#carthing — Public Fediverse posts

Lilbits: New software can breathe new life into discontinued hardware

Google announced two years ago that it was killing its short-lived Stadia game streaming service. and while the company was refunding customers who’d purchased games and hardware, folks who’d purchased the Stadia Controller weren’t thrilled that Google’s original plans would have led to the device becoming useless once the servers shut down.

Fortunately Google later released a tool that would let users convert the Stadia Controller into a Bluetooth game controller that could be used with other devices. And while the tool was only supposed to be around for a year, Google later extended its lifespan… and now the company has quietly done it again. So if you’ve got a Stadia Controller lying around, or find one in a garage sale, you’ve got at least until the end of 2025 to turn it into a Bluetooth controller.

Meanwhile Spotify is taking a very different approach with its short-lived Car Thing accessory that was designed as a wireless display and controller for streaming music in an automobile. After announcing earlier this year that it would discontinue all support for the Car Thing, the company has indeed begun to shut down its servers, and users are seeing messages letting them know that their devices will no longer work.

There is an active community of hardware hackers that have found ways to repurpose the CarThing for use as a DeskThing or for other purposes. But there’s no particularly easy way to get it to serve its original purpose… at least not yet.

Stadia Controller Bluetooth mode [@Wario64]

Google has quietly extended the deadline for turning the discontinued Stadia Controller into a Bluetooth game controller that can be used with a wider range of devices. The utility will now be available until at least Dec 31, 2025.

Car thing is officially dead [/r/CarThing]

Spotify is killing off support for the Car Thing today. It appears to be a phased rollout, but many users are now seeing a message saying their devices are no longer operational. Hackers have found new uses for the hardware… but not in cars, for the most part. via /r/CarThing (reddit) and Thing Lab (Discord)

What’s next for Surface in 2025, including a possible 11-inch mini Surface Laptop? [Windows Central]

Report: Microsoft could launch new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop models in 2025 with Intel Lunar Lake chips, as well as a new Surface Laptop Studio (might be Intel or AMD) and maybe a new 11 inch Surface device with Snapdragon X.

Compact RISC-V Linux Development Device with USB Form Factor Powered by Rockchip RV1103 [LinuxGizmos]

The Luckfox Pico WebBee RV1103 looks like a USB flash drive, but it’s a tiny computer with a RV1103 processor with a 1.2 GHz ARM Cortex-A7 CPU and a RISC-V microcontroller, 64MB of DDR2 memory, a128MB of SLC NAND flash storage, and a microSD card reader and 10/100 Ethernet port. It sells for $14.

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#carthing #google #leaks #lilbits #luckfox #luckfoxPicoWebbeeRv1103 #repurposingHardware #rumors #rv1103 #spotify #spotifycarthing #stadiaController #surfaceLaptop #surfaceLaptopMini #surfacePro

Tech Addicts Podcast – Peeking at Pentax

Gareth and Ted are at it again. This week some love for Joplin, TubeSync, Samsung Galaxy S-Pen Pro. There news, Spotify killing Car Thing, Spacetop G1, Pentax WG-8, HealthyPi, Galaxy Ring, One UI 6 updates and a new phone from HTC.

https://garethmyles.com/tech-addicts-podcast-peeking-at-pentax/

#Podcast #TechAddicts #CarThing #GalaxySPenPro #HealthyPi #HTC #Joplin #Linux #microsoft #Pentax #recall #Samsung #SpacetopG1 #Spotify #TubeSync

Spotify Car Thing Discontinued - Refunds Now Available Amid User Backlash: https://www.reviewspace.info/spotify-car-thing-discontinued-refunds-now-available-amid-user-backlash

#Spotify #CarThing #Refund #ClassActionLawsuit #MusicStreaming #CarAudio #TechnologyNews

Lilbits: Spotify is refunding Car Thing customers after all, Librem 16 Linux laptop on the way

Last week Spotify announced it would end support for its short-lived Car Thing accessory for streaming music in an automobile… and by end support, I mean the gadgets would just stop working altogether. Part of the problem is Spotify never sold many of these things, but folks who did buy them weren’t too happy, and now Spotify has caved to pressure and […]

https://liliputing.com/?p=169278

#android #apple #appleTvPlus #carThing #handheldGamingPc #hardwareKillSwitch #leaks #librem16 #lilbits #linuxLaptop #psvr2 #psvr2PcAdapter #purism #purismLibrem16 #spotify #videoStreaming #zotacGamingZone #zotacZone

Lilbits: Spotify’s Car Thing will turn into a brick in December, and the corpse of Atari bought the corpse of Intellivision

Atari and Intellivision were two of the first big names in home video game consoles in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But that was a long time ago, and a series of companies have bought and sold the rights to the Atari and Intellivision brand names and game catalogs in the decades that have passed since then.
All of which makes today’s […]

https://liliputing.com/?p=169093

#atari #camm2 #carThing #intellivision #internetOfShit #lilbits #memory #motherboard #msi #msiZ790ProjectZeroPlus #spotify #tuxedoStellarisSlim15

extremely cool project for the Spotify #CarThing (aka #Superbird):
https://github.com/bishopdynamics/superbird-debian-kiosk