Leica’s a strange one. It only puts out a handful of cameras every year, and most of them are remixes or minor iterations on previous models. Since 2017 its flagship has been the solid but still somewhat archaic M10, but now the company has revealed its successor: the even more solid and also still somewhat […]
Look upon my CES 2022 work from home setup and despair
Working from home has been my normal for more than a decade, but it’s getting a bit stale. Time to spice it up — with some of CES 2022’s hottest items, all of which definitely kind of exist. First off let’s upgrade these dinky twin 27-inch Dells I’ve been attempting to work on for the […]
Twitter bans Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene’s personal account over COVID-19 misinformation
Twitter has permanently suspended the personal account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) “for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy,” according to the company. Her official government account remains active. Rep. Greene has been prolific in the posting of articles and statistics supposedly pertaining to the pandemic but often are misleading or flat-out wrong. This […]
Cheugiest tech moments of 2021
Technology has come a long way in 2021. There’s widespread mRNA vaccines! An asteroid-deflecting space mission! A very powerful laptop with a very controversial notch! But it’s unfortunately easier to think about the cringiest moments of the year than it is to remember times when we marveled at indoor farming robots. So hop aboard the choo-choo-cheugy […]
Voyant raises $15M to scale production of its tiny, inexpensive lidar tech
The future of lidar is uncertain unless, as Voyant hopes to do, its price and size are reduced to fractions of their current values. As long as lidars are sandwich-sized devices that cost thousands, they won’t be ubiquitous — so Voyant has raised some cash to bring its smaller, cheaper, more easily manufactured, yet still […]
Kathy Lueders on Artemis, restructuring NASA and the lifecycle of the ISS
Kathy Lueders, head of NASA’s newly minted Space Operations Mission Directorate, joined us at TC Sessions: Space last week for a chat about the future of the agency and what she is looking forward to — and dreading — in the next decade of missions. In the first place, Lueders explained the reasoning behind NASA’s […]
Ameelio’s free video calling service for inmates goes live at first facilities
Ameelio, a nonprofit startup that intends to replace inmate-paid video calling in prisons with a free service, is making inroads against the companies that have dominated the space for decades. With nine facilities in Iowa up and running and talks progressing with dozens more ahead of a planned 2022 launch, the company may soon usher […]
FTC may consider rule curbing algorithmic discrimination and ‘commercial surveillance’
The Federal Trade Commission appears to be preparing to consider a rule aimed at digital platforms that either invasively track their users or allow others to do so. The “Trade Regulation Rule on Commercial Surveillance” is at a very early stage but could be the first major anti-Big-Tech action by new FTC Chair Lina Khan. […]
AI-powered VFX startup Wonder Dynamics raises $10M A round
Wonder Dynamics aims to make “blockbuster-level” visual effects achievable by living-room-level creators using AI and cloud services, though it has kept its product closely under wraps. The secretive company, which boasts a star-studded set of advisors, has raised a $10M A round ahead of a planned launch later in 2022. The company was founded by […]
First Resonance brings its space-scale manufacturing OS to hardware makers with $14M A round
First Resonance makes software for making hardware. The company’s Ion platform provides an all-in-one option for anyone who has to manage manufacturing lines, supply chains, engineering and design, among other things. Now, with $14 million in new funding, the company aims to scale up its presence and make a full-court press on the hardware makers […]