odd look at news on the web
Compact tiny house fits two bedrooms and a surprisingly useful kitchen
12 March 2026 @ 3:03 pm
Despite its modest length of just 24 ft (7.3 m), the Premium Vista packs an impressive amount of features inside. Its space-saving interior includes a well-stocked kitchen, plus two loft bedrooms.Continue ReadingCategory: Tiny Houses, OutdoorsTags: Building and CStep sequencer playfully reimagined as an analog wooden toy
12 March 2026 @ 1:08 pm
I've seen a lot of cool hardware for making music over the last couple of years, but none of it is quite as focused on the pure joy of playing an instrument like the Tembo.Continue ReadingCategory: Music, Consumer Tech, Irsay auction offers an array of priceless cultural memorabilia
12 March 2026 @ 10:33 am
Some people collect cars, some collect art, jewelry, ceramics, first edition books, entertainment memorabilia, movie posters and guitars while others collect baseball cards, comic books, video games and vintage technology. Items that were once throwaways are now sometimes worth a million bucks... quite literally.Continue ReadingCategory: Collectibles, LifestyleTags: Auction, The R66 Turbinetruck: The little cargo copter without a cockpit
12 March 2026 @ 5:16 am
Sikorsky subsidiary Robinson’s R66 Turbinetruck looks like many other light cargo helicopters, yet something about it seems a little off. But what? Oh, right – instead of a cockpit, the aircraft has a pair of clamshell doors and no place for a crew.Continue ReadingCategory: Military, TechnologyTags: Sikorsky, 200-lb inflatable camper airs up in 5 minutes to sleep 4 people
12 March 2026 @ 3:17 am
Pickup truck campers and camping toppers have been growing lighter and lighter through smart, compact design, but few approach the featheriness of the Thaircamper. The inflatable camper weighs as little as some fiberglass truck caps, but instead of barely offering enough space to sleep one or two people with little headroom, it inflates in mere minutes into a full alcove camper that sleeps three to four. Truck camping just got much easier, lighter and cheaper.Continue ReadingLamprey-inspired suction cup lifts 850 times its own weight
11 March 2026 @ 7:56 pm
Lampreys are able to stay securely attached to whales and sharks as they hurtle through the ocean, so you'd think they could teach us a thing or two about suction. It turns out that they can indeed, as scientists have developed a lamprey-inspired suction cup that can lift over 800 times its own weight.Continue ReadingCategory: TechnologyTags: Biomimicry, World's most powerful eFoil is also one of the easiest to learn on
11 March 2026 @ 4:17 pm
While the rest of the eFoil industry seems to be quietly shrinking its designs – smaller boards, lighter motors, more discreet profiles – Hydroflyer went the other way entirely, bringing a dirt-bike sensibility to electric hydrofoiling and building what's claimed to be the quickest, most powerful eFoil on the planet.Continue ReadingCategory: Marine, TransportTags: Hydrofoil, New Sonos speaker is a team player indoors and out, and lasts all day
11 March 2026 @ 8:42 am
Sonos just launched its new Play wireless speaker, bringing back the moniker for its portable range from over a decade ago.Continue ReadingCategory: Home Entertainment, Consumer Tech, Bio-inspired robo-dolphin could soon be vacuuming oil off the sea's surface
10 March 2026 @ 9:09 pm
When it comes to systems for cleaning up marine oil spills, most of them simply float in place, waiting for the oil to come to them. A new robot, however, could proactively move through oil slicks – and it's inspired by both a dolphin and a sea urchin.Continue ReadingCategory: Robotics, TechnologyTags: Smart 2-in-1 digital microscope goes desktop or handheld as needed
10 March 2026 @ 6:00 pm
To touch grass, venture outdoors and take a break from doom-and-gloom news, what can one do to pass the time without a smartphone? Perhaps they can take a peek into the infinitesimal world outside with Bubo, a 2-in-1 digital microscope currently on Kickstarter.Continue ReadingCategory: Consumer Tech, TechnologyTags: Micros
Last year IEEE launched its first virtual career fair to help strengthen the engineering workforce and connect top talent with industry professionals. The event, which was held in the United States, attracted thousands of students and professionals. They learned about more than 500 job opportunities in high-demand fields including artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and power and energy. They also gained access to career resources.Hosted byIEEE Industry Engagement, the event marked a milestone in the organization’s expa
This article is crossposted from IEEE Spectrum’s careers newsletter. Sign up now to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, written in partnership with tech career development company Parsity and delivered to your inbox for free!How to Keep Your Engineering Skills Sharp in an AI WorldEngineers today are caught in a strange new reality. We’re expected to move faster than ever using AI tools for coding, analysis, documentation, and design. At the same time, there’s a growing worry in the back
There’s a moment in John Williams’s Star Wars overture when the brass surges upward. You don’t just hear it; you feel propulsion turning into pure possibility.On 16 March 1926, in a snow-dusted field in Auburn, Mass., Robert Goddard created an earlier version of that same feeling. His first liquid-fueled rocket—a spindly, three meter tangle of pipes and tanks—lifted off, climbed about 12.5 meters, traveled roughly 56 meters downrange, and crashed into the frozen ground after 2.5 seconds. A few witnesses, Goddard’s helpers, shivered in the cold. The little machine defied common sense. It rose th
In April of 2025, OpenAI released a new version of GPT-4o, one of the AI algorithms users could select to power ChatGPT, the company’s chatbot. The next week, OpenAI reverted to the previous version. “The update we removed was overly flattering or agreeable—often described as sycophantic,” the company announced. Some people found the sycophancy hilarious. One user reportedly asked ChatGPT about his turd
SummaryFully homomorphic encryption (FHE) allows computing on encrypted data without decryption, but it’s currently slow on standard CPUs and GPUs.Intel’s Heracles chip accelerates FHE tasks up to 5,000 times faster than top Intel server CPUs.Heracles uses a 3-nanometer FinFET technology and high-bandwidth memory, enabling efficient encrypted computing at scale.Startups and Intel are racing to commercialize FHE accelerators, with potential applications in AI and secure data processing.Worried that your latest ask to a cloud-based AI reveals a bit too much about you? Want to know your genetic risk of di
Innovation rarely happens in isolation. Usually, the systems that engineers design are shaped by global teams whose members’ knowledge and ideas move across borders as easily as data.That is especially true in my field of robotics and automation—where hardware, software, and human workflows function together. Progress depends not only on technical skill but also on how engineers frame problems and evaluate trade-offs. My career has shown me how cross-cultural experiences can shape the framing.Working across different cultures has influenced how I approach collaboration, design decisions, and risk. I am an IEEE member and a mechanical engineer at
When the Trump administration last year sought to freeze construction of offshore wind farms by citing concerns about interference with military radar and sonar, the implication was that these were new issues. But for more than a decade, the United States, Taiwan, and many European countries have successfully mitigated wind turbines’ security impacts. Some European countries are even integrating wind farms with national defense schemes.“It’s not a choice of whether we go for wind farms or security. We need both,” says
A simmering dispute between the United States Department of Defense (DOD) and Anthropic has now escalated into a full-blown confrontation, raising an uncomfortable but important question: who gets to set the guardrails for military use of artificial intelligence — the executive branch, private companies or Congress and the broader democratic process?The conflict began when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a deadline to allow the DOD
Through the Artemis Program, NASA hopes to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon in its southern polar region. China, Russia, and the European Space Agency (ESA) have similar plans, all of which involve building bases near the permanently shadowed regions (PSRs)—craters that contain water ice—that dot the South Pole-Aitken Basin. For these and other agencies, it is vital that these bases be as self-sufficient as possible since resupply missions cannot be launched regularly and take several days to arrive.
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.ICRA 2026: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNAEnjoy today’s videos! The functional replication and actuation of complex structures inspired by nature is a longstanding goal for humanity. Creating such complex structures combining soft