Analogue Pocket Returns, Tariffs Lift Price to $240
Tariffs just pushed Analogue's Pocket to $240 as it returns to shelves. The Analogue Pocket—an eagerly awaited handheld that plays actual Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance carts—will be back in stock this week, with the dock accessory in tow. Preorders go live March 4 at 11:00 AM ET, wi
London hosts largest anti-AI protest yet
Hundreds of protesters marched through London’s tech heart, demanding the plug be pulled. On February 28, Pause AI and Pull the Plug staged what organizers billed as the largest anti-AI protest of its kind, drawing a couple hundred people to King’s Cross near the UK campuses of OpenAI, Meta, and Goo
Apple Refreshes Midrange Line: iPad Air M4 and iPhone 17e
Apple kept price steady while turbocharging its midrange lineup. The company rolled out a more powerful iPad Air M4 and the budget-friendly iPhone 17e, both priced at the same levels as their predecessors and with pre-orders kicking off at 9:15 AM ET on March 4. The iPad’s new flavor arrives about a
BMW Trials Hexagon's Wheeled Humanoid in Leipzig
BMW is piloting Hexagon’s wheeled humanoid AEON at its Leipzig plant, and it rolls faster than it walks. Engineering documentation shows this project began with theoretical evaluations, moved into laboratory tests, and reached an initial test deployment at Group Plant Leipzig in December 2025. A sec
What we’re watching next in china
Beijing’s robot localization drive just hit the factory floor. Chinese regulators have signaled a sustained push to localize core robot components—servos, controllers, and sensors—shifting procurement incentives toward domestically produced parts rather than imported substitutes. MIIT-linked releas
OpenAI Wins Pentagon Deal, Balances Safety
OpenAI just handed the Pentagon access to its AI for use in classified settings—but with guardrails that feel almost comic-book careful. On February 28, OpenAI announced a deal to let U.S. military personnel use its technologies in classified environments, while insisting it did not surrender its sa
AI & Machine Learning
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AI Rewrites Go Minds at the Top
AI now governs the moves of the world’s top Go players. In a quiet corner of Seoul, inside the Korea Baduk Association’s aging stone building, a quiet revolution unfolds. The room once filled with the soft clack of stone against board now buzzes with mouse clicks as professional players test themsel
AI Upends Go, and Cyber Threats Target Researchers
A cybersecurity researcher just faced death threats online, and AI’s reach now touches every corner of the digital world. Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B, had her career built on tracking cybercriminals—and on April 2024 she became the target of coordinated, chilling threats via
AI rewrites Go, reshaping the pro scene
Go’s top players now train to mimic AI, not invent. That sentence isn’t a tagline for a hype cycle; it’s the current reality, as AI has rewritten the old playbook and rewritten what “expert” means on the board. The MIT Technology Review’s The Download frames a pivotal shift: ten years after AlphaGo
Industrial Robotics
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Peripheral motion systems extend robotics on the shop floor
Robot-transfer units finally take robotics beyond the cell. When a robot shares a line with a conveyor, the magic isn’t just in the arm—it’s in the glide path that shifts the part from robot handoff to the next machining stage. Industry insiders say seventh-axis systems, or RTUs, are finally giving
Peripheral motion systems power real robotics deployments
Peripheral motion systems just turned a demo into a deployment. A growing class of add-on hardware—robot-transfer units, seventh-axis extensions, and other conveyor-tedied workcell enablers—has moved from chart-filled slides to line-floor reality, letting robots reach, load, and offload without bott
Integrated Intelligence Becomes the New Factory Benchmark
In 2026, the hard part isn’t buying robots—it’s stitching intelligence into the line. Factories are no longer debating whether to automate; they’re debating how to knit smart capabilities into every cell without crippling operations. A recent look at how vendors touting “best-in-class” manufacturing
Cobots Trim Cycle Times Without Halting Lines
Cobots keep lines running and cycle times steady. Across the modern factory floor, collaborative robots are moving from demo status to deployment. Industry practice shows Kassow cobots delivering accuracy, efficiency, and customization at dispensing stations, quietly tightening up repetitive tasks t
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China’s Humanoid Robots Sprint Ahead
China’s humanoid robots ship fast and cheap. The TechCrunch piece frames an emerging market where domestic firms are pushing out more units and iterating faster than their U.S. peers, all while the field remains fundamentally nascent. Important caveat the article notes: it does not publish standardi
China Leads the Early Humanoid Robot Market
China's humanoid robots are shipping faster—and beating the West to scale. The TechCrunch report on February 28, 2026 frames a market already breaking from the lab: domestic Chinese firms are moving more units and iterating more quickly than their U.S. counterparts in the still-nascent humanoid aren
China’s Humanoids Ship in Bulk, Beat U.S. on Speed
China’s humanoid robot push is no longer nibbling at the market; it’s shipping in bulk, iterating faster than Western rivals in a still-nascent field. The TechCrunch article frames a simple thesis: domestic firms in China are pushing out more units and refining their products at a breakneck pace, ou
Field-roaming robot dogs haul produce
Robot dogs haul harvests across mountain fields—no forklift required. IEEE Spectrum’s Video Friday spotlights DEEP Robotics’ Lynx M20 quadroped as it moves harvested crops through uneven, rural terrain. The clip shows a rugged chassis, robust off-road locomotion, and a cargo-handling workflow that a
Consumer Tech
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Qualcomm Unveils Wear Elite AI Chip
Qualcomm just unveiled an AI-first chip for wearables beyond the wrist. The Snapdragon Wear Elite is pitched as a “wrist plus” platform, designed to sit alongside the company’s existing W5 Plus rather than replace it. Announced at a press briefing, the Elite is built on a 3-nanometer process and sta
Claude Tops App Store After Ban Sparks Downloads
A political storm just handed Claude a surprise downloads boom. The AI world woke up to an unusual headline this week: Claude, Anthropic’s rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, surged to the No. 1 spot on Apple’s Top Free Apps after news that President Trump barred federal agencies from using Claude. In a move
Lenovo folds modular, foldable future into two devices
Lenovo just folded the future into a handheld and a modular PC, debuting two bold concepts at MWC that aim to redefine how you interact with a PC on the go. On one side sits the Legion Go Fold, a gaming handheld built around a flexible OLED display. The screen measures 11.6 inches, but can bend in h
Honor Magic V6: Thinner Foldable, Questionable Value
Honor’s Magic V6 is thinner than ever, but durability is the real question. The company rolled out the follow-up to its V5 in record time—seven months after August 2025’s launch—clearing the field in the ongoing thinness race that foldables rely on to stand out against Samsung and an anticipated App
China Robotics & AI
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Modular outdoor robots win $14M Series A
A deformable, modular robot platform just secured $14.4 million. Juewu Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., a heavy-load, all-terrain robotics company, closed a Series A worth over RMB 100 million, led by China Growth Capital with participation from Jiangxi Financial Control Capital. The round builds on
DeepSeek V4 Goes China-First on Domestic Chips
DeepSeek’s V4 multimodal model is going all-in on China-made hardware, a move that could reshape the domestic AI stack and ripple through global sourcing decisions. DeepSeek is lining up a major update to its multimodal large language model, with native image, video, and text generation capabilities
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Anthropic Faces Lose-Lose Over Pentagon AI Policy Deadline
Anthropic and the Pentagon stand on a policy cliff with no winners in sight. A looming deadline for a policy change has turned the fight over AI in national security into a bruising stalemate. On one side, the Department of Defense wants guardrails that curb risk and control how commercial models ar
Anthropic-Pentagon AI Clash Looms Over Deadline
Anthropic’s bid to supply AI to the U.S. defense apparatus is stalling on a looming deadline for policy alignment, a tug-of-war that could remake how private firms engage national-security work. The public dispute centers on how the Department of Defense wants to govern and field advanced AI, and wh
Anthropic Faces Pentagon Deadline Standstill
Anthropic's Pentagon deadline looms, and the alliance could crater without a policy tweak. The tug-of-war centers on how the Defense Department wants to govern commercial AI models used in national security—while Anthropic and other tech firms push back on terms they view as overly crippling or risk
Sovereignty Gap Reshapes U.S. AI Policy
The U.S. is pitching "sovereign AI" abroad, offering deployment control through American tech—while partners push for true sovereignty. A center-right think-tank analysis argues the big question isn’t whether countries can access U.S. AI tools, but whether joining such programs comes with an assuran
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