Noki spent months assembling a dream from the past in the softly lit glow of a workshop clutterd with desk lamps and CRT monitors. His creation, a fully portable Commodore 64, is not disguised as some sophisticated modern gadget, but rather a dead-set accurate clone. The computer folds open like an old briefcase from the 1980s, with a beige plastic outer casing full of sharp lines and curves that evoke recollections of ancient office equipment.
Markarian 178 lingers quietly in the constellation Ursa Major, a mere 13 million light years from our own home planet earth. As a blue compact dwarf galaxy, it’s around 5,700 light-years wide, small in comparison to the Milky Way’s vast expanse. Astronomers first noticed it in the 1960s and 1970s for its extremely bright ultraviolet glow, which Benjamin Markarian “collected” in his catalog. There are actually over 1,500 Markarian galaxies, each of which shines in ultraviolet due to the high energy processes that occur within them.
Photo credit: Windows Latest
Leaks have a habit of catching you off guard when CES is right around the corner. This time, we’re looking at Lenovo’s Legion Pro Rollable, a gaming laptop that aims to broaden your vision in ways that regular laptops cannot. Official promotional images and internal conversation reveal that it is a device with a screen that rolls out sideways, transforming what would otherwise be a tiny laptop into something much larger.
NASA and Japan’s JAXA have collaborated to investigate Cassiopeia A, also known as Cas A, a large debris field located 11,000 light years away and around 340 years old. The XRISM satellite was expressly created to examine star graveyards in greater detail than ever before, and it has just passed over some extremely interesting data revealing evidence of chlorine and potassium in the blazing wisps of Cas A.
Viwoods debuted the AiPaper Reader C to slip neatly into a pocket right alongside your regular phone, but with a screen designed for long reading sessions without all the usual glare or battery drain. They brought out this device as a follow up to their earlier black and white model, and this time they’ve swapped in a color display which makes a big difference when handling comics, mags and illustrated guides. At $349, its placement really is where e-readers meet basic mobile tech, and the end result feels like a nice companion for everyone who’s just had it up to here with scrolling through endless feeds.
LimX Dynamics, based in Shenzhen, has finally made a significant breakthrough with their humanoid robot Oli. At 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighing 121 pounds, this machine has long promised to offer more than just sterile lab test results. And, based on the footage published thus far, Oli is capable of delivering. It’s been put through its paces on a simulated construction site, with loose sand attempting to suck it under, boards attempting to shift out from under it, rocks protruding as if waiting for some clumsy robot to come along and get trapped, and piles of debris searching for an opportunity to trip it up.
Hangzhou, home to a stunning 12 million people who are continuously speeding around town on motorcycles and in cars, has had one major issue: getting traffic to flow smoothly at crossings. However, a new high-tech traffic officer has recently appeared at the intersection of Binsheng Road and Changhe Road in the Binjiang area, and it has sparked much discussion among locals. They’ve named it Hangxing No. 1, and it’s a genuine oddity: a 1.8m-high traffic robot with arms sticking out at all directions.
Northrop Grumman unveiled Project Talon in the vast hangars of the Mojave Air and Space Port in the California desert. This unmanned aircraft is ready to team up with fighter jets, transforming solo missions into coordinated raids that protect pilots and provide them a competitive advantage. Northrop’s engineers and the magicians at Scaled Composites have been pounding this prototype into shape over the past 15 months, and in just nine months, it will make its first flight.
Apple has a talent for removing the annoyances from our everyday routines and replacing them with a refined sense of style. Consider earbuds: for years, you had to select whether you wanted them to be incredibly comfortable or super quiet. You choose open designs that allowed the world in, or sealed tips that kept you completely out of touch, even in a packed subway. With the AirPods 4, which have active noise cancellation, now available for $99 (was $179), all of that sounds like old history.
Photo credit: 2025 CREATE Lab EPFL CC BY SA
In a small quiet lab tucked away in the Swiss countryside, a team of engineers has figured out a method to repurpose discarded langostino lobster shells into grippers that can pick up pens or tomatoes with amazing ease. These aren’t the conventional metal claws you see attached onto assembly lines; instead, they employ the leftovers from seafood dinners, combining biology’s trash with a few basic mechanical adjustments to make tools that bend and hold like something very much alive.