Technology

Designed with street photographers in mind, Ricoh has now introduced its latest special-edition GR IIIx Urban Edition compact camera. Carrying a fixed 26.1mm (40mm equivalent) lens, the new GR IIIx option is equipped with a 24-megapixel APS-C sensor with three-axis image stabilization to provide plenty of functionality in a tight, minimal body. The entire casing is finished in metallic grey for a sleek, understated look while its multi-step painting process creates a surface that looks smooth but provides plenty of tactile grip. A deep navy blue cap ring provides a welcome dash of contrast to the overall aesthetic, matching with the blue ring on the leather strap as well. As a bonus, the camera will also come with a series of new features that’ll be available for the GR IIIx range soon thr...

During the 2022 International Robot Exhibition (iREX) in Tokyo, motorcycle manufacturer Kawasaki debuted its rideable “RHP Bex” robot, named after the Ibex goat species known for its large recurved horns. Bex arrives amidst other high-performance animal-like robots such as Boston Dynamics‘ robot dog Spot and XPeng’s rideable robot unicorn. While built with robotic limbs like the others, Bex can also lower itself and travel on wheels attached to its knees and feet. [embedded content] Kawasaki looks to further develop Bex as a humanoid with arms, and the upper body is built to be modular so that it can be modified for different applications in manufacturing plants, construction sites, farmlands, and more. Bex currently has the potential to move up to 160 kg (353 lb) and is built to carry bot...

Warner Bros. Consumer Products and CASETiFY are entering the Wizarding World with the brand new Harry Potter collaboration, its marketing campaign spearheaded by Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy in all eight films. The collection will highlight the four Hogwarts houses, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin, and iconic moments from the movie adaptations, including Harry’s first interaction with the Mirror of Erised (available exclusively on the CASETiFY Co-Lab app), the Nimbus 2000, his first broomstick and his face-off with the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. In addition, CASETiFY is introducing its first Lenticular Case which will capture the wizarding world’s “moving photos.” When titled from side to side, the Lenticular Case will unveil the Marauder’s Map to the rightf...

Apple is releasing cool new desktop Macs again, but people are still doing plenty of fun projects using older Apple machines. A fun example that we spotted recently (h/t Input) was this mod by someone named Connor, who took the internals of an M1 Mac Mini and put them into one of Apple’s most iconic desktops, the iMac G4. As Connor shows in a YouTube video, the G4 still has all of its original functionality after his mod — it can play DVDs from an internal drive (though they did have to swap out the original one, which connected using IDE) — and at first glance, it hasn’t been changed at all. But with the screen on, it’s obvious the computer is running the modern macOS Monterey, instead of OS X 10.5 Leopard, the last operating system that officially supported the G4’s original hardware. [e...

The “Nintendo GameCube Advance” is a strange piece of internet gaming history: a fanciful render of a portable version of the GameCube that has made the rounds online since 2005. But while the render has long been dismissed as a fan-made fake, YouTuber GingerOfOz has taken matters into his own hands and built a real, functional version of the concept, as spotted by Eurogamer. Ginger didn’t just build his own real GameCube Advance, though: he also tracked down the original artist behind the 2005 mockup and got the scoop on how and why they made it in the first place. Ginger is no stranger to making slick custom Nintendo mods, like his impressive Wii Boy Color from 2020 that somehow managed to shrink an entire Wii into the size and form factor of a Game Boy Color. The nearly 20-minute video ...

A recent report has determined that Apple has made over $6.5 billion USD in profit by longer providing chargers and earphones with its latest iPhone purchases. Back in 2020, Apple introduced the move with the intention of cutting down its waste. The tech giant received praises from environmentalists when it claimed it plans to reduce annual carbon emissions by two million tons. However, although consumers do not receive the charger or headphones, the products are promised to feature upgraded hardware and higher quality in general. Apple argues that the tradeoff on maintaining the same cost is that the iPhone comes with more premium features. Both the earphones and chargers retail for $19 USD each and since these items are usually cheaper to produce, Apple is saving approximately $35 USD pe...

Last week, Twitter introduced one of its worst product decisions in a while: the service would default to showing the algorithmically served Home feed while the reverse-chronological Latest feed was accessible in a separate tab. The change, which was available first on iOS and was set to arrive “soon” on Android and the web, made it more difficult to view tweets in chronological order. Following significant pushback, Twitter announced Monday that it would be reverting things to the way they used to be. “We heard you — some of you always want to see latest Tweets first,” Twitter said in a tweet on its support account. “We’ve switched the timeline back and removed the tabbed experience for now while we explore other options.” We heard you –– some of you always want to see latest Tweets first...

Only a dozen states are regularly reporting sewage data to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Wastewater Surveillance System, Politico reported. The system, which launched in 2020, collects data on levels of the coronavirus at sewage plants around the country. But with most states not participating, the agency isn’t able to get a clear picture of how the virus is spreading nationwide. Wastewater is a valuable public health tool for the COVID-19 pandemic because it doesn’t rely on people showing up for testing or reporting the results from tests taken at home. Levels of the virus in sewage also tend to rise before cases start to go up, so it’s an early warning sign for increased spread. Early signs of the omicron variant showed up in sewage, for example, and recent dat...

18 months ago, Microsoft revealed that one of the most important advancements in its new Xbox Series X console would be coming to PC — the ability to stream tremendous amounts of data from a blazing fast NVMe solid state drive to your GPU, instead of relying on your pesky CPU to decompress it first. The so-called “DirectStorage API” would let games load more detailed worlds, and load them more quickly than before. Now, Microsoft says the DirectStorage API has arrived. “Starting today, Windows games can ship with DirectStorage. This public SDK release begins a new era of fast load times and detailed worlds in PC games by allowing developers to more fully utilize the speed of the latest storage devices,” reads the company’s blog post. How DirectStorage works, in a nutshell. Image: Microsoft ...

A de facto ban on Bitcoin and Ether died in the European Union Parliament today. The controversial proposal attempted to clean up pollution from the most energy-inefficient cryptocurrencies. But even though the proposal failed, cryptocurrencies are still likely to face scrutiny from policymakers as the EU tries to tackle twin climate and energy crises. Getting rid of their pollution has become a global game of whack-a-mole since China banned cryptocurrencies last year. The EU Parliament’s committee on economic and monetary affairs voted on Monday to move forward with a legislative framework for regulating digital assets. In the process, it decided to drop a proposed rule in the framework that would have prohibited people in the EU from using an energy-hungry process to generate cryptocurre...