Weekly recap

Weekly Tech Recap - № 259 - Game Gear Micro, postponement in the tech world, less is Moore, Edge Chromium, wallpaper crashing bug

By Laurent Gloaguen,

June 5, 2020.

Game Gear Micro

Game Gear Micro. © Sega Corp.

Over the last four years, we’ve experienced a wave of mini retro consoles, with the NES Classic Edition, Sega Genesis Mini, PlayStation Classic, among others. Now, it’s time for micro retro consoles with Sega’s Game Gear Micro, a new console that is 92% smaller than the original. Just 80x40mm, the new “portable mascot” has a 1.15-inch screen with a 240x180 pixel resolution. It comes in four colours, each with its own suite of four different games. The Micro can run on a USB power adapter or two AAA batteries. It has a single mono speaker and a headphone jack. It will launch in Japan in October for JPY4,980 (about CAD62). No release plans have been announced for other markets. The original Game Gear from 1990, with a Z80 processor and a backlit 160x144 pixel, 16-color display, had achieved critical success but not a commercial one, probably due to its price and to the fact that it burned through 6 AA batteries every four hours.

⇨ YouTube, “『ゲームギアミクロ』プロモーション映像.”

⇨ Ars Technica, Kyle Orland, “Sega’s tiny Game Gear Micro is 92% smaller than the original.”

Postponement after delay in the tech world

George Floyd mural in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Lorie Shaull (cc by-sa 2.0).

After the tech world’s many pandemic-induced delays and cancellations, now the grim news coming out of the U.S. is causing many companies to reschedule their events and product launches. While some people will be disappointed, most will agree that now is not a good time for self-promotion. For starters, the new season of Fortnite is postponed: “We’re acutely aware of the pain our friends, families, team members, players, and communities are experiencing,” Epic said in a blog post. “We believe in equality and justice, diversity and inclusion, and that these fundamentals are above politics. The team is eager to move Fortnite forward, but we need to balance the Season 3 launch with time for the team to focus on themselves, their families, and their communities.” Also in the field of video games, Activision announced the postponement of new content updates for several Call of Duty games: “Right now, it’s time for those speaking up for equality, justice, and change to be seen and heard,” said the company on Twitter. Cisco, for its part, rescheduled its Cisco Live event: “People across the U.S. and the world are dealing with so much pain, frustration and anger,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said. “We want to give you space this week to do what you need to do within your own organizations and communities.” Sony announced it was postponing its PlayStation 5 event, saying it wanted to “stand back and allow more important voices to be heard.” Google delayed the Android 11 beta launch event, saying “We are excited to tell you more about Android 11, but now is not the time to celebrate.” Many tech companies have spoken out against racial inequities and made some sometimes sizeable donations to organisations fighting for racial justice. Tech reporters Ina Fried and Kyle Daly rightly concluded: “Words are easy, but actions matter more. Donations make support quantifiable, but the most consequential impact tech companies can have is in choosing whether their platforms exacerbate tensions or help bring people together.” Could that be a swipe at Mark Zuckerberg?

⇨ The Verge, Jay Peters, “Fortnite’s next live event and season delayed again.”

⇨ The Verge, Taylor Lyles, “Activision postpones new Call of Duty content so protestors can ‘be seen and heard’.”

⇨ Axios, Ina Fried, “Cisco, Sony postpone events amid continued protests.”

⇨ Axios, Ina Fried, Kyle Daly, “How Big Tech has responded to the protests.”

Less is Moore

On a guest post on IEEE Spectrum, three MIT scientists plead for more efficient code as a way of saving Moore’s Law. For decades, our ability to miniaturize components led to us doubling the number of transistors on a silicon chip every two years or so, but we’re now reaching the limits of miniaturization, and so computing performance is stagnating. What to do? Essentially, the authors say that we should be reaching for more efficient, economical and elegant code. It would seem that processor performance has supported complacency in software development, which has translated into low code efficiency and speed. As Moore’s Law becomes obsolete, if we want to make headway in the universe of artificial intelligence and robotics, we’re going to have to slim down our coding.

⇨ IEEE Spectrum, Charles E. Leiserson, Tao B. Schardl, Neil C. Thompson, “Can software performance engineering save us from the end of Moore’s law?.”

Edge Chromium via Windows Update

While Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browser has been available since January, you had to actually download it to use it. Now, Microsoft has announced that Edge will be disseminated through Windows Update, automatically installing on Windows version 1903 and up. This new version of the Edge browser features many functional enhancements and corrects various bugs. However, just because the new Edge is widely distributed doesn’t mean that hundreds of millions of Windows 10 users are going to adopt it wholesale.

⇨ Microsoft, “The new Microsoft Edge is available for Windows 10, version 1903 and 1909.”

Picture imperfect

A big, bad Android bug is disabling phones through poor background image choices. The issue came to the attention of the general public when Ice Universe tweeted an image causing the crash; the bug has since been verified by 9to5Google and Android Authority. The bug hits Samsung phones particularly hard, but also affects Google Pixel devices, among others. As the bug makes phones inoperable even after a reboot, we don’t recommend you see for yourself, unless you enjoy factory resets. At issue is a simple question of color space: if the image isn’t in sRGB, as expected, Android crashes and burns.

You like danger? Here’s the image in question: