This Dreamcast memory card can emulate Game Boy games
It's not just a memory card, but also a handheld emulation machine for 8-bit games.
The VMU Pro goes up for pre-order today in a variety of colors for $81.24.
The Sega Dreamcast was ahead of its time in many ways, but one nifty feature that died with the console was the Visual Memory Unit, or VMU. It wasn't the first memory card on the market, but with an integrated screen and controls, it added playable mini games to keep the fun going when away from your console. Now, the VMU Pro takes things to the next level, with not just playable minigames but also full-blown emulation for 8-bit games.
Produced by 8BitMods, the VMU Pro is a new device with all the functionality of original modules, including full backward compatibility. It supports microSD cards up to 2TB, roughly the same storage as 15 million original VMUs. You can also transfer saves from old VMUs by connecting the two units, transfer wirelessly between two VMU Pros, or automatically back up your saves to Google Drive via Wi-Fi.
The VMU Pro also features built-in emulators for the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, NES, Game Gear, and Master System. All emulators are capable of 1.5x scaling to fill the backlit IPS color display, and integrated Bluetooth LE support offers better sound than the integrated mono speaker. You can get much better emulation performance for the same price from something like the TrimUI Brick, but that device doesn't double as a VMU.
The VMU Pro is the ultimate Dreamcast accessory.
Of course, the module can also play original VMU mini games via eVMU. These were short side adventures tied to your game saves, so you could hatch your Sonic Adventure Chao or find unique treasures to pass to your Skies of Arcadia characters.
Thankfully, the VMU Pro features a better battery than the original, which ate through coin batteries. The 720mAh cell lasts up to six hours on a single charge while emulating games, or a full month of less demanding use as a plain old memory card.
8BitMods plans to add more features over time, including more emulators and an SDK so users can develop their own VMU Pro apps. It really is the ultimate Dreamcast accessory.
The VMU Pro is available in seven different colorways, and it goes up for pre-order today for a little over $80, with units expected to ship in October of this year.
Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at
Email our staff at news@androidauthority.com . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Wire
2 hours ago
- Business Wire
Files.com Acquires ExpanDrive, Launches Free Version to Expand Multi-Cloud Access
TEMPE, Ariz.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- the leading platform for secure and automated file transfer, today announced its acquisition of ExpanDrive, a desktop application for accessing cloud and remote storage as local drives. As part of the acquisition, ExpanDrive is now free for personal use under a new freemium pricing model. Bringing Remote Storage to the Desktop ExpanDrive enables users to mount cloud platforms and remote servers – including SFTP, Amazon S3, Google Drive, and Dropbox – directly into their native file explorers on macOS, Windows, and Linux, without syncing or separate transfers. 'ExpanDrive offers a beautifully simple way to access remote storage right from your desktop,' said Kevin Bombino, CEO of 'We're thrilled to make it free for personal use, helping more people experience frictionless file access.' Freemium Model Now Live ExpanDrive is now: Free for individuals and small teams (under 10 users annually) Paid for larger teams and enterprises, unlocking features like the Web Console, Server Edition, and premium support Strengthening the Ecosystem ExpanDrive's technology and user experience will help shape future innovations across the platform – reinforcing its mission to unify secure file access, automation, and management at any scale. About ExpanDrive Founded in 2004, ExpanDrive allows users to mount cloud and remote storage as local drives across operating systems, simplifying access to services like SFTP, S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, and more. About is the secure file platform for automation, compliance, and scale, trusted by over 4,000 organizations. It enables teams to manage, transfer, and integrate files across systems with enterprise-grade security, direct cloud integrations, and powerful automation.
Business Insider
a day ago
- Business Insider
Here's the list of websites gig workers used to fine-tune Anthropic's AI models. Its contractor left it wide open.
An internal spreadsheet obtained by Business Insider shows which websites Surge AI gig workers were told to mine — and which to avoid — while fine-tuning Anthropic's AI to make it sound more "helpful, honest, and harmless." The spreadsheet allows sources like Bloomberg, Harvard University, and the New England Journal of Medicine while blacklisting others like The New York Times and Reddit. Anthropic says it wasn't aware of the spreadsheet and said it was created by a third-party vendor, the data-labeling startup Surge AI, which declined to comment on this point. "This document was created by a third-party vendor without our involvement," an Anthropic spokesperson said. "We were unaware of its existence until today and cannot validate the contents of the specific document since we had no role in its creation." Frontier AI companies mine the internet for content and often work with startups with thousands of human contractors, like Surge, to refine their AI models. In this case, project documents show Surge worked to make Anthropic's AI sound more human, avoid "offensive" statements, and cite documents more accurately. Many of the whitelisted sources copyright or otherwise restrict their content. The Mayo Clinic, Cornell University, and Morningstar, whose main websites were all listed as "sites you can use," told BI they don't have any agreements with Anthropic to use this data for training AI models. Surge left a trove of materials detailing its work for Anthropic, including the spreadsheet, accessible to anyone with the link on Google Drive. Surge locked down the documents shortly after BI reached out for comment. "We take data security seriously, and documents are restricted by project and access level where possible," a Surge spokesperson said. "We are looking closely into the matter to ensure all materials are protected." It's the latest incident in which a data-labeling startup used public Google Docs to pass around sensitive AI training instructions. Surge's competitor, Scale AI, also exposed internal data in this manner, locking the documents down after BI revealed the issue. A Google Cloud spokesperson told BI that its default setting restricts a company's files from sharing outside the organization; changing this setting is a "choice that a customer explicitly makes," the spokesperson said. Surge hit $1 billion in revenue last year and is raising funds at a $15 billion valuation, Reuters reported. Anthropic was most recently valued at $61.5 billion, and its Claude chatbot is widely considered a leading competitor to ChatGPT. What's allowed — and what's not Google Sheet data showed the spreadsheet was created in November 2024, and it's referenced in updates as recent as May 2025 in other documents left public by Surge. The list functions as a "guide" for what online sources Surge's gig workers can and can't use on the Anthropic project. The list includes over 120 permitted websites from a wide range of fields, including academia, healthcare, law, and finance. It includes 10 US universities, including Harvard, Yale, Northwestern, and the University of Chicago. It also lists popular business news sources, such as Bloomberg, PitchBook, Crunchbase, Seeking Alpha, and PR Newswire. Medical information sources, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, and government sources, such as a list of UN treaties and the US National Archives, are also in the whitelist. So are university publishers like Cambridge University Press. Here's the full list of who's allowed, which says that it is "not exhaustive." And here's the list of who is banned — or over 50 "common sources" that are "now disallowed," as the spreadsheet puts it. The blacklist mostly consists of media outlets like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and others. It also includes other types of sources like Reddit, Stanford University, the academic publisher Wiley, and the Harvard Business Review. The spreadsheet doesn't explain why some sources are permitted and others are not. The blacklist could reflect websites that made direct demands to AI companies to stop using their content, said Edward Lee, a law professor at Santa Clara University. That can happen through written requests or through an automated method like Some sources in the blacklist have taken legal stances against AI companies using their content. Reddit, for example, sued Anthropic this year, saying the AI company accessed its site without permission. Anthropic has denied these claims. The New York Times sued OpenAI, and The Wall Street Journal's parent, Dow Jones, sued Perplexity, for similar reasons. "The Times has objected to Anthropic's unlicensed use of Times content for AI purposes and has taken steps to block their access as part of our ongoing IP protection and enforcement efforts," the Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander told BI. "As the law and our terms of service make clear, scraping or using the Times's content is prohibited without our prior written permission, such as a licensing agreement." Surge workers used the list for RLHF Surge contractors were told to use the list for a later, but crucial, stage of AI model training in which humans rate an existing chatbot's responses to improve them. That process is called "reinforcement learning from human feedback," or RLHF. The Surge contractors working for Anthropic did tasks like copying and pasting text from the internet, asking the AI to summarize it, and choosing the best summary. In another case, workers were asked to "find at least 5-10 PDFs" from the web and quiz Anthropic's AI about the documents' content to improve its citation skills. That doesn't involve feeding web data directly into the model for it to regurgitate later — the better-known process that's known as pre-training. Courts haven't addressed whether there's a clear distinction between the two processes when it comes to copyright law. There's a good chance both would be viewed as crucial to building a state-of-the-art AI model, Lee, the law professor, said. It is "probably not going to make a material difference in terms of fair use," Lee said.
Android Authority
2 days ago
- Android Authority
Google Drive's new tool makes it a breeze to skip right to the good part of your video uploads
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR Google Drive will now show thumbnail previews when hovering over the video progress bar. The feature will be available to all users on the web version of Drive, but it only works on newly uploaded videos. It's rolling out to Rapid Release domains starting today, with a wider rollout starting on August 20. Scrubbing through a video in Google Drive often meant dragging the progress bar blindly and hoping for the best. That's finally changing, with Google adding thumbnail previews to the progress bar to make it easier to find the moment you're looking for. The new feature is already rolling out, but don't get too excited about navigating your old videos just yet. The feature was just announced in a Workspace Updates post and is now rolling out to Rapid Release domains, with a broader rollout to follow from August 20. Users can hover over the timeline of a new video in Drive on the web to view scene-by-scene thumbnails, helping you jump to the right moment without much guesswork. It's certainly a step in the right direction, albeit by adding a perk many other video players already offer. The slight catch here is that older video files won't benefit — only those uploaded after the feature becomes available will show thumbnails. This is just the latest in a string of updates for Google Drive. In June, the Android app got a redesigned video player that aligned it with the desktop version. That same update also improved the mobile upload process with easier file renaming and folder selection. Google has also been rolling out Gemini-powered features in Drive, including AI summaries for PDFs and a 'Catch me up' tool that highlights changes made to shared documents since you last opened them. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
