The reborn Commodore 64 is an astonishing remake--but daunting if you weren't there the first time around. "Digital detox" approach is compelling. It's hard to overstate just how seismic an impact the Commodore 64 had on home computing. Launched in 1982, the 8-bit machine--iconic in its beige plastic shell with integrated keyboard--went on to become the best-selling personal computer of all time . Despite the success, manufacturer Commodore International folded in 1994, with rights to the name floating around for years.

Very few Yugoslavians had access to computers in the early 1980s: they were mostly the preserve of large institutions or companies. Importing home computers like the Commodore 64 was not only expensive, but also legally impossible, thanks to a law that restricted regular citizens from importing individual goods that were worth more than 50 Deutsche Marks (the Commodore 64 cost over 1,000 Deutsche Marks at launch). Even if someone in Yugoslavia could afford the latest home computers, they would have to resort to smuggling. In 1983, engineer Vojislav "Voja" Antonić was becoming more and more frustrated with the senseless Yugoslavian import laws. "We had a public debate with politicians," he says.

For a period between the winter of 1983 and the summer of 1986, my life was completely dominated by the Commodore 64. The seminal home computer, launched 40 years ago this month, featured an 8-bit microprocessor, a huge 64k of memory and a set of graphics and sound chips that were designed by the engineers at Commodore's MOS Technology subsidiary to power state-of-the-art arcade games. Instead, Commodore president Jack Tramiel ordered the team to build a home computer designed to smash the Atari XL and Apple II. So that's what they did. I didn't know any of this when my dad brought home a C64 one afternoon a year after the launch of the machine.

What does it really mean to run machine learning on the edge? Over the last five years, Ekkono's researchers, engineers, and developers have been working hard to bring smart functionality to small hardware platforms. In this blog post, I would like to give you a small glimpse of what's possible to achieve with our purpose-built machine learning software library, designed with portability and ease-of-use in mind from the very first line of code. The potential benefits of analyzing data close to the source, rather than uploading it to the cloud, are many: faster response times, increased security and privacy, and improved energy efficiency, to name a few. Back in June, one of our data scientists, Eva Garcia Martin, wrote about some of the challenges of designing and building machine learning software for edge devices, and how those challenges influence our R&D processes.

If you were into video games in the 1980s or 90s, then along with your computer, your QuickShot joystick and your tape player, there was one other vital component of your set-up: a games magazine. For me it was Zzap! 64, a glossy mag dedicated to the Commodore 64 with brilliant, opinionated writers, excellent features, and an exhaustive tips section. I would rush to the newsagent on publication day, bring it home with almost religious reverence, then read it from cover to cover. And then I would go back and read it again. This was how I discovered new games such as Sentinel, Elite and Leaderboard, but also, through the letters page and competitions, joined a community of players, years before the world wide web allowed us all to get in contact. In the 80s, video game magazines were the internet.

Nick Bowman gestures to the old-fashioned gaming consoles littering his desk. "Whenever I am having kind of a crappy day, I pull out the Nintendo," he says, pointing. I also have a Raspberry Pi that I have all my emulators on. Bowman, an associate professor of journalism and creative media industries at Texas Tech University, has a vast collection of consoles and hundreds of cartridges and discs. Like me, he grew up in a time when video games were intimately tied to a physical device.

It was Caverns of Khafka for me. Discovered one rainy afternoon in a Debenhams bargain bin, this weird Commodore 64 dungeon exploration game totally freaked me out with its funeral dirge soundtrack and horrific screeching bats. When I tried to tell my friends about it, they looked confused and concerned – no one else had ever heard of it. I started to think I was the only person in the world who had explored this disorientating adventure – it took on a sinister air. In the pre-internet era of gaming, it was common to stumble upon these hidden oddities.

My grandfather, a lover of classical music, was president of the Hull Philharmonic Orchestra for many years. When I was 15, I played him an orchestrated version of Nobuo Uematsu's To Zanarkand, from the video game Final Fantasy X. "This isn't real music if it's from a video game," he told me at the time. I don't think he could ever have imagined that 12 years later, the Hull orchestra to which he had devoted so many years would be performing music from 1980s video games, in front of a packed hall. In the past, video game music concerts were a promotional novelty, but today they are regular and well-attended billings in venues across the world. From The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddess to Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds, Assassin's Creed Symphony to the recent debut by the London Video Game Orchestra and even a performance by the BBC Concert Orchestra hosted by lauded composer Jessica Curry, fans are flocking to concert halls to hear their favourite video game melodies played live.

The Scelbi was initially advertised in the back of an amateur radio magazine in 1974. The product would only sell about 200 units and was discontinued before the end of the decade.

Happy video game news this week: Someone's making a miniaturized Commodore 64, Hollow Knight's getting its third free expansion, Avernum 3 was remastered, and Rainbow Six Siege teased...aliens? Also, Paragon and Gigantic are both shutting down. This is gaming news for January 29 to February 2. Red Dead Redemption 2 was delayed this week to October, which is big news everywhere but here because Rockstar still hasn't confirmed a PC version. Those looking to celebrate the classics though should jump on the Humble Rockstar Bundle. The Grand Theft Auto games are bound to draw the most attention-- III and Vice City in the $1 tier, San Andreas in beat-the-average, and $15 for GTAIV. But the real aficionados know Max Payne, Max Payne 2, and Bully are the best games in this bunch.