Technology

A new photography competition has released its first batch of winners and finalists. A portrait of a playful sea lion has won the inaugural Nature Photography Contest, which showcases animals, plants, landscapes and human impact on the environment.

What did your area look like 1,000 years ago? Well, people in the year 3023 might have the luxury of finding out, thanks to an art/science project called the Millennium Camera, which will take an extremely long-exposure photo of the Arizona desert.

Although most smartphones are now waterproof, you definitely shouldn't take them snorkeling without an underwater housing. The Universal Lite is one such device that fits a wide range of phones, allowing them to serve as underwater cameras.

The US Army is swapping out its Cold War fleet of prop-driven recon planes with ones based on a business jet. Under a new contract, the Army is buying a Global 6500 jet aircraft from Bombardier with options for two more for development prototypes.

The US Space Force's X-37B spaceplane has launched successfully on its multi-year orbital mission. At 8:07 pm EST, the unmanned vehicle set atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy booster lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The US Navy and US Air Force have tapped Raytheon to design, build and test two high-power microwave antenna systems. These will be used in field-grade directed energy weapons to counter aerial drones and similar threats.

Samsung has announced its latest flagship handsets overnight, the S24 series, while also revealing a bunch of AI-powered tools designed to help users with photos and videos, communication, online search and more.

DJI has announced an update to its clip-on wireless microphone system launched in April 2022. The Mic 2 now comes with internal 32-bit float recording, noise cancellation and a longer battery life.

Sports optics manufacturer Swarovski Optik has cooked Merlin Bird ID and Mammal ID smarts into a pair of high-end binoculars called the AX Visio to name birds and other critters at the touch of a button.

Although DJI is probably the best-known manufacturer of consumer drones, it hasn't ventured into the world of delivery drones … until last week, that is. The company's FlyCart 30 (FC30) is now set to join the growing ranks of package-toting copters.

In order for cargo drones to be widely adopted, it helps if they're compatible with the shipping infrastructure. The creators of the Orca drone have kept that in mind, as their aircraft will take payloads stacked on standard-size shipping pallets.

If you're conducting covert military reconnaissance, you probably don't want the enemy seeing what's obviously a drone flying overhead. That's where the Evolution Eagle is intended to come in, as it's a drone that just looks like a big ol' bird.

China's Fiio – which recently announced a mechanical keyboard with a built-in DAC – has launched a new flagship desktop media streamer and headphone amp/DAC combo that's dominated by a slick smartphone-like user interface.

Home audio brand Victrola snuggled up with Sonos back in 2022 with a streaming turntable designed to feed groovy tunes direct to Sonos speakers over a wireless connection. Now the company has expanded to Roon and beyond with the Stream Sapphire.

Chinese projector company XGIMI has teased the first details of an upcoming long-throw projector that's built around its latest Dual Light Technology, and will also roll out with IMAX Enhanced certification.

This MS Office 2019 and Windows 11 Pro bundle offers a powerful suite of productivity tools, seamless integration, enhanced security features, and a user-friendly interface, ensuring efficient digital workflows. A lifetime license to both is just $50

Dreamscreens transforms your ordinary Smart TV into an immersive art gallery, boasting over 500 iconic masterpieces in ultra-high-definition 4K, providing a customizable and affordable art-viewing experience at your fingertips. Now available for $33

Rosetta Stone combines immersive real-life scenarios and native speaker interactions, providing a language-learning experience that accelerates fluency and enhances conversational skills. During our Tech Deals campaign, it’s on sale for $150

In order to keep surgeries minimally invasive, it would be great if implants could be injected into the body in liquid form, then solidified once in place. Well, a new ultrasound-based 3D printing process may one day make that very thing possible.

3D printing single objects out of different materials can be difficult, if those materials cure at different rates. The new Inkbit system addresses that problem, and has been used to print a complex functional robotic hand… in just one print job.

If you can 3D-scan it, you can 3D-print it – and Matter and Form has announced a super-versatile new way to do so. The Three system creates photorealistic, high-detail, full-color 3D scans of objects from coins to cars, and potentially beyond.

CES 2024 is fast approaching, and some consumer tech companies are teasing stuff early. LG has announced new additions to its UltraGear line of gaming monitors, including one that allows users to switch between 240-Hz 4K and 480-Hz HD using a hotkey.

Australian researchers are putting together a supercomputer designed to emulate the world's most efficient learning machine – a neuromorphic monster capable of the same estimated 228 trillion synaptic operations per second that human brains handle.

Scientists have grown a tiny brain-like organoid out of human stem cells, hooked it up to a computer, and demonstrated its potential as a kind of organic machine learning chip, showing it can quickly pick up speech recognition and math predictions.

This charmingly Japanese robot acts as a gaming buddy, taking the other controller and playing against you while chatting about what's happening on screen. It's designed to stave off loneliness, and teach increasingly isolated gamers to be social.

Upper Story's second board game uses a gorgeous array of mechanical gadgets to give kids a physical, visual, fun way to understand electronics – and to give parents the feeling their young genius might be able to get them into a better nursing home.

Right on schedule, Sony has unveiled a mid-generation refresh for the PlayStation 5. The update slims down both models of the console, beefs up the storage space, and adds an optional Blu-Ray drive that can be later fitted to the digital-only console.

That Lenovo launched a bunch of new laptops at CES 2024 is hardly surprising, but one of those new models has been transformed into a proof-of-concept that rocks an animated color E Ink outer lid.

Most laptops and Macbooks come with a webcam built in, but they can leave video-chatters somewhat wanting in terms of performance and image quality. Newcomer Opal Camera has addressed such things with a small-but-powerful model called the Tadpole.

More than a decade since the first low-powered but fuss-free, easy-to-use, inexpensive laptops running Chrome OS were launched, Google has now announced the Chromebook Plus program – a new performance-focused category with built-in AI.

Back in 2012, Vox Amplification looked to its design history to launch a pair of travel guitars based on the classic 1960s Phantom and Teardrop shapes. With NAMM just around the corner, the company has refined the concept for the feature-packed APC-1.

Though best known for its iconic electric guitars, Gibson also produced its own amplifiers until the late 1960s. A couple of years ago, company CEO Cesar Gueikian hinted at its return to tube amp manufacture, and now the first two combos have launched.

The world's largest music gear expo is set to open its doors next week, and Yamaha has popped up early with a groove machine called the Seqtrak that could have jumped straight out of Teenage Engineering's design playbook.

When it comes to tasks like the exploration of unstructured environments, traditional robots may be stymied by obstacles such as uncrossable gaps. That's where the FiloBot comes in, as it grows like a self-supporting vine.

Water striders are fascinating to watch, as they scoot across the water while supported by surface tension. Scientists have now built a tiny robotic version of the insect, which utilizes a record-breaking actuator to get a move on.

Figure has signed its first commercial deal, and is sending its general-purpose humanoid robots off to start real-world work at BMW's manufacturing plant in South Carolina. Founder and CEO Brett Adcock talks us through this rubber-meets-road moment.

If you want a wearable to track workouts, runs, sleep and plenty more, then there's no shortage of devices to pick from – and after a couple of weeks of testing we can tell you that the Coros PACE 2 has a few features that might make you choose it.

Google has promised big improvements for its Wear OS wearable platform later this year, but in the meantime Mobvoi has launched a new device that could be the best value smartwatch on the market right now: the TicWatch E3.

Google's Wear OS platform could certainly use some more actual smartwatches to run on, and Casio has obliged with the GSW-H1000 – the first G-Shock smartwatch from the brand to come with Wear OS on board.

Everybody wants a faster internet connection, and now engineers in Japan have shattered the record for data transmission. The team managed to transmit more than 20 times the global internet traffic per second through a single optical fiber.

While 5G feels pretty new and flashy, the industry is already making preparations for the next generation. LG Electronics and the Fraunhofer Institute have now conducted a test that set a new distance record for data transmission using 6G technology.

A team of international researchers say they’ve set a new world speed record for an industrial standard optical fiber that’s as thick as a human hair, achieving a data transmission rate of 1.7 Petabits per second over a 41-mile cable.

Budget smartwatch maker Amazfit has unveiled the Helio Ring, a smart wearable that's not designed for casual fitness fanatics but is aimed at monitoring key health metrics that athletes need to maximize performance.

Tired of losing your remote, or having to use multiple remotes for multiple Apple devices? Well, the Mudra Band allows you to wirelessly wrangle all your iOS/Mac gadgets via a single gesture-control wristband on your Apple Watch.

The lenses in our eyes stiffen as we age, making it harder to switch focus between different distances. But autofocus systems are now getting so compact and efficient that they fit in a set of glasses – provided you don't mind looking a bit dorky.

Finland's Varjo has announced the latest edition of its mixed-reality headset for enterprise and military, which is claimed to offer "virtual and mixed reality experiences practically indistinguishable from natural sight."

Fluid Reality is offering a cheaper, more lightweight haptic VR glove that doesn’t need to be tethered to bulky backpacks or multitudes of tubing. It’s designed to provide users with a high-resolution VR experience, direct to their fingertips.

"This is really the most incredible thing I've ever seen," said podcast host Lex Fridman, interviewing Mark Zuckerberg in VR using Meta's stunning new photorealistic avatars, coming soon to Quest, so lifelike that they "cross the uncanny valley."