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Yes, you probably already have a virtual assistant in your pocket on your phone. Heck, if you're reading Engadget, I'm willing to bet you've got at least one smart speaker floating around your home as well that you can ask to complete basic tasks. But a new start up called Rabbit seems to think these are less than ideal implementations of AI (if you can really call Siri and Alexa that). It envisions a world where you trade apps for conversation and, rather than a distracting device shoving icons in your face, you interact with what amounts to a walkie-talkie for an AI.

The R1 is the first device to be launched by Rabbit and it's an objectively adorable little square in an endearingly bright shade of orange. Even if you're not sold on the necessity of a dedicated gadget for a virtual assistant, it's hard to deny the aesthetic appeal, which comes courtesy of the design gurus at Teenage Engineering. It features a small 2.88-inch touchscreen, an analog scroll wheel, two mics, a speaker and a "360 degree rotational eye", which is just a fancy name for a camera you can spin to face towards you or through the back of the handset. 

The primary way you interact with the R1, though, is by pressing and holding the "Push-to-Talk" button. This tells Rabbit OS to start listening. A heavily stylized and disembodied rabbit head bobs slowly as you ask your question or give it a task, and then it quickly gets to work. Want to book an Uber? Need a recipe to use up the left overs in your fridge? Wondering who sampled The Isley Brothers "That Lady"? (The answer is Beastie Boys, Basement Jaxx and Kendrick Lamar, FTR.) The R1 seems pretty capable of handling those tasks, at least in the controlled video demo.

Rabbit OS is able to tackle those tasks using what it calls the Large Action Model (LAM). This is what founder and CEO Jesse Lyu pitches as the company's major innovation. Its designed to take actions on interfaces, rather than through APIs or apps. In short, it can be trained to cary out almost any task that can be accomplished through a user interface. It's sort of like a fancy version of a macro. 

As a way of demonstrating its capabilities, Lyu teaches the R1 how to generate an image using Midjourney via Discord. Once Lyu walks performs the process, with Rabbit OS recording his actions, its able to repeat the task when asked. 

The rotating camera faces up into the body by default, acting as a sort of privacy shutter. Only turning its sensor towards its target when summoned. It can do the usual tricks like identify people or thing in the real world (within reason at least). But it's the way it interacts with the AI that is sure to pique people's interest. In the demo Lyu points the R1 at a full refrigerator and asks it to suggest a recipe thats "low in calories" based on it's contents. 

Rabbit

Of course, there's still a lot of unanswered questions about the R1. How is the battery life? The company claims it's "all day," but what does that really mean? And will the average user be able to train it easily. At least we know a few things, though. We know it costs $199 and that it's available for preorder now, with an expected ship date sometime in March or Apil. 

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

EVs, like me after the holidays, have a tendency to bloat at the slightest provocation, which is why I can’t fit into those size 34 jeans. The big issue for electric cars is heavy batteries force cars to grow in size to accommodate them. Of course, the heavier the load, the more power is needed to keep going, forcing you into a vicious cycle. Even a small city car like the original Smart has, in its latest electric version, grown into a grotesque parody of its predecessor. Which is why there’s a lot of hope riding on truly small EVs, like Squad Mobility’s solar-powered car that’s designed not to grow too big to fit inside a city.

The company was founded by Chris Klok and Robert Hoevers, who met while working on the Lightyear solar car. Klok was chief vehicle engineer of that project, while Hoevers was previously involved with NIO’s Formula E team. But they left Lightyear to help develop a small, solar-powered car that would offer affordable and clean mobility for dense cities. And while it’s just got a few prototypes to show off, like the one here at CES 2024, it’s expecting to begin production in 2025. Even better, many of its existing pre-order customers are based in the US, given the need for a car like this in those communities that exclusively rely on golf carts to get around.

The Solar City car has a 250Wp panel in its roof, which is designed to generate enough power for a few short trips each day. The company says that, in Las Vegas, you could expect to travel for around 13 miles purely from the energy collected from the panel. (You can plug it in to an outlet if you really need to.) With a kerb weight of 794 pounds, it’s light and efficient enough to get you around short distances without much stress. Of course, the speed is limited — and you’ll only get around 25mph out of the 4kW motor, but if you live in a big city and just need to get to work, or pick up some groceries, that’s probably all you need.

You might expect the car to be poky, but the high roofline and low floor means it’s surprisingly comfortable. The prototype here has some quirks — like acceleration and brake pedals that are a bit too close to the seat — which will be eliminated in the production version. There’s even a rear load space big enough for a suitcase or a couple of decently-sized bags, and the prominent tyres mean you could even tackle rough terrain in short doses. The fact it measures just 6.6 feet long means you can park it sideways and it’ll take up the same amount of room as most cars, too.

We’re still a year out before we’ll see the production model of this car, but there are plenty of reasons to be hopeful. The company expects the retail price to be $6,250 excluding sales tax, making it ideal as a city runaround or second (or third) car. That said, the figure does exclude the cost of the doors which, like AC, count as an optional extra.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

Right now there are a bunch of companies trying to figure out new and better ways to work on the go. Lenovo made a laptop with two displays and a detachable keyboard to help give owners additional screen space without too much added bulk. And there are headsets from Meta, Apple and others that offer a way to create a completely virtual workspace without the need for a tethered PC. But with the Spacetop, startup Sightful has come up with an in-between solution that uses the bottom of a laptop, but instead of a traditional display, it’s attached to a pair of AR glasses.

In theory, the glasses provide a 100-inch virtual display that can hold more windows than you could ever fit on a traditional laptop screen. And with the Spacetop being powered by Android, you get a familiar working environment too. Instead of controllers or hand gestures, there’s a typical keyboard and touchpad for writing, browsing the web or anything else you might need to do. But after trying one out, while I like the idea, I’m not so sure about Sightful’s execution.

The system is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 chip (the same processor Meta used in the Quest 2 from 2020), just 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. It feels smooth, though I wouldn't necessarily call it fast. I didn’t notice much lag when dragging windows around or typing, but I didn’t get to see how it handles a ton of open apps or anything more demanding than a web browser. Sightful has also come up with some simple shortcuts for doing things like re-centering the screen (just press the left and right Shift keys at the same time).

The issue I ran into is that, while Sightful developed the base of the laptop itself and put its logo on the side of the glasses, the bundled AR eyewear attached to the PC is actually off-the-shelf specs from Xreal (in this case the Xreal Lights). So while Xreal glasses are somewhat sharp, their narrow field of view (especially vertically) and somewhat small sweet spot left a lot to be desired when it came to actually using that 100-inch virtual display.

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Additionally, the Spacetop’s keys felt spongy and its touchpad was lackluster too. It’s a far cry from the more precise haptic surfaces you’d get on a premium Mac or Windows PC. And when you combine all this with a starting price of $2,000, I just don’t see the appeal. For people who already have a laptop, I’d argue you’d be much better off getting a Meta Quest 3, which costs $500, sports a much newer chip and can sync with your laptop to create its own version of a virtual desktop. Plus then you’d have a headset that’s way better at playing games, watching movies and more.

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

There’s a reason why Meta, Apple and others have sunk billions of dollars into making headsets and glasses with finely tuned optics. And I’m sure someday (maybe even sometime in the next few years), off the shelf AR glasses will make some pretty big advancements. But between its high price, dated specs, and a big, but not great-looking virtual display powered by two-year old AR glasses, the Spacetop doesn’t quite deliver on the promise of revolutionizing the common laptop.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

Imagine being at a crowded convention or noisy bar and trying to have a conversation with someone across from you. It's tough enough for people with hearing to focus on what the person is saying, not to mention those with hearing loss. Assistive technology company OrCam has rolled into CES 2024 with a host of new products including a set of devices and an iPhone app designed to help those with hearing loss deal with auditory overload. The platform is called OrCam Hear and after a quick hands-on at the show in Las Vegas, I'm pleasantly surprised.

OrCam Hear consists of a pair of earbuds and a dongle that plugs into any phone, and you'll use the app to control who you want to listen to. The system listens to voices for a few seconds (via the dongle) and uses AI to create speaker profiles for each person that then allows you to "selectively isolate specific voices even in noisy environments." This targets the issue sometimes known as the "cocktail party problem" that's a challenge for hearing aids.

During a demo, my editor Terrence O'Brien and I spoke to two people whose voice profiles were already set up in the app. We stood around a table with Terrence on my right and the two company spokespeople across us about five feet away. I put the earbuds in (after they were sanitized), and the noise around me immediately sounded a little less loud and a lot more muffled. 

Photo by Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

I looked at everyone around me and though I could see their lips moving, I couldn't hear anyone speaking. After OrCam's reps used the app to drag a floating circle into the ring surrounding me, I started to hear the person diagonally across me talk. And though the executive next to him was also moving his mouth, I could still only hear the voice of the person selected. Only after we moved the other speaker's icon into the ring did I start to hear them.

What impressed me more, though, was how the system handled relatively new participants like Terrence. He didn't have a profile set up in the app, and I initially couldn't hear him at all. A few seconds into the demo, though, a new circle appeared with a gray icon indicating a new "Anonymous" person had been recognized. When we dragged that into the ring, I was suddenly able to hear Terrence. This was all the more impressive because Terrence was wearing a fairly thick mask, which would have made him hard to understand any way. Yet, I was able to clearly make out what he was saying.

The OrCam Hear isn't perfect, of course. I was still able to hear the speakers as they talked, and the audio playing through the earbuds was slightly delayed, so there was a small echo. But people who have hearing loss, whom this product is designed for, aren't likely to experience that. There was also some audio distortion when the selected speakers were talking, but not so much that it impeded my comprehension.

OrCam said that the Hear platform is "currently in a technology preview phase and is expected to be shipped later in the year." Hopefully, that gives the company time to iron out quirks and make the app available on both iOS and Android, so that the assistive tech can be truly inclusive and accessible to more people.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

The official X account belonging to the Securities and Exchange Commission was briefly “compromised,” the regulator said, after an apparently rogue post on X temporarily juiced bitcoin prices. 

On Tuesday, the SEC’s official X account tweeted that bitcoin ETFs had been approved “for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.” The tweet included an official-looking graphic featuring a quote from SEC Chair Gary Gensler. However, Gensler himself quickly clarified from his X account that the post from @SECGov was the result of a "compromised” account.

“The @SECGov twitter account was compromised, and an unauthorized tweet was posted,” Gensler wrote. “The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products.”

Screenshot via X

The confusion comes as the SEC is, in fact, considering whether to approve spot bitcoin ETFs, investment funds that hold the cryptocurrency. The regulator is expected to make a decision Wednesday in a process that has been closely watched by crypto investors.

Naturally, the now-deleted tweet from the SEC’s official (and gray check-verified) account on X prompted a momentary surge in bitcoin prices, followed by a steep decline. The post and subsequent clarification from Gensler “wiped out over $50 million of leveraged derivatives trading positions within an hour,” according to and analysis from CoinDesk.

For now, it’s unclear exactly how the SEC’s X account was “compromised.” In a statement, an SEC spokesperson told Engadget that “the unauthorized tweet regarding bitcoin ETFs was not made by the SEC or its staff.” The regulator has so far given no indication about whether it intends to approve any spot bitcoin ETFs this week.

X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Today, at CES 2024 in Las Vegas, Honda revealed two concept EVs — a sedan dubbed the Saloon and the minivan-esque Space-Hub. Honda said it will develop a model based on the Saloon concept car for North American markets in 2026, before it eventually reaches other buyers in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, South America and Africa. Additionally, the carmaker debuted a redesigned H logo that will be exclusive to its EV lineup.

The Saloon, which is its flagship concept EV, has an aerodynamic design and rides low to the ground. While the Space-Hub is quite a bit boxier and renders show it with seating that has passengers facing each other. Besides touting a spacious cabin, Honda did not share much about when or if it plans to actually manufacture a car inspired by the Space-Hub concept.

The first entries in Honda’s 0 Series lineup will feature advanced driver-assistive systems that pair with the carmaker’s Sensing Elite software. In the latter part of the decade, Honda expects the 0 Series to gain automated driving features through the integration of AI.

Around the same time the company expects to implement dramatic improvements to its battery technology, like fast charging from 15 to 80 percent in around 15 minutes and reducing battery degradation to less than 10 percent over 10 years. Those are bold goals, especially for a company that is a little late to the EV space.

Honda

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

Samsung's Ballie robot is one of the more delightful things we've heard about at CES 2024. The spherical robot was a surprise from Samsung yesterday, though the company first showed off a version of it back in 2020. Ballie's now a lot bigger, growing from a tennis ball to a bowling ball, and it has a built-in projector.

Unfortunately, Samsung isn't letting us get any one-on-one time with Ballie, but the company did show off a demo at its booth. It was obviously tightly scripted and controlled, but at the very least it gave us an idea of how the company envisions Ballie being used. The actor asked Ballie to start a workout routine for him and it started projecting a workout video on the wall and started some tunes. Sure, you could just use your TV for that, but when one of the exercises called for laying down, Ballie shot the video to the ceiling so the actor could continue following along. 

In another example, Ballie was able to give a visual representation of the house's air quality, pulling data from a connected air purifier. In addition to showing some stats on the wall, Ballie noted that a filter needed to be changed. The idea here is to show that Ballie can talk to all your smart home devices and display info from them, even if they don't have a dedicated display. 

Naturally, Ballie can also display events on your calendar and place phone calls, and it can show video from things like the inside of your Samsung fridge or oven as well as when someone is at your doorbell. Basically, Ballie feels like a smart home hub on wheels that can also display stuff when you want it to. 

It's cute, and it was fun to see Ballie confidently rolling around the floor of the demo area, but I can't help but think that it's solving exactly zero real world problems either. We'll have to see how development progresses, but Samsung says it'll be on sale by the end of the year. I'm not fully convinced, as we've seen a lot of, but I am definitely rooting for the little robot.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

Qualcomm is ringing in the new year at CES 2024 in Las Vegas with some updates in its chip lineup that power virtual and mixed-reality headsets. The keynote, which will detail more about what’s new for its anticipated AI-powered chip, will happen on January 10 at 5pm ET. It can be streamed on Qualcomm’s website or directly on the CES keynote page.

What to expect

There might be some information divulged about Meta and Qualcomm’s chip collaboration and how it could improve functionality on new gen VR headsets. Qualcomm has said that the technology has been engineered into a single chip architecture that allows it to support smaller and sleeker headsets.

The AI-integrated chip technology will not only make it easier to track a headset user’s hands, controllers and eyes during use, it will also deliver better display resolution per eye. The Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chip will offer up to 4.3k by 4.3k resolution per eye, as well as upgraded raw image processing and full color display.

Cristiano Amon, the CEO of Qualcomm is also going to focus on generative artificial intelligence and how Snapdragon platforms will integrate AI on devices from smartphones to PC gaming systems. Amon’s keynote is in alignment with the company’s overall move towards investing in AI hardware in its offerings, which we saw in its recently revealed mobile chipset for Android devices.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

This year, LG Display came to CES 2024 with something to prove. It had multiple sizes of transparent OLEDs (the show's theme appears to be transparent displays) and a gaming monitor capable of 480Hz refresh rates – double what we’re used to seeing. Perhaps the most interesting things at its showroom were LG Display’s most advanced OLED panels yet, featuring its META technology 2.0. While it sounds like promotional fluff (and there’s some of that here), the company is trying to address arguably OLED’s biggest weakness.

While the company revealed its META technology last year, version 2.0 features advanced microlens arrays (now called MLA+). These are micrometer-sized lenses with a Dragonfly eye design that improves the viewing angle of OLED displays up to 160 degrees. These lenses (and there are 42.4 billion of them in LG Display’s 83-inch 4K prototype), combined with new algorithms result in an OLED far more brighter than its predecessors – 42 percent brighter than conventional OLEDs, according to the company.

META 2.0 could address one of the biggest criticisms of OLED compared to rival screens- whether Mini or MicroLED – that it can’t get bright enough. LG Display says its META 2.0 OLEDs can hit 3,000 nits of brightness.

Why would you want an even brighter OLED? Combining MLA+ with a new brightness-optimizing algorithm analyses scenes in even more detail, to enhance both peak and also color brightness. These next-gen OLED displays can reach color brightness of up to 1,500 nits — 114% brighter than conventional OLEDs. A new detail-enhancing algorithm will also attempt to accurately render bright and darker images, where detail is sometimes lost. It’s not just a matter of image quality either — the technology offers power savings too.

LG Display’s 83-inch 4K META 2.0 OLED demonstration display will apparently be joined by 55-, 65- and 77-inch options, as well as 8K OLEDs as big as 88 inches. These will reach consumer TVs, monitors, and the rest – just in time to go head-to-head with the latest, brightest MicroLED rivals.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

Netflix’s long-anticipated sci-fi series 3 Body Problem finally has a full trailer, following a short teaser released last year. This new trailer is over two minutes long and absolutely filled with exciting moments and tantalizing clues. Watch it below.

The show’s based on a hit book series by Chinese author Liu Cixin. The showrunners include David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, formerly of Game of Thrones. Yes, everyone hates them because of the ending of HBO’s fantasy epic, but here’s the thing. 3 Body Problem is the first novel in the finished Remembrance of Earth's Past series, and the earlier seasons of Game of Thrones, when working from pre-existing material, were absolutely iconic. So this could be very good, though it has suffered from delays.

As for the plot, well it’s complicated and hard to even discuss without getting into spoilers. The books are out there if you can’t wait until the show’s March 21 release date. As a clue, the clunky title actually refers to a common problem with both classical physics and quantum physics involving Newton’s laws of motion and universal gravitation. In other words, it’s hard sci-fi, but the books have plenty of action and mystery set-pieces, and the show looks to follow suit. Expect plenty of advanced technologies and otherworldly weirdness.

3 Body Problem stars Benedict Wong, Eiza González and several Game of Thrones alums including Jonathan Pryce and John Bradley. Besides Benioff and Weiss, screenwriter Alexander Woo is on-board as a co-showrunner. Woo’s best known for his work on True Blood and The Terror, among other well-regarded series.