Coca-Cola just dropped the 2025 edition of their beloved “Holidays Are Coming” ad – the one that taught an entire generation to finally start thinking about Christmas. Last year, the cars were slipping on ice and the passengers looked like melted wax. This year, the wheels turn alright but the passengers are all furry critters – polar bears, sloths, squirrels and even seals.
A single frame from Halo: Campaign Evolved depicts Master Chief standing on the Ring’s beach, with sunlight cutting through palm fronds so sharp you can count the veins. Twenty-four years after the original Halo debuted on a clunky Xbox, the same shore shines in Unreal Engine 5.
Hyundai has just introduced Elexio, a brand new electric SUV in China that is less expensive than a fully loaded Honda Civic and comes standard with Dolby Atmos sound. Six speakers come as standard, but if you choose Bose, you get two more. When you open the door, you’ll notice a 27-inch 4K screen sprawled across the dashboard, like a TV that has forgotten where it belongs. Kugou music and iQIYI are already installed and ready to play movies and music in the sound bubble while driving.
Photo credit: Jeon et al., Sci. Adv. 11, eadt5888 (2025)
A lab in Seoul had a major breakthrough with a project that produced a robot that resembles a gummy bear and behaves like a living cell. Just try dropping it from a table to see what happens – it splats and then just rolls away like it never happened. Squeeze it between your fingers and it oozes like jelly, only to snap back to its original shape when you let go. Play a burst of sound at it by sending two of them towards each other and they basically kiss, fuse and transform into one bigger blob – complete with whatever each one swallowed along the way.
Bose has spent years perfecting the art of quieting the world down and the QuietComfort Headphones, priced at $199 (was $349), are the latest result of that effort with an almost blissfully personal focus on comfort. These over-ear headphones arrive in a slim black box with a USB-C plug, a good old fashioned audio cable for when you need to go wired, and a compact travel case that’ll slip easily into your hand luggage. And the best bit is they weigh less than half a pound, fold up neatly when you need to stash them away and have earcups that swivel to fit snugly round your head – no more bulky gear here.
Joel Creates spent his childhood staring at Nintendo 64 game displays, believing that the luminous box led to another world completely. Thirty years later, he was able to distill that universe into a handheld gadget that is a true trip back in time: a portable game system with a color CRT screen and a Nintendo Switch 2 that slides straight into the front, much like a tape does into a VCR. The end result is a beast that weighs more than a laptop, lasts approximately an hour on a single charge, and looks like it came directly from the 1996 assembly line (which most likely never existed).
France has just launched a simple yet genius idea: a stretch of highway that fuels electric vehicles as you drive. No plugs, no stops, just a seamless flow of energy from the road to your wheels. Coils in the asphalt beam power to receivers installed under compatible vehicles, trucks and buses. So you never have to stop.
Erick from Not From Concentrate spent months shrinking Sony’s PlayStation 5 into a 6-litre aluminum box. He calls it the Tiny PS5 Redux. Builders can now download his guide and build their own. The finished machine sits between two full-size PS5s like a child flanked by parents, yet it plays the same games at lower temperatures.
Photo credit: Rendezvous Robotics
Elon Musk has a talent for bringing far-fetched ideas down to earth. When word surfaced last month that two of the new generation of space companies were collaborating, he couldn’t help but share his thoughts, even if it was merely to make a simple point about SpaceX’s intentions to build data centers in orbit. There was no fanfare, no extensive explanation, just a deadpan remark to scaling up existing satellite technology. In a world where the demand for processing power is constantly increasing, that casual statement sent shockwaves across the IT community, drawing everyone’s attention to that untapped resource – literally the void where silicon meets sunlight.
