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Tech NewsGadgetsAirTags Are the Perfect Dog-Tracking Device—With the Right Accessory
Nina is a 9-year-old doggie from South Carolina who we adopted last March. She is also a runner. One evening, a week into her time with us, she wandered off for two days, freaking us out quite a bit. She darted away again about a month ago. Thankfully a passerby picked her up and took … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgetsA New 3D Printer Can Produce On-Demand Batteries
The Sakuu Corporation, a California-based company backed by Musashi Seimitsu, has announced a new 3D printing system that can print large electric vehicle batteries on demand. The system uses new techniques to create solid-state batteries that are lighter and smaller than traditional lithium-ion batteries. The system uses two types of printing to get the job … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy and SecurityCAPTCHAs May Soon Go Extinct
Are you a human? It’s an age-old question made more pressing by the ability for millions of computers to shut down websites or snipe auctions out from under regular, non-robotic buyers. What’s more, proving you’re a human reduces spam, abuse, and even theft. But the way we currently tell if someone is human online — … Continued
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ReviewsHome Entertainment & Smart HomeThe Fender Mustang Micro Puts a Tiny Amp In Your Pocket
Most guitar gear is pretty simple: You plug a cable designed in the 1950s into a jack that’s just as old and start playing. The electronics inside the various amps and pedals are where things get interesting, which is why Fender has created the $99 Mustang Micro. The Mustang Micro is a tiny device that … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgetsThis Indoor Garden Will Feed You Greens Year-Round
Click & Grow 25 is the latest project by former orchestra conductor Mattias Lepp who felt that the idea of indoor gardens—essentially, a farmer’s market in a box—would be just the tool for staving off future food shortages. His company, founded in 2009, raised $11 million in 2018 to develop new materials and hardware technologies … Continued
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ReviewsHome Entertainment & Smart HomeArduino’s New DIY Kit Makes It Easy to Build Smart Home Gadgets
The Arduino Oplà kit is a simple way to start building Internet of Things gadgets for fun and, for some, profit. The $114 starter kit includes an Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 board—basically a tiny, programmable microprocessor—and an IoT Carrier that looks kind of like a flower with an OLED screen in the center. What you … Continued
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ScienceSpace & SpaceflightNASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Is Racing Back to Earth With a Scoop of Asteroid
OSIRIS-REx, a NASA spacecraft tasked with collecting rocks and dust from a nearby asteroid named Bennu, is coming back home after almost five years away. The spacecraft, officially named Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer, officially fired its engines to begin its Earthward journey on May 10. Its return trip will take two … Continued
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Tech NewsNewsA New System Uses Sawdust to Print Wooden Objects
A new printing system called Forust is using scrap wood to 3D print wooden objects that are as structurally sound as regular carved wood. Created by Andrew Jeffery and a team of researchers at Desktop Metal, the system prints using fine sawdust that is formed into solid objects. “Since we began in 2019, our focus … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgetsCitizen Releases New Star Wars Watches for the Discerning Jawa
Boba Fanns, rejoice! Citizen has hopped aboard the Star Wars spacetrain with a new set of themed Ana-Digi Temp watches. The $350 watches come hot on the heels of the company’s Rebel Pilot and X-Wing watches that launched a few weeks ago and feature beloved characters like C3PO, R2D2, and Darth Vader. These watches are … Continued
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Tech NewsNewsHardware Hacker Breaks the DRM on a Mini Dishwasher
In what amounts to a very clever bit of hardware hacking, developer dekuNukem (the hacker who created a little device that automatically switches your screen to work when a boss walks by) has detailed a methodology for refilling the DRM-protected detergent cassettes for a $486 portable dishwasher called Bob. Trust me, it’s more interesting than … Continued
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Tech NewsNewsPrint Books Are Still Outselling eBooks, Study Finds
According to a study by Statista’s Advertising & Media Outlook, ebook sales are still trailing physical book sales globally, especially during the dog days of the covid-19 pandemic. The study, which asked respondents to describe their book purchases in 2020, found that ebooks still haven’t replaced paper in most countries. “In the United States for … Continued
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Tech NewsNewsU.S. Court Says Ghost Gun Blueprints Can Stay Online
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled this week that posting plans for so-called “ghost guns”—homemade firearms and firearm parts designed to route around gun regulations—is technically legal. The ruling, which affirmed the Trump-era removal of these gun and gun parts from the State Department’s Munitions List, means that the blueprints … Continued
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Tech NewsPrivacy and SecurityEtsy-Owned Music Sales Site Reverb Hit With Data Breach
Last week, security consultant Bob Diachenko found an unsecured database run by the Etsy-owned music marketplace Reverb. The exposed database, which contained user data like phone numbers, emails, addresses, and even order information, was dangerous in its own right, but then Diachenko figured out how many customers were affected: 5.6 million, by his reckoning, an … Continued
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Tech NewsNewsMaybe We Don’t Need an In-Person CES?
CES is coming back to Vegas. The show’s parent organization, the Consumer Technology Association, will hold an in-person event in Las Vegas in January 2022 after putting on a decidedly muted online event last winter. “We’re thrilled to return to Las Vegas – home to CES for more than 40 years – and look forward … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgetsWatchmakers of the Future, Don Your Cyberloupes
While a “cyberloupe” sounds like a tube Elon Musk would run ugly trucks through, it’s actually a jewelers loupe from the future made by watch company IWC. Loupes, which are basically eye-mounted microscopes used by watchmakers to place fiddly bits of metal into watch cases, haven’t been upgraded much in the past few hundred years. … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgetsMontblanc’s Summit Lite Finally Comes to the U.S.
Montblanc’s Summit Lite has, since January, been the high-end smartwatch for the Euro set. Encased in steel, the $860 piece is a less expensive version of the luxury company’s Summit 2+, a $1,170 splurge that is one of the last luxury smartwatches on the market. Now, to much rejoicing, the Summit Lite has come to … Continued
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Pioneer DJ’s Studio Speakers Won’t Fit On Your Desk, but They Sure Sound Amazing
When Pioneer DJ initially described their new DJ monitors, the VM-80s, I was convinced they’d be a great addition to my desk audio setup. Pioneer DJ makes great, solid speakers, and these new monitors—essentially $289 standalone speakers that can be installed in any configuration—looked like just the trick to get some solid audio out of … Continued
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Tech NewsNewsTetris-OS Is an ‘OS’ That Only Plays Tetris
As a former Tetris fanatic, the idea of an operating system that only runs Tetris, over and over again forever, is fairly compelling. First, my workday would be completely different. Gone are Zoom meetings, mid-morning Slack standups, and endless writing. In fact, a computer that can only play Tetris would remove me from the internet … Continued
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Tech NewsGadgetsThis DIY Wireless Ball Cap Lets You Control Death Itself
When it comes to facing your own mortality, there are few things better than a grinning skull with creepy eyeballs. And when it comes to really freaking you out, the only way to make a grinning skull worse is to connect it to a computer and make it jerk around and gape like some degloved … Continued
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