<hr/><h4>I’m in love with Astell&Kern’s crooked, beautiful, ridiculously expensive MP3 player</h4><div>
<p>It may be old-fashioned, but I find dedicated MP3 players wonderful little devices. I’ve used tons over the years (the <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2009/09/18/review-zune-hd/">Zune HD</a> is still the best) and I’m glad to see they live on in some fashion, even if it’s as an <em>objet d’art</em> jammed with audiophile knick-knacks and a $700 price tag: <a href="https://www.astellnkern.com/eng/content/shop/features.asp?mcg=CG110000&mpos=0&scg=CG232020&spos=2&tcg=&tpos=0&gcode=SC32080">Astell&Kern’s A&norma SR15</a>.</p>
<p>Look at that thing! The ground of the tech world is littered with anonymous-looking lozenges made to appeal to as many people as possible. Then you have this thing.</p>
<p>What a design choice, to tilt the screen like that and form the rest of the device from prism-like complementary rectangles! The site even has a <a href="https://www.astellnkern.com/eng/content/shop/designconcept.asp?mcg=CG110000&mpos=0&scg=CG232020&spos=2&tcg=&tpos=0&dpos=2&gcode=SC32080">“design concept”</a> page, on which it points out that this isn’t a purely aesthetic choice:</p>
<blockquote><p>The slight angle and precise, mindful alignment show the empty space and tones that fills the space.<br>
From any angle, or either hand you hold your device, it does not hinder the display screen and offers the best grip.</p></blockquote>
<p>Isn’t that wonderful? And it’s even kind of true! Those areas we so carefully avoid with our fingers or thumbs are now grippable.</p>
<p><img class="breakout aligncenter size-full wp-image-1641293" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/aknorma1.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="554">Meanwhile, the tilted screen also makes room for the knurled volume knob, while simultaneously protecting it from unwanted touches. And the angle of the screen makes for a visual hint for the power button.</p>
<p>I just love how risky this design is, how eye-catching, how simultaneously practical and impractical. We need much more of that in tech. This device has more personality than every iPhone since the 6 — combined.</p>
<p><img class="breakout aligncenter size-full wp-image-1641291" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/aknorma2.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="555">Inside is the usual blast of audio jargon: Cirrus Logic Dual DAC, native direct stream digital, 24-bit 192KHz playback, balanced 2.5mm headphone out and a quad-core CPU to support it all. Do you need any of that? Probably not, but a few people might, and at least you’ll be sure this thing will play pretty much anything you throw at it and sound great doing so.</p>
<p>I’ve used a few of A&K’s previous products, and can testify that they’re extremely well-built and feel great to use, though the screens are a bit low-resolution and the UI can be lacking. The 3.3-inch screen isn’t going to blow anyone away with its 800×480 resolution, but it should be sharp enough, and the UI got a redo between the devices I’ve used and the SR15. I’m eager to see if it’s more fun to use now.</p>
<p>The A&norma SR15 is available now for anyone with a pocket full of money to burn.</p>
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</div><br/><div>Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/16/im-in-love-with-astellkerns-crooked-beautiful-ridiculously-expensive-mp3-player/</div><br/><hr/><h4>This jolly little robot gets goosebumps</h4><div>
<p>Cornell researchers have made a little robot that can express its emotions through touch, sending out little spikes when it’s scared or even getting goosebumps to express delight or excitement. The prototype, a cute smiling creature with rubber skin, is designed to test touch as an I/O system for robotic projects.</p>
<p><img src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/mza1otaymw.jpeg"></p>
<p>The <a href="http://guyhoffman.com/goosebumps-texture-changing-robotic-skin/">robot mimics the skin of octopi</a> which can turn spiky when threatened.</p>
<p>The researchers, Yuhan Hu, Zhengnan Zhao, Abheek Vimal and Guy Hoffman, created the robot to experiment with new methods for robot interaction. They compare the skin to “human goosebumps, cats’ neck fur raising, dogs’ back hair, the needles of a porcupine, spiking of a blowfish, or a bird’s ruffled feathers.”</p>
<p>“Research in human-robot interaction shows that a robot’s ability to use nonverbal behavior to communicate affects their potential to be useful to people, and can also have psychological effects. Other reasons include that having a robot use nonverbal behaviors can help make it be perceived as more familiar and less machine-like,” the researchers told <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/feel-what-this-robot-feels-through-tactile-expressions">IEEE Spectrum</a>.</p>
<p>The skin has multiple configurations and is powered by a computer-controlled elastomer that can inflate and deflate on demand. The goosebumps pop up to match the expression on the robot’s face, allowing humans to better understand what the robot “means” when it raises its little hackles or gets bumpy. I, for one, welcome our bumpy robotic overlords.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1641251" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/tm_experiments.png?w=515" alt="" width="515" height="680"></p>
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</div><br/><div>Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/16/this-jolly-little-robot-gets-goosebumps/</div><br/><hr/><h4>Watch a laser-powered RoboFly flap its tiny wings</h4><div>
<p>Making something fly involves a lot of trade-offs. Bigger stuff can hold more fuel or batteries, but too big and the lift required is too much. Small stuff takes less lift to fly but might not hold a battery with enough energy to do so. Insect-sized drones have had that problem in the past — but now this RoboFly is taking its first flaps into the air… all thanks to the power of lasers.</p>
<p>We’ve seen bug-sized flying bots before, like the <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/25/the-robobee-learns-to-launch-itself-out-of-the-water/">RoboBee</a>, but as you can see it has wires attached to it that provide power. Batteries on board would weigh it down too much, so researchers have focused in the past on demonstrating that flight is possible in the first place at that scale.</p>
<p>But what if you could provide power externally without wires? That’s the idea behind the <a href="http://www.washington.edu/news/2018/05/15/robofly/">University of Washington’s RoboFly</a>, a sort of spiritual successor to the RoboBee that gets its power from a laser trained on an attached photovoltaic cell.</p>
<p><img class="breakout aligncenter size-full wp-image-1640546" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/robofly_0123_web.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683">“It was the most efficient way to quickly transmit a lot of power to RoboFly without adding much weight,” said co-author of the paper describing the bot, Shyam Gollakota. He’s obviously very concerned with power efficiency — last month he and his colleagues published a way of <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/19/technique-to-beam-hd-video-with-99-percent-less-power-could-sharpen-the-eyes-of-smart-homes/">transmitting video with 99 percent less power than usual</a>.</p>
<p>There’s more than enough power in the laser to drive the robot’s wings; it gets adjusted to the correct voltage by an integrated circuit, and a microcontroller sends that power to the wings depending on what they need to do. Here it goes:</p>
<p></p>
<p>“To make the wings flap forward swiftly, it sends a series of pulses in rapid succession and then slows the pulsing down as you get near the top of the wave. And then it does this in reverse to make the wings flap smoothly in the other direction,” explained lead author Johannes James.</p>
<p>At present the bot just takes off, travels almost no distance and lands — but that’s just to prove the concept of a wirelessly powered robot insect (it isn’t obvious). The next steps are to improve onboard telemetry so it can control itself, and make a steered laser that can follow the little bug’s movements and continuously beam power in its direction.</p>
<p>The team is headed to Australia next week to present the RoboFly at the<a href="https://icra2018.org/"> International Conference on Robotics and Automation</a> in Brisbane.</p>
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</div><br/><div>Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/15/watch-a-laser-powered-robofly-flap-its-tiny-wings/</div><br/><hr/><h4>First CubeSats to travel the solar system snap ‘Pale Blue Dot’ homage</h4><div>
<p>The <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/03/nasas-insight-mars-lander-will-gaze-and-drill-into-the-depths-of-the-red-planet/">InSight launch</a> earlier this month had a couple of stowaways: a pair of tiny CubeSats that are already the farthest such tiny satellites have ever been from Earth — by a long shot. And one of them got a chance to snap a picture of their home planet as an homage to the <a href="https://techcrunch.com/gallery/on-voyagers-40th-anniversary-here-are-20-of-the-missions-best-images-and-discoveries/">Voyager mission’s famous “Pale Blue Dot.”</a> It’s hardly as amazing a shot as the original, but it’s still cool.</p>
<p>The CubeSats, named MarCO-A and B, are an experiment to test the suitability of pint-size craft for exploration of the solar system; previously they have only ever been deployed into orbit.</p>
<p>That changed on May 5, when the InSight mission took off, with the MarCO twins detaching on a similar trajectory to the geology-focused Mars lander. It wasn’t long before they went farther than any CubeSat has gone before.</p>
<div class="embed breakout">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="Rllen0Z31g"><p><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/28/citizen-spacecraft-builders-literally-race-to-the-moon-in-nasas-cube-quest-challenge/">Citizen spacecraft builders literally race to the moon in NASA’s Cube Quest Challenge</a></p></blockquote>
<p></p>
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<p>A few days after launch MarCO-A and B were about a million kilometers (621,371 miles) from Earth, and it was time to unfold its high-gain antenna. A fisheye camera attached to the chassis had an eye on the process and <a href="https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA22323">took a picture to send back home</a> to inform mission control that all was well.</p>
<p>But as a bonus (though not by accident — very few accidents happen on missions like this), Earth and the moon were in full view as MarCO-B took its antenna selfie. Here’s an annotated version of the one above:</p>
<p><img class="breakout aligncenter size-full wp-image-1640467" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/pia22323_fig1.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="653"></p>
<p>“Consider it our homage to Voyager,” said JPL’s Andy Klesh <a href="https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/news/8338/a-pale-blue-dot-as-seen-by-a-cubesat">in a news release</a>. “CubeSats have never gone this far into space before, so it’s a big milestone. Both our CubeSats are healthy and functioning properly. We’re looking forward to seeing them travel even farther.”</p>
<p>So far it’s only good news and validation of the idea that cheap CubeSats could potentially be launched by the dozen to undertake minor science missions at a fraction of the cost of something like InSight.</p>
<p>Don’t expect any more snapshots from these guys, though. A JPL representative told me the cameras were really only included to make sure the antenna deployed properly. Really any pictures of Mars or other planets probably wouldn’t be worth looking at twice — these are utility cameras with fisheye lenses, not the special instruments that orbiters use to get those great planetary shots.</p>
<p>The MarCOs will pass by Mars at the same time that InSight is making its landing, and depending on how things go, they may even be able to pass on a little useful info to mission control while it happens. Tune in on November 26 for that!</p>
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</div><br/><div>Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/15/first-cubesats-to-travel-the-solar-system-snap-pale-blue-dot-homage/</div><br/><hr/><h4>Tushy is the simple bidet for every toilet</h4><div>
<p>If there’s one thing I envy in the global spirit and character its the appreciation of a fine bidet. Hygiene being close to godliness, one can imagine the huddled scientists at CERN and KAUST and Tokyo University creating scientific marvels, secure in the knowledge that their posteriors were as clean and crisp as their lines of thought. The same can be said of peoples of all continents who celebrate the occasional fountainal intrusion, from those who use bidets <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/04/toto_washlet_s350e_the_incredible_japanese_wonder_toilet_that_will_change.html">complete with birdsong</a> to hide their doings to those with a simple hose next to the can.</p>
<p>But America, that land of the free and the home of the brave, can’t join in the fun? Is there no bidet culture in Dear Columbia? Pshaw. After all, there’s something called <a href="https://hellotushy.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Branded">Tushy</a>.</p>
<p>This simple bidet system is the gateway drug to posterior enjoyment. I’ve been trying to install a proper bidet in my home since <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZuJix335nY">2007</a>. The problem I discovered was that the design of my toilet did not allow for something large and heavy up against the toilet tank. Because the system was so large I couldn’t fit it in place of the seat, resulting in endless heartbreak. I was almost going to swap out my toilet for one of a simpler designed but luckily the Tushy is the low-cost, low tech solution I was looking for.</p>
<p>It works by sitting in line with the tank refill line. You simply connect the line to the Tushy and then connect a line from the Tushy to the tank. The water that would normally go into your bowl is routed through a little movable nozzle and up into your backside. The water, obviously, is cold. You can also turn it so the water cleans the nozzle, and important health and safety addition.</p>
<p>Bear in mind that the Tushy is as simple as it gets. It doesn’t blow out fine perfumes, it doesn’t steam or mist you, and it doesn’t play birdsong. But it costs $69 and seems to work just fine in my testing. In fact, I’m thinking of Tushying up the whole house since it doesn’t actually need electricity or any plumbing changes.</p>
<p>Tushy also sells an $84 Spa model that connects to your hot water line for a bit of warmth. But that’s for the coddled few who can’t manage a little cold water.<br><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-1640409" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/spa_closeup_silver_2cd41ec0-1104-4cde-bea5-281a299551a4_681x.png?w=300" alt="" width="300" height="247"><br>
Why is this important? Because all innovation is important, for one. The changes in lifestyle associated with tech are moving out of the esoteric into the basic, a fact that should give us all a bit of a giggle. If electrified scooters in SF are a sign of the apocalypse, things like the Tushy are a sign of a renaissance. After all, the clean innovator is the happy innovator.</p>
<p>Ultimately ideas like Tushy will lead us to a new world of butt hygiene. Perhaps, one day, all of us will have a bidet in our homes and offices. Perhaps one day we will be able to break the shackles of toilet paper. And perhaps, one day, we will join the ranks of men and women who enjoy a good squirt in the morning. Until then, Tushy does its business.</p>
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</div><br/><div>Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/15/tushy-is-the-simple-bidet-for-every-toilet/</div><br/><hr/><h4>Lynq is a dead-simple gadget for finding your friends outdoors</h4><div>
<p>If you’ve ever been hiking or skiing, or gone to a music festival or state fair, you know how easy it is to lose track of your friends, and the usually ridiculous exchange of “I’m by the big thing”-type messages. <a href="https://lynqme.com/">Lynq</a> is a gadget that fixes this problem with an ultra-simple premise: it simply tells you how far and in what direction your friends are, no data connection required.</p>
<p>Apart from a couple of extra little features, that’s really all it does, and I love it. I got a chance to play with a prototype at CES and it worked like a charm.</p>
<p>The peanut-shaped devices use a combination of GPS and kinetic positioning to tell where you are and where any linked <a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/awearable-apparel/" target="_blank" data-type="organization" data-entity="awearable-apparel">Lynqs <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> are, and on the screen all you see is: Ben, 240 feet <em>that</em> way.</p>
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<img class="breakout size-full wp-image-1640289" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/lynq1.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="637"><p class="wp-caption-text">Or Ellie.</p>
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<p>No pins on a map, no coordinates, no turn-by-turn directions. Just a vector accurate to within a couple of feet that works anywhere outdoors. The little blob that points in their direction moves around as quick as a compass, and gets smaller as they get farther away, broadening out to a full circle as you get within a few feet.</p>
<p>Up to 12 can link up, and they should work up to three miles from each other (more under some circumstances). The single button switches between people you’re tracking and activates the device’s few features. You can create a “home” location that linked devices can point toward, and also set a safe zone (a radius from your device) that warns you if the other one leaves it. And you can send basic preset messages like “meet up” or “help.”</p>
<p>It’s great for outdoors activities with friends, but think about how helpful it could be for tracking kids or pets, for rescue workers, for making sure dementia sufferers don’t wander too far.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The military seems to have liked it as well; U.S. Pacific Command did some testing with the Thai Ministry of Defence and found that it helped soldiers find each other much faster while radio silent, and also helped them get into formation for a search mission quicker. All the officers involved were impressed.</p>
<p>Having played with one for half an hour or so, I can say with confidence that it’s a dandy little device, super intuitive to operate, and was totally accurate and responsive. It’s clear the team put a lot of effort into making it simple but effective — there’s been a lot of work behind the scenes.</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1640338" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/giflynq.gif" alt="" width="480" height="270">Because the devices send their GPS coordinates directly to each other, the team created a special compression algorithm just for that data — because if you want fine GPS, that’s actually quite a few digits that need to be sent along. But after compression it’s just a couple of bytes, making it possible to send it more frequently and reliably than if you’d just blasted out the original data.</p>
<p>The display turns off automatically when you let it go to hang by its little clip, saving battery, but it’s always receiving the data, so there’s no lag when you flip it up — the screen comes on and boom, there’s Betty, 450 feet thataway.</p>
<p>The only real issue I had is that the single-button interface, while great for normal usage, is pretty annoying for stuff like entering names and navigating menus. I understand why they kept it simple, and usually it won’t be a problem, but there you go.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lynq-location-tracking-even-when-cell-phones-fail-family-kids#/">Lynq is doing a pre-order campaign on Indiegogo</a>, which I tend to avoid, but I can tell you for sure that this is a real, working thing that anyone who spends much time with friends outdoors will find extremely useful. They’re selling for $154 per pair, which is pretty reasonable, and since that price will probably jump significantly later, I’d say go for it now.</p>
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</div><br/><div>Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/15/lynq-is-a-dead-simple-gadget-for-finding-your-friends-outdoors/</div><br/><hr/>Source: https://techcrunch.com/