Comcast started rolling out Xfinity Shield this month, and the free piece that has everyone talking is WiFi Motion. Eligible internet customers who rent a recent Xfinity gateway can turn their existing Wi-Fi into a basic movement watcher without buying cameras or extra sensors. Radio waves already fly between the gateway and other gadgets that stay plugged in. A person walking through those paths changes how the waves arrive, and software in the box treats that change as motion.
In 2008 Peter Serafinowicz walked onto a BBC set in the role of an Apple store employee and introduced Mactini, the smallest computer in the world. One key. Press it once for A. Press it 26 times for Z. For a comma, hold four seconds, lift for two, then fire off a rapid little drum fill. The audience laughed. Apple kept making things smaller anyway.
Every year, families forget the same dates, a birthday passes by, and an anniversary card is bought two days late. Three phones and a scrap of paper attached to the refrigerator are used to keep holiday shopping lists. Dragon Touch’s 15.6-inch TM15 digital calendar, priced at $149.99 (was $160), is a plug-in device that sits on the same wall or counter, keeping everything in one place and visible from across the room.
Gamescom usually sells the next console, the next season pass, the next reason to stay up too late. This year IKEA arrived with a nine-piece line called YXSTABY, built with Xbox designers piece by piece, and the pitch is quieter than the hall around it. Play now happens on sofas, at kitchen tables, between homework and dinner. These objects are meant to roll in for that hour and roll back out without turning the room into a cave.
Rockstar and Netflix put twenty-six minutes of actual GTA 6 gameplay on screens this afternoon, all captured on a regular PlayStation 5, and for the first time the wait stopped feeling like rumor. Jason and Lucia walk into a dim apartment building looking for a man named Raymond on a pickup for someone called Boobie Ike.