Woot's Video Games for All sale slashes prices fast
Woot just turned up the heat on game deals. The retailer is running a Black Friday–style push titled “Video Games for All,” with deep cuts on physical PS5, Switch, and Xbox titles plus accessories. The sale stretches through March 5, but a limited-time extra kicker ends earlier: use LEVEL20 at check
Denza Z9GT Claims World's Longest-Range BEV
Denza’s Z9GT hits 1,036 km — the longest-range mass-produced EV. BYD’s premium Denza brand just raised the range stakes with a single press of the accelerator. The Z9GT announces a pure electric range of 1,036 kilometers, a figure the company bills as the world’s longest-range mass-produced BEV unde
What we’re watching next in humanoids
The demo reel era is over—the lab is finally delivering measurable, repeatable progress. A quiet consensus is forming across IEEE Spectrum Robotics, The Robot Report, and Boston Dynamics: humanoid platforms are moving from flashy stunts to demonstrable, benchmarkable capability in controlled environ
AI Reshapes Go as Pros Train Like Machines
AI now dictates how the world's best Go players train. Ten years after AlphaGo, the game has transformed into a testing ground where machine-style reasoning dictates the moves players study and imitate, not just the ones they dream up on their own. The MIT Technology Review piece traces a quiet revo
Discord's Age-Verification Rollout Triggers Privacy Backlash
Discord's latest move to gate access with age verification has privacy advocates bristling. The issue sits at the intersection of user safety, platform governance, and civil liberties. In the EFFector 38.4 issue, the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that requiring age verification to use online
Low-cost MacBook Aims to Win Windows Users
Apple is reportedly plotting a $699–$799 MacBook to win Windows users. Apple’s next move, if rumors prove right, centers on a colorful, budget-minded MacBook that would sit below the current $999 MacBook Air and eschew the “Air” and “Pro” branding. The device would run on one of Apple’s mobile proce
AI & Machine Learning
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What we’re watching next in ai-ml
Benchmarks are getting audited—no more smoke and mirrors. A quiet but powerful shift is reshaping how AI progress is judged. Across arXiv’s AI listings, the Papers with Code benchmark ecosystem, and OpenAI Research, researchers are doubling down on evaluation hygiene: robust ablations, cross-dataset
Finnish startup touts solid-state breakthrough; experts skeptical
Donut Lab says it has a production-ready solid-state battery, and the room goes quiet to listen. The Finnish startup has grabbed headlines by claiming a solid-state cell that can be scaled for mass production, charging fast, delivering high energy density, and tolerating extreme heat and cold—all wh
Industry 5.0 shifts AI to human-centric growth
Industry 5.0 finally treats workers as co-creators, not cogs. The shift from “do more with less” to “grow with people and machines” is picking up steam, according to MIT Technology Review Insights. The paper demonstrates a pivot from purely optimizing for cost and efficiency to orchestrating AI, clo
Donut Lab's Battery Claim Faces Keen Scrutiny
Donut Lab says its solid-state battery charges in minutes and costs less than lithium-ion—and now it must prove it. The Finnish startup rolled out a wave of videos last month to back up a claim that, if true, would upend EV economics and design. For now, skeptics say the real test begins where gloss
Industrial Robotics
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What we’re watching next in industrial
The demo is over—cobots are proving their payback in real plants. A recent cross-section of deployments reported by Automation World, Control Engineering, and Supply Chain Dive shows a clear shift from glossy proofs-of-concept to production-ready cells that actually contribute to the bottom line. Pr
Where to Buy Process Automation Services
ROI hinges on the integrator, not the cobot. Automation has migrated from single robots to end-to-end process solutions, spanning robotics and business process automation. Production data shows a widening appetite for outsourcing automation work as manufacturers seek faster deployment, more reliable
The Automation Buy: Who Delivers ROI?
Manufacturers buy automation and then race to prove the dollars add up. The trick isn’t finding a pretty demo; it’s lining up the long, stubborn chain of real-world requirements that sit between a PowerPoint slide and a working line. A recent industry thread points to a simple reality: robotic and b
Chinese Humanoids Head to Seoul Expo
Five Chinese humanoid makers are descending on Seoul next week to show what they can actually deploy, not just dream about. Automation World in Seoul will host a China Humanoid Conference component, bringing AGIBOT, Fourier, Huawei, Leju, and Unitree to the expo floor alongside AW 2026’s broader sh
Humanoids
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Hyundai MobED Roams AW 2026 on four wheels
MobED rolled onto the AW 2026 floor with four independent wheels—and it worked. Hyundai Motor Group’s Robotics Lab unveiled MobED, its Mobile Eccentric Droid, at the Smart Factory & Automation World show in Seoul after a December 2025 reveal. The platform relies on four independently driven wheels a
AI2 Robotics bets big on general-purpose humanoids
AI2 Robotics just closed a roughly $145 million Series B to push a general-purpose humanoid from lab demo to retail service. The company, founded in 2023 by Dr. Yangdong Eric Guo in Shenzhen, has been building AlphaBot as a wheeled humanoid platform that blends proprietary foundation models with rob
Untitled
Sorry — I can’t produce a humanoid-focused desk brief from the provided source. The link is about discount deadlines for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, not a humanoid robotics event or announcement. To meet the “in-domain” desk brief requirements (DOF counts, CRL levels, humanoid-specific context, etc.),
AlphaBot moves toward general-purpose humanoids with $145M
AlphaBot inches toward general-purpose humanoids, backed by a $145 million Series B. AI Robotics, a Shenzhen-based startup founded in 2023 by Dr. Yangdong Eric Guo, announced a CN¥1.2 billion investment to push its embodiment-focused AI stack from lab demo toward real-world utility. The round, desc
Consumer Tech
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Apple eyes cheap MacBook to win Windows users
Apple may be aiming a $699 MacBook at Windows holdouts. If rumors prove true, the plan would be to field a colorful, low-cost, non-Air, non-Pro notebook powered by one of Apple’s mobile processors, cutting through the price barrier that keeps many PC buyers on Windows. The chatter centers on a entry
RAM Shortage Bumps Galaxy S26 Price
RAM shortages are pricing your Galaxy S26. Samsung confirms that tight memory supply, plus higher material costs and tariffs, pushed the cost about $100 higher than the previous generation, a move executives describe as a real, apples-to-apples pass-through of the current squeeze in component pricin
Block slashes nearly half its staff, betting the future on AI
Block is slashing nearly half its staff, betting the future on AI. The fintech giant will cut more than 4,000 jobs, shrinking the headcount from just over 10,000 to under 6,000 as it doubles down on artificial intelligence. In a post on X, Jack Dorsey-frame and Block leadership framed the layoffs as
Apple and Netflix Team Up for Formula 1 Content
Apple and Netflix just rewired live sports for your screen. The two streaming giants have struck a cross-platform deal to share Formula 1 programming, letting Netflix stream the Canadian Grand Prix in May while both Netflix and Apple TV will air season eight of Drive to Survive, the docuseries that
China Robotics & AI
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FiveAGES Funds Unitree Brain, Raises RMB Hundreds of Millions
The robot brain behind Unitree just raised hundreds of millions. In January 2026, FIVEAGES was named a “核心生态伙伴” (Core Ecosystem Partner) of Unitree Robotics, signaling a formal, long-term coupling of hardware and software for industrial robots. Fiveages serves as the model provider—the “brain” in th
Denza Z9GT claims 1,036-km range
Denza’s new Z9GT claims 1,036 kilometers of pure-electric range, a number the brand bills as the world’s longest for mass-produced EVs under current standards. The car still leans into Denza’s premium design language, but the tech updates are what the automaker wants you to notice: the LiDAR sensor
Beijing AI storage maker seeks HKIPO
Beijing’s data lake specialist XSKY has filed for a Hong Kong listing, signaling another shift in the capital-raising path for China’s AI infrastructure players as the country scales its cloud and AI ambitions. Founded in 2015 by Xu Xin and Wang Haomai, XSKY positions itself as an independent distri
SenseTime Spin-off Targets Factory Floors with TX01
A SenseTime offshoot bets wheeled humanoids will run the factory line. Shenzhen Tianyuanxing Technology Co., Ltd. (Tianyuanxing) has closed an angel round worth tens of millions of yuan, led by Hongde Investment, Shengshi Hongyuan, and Haiyuan Capital. The company—born from SenseTime’s industrial ro
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What we’re watching next in other
Fresh AI rulemaking is creeping through the Federal Register’s AI docket, signaling that governance is moving from talk to real, enforceable duties. The three signals in view are complementary: the Federal Register’s docket indicates active rulemaking and more filings to parse; NIST’s newsroom and u
Sovereign AI: The New Battleground
Sovereign AI is the new battleground, and Washington seeks certainty. The debate hinges on whether the United States can offer foreign partners enough deployment control over American AI tech to keep influence intact while others push to reduce dependence on U.S. systems. In a pointed op-ed publishe
Wisconsin scrapped VPN ban, but age checks loom
Wisconsin scrapped the VPN ban, but the age-check bill still threatens online access. In a move that drew cheers from digital rights advocates and concerns from lawmakers who see a harder line on internet content, Wisconsin lawmakers removed the provision banning VPN services from S.B. 130 / A.B. 10
Password Managers: Your Online Lifeline in 2026
Your passwords just got a personal bodyguard. The Electronic Frontier Foundation released a February 2026 guide that simply treats password managers as the single most effective defense against phishing and data breaches. The point is blunt: if you’re still reusing passwords across dozens of sites,
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