Luke Creatives spent more than eight months on a soda machine that listens to a spoken request and mixes a drink from a bank of concentrated flavors. Ordinary fountain buttons give you one listed option. This cabinet aims at anything you can say out loud, from strawberry lemonade to a summer night, and it draws on roughly half a million possible mixes to do it.
Photo credit: Sara Tan | RMIT
Researchers at RMIT University’s Centre for Additive Manufacturing have printed a titanium lattice that floats while remaining open so water can pass straight through. Lead researcher Dr Jordan Noronha and project leader Distinguished Professor Ma Qian worked with Professors Andrey Molotnikov, Milan Brandt and Martin Leary, along with partners at France’s Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers. Their hybrid starts with Ti-6Al-4V, an alloy that normally sits around 4.43 grams per cubic centimeter, more than four times the density of freshwater.
Fresh iPhone 17 and iPhone Air owners are already asking the same thing. If battery is the only reason to spend more, do the new iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max actually earn the upgrade. Tech Chap tried to answer that by running those two new Pros against last year’s 17, 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max, and the thin iPhone Air until every phone died, then he ran the whole thing a second time with a Galaxy S26 Ultra in the mix.
Super Valid Designs spent two months on a ski lift because mice had moved into the chicken coop and ordinary traps only opened a revolving door. Catch one batch and another arrives. Live relocation felt like a better bet than a pile of snap traps, so the plan became a pair of jobs in one machine: baited gondolas that work as traps, then a cable line that carries those cars 250 feet down a hill and dumps the passengers into brush without anyone walking the route every night.
Photo credit: Macrumors
Apple just put Active Noise Cancellation, Adaptive Audio, and stem volume swipes into the open ear pair that costs $149, and that price is the whole story. AirPods 5 with Wireless Charging Case arrived in stores on September 18 at the same starting money Apple used for AirPods 4 two years ago, except ANC is now standard instead of a $50 upcharge. You still get the familiar short stem and the same 4.3 gram bud that rests in the bowl of the ear with no silicone tip. A redesigned multiport acoustic layout and next generation Adaptive EQ are meant to add depth and detail across a wider range of ear shapes, while Personalized Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking keeps music, movies, and games moving with your head.