Costume Drama. Squachy looked in the mirror. The mirror said "tent". He had been wearing a captain's hat made of two black triangles, a tinfoil hat that was mostly a rice hat, and a ninja suit so black that nobody could tell he was in it, which sounds like a win for a ninja until you realise it made him a blob. So he went shopping. Eleven outfits are redrawn from the ground up, and three stayed exactly as they were, because they were already right and he is a cardboard cutout, not a fashion show.
What makes them better. Every costume piece has a black outline now, the same as he does, so a hat sits ON him instead of floating near him. Each colour gets a light, a middle and a shade, picked from the handful the CYD screens can actually show, so nothing goes muddy. And the costumes dress his body, not just his head: shirts, coats, overalls, sleeves and boots. A hat alone disappears from across a room. A pirate coat does not.
The highlights. The tinfoil hat is crumpled foil with a red and blue beanie propeller turning on top, because if you are going to block the signals you may as well look fabulous doing it. The captain has a real pirate hat with gold braid and a skull and crossbones, and a red coat with a buckled belt. Both bros got a proper cap with an S on the front (for Squachy, lawyers, relax), a moustache, overalls down their legs and white gloves. The ninja is navy now, with a red headband whose tails flutter behind him. The space suit finally has arms. The blue one got swept-back spikes and those shoes. The wolf pelt grew paws with claws and a hide down his back. Chrome Wing is actually chrome, with a shine that runs along each wing when he flaps. The void eye blinks with an edge now, and glows a little. And the tanooki is the whole suit, orange from ears to tail, with his face in the hood. There was a version in between with round ears that had dark centres, and it looked like he had a second pair of eyes on top of his head. It has been destroyed. We do not speak of it.
Spam floods get one alert. At a hacker convention somebody spent the day broadcasting fake AirTags, a fresh address every burst: ninety-one AirTag alerts in twenty-two minutes, then a hundred and seventy fake Google tags, and the only way to get the watch back was to switch AirTags off entirely. Squachy knows the trick now. A real tag keeps announcing while it's near. A fake is heard once and never again. When a pile of one type of tag does that, or when more new ones turn up in a minute than any crowd makes, he calls it: one alert with a red SPAM banner and a count, and after that every sighting of that type is still logged but doesn't interrupt, until five quiet minutes go by. Real tags of that type are held along with the fakes for those five minutes, and the alert says so. Anything on your WATCH list always gets through.
67 KB back on every CYD. Nobody updates over Bluetooth. WiFi and USB both do the job, and the Bluetooth update server was the one piece of the Bluetooth stack a CYD carried for nothing else. It's gone from the CYDs, which gives back 67 KB of flash and about 3 KB of memory while he runs. The squad, invites, messages and visits never used it and all still work. The watch keeps its Bluetooth updates, because it has room. A CYD still on an older release can take this one over Bluetooth as before. After that, it updates over WiFi or USB.
The black box shows what a clear hid. Typing BLACKBOX on the console used to stop at the last time someone pressed CLR, as if nothing had happened before it. It prints the whole ring now, with a "LOG CLEARED here" line where each clear was. The LOG screen still starts fresh after a clear.
The actually-useful part
Added
- Spam flood detection: a type that produces a pile of Bluetooth addresses heard for under ten seconds and never again, or 40 new addresses in a minute, trips into SPAM. One alert with a "SPAM: N FAKE TAGS" banner, then sightings of that type are logged without interrupting until five minutes pass with no more evidence. WATCH targets always get through.
- Outfit keylines, three-tone shading on the RGB332 grid, and garments on the torso, legs and arms for the redrawn outfits.
- TINFOIL: faceted foil, a rolled brim, a turning propeller and a glint.
- CAPTAIN: a pirate hat with braid and skull and crossbones, and a red coat with lapels, buttons and a belt.
- PLUMBER BRO and TALL BRO: domed caps with an S emblem, a two-lobed moustache, shirts, denim overalls on the legs, gold buttons and gloves.
- SHADOW: a navy suit, a red headband with fluttering tails, a face mask, and a sash with a throwing star.
- SPACE: sleeves, gloves and boots that follow his limbs, a heavier helmet rim, and blinking chest lights.
- BLUE BLUR: quills behind his head, outlined gloves, strapped shoes, and a dust puff when he walks.
- WOLF PELT: an outline round the mask, pink inside the ears, paws with claws, and a hide down his back.
- CHROME WING: chrome wings with a shine that slides out along them on every flap.
- VOID EYE: an edge on the closing lids and a slow glow ring.
- TANOOKI: the full suit, with pointed ears on the hood and a ringed tail.
Changed
- The CYDs no longer carry the Bluetooth update server: 67 KB less flash and about 3 KB more free memory. Their update screen drops the Bluetooth button and WiFi moves into its place. The T-Watch S3 keeps Bluetooth updates.
- BLACKBOX on the console prints the whole ring, marking each clear with a "LOG CLEARED here" line instead of stopping at the newest one.
- The TANOOKI outfit loses its raccoon mask and snout pad.
- UNICORN, SNOW PARKA and SHARK SUIT are unchanged, on purpose.
Fixed
- The Bluetooth update stub never compiled on the boards meant to use it: its guard tested whether a NimBLE setting was defined, and it always is, as 1 or 0.