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World’s First Wave Power Generator Receives Certification For Regular Use

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“The Norwegian certification agency DNV has certified the commercial wave-driven power generator Corpower C4 for regular use,” writes Longtime Slashdot reader Qbertino. “German news site heise.de has a detailed write-up. See a CGI video of the power station and its internals, as well as the company’s website [at their respective links].” From the report (translated to English): According to the manufacturer Corpower Ocean, it is the first DNV prototype certificate for a wave energy converter. The certificate confirms that Corpower’s technology meets DNV’s requirements for structural strength, reliability, and safety, Corpower Ocean announced. The certification process began in the design phase and lasted seven years. DNV oversaw the process from concept development through design, manufacturing, and assembly, to dry-running tests and subsequent operation.

This is an important step, said Patrik Moller, CEO and one of the founders of Corpower Ocean. With the certification, wave energy is no longer just a promising technology, but a proven and financially viable one. This opens up new opportunities for project financing, insurance, and investments in commercial applications. The Corpower C4 wave power plant looks like a normal buoy: It consists of a 19-meter-long floating body with a diameter of 9 meters and a weight of approximately 11 tons. The system is anchored to the seabed. A mechanism inside the buoy converts its up-and-down movements in the waves into a rotary motion. This, in turn, drives a generator that produces electricity. The report notes that the company is “planning the first two industrial-scale wave energy farms off the coasts of Portugal and Scotland,” which are scheduled to begin operating sometime between 2027 and 2029.

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TerraByte AI expands its ‘Earth Search Engine’ with satellite imagery partnership and interactive features

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U.S. map with sites of wildfires, earthquakes and other natural phenomena pinpointed
An interactive map displays the sites of wildfires, earthquakes and severe weather events, with links to satellite imagery. (Credit: TerraByte)

Two months after emerging from stealth mode, TerraByte AI is using artificial intelligence and a new partnership to upgrade its “Earth Search Engine.”

The startup, which maintains operations in Seattle as well as San Francisco, has just rolled out a TerraByte News service that pinpoints wildfires, earthquakes and severe weather events on an interactive map. Users can follow links to access news reports, social media posts and satellite views related to selected events.

The satellite views include open-source images from NASA’s Earth observation system as well as Europe’s Sentinel satellites. And now the database also features high-resolution pictures provided through a newly announced partnership with Texas-based SkyFi. The partnership gives TerraByte’s users access to SkyFi’s self-service Earth intelligence platform, which offers satellite and aerial imagery from more than 300 sources at prices as low as $15 per image.

“In May, when we came out of stealth, we made the planet searchable,” TerraByte CEO Rishi Madhok told GeekWire. “Now, the moment you find something, you can hold the imagery in your hands within a day. The next step is making Earth intelligence as routine as a web search — you ask, you see, and then you act.”

Madhok and Fuxun Yu, TerraByte’s chief technology officer, founded the company last year as a follow-up to their work on geospatial data analysis at Microsoft. They developed search tools that can recognize features of interest in satellite images and deliver data-driven insights in response to natural-language queries.

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TerraByte’s digest entry for “Forest Fires in France” combines satellite imagery and news reports. (TerraByte Graphic)

Over the past couple of months, TerraByte’s team has grown from three to five employees, Madhok said. “Our goal is to grow the team even further this year, because we are seeing a lot of traction from users since we came out of stealth,” he said.

“A lot of traction is coming from insurance [companies], from the government, from mining, from other areas where there is the possibility to see things,” he said. “And finance, right? A lot of quant firms and hedge funds want to see all of this activity coming in.”

One key application involves emergency response. “Our big focus is on catastrophes, particularly wildfires,” Madhok said. “Our vision is that anybody should be able to track this — not limited to just journalists, but including everyone who is living in those areas and wants to see what’s going on.”

Madhok expects the revenue-sharing partnership with SkyFi to open up new opportunities. “I’m happy to say that we have customers who are paying us,” he said. “From that perspective, we’re already doing well.”

Advances in AI are creating still more opportunities. “Now you can do searches not just using text, but using images, which we call visual search,” he said. “Let’s say you’re searching for a certain kind of vessel, and it’s very hard for you to describe it in natural language. You can just take a screenshot of it, upload it, and within seconds it will literally search for what you were looking for.”

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Looking ahead, Madhok and his teammates plan to add people power to the power of AI.

“This is the first version of a platform that we’re going to release, and we obviously want to learn more from our users,” he said. “We want this platform to become crowdsourced, so that people who are local to a region can add more information from that perspective, because then it starts becoming more powerful. We don’t want just TerraByte to be the owner of this.”

Madhok shared a video on LinkedIn that shows how TerraByte’s platform can quickly find high-resolution imagery of a shipwreck in Washington state’s Possession Sound:

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This Nespresso Phillips coffee machine is a cheaper way of getting your morning coffee boost

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A single takeaway espresso in London now regularly costs £4 or more, which adds up fast if that’s part of your daily routine.

That maths is exactly what makes the Philips L’OR Barista coffee machine worth a look now that it’s down from £109.99 to £81, a 26% saving that works out at £28.99 off the usual price.

Philips L'or Barista on a pink cloudy backgroundPhilips L'or Barista on a pink cloudy background

This Nespresso Phillips coffee machine is cheaper than a month of coffee takeaways

With Dual Capsule Recognition and 19 bar pressure for genuine espresso-bar crema, the Philips L’OR Barista is down to £81, a 26% saving.

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Rather than relying on ground beans or a single capsule format, this machine reads the size of whatever pod you drop in thanks to its Dual Capsule Recognition technology, automatically adjusting the brew to suit each specific coffee recipe.

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That flexibility extends to the capsules themselves, since the L’OR Barista is built around exclusive double shot capsules alongside L’OR Espresso single shots, while also staying compatible with standard Nespresso Original capsules already sitting in your cupboard.

Being able to brew two cups of espresso, or a single double espresso, from one of those double shot capsules means a ristretto for two or a stronger cup just for yourself is never more than a button press away.

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Underneath all that convenience sits genuine brewing power, with the system pushing coffee through at up to 19 bar of pressure to chase the same crema and intensity you would expect from a proper espresso bar.

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Every machine also arrives with a coffee tasting box containing four L’OR Espresso single shot capsules and five L’OR Barista double shot capsules, so there’s no need to buy pods separately before your first cup.

With over 930 reviews averaging 4.5 stars and two years of warranty cover included as standard, this is a machine that has already proven itself to plenty of buyers well beyond the strength of a single discount.

At £81 rather than £109.99, the Philips L’OR Barista pays for itself within weeks for anyone funding a coffee habit one overpriced takeaway cup at a time, and our Best Coffee Machine 2026 guide has the full rundown.

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Samsung’s 49-inch Odyssey OLED G9 is one of the best ultrawide monitors around, and $700 off

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Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is one of the biggest movies of the year (in every way imaginable), but Samsung‘s Odyssey OLED G9 monitor is a highlight in Best Buy’s Black Friday in July sale. Usually priced at $1,699.99, it’s currently down to just $999.99 right now, saving you $700.

The enormous 49-inch Dual QHD OLED display and 32:9 aspect ratio effectively replace two 27-inch QHD monitors, giving you an super-wide workspace for productivity and entertainment.

Add a 240Hz refresh rate, 0.03ms response time, and Nvidia G-SYNC Compatible support, and you’ve got a display that’s as impressive for gaming as it is for multitasking and creative work.

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Should you buy it?

Buy the Odyssey OLED G9 monitor if…

You should if you’re looking for a premium ultrawide monitor that excels at far more than gaming. The OLED panel produces exceptional contrast with deep blacks, HDR10+ support adds extra punch to compatible content, and the huge desktop space makes it fantastic for productivity, video editing, and creative work.

Skip the Odyssey OLED G9 if…

You shouldn’t if desk space is limited or you mainly use your PC for everyday office work. At 49 inches with a 32:9 aspect ratio, this is a huge display that demands plenty of room, and many people simply won’t need this much screen real estate.

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Why we recommend it

Samsung has combined a 5120 x 1440 OLED panel with a 240Hz refresh rate and a lightning-fast 0.03ms response time, creating a monitor that feels equally at home handling fast-paced games and demanding professional workloads.

The anti-glare coating helps reduce reflections, while the height-adjustable stand, DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.1, USB-C connectivity, and three-year warranty complete an impressively well-rounded package.

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In her 4.5 star review, our monitor expert Allisa said the Odyssey OLED G9 is “an incredible monitor that’s worth the cost.” In addition, she found it to be “fantastic, with plenty of features, excellent display, and a pretty solid speaker system.”

Price Context & Historical Value

The Odyssey OLED G9 normally sells for $1,699.99 at Best Buy, and this $700 discount brings the price down to just $999.99. That makes this flagship OLED ultrawide far more affordable for any buyers who may have previously considered it out of reach.

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The Catch: What to know before you buy

This monitor is designed for creatives and enthusiasts, and you’ll need a capable graphics card to make the most of its 5120 x 1440 resolution and 240Hz refresh rate. At its discounted price, a penny under $1000, it’s still a premium purchase, but if you can afford it, I would definitely recommend buying it.

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The little chips that could: How Impinj has survived 26 years in a market that’s ‘just getting going’

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Impinj co-founder and CEO Chris Diorio, center, and members of the Impinj team at the Nasdaq opening bell ceremony in New York City on Tuesday, marking the 10th anniversary of the company’s IPO. (Nasdaq Photo)

Backstage at a Seattle tech event in the early 2000s, Chris Diorio was waiting his turn to speak. Next to him was Jeff Bezos, whose company was already becoming a household name.

Diorio, the leader of Impinj, then a tiny local startup, turned to the Amazon founder: “Jeff, you’ve got a much bigger near-term opportunity than we do,” Diorio recalls saying, “but we’ve got a much bigger long-term opportunity than you do.”

Before Bezos could respond, he was called onstage.

“The technology turned out to be way harder than I thought,” Diorio acknowledged after telling that story in a recent interview. “But that’s what I told him — and I still believe in those words. Our opportunity is to deliver physical intelligence for every item in the world.”

A quarter-century after that chance encounter, Diorio rang the Nasdaq opening bell Tuesday morning in New York City to mark the 10th anniversary of Impinj’s IPO. The company’s tiny, battery-free RFID chips — each smaller than a grain of sand — have been embedded in more than 160 billion items, including clothing, pharmaceuticals, airline luggage, and groceries.

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An illustration of the Impinj E710 reader chip inside a handheld RFID scanner used for retail inventory. (Impinj Photo)

Impinj commands nearly two-thirds of its market, won a patent war against a rival 15 times its size, and has grown from a $250 million IPO valuation to a market cap of more than $4.2 billion. Along the way, the company survived a billion-dollar industry hype cycle that killed nearly every competitor.

And yet, Impinj has posted exactly one profitable year since going public — thanks to a $45 million legal settlement at the time. Its accumulated deficit stands at $400 million, its financial reports show. Less than 1% of the items it envisions connecting are connected today. 

To Diorio, that speaks to the potential. The company is barely scratching the surface. He cited the 1% stat in his comments before ringing the Nasdaq bell on Tuesday morning, saying the “opportunity is so gigantic that we’ll still have a huge runway ahead of us 10 years from now.”

That the company has gotten to this point is as much a Seattle story as it is a technology story. Impinj has benefitted from a network of patient local investors, academic connections and supporters who gave the company the time that Silicon Valley never would have. 

But no one imagined it would take this long when they got started.

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From Caltech to Seattle 

The origins of Impinj were at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., in the 1990s. Diorio was a graduate student working under Carver Mead, the physicist and engineer who helped coin the term Moore’s Law and helped lay the intellectual foundation for the modern semiconductor industry. 

Carver Mead, the Caltech physicist and engineer who co-founded Impinj with Diorio. (Photo by Norman Seeff, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Together, they discovered a way to change a transistor’s electrical properties after it had been manufactured — a quantum-mechanical phenomenon called “impact-ionized hot electron injection.” That made it possible to build chips so efficient and inexpensive that they could be embedded in disposable packaging. (“Impinj” is derived from that scientific name.)

In an oral history later recorded by the Science History Institute, Mead described Diorio as “a super-bright, super-high-energy guy” who “burned up the track” at Caltech.

After finishing his PhD, Diorio was recommended by Mead to the University of Washington’s computer science department. There was resistance among the UW faculty — his research in analog circuits wasn’t an obvious fit — but professor Larry Ruzzo carried the day. 

Ruzzo essentially said, “This guy is brilliant, and even if he is nothing other than our gift to the rest of the university, we should hire him,” recalled Ed Lazowska, the department chair at the time. 

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Diorio joined the UW faculty in 1997. Over the next few years, his research earned a string of honors, including Packard and Sloan fellowships. A couple years later, Diorio met up with Mead on a trip to California, over dinner at Fresh Cream, a long-since-closed French restaurant in Monterey. Diorio asked Mead if it was time to start a company. 

“Are you up for it?” Mead asked. Diorio said yes. They started the paperwork the next day.

Impinj was incorporated in April 2000, headquartered in Seattle. It quickly got the attention of two local investment firms, with behind-the-scenes help from the everpresent Lazowska. 

On April 21, 2000, the UW computer science chair emailed Bob Nelsen at Arch Venture Partners and Tom Alberg at Madrona. He explained that he was urging Diorio and Mead “to get some local $ for the connections,” and that he had pointed them to Arch and Madrona. 

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Impinj co-founder and CEO Chris Diorio discusses Gen2X, the company’s latest advancement in RFID chip technology. (Impinj Photo)

Patrick Ennis, then at Arch, reached out to Diorio that same day. As Ennis recalled in a recent interview, there were plenty of Silicon Valley firms that wanted in, thanks to Mead’s reputation, but Diorio and Mead decided to take Lazowska’s advice and go with Seattle investors. 

Diorio, who likes to take walking meetings, negotiated the terms with Ennis as they made their way on foot through the University of Washington Arboretum one day. The investment closed that summer: $15 million, split evenly between Arch and Madrona. 

Impinj at the time had patents, prototypes, and no real business plan. 

“That’s how venture capital should be done,” said Ennis, who has since become a Madrona venture partner. “You make big bets on great technology and great people.”

Betting the company on RFID

Bill Colleran joined Impinj as CEO in January 2001. He and Diorio had designed satellite chips together at defense contractor TRW in the 1980s. Colleran had just sold his Bluetooth startup, gotten married, and gone on his honeymoon. He came home to a message from Diorio: he’d started a company in Seattle and wanted Colleran to join. 

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Bill Colleran, Impinj’s first CEO, was recently tapped to lead AI coding startup Adronite.

Colleran was soon in Seattle — one of six or eight people working out of what he warmly recalls as “a crappy little building” in the University District, several of them former TRW colleagues. 

“We were kind of getting the band back together,” he said. 

RFID wasn’t the original plan. Impinj’s first target was improving power efficiency for 3G wireless base stations, but the dot-com bust killed that market, and regardless, the company was too small to compete with the major chipmakers in the wireless industry.

The team spent two years exploring what to do with their technology. Cable modems required too much dependence on Intel, as Colleran recalled. Cell phone radios were dominated by players too big to compete against. GPS turned out to be a poor technical fit — Impinj’s chips excelled at low power, but GPS demanded low electrical noise, a different problem entirely. 

So they eventually settled on RFID, the technology that uses tiny wireless chips to identify and track physical objects. The industry was young, the standards were still being written, and Impinj’s low-power technology seemed tailor-made for it.

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As Madrona’s Ennis and Tim Porter write in a piece pegged to the IPO anniversary, “When you have a truly powerful, groundbreaking deep technology, it behooves you to wander the product-market fit wilderness for a while, even when that is unsettling and downright frightening, and even when it runs contrary to what you learn in a VC class in business school.”

Then, a stroke of luck: In June 2003, Walmart announced it would require its top suppliers to tag every pallet and case with RFID chips. The Impinj team celebrated their good fortune. 

“We all high-fived,” Diorio recalled. “We did it. Eighteen months, we’re gonna IPO.”

In reality, it would be another 13 years.

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Surviving the RFID hype cycle

Walmart’s announcement triggered a gold rush of venture capital investment into RFID technology startups. But there was no global spectrum allocated, no standard that worked, and no products ready to deliver on the promise. Walmart’s own January 2005 deadline came and went. Only half of its top suppliers could comply.

By 2008, the hype cycle had collapsed. Nearly every RFID startup died or got acquired. 

“More than $1 billion of VC money got poured into RFID,” Diorio recalled. “Way up, crashing down, and only one company that made it out the other side. … We were lucky enough that it was us.”

The real inflection didn’t come until around 2010, when retailers began tagging individual items, not just pallets. Knowing exactly which products were where, in real time, could lift same-store sales by as much as 10%, by solving a basic problem: getting items out of back rooms and onto shelves, making them available for purchase before customers gave up looking for them. 

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Impinj filed to go public in April 2011, seeking to raise $100 million. But choppy markets — capped by the botched Facebook IPO in May 2012 — closed the window, and the company withdrew the filing that summer, raising $21 million privately instead.

After 14 years as CEO, Colleran stepped aside in 2014

“I didn’t know if I wanted to be a lifelong RFID guy,” he said. 

An exit wasn’t in sight — the IPO window was shut, and a sale didn’t make sense because Impinj made both chips and readers, and “any of the companies that would be interested in boxes weren’t chip companies, and the chip companies weren’t interested in boxes.”

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Diorio took over as CEO that November. The venture investors were 14 years in and needed a path to liquidity. He spent the next two years sorting things out and getting the company ready.

The long road to IPO

Porter, now a Madrona managing director, who had worked closely with Alberg on the Impinj investment since 2007, recalled the final stretch. One of the first target dates for trading landed on the day Britain voted to leave the European Union, sending markets into a tailspin. 

“It was a little bit like, are you kidding — what next?” Porter said. 

But on July 21, 2016 — some 16 years after its founding — Impinj went public on the Nasdaq at $14 a share, raising $67 million at a market cap of just over $250 million. 

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The late investor Tom Alberg, one of Amazon’s first investors and an early backer of Impinj, looks on as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks at a Madrona event in 2015. (Madrona Photo)

Alberg, the late, legendary investor, who was one of the first people to back Bezos’ fledgling online bookstore, personally invested $500,000 in the offering — a rare move among venture investors, who typically use IPOs to finally cash out, not double down. 

Porter called Alberg’s move “a really big signal” to the market that demonstrated his long-term belief in Impinj. It was also a smart investment, as it turned out. As noted during the Nasdaq bell-ringing Tuesday morning, Impinj’s share price has grown by nearly 900% since the IPO.

But there was one last hitch. On the night before trading began, the offering was so oversubscribed that the final allocation became a drawn-out negotiation between the board and the bankers over how many shares to issue. It dragged on so long that Diorio and CFO Evan Fein, stuck in Chicago for the roadshow, missed their flight to New York.

Fein had been one of the first people hired at Impinj, joining Colleran in the University District office in 2001 and staying through the whole ride. He was not about to miss the bell-ringing.

The CFO wanted to make a run for it, but Diorio told him there was no way — the flight departed in 30 minutes from O’Hare. Fein tried anyway. He didn’t make it. They stayed in Chicago overnight and caught a flight the next morning.

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The company’s CTO at the time rang the bell in Diorio’s place. 

Trial by fire

The celebration was short-lived. After the IPO, demand for RFID surged — but Impinj, thinly capitalized after years of private fundraising, didn’t have the operational capacity to fill the orders. The stock quadrupled from its $14 IPO price to more than $60. Then it all came apart.

NXP Semiconductors, a Dutch chipmaker roughly 15 times Impinj’s size, moved aggressively on pricing and took business away. Customers who had been stockpiling RFID tags pulled back on orders. Revenue declined. On Feb. 2, 2018, the stock plunged 47% in a single day.

What followed was the darkest stretch in the company’s history. The company laid off 9% of its workforce. Then a former employee complaint triggered an audit committee investigation, forcing the company to miss an SEC filing deadline and drawing a deficiency notice from Nasdaq.

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For months, the outcome was uncertain. Executives couldn’t trade their stock or issue grants to employees. The investigation cost $1.4 million. NXP, sensing an opportunity, continued to press its advantage.

Diorio described the investigation as mentally draining. The company was spending millions of dollars, the outside attorneys weren’t sharing their findings along the way, following the standard practice, and there was no way to know for certain how it would end. 

“You firmly believe you haven’t done anything wrong,” he said, “but who knows if somebody actually did something wrong that you don’t know about.” 

The investigation ultimately cleared the company, finding “no credible evidence” of wrongdoing, and Impinj received what Diorio called a rare letter from the SEC formally closing the matter. The stock surged 35% on the news.

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Diorio called 2018 a turning point. “It was the year where everything got really difficult, the team and the company rallied, and it was the strength and the persistence of the team and their dedication that pulled us out the other side,” he said. “I’ll never forget that.”

The following year, Impinj went on offense. In June 2019, the company sued NXP, alleging it had copied 26 of Impinj’s patents. NXP countersued. The litigation stretched across five years and four lawsuits. In 2023, a federal jury found NXP had willfully infringed Impinj’s patents and awarded $18.5 million in damages. NXP settled in 2024, paying $45 million upfront and agreeing to ongoing royalties of roughly $17 million a year.

Where Impinj stands today

Diorio helped coin an industry term for the technology Impinj had built: RAIN RFID, short for “RAdio-frequency IdentificatioN.” It distinguished what Impinj does (using battery-free chips to identify and track individual items at scale) from other flavors of RFID used for key cards, animal tags, and contactless payments.

Today the company employs more than 450 people, most of them based in its headquarters at 400 Fairview Ave. N. in Seattle, with a test and development lab on Beacon Hill. The workforce is a fraction of NXP’s, which has more than 32,000 employees — a reminder that Impinj has built a market-leading position with a comparatively small team. 

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Inside the Impinj offices in Seattle in 2018. (File Photo)

Impinj holds an estimated 64% of the global market for RAIN RFID endpoint chips, up from 51% the year before, according to ABI Research. The company first overtook rival NXP for the market lead in 2024. The industry shipped nearly 53 billion chips in 2024, roughly one for every six or seven people on Earth. Impinj has connected more than 160 billion items cumulatively.

Each chip is battery-free, costs a few pennies, can be read wirelessly from 30 feet away, and identifies individual items at a rate of up to 1,000 per second. Vision systems can’t identify individual items. QR codes require line of sight. NFC has a range of four inches. Bluetooth requires a battery.

“Name any other technology that even gets close,” Diorio said. “You won’t come up with one.”

Privacy concerns nearly killed the RFID industry in its early years, when consumer groups campaigned against the technology in the mid-2000s. Although there’s privacy innovation still to come, Diorio said those fears have largely faded. The chips carry only a number, respond only when powered by an external reader, and don’t track people. 

One retailer already turns its tags invisible after the point of sale, though Diorio noted that’s “not the best solution because then that inhibits recycling.” 

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His longer-term goal is cryptographic security, chips that can’t be cloned, putting “a dent in global counterfeiting” while keeping consumer data protected. 

Meanwhile, the competitive landscape is shifting. Diorio views NXP as the only real competitor — “everybody else in the market is a partner,” he said — but the competitor list in Impinj’s SEC filings has grown from two names at the time of the IPO to more than six, including four Chinese chipmakers. When a product costs pennies, low-cost competitors have a natural opening.

Retail apparel remains the core market. About 60% of all RAIN RFID tags go on clothing. But that reliance has made the business volatile. Three times in 10 years as a public company, demand from retailers has dropped sharply, dragging revenue and the stock with it. 

Earlier this year, Impinj’s stock plunged after the company issued guidance well below expectations. Part of the challenge: the company’s top three customers account for 61% of revenue.

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The financial picture reflects a company that is still proving itself. Revenue has grown from $123 million in 2018 to $361 million last year, but Impinj has posted just one profitable year since going public — a $41 million gain in 2024, boosted by the NXP settlement.

To Diorio, all of this is prelude. Apparel, he said, is “tiny” compared to the total market of every item manufactured, transported, and sold. General merchandise, supply chain logistics, pharmaceuticals, food — each is an order of magnitude larger, or more.

“We have a gigantic blue ocean,” he said. “It’s the size of the Pacific.”

Machine learning and AI

The company is also using machine learning to move beyond handheld inventory scanning. Fixed readers mounted in ceiling tiles and other locations can track items autonomously at store choke points, from receiving docks to fitting rooms to exits, replacing employees who currently walk the aisles waving handheld scanners. 

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More broadly, Diorio sees tagged items as a data source for AI, generating hard information at every point in a product’s journey from factory to shelf to recycling bin. 

“Most of the modeling that goes on today is based on guessing,” he said. “If the models are based on hard data, it’s immensely more valuable.” 

Impinj’s M800 series RAIN RFID chip, smaller than a grain of sand, is designed to be embedded in labels on individual items — including fresh groceries, one of the company’s biggest growth opportunities. (Impinj Photo)

The biggest bet ahead is food. Three of the top five U.S. grocers (Kroger, Walmart, and Albertsons/Safeway) are piloting RFID for food freshness, according to Diorio, using tags to identify items approaching their expiration dates so they can be marked down before they end up in the trash. 

A European grocer is pushing toward fully automated checkout, where a basket of tagged items moves down a conveyor and is read instantly, no scanning required.

These are pilots, not deployments. The grocery market dwarfs apparel in volume, and Impinj has yet to prove it can crack it at scale. But here again, Diorio sees this as untapped potential. 

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“My enthusiasm is as high as it’s ever been,” he said. “We are just getting going.”

And this time, he made it to New York to ring the opening bell. 

During his Nasdaq remarks on Tuesday morning, Diorio told the story of getting stuck in Chicago for the IPO a decade ago, using the anecdote to make a larger point.

“The team stepped in,” he said. “The team that was here covered everything, rang the bell, did all the process, and did it beautifully. In fact, probably better than we could have. And that is the story of Impinj. It’s the team.”

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Editor’s note: This story was updated July 23, 2026, to reflect ABI Research’s 2025 market share estimate of 64% for Impinj, up from 51% in 2024 as originally reported. The spelling of former CFO Evan Fein’s name was also corrected.

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Kagi Brings Back Old-School Search, One Human-Made Website at a Time

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If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember the way the web used to be: sites made and developed by humans.

You could load up a directory like AltaVista or Yahoo and click through categories including Home & Family, Science, and Computers. In those listings you’d find pages put together by hobbyists, academics, and tech nerds.

People gathered around forums and bulletin boards, and web developers tended to avoid putting images on their sites because it would slow down page loading. The idea of watching a video over the internet seemed almost impossible.

In the decades since those formative years, the web has transformed almost beyond recognition. Almost everything is now monetized to the nth degree, from search results and forums to social media and news outlets. Powerful apps and tools now run inside browsers, while AI is hard at work removing the need for the open web altogether.

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There are now a good number of companies that are keen to see the spirit of the old web return, and that includes Kagi. For several years Kagi has been running a search engine based on privacy and security. Now Kagi has expanded its efforts beyond its Google-alternative search tool to curate a “small web” of sites driven and written by humans.

The Kagi Search Engine

As Kagi’s main business is its search engine, it makes sense to start here. Searching with Kagi will cost you a small fee (starting at $5 a month, plus sales tax) for 300 searches. The standard-level AI assistant is included in that price; it’ll help you make sense of what you’re seeing. You get unlimited searches and more AI assistant tokens for $10 a month. If you want to see what Kagi is like first before committing, there’s a free trial available that allows you 100 searches.

The argument that Kagi puts forward for why you should pay for search is pretty persuasive. As Kagi explains it, searching the web is always going to cost you—it’s just a question of whether you pay directly with dollars, by giving up data about your online activity, or by sifting through an increasing number of ads and sponsored links.

Besides making search more private, Kagi also wants to make it better by serving up results that aren’t influenced by paid promotions or whatever Google’s favored business practices happen to be from month to month. Kagi has its own indexes for web and news, and is built to promote “relevant, high quality results” and noncommercial sites.

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To get started with Kagi search, all you need is an email address and password to manage your account. You can then get started with your 100 free searches. Open the search options panel to limit results to images, videos, podcasts, maps or news, or to filter by time or language.

For me, it feels a little bit like stepping back in time. Searching for a band, for example, brings up its official website, Wikipedia page, social media accounts, and YouTube channel—all free of promoted results, related searches, and sponsored content (such as concert tickets). It’s more the way search results used to appear.

Kagi’s Small Web Project

There’s now more to Kagi than search. The company offers access to a multitude of AI models (of course), and is busy building out its Small Web project, which aims to highlight the best of the human-made and human-curated internet. The company recently launched apps for Android and iOS too.

The idea is to avoid a web “dominated by algorithms, ads, and AI-generated noise,” in Kagi’s words. It’s a little like the old StumbleUpon, if you remember that far back. There’s a Next Post button for jumping to something else at random, allowing you to favorite what you see or to search for something specific. There’s a Share button too, of course.

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Tiny Vinyl Launches a $49.99 Player for 4 Inch Records Because Apparently They Needed One

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Tiny Vinyl now has a dedicated belt drive record player with Bluetooth, built in stereo speakers, and accessories for storing and displaying its growing collection of miniature records.

Last year, we covered Tiny Vinyl, the 4-inch record format that puts one song on each side and turns physical music into something closer to a collectible sonic snack. Apparently the snack now requires its own table setting.

The new Tiny Vinyl Player is a $49.99 record player designed exclusively for the company’s miniature vinyl format. It is available through Target in a black leatherette clamshell cabinet with built in stereo speakers, Bluetooth output, and a wired audio connection for external speakers or headphones.

Why Does Tiny Vinyl Need Its Own Player?

Strictly speaking, it does not.

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Tiny Vinyl records spin at 33⅓ RPM and can play on many conventional manual turntables. The problem is that their grooves sit very close to the spindle. Automatic stop and return mechanisms can engage before the song is finished, while some tonearms simply cannot travel far enough toward the center of the platter.

tiny-vinyl-player-angle
Tiny Vinyl Player

The dedicated player removes that uncertainty and gives collectors a simple way to use the format without checking tonearm geometry or disabling automatic functions. It also makes Tiny Vinyl more approachable for younger listeners and casual collectors who do not already own a turntable.

Tiny Vinyl says customers began requesting a player almost as soon as the records reached the market. Target also encouraged the company to develop one after the retailer began carrying the format across its stores. According to the company’s founders, more than one million Tiny Vinyl records have now been pressed.

Perhaps the tiny ecosystem is becoming less tiny.

What Does the Tiny Vinyl Player Actually Play?

One format. No plot twist.

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The Tiny Vinyl Player supports the company’s 4-inch records at 33⅓ RPM. It does not play conventional 7 inch singles, 10 inch records, 12 inch LPs, or standard 45 RPM releases.

Each Tiny Vinyl record holds up to four minutes of music per side and is issued as a sequentially numbered limited edition. The records use 15 grams of 100 percent bio attributed vinyl, compared with approximately 140 grams for a conventional LP.

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That limited playing time means this is not a format for albums, live recordings, or the 17 minute version of anything. It is designed for two songs, collectible artwork, and fans who enjoy owning a physical object connected to a particular artist.

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Tiny Vinyl’s official catalog now includes more than 90 released or identified records, most of which sell for $14.99 at Target. The lineup spans artists such as Rihanna, Ariana Grande, Bruno Mars, Chappell Roan, Britney Spears, The Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, Blink 182, Jimi Hendrix, BTS, and John Williams.

Tiny Vinyl Info

Tiny Vinyl Player Features

The Tiny Vinyl Player is a compact belt drive design measuring approximately 10 inches wide, 5.5 inches tall, and 6.5 inches deep. It weighs 3.88 pounds and requires AC power because there is no internal battery.

Key features include:

  • 33⅓ RPM playback
  • Support for 4 inch Tiny Vinyl records
  • Belt drive mechanism
  • Built in stereo speakers
  • Bluetooth output for compatible speakers and headphones
  • Wired audio output
  • Black leatherette clamshell cabinet
  • Included power cord
  • Compact 10.04 by 5.51 by 6.46 inch dimensions

The player is designed to work immediately out of the box, although records are sold separately.

Please Connect Better Powered Speakers

Nobody should expect room filling bass, meaningful stereo separation, or much dynamic impact from speakers squeezed into a $49.99 record player that is only slightly larger than a shoebox.

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Tiny Vinyl acknowledges that the built in speakers are intended for convenient, casual listening rather than high quality playback. Two colleagues who have already purchased it described the sonic playback as “thin” and “lacking bass impact.”

Color me surprised. Not really.

We have not tested the Tiny Vinyl Player, so this is not a sonic verdict. It is, however, a very strong recommendation to connect the player to a better pair of powered speakers.

Use the wired audio output when possible, or connect through Bluetooth if convenience matters more. Even an affordable pair of powered bookshelf speakers should provide greater output, stronger bass, and a more convincing sense of scale than the internal speakers.

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Will that transform a 4-inch record into an audiophile pressing? Of course not. But it should make the experience considerably more enjoyable, which is presumably why you bought a record that can hide behind a drink coaster in the first place.

Tiny Vinyl Crate

tiny-vinyl-crate
Tiny Vinyl Crate

The $19.99 Tiny Vinyl Crate provides storage for up to 32 records. It uses a wood frame with black leatherette covering and a velveteen interior, and it is sized so the Tiny Vinyl Player can sit directly on top.

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The crate can also accommodate compact discs and cassettes, should your miniature record collection fail to consume every available inch of storage.

Tiny Vinyl 2×2 Frame

tiny-vinyl-frame
Tiny Vinyl 2×2 Frame

For collectors more interested in displaying the artwork, the $14.99 Tiny Vinyl 2×2 Frame holds four record jackets behind a clear shatter resistant window.

The black wood frame measures approximately 11 by 11 inches, uses magnetic closures for easier access, and can be mounted on a wall or placed on a flat surface. The records themselves are not included.

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The Bottom Line

The Tiny Vinyl Player is not pretending to replace a conventional turntable, and anyone expecting it to compete with a proper analog system has wandered into the wrong aisle at Target.

This is a compact, affordable player for collectors who already own Tiny Vinyl records, younger listeners discovering physical music, or anyone whose automatic turntable cannot reach the format’s unusually close inner grooves. It also makes a fun desk system or gift without requiring the space and expense of a full size turntable setup.

Owners of a compatible manual turntable do not need it. Listeners expecting full size LP performance should avoid it entirely.

For everyone else, the Tiny Vinyl Player completes an amusing and increasingly popular collectible ecosystem. Just connect it to better powered speakers. Tiny records are one thing. Tiny sound does not have to be part of the deal.

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Price & Availability

The Tiny Vinyl Player and accessories are available exclusively through Target at the time of publication.

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Radar Signals from US-India NISAR Satellite Turns an Antarctic Peak Into a Hummingbird

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Radar Signal NISAR Satellite Antarctic Peak Hummingbird
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Radar signals from the joint US-India NISAR satellite have mapped a mountaintop in East Antarctica that forms a clear hummingbird shape once the data is processed into color. Scientists at the mission nicknamed the result “the hummingbird” almost as soon as the image appeared.


Radar Signal NISAR Satellite Antarctic Peak Hummingbird
Nunatak Zaterjavshijsja is a granite mountain in East Antarctica’s Prince Charles Mountains that rises from the surrounding ice sheet approximately 40 kilometers southwest of Mount Newton. A glacier lumbers past this impediment on its journey northeast to the ocean. The force of the mountain causes the ice to strain and bend, eventually forming deep cracks in the surface known as crevasses.

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NISAR’s L-band radar collected observations in August 2025, when the satellite was still being tested. It operates by transmitting microwaves towards the surface, which have horizontal polarization, and recording what comes back. Surfaces that bounce the signal back with the same direction as it was sent appear in magenta, which is the smoothest type of ice. Anything that returns with a changed polarization of the signal or scatters after entering the ice registers as green. These greens distinguish the faces of crevasses and other irregular structures. Where both types of signals come back strongly, you get white.

Radar Signal NISAR Satellite Antarctic Peak Hummingbird
When the finished image is viewed, the peak forms a bright, oval center with a darker section smack in the middle, similar to an eye. Fine green lines radiate from the top and bottom of the core in patterns resembling feathers or wings. A long thin green chunk extends away from the oval, giving it a pointed beak appearance. The ice stream that continues to go northeast becomes the tail of the whole thing. Magenta fields surround the smoother areas of the fractured zone, while the deepest cracks light the brightest green.

Seongsu Jeong, a signal analysis engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab who produced the image, explained that the radar can look past the snow and into the ice, revealing features that optical sensors cannot detect. A Landsat 9 image of the same region obtained in November 2025 is almost entirely white, with just weak traces of a mountain existing.

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NISAR is equipped with both L-band and S-band radars, as well as a 12 meter mesh reflector, the largest radar antenna ever flown by the US. Every 12 days, the satellite covers nearly the entire surface of the Earth, including land and ice. The mission’s processed L-band data was made available to the public on July 20, 2026, only a few days before the first anniversary of its launch from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Center on July 30, 2025.

The beak shape was a complete coincidence, but the detail behind it is extremely valuable. The green fracture lines indicate exactly where the glacier is under stress and how the ice moves around the nunatak. Scientists may use this knowledge to investigate how glaciers move, the dynamics of ice sheets, and how Antarctic ice responds to impediments well inland from the shore. The same radar approach that transformed a single peak into a bird shape is already demonstrating the ability to provide repeated, all-weather data required to track these changes over time.
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How to watch Stage 19 & 20 of Tour de France 2026: FREE live streams

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Tour de France 2026 continues today with Stage 19, the first of two successive summit finishes at the iconic Alpe d’Huez. Just the name conjors images of legendary Tour moments of years gone by, from Fausto Coppi’s incredible climb to victory back in 1952, to Tom Pidcock’s seat-of-your-pants descent 70 years later. So good that they included it twice in this year’s route, the riders will have to do it all again tomorrow (Via a different route) on the day before the finish.

Today’s stage is a 127.9km ride from Gap which includes 3,500m of elevation gain, starting with the Category Two Col Bayard, a 4.8km long climb with an average gradient of 7.2%. The riders get some respite with a short descent and a brief flat section, before taking on the Category One Col du Noyer (7.2km at 8.5%) which takes them to the summit. They will be far from finished, though, with 100km still to go which includes the Category Three Col d’Ornon (5.4km at 6.4%) before they tackle Alpe d’Huez with its familiar 21 hairpin bends.

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Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra vs. Z Fold 7: Improved Battery, Screen and a Higher Price

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At Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event, the phone-maker announced three new folding phones, including its first-ever Ultra foldable phone. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is the true successor of last year’s Fold 7, while the Fold 8 enters with an all-new wide-fold design.

These devices are still priced high enough to put them out of reach for many, but they pack subtle design improvements that might make a big impact in daily life. I love the new anti-reflective coating, easier-to-unfold design and battery upgrades, but the Galaxy Z Fold 7 remains a powerful and capable device – especially if you can get it at a rare discount.

The two book-style foldables differ mainly in experiential upgrades rather than spec bumps. It might be hard to get an idea of what’s exactly new. That’s why I put them side by side during my hands-on to find out.

Holding the Z Fold 8 Ultra and the Z Fold 7.
The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra succeeds the Galaxy Z Fold 7 with a thinner design when folded.Prakhar Khanna/CNET

Design and display

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is roughly the same size as the already thin-and-light Fold 7. It weighs the same but is a millimeter slimmer when unfolded. Both phones are comfortable to hold, but the new model is easier to open.

Samsung has made the Ultra’s sides slightly slimmer so its bezels don’t run all the way to the corners. This gives you a slight gap between the sides to make it easier to unfold. In comparison, the Fold 7 has flat sides with zero gap when the phone is folded shut, making it more difficult to unfold.

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Both phones have a 6.5-inch AMOLED cover screen and an 8-inch AMOLED folding display with a 120Hz variable refresh rate. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra’s inner screen is brighter at 3,000 nits (versus 2,600 nits on the Fold 7). It also has a matte finish, along with my long-requested feature: an anti-reflective coating for better legibility in harsh lighting conditions and outdoors.

Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Galaxy Z Fold 7
Side by side of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 (left) and the Z Fold 7.Prakhar Khanna/CNET

I held both phones indoors in direct light, and the difference was noticeable. My Fold 7 was more susceptible to glare and harder to see under direct light when compared to the new model. 

Samsung has also improved the crease situation. It is minimal and can’t be seen unless you’re specifically looking for it. The phone-maker has added a new display structure that combines titanium-alloy film with an enhanced titanium plate to strengthen the display and balance the “hinge mechanics, display tension and magnetic force to make unfolding feel smoother, lighter and more natural,” says Samsung.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and Z Fold 7 while closed.
While closed, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and the Galaxy Z Fold 7 use their 6.5-inch displays. Prakhar Khanna/CNET

Both foldables are IP48 rated for dust and water resistance. So, they aren’t truly dust-tight like the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold and Honor Magic V6, but they can survive being dunked in water for at least 30 minutes (the “8” in IP48). But they won’t protect against dust particles smaller than 1mm (the “4” in that rating).

Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra while open
The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra uses an 8-inch screen when unfolded.Prakhar Khanna/CNET

Performance and battery

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chip, as compared with the Fold 7’s Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. Both phones come in three storage variants: 256GB, 512GB and 1TB, with the top-end model getting 16GB of RAM (the 256GB and 512GB models are again paired with 12GB of RAM).

Samsung says it has created more space in the internals for better heat dissipation, so you can theoretically expect better thermal management.

As for the battery, this is the first time Samsung is using the silicon-carbon anode technology. It has allowed the phone-maker to upgrade the cell capacity from 4,400 mAh to 5,000 mAh on the new model. The Ultra also supports faster wired charging at 45 watts (the Fold 7 offered 25 watts).

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On paper, it is still behind Chinese rivals like Oppo and Honor, which include over 6,000-mAh batteries in their respective folding phones, but I’m hoping this spec bump will help me get through a day with ease.

Both phones have Qi wireless charging, but no inbuilt magnets. You’ll have to buy a separate magnetic case to add compatibility with Qi2 wireless chargers and other magnetic accessories.

The back of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and Z Fold 7.
The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and Z Fold 7 both include a 200-megapixel wide camera.Prakhar Khanna/CNET

Camera, software and AI

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra’s camera array is mostly unchanged from last year’s model, with one exception: the ultrawide sensor. You get a 200-megapixel main camera and a 10-megapixel telephoto sensor with 3x optical zoom on both phones. However, the 12-megapixel ultrawide camera has been upgraded to a 50-megapixel sensor. You can expect higher-quality images, but I’ll wait for CNET’s tests to identify the real differences.

Both foldables shoot video in 8K at 30 frames per second, but the Fold might appeal to more creatives. The new model adds support for the APV codec and adds a Cine LUT to give cinematic color and tone control directly from your phone. This adds greater flexibility for editing and production workflows for professional creators.

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 launched with Android 16 onboard last year, and the Fold 8 Ultra is coming with Android 17 (with One UI 9 on top). You get a similar software experience on both phones, and the Z Fold 7 will get the update to Android 17 with One UI 9.

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The Z Fold 8 Ultra with split screen apps
Now Nudge opens the Calendar in split screen after you tap on its pop-up button.Prakhar Khanna/CNET

The two devices support the full suite of Samsung’s Galaxy AI features alongside Gemini access. There’s AI Select for on-screen search support, an object eraser tool in the Gallery app and contextual AI features like Now Nudge for first-party apps. The latter displays contextual actions based on on-screen information. Like, if you’re having a chat in the Messages app, and they send you an invite with the date, time and address, Samsung’s Now Nudge feature will show a pop-up to add it to Calendar.

The phone-maker also demoed a new agentic AI feature at my demo, which wasn’t very impressive. Ideally, the new Gemini feature would help book a hotel just by looking at an on-screen photo of the Eiffel Tower, but in its current state, it was unreliable. But since the Z Fold 8 Ultra gets seven years of software updates and the Z Fold 7 has six more years to go, there’s plenty of time for both phones to continue to improve on these features.

To see more differences between the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and the Z Fold 7, check out the specs chart below.

Hands-On With Samsung's Z Fold 8 Ultra and Z Flip 8: What Your Extra $100 Buys

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra vs. Z Fold 7: Specs and prices

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7
Cover display size, tech, resolution, refresh rate 6.5-inch AMOLED; 2,520×1,080 pixels; up to 120Hz variable refresh rate 4.1-inch AMOLED; 1,048×948 pixels; 120Hz refresh rate
Internal display size, tech, resolution, refresh rate 8.0-inch AMOLED; 2,256×2,504 pixels; up to 120Hz variable refresh rate 6.9-inch AMOLED; 2,520×1,080 pixels; 1 to 120Hz refresh rate
Pixel density Cover: 422 ppi; Internal: 422 ppi Cover: 342ppi; Internal: 397ppi
Dimensions (inches) Open: 6.23 x 5.6 x 0.16 in; Closed: 6.23 x 2.87 x 0.35 in Open: 2.96 x 6.56 x 0.26 in; Closed: 2.96 x 3.37 x 0.52 in
Dimensions (millimeters) Open: 158.4 x 143.2 x 4.1mm; Closed: 158.4 x 72.8 x 8.9mm Open: 75.2 x 166.7 x 6.5mm; Closed: 75.2 x 85.5 x 13.7mm
Weight (grams, ounces) 215g (7.58 oz) 188g (6.63 oz.)
Mobile software Android 17 with One UI 9 Android 16
Cameras 200-megapixel (wide), 50-megapixel (ultrawide), 10-megapixel (telephoto), 10-megapixel (cover screen selfie) 50-megapixel (wide), 12-megapixel (ultrawide)
Internal screen camera 10-megapixel 10-megapixel
Video capture 8K at 30 fps 4K
Processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy Samsung Exynos 2500
RAM/storage 12GB + 256GB; 12GB + 512GB; 16GB + 1TB 12GB + 256GB, 12GB + 512GB
Expandable storage None None
Battery 5,000 mAh 4,300 mAh
Fingerprint sensor Side Yes
Connector USB-C USB-C
Headphone jack None None
Special features IP48 rating, Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3 (cover screen), Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 (Rear), Advanced Armor Aluminum, 5G (sub6, mmW), Wi-Fi 7, 3,000-nit peak brightness, anti-reflective display, 45-watt wired charging, 20-watt wireless charging One UI 8, IP48 water resistance, 25W wired charging, Qi wireless charging, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, Galaxy AI
US price starts at $2,100 (256GB); $2,300 (512GB); $2,700 (1TB) $1,100 (256GB)
UK price starts at £1,899 (256GB); £2,069 (512GB); £ 2,409 (1TB) £1,049
Australia price starts at AU$2,999 (256GB); AU$3,299 (512GB); AU$3,899 (1TB) AU$1,799

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This Searchable Tool Is Helping Track Flock Surveillance Cameras in Your City

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Recent coverage of Flock Safety, the fast‑growing US surveillance technology company, reveals how opposition to automated license plate readers is playing out at the local level.

In South Carolina, officials have been sparring over whether to install 25 new cameras, a dispute that reflects broader questions about cost, oversight, and how much surveillance communities are willing to accept. The city of Los Angeles recently broke its contract with Flock Safety, though Flock’s CEO argues that the suspension should be temporary while the police department revises its rules.

These cancellations are in large part driven by public concern around a system designed to enable mass surveillance, which is susceptible to serious abuses, including biased policing and privacy violations.

To track such surveillance, journalists and researchers are increasingly turning to a free tool called the Atlas of Surveillance, a collaboration between the renowned digital privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation and the University of Nevada, Reno. The site has become a go‑to source for mapping police technology — which also includes drones, facial-recognition cameras and body cameras — with a searchable database that’s often more dependable than alternatives.

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With the Atlas of Surveillance tool, you enter a city, county, state, law enforcement agency or vendor in the US and select which technology you’re interested in tracking. You’ll get a list of details based on your search, including links to public records or news articles.

“We frequently run into situations where local councilpeople don’t even know that a certain tool is in use,” said Beryl Lipton, Electronic Frontier Foundation senior investigative researcher. “Learning about a technology we have logged in the Atlas of Surveillance is meant to help people have conversations [about] whether that tool is appropriate for local use, start asking questions, and advocate for standards around how their police can or can’t use this equipment.”

Surveilling surveillance

While other tools for tracking Flock cameras and similar surveillance systems exist, I prefer the EFF’s approach, which uses reliable crowdsourced data from specific volunteers, including University of Nevada students and staff, as well as experienced researchers. These volunteers use a variety of information, including government documents, press releases, news stories and confirmed social media posts, to create lists of exactly which surveillance technologies local police or sheriff departments are using, as well as when they were adopted.

Deflock, another popular crowdsourced app for reporting Flock camera locations, has an open-source design that leaves it vulnerable to false reports from people who only think they’re seeing a surveillance device. Self-reports are also becoming less reliable as surveillance cameras are being hidden in speed signs and cacti.

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Results for an Atlas of Surveillance search.
The Atlas provides sources for its information and includes records dating back years.EFF

I tried the Atlas tool with several location searches, including Albany, Georgia, where five police officers were fired and arrested in July on charges of misusing the city’s Flock system. Sure enough, I could see exactly when Albany began its Flock program, among other details about the technology it uses.

“While we may know that a police department has a tool, we may not know that they don’t have a governing policy or what is in the policy they have, like how long the data is retained,” Lipton told me.

Lipton recommends that users pair the Atlas tool with the EFF’s Street-Level Surveillance hub, which offers deeper documentation, including details on third‑party vendors that collaborate with law enforcement.

The Atlas database isn’t perfect, and the volunteers can do only so much. In my own searches, I found that my home city offered accurate listings for traffic cameras, but didn’t mention the period when it adopted Flock automated license plate readers last year, before removing them after public complaint. I’ve seen similar patterns in other cities with comparable histories, suggesting the database may emphasize active programs or exclude portions of older records.

Resources like the Atlas of Surveillance give residents a clearer view of the technologies their police departments use, information that can otherwise be difficult to obtain. As I’ve covered before, some cities will carefully omit the name “Flock” when announcing new surveillance or monitoring programs, even if they are using the brand’s drones or ALPR cameras.

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If you’d like to volunteer for the Atlas of Surveillance, you can select the Collaborate option to submit a datapoint for consideration.

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