Built

Call it a "walled garden" or an ecosystem, but at the heart of Thursday's blockbuster US lawsuit against Apple are the many ways the company gets customers to remain faithful to its products.- Apple versus PCs -Very early on in its nearly half-century history, Apple made a decision that its products were to stand out alone and shouldn't be combined with products from other companies. With fans touting its better design and easier interface, Apple computers often drew the vitriol of PC users who equated its products as a…

SpaceX's mega-rocket blasted off on another test flight, aiming to make it halfway around the world this time. SpaceX's mega-rocket blasted off on another test flight Thursday, aiming to make it halfway around the world this time. The first two flights last year lasted mere minutes before blowing up over the Gulf of Mexico.Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, soared from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border and headed out over the gulf. No people or satellites were on board. The rocket…

Wooting’s 60HE is widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best, gaming keyboard on the market. That’s all thanks to Rapid Trigger, a feature that speeds up how quickly you can activate a key to respond in games like Valorant or Counter-Strike 2. Now, Wooting is launching the 80HE, a larger keyboard with an 80 percent layout. It comes with a new “Rappy Snappy” feature that combines with Rapid Trigger to make it even faster to pull off moves like strafing and bunny hopping in games.“Rappy Snappy is our new spin on…

The new model, called RFM-1, was trained on years of data collected from Covariant’s small fleet of item-picking robots that customers like Crate & Barrel and Bonprix use in warehouses around the world, as well as words and videos from the internet. In the coming months, the model will be released to Covariant customers. The company hopes the system will become more capable and efficient as it’s deployed in the real world.  So what can it do? In a demonstration I attended last week, Covariant cofounders Peter Chen…

Kyle Kucharski/ZDNETZDNET's key takeawaysFor $129, the Opal Tadpole, a tiny external webcam (supposedly the smallest ever built) designed to clip onto your laptop screen and blast your built-in webcam's capabilities out of the water. It comes with 4K video resolution, a mirrorless Sony 48-megapixel  IMX582 Exmor RS sensor, and a directional microphone that only picks up sound from the camera's field of vision. The result is professional-level video quality that looks like it's coming from a "real" camera but in a…

Kyle Kucharski/ZDNETZDNET's key takeawaysFor $129, the Opal Tadpole, a tiny external webcam (supposedly the smallest ever built) designed to clip onto your laptop screen and blast your built-in webcam's capabilities out of the water. It comes with 4K video resolution, a mirrorless Sony 48-megapixel  IMX582 Exmor RS sensor, and a directional microphone that only picks up sound from the camera's field of vision. The result is professional-level video quality that looks like it's coming from a "real" camera but in a…

Scientists have grown small but complex models of human organs from live fetus cells for the first time, giving experts new insight into our development and potential treatments for malformations while in the womb.These organoids aren't full replicas of organs, but they're close enough to the real deal that they can be used to study disease and other aspects of human biology that are difficult to investigate in living people.In a new study carried out by an international team of researchers, lung, kidney, and intestine…

Photo: ReVision Energy An abandoned gravel pit was the ideal site for this community solar farm in Maine, because nearly 90% of the state is forested. The Wishcamper Hampden solar farm is in Hampden and was built by owner Wishcamper Companies, a clean energy and real estate investor and project developer ReVision Energy. The $15 million, 6.77 megawatt (MW) project will generate an estimated 8,700 MWh of clean energy annually. The clean power generated will be the equivalent of the energy…

It is cold, dark and deathly quiet at an out-of-town business park in West Sussex. Hours before the car-parts business, the furniture workshop and the trampoline park open, the only noise competing with the hum of the A27 spills out from unit 45.“We are serving up the ultimate builders’ breakfast!” bellows a jingle playing out just after 7.30am. “The Bald Builders Breakfast … Packed with the good stuff, plenty of sauce and the two biggest clowns on site.”Brad Hanson and Sam Hughes, who both live nearby, are broadcasting…

The White House has announced an investigation into cars built in and other unnamed "countries of concern." The Biden administration notes that cars are "constantly connecting" with drivers' phones, other vehicles, American infrastructure and their manufacturers, and that newer models use tech such as driver assist systems."Connected vehicles collect large amounts of sensitive data on their drivers and passengers; regularly use their cameras and sensors to record detailed information on US infrastructure; interact…