In this, the 3000th Year Since The Coming Of The Wanderer (All Praise His Mercy), we are greeted by the fifth Potentate, a Teddy Ruxpin with LCD eyes and iPad connectivity. Teddy Ruxpin, or, as his followers in the Cities of Refuge called him, Ted, is a robotic toy that reads to children and then flays your mind from stem to stern, stealing all hope and blasting your personality to ribbons… Read More
Humans are pretty good at ballparking distances, even with one eye closed — but it turns out computer vision systems have a hard time with it. Researchers hope to fix that, or at least make robots a little more robust, by teaching them to navigate a space without the benefit of stereo vision — in zero gravity, to boot. Read More
Elon Musk has a plan to colonize Mars, but he’s not rushing it. In a conference call following the SpaceX CEO’s presentation today at the International Astronautical Conference, Musk noted that the project is still essentially a hobby at the company, drawing only a fraction of its efforts. Read More
On this week’s episode of TCBC, after a brief Disrupt-induced hiatus, longtime TechCruncher Greg Kumparak dishes on Pokémon Go – what made it so appealing at launch, what’s going on with product development, and where he’d like to see it go in the future.
Greg and I are both big Pokémon fans, so it’s a subject about which we have no shortage of things to say. Read More
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has called on HP to restore customer’s ability to use third-party ink cartridges in its Office Jet printers. It is also urging consumers to sign a petition, which as of this posts’s publication, has nearly 7,500 signatures. In an open letter to HP Inc. President and CEO, Dion Weisler, activist Cory Doctorow calls on the company to take five… Read More
Remember ThingMaker? Mattel’s $300 3D printer that would let kids print out their own toys? Its ship date – which was supposed to be this month – just got pushed back another year, according to a report from Engadget. The toy maker says it needs the extra time to “enhance the digital functionality” in order to deliver the “most engaging” experience… Read More
Confirming earlier leaks, Roku this morning unveiled a refreshed and rebranded line of streaming media players, with the intent of plugging every hole in the market. Instead of numbering the Roku devices as before, the new streamers use names like “Express” for the entry-level devices up to “Ultra” for the high-end player, and focus on consumers’ particular… Read More
Lego’s Star Wars series is actually everywhere in my office, so I’m happy new sets from Rogue One: A Star Wars story are set to launch on September 30. I got the chance to check out one of those sets ahead of launch, and built the U-Wing, a ship new to the Star Wars universe featured in the film. The U-Wing’s official designation is the UT-60D, and it’s made by… Read More
Spotted at Photokina, the world’s largest photography trade show: A professional photographer, taking a photo, then taking a picture off the back of their camera to share the photograph on Facebook. It’s not that unusual an occurrence, but it served as the perfect parable on quite how vigorously the camera manufacturers have self-copulated themselves into oblivion. Read More
Snapchat is the only company cool enough to possibly dismantle the Google Glass stigma. Awkward, useless, and a threat to privacy are how many think of computers you wear on your face. Can Snapchat show off the masterful marketing and smooth execution required to produce a product that won’t die on stores shelves or in a desk drawer? To quickly recount the basics, a video of… Read More
