Riley picked up an old Prusa MK3S+ 3D printer whose hot-end had already failed in an explosive blow-out. Most owners would scrap the machine or hunt for a replacement nozzle and heater block. He saw an opportunity to remove the entire filament path and install something else in its place. The motion system, frame, and stepper motors still worked. Only the part that melts plastic was gone, which left an open mounting point for a different kind of extruder.
Anyone who needs a laptop that can carry a full day of serious work without constant pauses still lands on the same machine. Apple’s 16.2-inch MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro, priced at $2,499 (was $2,999) in the Space Black configuration with 24GB of unified memory and a 1TB solid-state drive, remains the cleanest answer for the money.
Photo credit: 2026 EPFL LMTS CC BY SA 4.0
Engineers in Lausanne have built a motor easy to mistake for a length of heavy sewing thread. FiberMotor, from the Soft Transducers Laboratory at EPFL, measures only 1 to 3 millimeters across and turns electricity straight into a push or a pull. Herbert Shea, who leads the lab, calls it the first fiber-format sliding motor, and the description fits once the inner strand starts to move.
Amazon spent years selling Fire tablets as cheap doorways into Prime Video and Kindle. Yesterday, the company set that approach aside and introduced three devices that carry the Alexa name instead: an 8.7-inch model from $229.99, an 11-inch model from $329.99, and a 12-inch Pro from $499.99. Orders opened the same day. Shipments in the United States, Mexico, and Canada start October 14, with the United Kingdom and several European countries following on October 19.
Citroen just opened the order books in Germany for the Ami Outdoor, a special edition of the boxy electric two-seater that has been scooting around European side streets since 2020. List price starts at €9,690 including tax, the rough equivalent of $11,000, before delivery and plates. A lease is offered at €65 a month over 36 months after a €1,350 payment up front, with a yearly allowance of 5,000 kilometers. Dutch pricing sits at €9,940, about €1,190 above a plain Ami. Belgium has matched the German figure for private buyers through the end of October. Wider European availability is expected after that first wave. In Germany the car is sold online only.