Latest Technology

FleetZero has an ambitious goal: to compete with global shipping companies with its own boats, powered entirely by electricity . The company just secured $15.5 million in new funding and is looking for the first ship to convert to run on its shipping container-shaped batteries. The company’s plan, described in detail here , is to convert existing ships to electric propulsion, replacing the diesel engine or generator with enormous batteries of the company’s own design. These would be loaded and unloaded like any other cargo, swapped out at ports and charged between journeys. Done right (and it seems likely that’s the way they’re trying to do it) a ship doing this can handle some of the longest and most popular routes across the Pacific. But though it all sounds good in theory, obviously at some point you need to put these theories on the water, and that’s the next step for the company. Fortunately, co-founders Steven Henderson and Mike Carter have backgrounds in shipping and shipbuild

European Union lawmakers are proposing to ban flavored heated tobacco products — a category that covers vaping — in a move they say is intended to protect the health of young people after a “significant” rise in sales of novel heated tobacco products. The EU has set itself a goal of creating a ‘tobacco free generation’, and having less than 5% of the population using tobacco by 2040, as part of a major anti-cancer drive. But the rise of vaping — with its array of youth-friendly flavored cartridges/pods, touting tastes like bubblegum, crème brûlée, mint or strawberry watermelon — presents an obvious challenge to steering young people away from smoking. Announcing the proposal to amend existing EU rules, to remove an exemption on the sale of flavored tobacco products that currently applies to e-cigarettes and other heated tobacco products, the Commission said sales volumes of these products had risen at least 10% in at least five Member States, adding that the sales volume of heated

Few consumer electronics categories matured as quickly as wireless earbuds. We went from the first good implementation of the technology to near ubiquity, seemingly overnight. Suddenly a good pair is cheap and they seem to be everywhere. It’s precisely for this reason that it’s become nearly impossible to distinguish yourself from the masses of companies operating in the space. But Nura has had a secret weapon, from its earliest days, when its founder brought a massive prototype box of circuitry to the TechCrunch offices almost exactly six years ago this week. The company’s user-customizable sound profiles have remained a genuinely exciting feature that’s managed to set the company apart from the teeming throngs of headphone makers. Today, the Australian-based startup is announcing the upcoming release of NuraTrue Pro. The headphones, which will first be made available as part of a Kickstarter campaign, are being positioned as the tier above the company’s existing NuraTrue buds. The

The axe has fallen for e-cigarette maker Juul. The FDA ordered the company to stop selling and distributing its ubiquitous vaping devices in the U.S. Thursday, a dramatic end for a company that dominated the e-cigarette market and was valued at $38 billion at the top of its game. Juul will no longer be able to sell its vapes nor its 5 percent or 3 percent tobacco and menthol-flavored pods in the U.S. without “risk[ing] enforcement action” from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Retailers will also be prohibited from stocking Juul products in the U.S. The FDA’s ban against Juul come after the company failed to provide consistent evidence about the safety of its vapes and tobacco pods. “As with all manufacturers, JUUL had the opportunity to provide evidence demonstrating that the marketing of their products meets these standards,” Acting Director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products Michele Mital said. “However, the company did not provide that evidence and instead left us

Cashify, a marketplace for gadgets trade-ins and buybacks in India , has raised $90 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its business in the world’s second largest smartphone market. Prosus Ventures and NewQuest Capital Partners led the seven-year-old Indian startup’s Series E funding, Cashify said on Thursday. Paramark Ventures and existing backers including Bessemer Venture Partners, Blume Ventures and Olympus Capital also participated in the new round, which included some secondary transactions. The new round, which multiples the startup’s valuation by 2.5 times since Series C funding, takes Cashify’s to-date funding to over $130 million. Cashify operates an eponymous platform — both online and physical stores and kiosks — for users to sell and buy used smartphones, tablets, laptops and other gadgets. Users sell to and buy devices from the startup by visiting the startup’s website or app. Additionally, Cashify also works with all top smartphone makers including

Detroit-based Airspace Link has positioned itself as a provider of increasingly important infrastructure in the burgeoning drone services space, letting operators get local and federal approval quickly. With $23 million in new backing, the company now plans to take its platform to other countries looking to get their drone industries off the ground. The company’s main offering is an online service that helps anyone working with UAVs to get FAA permission to fly, by showing the necessary safety protocols are in place. This process, like any form of red tape, is especially difficult for startups and individuals to manage, and even large companies with compliance teams would like it to be easier. “The drone industry for beyond line of sight, things like food delivery, have been held back by this,” said CEO Michael Healander. “We all know drones can do these things, but integration in the national infrastructure isn’t there. Operators are building their own systems to prove they have rad

Rune Labs, a precision neurology company in San Francisco, announced that its StrivePD software ecosystem for Parkinson’s disease has been granted 510(k) clearance by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin using the Apple Watch to collect and measure data from Parkinson’s patients. The FDA approval is another reason the Apple Watch is a big player in helping people with Parkinson’s. While there are several medical-grade devices capable of tracking Parkinson’s symptoms, many consumers will want an Apple Watch because it is familiar to them and has other uses — like fitness tracking, heart rate monitoring and, most recently, medication tracking , among other things. The StrivePD software uses Apple’s Movement Disorder API (Application Programming Interface) to track tremors and dyskinetic symptoms of Parkinson’s from the Apple Watch. The motion data is collected in an iPhone app, allowing patients to take notes about their symptoms, overall mood, medication usage and m

Puffco has long led the market with innovative cannabis vaporizers. The Puffco Peak Pro is easily one of the best e-rigs available, and the company just unveiled a new vape called the Proxy. It offers the best of the Peak Pro and can be built into various form factors. Don’t be distracted by the lovely pipe. That’s just a piece of glass. The Proxy slides into the glass piece. Think of the Proxy as a modular dabbing rig, able to fit into any form factor made for the unit. Bubbler? Sure. Glass beaker? Yep. Pipe? Obviously. The $299 self-contained rig is about the size of a taller D-cell battery. Inside is the same heating element found in the company’s other flagship product, the Peak Pro. USB-C recharges the battery, and the unit comes pre-programmed with four different heat levels. Puffco ships the Proxy with the pipe shown here, along with a travel case that holds cables, a cleaning kit and a concentrate container spot. It’s simple to use: Open the carb cap at the top, drop in yo

One of the challenges faced by people with Parkinson’s disease is the possibility of “freezing” during normal movement, causing falls and lack of mobility. Surprisingly, small external cues can help them escape freezes or avoid them altogether — and De Oro has raised $2.8 million to commercialize its NexStride portable gadget , which provides those cues on demand. The simplest way to understand freezing is that the normal pathway in the brain for your body turning the impulse “walk forward” into actual movement doesn’t activate correctly. This can lead to slow or stopped movement despite willing one’s limbs to move the way they normally do. Studies have found a surprisingly effective technique for preventing this: cueing. When a person sees or hears an external cue associated with moving forwards, it activates a different pathway for walking forwards, breaking the person out of the frozen state. De Oro’s device provides two such cues. One is a little metronome-like ding that makes t

Sonos went a bit further downmarket recently with the Ray , a smaller and cheaper soundbar than the Beam, itself a smaller, cheaper soundbar than the Arc. But while the Ray performs well, it doesn’t quite earn its premium and leaves one feeling that they should have just gone for something bigger. No one should have to suffer the sound that comes out of TVs these days, especially when you can get a soundbar for under a bill that will be wildly better. Get into the $150-$200 range and you can get a sub as well and some extra features like smart assistant, Airplay, and so on. But Sonos knows that its customers are willing to pay considerably more for its slick integration and advanced features. At $279, the Ray is priced well above other essentially 2.0-channel systems except for the likes of Bose, another brand that generally gets a pass for inflated price tags. But the truth is it’s not really competing against standalone soundbars — it’s competing against other Sonos options. If a

European Union co-legislators have reached provisional agreement on a common charging solutions for smartphones, laptops, tablets and other small and medium sized electronics — some 15 different categories in all — agreeing that, by autumn 2024, USB Type C will be the common charging port for in scope devices. Laptop makers have been given a little longer to implement the common charging solution on account of different power charging characteristics — with 40 months after the rules enter into force to adapt their kit. Wireless charging interoperability is also being addressed by the EU — although not immediately; lawmakers have agreed for the Commission to ask standards authorities to come up with a standard to enable wireless charging interoperability. The Commission will then be empowered to adapt the directive via delegated acts to ensure that wireless charging kit does not sidestep the requirement for a common approach. The provisional agreement between the European Parliament

Apple is improving its webcam on the shiny new M2 MacBooks , but for those of us still chugging along on our existing MacBooks, we’ll be able to use our iPhones as webcams ( … if we don’t want to sneak a look at our phone during a Zoom meeting). Later this year, Apple will begin selling a Belkin mount that lets you clip your iPhone to the top of your MacBook. Then, while on FaceTime calls from your laptop, you’ll be able to use iPhone camera functions like portrait mode, center stage and studio light, a new feature that brightens your face and darkens the background behind you. You can also use your iPhone camera on other MacOS apps, like Zoom. Without even adjusting your phone, your camera can also somehow provide a desk view (wide angle lenses, perhaps?). This may be useful for a math teacher, for example, who wants to write out the steps to solve an equation without hooking up a tablet. In practice, it probably won’t look as nice as it did at the keynote — whose desk is actually o

Today at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple unveiled a slew of upgrades headed to iPad devices in iPadOS 16, the latest version of the company’s tablet-focused operating system. A redesigned multitasking interface — dubbed Stage Manager — makes it simpler to see which apps are open and switch between tasks, while new tools offer ways for users to juggle up to eight apps at once and resize windows. Previously, iPadOS could only run two resizable apps side by side (Split View) and bring a minimized third app above them in a capability called Slide Over. Improvements arrived in iPadOS 15 last year, simplifying the process of dragging and dropping text, images, links and files from one app to another. But the workflow remained somewhat clumsy — even with the addition of a multitasking toolbar. Stage Manager automatically organizes apps and windows, allowing users to drag and drop windows from the side or open apps from the Dock to create groups of apps. The window of the

Apple surprised WWDC keynote watchers with the release of a new, fully redesigned MacBook Air. The MacBook Air, Apple’s most popular notebook computer, last got a significant physical overhaul in 2018. The new MacBook Air borrows design cues from both Apple’s latest iMac line, as well as the new MacBook Pros that were released in late 2021. It’s also powered by the first second-generation Apple Silicon processor — the M2 system-on-a-chip . The new MacBook Air features thinner bezels surrounding the display (albeit with a notch) and drops the tapered case found on earlier models in favor of a base with consistent thickness more similar to the ones found on the new 2021 MacBook Pro. Despite the loss of the taper, the 13-inch laptop is thinner (at its thickest point) and lighter than the outgoing version. It’s 2.7 pounds in total, significantly lighter than the 14-inch MacBook Pro. It’s only 11.3 mm thick (0.5 inches), and it now comes in a champagne-ish color as well as a very deep blue

During a keynote at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the company debuted the latest version of WatchOS, the operating system that runs on the Apple Watch. Apple claims that it has improved the Apple Watch’s ability to detect arterial fibrillation (AFib), an irregular heartbeat that can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure, and other heart-related complications. With the arrival of WatchOS 9, supported Apple Watch device models can now detect “burden,” or how often a person experiences AFib over a certain amount of time. Apple was granted 501(k) approval from the U.S. Federal Food and Drug Administration this morning. As opposed to full approval, 501(k) approval doesn’t require companies to provide effectiveness data from clinical trials. With WatchOS 9, supported Apple Watch models now show heart zones to get a sense of your intensity level. You can set up distance and time intervals, and there’s haptic and voice feedback to tell you when to switch modes while working

Ring announced new features for its Ring Protect Basic plan, such as more alert options, exclusive discounts (10%), up to 50 video downloads (up from 20), and 180 days of video (up from 60), plus a ton of “coming soon” features (smart alerts for cars, animals, alerts for breaking glass and open doors). However, with these new upgrades, the price of the Protect Basic plan is increasing starting in July to $3.99 a month or $39.99 a year in the U.S. Ring shared the news in a surprising note this week, sharing that existing customers will see the new features on July 1, and will experience the price jump whenever their subscription renews. Image Credits: Ring The Ring video doorbell launched in 2015 as one of the first video doorbells on the market. Two years later, Ring’s cheapest security camera subscription plan was introduced and has stayed flat at $3 per month ever since (well, until this week) The 99-cent increase has some users understandably aggravated, especially those who

Garmin just brought solar power to its Forerunner line, a cult-favorite among runners. Along with some other devices, the company took the wraps off its new Forerunner 995 Solar today. The $600 running watch packs a new touchscreen display, physical buttons, up to 20 days between charges via its “Power Glass” charging lens , multiband GPS and a new heart rate variability feature, among other things. Garmin is also selling a standard 955 (sans solar), which shaves $100 off of the price and five days off of the effective battery life. Toward the lower end, Garmin also announced the Forerunner 255 . As the Verge pointed out, it isn’t all that different from the earlier Forerunner 245. The $350 device adds multiband GPS, contactless payments and some new software features . It comes in two sizes, each with optional music features that’ll set you back another 50 bucks. All of the new watches are available as of June 1. Garmin’s Forerunner 995 Solar. Image Credits: Garmin Solar-powe