• Alien: Isolation 2 will be built using Unreal Engine 5
• Creative Assembly is developing its own custom lighting and audio technology
• Creative director Al Hope says modern game development allows for “real-time feedback”

Creative Assembly has confirmed that Alien: Isolation 2 will be built with Unreal Engine 5, but the team is also developing custom technology for lighting and audio.

That’s according to Creative Director Al Hope, who, alongside Animation Director Simon Ridge, discussed the technological advancement of the upcoming sequel in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest (SGF) 2026.

Consumers are often misled by these color schemes.

Purple USB (unofficially) means fast charging and data speeds

How to be sure about a cable’s data and charging speeds

Every time someone checks out with Apple Pay, trying to tap the card shown on the payment sheet to switch to a different one, they end up getting confused. In iOS 26, that tap does not switch your card. 

It opens an address-editing screen instead. The real card switcher is a different, easy-to-miss button near the bottom of the screen. If you’ve ever fumbled through Apple Pay at checkout, wondering what’s going on, Apple just fixed it with iOS 27. 

So what exactly was wrong with Apple Pay’s card switcher?

The instinct to tap the card itself makes sense, but it didn’t on Apple Pay. The confusion also ended up in people paying with the wrong card. 

Someone trying to switch from a debit card to a rewards card would tap, land on the address screen, go back, do the entire thing again, and end up paying with whatever was already selected. 

With Apple Wallet holding debit cards, credit cards, and pay later accounts, that flaw only got more noticeable over time.

What does the new Apple Pay checkout look like?

iOS 27 lets you choose between the cards on the main Apple Pay sheet, by swiping on them, the gesture people were already trying anyway. Tapping a card now opens a grid view showing every eligible card. 

The new design also shows details like rewards, account balances, and pay later options, so that buyers can compare before paying. Even though merchants and developers still control the details that show up, iOS 27’s Apple Pay checkout page is much better and clear than that on iOS 26. 

For those catching up, this card switcher tweak is a small piece of a much bigger Apple Wallet push from WWDC 2026, which includes bill splitting through Apple Cash using Visual Intelligence, the ability to turn physical loyalty and membership cards into digital Wallet passes, and an expanded hotel key experience with trip details and activity updates.

You may also need to upgrade your wiring and electrical panel and get permission from your local authority. In my case, here in Scotland, that meant asking my distribution network operator. The US equivalent is an electric distribution utility or local distribution company. They may have to upgrade your connection. I needed a new cut-out with a bigger fuse to handle my EV charging, battery, and air-source heat pump, but the upgrade was free. Your mileage may vary, and it can take a while to hear back. Your installer will likely handle this process for you.

You also need to choose an installer. I recommend shopping around, reading reviews, and getting multiple quotes. The Greener Energy Group installed my battery, and they were excellent. There was a site visit to discuss the work, and the installation was completed in a day. The installers need a suitable location for the battery (mine was installed in the garage, but they are weatherproof, so they can also be installed outside), and they must run cable to your main fuse board.

The EcoFlow PowerOcean system stood out because of its 15-year warranty, modularity (expandable to 45 kWh), stylish design, and accessible smartphone app. I went with a 6-kW hybrid inverter (thinking we may get solar panels down the line) and two 5-kWh batteries. With hindsight, I should have gone for three or four, but I’ll get into that later.

The EcoFlow PowerOcean sports a sleek gray metallic design, and it’s only 188 millimeters deep (around 7.5 inches). It’s pretty unobtrusive, but it’s better if you can tuck it away in a garage or basement because that will also help with operating temperatures, though the PowerOcean also has built-in heating to avoid reduced performance when it’s very cold.

Powering Up

EcoFlow via Simon Hill

EcoFlow via Simon Hill

Configuring my EcoFlow PowerOcean was a breeze. My current EV tariff (Intelligent Octopus Go) offers cheap electricity between 11:30 pm and 5:30 am, so I have the battery fill up during those hours, and it starts to discharge every morning at 5:31 am. We are a family of four, and I work from home.

I came to this Bluesound Pulse Cinema Mini with admitted baggage. I’m not gonna sugarcoat it; I did not like Bluesound’s original Pulse Soundbar. It had an awkward design, it sounded cold and clinical, and it was very expensive when compared to alternative products.

The Bluesound Pulse Cinema Mini is company’s latest model, and is still on the pricey side, but where its predecessor disappointed, the Cinema Mini impresses. There’s powerful, rich, and detailed sound, an elegant design that will complement most rooms, and a wealth of features you won’t find from brands like Sonos and Bose.

If you’ve grown tired of relentless price hikes from your favorite streaming platforms, it’s nice to know that free TV streaming services such as Tubi, Kanopy and Pluto TV can be counted on for all kinds of great shows and movies. New films and TV shows arrive on these platforms every month, making them fantastic options if you don’t want to pay for another service. 

This June, Tubi debuts the fun new thriller Night Shift, about a museum guard who is forced to participate in a heist to save her husband’s life. The streamer also has a few other great titles to catch up on this month, including Challengers, Independence Day and Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. You should get right on top of that, Rose. (IYKYK.)

A couple of other big blockbusters are also arriving this month: you can catch Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem on Pluto TV, as well as a batch of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen flicks.

Kanopy has some great new releases this month too, from old favorites like Spaceballs to new indie films like Pools, Tow and Hot Milk. There are also lots of great A24 films dropping this month across Kanopy, Pluto, Plex and more, including The Whale, Uncut Gems, Aftersun and more.

Here’s a look at the best films arriving on free streaming platforms this June.

Free movies on Tubi in June

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Former Love & Hip-Hop Hollywood cast member Apryl Jones stars in the newest Tubi original thriller, Night Shift. In the movie, Jones plays a security guard at an art gallery who encounters a group of thieves who give her an ultimatum: help them with their heist, or else her husband will be killed. The film arrives on June 5.

Other movies arriving on June 1 (unless otherwise noted):

• Challengers
• Happy Gilmore
• I Saw the TV Glow
• Set It Off
• Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead
• Sasquatch Sunset
• Above the Rim
• Stand by Me
• Percy Jackson & The Olympians (June 15)
• Infinity Pool (June 13)
• Independence Day (June 15)
• The Patriot
• Speed
• Alien vs. Predator

Free movies on Kanopy in June

• The Whale (June 5)
• Uncut Gems (June 5)
• Love & Mercy (June 5)
• Spaceballs (June 5)
• Yi Yi (June 5)
• The Disaster Artist (June 5)
• Swiss Army Man (June 5)
• Singles (June 19)
• Hot Milk (June 19)
• Aeon Flux (June 19)
• Pools (June 26)
• Tow (June 26)

Free movies on Fawesome in June

• Oldboy
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• Memento
• The Lives of Others
• Jack Reacher
• Warrior
• Mississippi Burning
• Marshall
• Moonrise Kingdom
• Much Ado About Nothing
• The Third Man

Free movies on Pluto TV in June

• Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
• The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
• The Goonies
• Top Gun: Maverick
• Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
• Good Will Hunting
• The Aviator
• Pulp Fiction
• The Godfather Part II
• Encino Man
• It Takes Two 
• Passport to Paris
• Billboard Dad 
• Switching Goals
• New York Minute 

Free movies on Plex in June

• After Yang
• Aftersun
• But I’m A Cheerleader
• For Colored Girls
• Minari
• The Road
• Call Me by Your Name
• Paris Is Burning
• The Grey
• Obvious Child
• Laggies
• Dredd
• Dear White People

Technics is Japanese. Fritz Hansen is Danish. The SL-40CBT is a Bluetooth direct drive turntable built for modern living rooms, not your local audio society’s hidden listening room. The new Fritz Hansen Special Edition keeps the same wireless-ready platform but adds a deep burgundy finish and a stronger dose of Scandinavian design.

The standard SL-40CBT already made sense. It gave Technics a more lifestyle-friendly entry point into the modern turntable market with Bluetooth streaming, a built-in moving magnet phono stage, direct drive engineering, and a cleaner, more compact MDF chassis. It was not designed to replace an SL-1200GR2 or SL-1500C in a high-end system.

It was designed for people who want a real Technics turntable that can work with active speakers, headphones, wireless systems, or a traditional amplifier without demanding three more boxes and a mess of cables.

The Fritz Hansen edition does not appear to change the SL-40CBT mechanically. Same Bluetooth direct drive platform, different visual language, and a much smaller production run.

What Makes the Fritz Hansen Edition Different?

The biggest change is visual. Technics has taken the SL-40CBT and given it Fritz Hansen’s signature deep burgundy finish, replacing the standard light grey, charcoal, and terracotta options with something more deliberate and less “we found this color in a Scandinavian coffee shop.”

There are also two Fritz Hansen-specific details: a branded metal plaque on the plinth and a Fritz Hansen-branded platter mat. Those are not sonic upgrades, but nobody buying this version is pretending a logo on a mat lowers the noise floor.

The collaboration also includes a matching limited-edition Kaiser Idell Luxus lamp in the same deep burgundy finish. The turntable and lamp are not sold as a pair, but they were clearly designed to share a room and make your IKEA KALLAX feel like Sweden just lost the design argument.

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Same SL-40CBT Tech Underneath

Underneath the new finish, Technics’ core direct drive engineering is still the headline feature. The table uses an iron coreless direct drive motor, which is the kind of thing Technics has been refining for decades while everyone else argued about whether Bluetooth and vinyl should be allowed in the same sentence.

The SL-40CBT also includes a switchable built-in moving magnet phono stage. That makes it easy to connect the turntable directly to powered loudspeakers, a line-level input, or a more conventional integrated amplifier. If you already own a better external phono preamp, you can bypass the internal one and upgrade the signal path later. That flexibility is the point.

Bluetooth is the other key feature. The SL-40CBT supports SBC and aptX Adaptive, allowing users to stream vinyl wirelessly to compatible speakers or headphones. Analog purists will roll their eyes hard enough to require medical assistance, but the use case is obvious. Not everyone wants a full rack of gear, and not everyone has the space, patience, or domestic approval for one.

Built for New Vinyl Buyers, Not Just Technics Diehards

The standard SL-40CBT was clearly aimed at newer vinyl buyers and people moving up from entry-level decks. That does not make it less desirable. It just means Technics understands that the next generation of vinyl listeners may want a turntable that can connect to active loudspeakers, stream to headphones, and still offer a real upgrade path.

The deck uses an MDF chassis rather than the traditional die-cast aluminum construction found higher up the Technics range. That choice helps keep the cost down and gives the table a more minimalist furniture-friendly profile. It also makes the SL-40CBT feel less like a DJ tool and more like a modern home audio product.

The 1.26 kg die-cast aluminum platter, reinforced rib structure, electronic speed control for 33 1/3 and 45 RPM, compact tonearm base, S-shaped tonearm, removable headshell, and newly tuned insulators still give the table a legitimate Technics foundation.

Denmark Is Having a Moment

The Fritz Hansen collaboration also lands at a time when Danish audio and design feel impossible to avoid. Denmark has always punched above its weight in hi-fi, but lately it feels like the entire country held a quiet meeting and decided to colonize the listening room.

Dynaudio, Gryphon Audio Designs, Bang & Olufsen, DALI, Audiovector, Lyngdorf Audio, Steinway Lyngdorf, Ortofon, Raidho, System Audio, Buchardt Audio, Gato Audio, Vitus Audio, Ansuz, Aavik, Børresen, and CANVAS HiFi all reinforce the point. For a country with fewer people than some American metro areas, Denmark’s footprint in high-end audio is remarkable.

And it is not just about sound. Danish brands have been better than most at understanding that hi-fi equipment lives in actual rooms with furniture, lighting, kids, dogs, spouses, and the occasional guest who thinks your monoblocks are humidifiers. The best Danish audio products usually don’t scream for attention. They sit there looking calm, precise, and vastly superior.

Technics may be one of Japan’s most important hi-fi names, but this collaboration proves that Danish design is everywhere right now. Even the Japanese are borrowing the furniture language.

The Bottom Line

Only 300 units of the Technics SL-40CBT Fritz Hansen Special Edition will be made, with availability expected in October 2026. Pricing has not been announced, but it would be shocking if it did not cost more than the standard SL-40CBT.

That raises the obvious question: should anyone pay more for a color, a plaque, and a branded platter mat?

For most people, probably not. The standard SL-40CBT remains the smarter buy if the goal is sound quality, convenience, and value. The Fritz Hansen edition is for a narrower audience: design-conscious vinyl listeners, collectors, Fritz Hansen devotees, and people who want a Technics turntable that looks less like hi-fi hardware and more like part of the room.

That is not a criticism. Hi-Fi has spent too many years pretending that industrial design does not matter, which is absurd when most systems live in shared domestic spaces. The Fritz Hansen SL-40CBT is not technically more ambitious than the regular version, but it may be more desirable to the kind of buyer Technics wants to reach with this table.

Where to order: $1,199 at us.technics.com

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Stefan spent more than a month testing different ways to connect Claude Code to Unreal Engine 5. Most attempts produced fragile setups that broke quickly or required constant manual fixes. The video he released on June 10 walks through the exact combination of tools and habits that finally produced something playable. Two free plugins made the difference. UnrealClaude gives the AI direct access to the viewport so it can capture screenshots and move objects around. VibeUE handles blueprint edits and Python commands inside the editor. Both connect through the Model Context Protocol, which lets Claude issue structured commands without constant copy-paste work.

The installation process begins with Unreal Engine 5.7 and the Claude Code desktop software, which are launched from the project folder. Stefan then advises Claude to get the plugins from GitHub and the website files, install the necessary libraries, and connect everything with some basic checks. A free VibeUE API key unlocks the blueprint tools, and a CLAUDE.md file in the root of your project preserves the setup information, letting you to pick up where you left off when you return. Git tracks every change here, which is really handy when the AI begins meddling with your concepts.

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The test project starts out as a third-person template. Stefan installs a custom fox model from another AI tool and just adds some reference assets to the content folder. From then, he keeps the prompts concise and accurate. No generic “create a game” – he wants specific actions such as “I need a route of tiles that just keeps moving ahead of the player and disappearing behind, auto-forward movement, switching lanes left and right with the A and D keys, obstacles that block the lanes, and coins that only appear in safe areas.”

Claude starts working on a blueprint called BP_Runner_Tile to fix the repeated path problem, adding variables for tile length and path length and fine-tuning the logic so that new bits arrive at the right time while old ones are cleared up. Lane switching becomes more difficult as you need to check for collisions while keeping the camera moving smoothly, which various Python commands help with. The AI generates simple UI elements for the score, collected coins, and a game over screen with a retry button to begin.

Next, Stefan sends along some meshes for a stone bridge, spiky roller obstacles, and collected coins. The prompts direct Claude to replace the placeholder shapes with the real thing, to use proper PBR materials rather than the default shader, and to make sure that everything is in the proper spot so that nothing sticks out or clips through the railings or bridge. When things go wrong, Stefan just takes a screenshot and sends it to Claude, who uses line traces to detect geometry issues and nudges the items into a better position. We have one pass to sort through the coins that appear on top of obstacles, and another to clear up the bridge’s holes.

Iteration followed a constant pattern, but whenever there were significant changes to the project, Stefan would direct Claude to open the play-in-editor, take a new screenshot to check for any faults that had snuck in, and then assess what needed to be rectified. The AI would identify issues, such as the game terminating prematurely when the fox changed lanes or speed boosts that felt strange. So the AI would go in, modify the required blueprint nodes or variables, test again, and repeat the process. Blueprint-wise, things got a little complicated with the twisted node graphs, as you’d expect from AI tools, but the logic worked. Fortunately, human eyes intervened and prevented the situation from devolving into an unrecognizable tangle, called spaghetti code.

The finished prototype is a clean, endless runner. The fox figure merely plods on autopilot across this lovely stone bridge in a mountain landscape, while players try to avoid hazards and gather coins to boost their score and speed significantly. A simple user interface logs your progress and allows you to restart if you encounter any problems. Maintaining a focused and simplified project scope was critical to keeping things manageable and development time low. This, in turn, helped to keep token consumption from becoming out of control. To give you a flavor of how reasonable things were, even a very complex feature like randomly dropping safe coins somewhere in the game took about 15 minutes and 14,000 tokens on the Opus model.

I studied physics in college, and I’m always surprised how fundamental some of the concepts are. Take waves for example. You really wouldn’t expect the same underlying concept to be at work on surface of a pond, the string of a guitar, light passing through two slits, and then in the probabilistic behavior of electrons orbiting inside nuclei. But here we are, in a world filled with wave-like phenomena.

What little control theory I know, I’ve learned in the school of hard knocks. But it’s equally amazing that the same basic concepts govern the tuning of car shock absorbers, PID controllers, active audio filters, and other more complex systems where feedback matters. Crucial in all of these systems is the judicious balance of amplification and damping.

And last week on vacation, learning to drive a covered wagon pulled by a heavy draft horse, I saw the same patterns again. The horse likes to pull, and when the wagon comes over the crest of the top of a hill, it starts to roll forward into his harness, pushing him from behind. This makes the horse uneasy, and he slows down, the wagon pushes him harder, and positive feedback gets out of control.

The man who was teaching me to drive the wagon said, “it’s not like a car” in that you don’t tap the brakes to slow down and then let go. Rather, you hold on the brakes for a lot longer than you think is necessary – until the horse tells you that he feels like pulling again – and then you let up only a tiny bit at a time. Otherwise, you end up in the under-damped case, where you let the wagon go too much, it slows the horse, you slam the brakes, the horse pulls hard, and you let up on the brakes, and the cycle continues anew.

What he meant by “not like a car” was that the brakes aren’t just slowing down the wagon, they’re adding damping to keep the horse-wagon system from oscillating. Once that clicked in my mind, everything was smooth sailing. After a couple of days, I even started adding some feed-forward to my mental PID controller, letting the brakes go a little bit more when the horse was approaching the bottom of a hill, and he obviously wanted to pick up a little more speed before the grade ahead.

The horse seemed happy that I was finally getting it, but I don’t think he had any understanding of tuning PID loops. He did have me pondering, on a long stretch of rolling hills on a summer morning, if there were a good minimal set of patterns that explained a maximal breadth of phenomena. I’m starting with the physics of waves and the control of feedback systems, but what’s next?

from the better-late-than-never dept

Good news! (Maybe?) Federal legislators have introduced a bill that, if passed, would finally guarantee the right to record law enforcement officers. Here’s Reason’s CJ Ciaramella with the details:

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D–Conn.) and Rep. Maxwell Frost (D–Fla.) introduced the “Right to Record Act of 2026,” which they say would create new consequences for individual federal officers who violate a person’s First Amendment right to document and record police.

The legislation would create a right to sue a federal law enforcement or immigration officers who engage in wide range of retaliatory behavior, including threatening and harassing videographers, surveilling them, and seizing and destroying their equipment.

So, there’s a lot to discuss here. First off, the only reason a bill like this is necessary is the current iteration of the Supreme Court. This court has repeatedly shrugged off cases that may have finally established the right to record law enforcement officers (and other public officials). Most (but not all!) lower courts have already established this right.

The Supreme Court is the holdout. Maybe that’s just because it doesn’t feel it’s necessary to step in when the issue seems to have been pretty much settled at the district level. If that’s the case, the excuse is lazy and convenient. It takes the Supreme Court to fully settle an issue when there are outliers bucking against the trend. So far, it has refused to do so.

Next up is the caveat in the introduced law: it only affects federal law enforcement officers.

While it would be nice for the proposed law [PDF] to codify the right to record any law enforcement officer, there are good reasons for introducing the bill with this specific wording.

One of the compelling reasons has been created by federal officers, especially those engaged in Trump’s mass deportation efforts. Not content to simply overreact to protests and friction with violence and actual murders, officers have been witnessed deliberately targeting journalists and observers for the obvious reason of deterring further recordings and seizing/destroying what’s already been captured.

The lawmakers cited recent allegations of federal officers targeting videographers in New Jersey, Memphis, and elsewhere across the country, as well as the importance of video evidence in refuting the false government narratives of several shootings of U.S. citizens by immigration agents.

[…]

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[D]epartment of Homeland Security (DHS) officials have repeatedly suggested that [recording officers] is doxing and obstruction of justice. Over the past two years, videos from around the country—from Oregon to Maine to the Florida Keys—have shown federal immigration agents arresting or threatening to arrest people for filming them.

This right needs to be recognized if it’s going to mean anything when federal officers violate it. That brings us back to this same Supreme Court, which in recent years has made it impossible to successfully sue federal officers for violating rights. Part of this is due to this version of court steadily narrowing the Supreme Court’s 1971 Bivens ruling to allow lower courts to immediately reject anything that doesn’t exactly match the facts of the original case.

The rest of it is due to this court’s conservative majority having almost no interest in establishing rights, while being more than happy to eliminate rights that have been recognized for decades.

That’s the other meaningful part of this bill: it creates a cause of action the courts can’t just shrug off. If it is shown the “right to record” has been violated, individual officers and their employer (the US government itself) can be held liable for these violations. The bill’s text also eliminates the federal government’s “sovereign immunity” option, which means it has to take the loss if its employees are ruled to have violated this right.

This is Congress beating the Supreme Court at its own game. The nation’s top court loves to tell citizens whose rights have been violated that if they don’t like the fact federal officers are 99.9% immune from civil suits they should take it up with Congress. Well, Congress is taking it up. And if the bill becomes law (which seems extremely unlikely), the Supreme Court (and lower courts) can’t talk their way around the rights violations by pretending (1) the right isn’t established or (2) the remedy lies elsewhere.

The bill provides a long list of actions that are presumptive violations of the right to record. This includes everything from merely trying to deter recordings to threatening observers, pursuing them to other locations, placing them under surveillance, or demanding to see their identification. That’s not the entire list either. It also covers attempts to seize or destroy recordings and engaging in any actions that appear to be retaliatory.

In the current climate under the current administration, there’s almost zero chance this will be passed by Congress. But this administration won’t last forever (assuming this Republic can be kept). And this effort needs to be made, even if it results in little more than more congressional reps and federal officials going on record expressing their disdain for the public and their rights. As long as this Supreme Court retains its current makeup, the best option may be legislation, rather than litigation. This puts the administration on the defensive and calls the Supreme Court’s bluff.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, bivens, free speech, maxwell frost, police misconduct, richard blumenthal, right to record, rights violations