A YouTuber named smill just finished a playthrough of Minecraft using only a receipt paper for visuals. He turned off his monitor, took screenshots of the game one by one and fed them straight into the printer. Each frame came out on a strip of thermal paper, a long blurry record of his adventure. By the end he had defeated the Ender Dragon, so you can finish the game this way if you have the patience and a stack of paper rolls.
Maker RCLifeOn came up with a crazy idea one day: why not remove the board from that hydrofoil setup and replace it with something with pedals and gears? The result is a contraption that promises to glide over the water on plastic and wood wings, driven solely by the rider’s own two legs and the gentle hum of an electric engine. Months of scribbling down ideas and late-night printing sessions later, that concept finally hit the water for the first time.
NVIDIA’s Shield TV Pro is a deliberate contrarian to all of the budget-priced streaming sticks and cubes. For those who want the best performance in a streaming device, the Shield Pro delivers where others just perform. Priced at $169.99 (down from $199.99) ahead of Black Friday, recent software updates in February 2025 added Auro-3D audio and new GeForce NOW titles so it stays current.
Huawei has unveiled a Wi-Fi router that shatters all preconceptions about what these devices are supposed to look like. The X3 Pro is a sleek, mountain-inspired objet d’art that boasts a clear cone and a textured peak inside. The main unit is long and thin at the top, flares out at the bottom, and has a translucent top piece that let some light in. A metal band wraps around the center, with a gold-etched mountain design and the Huawei emblem beneath it. Off the back of the main unit is a compact satellite router, perfect for expanding your network without making a big impact.
A 1972 BMW 2002 stands on a quiet Houston street, its Golf Yellow paint giving off a warm glow with the afternoon sun in the same manner it did half a century ago. This two-door coupe, which had only 19,000 miles before heading into a Munich workshop for a tune-up a few years ago, appears like a battle-hardened survivor from a time when cars had true character. Edgar and Nicolas Navarro run Bavarian Econs Tech out of a generic small garage in Munich; they removed the ancient 4-cylinder engine, which used to purr along in traffic, and filled the empty area with batteries and wires. What eventually emerged on the other side is known as the 2002te.
Snow covers the ground in a wooded clearing, where a hiker stops to catch his breath and grabs his iPhone 17 Pro. But it slips out of his gloved hand and into the snow. Moments later a raccoon emerges from the underbrush, sweeps away the powder and reveals the screen. He opens the camera app and soon a crowd of woodland creatures gather around this unexpected prize. What follows is an impromptu performance titled “A Critter Carol.”
A case for your iPhone has just become so much more. The REETLE SmartInk I attaches to 14 series and above devices, adding a 3.97-inch E Ink screen on the rear. This allows you to read texts or take notes without bringing up the main screen.
Photo credit: UCSD
Engineers at the University of California, San Diego have created a thin electrical patch, a smart sticker if you will, that attaches to the rim of a coffee mug or water bottle. This turns the whole thing into a health tracker. Grip the cup as usual and it will draw in a small amount of sweat from your fingertips to measure your vitamin C levels.
Pete Bitar has been chasing the ultimate rush: the thrill of soaring through the air propelled by electricity. Years of work in his workshop have finally paid off with the introduction of the LEO Solo JetBike, the latest in a line of prototypes that have experienced their fair share of ups and downs.
By the end of 2025, we will have far more processing power at our disposal than there was in all data centers a decade ago, and the true magic will occur when that capacity begins to trickle into our daily lives without raising a blip. Enter the latest iPad Air, with a beastly M3 chip, a device that silently gets the job done without raising a fuss. The 11-inch variant with 128GB storage is priced at $449 (down from $599) ahead of Black Friday, which significantly reduces the tablet’s pricing and makes the iPad Pro’s starting price of $999 appear a little pricey.