Boston Dynamics has a new robot to simultaneously wow and terrify, with Stretch moving away from the human or animal body style of the company’s other ‘bots with a far more practical design instead. Unlike Spot, Boston Dynamics’ robot dog, which has been designed to be as flexible as possible in how it can be deployed, Stretch is focused on warehouse automation, and specifically for moving boxes around at speed. It’s a growing segment, accelerated in particular over the past 12-18 months as online retail picked up some of the slack during the pandemic. Getting reliable human workforces – and…
Author: Miley Selena
Although a proprietary closed-source operating system, Windows also plays host to a suite of popular open source software, many of them providing functionality that’s hard to find from proprietary solutions, especially for the price of free. Not all open source programs, however, are always free of shady behavior and, depending on who’s in charge, some may start taking questionable actions to keep the lights on. One recent example is the popular FTP program FileZilla that has now resorted to a somewhat deceptive strategy to put adware on Windows computers. Most Windows users probably won’t need an FTP client but for…
One of the first hurdles that nations around the world faced at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was how to keep track of people that patients came in contact with before testing positive for the coronavirus. Contact tracing became almost the perfect opportunity for technology, especially mobile and cloud, to make things easier. Now that vaccinations are underway, a new need has risen, the need to keep track of who has gotten their shots already. Again putting technology to use, New York State just launched the Excelsior Pass, perhaps one of if not the first COVID-19 “passport” to be…
If you thought you need a large screen 4K TV to get that theater-like experience at home, think again? The exciting new form of big TV, the Ultra Short Throw (UST) projectors are making a parallel intrusion into home entertainment with their easy setup approach and big screen delivery without tangling wires and impeding shadows. These projectors feature a very wide-angle lens and can be placed just under or above – inches away from the screen – to project images as large as 150-inches diagonally. Given their 4K resolution, the projectors can deliver a bright and an immersive experience perfect…
OnePlus has just announced a slew of devices in its 2021 lineup. Alongside the OnePlus 9 series, the debuting OnePlus Watch is the brand’s first foray into wearables. The new smartwatch has some distinguishable features including one of the best battery backups, which positions it against the more expensive alternatives such as the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 or the Fitbit Sense. Since the OnePlus Watch is compatible with only Android devices at this point in time, it is fair to pit it against the Galaxy Watch 3, buyers are lured toward when buying an Android smartwatch. Let’s see how OnePlus…
Razer, the company best known for its gaming laptops and accessories, is back with a new device — but it has nothing to do with playing video games. The newly introduced Razer Reusable Straw is exactly what it sounds like: a metal straw that you can use to drink, then clean and store until the next time you need a straw. Though straws are a very basic device, one must admit that Razer’s reusable straw kit is visually appealing, one that bundles a telescopic metal straw with a similar cleaning brush and a carrying case for storing both. The case…
Canadian news (CTV News) reported an epic tale of extreme iPhone survival this week. Ice Fishing on Waskesui Lake in Saskatchewan one Angie Carriere dropped her iPhone 11 Pro down the fishing hole. About a decade ago, even the newest model smartphones in the world would’ve been an immediate lost cause. Here in 2021, there’s more room for hope. The iPhone 11 Pro has IP68 certification for resistance to water and dust. IP68 certification means the iPhone 11 Pro is guaranteed to survive approximately up-to 30 minutes at up-to 2 meters below the surface of the water. This does not…
Apple has released new versions of iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS, and if you have an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch the official advice is that you should update them sooner rather than later. iOS 14.4.2, iPadOS 14.42, and watchOS 7.3.3 all fix an active vulnerability, Apple says, which it believes has already been exploited. “Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to universal cross site scripting,” the company says in its security report about the new software. “Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited.” The fix, Apple says, was “improved management of object…
The next Apple Watch is rumored to offer a set of upgrades with degrees of change that’ll likely entice even the most recent-generation Apple Watch wearers. One of the most recent tips, appearing just this week, suggests that we’ll see a rugged Apple Watch released with Apple Watch Series 7. This new release would deliver a device more capable of withstanding impact, with a casing better suited to avoiding scratches and damage of several sorts. The Apple Watch Explorer Edition is likely the only “all new” version of the Apple Watch. This would be a new model with a new…
TCL is working on a foldable, rollable phone hybrid, which combines two of the biggest trends in smartphone design at the moment. The company – which makes its own displays, and which began pushing its own brand for Android devices in early 2020 – has been working on foldable and flexible OLED panels for some time now, though this new concept device brings them together in as-yet unseen ways. Roughly twelve months ago, TCL revealed some of the prototype designs it had been developing. That included a double-folding tablet – which had two hinges, and collapsed like a concertina to…