Spiria logo.

Weekly Tech Recap - № 262 - Evercade, Microsoft Store, Fugaku, Windows File Recovery, AniMe Matrix

July 3, 2020.

Evercade Console

Evercade.

Evercade console. © Blaze Entertainment.

If you’re into retro games, you’re going to love Blaze Entertainment’s portable console, the Evercade, and especially its price. The starter pack, which includes the console and a cartridge with 20 Atari classics, will cost you just CAD100. You can then get more cartridges, each with 6 to 20 games, for CAD30 each. The handheld console has a RGB 4.3 inch screen (480x272px) and a quadcore 1.2GHz processor. It connects to a TV screen through a micro HDMI port. The battery has a 3 to 5 hour lifespan and you can play while the console is plugged into the charger. The cartridges and games from the 80s and 90s make you feel like you’ve gone back in time, when the Game Boy was king. But Kyle Orland of Ars Technica isn’t too enthused with the return of the cartridges (“This is the XXIst century, just let me download ROMs!”). Seriously lacking in nostalgia. 

YouTube, “Evercade - Official Announcement Trailer.”

YouTube, “The Evercade - Is it MADNESS or GENIUS?!

Ars Technica, Kyle Orland, “Evercade’s retro portable made me fall out of love with game cartridges.”

Gizmodo, Andrew Liszewski, “The Evercade simplifies retro gaming and I’m surprised how much I love it.”

 

Microsoft dumps retail stores

Microsoft Store on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.

Microsoft Store on Fifth Avenue, Midtown Manhattan. © iStock.

After opening some 70 stores in the U.S. and 7 in Canada, Microsoft is giving up on physical retail. Microsoft’s retail foray had started under Steve Ballmer with the opening of the first two stores in 2009, to coincide with the launch of Windows 7. The model closely followed (if not copied exactly) the Apple Store concept, launched by Steve Jobs in 2000. Just a year ago, the first European Microsoft Store opened on Oxford Circus in London. Yet since the beginning, the Microsoft Stores have had trouble turning a profit, and observers have wondered about the soundness of the investment. It seems that this same question was asked around the Board table, and that the answer was to stop the bloodletting. According to sources, the closures had been planned for 2021, but the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the process. Four stores, in New York, Sydney, London and Redmond will be “reimagined” as “experience centers”.

The Verge, Chris Welch, “Microsoft to permanently close all of its retail stores.”

 

Fugaku, the world’s fastest computer

Fugaku.

Fugaku 富岳. © RIKEN Center for Computational Science.

Fugaku, the supercomputer jointly developed by the RIKEN research institute and Fujitsu Ltd based on ARM technology, was crowned fastest computer ever by Top500, a listing of the world’s fastest supercomputers. It earned the top spot with a LINPACK score of 415.5 petaflops, a much higher result than the previous record-holder, the 148.6-petaflop Summit in the U.S. Like many of its brethren in the extended supercomputer family, it will be used for computation-intensive applications, like drug development, natural disaster simulations, weather and climate forecasting, new materials development, etc. While most supercomputers are developed on x86 processor architecture, the Fugako is based on an ARM processor, Fujitsu’s 48-core, A64FX SoC. Fugaku also supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x, the de facto standard operating system in the field.

TOP500.org, “Japan captures TOP500 crown with arm-powered supercomputer.”

IEEE Spectrum, John Boyd, “Japan’s Fugaku supercomputer completes first-ever sweep of high-performance benchmarks.”

 

Windows File Recovery

Oops. What did I do?

Oops. What did I do? © iStock.

Who hasn’t deleted a file by mistake, with most unpleasant consequences, like losing hours of work? Until now, Microsoft didn’t have a Windows utility to recover them. That’s why the release of the Windows File Recovery tool, which works with the latest Windows versions (20H1, 2004 and 19041), is most welcome. Unlike most third-party utilities, it only works as a command line app, but it’s still very easy to use. It can handle internal and external drives (NTFS or ReFS), as well as USB sticks and SD cards (FAT, exFAT). You’ll need a separate storage capability, for example a USB key, to restore your files.

Microsoft Support, “Recover lost files on Windows 10.”

 

ROG Zephyrus G14 with LED matrix

ROG Zephyrus G14.

ROG Zephyrus G14. © ASUSTeK Computer Inc.

It serves no functional purpose and is completely superfluous (especially in lockdown when you have no chance to use your computer in public), but we still find it supercool: the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 can be configured with a LED dot-matrix display hidden in its lid, with a new model costing UDS2,000. This “AniMe Matrix” display consists of 1,215 Mini-LEDs that support 256 levels of brightness each and can be used to show anything you like, but especially GIF animes. Beyond that, it’s a powerful gaming computer (who else would want an AniMe Matrix?) with a AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 GPU, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB NVMEe M.2 SSD. 

YouTube, “AniMe Matrix Tutorial - Zephyrus G14 | ROG.”

The Verge, “Asus’ ROG Zephyrus G14 is now available with a hidden LED display on its lid.”