Latest Technology

Boston- and San Francisco-based Mode Designs may not be a mainstream brand, but the company has made quite a name for itself in the mechanical keyboard world in recent years. The company’s previous releases, the high-end custom Mode Eighty tenkeyless (TKL), which you can easily configure to cost over $600 –without keycaps and switches — and the SixtyFive were major hits among mechanical keyboard afficionados. Now, the company is getting ready to launch the Sonnet , its first 75% keyboard, that is, a more compact TKL with dedicated function keys. Pre-orders for the Sonnet start on April 29th, with prices starting at $299, though chances are you’ll want to make a few changes to the basic configuration that will likely add at least another $50 or so to the base price. Sadly, though, it’ll be at least October 2022 before Mode will start fulfillment (which is still better than many other projects in the keyboard enthusiast space — looking at you, GMK ). This is not, however, a group bu...

Meet Pixy , Snap’s little flying companion. Pixy is a mini drone that can act as a camera sidekick when you can’t ask someone to take a video of you. It’s yellow, it’s cute and it’ll be available in the U.S. and in France for $229.99. “Today, we’re taking the power and magic of the Snap Camera — the spontaneity, the joy, and the freedom — to new heights. A new camera to match the limitless potential of your imagination. Meet Pixy, the world’s friendliest flying camera. It’s a pocket-sized, free-flying sidekick for adventures big and small,” Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said during the Snap Partner Summit keynote. Pixy isn’t your average drone as there is no controller and no SD card. It feels like the company has optimized the device so that it’s easy to pick up and get started. There’s a button to activate the device and a camera dial to select the flying mode. There are four preconfigured flight paths. You can tell Pixy to float, orbit around you or follow you as you walk or run. You se...

Cultivated meat, grown in a bioreactor rather than out on the range, might be one of the big food trends of the decade. But it’s relying on tech built around multiplying yeast and bacteria cells, not animal tissue — and Unicorn Biotechnologies wants to change that with new equipment created with mass food production in mind. It’s just raised $3.2M to turn its prototype bioreactor into a commercial product. Though we hear about new cultivated meat companies and funding rounds with frankly amazing frequency ( this one happened while I was writing this!), there are fundamental questions about whether this method of growing meat can scale. The simple fact is that animals like cows are grown in huge environments that are mostly empty or filled with hay; every gram of cultivated meat comes through an expensive, complex machine that probably wasn’t designed to do this stuff in the first place. “Most biomanufacturing systems were designed and optimized for making bacteria (making enzymes)...

As humanity prepares to return to the Moon (“to stay,” as they remind us constantly), there’s a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built to make sure astronauts are safe and productive on the lunar surface. Without GPS, navigation and mapping is a lot harder — and NASA is working with lidar company Aeva to create a tool that scans the terrain when ordinary cameras and satellite instruments won’t cut it. The project is called KNaCK, or Kinematic Navigation and Cartography Knapsack, and it’s meant to act as a sort of hyper-accurate dead reckoning system based on simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM) concepts. This is necessary because for now, we have no GPS-type tech on the Moon, Mars, or any other planet, and although we have high-resolution imagery of the surface from orbit, that’s not always enough to navigate by. For example, at the South Pole of the Moon, the fixed angle of the sun results in there being deep shadows that are never illuminated, and brightly baked highligh...

European Union lawmakers have taken a step closer to agreeing rules to standardize how a range of mobile gadgetry is charged. Today MEPs in the European Parliament’s internal market and consumer protection (IMCO) committee adopted their position on a Commission proposal announced last fall, ahead of a full vote by the parliament next month to confirm how it will negotiate with Member State governments on the detail of the legislation. The Council adopted its position on the common charger proposal back in January. The IMCO committee voted 43:2 in favor of a negotiation position that will push to standardize charger ports for a range of mobile devices on USB Type-C, including smartphones, tablets, handheld games consoles, e-readers, digital cameras, electronic toys and more — with MEPs voting to expand the original proposal to cover laptops, among other additional products. The committee backed exemptions for devices when they are too small to house this type of port — such as...

Everyone thought it was a little bonkers when Panic announced that they would be making a monochrome handheld gaming machine with a sort of subscription model where you can’t choose the games you get. DOA, right? Well, the preorders sold out so perhaps not. And fortunately, Playdate is a fun, weird and promising device that’s exactly what it sets out to be, and for those attracted to its funky aesthetic and games, a worthwhile purchase. The original idea of the Playdate was a truly pocket-size gaming machine that set itself apart not just with a black-and-white screen and the inclusion of a crank for gaming gimmicks, but a scheduled release of games that would appear automatically and regularly … a play date. Unexpected levels of interest from gamers (20,000 first batch units sold out even at the rather high asking price of $180) and developers interested in something new and weird led them to expand the first “season” of games to 24, sweetening the deal somewhat. After a few dela...

Luis Severino cupped the glove around his ear in frustration. The Yankee Stadium two-strike Death Star siren was blaring over the PA, the announcers reasoned. The pitcher signaled frustration with a new piece of technology that’s quickly been rolled out on baseball’s biggest stage. Manager Aaron Boone walked out to the mound, handing Severino a replacement piece. It was a brief, embarrassing moment for PitchCom , a new piece of hardware that’s quickly made its way onto the uniforms of pitchers and catchers across MLB. After a season of testing in the Low-A West minor league, there was one major issue its creators haven’t addressed: user error. “I left it in the dugout,” Severino confessed to reporters after the team’s 4-2 win over Boston. “We were worried about that,” says PitchCom co-founder, Craig Filicetti. “Honestly, it is so lightweight and so imperceptible. We’ve had people that just walk away with them, when they’re on their head in several situations.” It was a momentary —...

Spotify’s $90 in-car entertainment system “ Car Thing ,” which went on sale to the general public in February, is gaining a number of new features. The company announced today it would add one of users’ most-requested features — the ability to add songs and podcasts to a queue — alongside other updates involving voice commands, playlists, responding to phone calls, and controlling other media. The music streaming system is meant to offer consumers an option to more easily listen to Spotify while in the car if they don’t already have a built-in media and entertainment system, or a vehicle that supports Android Auto or Apple’s CarPlay. Or it could be used with those other systems if people just happened to prefer Car Thing’s interface. As Car Thing already connects to the vehicle via USB, Bluetooth, and Aux in order to stream Spotify from the driver’s phone, it makes sense to allow the device to work with other phone functions, too. Spotify says device owners will now be able to se...

A growing number of people are looking for ways to live more sustainably amid increasing concerns over the environment and what we humans keep doing to pollute it. Today, a startup called Grover that has built a business around one aspect of that — enticing people to buy and eventually discard less consumer electronics such as phones, monitors and electric scooters by offering them attractive subscriptions to use their stock of new or used gadgets instead — is announcing a big round of funding to expand its business. The Berlin-based company has raised $330 million — specifically $110 million in equity and $220 million in debt — money that it plans to use both to expand its stock of devices as it gears up for more user growth; but also build out more tools and financial services to personalize the experience for individuals, and to encourage more business on its platform through schemes like loyalty programs.  Energy Impact Partners is leading the equity portion of the Series C,...