Author: News Room

Your portable PS4 Slim dream just got a real-world build

A modder says a portable PS4 Slim can finally feel like something you’d actually use, not a fragile showpiece. After months of revisions, the latest version is presented as a stable handheld built for regular play. The heart of the project is a trimmed and modified PS4 Slim motherboard, cut down to shrink the system without losing core functionality. To keep the handheld from cooking itself, the design leans on a reworked cooling setup plus active safeguards. An onboard ESP32 running custom firmware monitors temperatures and power behavior, and it can enforce thermal limits and trigger an emergency shutdown. It’s…

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This 18-gram haptic ring for VR lets your finger feel virtual objects

A new haptic ring for VR is trying to solve a stubborn problem, virtual touch still feels flat. Researchers from Sungkyunkwan University, EPFL, and Istanbul Technical University built an origami-inspired wearable called OriRing that weighs 18 grams and can push back with up to 6.5 newtons of force. OriRing measures both pressing and sliding forces on your finger, then generates physical resistance to match what you’re doing in VR or AR. The researchers say it can represent object size and stiffness, and it can also take user input to change those properties on the fly. It’s still a prototype, and…

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Your controller may soon track your heart rate during intense matches

Anbernic is a name usually whispered in reverence by retro handheld enthusiasts—the company that churns out Game Boy-style emulators faster than most of us can charge our batteries. But in a move that feels equal parts “genius” and “why though?”, they have just dropped the RG G01, a wireless controller that wants to know exactly how stressed you are while you play. The headline feature here is undeniable: this gamepad has a built-in heart rate monitor It sounds like something out of a sci-fi experiment or perhaps a rejected Wii peripheral from 2008, but the implementation is surprisingly slick. Sensors…

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Your iPhone’s Siri upgrade may be tied to iOS 26.4

Apple is closing in on the Siri reboot it teased at WWDC in June 2024, and the rollout appears tied to iOS 26.4. Apple has been planning to show the upgraded assistant in the second half of February, with iOS 26.4 expected to enter beta testing next month and ship publicly in March or early April, according to Bloomberg. The upgrade is supposed to move Siri past simple voice commands and generic answers. The assistant should be able to draw on personal data and what’s on your screen to complete tasks, which is the kind of everyday help Apple has…

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Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro may reach 5.0GHz with Samsung heat tech

If you follow the smartphone world closely, you know that we have hit a bit of a wall recently. For the last few years, Qualcomm has been relentlessly pushing clock speeds higher and higher, but physics is starting to push back. It doesn’t matter how fast a chip can go if it gets so hot within three minutes of gaming that it has to throttle itself down to a crawl. The current Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is a beast, sure, but it is already dancing right on the edge of what is thermally possible inside a device that sits…

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A SpaceX Dragon capsule just nudged the ISS to a record altitude

The International Space Station (ISS) is now orbiting Earth at a record altitude of 262 miles (422 km). It was deliberately nudged to a higher position just recently by a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. Such a maneuver is necessary to keep the station safely orbiting Earth, as atmospheric drag causes it to gradually lose altitude. The station can use any of the docked spacecraft to adjust the its orbit. The process is performed by firing thrusters on one of the spacecraft for a period of several minutes, gently pushing the orbital facility to a new altitude. Without the reboost procedure, which…

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Your Claude chats just got more powerful with interactive app support

Anthropic just turned its AI chatbot Claude into a real productivity hub by bringing interactive apps right into the chat. Users can now perform actions within apps like Slack, Figma, Asana, Canva, Box, Clay, and more without needing to switch windows. Instead of offering text-only responses, Claude can now act as a full-on workspace, letting you draft Slack messages, build project boards, design mockups, and more. Built on top of the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which Anthropic introduced in 2024 as a standard for how AI and apps talk to each other, the feature is designed to scale over time,…

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Early look shows Apple’s Liquid Glass-style blur effects coming to Android 17

Google may be quietly rethinking how Android looks, and an early glimpse of Android 17 suggests visual changes that feel very familiar. New evidence has surfaced showing blur effects in Android 17’s system interface, hinting at a design direction that echoes Apple’s Liquid Glass style. Blur and transparency are not entirely new concepts for Android. What makes this Android 17 sighting notable is how deliberate and system-level the effects appear to be. A closer look at Android 17’s new blur effects According to the Android Authority, these visuals are tied to new UI flags. The effects are not flashy, but…

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Code Vein II Review – Bloodsucking The Fun Away

It’s fitting that Code Vein II is set in a world of vampires. As I hunted down these bloodsucking creatures in the present and 100 years in the past to prevent the collapse of the world, I felt trapped within its clutches, like a castle guest desperate to escape but unable to do so. Across 42 hours of monotonous game, I found little warmth here. Its skin, a distractingly garish and ugly visual style, is as cold as its blood, a combat system that struggles to fuse original ideas onto a skeleton sculpted better elsewhere in the genre. Even its…

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These Bose open-ear earbuds are 0 off, and they’re perfect if you hate feeling “plugged in”

Some people love the sealed, noise-cancelling bubble. Others can’t stand it. If you want music or podcasts without losing awareness of what’s happening around you, open-ear earbuds are the sweet spot. The Bose Ultra Open-Ear true wireless earbuds are down to $199.00, saving you $100 off the $299.00 compared value. That’s a meaningful cut for a premium, niche category that usually stays pricey. What you’re getting These are true wireless open-ear earbuds, designed to let you listen while still hearing your surroundings. That makes them a strong fit for walking, commuting, working in an office, or any situation where you…

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