata was sometimes unflyable with the Motion Controller.
If you have some experience, the FPV Controller 2 is a better option. It allows you to engage manual mode to cruise faster, fly low to the ground and zag between trees or rooftops. Inside, you can fly precisely between rooms, objects and people, just like you may have seen in some of those cool cinewhoop FPV videos.
Manual mode also opens up flips, dives, climbs, hairpin turns, rolls and other tricks. Just bear in mind that there are no sensor safeguards. While Avata drone is tough, it’s not unbreakable and could really hurt someone at 60 MPH. It’s also more unstable, so flying it requires serious skill. It is a ton of fun, though, with the speed and lack of safeguards providing a real adrenaline rush that you don’t get from other drones.
Video quality
Most so-called Cinewhoop FPV drones use external cameras like the GoPro Hero Bones (or just regular stripped-down GoPros), but the Avata has one built in. It uses the same size 1/1.7-inch sensor as the new Action 3 camera, with 64 percent more area than the FPV.
Like the Action 3, it has normal, wide and ultra-wide options with up to a 155 degree field of view. And on top of the built-in gimbal and RockSteady smoothing, it has the HorizonView option to keep things level, even if the drone is tilting heavily.
The gimbal and RockSteady stabilization keep video smooth despite wind or abrupt maneuvers. And the HorizonView option worked as advertised, keeping things level for even when we were slaloming between trees.
It supports 4K video at up to 60 fps or 1080p and 2.7K at 120 fps with the Goggles V2, but only 100 fps with the Goggles 2. It’s not ideal that it has slower speeds than the headset it’s sold with, but it’s apparently due to the higher resolution. The sensor has 48 megapixels for shooting photos, if you ever want to do that.
Considering the camera’s small size, image quality is solid. Video is sharp and colors are accurate, though they can be a bit oversaturated. If you need a bit more dynamic range, it has DJI’s D-Cinelike mode.
It’s not bad in low light for shooting cityscapes or well-lit interiors, with an ISO range up to 12800 in expanded mode. You still need a decent amount of light, though, or video will get blocky and grainy in a hurry. If it gets too bad, it’s unfixable in post, so make sure to have enough light if shooting indoors.
Overall, it’s a very solid camera, though not up to, say, GoPro’s standards. The camera is part of a holistic package though – combined with the Avata’s small size and maneuverability, it gets shots no other off-the-shelf drones can.
Wrap-up
Steve Dent/Engadget
In sum, the Avata is a fun, rugged and maneuverable little drone that produces great footage, but it does have some weird flaws and limitations. The Goggles 2 limit the slow-motion and aren’t ideal if you wear glasses. Plus the Motion Controller isn’t ideal for precise FPV flying, and the microSD slot and USB-C port are poorly positioned.
It’s also fairly costly. Though the base drone is $629, it’s $1,388 with the Goggles 2 and Motion Controller, plus another $279 with the Fly-More kit. If you add the FPV Remote Controller 2, that’s another $199. By comparison, the FPV bundled with the Goggles V2 and older Motion Controller costs $1,300.
Still, there aren’t many other ready-to-fly drones that can do what it does. If you want a highly maneuverable and relatively safe Cinewhoop-style drone without building one yourself, it’s really in a class by itself.
Oct 07
“I was nonbinary before there was a word for me… I’ve been called just about everything and it’s never hurt as much as being asked to be somebody else.”
Oct 07
If you’ve managed to finally get your hands on a PlayStation 5, these are the PS5 accessories you’ve been missing out on.
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