Bismuth crystals have an otherworldly beauty, shimmering with iridescent colours that seem to dance across their stair-step surfaces when light hits them. Mistaking them for some kind of high-tech creation is easy, but they’re actually 100% natural. Their unique geometry – a real maze of spiraling edges and colors – has people wondering: what is it about these crystals, made from molten metal as they are, that gives them their otherworldly looks?
Amazon, the company that changed retail, is now dipping its toes into the vast expanse outside of Richland, Washington. Here, among the sagebrush and Columbia River, the company is getting into nuclear with a project that will power its data centers. The Cascade Advanced Energy Facility is the centerpiece, a collection of small modular reactors (SMR) that will produce power without fossil fuels.
Toyota’s micro solar EV, the FT-Me, has moved a step closer to reality thanks to a grant from the UK government. The £15 million award, announced on October 15, will go through the Drive35 initiative and be overseen by a Toyota-led team to evaluate every component of this strange little vehicle. It was unveiled in Brussels in March, but now the hard work begins: transforming drawings into something you might see whizzing through Derby traffic.
Inventor James Bruton is known for his big builds and this one is a doozy: a miniature electric car steered by the movement of his face. He used the new Arduino UNO Q, a single board computer with a microprocessor, to create a vehicle that combines cutting edge tech and hands on engineering.
Watching a movie on a big screen TV is already a treat, but Govee’s Envisual TV LED Backlight T2 with Dual Cameras ($74.99 after automatically applied 25% off coupon at checkout) takes it to a whole new level.
Google just released Veo 3.1, the latest version of its AI video tool, and it’s evident that they focused on the elements that are most important to users who edit video for a living. It was released alongside Flow, a video editing application that has always been strong but now become sharper and more versatile. In the five months since Flow’s inception, users have created over 275 million recordings, prompting Google to address requests for improved sound handling and hands-on controls.
Realme has released the GT 8 Pro in China, a phone that gives control back to you in ways few others will. Five days before the official launch on October 21, the company flooded Weibo with teasers showing off the device in full. Simply put, Realme made something that makes you want to grab a screwdriver and mod, or at least the camera.
McDonald’s Japan never fails to surprise with its collaborations and this latest one brings in the Street Fighter series for the first time. From October 22, 2025, the fast food chain will be rolling out a limited time menu that pays homage to the classic characters of the game. Fans who grew up trading Hadokens in arcades or grinding matches in Street Fighter 2 have a reason to line up at the golden arches. The menu takes the familiar beefy staples and adds flavors inspired by characters like Ryu, Chun-Li and Ken.
Sharp’s latest creation, the meerkat-shaped robot Poketomo, turns daily conversations into something memorable. This little guy weighs 200g and is 12cm long so you can clip him onto your backpack or slide him into your pocket. He costs 39,600 yen ($270) but the real magic happens with a monthly plan that starts at 495 yen for 400 chats. Poketomo can even connect to cloud services via Wi-Fi thanks to a Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 CPU, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.
