Toast, a YouTuber who turns crazy ideas into real gadgets, decided to master one of the most complex machines in music. He wanted a piano that could be printed at home with a normal 3D printer. No strings or heavy wood frames – just layers of molten plastic that form keys, hammers and resonant tubes. The end result plays actual notes, fits on a desk and doesn’t cost much more than a few rubber bands.
Abxylute’s M4 Snap-On controller is available on Kickstarter today, and it is essentially a little palm rest that attaches to the back of your phone and transforms touchscreen torment into actual pint-sized gaming sessions. Early backers can score one for $39 while the early bird special is still going on – and you’ll get to try it out way ahead of the curve (deliveries start next month).
Shenzhen-based UBTECH Robotics has just shipped hundreds of Walker S2 humanoids to real factories, claiming that this is the world’s first mass delivery of robots intended to appear and move like real humans. They’re not holding back on any details either. Production ramped up in mid-November, and the first batch has now been dispatched to partners that require additional labor on the assembly line.
Wall adapters have been quietly getting the job done for years, stuck in the bottom of a bag or tucked away in some corner. But every now and then one comes along that’s worth taking a longer look at, for reasons that go beyond just being functional. The UGREEN Nexode Uno 30W fast charger, priced at $17.98 (was $29.99), is one of those. It resembles a small robot, with a pop-out socket and an LED display that flashes the charging status in simple little images, which is about as near as you can come to making paying attention to how long something is charging entertaining.
On Thursday afternoon in Florida, a roar echoed over the Atlantic as Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 36. Liftoff was at 3:55 p.m. Eastern, right in the middle of an 88-minute window that had been clear of previous issues. The vehicle, painted white and blue, rose steadily on clouds of fire from its seven BE-4 engines, carrying two small, but mighty, spacecraft from NASA.
A single bed on a Bambu Lab 3D printer whirs away for hours, layer by layer, building up a strong PLA filament mat, strand by strand. When the platform has cooled down, the interlocking rings lift loose, revealing a flexible mat of plastic chainmail ready to be draped over a test dummy. The guys over at Screen Tested wanted to know if you could genuinely make decent armor on one of these fancy home 3D printers – could it resist real-world violence?
Humanoid robot researchers say we’ll be living alongside machines as if it were second nature, but a recent presentation in Moswcow reminded us that, more often than not, these promises are built on shaky ground. That was the case last week when AIdol – billed as Russia’s attempt at cracking the market for upright, thinking robots – made its long-awaited debut. For a fleeting moment, it looked as though this was going to be some kind of smooth first impression.
Google DeepMind has just unveiled SIMA 2, an AI agent that dives headfirst into 3D video games and handles them like a pro in no time. Last year’s SIMA 1 could handle some basic directions in virtual settings, but until recently, it was only succeeding about 31% of the time when things got tricky, whereas humans were able to crack it at a rate of 71%. With SIMA 2, they’ve approximately quadrupled that success rate by combining it with Gemini’s language intelligence, which essentially allows it to take raw commands and transform them into a meticulously plan, along with all the back and forth communication.
Valve has thrown a few curveballs with the announcement of three new devices, all of which appear to build on the same magic that made the Steam Deck so successful. Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame will be available in 2026, all running SteamOS and designed to make it incredibly simple to share games, saves, and controls.
GPT-5.1 was released by OpenAI today, and the first thing you notice is the tone. Not the voice on your phone, which will be accessible soon, but how it speaks. Say goodbye to those inflexible, textbook responses that made conversing with it feel like talking to a friendly but awkward acquaintance. In its place, you get someone who sounds more like an intelligent buddy, remembering what you said five minutes ago and genuinely asking about your day.