Carrera, a German company that has been making slot car toys since the 1960s, has taken racing to a whole new level with Carrera Hybrid. This new system ditches the traditional grooved tracks for a free-roaming experience controlled by a smartphone app. Available in the US from September 1 for $199.99, the starter set includes 15 track pieces—straights and curves—along with two Porsche 911 GT3 R racers scaled at 1:50.
Photo credit: Android Authority
Google Translate has been the go-to tool for quick translations for a long time, bridging language gaps with a tap. Now it’s going into new territory, to teach you a language rather than just translate it. A recent hands-on look at an unreleased feature, uncovered through an APK teardown, shows Google is going to challenge Duolingo with a Practice mode.
Ivan Miranda’s latest project—a full sized kayak printed in under 24 hours—takes additive manufacturing to new heights. Using a custom built 3D printer with a treadmill as the print bed, he aimed to print a functional watercraft faster than most people can assemble a piece of IKEA furniture.
Photo credit: Sreang Hok/Cornell University
Video used to be a window to reality, a reliable record of events. Now with deepfakes, that trust is crumbling. Anyone with a decent computer can create a video of world leaders saying things they never said or events that never happened. It’s getting worse and worse, but a team at Cornell has come up with a way to fight back. Their solution is called noise-coded illumination and it uses something as ordinary as light to watermark videos in a way that’s almost impossible to fake.
Wireless earbuds flood the market faster than you can charge a pair, but every so often a deal comes along that demands attention. Right now, Beats Studio Buds + are down to $99.95 from their usual $169.95—a price cut that makes them a serious contender for anyone looking for good sound without breaking the bank.
A Chinese modder named Qingchen DIY has built a handheld gaming PC that’s a fever dream for gamers who want raw power. This custom built device is made from the guts of a high end gaming laptop and leaves commercial handhelds in the dust. With a 12.5 inch 4K touchscreen and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU it’s a experiment of what happens when you don’t compromise on specs for portability.
