FlashFeed

Full text

All you big Banjo-Kazooie fanatics probably don't need another reason to grab the new Rare Super Pocket, but you can add hidden music tracks to your list. That's right, the shiny new budget handheld is hiding over 20 songs that didn't make it to the final cut of the N64 classic or Banjo-Tooie, but you will have to roll credits to hear them on the actual portable.

Haven't completed Banjo-Kazooie on the Super Pocket Rare Edition yet? Fear not, as not only did speedrunner TSR Stormed unearth the hidden jukebox, but they have also uploaded each song to YouTube (cheers, VGC ). That will save you from unlocking "one of the Stop n Swop items after beating the game," but it's also an act of public service for those of you who haven't got the retro handheld in your possession.

I don't feel too bad not discovering this first, given that TSR Stormed is a speedrunner. Let's just say I've spent too much time comparing this new Banjo-Kazooie port on the Super Pocket to my actual N64, as it's wild seeing what was once a cutting-edge 3D caper running on a portable you can grab for $70 . Yes, it is using a fairly basic 2.8-inch IPS display, but the resulting visuals punch well above their price weight.

The new Evercade version of Banjo-Kazooie has a secret music player when you unlock one of the Stop n Swop items after beating the game. It has a TON of unheard beta tracks and most of them are early level themes for worlds in Banjo-Tooie!Here is "Funfair" for now. pic.twitter.com/HkiYZXz2sg June 29, 2026

Admittedly, I would rather use the OG N64 gamepad or an alternative retro controller (looking at you, 8Bitdo N64 Bluetooth controller ) to finish Banjo-Kazooie for the zillionth time in 28 years. As much as I love every version of the Super Pocket I've tested to date, its GameBoy-inspired controls and compact shoulder buttons are a little cramped. Rare has tailored the handheld version's mapping to make up for the lack of a thumbstick and other differences, though, so everything from sneaking to pulling off jumps in the handheld version still feels natural.

You can rest assured I will be putting my important plans (largely playing old Windows 95 games in Glide mode) on hold this evening to try and finish Banjo on the handheld. Doing so will let me kick back and listen to early versions of the Mumbo Mountain and Treasure Trove Cove theme, as well as tracks like "Funfair" and "Lava World" that were recycled for Banjo-Tooie.

The big golden puzzle piece left unanswered is whether the hidden jukebox will be included in the Evercade Banjo-Kazooie collection when the cart arrives this October, or if we'll end up with other hidden Stop 'N' Swop treats. I'd like to think that anyone who grabs the double-pack, or even the Evercade Nexus bundle for $199.99, will get a little something extra, and I'll certainly be hunting across the Isle o' Hags for secrets.

Take a peek at the best retro consoles for full-fat systems you can hook up to your modern TV.

Full text

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence firm, on Tuesday announced the availability of Claude Science, an application that optimizes the company’s large language model for use in scientific laboratories and, especially, within the research operations of pharmaceutical companies.

The product is a beachhead in Anthropic’s larger battle for the future of biology. The firm has ambitions so big they would seem caricaturish were it not for its financial means. A month ago Anthropic said it had reached annualized sales of $42 billion — about as much as the drug giant GSK — and that it is valued, based on a $65 billion funding round, at $965 billion, far more than any health care company except Eli Lilly.

In the last year, Anthropic’s Claude Code application fundamentally changed the way the computer programming industry works. Eric Kauderer-Abrams, Anthropic’s head of life sciences, told STAT in an interview that the company expects the application unveiled Tuesday to fundamentally change the life sciences in the same way. He also stated that the he feels the company’s efforts in biology are “the single most important thing” at Anthropic.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

Full text

Bitcoin Magazine

One Year Later: How Coldcard Q’s Key Teleport Delivers Secure Remote Key Management for Bitcoin Treasuries

Have you ever been travelling, had to make a big payment and realised you left your hardware wallet back home? Perhaps you are a key holder in a business’s Bitcoin treasury, or an emergency came up, and a big payment has to be made, some cold storage Bitcoin has to move, but the keys are elsewhere.

Key Teleport, a feature developed by the hardware wallet manufacturer Coinkite, may be the most secure way to handle key material at a distance. The feature is only available to the Coldcard Q, the premium, feature-rich Bitcoin hardware wallet developed by the company.

Before Key Teleport, the most paranoid, secure way to move a private key over the internet was not to send it over WhatsApp or Signal. These apps, while end-to-end encrypted on the surface, are running on top of very complex hardware and operating systems, in many cases with very intrusive firmware embedded deeply by manufacturers . Smartphones today, as with most of mainstream technology, are simply not designed to secure highly valuable secrets that can transfer irreversible money like Bitcoin.

Had you asked me how I might go about sending a private key with life-changing money on it, across the wire, I would have told you this: You need to boot Tails OS , a slim, highly paranoid Linux distribution, into hardware you know to be secure, ideally a burner laptop. You then need to generate a fresh set of PGP keys to encrypt the secret with the power of asymmetric cryptography. The recipient needs to do the same, Tails-OS and PGP. Then, a classic encrypted message is made to the recipient’s public key, and the encrypted secret is sent over Tor, probably wrapped by another VPN just in case. Having done this once, I can tell you, it’s a mission.

This Tails-OS plus PGP combo is the kind of setup that Edward Snowden used to get in contact with journalist Greenwald originally, to leak the 2014 NSA surveillance secrets. If the 90’s cypherpunks had some kind of secret society, through which they coordinated the creation of technologies like Bitcoin or Wikileaks, this is the kind of setup they might have used.

The Key Teleport by Coldcard Q makes tasks of this sort far easier. You can now easily send encrypted messages across the internet without having to worry about your hardware or what other software might be installed on it that could spy. It also solves key management dilemmas; a partially signed Bitcoin multisig transaction can be transmitted as an encrypted note to the recipient Coldcard Q, for example. Or a whole wallet set up, with its metadata, key material and custom settings, backed up, encrypted and sent across the world to its unique recipient. I got a couple of these devices recently for a test run of the feature, and not even Opus 4.8 High could figure out how to crack the encrypted blurb.

The Hardware

The Coldcard Q — which now comes in a wide range of colored cases — has a very specific set of tools necessary to enable this kind of airgapped communication. First of all, it inherits the dual secure element model developed in the Mk4 series of Coinkite devices. Where two closed source chips made by different manufacturers are used in combination with an open source MCU chip to generate keys, encrypt, decrypt and store sensitive data. A combination of the components would need to be compromised by an attacker with physical access to get the wallet. These chips are, of course, used by the Key Teleport feature, handling the encryption and decryption of whatever message the user is dealing with.

The screen is a 3.2-inch LCD screen with enough resolution to show the BBQr code. BBQr is a QR code standard developed by Coinkite that has no dependencies or third-party libraries, is backwards compatible with standard QR code readers, and can contain larger messages than traditional QR codes.

The Coldcard Q is also able to read QR codes. It has a dedicated QR code scanner with a red strobe indicator light that guides the user as to what the scanner is pointed, and a small flash light that can be activated with a button to help in low light environments. This optimised hardware set solves common problems with QR code payments, where variation in screen resolutions, camera quality and lighting can make scanning a payment QR code difficult.

The Cryptography

TWO OR THREE IMAGES SIDE BY SIDE, QR CODE, PIN SHARING, SCANNING.

A multi-layer cryptographic protocol is used to encrypt the data to be transmitted by Key Teleport. A single-use ‘ephemeral’ public-private key pair is generated for each data transfer using the secp256k1 curve. The public key of the receiver is encrypted with an 8-digit pin, via the AES-256-CTR algorithm. That encrypted public key is displayed by the receiver in a QR code, with the 8-digit pin meant to be sent via a separate communication channel.

As an example, the recipient would do a video call with the sender, show them the QR code, and use Zoom. Then send the 8-digit PIN code using Signal. This operational security practice means that dedicated attackers would have to compromise two separate communication channels to get the recipient’s public key.

Sender scans the QR code, enters the pin code and in the back end, the sender device derives a shared session key via ECDH, using the receiver’s public key and its own ephemeral keypair. The user was asked to select what data they want to transfer, from three options: “Quick Text Message”, “Master Seed Words” and “Full COLDCARD Backup”. Once the user chooses, the data is encrypted by the recipient’s public key, and that encrypted blurb is encrypted once more with a new PIN code. Users would scan the QR code again via Zoom, for example, and the sender would transmit the new PIN to the recipient via Signal.

There is a deep set of careful cryptographic details involved in how this Key Teleport is integrated that is well documented in the Coinkite GitHub repository , but as far as the user experience is concerned, the process is now complete. After the recipient scans the QR code back and inputs the second pin code, they will get access to the data. Both Coldcard Q devices would have been entirely airgapped, not connected to computers via USB cables, as QR codes and scanners were used to transmit data, powered by three AAA batteries.

Last but not least, users can also share the encrypted data via NFC, which creates a special link at keyteleport.com for users to easily scan the QR code and get the encrypted data, replacing the hypothetical Zoom call.

Opus 4.8’s Conclusion

In my test of the Key Teleport feature, I tasked Opus 4.8 High, one of the most powerful AI coding models from Anthropic, to try and decrypt the message. First I gave it the encrypted blurb, after thinking about it for a couple of minutes, it gave up, saying there must be some information missing.

I then gave it one of the pins, which helped, but ultimately was not sufficient for it to crack the cryptography. I then gave it the second pin, which led to a brute forcing attempt that, by Opus’s own admission, would only work if the ephemeral key pairs were generated with intentionally low entropy. Ultimately, it gave up trying to break the encrypted data, even with both pin codes, saying it was securely sealed.

I asked the model to write one paragraph about its conclusions. Here’s what it wrote:

“I’m Claude Opus 4.8 (Anthropic), running in Cursor.

We took a scrambled QR code from COLDCARD’s Key Teleport feature — the kind meant to move a secret like a seed phrase between two wallets — and tried hard to break it open without the missing piece. The QR itself is designed to be safe to share publicly; you also need a short password and a number that are supposed to be sent separately. Even with that password and number in hand, we still couldn’t read the secret, because the real lock is a one-time random key that only exists on the receiving device and was never published anywhere.

We threw dictionary guesses, math tricks, and large-scale computer searches at it; a few things looked promising at first but turned out to be false alarms, which is actually a good sign that the checks work. Bottom line: Key Teleport did what it’s supposed to do — the QR plus the side-channel codes are not enough to steal the secret without the receiver’s private key. For a real transfer, you’d scan the code on the receiving COLDCARD and type in the password there; that’s the intended, secure path.”

Final Thoughts

The Coldcard Q’s Key Teleport feature opens the door to an otherwise very difficult to achieve level of secure communication over the internet. The scrutiny dedicated to the hardware and firmware process likely outmatches that of even high-security mobile phone operating systems like Graphene OS. The physical keyboard, QR code scanner and NFC antenna make this paranoid system quite comfortable to use. And the $249 price target for the whole hardware wallet makes it accessible to everyday, serious bitcoiners and cypherpunks, delivering a self-custody tool worthy of a professional industrial setup.

Disclaimer: Coinkite provided Bitcoin Magazine with a couple of free Coldcard Q devices to use for the purpose of testing their product for review.

This post One Year Later: How Coldcard Q’s Key Teleport Delivers Secure Remote Key Management for Bitcoin Treasuries first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt .

Full text

Star Fox 64 is the Nintendo game that refuses to fade away, and we're not complaining, especially when the new Switch 2 remake — simply titled Star Fox — amplifies its replay value and expands the original vision with a bunch of new content.

Roughly a decade ago, Star Fox Zero almost killed the franchise for good. The ill-fated Wii U entry's structure and plot stuck staggeringly close to Star Fox 64 (Lylat Wars for us PAL gamers), but no one could definitely answer if it was a remake, reboot, reimagining, or something else entirely.

It being a remake wouldn't have mattered, except that Star Fox 64 3D (for the little brave 3DS) had already done that with strong results. Now in 2026, we're still flying around the same planets with 'Star Fox'.

Considering Fox McCloud's secondary role in the recent Super Mario Galaxy Movie , you'd expect Nintendo to push onward with an all-new game in the enduring science fiction rail shooter series, yet Star Fox seems fated to play the greatest hits again and again. Fortunately, it nails what made Star Fox 64 so enduring and is the most complete take on Team Star Fox's greatest adventure.

The story is the same: The mad scientist Andross is exiled to the unwelcoming planet of Venom by General Pepper for almost destroying Corneria, the fourth planet of the Lylat system.

(Image credit: Nintendo) When suspicious activity is detected on the doomed world a few years later, Team Star Fox goes to investigate and – spoiler alert – James McCloud is killed by Andross following a betrayal from inside the team. Some time passes, and Andross launches an all-out attack against Lylat's forces, so it's time for Team Star Fox (now captained by Fox McCloud, James' son) to set things right.

And yes, his last name is Fox, and he is a Fox. If you're new to the series, there are no humans in this universe, only anthropomorphic animals.

While Star Fox doesn't sacrifice the original's arcade-y nature (you can 'beat it' in under two hours), it makes space for meatier cutscenes which better define the characters and the high stakes of the story.

It's all simple stuff with no real room for twists and turns that never gets in the way of the game's fast pace, but Velan Studios ' effort is a commendable reminder that even extremely faithful remakes can add to a classic formula. Shoutout to the new arrangements of memorable musical themes from the original, too; the orchestral refresh simply sounds amazing.

(Image credit: Nintendo) The character redesigns will no doubt be a point of contention. Fox McCloud doesn't look nearly as stylish as in past Star Fox games — or as he does in this year's Mario Galaxy flick — while team members like Slippy Toad (who seems slippery ) and Falco Lombardi land right in uncanny valley territory. There's a distinct charm to Star Fox's art direction — and the conversation surrounding the toons proves it — but the presentation no doubt raises the question of how much realism is too much realism for a property as cartoony as this.

The Arwings, enemy ships, and other vehicles look absolutely dashing and move with a smoothness that would've made Nintendo kids in the 1990s levitate, though. Both during missions and in cutscenes, there's speed and weight to the stars of the show, and smaller touches like laser beams briefly illuminating the environments remind us how far graphics have come.

The same could be said about the colorful levels; from Corneria to Solar, there's a vividness to Star Fox's many space locales that sometimes can be even distracting when the screen is filled with foes and incoming attacks.

(Image credit: Nintendo) Star Fox 64's 'pick up and play' nature remains untouched and only lightly upgraded. The control scheme could be more intuitive, but it's not too complex; moving around the screen, executing evasive maneuvers, and shooting down enemies feels snappy. Some of the latter levels weren't as 'tight' as I'd hoped for, but maybe that's just me still adjusting to the unavoidable nuances that come with a full tech rework under the hood.

The highlight, though, may be Switch 2's unique mouse mode, which is put to great use here; playing through the campaign with it plus the cockpit view feels transformative (It was impressive in Metroid Prime 4 ). Of course, the action runs at 60 frames per second with sharp image resolution in both docked and handheld modes, helping you achieve high scores, no matter which control option you use.

Blasting through the short (but highly replayable) campaign is just the beginning. There are hidden routes to discover, medals to obtain, new challenges to tackle, and the brutal Expert difficulty to clear. Ultimately, Star Fox is all about perfecting high scores and mastering a new iteration of a classic that's been dominated over the decades by the most dedicated pilots. It's Nintendo offering "one last ride" (hopefully) and inviting vets to reexperience the Lylat Wars in new, more demanding ways beyond the first run. On that front, Star Fox is a resounding success.

(Image credit: Nintendo) But it's hard to usher in a future for a dormant series without betting some chips on the casual crowd and newcomers, and I'd say most folks without an already established connection to the series (rail shooters are incredibly niche nowadays) are likely to go through Star Fox's campaign once or twice and then complain about the price tag.

There's actually a lot to Star Fox, but it mostly boils down to replaying the same missions in different ways. It's a retro sensibility that older gamers find captivating, but times have changed, and you have to wonder whether Nintendo should've gunned for an all-new game instead.

The multiplayer offerings shouldn't be ignored, though. Co-op (local or via the wireless GameShare function) lets two players go through the campaign by splitting the Arwing controls into movement and shooting, which is a nice offbeat bit of fun. Online, things get more interesting with a 4v4 competitive mode across three maps with different objectives and plenty of chaos, with NPC starfighters also fighting for control of objectives alongside players.

Matches are fast and intense, with free flight and plenty of power-ups adding to the spectacle and scale of the action. There's not much variety here, but the bones are strong. If they add more maps and modes, it could be something, but as it stands, it feels like one of those obligatory multiplayer modes every game had in the Xbox 360 era

(Image credit: Nintendo) Players willing to pick up the Switch 2 camera can also 'wear' the look of their favorite Star Fox characters VTuber -style while playing online, which is a silly little extra with incredible comedic potential in the right hands. Hardly a game-selling addition, but it's the kind of playful, family-friendly addition we expect from Nintendo.

Star Fox bets big on already established fans and hopes for the best when it comes to onboarding newbies. Will it pay off? Maybe, but 'nostalgia gains' are declining everywhere, and I'm worried that if this doesn't perform, we may be stuck waiting for a new entry that never comes... again.

Star Fox is available now for purchase on Nintendo Switch 2.

A review code for Star Fox was provided by Nintendo.

Blast off on a high-octane adventure to save a star system from invasion. Step into the cockpit and fly across the stars and skies with Fox McCloud and team!

This cinematic take on the Star Fox 64 story features fully voiced dialogue and cutscenes, an epic orchestral soundtrack, mouse control support, and a complete visual overhaul that takes advantage of the enhanced performance of the Nintendo Switch 2. View Deal