Author: News Room

For many people who grew up in the early 2000s, the Game Boy Advance was the handheld they carried everywhere. The Keyboy Advance is trying to bring some of that nostalgia to a modern desk, using the wide, landscape-style silhouette of Nintendo’s 2001 handheld as the basis for a compact mechanical keyboard kit. It is not an official Nintendo product, but the visual references are easy to spot. How much Game Boy Advance is in the design? The Keyboy Advance takes the general shape of the Game Boy Advance and rebuilds it around a 50% HHKB layout. The overall footprint…

I have a soft spot for phone brands that made Android feel less inevitable. Meizu is one example, but there were plenty of smaller names with their own strange little gravity, from Fairphone’s repair-first stubbornness to Unihertz’s tiny oddballs, Shiftphone’s modular ideals, Murena’s de-Googled pitch, and Teracube’s attempt to make phone ownership feel less disposable. They weren’t always perfect, and some were never built to go mainstream, but they made smartphones feel alive around the edges. Now the AI phone push is arriving, and it already looks less like a creative explosion than a cover charge. Meizu said in 2024…

If there’s one thing that has disrupted consumer tech economics over the last year while changing how we understand and recommend products, it’s the ever-rising cost of memory and chips.  The desperate need to scale up AI infrastructure has pushed major manufacturers to prioritize enterprise demand, leaving everyday consumers with far fewer choices. Those available cost significantly more than they did a year ago. RAMageddon is disrupting consumer tech economics You could’ve dismissed the memory crisis as a theory, but if even the world’s most valuable consumer tech company is feeling the pressure, it’s safe to say that it’s become…

A new hardware accessory is looking to simplify one of the more frustrating aspects of using a MacBook: juggling different keyboard shortcuts across video calls, productivity apps, and development tools. A startup Project Mirage has launched Dune, a compact USB-C accessory that adds three programmable buttons to compatible MacBooks. The device automatically changes its functions depending on the application currently in use, allowing users to perform common actions with a single press instead of memorising different keyboard shortcuts. Dune combines context-aware controls with AI-powered customization Unlike traditional macro keypads, Dune is designed specifically for MacBooks and is custom-built to match…

When Apple unveiled the iPhone Air, I knew immediately it would be my next phone. I have always loved small phones, and I stretched my iPhone 13 mini for as long as possible. But it struggled to keep up with my usage, so I had to upgrade.  Since Apple no longer makes a small iPhone, the slim iPhone seemed like the right choice at the time. And honestly, it worked out well. While the iPhone Air is not as easy to handle as an iPhone mini, it is one-handable thanks to its slim profile and lower weight.  I also got…

Apple is expected to debut the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max this fall, possibly alongside its first foldable iPhone. The standard iPhone 18, however, is said to arrive later in spring 2027 with the iPhone 18e. While the lineup is expected to get more RAM, the upgrade may still fall short of what the standard and 18e models need for two advanced Siri AI features. The issue is Apple’s AFM Core Advanced model. It powers Advanced Dictation Preview in iOS 27, along with Apple’s new expressive Siri voices. The model runs locally on supported devices, but it…

Spotify has removed more than half a million streams from Malcolm Todd’s song “Earrings” after finding suspected bot activity, according to a report by Financial Times. The track, first released in 2024, suddenly rose to No. 1 on Spotify’s daily U.S. chart after a sharp jump in streams. At the same time, traders on prediction market Kalshi had been betting on whether Todd would land a No. 1 song on Spotify USA before the end of June. There is no suggestion Todd or his team were involved in any attempt to boost the song’s numbers. Kalshi has said it is…

The race to blanket Earth with satellite internet has unlocked faster connectivity for millions. But according to the European Southern Observatory (ESO), it could also make one of humanity’s oldest hobbies, and one of its most important sciences, a whole lot harder. The organization warns that the rapid growth of satellite mega-constellations could severely disrupt observations made by some of the world’s most powerful telescopes. Astronomers say the night sky is reaching its limit According to the ESO, the number of satellites orbiting Earth has exploded in recent years. Starlink alone now accounts for roughly 10,400 satellites, while before 2022,…

Most robots are pretty good at seeing, but touching? That’s been a much tougher problem. While humans instinctively know how hard they’re gripping a coffee mug or pressing a button, robots have traditionally relied on complex arrays of tiny sensors to estimate the same thing. Now, researchers at Queen Mary University of London believe they’ve found a much simpler solution: make touch visible. A sensor that turns touch into color As per the study published in Science Advances, their new tactile sensor changes color whenever pressure is applied, allowing a standard camera to “see” exactly how an object is being…

I have been testing Radial for the past week, and it’s quickly become one of those apps I didn’t know how I could live without. It’s a radial menu for macOS that puts your shortcuts, scripts, and automations right where your cursor is, so you never have to go hunting through menus to find what you need. The app just received its 5.0 update, adding AI actions powered by Claude, window layouts, variables, a redesigned settings interface, a new Atmosphere background effect, and a squircle menu shape. I got to try most of these, and here’s what I found. How…