There’s a new trailer, which was revealed at Nintendo’s latest Indie World Showcase event. It looks very cute. You play as a, duh, cat and explore a Japan-inspired city, getting into mischief and wearing a bunch of costumes. It’s a cozy game, so don’t expect any bloodthirsty cyberpunk ruffians to chase you around town.

The cel-shaded visuals are adorable and the “mini-open-world” looks like its filled with stuff to do, people to annoy and sun-soaked spots to take a good nap. We’ll never fully understand what goes on in the brains of our favorite felines, they are aliens after all, but this game will at least give us some time in their shoes/paws.

The developer is a company called Double Dagger Studio, which was started by veteran game designer Matt T. Wood, who spent nearly two decades honing his craft at Valve. He worked on a whole bunch of games that seem to be the polar opposite of a cat sim, like Left 4 Dead, Portal 2 and CS:GO. Despite this pedigree, Little Kitty, Big City features no combat and has been likened to classic stories like Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz.

The post Cozy cat sim Little Kitty, Big City arrives for consoles and PCs on May 9 appeared first on Best News.

Here’s how it works. If you happen upon a lost pet wearing the Ring Pet Tag, flip the tag backwards and scan the QR code to find out who owns the animal, where they live, their phone number and relevant health information, such as required medications and the like. You can even contact the owner through the app and engage in a two-way conversation. Of course, all of this involves coaxing a scared dog or cat into allowing you access to that QR code, which could be problematic.

Though the tech on display is interesting, it’s worth noting what the device doesn’t feature. There’s no GPS, so no way to geolocate a lost pet. The tag also lacks a camera, which is a common feature for some pet accessories. It’s basically a QR code on a tag that provides the same kind of information that could simply be written onto a collar, though most collars don’t boast enough room to detail medication requirements and other unique data points. So it’s useful from a “all of your information in one place” standpoint.

The price, however, is right. The Ring Pet Tag costs just $10, which isn’t that much more than a standard analog tag with no scannable QR code to speak of. Preorders start today via Amazon and Ring, with shipments starting on October 4th.

The post Ring announces a wearable for your lost pets that's just a QR code appeared first on Best News.

The signal from the video, sent on December 11, made it to Earth in 101 seconds from Psyche’s location at the time, which was about 80 times as far as the distance between Earth and the moon. It was uploaded before the mission launched, and sent back home by a flight laser transceiver aboard Psyche at a rate of 267Mbps. The spacecraft, which set off on its journey in October, is on its way to study a metal-rich asteroid in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

“Despite transmitting from millions of miles away, it was able to send the video faster than most broadband internet connections,” said Ryan Rogalin, the receiver electronics lead for the project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. “In fact, after receiving the video at Palomar, it was sent to JPL over the internet, and that connection was slower than the signal coming from deep space.”

The post NASA beamed a video of a cat named Taters from deep space to Earth appeared first on Best News.

On the side of the door facing the outside, you’ll find a motion sensor and night-vision camera. Flappie says it has compiled a “unique and proprietary” dataset over the years, with a focus on diversity — this means getting lots of different kinds of cats as well as prey, filmed in a variety of different lighting conditions. The company says that its AI-powered detection system is accurate more than 90 percent of the time, which means your cat could still get a mouse inside. But hopefully that’ll happen a lot less frequently.

There are some manual switches on the inside of the door so you can lock and unlock it any time you want as well as turn off the prey-detection system. Eventually, Flappie says that pets are likely to be trained that they can’t enter when carrying something, and when they drop the prey the door will promptly unlock so they can get inside. (One of Flappie’s co-founders admitted that a smart cat might figure out to drop the mouse, get the door open, pick it back up and then run in. But no solution is foolproof, right?)

Flappie also included chip detection in its cat door. So if your pet has been microchipped, you can make it so the cat door only opens for your specific pet. And, of course, there’s an app so you can control the door from your phone. But if you’re not inclined to hook the Flappie door up to the internet, it’ll still work via the controls on the door itself.

For starters, Flappie plans to launch its pet door in Switzerland and Germany later this spring, with plans to expand from there once it gets production scaled up. A US launch is part of the roadmap, but there’s no word yet on when that’ll happen, or how much the Flappie door might cost when it gets here. But a CES newsletter focused on Swiss tech companies says that Flappie will cost $399, or $199 with a two-year $8.90 monthly subscription to the app so you can see all the videos the door records of your pet.

Update, January 8, 2024 12:45 PM ET: We’ve added pricing details on the Flappie to this story.

We’re reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

This article contains affiliate links; if you click such a link and make a purchase, we may earn a commission.

The post The Flappie AI cat door stops your pet from gifting you dead mice appeared first on Best News.