GADGET
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Kohler’s voice-controlled bidet seat turns your dumb toilet into a luxurious smart-throne
Some companies take monitors, TVs or AI-fueled laptops to CES. Others bring a toilet seat you can talk to. The 151-year-old bathroom appliance company Kohler will introduce the PureWash E930 Bidet Seat in Las Vegas next week. The accessory fits onto most elongated toilets, transforming your dumb can into an Alexa- or Google Assistant-powered smart-loo. Kohler says the PureWash E930…
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The Morning After: Tech to help you stick to your New Year’s resolutions
New Year’s resolutions are usually set with the best intentions – I may have already failed at one of mine already — but the right tools (and resolutions, if I’m honest) can make achieving those goals easier. Naturally, with all the wearables and smartwatches around, there’s a fitness theme to half of our guide, but smartwatches can help nudge you…
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Tech’s biggest losers in 2023
The last few years have been, to put it mildly, rough. And 2023 continued to bring sad tidings. Amid the humanitarian crisis that is the Palestine-Israeli conflict, plus increased fears around the credibility and reliability of AI and Elon Musk’s ongoing meltdown, tech’s biggest players also suffered their fair share of losses. This year, we saw the demise of the…
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Swedish Researchers develop ‘electronic soil’ that speeds up plant growth
Researchers from Linköping University in Sweden developed a ‘bioelectronic soil’ that can speed up the growth of plants in , or farms that grow plants without soil in environments made up of mostly water and a place for roots to attach. After integrating the engineered ‘eSoil’ into the framework where seedlings grow, researchers discovered that sending electrical signals through the…
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How we built a less-explodey lithium battery and kickstarted the EV revolution
Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium — these foundational materials are literally what the modern world is built on. Without sand for glass, say goodbye to our fiber optic internet. No copper means no conductive wiring. And a world without lithium is a world without rechargeable batteries. For the final installment of Hitting the Books for 2023, we’re bringing…
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Netflix milks 'Squid Game' again with a $39 in-person 'experience'
At its heart, Squid Game is a critique of capitalism and yet, Netflix can’t stop finding ways to squeeze money from it. After renewing the show for a second season and then debuting a reality show based on the series, Netflix opened a pop-up experience in Los Angeles where fans can pay to play games inspired by the show, eat…
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Webb telescope’s new Uranus image looks like a portal to another dimension
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has a treat to celebrate the upcoming second anniversary of its launch. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), which operate the craft alongside the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), shared a recent image of the icy planet Uranus. The picture, resembling a glowing blue marble rippling into a black ocean, was funneled through the…
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Nintendo has unofficial The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening PC remake taken down (update)
Update December 15, 2:10PM ET: As expected, Nintendo lawyers stepped in to force Itch.io to take down the game, so unfortunately it is no longer available to download. Our original coverage follows below. An anonymous and inventive Nintendo fan has recreated the Game Boy classic The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening with a twist that separates it from the official…
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The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are getting AI-powered visual search features
The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are about to get some powerful upgrades thanks to improvements to the social network’s AI assistant. The company is finally for real-time information to the onboard assistant, and it’s starting to test new “multimodal” capabilities that allow it to answer questions based on your environment. Up to now, Meta AI had a “knowledge cutoff” of…
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Researchers fuse lab-grown human brain tissue with electronics
In a story ripped from the opening scenes of a sci-fi horror movie, scientists have bridged a critical gap between the biological and electronic. The study, published in Nature Electronics (summarized in Nature), details a “hybrid biocomputer” combining lab-grown human brain tissue with conventional circuits and AI. Dubbed Brainoware, the system learned to identify voices with 78 percent accuracy. It…
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