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Tech News
NASA has named its next major space observatory after Nancy Grace Roman, the agency's first chief astronomer and a key figure behind Hubble. The telescope will offer a field of view at least 100 times wider than Hubble's, allowing it to capture light from potentially a billion galaxies over its operational life.
The piece traces why colors, historically described with only a handful of words per language, needed a numerical system for accurate reproduction across billions of screens. It explains that mapping shades to numbers, rather than an ever-expanding list of names, allows for the precision required to distinguish nearly identical hues.
Japanese researcher @dydt_Nao successfully demonstrated a dinner-plate-sized USB flash drive built from magnetic core memory, transferring both a text file and a small monochrome bitmap image between two PCs. The device, which uses a Raspberry Pi Pico as its controller, stores only 128 bytes of data and displays activity through a 32x32 LED array that lights up as each magnetic core is accessed. The creator plans to showcase the device at Maker Faire Tokyo 2026 in early September.
The magic eye tube, invented by Allen B. DuMont in 1932, was a vacuum tube used to visually indicate signal strength in radio receivers, helping users tune into stations accurately. RCA released the first commercial version, the 6E5, in 1935, and these tubes remained common in radios until around 1980, when transistors replaced vacuum tube technology.
Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds reflects on the racing series' evolution from a fledgling 2014 championship, where cars needed mid-race swaps to finish, into a global motorsport with vehicles exceeding 200 mph. Dodds, a former Volvo and Honda motorsport executive, frames Formula E as both a competitive sport and a real-world laboratory for electric vehicle technology, noting it remains the only sport certified as a B Corporation.
Chinese robotics firms are building humanoid and industrial robots using Nvidia's chips and simulation software, an area of AI hardware trade that remains largely permitted under current U.S. export rules. Nvidia has positioned itself as a key infrastructure provider for this 'physical AI' sector, supplying both computing power and development platforms to Chinese customers despite broader U.S.-China tech tensions.
Apple is preparing to release its first smart glasses as early as next year, built around Siri and Visual Intelligence rather than augmented-reality displays. The glasses will use cameras and microphones to let Siri interpret surroundings, translate text, and answer contextual questions, plus built-in speakers for audio, according to a Bloomberg report citing Mark Gurman. Apple is designing multiple frame styles in-house using acetate material, with possible future versions adding health-tracking features like heart-rate sensors.
San Francisco startup Mara raised $7 million in pre-seed funding to build Spike, a portable counter-drone system carried in a backpack. The system pairs a launcher holding up to 48 lightweight 250-gram Seeker interceptors with a Spotter sensor unit that fuses optical, acoustic and optional radar detection to track fiber-optic and autonomous drones that evade radio-frequency jammers. Mara says each Seeker costs roughly the same as the sub-$1,000 FPV quadcopters it's meant to destroy, undercutting rival interceptors by a claimed 20-fold margin.
The Debian Project has voted to allow developers to use generative AI tools when producing contributions to the project, provided the resulting work meets Debian's existing standards. The decision clarifies that contributors remain fully responsible for reviewing, testing, and validating any AI-assisted code or documentation before submission, regardless of the tools used to create it.
Engadget rounded up its recent reviews, including senior writer Daniel Cooper's take on the Pebble Time 2 smartwatch alongside coverage of Google's Pixel 11 lineup. Cooper praised the Pebble Time 2 for deliberately avoiding heavy AI features, calling it a refreshing option for users who want simpler wearables.
Therabody has released the second-generation Theragun Sense, a $299 massage gun aimed at everyday relaxation rather than intense deep-tissue recovery. It features an LCD screen that walks users through guided routines, showing where to apply the device, for how long, and with how much pressure, with additional routines available via the Therabody app over Bluetooth.
A leaked DLL file from DLSS 5, discovered inside NBA 2K27's installation files, has been packaged into the RenoDX modding tool and applied to numerous games including Remedy's Control. The unfinished build initially worked only on RTX 50-series cards, but modders quickly adapted it for RTX 40-series GPUs as well, letting a much wider audience test the unreleased technology months ahead of Nvidia's planned fall launch.