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Beloved co-operative platformer Pico Park: Classic Edition has been accidentally made free on Steam forever
Game Reviews

Beloved co-operative platformer Pico Park: Classic Edition has been accidentally made free on Steam forever

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Beloved 2016 Co-op platformer Pico Park: Classic Edition has accidentally been made free on Steam permanently by the developer Tecopark. This is thanks to Steam’s limits to how many times developers can make games free before changing them back to premium titles.

Pico Park Classic Edition, which has been free on Steam for some time, recently got updated with online multiplayer support, a visual overhaul, and other quality of life features. With this update, the developer decided to charge a small fee for the game.

Tecopark wrote earlier this year: “I kept Classic Edition because it’s Steam-exclusive and supports 10 players. Since I’m doing it anyway, I’ll update it with online support. I might charge a small fee for it. I recommend installing it while it’s still free.” This update was implemented in September, but Tecopark decided to leave it free for one last week before charging for the new and improved title.

Watch the Pico Park 2 reveal trailer hereWatch on YouTube

Fast forward to the 5th October, and Tecopark realised they could no longer charge money for Piko Park: Classic Edition, meaning the game would remain free forever on Steam even with this substantial update. Tecopark posted on X: “I tried updating it to make it paid again, but I forgot that once you switch from paid to free, you can never go back to paid! Ugh If you play this free version and have fun, try the series too. It’s weird that this one can be played with 10 people, huh? Ugh.”

They urged fans to play the other Pico Park games – Pico Park and Pico Park 2. Both games share Pico Park: Classic Edition’s quality and quirky nature, and are great co-operative games to play with friends and family. So given this unfortunate situation, why not do exactly that?



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FCC accidentally leaked iPhone schematics, potentially giving rivals a peek at company secrets
Gaming Gear

FCC accidentally leaked iPhone schematics, potentially giving rivals a peek at company secrets

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently published a 163-page PDF showing the electrical schematics for the iPhone 16e, despite Apple specifically requesting them to be confidential. This was most likely a mistake on the part of the FCC, according to a report by AppleInsider.

The agency also distributed a cover letter from Apple alongside the schematics, which is dated September 16, 2024. This letter verifies the company’s request for privacy, indicating that the documents contain “confidential and proprietary trade secrets.” The cover letter asks for the documents to be withheld from public view “indefinitely.” Apple even suggested that a release of the files could give competitors an “unfair advantage.”

To that end, the documents feature full schematics of the iPhone 16e. These include block diagrams, electrical schematic diagrams, antenna locations and more. Competitors could simply buy a handset and open it up to get to this information, as the iPhone 16e came out back in February, but this leak would eliminate any guesswork. However, Apple is an extremely litigious company when it comes to stuff like patent infringement.

The FCC hasn’t addressed how this leak happened or what it intends to do about it. AppleInsider’s reporting suggested that this probably happened due to an incorrect setting in a database. This was likely not an intentional act against Apple, which tracks given that the company has been especially supportive of the Trump administration. CEO Tim Cook even brought the president a gold trophy for being such a good and important boy.



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Leoneq iNapGPU
Gaming Gear

Hardware tinkerer fails spectacularly at building the world’s second worst graphics card, accidentally proving even crude TTL hacks can outlast expectations

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  • Crude GPU design showed random glitches whenever the system attempted memory writes
  • iNapGPU struggled with environmental noise from simple USB cables
  • A 12MHz counter overclocked to 20MHz caused constant instability

An obscure project on GitHub shows how a hardware hobbyist tried to construct what he called the “second world’s worst video card,” a text-mode graphics card using only TTL gates.

Working under the handle Leoneq, he released the “iNapGPU” repository to document his experiment.

His goal was to outdo Ben Eater’s “world’s worst video card” by making something even less practical.


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A minimal design that still exceeded true VGA limits

Despite deliberately using crude methods, he could not reduce the output below a basic VGA resolution.

The project specifications list VGA output at 800 x 600 (actually SVGA) @60Hz, with an accessible resolution of 400 x 300 in monochrome.

The hardware was built from 21 integrated circuits, including counters, NAND gates, and an EPROM working with a small SRAM.

By treating a 1-Mbit EPROM as a 1-bit memory, Leoneq could load up to four character sets of 255 characters each.

However, using tri-state buffers and a basic counter arrangement led to visual artifacts and poor stability.

Even when using a low-capacity memory and avoiding a microcontroller, the design still could not degrade to something below VGA.

Leoneq admitted that the assembly process was awkward, relying on 0.12mm wire on a protoboard rather than a printed circuit board.


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He described the result as terrible and warned others to “use fpga instead” to avoid similar frustrations.

The HSYNC timer was driven by a 12-bit counter rated for only 12MHz at 15V, yet he pushed it to 20MHz to double Ben Eater’s pixel clock.

He compared only the “ones” of counter outputs instead of full numbers, a shortcut that introduced repeated signals without breaking the display.

The unconventional approach kept the card functional, but it also revealed timing errors and unstable output.

This was never a viable graphics card because image glitches occurred whenever it wrote to memory, as it could not write and read simultaneously.

Also, environmental noise, even from a nearby USB cable, distorted the display.

In addition, the characters lacked clarity due to ROM power and read-time limitations, while unexplained lines appeared in the background.

Leoneq openly labeled the image as ugly and described the entire effort as a “huge waste of time.”

Although the project demonstrated that a crude collection of TTL gates could generate a usable VGA signal, it also shows why modern designers prefer programmable logic like FPGAs.

Leoneq’s repository provides conversion tools and test code for Arduino Mega, but the effort seems more like a technical joke than a practical product.

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Shein Accidentally Casts Alleged CEO Assassin Luigi Mangione as Its AI Model
GameFi Guides

Shein Accidentally Casts Alleged CEO Assassin Luigi Mangione as Its AI Model

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In brief

  • An AI-generated clothing model on Shein’s site bore an uncanny resemblance to alleged murderer Luigi Mangione, confirmed by facial recognition tools.
  • The shirt sold out before Shein pulled the listing, blaming a third-party vendor for the fiasco.
  • The incident adds to a growing list of AI-generated ad disasters, from deepfake influencers to celebrity likeness lawsuits.

The marketing team at Shein probably thought they’d found the perfect model: chiseled jawline, brooding eyes, the kind of face that could sell low-quality shirts to anyone scrolling at 2 a.m. There was just one problem—their AI-generated hunk was Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old charged with killing UnitedHealthcare’s CEO last December.

The shirt, a basic cotton one, appeared on Shein’s website with what AI researcher Henk van Ess identified as a likely Midjourney creation. Facial recognition tools confirmed the match. Within hours of going viral, the listing vanished faster than Shein’s return policy fine print.

“We are aware of the product and have removed it from our site,” a Shein spokesperson told TMZ. The company blamed an third-party vendor, shirking blame without identifying the supplier in question. The shirt reportedly sold out before anyone at Shein noticed their new model’s resemblance to the most wanted man in America last week.

But of course, you can access the advertisement if you visit the Wayback Machine.



Shein promised “appropriate action” against the vendor, which probably means finding a supplier who can generate fake models that don’t accidentally replicate people on FBI watchlists.

The incident sparked the usual X pile-on, with users torn between horror and grudging admiration for whatever algorithm thought “alleged CEO killer” was the right aesthetic for budget casualwear.

the fact that your face can be used, without consent, to promote products that you’ve never even touched thanks to genAI…

add in the fact that they’re using the image of an incarcerated individual who has already lost all autonomy.

— Bag chaser 🧌 (@deadbynextweek) September 3, 2025

First, he gets framed for murder, now this.

— 🥀_ Imposter_🥀 (@Imposter_Edits) September 3, 2025

Not the first, won’t be the last

Shein’s algorithmic face-plant joins a growing gallery of AI mishaps, including Scarlett Johansson, who practically made herself the fake face of the anti-deepfake movement.

The famed actress threatened to sue OpenAI over a suspiciously familiar voice assistant. She then sued Lisa AI for making an AI companion using her image. And later, her likeness was included without her consent in a fully AI-generated campaign featuring different Jewish artists wearing a t-shirt giving Kanye West the middle finger.

An AI-generated version of Scarlett Johansson featured in the viral video decrying Kanye West’s antisemitism. Image: Instagram

Just reecently, gaming company Nexon got caught using AI influencers in TikTok ads for The First Descendant.

“These AI ads make me sad and worried for the future of the game,” one Redditor wrote. “The worst part of this all is that whoever is in control of the Official TFD TikTok accounts is aware of the backlash against the AI ads and has gone out of their way to ignore and hide it. They have been deleting and reuploading the AI videos whenever they get too much backlash in the comments.”

Regulators are scrambling to catch up, but so far, regulation is crawling while AI sprints.

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