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How to Optimize Your Home for Robot Servants Jan 29, 2018

Show notes

Robots can walk, talk, run a hotel … and are entirely stumped by a doorknob. Or a mailbox. Or a dirty bathtub—zzzzt, dead. Sure, the SpotMini, a doglike domestic helper from Boston Dynamics, can climb stairs, but it struggles to reliably hand over a can of soda. That’s why some roboticists think the field needs to flip its perspective. “There are two approaches to building robots,” says Maya Cakmak, a researcher at the University of Washington.

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Made In Cookware Pan Set Review: Inexpensive, But Flawed Jan 26, 2018

Show notes

My sister Gina is a fantastic cook who does not suffer crappy cookware gladly. Her pans are battle-tested All Clads that have been roughed up over the years, but they take the abuse she dishes out with a shrug. Once, though, I noticed damage to a T-Fal pan of hers that wasn't up to the task; the bottom of the pan had a bit of a dome shape to it, meaning hot oil within the pan pooled around the outer rim but did not cover the higher center.

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Best Super Bowl Home and TV Deals for 2018: LG, Vizio, Sonos, Roku, Crock Pots Jan 26, 2018

Show notes

The Super Bowl is upon us, and this year we get to watch The New England Patriots face off against the Philadelphia Eagles. If that sounds familiar, it’s because they both faced off in the 2005 Super Bowl. The Patriots won then, but that doesn’t mean they’ll win again. With fans so dedicated that they’ll climb up Crisco’d light poles to celebrate, Philly may just have the spirit to overcome. The big game kicks off at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, February 4 on NBC.

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Freemie Liberty Review: The Breast Pump, Reimagined Jan 25, 2018

Show notes

The worst part of breast pumping? The logistics. Ask any working, breastfeeding mom and she'll describe the hassle of finding a private room, disrobing, and hooking up to a machine to pump every three to four hours. And then, after she's sat there for 20 minutes, she still needs to store the milk, wash everything, and put it all away. As an ER doctor and mom of preemie twins, Stella Dao had to pump four to six times a day. She had a big incentive to improve the existing technology.

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Review: HTC U11 Life (Unlocked, T-Mobile) Jan 25, 2018

Show notes

Let’s face it. Phones cost too much money. Yes, the $1,000 iPhone X is awesome, but for those who don’t need to keep a status symbol in their pocket, $350 feels much more reasonable, and that’s what the HTC U11 Life offers. You can buy two or three of these for the price of a top-tier Android phone, like the Pixel 2, and that’s the point. It’s an unabashed value version of HTC’s fancier U11.

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Remembering Ursula Le Guin, Imaginer of Difficult Worlds Jan 24, 2018

Show notes

Ursula Le Guin imagined the future for a living, but her most prescient statement may have come in a speech. "I think hard times are coming," the writer said at the National Book Awards in November 2014, "when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope." Three years and change.

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The Physics of Why Bigger Drones Can Fly Longer Jan 24, 2018

Show notes

You can get a drone in a wide range of sizes. Some of them fit in your palm (like the Syma X20) while others are quite large. But have you noticed anything about the flying time? Many of the super small drones have flight times that are less than five minutes. The larger drones (like the DJI Phantom 4) have a maximum flight time of closer to a half hour.

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Riding a Wild Wind, a Norwegian 787 Breaks a Speed Record Jan 23, 2018

Show notes

When Randal Miles woke up from a nap during his flight from Paris to Los Angeles last week, he opened the interactive map on his seat-back screen to see how much longer he'd be in the air. But the number that caught his eye was the jet's speed. The Norwegian jet was flying at 770 mph—about 200 mph faster than its standard cruising velocity. “I thought, ‘Damn, this thing is hauling ass,’” Miles says. “I thought I was either sleepy or it was reading wrong.

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How to Pre-Order Both of Nintendo's Labo Kits Jan 23, 2018

Show notes

Nintendo has sold a lot of Switches in the last year thanks to the console's unique ability to play games on a TV and on the go, but also thanks to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey. Though they came from 30+ year-old franchises, both games helped millions fall in love with them all over again. In 2018, Nintendo is setting its sights in a direction it hasn't aimed at before: the do-it yourself crowd.

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Does Sony's LF-S50G Speaker Actually Respond To Gestures? Not Really Jan 22, 2018

Show notes

Growing up, my black and faux woodgrain GE Digital Alarm Clock Radio was essential. I trusted it to tell me the time and make sure I wake up each and every morning—regardless of how many times I pressed its 9 minute snooze. Time has not been kind to that, now-vintage alarm clock. Somehow, it still does what it was designed to do, but in the last decade, my phone has taken all of its responsibilities. It now sits under my nightstand, wrapped in its own power cord like a straitjacket.

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