Technology

Boston Dynamics is best known for its robot dog Spot, a machine designed to work in a range of environments, from offshore oil rigs to deep underground mines. But in recent years, the company has increasingly focused attention on the logistics space, and today is unveiling a new robot with just one application in mind: moving boxes in warehouses. The robot is called Stretch and looks relatively dull for a Boston Dynamics creation. It’s not modeled after humans or animals, and instead aims to be as practical as possible. It has a square mobile base containing a set of wheels, a “perception mast” with cameras and other sensors, and a huge robotic arm with seven degrees of freedom and a suction pad array on the end that can grab and move boxes up to 23 kilograms (50 lbs) in weight. What conne...

A rare prototype of a Leica camera crafted by former Apple luminary Jony Ive and famed designer Marc Newson is being sold at auction in June. The device, which is described as being in “B+” condition, has a starting price of €100.000 (around $118,000), and the Leitz Photographica Auction house estimates that it’ll sell for between €200.000 and €250.000 (around $235,000 to $295,000). The prototype was produced during the development of the one-off Leica M for (RED) camera, which was sold at a charity auction in 2013 for $1.8 million. While the final product’s design shared a lot of similarities with Apple’s “cheesegrater” Mac Pro, this prototype appears to have a smooth reflective finish that looks like an absolute fingerprint magnet. The prototype, which is described as showing the “final ...

One of the biggest trends in machine learning right now is text generation. AI systems learn by absorbing billions of words scraped from the internet and generate text in response to a variety of prompts. It sounds simple, but these machines can be put to a wide array of tasks — from creating fiction, to writing bad code, to letting you chat with historical figures. The best-known AI text-generator is OpenAI’s GPT-3, which the company recently announced is now being used in more than 300 different apps, by “tens of thousands” of developers, and producing 4.5 billion words per day. That’s a lot of robot verbiage. This may be an arbitrary milestone for OpenAI to celebrate, but it’s also a useful indicator of the growing scale, impact, and commercial potential of AI text generation. OpenAI st...

Images of Samsung’s unannounced Tab A7 Lite tablet have leaked, courtesy of Evan Blass on Voice. The images show a decidedly budget-looking device, with a single rear camera and no flash. Internally the tablet is said to be running a modest MediaTek Helio P22T processor paired with 3GB of RAM and a 5,100 mAh battery. The Tab A7 Lite is one of two “Lite” tablets Samsung is expected to launch in June, if a February leak from WalkingCat is to be believed. The other is the Galaxy Tab S7 Lite, which features a bigger 12.4-inch display compared to 8.7-inches on the A7 Lite, according to WalkingCat. GalaxyClub.nl previously reported the S7 Lite may be available with 5G or Wi-Fi-only connectivity, and that it could be powered by a Snapdragon 750G processor with 4GB of RAM. Available colors are sai...

When you typically think of luxury car features, do you envision rich leather seating and extravagant trim? Advanced cruise control and intelligent self-parking? Whatever you’re imagining, I’m betting “dim my headlights so I don’t blind other people” isn’t it. But not only has BMW used its “High Beam Assistant” as an upsell for well over a decade, it’s also charging drivers extra to unlock the safety feature that’s already built into their cars — by buying it as an over-the-air software update. Apparently, this has been going on for nearly two years, but Car Magazine editor Jake Groves brought it to my attention for the first time this week in this viral tweet: For reference, this is the original pop up message I got on the system – couldn’t snap it last night as I was mid-driv...

Comic-Con won’t be hosting its regular in-person annual gathering this summer, as the organization behind the cosplay and fan gathering cancel the event for the second year in a row due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But there is now an in-person event on the books for the fall to compliment the limited online versions the organization is hosting in the coming months. Comic-Con International, the non-profit in charge of running the event and its companion conventions, announced on Saturday that it plans to hold a three-day, in-person event in November. It will take place in San Diego, where Comic-Con typically holds its biggest annual summer event at the city’s convention center. Yet it’s not known right now what the size or scope of the event will be. NBC News reports the dates will be Novembe...

I had to take a break from streaming Hannibal because I’m about halfway through season 3 and I don’t want it to end (also it’s just too intense for a binge watch, let’s be real). But I just watched the first episode of The Irregulars — loosely based on the Baker Street Irregulars from the Sherlock Holmes books— and so far it’s really good, especially if you are like me and appreciate seeing an established story retold from the point of view of another character (or in this case characters). A good batch of trailers this week, with that James Gunn movie everyone’s talking about and a Netflix flick about a group of astronauts headed to Mars who — surprise!— have an extra person aboard their ship. The Suicide Squad Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Viola Davis, and Sylvester Stallone (ser...

The massive cargo ship Ever Given has been stuck for nearly a week in the Suez Canal, captivating the internet and frustrating the teams responsible for dislodging it and the governments hardest hit by the shutdown of the maritime trade route. The ship (and its trademark “Evergreen” lettering painted on the side) has become so iconic, in fact, that its become a destination within Microsoft Flight Simulator, at least for one virtual pilot who appears to have created a mod that places the grounded vessel within the virtual Earth of the game, via GeekWire. Twitter user Mat Velloso shared a video from TikTok, originally captured and uploaded by user “donut_enforcement,” showing off the the flyby of the cargo ship to a convincing-sounding pilot narration as the boat sits stuck between the banks...

The ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 3 is a ThinkPad through and through. It’s got the keyboard nub, the discrete mouse buttons, and the all-black chassis with scattered dots of red. (If you’ve seen its predecessor, the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 2, you’ll know what you’re getting — the models are identical, with different chips.) But this ThinkPad has a unique feature you don’t see every day: an OLED screen. That, combined with its discrete GPU, puts the X1 Extreme Gen 3 out of the business laptop space that ThinkPads traditionally dominate and into the crowded market for ultraportable content-creation machines. Among those competitors, the X1 Extreme has some significant drawbacks that keep it from reaching the top of the pack. But it still includes the features that have made ThinkPads so dominant ...

One of the things that makes Animal Crossing so special is it’s soothing. There aren’t a lot of other games like it; it’s laid-back and comforting in a way that most games aren’t. Sometimes it can feel less like a game and more like a relaxing space to hang out in. But now that New Horizons has been out for more than a year, you may be looking for something just a little different. Cozy Grove might be just the thing: it has much of what makes Animal Crossing so great but in a tighter package. Also, there are lots of ghosts. Much like New Horizons, Cozy Grove drops you on a seemingly uninhabited island with the goal of turning it into a bustling town. The difference is that in Cozy Grove, the island used to be inhabited. And it still kind of is. When you first arrive, it’s mostly devoid of ...

On Friday, the Twitch streamer Ludwig slept in. He got up around 11AM PT and lay in bed, chatting with the more than 30,000 viewers of his stream. He’s spent a lot of time in that spot lately — in fact, he’s broadcast dozens of hours of himself curled up in a bright red race car bed since his stream first started. As of this morning, Sunday, March 28th, Ludwig’s stream has now been live for nearly two weeks straight. His stream started around 2PM PT on Sunday, March 14th, according to The New York Times. The plan was to stream 20 seconds for every new subscription purchased to his channel (subscriptions are $5 per month). [embedded content] It’s a bit like a telethon — he won’t stop so long as the money kept coming in. “We’re making this like a goddamn vending machine,” Ludwig said just a ...