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My desk doesn’t deserve the $600 Dyson Lightcycle lamp May 23, 2019

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Like many of you, I’m assuming, my desk was purchased at Ikea and is the center of my life. Such as it is, the desk is littered with bits of crackers, memory cards, branded Moleskin notebooks and countless coffee cups. I’m not a slob. I just live here. The desk is clean enough. Then Dyson sent me its new task light to try out. My desk suddenly felt dirty. After assembling the light, I looked around and took inventory of my life and choices.

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Seven years later, the OUYA is dead for real May 23, 2019

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Remember the OUYA? As a cheap Android-powered game console, it was pitched as being able to “open the last closed platform: the TV”. It was one of the first huge Kickstarter campaigns, raising nearly 9 million dollars on the site in 2012. Even half a decade later, it remains one of the biggest campaigns Kickstarter has seen. Outside of Kickstarter, the $99 console never really found its audience. OUYA was split up by 2015, its software assets and team acquired by Razer.

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Future Family launches a $200 membership for fertility coaching May 22, 2019

Show notes

Future Family is a startup aiming to make fertility services like IVF and egg freezing more accessible. They work with doctors and clinics to make the pricing of these services more predictable and upfront, then offer monthly payment plans to help customers spread the cost (often in the tens of thousands of dollars) over a few years.

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Apple announces new MacBook Pros with a keyboard fix, oh, and more powerful processors May 22, 2019

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Apple is updating its 15” MacBook Pro with new 8-core and 6-core processors and its 13” MacBook Pro with Touch Bar with 8th gen quad-core processors. Apple says that these boosts mean that the 15” MacBook Pro will run at double the speed of the previous quad-core models and hit 40% improvements over the 6-core MacBook Pro model. Apple says that this is its fastest Mac notebook ever. Oh, and there is that keyboard update.

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Why is Facebook doing robotics research? May 21, 2019

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It’s a bit strange to hear that the world’s leading social network is pursuing research in robotics rather than, say, making search useful, but Facebook is a big organization with many competing priorities. And while these robots aren’t directly going to affect your Facebook experience, what the company learns from them could be impactful in surprising ways. Though robotics is a new area of research for Facebook, its reliance on and bleeding-edge work in AI are well known.

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Minecraft Earth makes the whole real world your very own blocky realm May 21, 2019

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When your game tops a hundred million players, your thoughts naturally turn to doubling that number. That’s the case with the creators, or rather stewards, of Minecraft at Microsoft, where the game has become a product category unto itself. And now it is making its biggest leap yet — to a real-world augmented reality game in the vein of Pokemon GO, called Minecraft Earth.

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Rivian debuts a pull-out kitchen for its electric pickup trick May 20, 2019

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Sometimes you need scrambled eggs. And with that thought, toady at the Overland Expo in Flagstaff, AZ, Rivian announced a major accessory for its electric pickup: A camp kitchen. The unit slides out from the Rivian R1T’s so-called gear tunnel that lives between the bed and cab. The kitchen includes storage and a stove that’s powered by the R1T’s 180kWh battery pack. This kitchen unit is the first significant concept Rivian has unveiled for the pickup’s unusual gear tunnel.

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Clutter has picked up Omni’s storage business; Omni to focus on rentals May 20, 2019

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On the heels of Clutter announcing a large growth roundof $200 million earlier this year, the storage startup is cleaning up the competitive field. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Clutter has purchased the storage business of erstwhile rival Omni. Omni will remain an independent company, which will now instead focus on rentals of personal items. That business was originally built around renting out items that you had stored with Omni itself.

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Asus’ $499 ZenFone 6 has a flip-up camera and a giant battery May 17, 2019

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Premium smartphone manufacturers have moved the needle on pricing, but 2019 may well go down as a kind of golden age for budget flagships. Apple, Google and Samsung are all in that business now, and OnePlus has once again shown the world how to offer more for less. And then there’s the new ZenFone. It’s a bit of an understatement to suggest that Asus has had trouble breaking into the smartphone space.

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TikTok tops the iOS App Store for the fifth quarter in a row May 17, 2019

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TikTok tops the iOS App Store for the fifth quarter in a row Despite a $5.7 million FTC fine and changes to restrict its use by under 13-year-olds, TikTok retained its No. 1 position as the most downloaded app on the Apple App Store for the fifth consecutive quarter, according to a new report from Sensor Tower. The app saw more than 33 million App Store downloads during Q1, and was followed by YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger to round out the top five. The No.

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