A project has cloned the Apple II Plus, but instead of using emulation, it goes the harder route by rebuilding Apple’s classic computer in hardware.
If someone wants to get the experience of using Apple’s vintage products, they often turn to a software emulator. However, as one project proves, it’s possible to get the same effect by focusing on the hardware side.
Posted on Sunday by Simon Boak, the SB Mini II is referred to as a “Homebrew Apple II Clone.” It is a rebuild of the Apple II Plus from a hardware standpoint, but using modern components.
Boak saw that most of the basic logic chips are still available to consumers, including the 6502 CPU. That, combined with circuit diagrams in the original manual and a library of books on the topic, helped Boak come up with a gameplan and a shopping list of parts.
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A modern(ized) marvel
The clone does use modernized alternatives compared to the original design, mostly due to advancements in technology.
A key one is the replacement of the dynamic RAM (DRAM) used in the original Apple II. While the original kept to DRAM to save on cost, Static RAM or SRAM is also cheap enough for the project.
As a result, one and a half 32K SRAM chips are used to get the required 48k the Apple II Plus needs. The change also means there was no need to use circuitry to refresh the DRAM, which allowed the memory to function.
Boak remarks that a lot of the original circuit generated a composite video signal. Instead, using an Apple II VGA card, he was able to get a sharper video output, as well as removing the video generation logic from the circuitry.
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In effect, it is a “headless” clone if it is used without the VGA card.
This also helped simplify the clock and timing signals as well. In this project, Boak uses a 4.096 MHz crystal oscillator, divided down to 1.024MHz, which is close to the 1.023MHZ of the original machine.
A Raspberry Pi Pico, which in itself is more powerful than the Apple II Plus, is used as a way to connect a USB keyboard to the Apple II. The Pico does generate the same parallel data signals as the original keyboard, as well as eliminating the need to use voltage level shifters.
Smart case
The project was finished off by being placed in a specially created case, which was 3D printed in parts before being glued and painted together. Those part files have since been released via GitHub.
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It’s based on the design of the Apple ProFile hard drive. However, there are extra vents and a rear panel added so that connections could be accessed.
Just as the original was designed for easy access to the internals, the enclosure’s lid clips shut, so it can be opened without tools.
To go with the clone, Boak has also designed a matching Studio II LCD monitor.
This is far from Boak’s first attempt at making clones of Apple products. In June 2024, he created an Apple 1 clone with a printer, which used an SD card for storage.
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The Apple II Plus recreation is certainly impressive, since it’s a hardware recreation instead of just using an emulator. But sometimes, even those efforts can be just as astounding.
In 2024, a Hackintosh project aimed to recreate the original Macintosh Plus, using modern components internally. However, the effort used 3D printing to produce a highly-accurate full-scale recreation of Apple’s hardware.
If you’re a fleshy human, you probably learn to play video games by looking at the screen and pressing the buttons, and maybe copying the way you’ve seen others play the game before. [tryfonaskam] has recently been trying to teach an AI to play games in much the same way.
[tryfonaskam] built PILA—short for Polytrack Imitation Learning Agent. As you might have guest from the name, it’s an AI agent designed to play a simple racing game called PolyTrack. Rather than manually programming the agent’s behavior, PILA instead trains itself through supervised learning, where it observes the gameplay state via screen capture and monitoring the keyboard inputs made by human players as they drive the tracks. It then uses this to guide its own behavior, and learns to play the game by itself. The model receives live frames from the graphics engine while playing, and then predicts the appropriate actions and makes the right keyboard inputs in turn to steer the car through the track.
After a slight drought (by our standards), we’ve had a fair few soundbar and soundbar systems in for testing. Be sure to have a look over the coming weeks to read our thoughts on them.
And arguably, what’s leading the charge in terms of improving TV sound is the one-box soundbar. People want (or at least they seem to want) an all-in-one solution that handles films, TV and music without the need for extra speakers. But this convenience also comes with compromises.
Home cinema brands want to tempt you with marketing blurb and images of sound that flows from the soundbar and wraps around to create an immersive experience, but for the most part, that’s hokum.
There’s only so much a soundbar on its own can do. So while the soundbars and sound systems I’m currently testing are reaching consistently high levels, there are a few flaws that will stop them from becoming the all-in-one destination for home cinema. But maybe there’s a solution to all this.
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Movies and music don’t always mix
I’ve mentioned before that tuning a soundbar for movies is not the same as it is for music. Movies move to a different rhythm, there’s dialogue but also background and foreground elements. Sound pans across the stage from left to right and vice versa. You’ve got bass to handle along with dynamism, as well as all manner of genres from the jump scares in a horror to the crash, bang, wallop of an action scene. And a soundbar has to be good at all of these things.
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With music you don’t have as much to deal with, but there’s a rhythm and a clarity to music; there’s the tonality of instruments and people’s voices to consider. What works for a film or TV show doesn’t necessarily work for music.
There are a few soundbars and sound systems I’ve tested recently that have managed to bridge this gulf. The one I’ll focus on is the Focal Muso Hekla, which you should definitely not call a soundbar, but it’s a sound system that’s happy to play with movies and music, especially if it’s immersive audio in the form of Dolby Atmos.
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Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
I’ve been impressed by the width and height of films and TV series, and also with music in terms of how switching from stereo to immersive makes tracks feel as if they’re not coming from the Muso Hekla but lifted up from it and spread around it.
It’s not the same effect as movies, but what impressed me the most is that the Muso Hekla maintains a consistent tone whether it’s music or film, with big bass; and high levels of clarity and detail whether it’s with stereo or immersive audio. These aren’t easy things to maintain, especially for a one-box system, but the sound systems I’ve heard recently seem to be getting better at both. It might not be fully solved, but soundbars are making progress.
But the Focal is tied to being a one-box system, and like other all-in-one sound systems, it suffers from an unavoidable flaw. They’re front-heavy.
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The Hekla doesn’t support additional surround speakers, but if it were to, the Hekla, would defeat the purpose of being an all-in-one immersive system. But it does make clear that an all-in-one system is something of a misnomer if you’re thinking of true surround sound.
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All-in-one systems are front-heavy
This is another area I’ve talked about before, but I’ll reiterate it again. If you’re short on space a one-box soundbar can absolutely do a job, but if you want proper cinema immersion, then you’ll need surround speakers.
Without surround speakers, these types of sound systems are what we call front heavy – as in all the sound emanates from in front of you, but there’s no sound coming from your sides or behind you. In terms of immersion, having surround speakers can really help put you into the film or TV series. Without it, you can get a tall spread of sound; but that sense of immersion is only half there.
Let’s take the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar. On its own, it’s a dynamic, energetic and clear one-box soundbar with an impressive sense of bass. Once you play with the settings it’s capable of a decent height and a wide soundstage, so that front spread of sound can be big.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
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But without the Lifestyle Ultra Speaker that can act as a rear gunner, it does feel like there’s something missing from the experience. Without that information that fills in the gaps behind you, you’re not in the centre but rather on the edge of the sound. It’s called surround sound for a reason.
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However, it’s not all positive for surround sound. When testing LG’s Immersive Quad Sound Suite system, I found that having rear speakers helped with the sense of immersion, it actually reduced the height levels. Having the soundbar on its own, and the sound was tall and wide. Adding additional speakers helped add depth but also added a quite literal ceiling to its performance.
But maybe there’s a solution
Sony has launched its Bravia Theatre Trio home cinema speakers, and it’s an idea I can get behind.
It’s a central soundbar, similar to what I’ve mentioned previously, but it also comes with two speakers that can be put left and right. It’s designed to go with big-screen TVs (your 50-inch TV is basically disallowed), and while you can place the other speakers to the sides, you’re not beholden to that placement. You can dot them about anywhere in your room.
Through Sony’s 360 Reality Audio processing that works on top of Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, the speakers can figure out where they are in relation to one another and create a sound that fits the room, producing phantom speakers to fill in the areas where there’s no speaker. This is very similar to the Dolby Atmos FlexConnect system that I wrote about not long ago.
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The difference is that the LG Sound Suite is scalable, so you can add more once you’ve bought the main soundbar. The Theatre Trio comes as it is, and while you can add more speakers (another two), arguably for most people, more speakers with this system might serve as overkill for the size of the room you’re in.
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Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
Having heard this system at Sony’s HQ in Weybridge (along with dual Theatre Sub 9s), it was one of the most powerful home cinema surrounds I’ve heard; and it made me wonder if this is an avenue more brands should go down – of not just having a soundbar at the centre of the experience and then building it out with ‘optional’ speakers you can choose later down the line; but a specific system built to serve a particular need out of the box.
The Bravia Theatre Trio is expensive though, as much as the LG Sound Suite Immersive Suite 7 Pro which includes a subwoofer as well.
Cost is always an issue, and the Bravia Theatre Trio/ LG Sound Suite Immersive Suite 7 Pro aren’t for those looking to save money. But the Trio is a glimpse of a slightly different future to FlexConnect and in a different form to Focal Muso Hekla. Maybe the future of immersive home cinema isn’t the one-box soundbar, but the rise of the one-box system.
Amazon’s staggering $850 discount on a loaded 16-inch MacBook Pro with Apple’s M5 Max chip is available now, but with Prime Day ending tonight, you’ll want to act fast.
Prime Day ends tonight, and there’s a high likelihood this 16-inch MacBook Pro will go up in price. That’s because Amazon is currently knocking $850 off Apple’s revised MSRP for the high-end M5 Max model with an 18-core CPU and 40-core GPU, and we’re already seeing stockouts for other MacBook Pro SKUs.
Equipped with 48GB of memory and 2TB of storage, this model in your choice of Space Black or Silver is on sale for $4,149.99.
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This is a great deal for a large number of users, but if you need additional storage or RAM, there are discounts of up to $2,300 off every configuration in our 16-inch MacBook Pro Price Guide.
Last call for these Prime Day MacBook Pro deals
14″ MacBook Pro M5 (10C CPU, 10C GPU, 16GB, 1TB, Standard Display): $1,549.99 ($450 off)
14″ MacBook Pro M5 Pro (15C CPU, 16C GPU, 24GB, 1TB, Standard Display): $2,049.99 ($450 off)
14″ MacBook Pro M5 Pro (15C CPU, 16C GPU, 24GB, 2TB, Standard Display): $2,399 ($600 off)
14″ MacBook Pro M5 Max (18C CPU, 32C GPU, 36GB, 2TB, Standard Display): $3,199.99 ($900 off)
16″ MacBook Pro M5 Pro (18C CPU, 20C GPU, 24GB, 1TB, Standard Display, Space Black): $2,549.99 ($450 off)
16″ MacBook Pro M5 Max (18C CPU, 32C GPU, 36GB, 2TB, Standard Display): $3,649 ($750 off)
16″ MacBook Pro M5 Max (18C CPU, 40C GPU, 48GB, 2TB, Standard Display, Space Black): $4,149 ($850 off)
The Arena app will not use real money to process bets, sources told The New York Times.
Social media giant Meta is building a prediction markets app similar to Polymarket and Kalshi, The New York Times has reported.
The new app – internally referred to as ‘Arena’ – is the latest in Mark Zuckerbeg’s attempts to capitalise on changing internet trends and tap into emerging social behaviour online.
Sources told the publication that Meta would not allow users to bet real money on the app, likely opting for a points-based system instead, although the use of money wagering has not been completely ruled out.
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Zuckerberg has reportedly assigned a small team at Meta to build Arena, which would function independently from the tech giant’s social media platforms Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and Messenger.
Meta, with more than 3.5bn daily users across its platforms, hopes to grow Arena by directing its audience towards the new app.
Prediction markets allow participants to wager bets on real-world events in areas such as politics, entertainment and sports. Platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket have committed majorly to pushing their platforms to US users in recent years, including receiving endorsements from president Donald Trump.
These prediction markets, however, have resulted in a sharp rise in online gambling in the US, many experts have highlighted. The issue is exacerbated with heavy advertising across sports matches, public transport and billboards, making it harder for gambling addicts to quit.
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Kalshi and Polymarket put together accounted for about $24bn in global trading volume in just April this year, according to Pew Research Center. Comparatively, the total money gambled through legal sportsbooks in the US came to around $14bn per month on average in 2025.
“Set aside the debate on whether prediction market apps are investing or gambling – they’re habit-forming. And Meta is already facing high-profile litigation tied to concerns about addictive product design,” commented Forrester’s VP research director Mike Proulx.
“The irony here is hard to miss and not a great look for a company already under scrutiny.”
While Meta doesn’t share official numbers on underage users across its platforms, the EU indicated that roughly 10-12pc of children under 13 in the bloc are actively accessing Instagram or Facebook.
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The European Commission recently found that the social media giant did not do enough to mitigate risks children face when using its platforms.
Meta has made previous attempts to expand what it offers to its users. In 2019, company employees tried to create various social media apps, across podcasts, music and travel – but none gained sufficient traction.
In 2020, the company experimented with prediction markets with an app called ‘Forecast’. This was quietly closed down in 2022.
“Meta is following its familiar copycat playbook,” Proulx added.
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“Prediction markets are exploding into the mainstream, especially among younger men, and Meta wants a piece of that engagement. But this is yet another market that exists before its rules do. And like Meta, this category comes with baggage.”
Over in Europe, countries including Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Italy and the Netherlands recently announced that they would target unlicensed prediction market platforms. Last month, Spain temporarily blocked Polymarket and Kalshi.
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[Sam Wilkinson] recently installed a Dreo CLF513S ceiling fan in his place — it’s cheap, well-sized, and blows air around as you’d expect it to. The only problem is that it only works with an ugly cloud-only smart home setup out of the box. Never mind, though, because [Sam] figured out how to hack up a custom solution.
Hacking efforts began with the included remote control. [Sam] identified that the remote had to be RF, since it didn’t need line of sight to work properly. The FCC ID on the back of the device further indicated this was the case. Armed with that knowledge, it was simply a case of figuring out the commands sent by the remote, building something to replay them, and then hooking that into [Sam]’s existing Home Assistant setup.
The remote ran on 433.92 MHz, a not-uncommon bit of spectrum for these sort of appliances. An RTL-SDR was thusly enlisted to capture the output, with a spectrogram indicating the remote used simple on-off keying to send commands. Once commands were captured, [Sam] grabbed an ESP32-C6 microcontroller, hooked it up to a RFM69HCW radio transceiver, and programmed it to replay the fan on/off command. From there, a little dabbling with MQTT got the ESP32 controlling the fan as desired from within the Home Assistant ecosystem.
The Echo Studio houses immersive audio, Alexa support and clever sensors for smart home controls, all for an affordable price.
Pick up the Echo Studio for just £166.24 this Prime Day and save over £53 off its usual price. That’s the lowest we’ve seen the smart speaker reach on Amazon since its launch last year.
The Echo Studio is down to its lowest ever price
The Echo Studio houses immersive audio, Alexa support and clever sensors for smart home controls, all for an affordable price.
The Echo Studio is a well-rounded smart speaker that’s designed for use with Alexa+. Once you opt into the service, Alexa+ promises to be a more conversational assistant than the standard Alexa, allowing you to chat naturally between different topics and requests. In fact, we hailed the service as being “light years ahead of the competition” as it’s better at general responses, building smart home routines and able to find information from emails.
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The light ring will illuminate once Alexa has heard that all-important wake word, giving you an indication that it’s ready and waiting to answer your question.
Otherwise, the Echo Studio itself is equipped with three 1.5-inch drivers and a 3.75-inch high excursion woofer. What that means is real-world use is that the device is a very competent-sounding speaker for its price. While bass levels aren’t quite as room-shaking as other speakers, overall low frequencies are handled well while sound is well-balanced.
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Its design doesn’t stray too far from its predecessors, though now it includes easier-to-operate buttons than the previous Studio iteration, and rids itself of the action button too. That means you’ll have to either actually say “Alexa” to get its attention.
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Overall we awarded the Echo Studio with a four-star rating, as Home Technology Editor Dave Ludlow concluded the smart speaker is a “powerful, all-rounder for the voice assistant [Alexa], music and entertainment”.
Whether you’re keen to try Alexa+, want an easy way to control your smart home appliances or need to upgrade an old smart speaker, the Echo Studio is a brilliant option. Not only is Alexa easily one of the best voice assistants around, but its sleek design and brilliant speaker set-up makes it a solid investment.
Netflix is changing how user identities work on its platform, and for many subscribers, the move is showing up in the form of unexpected login prompts and extra steps at sign-in. The company has begun requiring almost every profile on an account to be tied to a unique email address,… Read Entire Article Source link
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid space telescope has captured the largest and most detailed visible-light image ever obtained of the Milky Way’s galactic bulge, the central region of our galaxy.
The image is a mosaic containing more than 60 million stars, as well as nebulae and star clusters. It will allow scientists to confirm the possible presence of exoplanets using a microlensing technique and measure their masses with greater precision.
The Power of Euclid
Although Euclid was designed to observe billions of distant galaxies, its visible-light camera is sensitive enough to resolve individual stars at the center of the Milky Way—a region that is both extremely bright and densely populated—without being overwhelmed by the intense light.
On March 23, 2025, Euclid turned its gaze toward the galactic bulge, capturing this enormous image in just 26 hours of observations. The result was remarkable: a mosaic composed of nine separate “pointings” (exposures) by its visible-light camera, each covering an area of sky larger than the full moon.
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While the quality of Euclid’s visible-light images is comparable to that of the Hubble Space Telescope, there is one major difference: Each pointing that Euclid captures in just a few hours covers an area 270 times larger than Hubble’s field of view. It is also much faster. To put this into perspective, the Keck Observatory would require roughly 2,000 hours to observe the same mosaic.
The Image of the Milky Way
The new Euclid image captures more than 60 million stars, along with nebulae and star clusters, in one of the Milky Way’s most crowded regions—a location ideally suited for searching for exoplanets through gravitational microlensing.
“To catch microlensing, you need to observe parts of the sky that are crowded with stars, such as close to the centre of our galaxy,” said Jean-Philippe Beaulieu, who led the observing campaign, in a press release. “During the last 20 years, almost 300 exoplanets have been discovered using this technique, all with ground-based telescopes and all towards the center of our galaxy. This image from Euclid includes 51 known planetary systems—and it will assist in studying many more that will be found.”
Measuring Planetary Masses
Although detecting a microlensing event requires several weeks of observations—meaning Euclid could not identify any new events during its relatively short observational campaign—what makes this image so valuable is that it provides the data needed to measure the masses of already known planets, as well as planets that have yet to be discovered.
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“In 24 hours, Euclid has already captured the stars involved in all the future microlensing events that the Roman space telescope will detect, but before the stars and planets involved have aligned,” said Natalia Rektsini, who led the publication of the data, in a press release. (The Nancy Grace Roman space telescope is slated to launch later this year.) “This means that anyone who detects a microlensing event in the same region, for example with Roman, will be able from now on to use Euclid data as a time reference in the past and see how the stars looked before they overlapped.”
In effect, Euclid’s observations will serve as a reference archive for future missions, enabling more detailed studies of exoplanets and more precise measurements of their masses.
“In just 24 hours, Euclid has delivered unique data on the Milky Way’s center, with a large and sharp view of this region,” said Valeria Pettorino, ESA’s Euclid project scientist, in a press release. “This data can also be used for other scientific applications, from brown dwarfs and binary stars to stellar motions and dust across our galaxy.”
This story originally appeared onWIRED Italiaand has been translated from Italian.
Sony has confirmed that it will remove 551 movies and TV series from the PlayStation Store in the UK on September 1, 2026. The content will also be simultaneously deleted from customers’ libraries who have already purchased it. Sony did not mention anything about refunds, suggesting affected users will not be compensated financially. Read Entire Article Source link
Get caught up on the latest technology and startup news from the past week. Here are the most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of June 21, 2026.
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Virginia-based AI startup Trase is expanding its presence in the Seattle region, with plans to grow from about 20 employees in the area today to as many as 100 in the coming months. … Read More
Valve Software abruptly opened reservations for its latest Steam Machine on Monday, but due to the ongoing PC component shortage, did so at a significantly higher price than expected. … Read More
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Mind Children Robotics, a Seattle-area startup co-founded by AGI researcher Ben Goertzel, is building Codey — a child-sized social robot priced under $10,000 and aimed at classrooms, hospitals and senior care. … Read More
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