Discs Matter: The team behind RPCS3 has announced another significant milestone for the project. The PlayStation 3 emulator is now a step closer to its original goal: perfectly preserving the entire PS3 library for future scholars and gamers alike.

The RPCS3 team recently unveiled a major upgrade for the emulator: PS3 games can now run directly from their original Blu-ray discs, giving retro gaming enthusiasts a new way to use their physical collections. The developers are billing it as a “plug & play” solution, though users will still need to meet a few mandatory hardware requirements to get it working.

Support for direct disc play was made possible by “digant73” and “Megamouse,” the RPCS3 team said. The two developers recently contributed crucial changes to the emulator’s codebase, extending on-disc play support to Linux, FreeBSD, and macOS.

The feature was previously available on Windows alone but is now a “universal” option across all supported operating systems. Install times for on-disc packages have been optimized as well.

– RPCS3 (@rpcs3) September 6, 2026

RPCS3’s developers say direct disc support should theoretically extend to physical games released as far back as 20 years ago, with no need to rely on external servers. Users will still need to provide a valid decryption key for their specific disc release and boot from a compatible Blu-ray drive; RPCS3 uses the provided key to decrypt the game’s content on the fly.

RPCS3’s quickstart guide includes a handy list of working BD drives, which should be capable of reading a PS3 disc’s file structure, dumping its contents, and booting the game from within the emulator’s UI. Last time I tried, I had no issues extracting and booting an original copy of Demon’s Souls through my “UHD Friendly” Asus Blu-ray burner (BW-16D1HT). Now, I should be able to boot the game straight from the disc as well.

RPCS3’s developers say a compatible BD drive is a “hard” limitation the emulator won’t be able to overcome anytime soon. PS3 games don’t use the standard Blu-ray format, so drives need specific MediaTek chipsets to read the discs properly. Many drives use these chipsets, but not all of them do – hence the “official” compatibility list.

The RPCS3 team is positioning direct disc play as a way to get the most out of personal physical game libraries. The timing sends a pointed message to Sony, which recently confirmed it will stop producing physical discs for new PlayStation games starting in 2028, shifting the platform toward an all-digital future.

Still, direct on-disc play is another major advancement for an emulator tasked with the once “impossible” goal of emulating the PlayStation 3’s Cell multi-core microarchitecture. RPCS3’s compatibility rate recently reached a “playable” state for 75% of the entire PS3 library.

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

A few months ago, I reviewed the Zip Cyber, a cyberpunk-themed pocket projector from Aurzen. It wasn’t very bright, but the trifold design made it extremely pocketable, and the overall appearance was great. 

At IFA, Aurzen debuted the Zip Pro, an updated and upgraded projector with 1080p resolution and twice the brightness. The exterior design is similar, keeping some aspects of the cyberpunk aesthetic (wise, in my opinion) and adding a small touchscreen on the top to aid setup. 

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

While still sporting what Aurzen calls “trifold” (there are two hinges), the Zip Pro is actually slightly larger than the Zip and Zip Cyber at 4.5 by 3.8 by 1.7 inches versus 3.3 by 3.1 by 1 inches. So, it’s nearly three times the total volume and about twice the weight. This is still a remarkably small projector, just less pocketable than the original. It would get swallowed by any backpack. 

Inside, there’s the aforementioned bump up to 1080p, as well as a slightly larger battery. Aurzen says it has 2.5 hours of playtime compared to the Zip’s 1.5 hours. Since it recharges via USB-C, though, you can extend playtime with any decent portable battery pack. So, with the improved performance, the larger size seems a reasonable trade-off. 

I got a quick look at the Zip Pro at IFA, and it did seem brighter, as evidenced by far larger image sizes to demo the projector compared to how I’ve seen it demo the Zip. The 200-lumen range makes the Pro far more usable in a wider variety of situations. It competes specs-wise,with the Anker Capsule 3, which was pricey but good. The Zip Pro is more expensive, but most tech is now compared to when the Capsule 3 was launched.

Connectivity

The biggest issue with the Zip Cyber was that it was a challenge to get anything onto it to watch. There’s still no HDMI, but it does have AirLink, Miracast, AirPlay P2P, DLNA and, especially notable since it was missing in the original Zip, Google Cast. You can also connect via USB-C to watch content from your phone.

You can preorder the Zip Pro now, and the MSRP is $630. I’ll be testing out the Zip Pro in my lab soon.

Geoffrey Morrison

Contributor

Geoffrey Morrison is a writer/photographer about tech and travel for CNET, The New York Times, and other web and print publications. He’s also the Editor-at-Large for Wirecutter. He is the author of Budget Travel for Dummies as well as the bestselling sci-fi novels Undersea, and Undersea Atrophia. He’s NIST and ISF trained, and has a degree in Audio Production from Ithaca College. He spends most of the year as a digital nomad, living and working while traveling around the world. You can follow his travels at BaldNomad.com and on his Instagram and YouTube channel.

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This clip-on speaker packs surprisingly chunky sound for its size. The built-in carabiner means you can easily tote it around while you’re on the go, and the onboard controls are easy to find and operate. This deal is solidly in the middle of what we tend to see; sometimes it falls a bit more in price, but this discount isn’t a bad one.

This speaker fluctuates in price very often, and it has remained a steadfast budget recommendation in our Bluetooth speaker buying guide. We don’t see it fall below $30 frequently. The sound will not blow you away. But for the price, it’s decent, with great battery life and a very portable water-resistant design.

They’re not the newest Sony headphones we love (the XM6), but at this price, it’s hard not to want to spring for it. This is the lowest price it tends to fall to, but it was selling for almost $50 more just a few days ago. Don’t get me wrong—the XM6 that came out earlier this year are a significant upgrade, but if you want a beautiful-sounding, comfortable, and stylish pair of noise-canceling headphones, the Sony XM5 will still make you very happy. Especially at this price.

Nothing earbuds consistently earn mentions in our buying guides, and the latest iteration is an honorable mention being sold at a very compelling price. The Nothing Ear (3a) are stylish and have solid sound, intuitive controls, and an optional app that’s actually useful. Noise cancellation could be better, but for less than $100 these are still a stellar budget pick.

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At the IFA show in Berlin, projector manufacturer JMGO launched its new Iris line. While externally similar to the N3 Ultimate and other models of its gimbal projectors, inside is a new light engine with even greater brightness and the new headline-grabbing feature at the show: a 120Hz refresh rate while running at full 4K resolution.

A 120Hz refresh rate isn’t exactly new in projectors, and definitely not with TVs, but with projectors, that refresh has been historically limited to 1080p. Is this a big deal? Sort of. It’s an interesting technical feat for sure, and shows where projectors can grow. For most people, it’s not likely a huge deal. Yet, a new DLP chip and design like what’s in JMGO’s new projectors is definitely worth having a look at. So I did.

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

All the refreshes fit to refresh 

I got a brief look at the new Iris projectors at IFA, and there are two models. The Iris Ultra Max has a stated 6,500 lumens, a fully motorized gimbal and a higher native contrast ratio compared to its sibling. The less expensive Iris Ultra has “just” 4,500 lumens and only manual adjustments for the gimbal. Both models have a 0.9-1.7:1 optical zoom as well as horizontal and vertical image shift (separate from the gimbal). They also have a dual iris system to help dial in brightness and improve the dynamic contrast ratio.

I didn’t have any of my test gear with me, and no trade show is an ideal place to judge a product anyway, but the projectors certainly looked bright. JMGO had a side-by-side demo set up running fast-moving and fast-panning 60-frames-per-second content. One projector was running at a refresh rate of 60Hz, the other at 120Hz. The latter did have less blur on some aspects of the image. However, if you’re not watching 60fps content like sports or video games, I’d expect some severe motion-smoothing issues, aka the soap opera effect (this will be the case with any of these higher-refresh projectors). Then again, 120Hz is an even multiple of 24, so theoretically they could dejudder without interpolating frames. We’ll see.

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

DLP has never had a significant issue with motion blur, so a faster refresh isn’t as big an improvement as it would be with, say, LCD. Reducing LCD motion blur is actually why we have faster refresh rates in TVs to begin with. JMGO says the faster refresh rate can also further minimize DLP’s infamous rainbow effect, where some people notice rainbow trails to certain objects on screen (or when they move their eyes). That could be very helpful for those susceptible to that issue.

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

I really liked the N3 Ultimate when I reviewed it. It was, at that point anyway, the best gimbal projector. I’m not fully convinced of the need for a fully gimbaled projector for most people. But, with image shift and optical zoom, the N3 can fit in a lot of rooms regardless of how much or little you interact with the gimbal mechanism. And regardless of all that, its performance was excellent. If JMGO can keep the image quality just as high with these new projectors while increasing the already impressive brightness, that will be a very interesting projector. I’ll be getting one to test soon, especially to see if this whole 120Hz thing is worth the hype.

JMGO is expecting the MSRP of the Ultimate Max to be $3,699 and $2,299 for the Ultimate. Both start shipping in mid-October.

Geoffrey Morrison

Contributor

Geoffrey Morrison is a writer/photographer about tech and travel for CNET, The New York Times, and other web and print publications. He’s also the Editor-at-Large for Wirecutter. He is the author of Budget Travel for Dummies as well as the bestselling sci-fi novels Undersea, and Undersea Atrophia. He’s NIST and ISF trained, and has a degree in Audio Production from Ithaca College. He spends most of the year as a digital nomad, living and working while traveling around the world. You can follow his travels at BaldNomad.com and on his Instagram and YouTube channel.

See full bio

• GPUThor is the first Rowhammer attack to defeat ECC on Nvidia GPUs and reach a root shell on the host
• It affects four Ampere workstation cards with GDDR6 memory, the RTX A4000, A4500, A5000 and A6000
• Non-uniform hammering, enabled by defeating GPU memory coalescing and finding that Target Row Refresh (TRR) mitigations fire once every 72 refresh intervals, delivers effectively 6.6 times the hammering intensity of prior attacks

Four researchers at the University of Toronto have disclosed GPUThor, a Rowhammer technique that breaks the error correction Nvidia has spent the past year recommending as the defense against exactly this class of attack.

Chris S. Lin, Joyce Qu, Aditya Rajeev and Gururaj Saileshwar are expected to present the paper outlining their approach and subsequent findings at ACM CCS 2026.

A year of weather balloons, cheap helium, and one brand-new 360 camera produced footage from roughly 110,000 to 120,000 feet. MAKE. ART. NOW. spent twelve months lofting Insta360 gear on 1,500-gram latex balloons aimed at a 115,000-foot burst, and the freshly launched X6 became the main camera for the last of those flights. Dual 1/1.1-inch sensors, 8K recording, 10-bit color, and horizon lock went along for a ride that included minus-70-degree air, a metal clamp that let go at 17,000 feet, and a neighborhood car crash captured in 360.

Payloads were kept fairly light, between 3 and 3.8 pounds, so he did not need to alert the FAA. Foam bases painted yellow provided as a base for the main camera, an X5 from previous flights, an Ace Pro 2 for behind-the-scenes photos, and some 4k 120fps burst grabs of the balloon popping, as well as a Go Ultra. External power comes from a USB box filled with Energizer lithium AA batteries; regular batteries simply weren’t up to the work in the cold. He placed hand warmers inside a 3D printed cage for one of the slow-motion cameras. The ripstop parachutes were 18 and 26 inches long, with the smaller one dropping quickly before cracking the foam, which was happily all it did. He needed to leave around 20 to 25 feet between the balloon and the payload to avoid the chute being tangled in leftover latex.

Insta360 X6, 8K 360 Camera with 1/1.1” Sensors

• DUAL 1/1.1″ SENSORS & TRIPLE AI CHIP SYSTEM: Custom-built dual 1/1.1″ square sensors deliver unprecedented 360 image quality. Combined with a triple…
• FLAGSHIP 8K50FPS 360 VIDEO: Hit record on our 360 action camera and capture your world in stunning native 8K50fps video. Every view, every highlight…
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Getting balloons to hoist the cameras proved to be much more difficult than it should have been. He felt he had enough helium with 300 cubic feet, but leaks and excess weight kept appearing. Party City eventually hooked him up with tanks that were 80 percent pure after he replaced the welding grade regulators that kept bursting. The ascent pace was quite consistent, ranging between 2 and 3 meters per second. Spot trace GPS trackers, which cost roughly $140 total, reported back every 5 minutes until they reached the 40,000-foot limit. According to weather models, we’d land between 5 and 10 miles from the launch site. We had one or two relatively simple pickups, often simply a door knock to return our payload. One cargo ended up on a farm; it required a drone to find it, and a grappling hook failed, so we had to ask a neighbor to let us through the brush to retrieve it.

On his second trip, the X6’s metal clip began to loosen around 17,000 feet, causing the camera to slant downward. He then discovered on the tape that the same file recorded an automobile bending a neighbor’s railing 18 seconds after he let go, and the cops arrived about 4 or 5 minutes afterward. The kids enjoyed it so much that they were counting down the days until they could leave, but he advised his daughter to wait her time because he believes the boys had the most fun they’d had all year. All three cameras that really flew back worked well. The X6’s lenses are easy to replace, thus scratches were never a serious issue. He employed timed capture to keep the high framerate Ace Pro 2 from overheating, and the lithium cells and the X6’s own 2,600mAh battery lasted the entire multi-hour trip without issue.

Even with the payload swinging wildly, altitude views remained rather stable since the horizon lock maintained the image level, allowing the residences on the way up to be zoomed in without the frame rolling. He was also able to capture the balloon popping and final expansion in slow motion using a second camera pointing straight above. Temperatures near the tropopause were brutal on every battery and camera mount, but to his astonishment, the X6 continued to record without issue. After three launches, it was evident that the list of things to avoid for the next launch included: not using metal clamps, ensuring that the parachute has enough room to work, purchasing helium from a local provider, and double-checking your concentration on a large screen before filling the balloon.