What do you do when you’re in lockdown during a pandemic but still want to get some exercise? Well, if you’re YouTuber SuperLouis64, you’d make a Kinect mod and, together with a Nintendo Switch Joy-Con, use your own body as a controller for Super Mario 64. The result is a hilarious yet surprisingly effective workout that looks a lot more challenging than Ring Fit Adventures. 

In the YouTube video (which you can see above), he uses a mini indoor trampoline as a way to control Mario’s jumps and the Joy-Con to manipulate objects. According to the video, he found the controls to be a little finicky at times, occasionally falling off bridges and cliffs. He also had some issues trying to ground pound a thwomp. One of the funnier parts of the video is him entering the water world thinking that it would be easy to swim through it, only to find out that “swimming” consists of jumping the whole time. 

How the internet helped crack the Astros’ sign-stealing case
Joon Lee,
ESPN

One of the biggest sports stories of the year has already broke, and it’s barely mid-January. If you haven’t heard, Major League Baseball determined the Houston Astros used various methods, including video feeds, to steal signs from the opposition during the team’s 2017 championship season — including the World Series. MLB found that it continued to do so during the 2018 season, too. So far, three managers have lost their jobs due to their involvement. ESPN explains how internet detectives examined footage for clues over the last several months, and how that work helped blow the case wide open.

“In some examples, [the] computing device may take the form of a gaming console, and [the head-mounted display] and peripheral control devices […] may be peripheral to the gaming console,” it wrote in the filing, while the illustrations depict an Xbox as well as a Kinect.

While some VR systems warn users when they’re straying outside of their safe play space, there’s still a chance they could hit surrounding objects, potentially damaging items or injuring themselves. Some VR users already employ a floor mat to give them a tactile sense of their space, as Variety notes, but Microsoft explained its mat could include markers a VR headset would scan to establish or adjust a safe zone.

The application also discusses markers for a start position you’d stand on before hopping into VR as well as pressure sensors for the mat. In addition, Microsoft suggests it could provide haptic feedback through vibrations.

If you reckon you wouldn’t have sufficient square footage for the mat in your gaming space, Microsoft might have an answer for that. One idea the patent spells out is that the mat may be available as interlocking floor tiles, so you could set it up as you please.

Of course, a patent isn’t confirmation in any way that Microsoft is working on such a floor mat or that it’s bringing VR to the next Xbox, codenamed Project Scarlett. But it’s at least considering the possibilities. A patent filing is just an early step towards a potential floor mat that could rumble while you play Gears of War 6 in VR while keeping you a little safer.

According to the contractors Motherboard spoke to, this has been going on since before Cortana arrived on the scene. Motherboard’s sources said they listened to audio when Xbox could be controlled via voice commands with the Kinect system. Microsoft removed Cortana from the Xbox in July, but the voice assistant can control the console via the Cortana Android and iOS apps.

Like Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google — which have all been charged with listening to voice assistant queries — Microsoft listened in on audio in an attempt to improve products and services. In a statement (which can be read below), a Microsoft spokesperson told Engadget, “We’ve long been clear that we collect voice data to improve voice-enabled services and that this data is sometimes reviewed by vendors.”

After recent news coverage and public outcry, Apple, Facebook and Google temporarily halted those practices. Amazon will let users opt out of having Alexa conversations reviewed by humans. Microsoft previously said it would continue listening to users but amended its privacy policies. It’s unclear if that will change now that we know contractors have listened to Xbox audio too.

The full statement from Microsoft is below:

“We’ve long been clear that we collect voice data to improve voice-enabled services and that this data is sometimes reviewed by vendors. We’ve recently updated our privacy statement to add greater clarity that people sometimes review this data as part of the product improvement process. We always get customer permission before collecting voice data, we take steps to de-identify voice snippets being reviewed to protect people’s privacy, and we require that handling of this data be held to the highest privacy standards in the law. At the same time, we’re actively working on additional steps we can take to give customers more transparency and more control over how their data is used to improve products.” – a Microsoft spokesperson