Technology - Google News

People are finding one final image of a deceased love one thanks to Google Maps' Street View - CNN
Inside TASBot’s semi-secret, probably legal effort to control the Nintendo Switch - Ars Technica
Will Xbox Series X games be held back by previous Xbox hardware? - Windows Central

People are finding one final image of a deceased love one thanks to Google Maps' Street View - CNN

Posted: 10 Jan 2020 03:11 PM PST

Google Maps' Street View is an online portrait of the world through millions of panoramic photos taken by Google's Street View cars or contributors.

Leslie Barraza told CNN she had no idea about the conversation she was about to start when she posted a 13- second screen recording of her using Google Maps Street View on Tuesday to find her deceased grandfather's farm in Durango, Mexico.

Leslie said her sister was showing her the streets of her grandfather, Carlos Barraza's farm and after a few taps, at the end of the road, they found him sitting outside his home.

'He was the rock to my family'

Her grandfather passed away two years ago, and Barraza said she wasn't able to say a final goodbye or tell him how much she loved him.

"My grandpa was the rock to my family," she said. "He was the only father figure in my life and to see him one last time gave me such a sense of comfort."

Barraza's tweet inspired so many to find and share screengrabs of their loved ones found on Street View. She said she feels awesome about what she started.

Hundreds have replied to her thread with their screen recordings of their deceased loved ones sitting, working or standing outside their homes or places they would frequent.

Google recognized Barraza's tweet and thanked her for sharing.

"It's heartwarming to see Google Maps and Street View helping so many people remember their loved ones in a special way and share their memory with the world," Google spokesman Ben Jose told CNN.

If you're curious about if or when Google will show up in your corner of the world, the company posts their schedule on its website.

"I felt a knot in my throat"

Iván Rodriguez told CNN his grandfather, Jose Guzman, immigrated to the United States in 1980. He moved in with the Rodriguez family in 2012 when Rodriguez's aunt was diagnosed with cancer. She passed away four years later, and Guzman decided to stay with the Rodriguez family permanently in their Los Angeles home.

Rodriguez described his grandfather as a hardworking man whose hobbies included sitting outside and soaking up the sun with the family dog.

"They would spend hours just sitting outside and enjoying the fresh air," Rodriguez said. Guzman passed away in June 2019 due to a respiratory failure caused by his chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

About a month ago, Rodriguez's father asked if Google had changed the picture of their house on Google Maps. That's when Rodriguez said he found the familiar sight of his grandfather sitting in the yard.

"It just meant a lot to our family to have that," he said.

Rodriguez said when he saw the tweet that started it all and began following the thread of tweets, he felt a knot in his throat.

"You just don't realize how many people might experience a similar thing and what it means to them," he said. "It was a great moment to say the least."

"The matriarch of our family"

Doretha James Ford was known for relaxing outside her home in Albany, Georgia, her granddaughter, Kisawanda James told CNN.

James described her grandmother as a strong, hardworking woman with an amazing sense of humor and wit.

"She rarely repeated herself, so if you missed it, you missed it," James said. "My grandmother meant the world to me."

On a day last year where she missed her a little extra, she looked up Ford's home on Google Maps and saw the image of her grandmother, before the Twitter thread was started.

Seeing the Twitter thread take off was exciting, according to James.

Ford battled early onset Alzheimer's disease for a few years, according to James. The older she got, it became more difficult with her immune system breaking down simultaneously. In January 2016 at age 97, Ford passed away.

"It gave me mixed emotions"

Sandra Dennis passed away in 2014 from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, her granddaughter, Emily Smith told CNN.

Around 2010, Smith said she remembers getting out the car and walking down the path to her grandmother's home in Burton-On-Trent, England.

She remembers this particular day because the Google Map Street View car was in the neighborhood and she said she waved at it.

Sure enough, Google cameras caught that exact moment.

"I told my grandma, 'It's the Google car.' My grandma looked puzzled, 'The what?' 'The Google car, grandma,' and I stood and waved," Smith said.

Smith described her grandmother as an incredible and caring woman.

"She would do anything for absolutely anyone," she said. "Always there to make you laugh."

Smith had previously looked at Dennis' address before seeing the thread late last year. She said it was a pleasant feeling knowing that there were others who had followed in her footsteps.

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Inside TASBot’s semi-secret, probably legal effort to control the Nintendo Switch - Ars Technica

Posted: 11 Jan 2020 04:15 AM PST

A sneak peek of the Super Mario Maker 2 gameplay that TASBot will show off, live, on stock Nintendo Switch hardware and software this weekend

For years now, the TASBot team has shown time and again that tool-assisted speedruns—which can feature superhuman input speeds powered by frame-by-frame emulator recordings—can actually work on unmodified console hardware. Thus far, though, TASBot's efforts have focused on defunct retro consoles from the Atari 2600 up through the Gamecube and Nintendo DS.

This weekend, TASBot will finally take its talents into the modern gaming era, showing off expert-level Super Mario Maker 2 gameplay on an actual Switch during the livestreamed Awesome Games Done Quick speedrunning marathon. And this time, the TASBot team is taking pains to make sure no one else can copy its method—to hopefully avoid Nintendo's potential legal ire in the process.

Flipping the Switch

The effort to let a Linux computer take external control of a Switch game began a bit inadvertently back in 2018, when the TASBot team attempted to partner with the AbleGamers charity. Their goal was to create an Arduino interface that would allow inputs (and pre-recorded input macros) from any controller to be re-mapped into input signals for any console interface.

While that AbleGamers effort eventually fizzled out, it did lead to a generalized Linux-to-Switch controller interface that was published on GitHub. At the same time, other efforts like CommunityController's "Twitch plays Nintendo Switch" were using similar concepts to let a Twitch chat room take control of live Switch gameplay (a la 2014's "Twitch Plays Pokemon" phenomenon).

While these kinds of efforts were fun for random tinkering, they utterly lacked the frame-perfect precision necessary for a successful replay of a pre-recorded, tool-assisted speedrun. "We saw massive inconsistencies," TASBot maintainer Allan "dwangoAC" Cecil told Ars about TASBot testing on the Switch in 2018. "Replay device precision was impossible... TASBot is a player piano—he's playing back a predefined sequence of button presses—but if he doesn't know when to send those button presses, it'll never work."

A circa 2016 version of TASBot shows off his new NES control display
P4plus2 carries TASBot down the AGDQ hallway to his big show in 2016.
TASBot circa 2019 sits at the ready in the GDQ practice room
A visualization of the setup that let TASBot pump arbitrary video through an SNES and streaming audio through an NES.

Brian Mulligan
TASBot sits next to MASHBot, which can actually tap a stylus on a Nintendo DS screen.
Last minute adjustments before TASBot's 2019 AGDQ performance.

By 2019, multiple TASBot team members were working in parallel to try to solve this seemingly intractable Switch timing problem. One branch of effort even tried to insert a "shim layer" onto a hacked Switch console to force the external input timing to line up with the in-game timing, but "we didn't get far because it's against our ethos to modify the console," Cecil said.

At the same time, TASBot team member KNfLrPn was "using the semi-working system to help test [Super Mario Maker 2] tech for other [efforts]," they recently told Ars. "So while doing that I kept trying different things just in case, and eventually found a combination of multiple pieces that worked together [to fix the timing problem]."

Prior to that first successful test in December, there was "about five months on-and-off of trying different approaches, different code, different hardware," KNfLrPn added. "Until it worked, we had no idea if it was possible (and actually suspected that it wasn't)."

Approaching the starting line

Though TASBot has taken the first step to breaking open robotic Switch play, its method still isn't perfect. For one, Cecil says the hardware still isn't precise enough for games that require analog input.

In testing on Breath of the Wild, for instance, the team tried recording a simple input macro of Link jumping off a tower. But Cecil said slight, frame-level differences between the Linux recording and the controller polling rate during playback led to butterfly effect-style chaos, such that "loading the same savestate and playing [the input] back would result in us landing in a different spot, sometimes substantially so." Using digital inputs on a more deterministic game like Super Mario Maker 2 eliminates those problems, Cecil added.

Playing on the Switch also means the TASBot team doesn't have the benefit of recording its inputs on robust, TAS-configured emulators, which allow for easy pausing, editing, and re-recording of frame-perfect input sequences that can create literally superhuman performance. On the Switch, thus far "there aren't any tools to make this fast," Cecil said. "This was done laboriously by hand and isn't easy to replicate."

For this weekend's AGDQ demonstration, KNfLrPn specifically designed a level to take these limitations into account; for each level section, they "include[d] a spot where I could get a consistent starting point (You might see in each part there's some kind of wall I could press against)."

TASBot makes his public debut at AGDQ 2014, including an arbitrary code execution glitch on the SNES.

From those safe spots, KNfLrPn said they could "start with a guess on which buttons to press for how long, try it, see what happens, adjust, and iterate over and over" until they reached the next safe spot. By playing a string of successfully recorded sections back from the start, KNfLrPn could then get back to any safe spot to continue the trial-and-error process.

Without the use of emulator tools, recording a few successful minutes of Switch gameplay took "several hours of trial and error, resetting each section and trying something slightly different each time," KNfLrPn said. "It was also 'only' several hours because I specifically designed each section to be easy to reset. Doing it with a 'real' level would be even more tedious."

Secrets and lawyers

Compared to some of our previous explainers on TASBot, you may have noticed I didn't go into detail on the actual method the TASBot team used to solve its Switch timing problem. That's because the solution—which requires a bit of extra video signal analysis hardware that the team is keeping hidden in a literal "black box"—could lead copycats to unleash utter chaos on some active Switch online leaderboards, including the recently launched Ninji Speedrun competitions on Super Mario Maker 2.

"This has a higher risk of widespread damage because Nintendo has not always been attentive to illegitimate leaderboard entries," Cecil said. "If a troll wanted to, they could make it impossible for a human to obtain the fastest time in the regularly released Ninji speedrun levels."

A TASBot team member (who asked to remain anonymous) went even further. "The knowledge of how to do this can and will affect records on some of the most difficult levels in the game... This tool could allow an individual the ability to trial and error their way through a level, and then release a perfect run to anyone on the Internet that also wishes to 'beat' a level. This would ruin the experience players have, as no one would know if a top record on a level is real or if it was done by a user in a malicious way."

The team's concern for methodological secrecy also mean this is one of the first TASBot projects where the team won't be releasing its source code publicly. That's a decision Cecil says he didn't take lightly. "As the President of the North Bay Linux Users' Group and an advocate for open source software, I always ensure we release what we create as open source and open hardware so others can replicate it," Cecil said. "In this case, doing so is both risky and unwise due to the potential damage to the community... I made this decision after consulting with a diverse range of community members and experts, including paying for a consultation with a lawyer who specializes in video game lawsuits."

A 3D model showing TASBot's new prototype design.
Potential color scheme for the new TASBot
A look inside TASBot's innards
TASBot's upcoming LED eyes can show multiple colors and emotions.
An alternate color design for the Yettee TASBot shirt.
New logo design.

That bit about lawsuits isn't a theoretical concern, either. "There are a number of situations in the past where Nintendo's lawyers have been overly aggressive and we can't predict what they might do or how they might respond," Cecil said. "We're mitigating this risk by ensuring we're doing everything offline and in full compliance with their terms of service, but they could still pursue legal action against us if they chose to."

(The threat of legal complications has also led the TASBot team to redesign the robot's public-facing shell, which is built off a repurposed NES R.O.B. controller. A new prototype design retains the same general feeling while being distinct enough for independent trademarking by the charity-focused TASBot L3C, Cecil said. The new design is also featured on an exclusive Yetee t-shirt, with proceeds going to the Prevent Cancer Foundation).

Who to tell

Cecil, who works as a security consultant at Bishop Fox, said the team discussed reaching out to Nintendo before publicizing its Switch-control method, but it "chose to not poke the bear." That's in part because controlling the Switch with a robot—using completely unmodified Switch hardware and software and standard controller input signals through the USB port—doesn't completely match the usual definition of a "security vulnerability."

"Nintendo has a vulnerability disclosure program, but the methods we're using don't fall under the category of issues that can be reported," Cecil said. "We're using Nintendo's hardware in a fully standards-complaint way and there is no way for them to prevent what we are doing without disabling all external devices. In other words, most companies don't have a big enough imagination to contemplate something so out-of-the-box, and there is no way for them to do anything about it even if we did provide a disclosure. So we have to take other precautions."

Cecil said he and the TASBot team have gone back and forth over whether to even show TASBot controlling the Switch at AGDQ (or last week's similar MAGFast speedrun marathon). Now, though, Cecil says he thinks there are enough precautions in place to "keep low effort script kiddies and copy and paste trolls from ruining the fun for everyone else." AGDQ management initially pulled the Switch demo due to time constraints, Cecil said, but the event recently added it back in as a donation incentive following the standard Super Mario Maker 2 demonstration on Saturday night.

Not everyone is convinced the TASBot team's efforts at operational secrecy will be enough, though. "Lots of 'fake' input devices have been made that have the possibility for [Switch] TASing, but none (that we've seen) have used [that potential]," TASBot team member Britmob said. "Frankly, I'm surprised no one else came up with it. But I don't expect people to be very far behind us, especially if they see if it's possible, regardless of us not disclosing methods."

"We will not be discussing the abuse concerns we have during the presentation because we do not want to draw attention to them," Cecil said. "But we do want to be open about the risks we face. Pretending the risks don't exist will not help us.

"We want to continue to show what we consider art at charity events and it's important to us to find the right balance of openness even on content designed for newer consoles," he added. "The TASBot community has become so much larger than anything I could have hoped for or done on my own and I truly feel like I've been given a wonderful opportunity to live beyond myself."

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Will Xbox Series X games be held back by previous Xbox hardware? - Windows Central

Posted: 11 Jan 2020 03:43 AM PST

So this week I've seen YouTubers and commentators fall over themselves to pour fear all over the Xbox Series X for, in my view, something that should be seen as a pro-consumer move.

Xbox Studios head Matt Booty said in an interview that indeed, the Xbox Series X will be a cross-gen console, with games hitting Xbox One X and S, in addition to the Series X.

The common narrative has been that this is somehow bad, because it somehow, checks notes, will restrict games to their base version, namely the Xbox One S. Wait, what? Really?

Okay, so there were instances even this generation where games have only had Xbox One S scaling modes, skipping the extra power provided by the Xbox One X. Back in 2017. But in 2020, I had to search pretty hard to find examples. The vast majority, if not all, AAA games in 2020 do have an Xbox One X mode, with up to 4K visuals, or 60 frames per second, or in some cases both.

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Does that change for the Xbox Series X? The answer is quite literally no.

The Xbox Series X will launch with the same development environment as the Xbox One, S, and X, dubbed ERA. Developers can use Xbox's APIs to scale their games to meet the hardware of each Xbox SKU, far more easily than they could in the previous generational transition. Many games achieved obviously superior visuals on Xbox One and PS4 despite being cross-gen titles, such as Assassin's Creed Black Flag, Battlefield 4, and Grand Theft Auto V. Some games like RYSE, widely regarded as the best-looking console game for quite literally years were originally being built for Xbox 360, too.

You might be able to argue PowerPC and x86 architecture simultaneously (along with Kinect, ahem) hurt the RYSE's scope and gameplay, but we live in very different times now. The Xbox Series X shares a developer environment, and a dev kit, with the Xbox One S and X. This is complete with modern software, improved developer tools, and a common set of APIs. Although the Xbox 360 version never actually launched, in today's times, RYSE would've fared far better as a cross-generational title, with improved tools to scale to different devices.

Now, you can argue that developers don't have the resources or dev hours to target each SKU with specific graphics settings. Typically those developers are on the indie side, which are less likely to be pushing photorealistic visuals anyway. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, it just is what it is.

There could be some legit arguments here, though. The CPU boost and Xbox Series X "SSD as RAM" could provide actual gameplay benefits alongside prettier grass and higher-def puddles. For example, you could have tens of thousands of zombies on-screen instead of mere thousands. I'd argue that most game developers probably wouldn't be utilizing those unique features at the start of a generation anyway, seeking to maximize profit by putting their games across both generations. That has always been the case. Grand Theft Auto V is one of the most successful examples of a cross-gen game remaining relevant throughout two console generations. With digital gaming, games as a service, and the rise of cloud streaming — things are just different now.

Microsoft would also be cutting itself off at the knees to disconnect the tens of millions of Xbox One owners out there, many of whom may just be picking up Xbox One X consoles for the first time as soon as 2019. In a world where Project Xcloud streaming, easy access via Xbox Game Pass and Xbox All Access are things, install base is god. Arbitrarily adhering to the "old-school rules" of a new console generation is simply a bad business decision in 2020.

It's on Microsoft to prove why the Xbox Series X is a worthwhile purchase when it goes on sale in 2020, and I firmly believe they will do that with visuals designed specifically for the Series X. AAA third-party developers will also lend support, because at the end of the day, why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they want their games to look as good as they possibly can when the option is there? Nobody is suggesting the prevalence of older GPUs prevents PC games from getting ray-tracing and 4K textures on the high-end. I wonder why. Oh, it's because they don't hold games back.

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