Gadgets

European Union lawmakers have taken a step closer to agreeing rules to standardize how a range of mobile gadgetry is charged. Today MEPs in the European Parliament’s internal market and consumer protection (IMCO) committee adopted their position on a Commission proposal announced last fall, ahead of a full vote by the parliament next month to

Everyone thought it was a little bonkers when Panic announced that they would be making a monochrome handheld gaming machine with a sort of subscription model where you can’t choose the games you get. DOA, right? Well, the preorders sold out so perhaps not. And fortunately, Playdate is a fun, weird and promising device that’s

Luis Severino cupped the glove around his ear in frustration. The Yankee Stadium two-strike Death Star siren was blaring over the PA, the announcers reasoned. The pitcher signaled frustration with a new piece of technology that’s quickly been rolled out on baseball’s biggest stage. Manager Aaron Boone walked out to the mound, handing Severino a

A growing number of people are looking for ways to live more sustainably amid increasing concerns over the environment and what we humans keep doing to pollute it. Today, a startup called Grover that has built a business around one aspect of that — enticing people to buy and eventually discard less consumer electronics such

China’s augmented reality startup Nreal is on a roll. The company, which hopes to bring AR to the masses by making bright-color, lightweight smart glasses, has just received $60 million in a Series C extension round, bringing its total funding in the last 12 months to a handsome $200 million. The new investment is led by

If you’ve never picked a raspberry, well, first of all that’s too bad, because a fresh raspberry is a beautiful thing. But second, and more immediately relevant in this case, you would not know that there is a technique to it that, surprisingly, robots aren’t super good at because they tend to be… crushy. But

The race is certainly on in the electrification of boating … even if everyone is jockeying for position before the market materializes. Flux Marine is joining the likes of Pure and Zin in trying to convert some of our waterways’ gas-guzzling outboards to cleaner, quieter battery powered ones, and the company just raised $15.5 million

Meet the Devialet Dione, a brand new speaker from high-end speaker manufacturer Devialet. With this new product, the company is entering a new market — home cinema sound systems. The Devialet Dione is an all-in-one soundbar compatible with Dolby Atmos 5.1.2 and it costs $2,400 (€2,190). “We are at the high end of the market

Figuring out what’s going on in the brain is generally considered to be somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible. One major challenge is that the best ways to do so are room-sized machines relegated to hospitals — but brain.space is hoping that its portable, powerful, and most importantly user-friendly EEG helmet (plus $8.5M in funding)

Twenty years ago, getting a human genome sequenced was a billion-dollar, international project. Today, you can get your dog’s genome sequenced by the end of the month for a few bucks. It speaks to the speed with which genetics has permeated our lives, but despite massive improvements to the technology, the process can still be

The first DJI Mavic turned the world of consumer drones on its head when it was released back in late-2016. The compact, foldable design launched a million copy cats around the world — including a number under the drone giant’s own umbrella. Compact certainly isn’t the first word that comes to mind in the enterprise

Mining is one of the oldest industries out there, but it has increasingly embraced high-tech methods as demand has increased. Plotlogic uses hyperspectral imaging, a technique generally found in labs and satellites, to add a new layer of data and automation to these crucial but often dated operations. Hyperspectral imagery is basically a photo that

Smartphone cameras have gotten quite good, but it’s getting harder and harder to improve them because we’ve pretty much reached the limit of what’s possible in the space of a cubic centimeter. Glass is a startup looking to fundamentally change how the camera works, using a much bigger sensor and an optical trick from the

This week, Nvidia, a company best known for its high-powered graphic processing units (GPUs) debuted a platform for the development of AI-powered medical devices. The device, called Clara Holoscan MGX, provides computing power allowing medical sensors to process multiple data streams in parallel, train AI algorithms, and visualize biology in real time. Clara Holoscan MGX,

The world’s labs are under pressure to do more tests and process more materials, not just due to COVID but from the growing biotech and drug development sectors — and automation is the sure path forwards. Automata, which got its start making a robotic arm for handling individual tasks, has now raised $50M to automate

Virtual production has rapidly become one of the most promising techniques in media. But while a huge and sophisticated real-time display instead of a green screen solves many problems, it also creates new ones. The creators of Netflix’s mind-bending Dark took on this challenge for the production of their new show, 1899 — and combined

Apple today is announcing a series of coming updates for AirTag and the Find My network aimed at addressing the problem of AirTag accessories being used to stalk individuals or people’s property without their knowledge or consent. Following the AirTags’ spring 2021 introduction, numerous media reports and updates from local police departments have warned of

Today, if a hematologist wanted to dive into the exact organization and structure of your blood cells, they’d probably need a microscope in a lab. Scopio, an Israel-based startup that just closed a $50 million Series C round, argues that soon, a lot of that work could be done with nothing more than a laptop.

A huge amount of energy use on our planet goes toward creating heat, and not only that, but a large amount of that energy is wasted and byproducts like CO2 blasted into the atmosphere. Modern Electron could change that with a new system that captures the emissions and produces clean hydrogen, right inside a home

Over the course of the last few years, Firewalla‘s combined firewall and router devices have made a name for themselves as the go-to hardware security tools for many enthusiasts and small businesses. Today, the company started shipping its newest device, the Firewalla Purple, a diminutive gigabit firewall and router that is currently retailing for $319.

Today’s cars are dumb where they should be smart, and smart where they should be dumb. Enough already. Make a car that’s pretty much all dumb and watch it sell — because what automakers are giving people is so bad, they’ll pay more to have less of it. Cars now are like budget smartphones with

Peloton ended 2020 on top. Its own supply chain issues had presented a hurdle — but if anything, these were side effects of the company’s own stratospheric successes. It simply couldn’t keep up with demand, one of the better problems to have as a business on the rise. Always leave them wanting more, as P.T.

Following a two-month delay, Valve’s Steam Deck will launch on February 25th. In a blog post the company published on Wednesday, Valve said it would open orders to the first batch of reservation holders that day. Those customers will have 72 hours to purchase the handheld. If they don’t use the opportunity, Valve will release

There’s a global competition to build the biggest, most powerful computers on the planet, and Meta (AKA Facebook) is about to jump into the melee with the “AI Research SuperCluster,” or RSC. Once fully operational it may well sit in the top ten fastest supercomputers in the world, which it will use for the massive

NASA’s Spinoff magazine is one of the things I look forward to reading every year. The space agency’s research trickles down to the rest of the world in surprising and interesting ways, which it tracks and collects in this annual publication. This year is no different, and NASA tech can be found in everything from

Tech sees differently, and can fuse multiple types of data we can’t even perceive: lidar, IR, ultrasonic, and so on. Metalenz, maker of highly compact “2D” cameras for advanced sensing, hopes to bring polarized light into the mix for security and safety with its PolarEyes tech. Polarization isn’t a quality of light that’s often paid

French startup Exotec has raised a $335 million Series D round in a new round of funding led by Goldman Sachs’ Growth Equity business. Following today’s investment, the company has reached a valuation of $2 billion. Exotec sells a complete end-to-end solution to turn a regular warehouse into a partially automated logistics platform. It’s a

Mosquitos kill more people than any other creature in the world, and there’s no shortage of potential tech solutions. One such solution comes from Bzigo, which markets a device that finds mosquitos in your home, points at them with a laser and can notify you on your phone when a mozzy is buzzing about. Walking

Perhaps 2022 will be the year consumer health tracking moves beyond the wrist. We’ve seen Oura’s rise over the past few years and a CES that brought with it a couple of ring fitness trackers. Following Google’s addition to vital and sleep tracking on the Nest Home, Sengled is adding the feature to a smart

Leica’s a strange one. It only puts out a handful of cameras every year, and most of them are remixes or minor iterations on previous models. Since 2017 its flagship has been the solid but still somewhat archaic M10, but now the company has revealed its successor: the even more solid and also still somewhat