There’s a long history of devices originally used for communication being made into computers, with relay switching circuits, vacuum tubes, and transistors being some well-known examples. In a smaller way, pneumatic tubes likewise deserve a place on the list; [soiboi soft], for example, has used pneumatic systems to build actuators, logic systems, and displays, including this latching seven-segment display.
Each segment in the display is made of a cavity behind a silicone sheet; when a vacuum is applied, the front sheet is pulled into the cavity. A vacuum-controlled switch (much like a transistor, as we’ve covered before) connects to the cavity, so that each segment can be latched open or closed. Each segment has two control lines: one to pressurize or depressurize the cavity, and one to control the switch. The overall display has four seven-segment digits, with seven common data lines and four control lines, one for each digit.
The display is built in five layers: the front display membrane, a frame to clamp this in place, the chamber bodies, the membrane which forms the switches, and the control channels. The membranes were cast in silicone using 3D-printed molds, and the other parts were 3D-printed on a glass build plate to get a sufficiently smooth, leak-free surface. As it was, the display used a truly intimidating number of fasteners to ensure airtight connections between the different layers. [soiboi soft] used the display for a clock, so it sits at the front of a 3D-printed enclosure containing an Arduino, a small vacuum pump, and solenoid valves.
This capacity for latching and switching, combined with pneumatic actuators, raises the interesting possibility of purely air-powered robots. It’s even possible to 3D-print pneumatic channels by using a custom nozzle.
Jumping back into Nerf Arena Blast today provides the same adrenaline that captivated players all those years ago in 1999. People are still loading patched versions of the game onto their modern machines and connecting to active servers, where matches are quickly filling up. This game has always managed to transform what would otherwise be a bunch of kids playing with foam darts into full-fledged digital competition that still feels new 27 years later.
The guys at Visionary Media did an excellent job designing the game around Nerf gear. Every blaster in the game is an exact replica of the one you can purchase at the store. The Wildfire, for example, can just spit out darts in fast bursts, whereas the Ballzooka releases these clusters that spread all over the place when they impact, and because ammo is limited, you can bet your bottom dollar that whoever runs out will be left hanging out to dry. Throwing in some secondary fire modes, such as tighter spreads or faster reload times, adds another layer of strategy to each of those Nerf guns, so practice pays off.
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Instead of simply racing around and gunning like most other arena games, Nerf Arena Blast offers three separate events to pick from. PointBlast is all about scoring hits on both your opponents and stationary targets, as well as collecting bonus tokens that appear when someone is tagged out. SpeedBlast is all about racing through colored flags in the correct order, and if you get tagged out, you get a free pass to reset your progress to the last checkpoint. Then there’s BallBlast, in which 7 random colors are scattered all over the map and players must run around grabbing these balls and shooting them into the goals, but the golden ball is the real game changer. These formats make every second of gameplay worthwhile since points matter far more than simply knocking someone out.
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As you go through the single-player campaign, new arenas will unlock in phases. Early levels involve winding through tight passages and water slides inside the Amateur Arena, but later levels take you to forest platforms in Sequoia or zero-gravity chambers on an orbital station. There are power-ups everywhere to give you a momentary speed boost or a shield that renders you nearly invulnerable for a short period of time, and you’ll be relieved to hear that health pickups only go up to 200 points, putting your survival skills to the test.
The Multiplayer modes, however, are what keep Nerf Arena Blast going. Local splitscreen now works out of the box, but fan-hosted servers bring strangers together for intense team battles on dozens of custom maps created by community members. Who could have predicted that one of the fans would add capture-the-flag to the game back then? Hundreds of custom venues and game adjustments are now included in a single small community patch that simply bundles all of the repairs and improves compatibility. As it is now officially abandonware, anyone can download the original files and begin playing without the need for any old disks.
The game’s scoring system is also designed to promote some innovation. Tag someone out, and the points go to whoever finishes them off, keeping everyone in the fight until the end, and double-damage pickups are the best, since they glow orange until someone whacks the holder, after which the effect is passed on to the next person to grab it. These minor touches keep games going in a continual push-pull, with no one giving up.
Durobo’s compact Krono e-note is finally available after a short delay. It brings a slightly different take on the e-reader formula, going head-to-head with the popular Boox Palma.
Priced at $279.99, the device combines a 6.13-inch e-ink display, Android 15, and a physical smart dial designed to streamline everyday tasks.
At its core, the Krono is still built for reading. However, it leans into versatility more than most devices in this category. It runs Android 15 with full access to the Google Play Store. This means users can install everything from e-book platforms to music streaming apps. That gives it a broader use case than a typical Kindle-style reader. Still, it stops short of replacing a smartphone.
The display uses an E Ink Carta 1200 panel with 300 PPI, paired with a front light for reading in low-light conditions. The standout feature, though, is the Smart Dial on the side. It can be used to adjust brightness on the fly. Additionally, with a press, it can trigger shortcuts like recording voice memos or launching the built-in AI assistant.
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Beneath the surface, Krono runs on an octa-core processor with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. This should be more than enough for reading, note-taking, and light app use. It also includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, stereo speakers, microphones, and a USB-C port. Therefore, it is a fairly well-rounded portable device.
There are some clear limitations. There’s no modem, no camera, and no speaker above the display. So it won’t double as a phone. But that seems intentional as the Krono is more about offering a focused, distraction-light experience with a few smart extras layered on top.
With its mix of e-reader simplicity and Android flexibility, the Durobo Krono feels like a device aimed at users who want more than just books. Yet, it does this without going all the way to a full tablet.
India’s quick commerce market is booming, with demand more than doubling for some players. But the fast-delivery push by Flipkart and Amazon is raising the stakes in an already crowded space where profitability remains under pressure.
Flipkart, one of India’s largest e-commerce players entered quick commerce later than local rivals such as Blinkit, Swiggy, and Zepto. But it has now crossed more than 800 dark stores (distribution centers for online shopping) this week, TechCrunch has learned, and is looking to double that by the end of 2026, according to UBS.
The expansion comes as India’s quick commerce sector enters a more intense phase of competition. The strain is reflected in recent developments, including the departure of a co-founder at Swiggy this week, as companies reassess strategy amid rising competition and costs.
The Walmart-owned company debuted in quick commerce with Flipkart Minutes in August 2024, offering deliveries across categories in as little as 10 minutes. Since then, the sector has expanded rapidly. More than 6,000 dark stores are now in operation, leading to significant overlap among players in major cities and intensifying competition, Bernstein said in a report earlier this week.
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Beyond major cities
Flipkart’s network in India remains smaller than that of market leader Blinkit, which has over 2,200 dark stores, according to Bernstein. However, Flipkart is betting on expanding beyond major cities to drive growth. This is unlike Blinkit, which plans to scale to 3,000 dark stores by 2027 while focusing on its top 10 cities.
“Flipkart has this Walmart DNA,” said Satish Meena, founder of Gurugram-based consumer insights firm Datum Intelligence. “Walmart’s DNA is always about expanding the total addressable opportunity to dominate by expanding the market.”
Flipkart is already seeing traction beyond major cities, with 25–30% of its quick commerce orders now coming from small towns, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Orders per dark store have also grown about 25% month-on-month, the person said.
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However, growth in quick commerce remains concentrated in larger cities. Most demand, Bernstein said, continues to be driven by big cities, where higher population density supports faster deliveries and better utilization of dark stores, even as expansion into smaller towns gathers pace.
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That dynamic also underpins profitability. The top eight cities in India account for over 3,800 dark stores operated by the five largest players, with about 3,600 of them having the potential to be profitable, according to Bernstein.
“Metro markets obviously are better in return ratios, better in profitability because of higher throughput,” said Karan Taurani, executive vice president at Elara Capital, a London-headquartered investment bank and brokerage firm. “This business is all about higher throughput, and for now, that is coming largely from metro markets.”
Still, some analysts see a longer-term opportunity beyond major cities. “Non-metros (small towns) can give a surge if companies expand beyond groceries and offer a wider range of items at faster speeds,” said Datum’s Satish Meena. “Flipkart is betting on that.”
Nevertheless, scaling beyond big cities will take time. Quick commerce is currently viable in about 125 cities, with dark stores typically taking six to 12 months to reach maturity and profitability, said Aditya Soman, a senior research analyst at CLSA, a Hong Kong-based brokerage. Many of the newer stores in smaller towns are still in the ramp-up phase, he added.
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Amazon, which entered India’s quick commerce market in late 2024 shortly after Flipkart’s debut, is also ramping up its presence. The e-commerce giant has rolled out around 450–500 dark stores so far, with about 330–370 currently operational, according to UBS, as it looks to tap into growing demand for faster deliveries.
Pressure mounting on incumbents
Flipkart is not just relying on dark-store expansion to compete but also aggressive pricing. The company is offering some of the highest discounts in the segment — around 23–24% across categories, based on a sample basket analyzed by Jefferies last month — as it looks to attract users in a market where price and convenience remain key drivers of demand.
The pressure from such strategies seems to be working. Brokerage firm JM Financial recently warned that Swiggy’s quick commerce business is caught in a “growth-versus-profitability deadlock” and risks destroying shareholder value, adding that a takeover by a larger, better-capitalized player may be the best outcome for investors.
Shares of Eternal, which owns Blinkit, are down about 15% so far this year, while Swiggy has fallen over 29%, even as Zepto is preparing to go public on Indian stock exchanges later this year.
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The entry and expansion of large players such as Flipkart and Amazon are reshaping the competitive landscape. “Quick commerce is no longer in a startup phase — it has become a big players’ game,” said Ankur Bisen, a senior partner at retail consultancy Technopak Advisors.
He added that the sector’s economics and limited differentiation could eventually drive consolidation, as companies compete for the same set of customers in a discount-heavy market.
Amazon, Flipkart, and Swiggy did not respond to requests for comment. Eternal declined to comment, while Zepto said it could not comment due to a silent period following its IPO filing.
Arizona state prosecutors allege Kalshi is running an illegal gambling operation, charging the prediction market with 20 “wagering” misdemeanors. But Friday a federal judge “temporarily barred Arizona from enforcing its gambling laws against predictive market operators,” reports the Associated Press, “and put the brakes on a criminal wagering case that the state has filed against Kalshi.
“U.S. District Judge Michael Liburdi’s ruling means a Monday arraignment hearing for Kalshi has been called off.”
The order was issued in a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration. The judge’s order said the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission had sufficiently shown that “event contracts” fall within the Commodity Exchange Act’s definition of “swaps,” and that it had demonstrated a reasonable chance of success in showing that the act preempts Arizona law… The commission had sued Arizona in response to cease-and-desist letters sent to Kalshi from state gambling regulators and the criminal charges filed against the prediction market operator. The commission argued Arizona is intruding on its exclusive federal power to regulate national swaps markets…
Earlier this month, the federal government filed lawsuits against Connecticut, Arizona and Illinois challenging their efforts to regulate prediction market operators. The Trump administration has so far backed the platforms. President Donald Trump’s eldest son is an adviser for both Kalshi and Polymarket and an investor in the latter. Trump’s social media platform Truth Social is also launching its own cryptocurrency-based prediction market called Truth Predict. Federal and state judges in Nevada and Massachusetts have now issued early rulings in favor of states looking to ban Kalshi and its competitor Polymarket from offering sports being in their states, according to the article, “while federal judges in New Jersey and Tennessee have ruled in favor of Kalshi.”
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And Arizona’s attorney general’s office said it disagrees with the court’s ruling and “will evaluate our next steps.”
Yifan Zhang, AI2 Incubator co-managing director and AI House founder, speaks at the 2026 Seattle AI Startup Summit. (Ken Yeung Photo)
The City by the Bay may be considered the center of AI and technology, but that doesn’t mean every founder should flock there to set up shop, right? That’s the argument put forth by Yifan Zhang, AI2 Incubator’s co-managing director and creator of the AI House.
In a speech at last week’s Seattle AI Startup Summit, Zhang addressed the classic San Francisco-versus-Seattle debate. And while she heaped praise on San Francisco, she also highlighted the benefits of founders building right here in the Pacific Northwest. It was less about civic boosterism and more about founder diagnostics.
Zhang said the same qualities that make San Francisco great for some founders can work against others — particularly those building category-defining startups in the AI era.
Is your startup butter or does it have sand in the gears?
When weighing their decision to relocate to San Francisco or stay in the Pacific Northwest, Zhang proposed that entrepreneurs ask whether they’re building a “butter” or a “sand in the gears” startup.
As she explained it, “butter” startups are those that “succeed solely based on pure speed of execution, an extremely smooth customer experience, removing all friction for your users.” These are best suited for San Francisco.
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Alternatively, startups with “sand in the gears” have real-world complexity, hardware, human relationships, and regulatory edges, all of which Zhang believes may be considered flaws in the Northern California city.
“The sand in the gears might give you some defensibility, a moat against the onslaught of competitors that are exactly the same,” she explained. “This is especially true in the AI era, when building has become so cheap. The people, the founders, willing to grind it out through these sand-in-the-gear startups, versus pivoting away from the things that are hard, will end up winning in these categories.”
Zhang used AI2 Incubator portfolio startup Friday Harbor as an example. Founded in 2024, the company faced a challenging technical problem: how to use AI to match borrower documentation against lender guidelines to determine who qualifies for a mortgage. Unfortunately, AI at the time wasn’t as great as it is today. There were shorter context windows and no agentic systems. Advanced reasoning models weren’t widely available.
“It’s also a hard problem when it comes to the customers you’re dealing with, a non-tech-savvy customer audience,” she said. Mortgage loan officers and originators tend to be skeptical of AI and distrustful of outsiders without industry experience.
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But rather than throw in the towel and pivot, Friday Harbor chose to work through all the tough technical problems, staying focused on customer outcomes, and ultimately delivering mortgage underwriting that today benefits from the latest AI advancements.
Zhang said that willingness to grind through hard technical problems is what sets Seattle apart from other tech-oriented U.S. cities like New York, Los Angeles, Austin, and Miami.
“We have a serious engineering culture here that’s heads and shoulders above every other city and goes toe-to-toe with San Francisco,” she said.
Building a startup in San Francisco vs. Seattle
AI2 Incubator’s Co-Managing Director, Yifan Zhang, gestures during her keynote speech at the Seattle AI Startup Summit. (Ken Yeung Photo)
Zhang knows what it’s like to build in both cities. She founded two startups — Gympack and Loftium — in San Francisco and Seattle, respectively. So how do the two cities compare for founders?
San Francisco’s biggest advantage is the sheer concentration of people singularly focused on founding and building great companies, Zhang said. Founders there absorb best practices faster than anywhere else, can draw from a talent pool that genuinely prefers startups over Big Tech, and get early access to cutting-edge technology.
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That said, there are notable downsides, such as overwhelming pressure from investors.
“You might be influenced to raise mega rounds when that’s actually pouring jet fuel in a plane when you’re learning how to fly,” Zhang said. “You may be influenced to pivot away from startup ideas that are good and are just a couple of tweaks away from being great.”
San Francisco can also be an echo chamber, Zhang said. When everyone shares the same startup-and-tech background, founders tend to hear the same feedback on repeat, whether or not it’s relevant to their company.
Seattle has its own advantages beyond engineering culture, Zhang said. Founders here are more willing to admit they have zero paying customers rather than ship a product that doesn’t work — a candor that San Francisco’s launch-at-all-costs culture tends to punish. She called Seattle’s humble approach a positive attribute, especially in an industry where the technology absolutely has to work.
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Of course, Seattle isn’t perfect. With Amazon and Microsoft so prominent in the local tech scene, founders are more likely to get advice from people with Big Tech experience than from those who’ve actually built or funded early-stage companies. And the mentalities and best practices that worked at large corporations don’t necessarily translate to startups.
She also warned that Seattle can have a narrow view of who gets to call themselves a founder, often defaulting to people who’ve had senior or executive roles at Amazon or Microsoft. That mindset may work if you’re building a B2B SaaS company selling back to Big Tech, Zhang said, but otherwise it’s irrelevant.
Her advice: “Pay attention to the things that you uniquely bring to the table and build a company around that.”
In the end, Zhang offered this tip for founders: “Geography does impact your idea [and] your chances of success. So choose it as carefully and wisely as you choose your startup idea and industry.”
The QIDI Max 4 is a 3D printer capable of multi-color printing, equipped with heating and cooling elements and a massive build volume. It’s a serious 3D printer for those who need it.
QIDI Max 4 3D Printer Review
I consider myself a professional amateur 3D printing hobbyist. The Anet A8 was my starter printer about five years ago. Between then and now, I’ve picked up and messed with a Creality Ender 3 and an Anycubic Photon series resin printer. More recently, I’ve even tried my hand at building my own HyperCube Evolution. Before I could finish it, my steam for the hobby ran out. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
Browsing in another new Barnes & Noble bookstore, in Bellevue, Wash. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
A new retail storyline is close to beginning in downtown Seattle with the opening this month of a Barnes & Noble bookstore — six years after the chain closed its longtime downtown location.
The new store at 520 Pike St. is about four blocks from Pike Place Market and another four from Amazon’s headquarters, in a 29-story Tishman Speyer office building. A grand opening event is planned for April 29 at 9 a.m., with a ribbon cutting and a book signing with bestselling author Robin Hobb (“Blood of Dragons”).
Downtown Seattle Association President and CEO Jon Scholes signaled his excitement Monday for the return of a major national retailer to an area hit hard by retail exits and depleted foot traffic during and after the pandemic.
“A strong signal to others who may have left the market over the last 6 years and to those that have yet to plant a flag here,” Scholes wrote on LinkedIn alongside a picture of the outside of the store. “With a record residential population, visitor numbers that are beating 2019 level and an increasing return of locals – there are many great reasons to be downtown.”
The store will be a short walk from the HQ towers and Spheres that make up Amazon’s Denny Triangle home. The tech giant got its start as an online bookseller, and on its way to disrupting multiple retail verticals, the company’s e-commerce dominance took a toll on physical bookstores, including Barnes & Noble. Amazon even opened physical Amazon Books locations, a concept that lasted about seven years before they were shut down in 2022.
Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt said in a television interview last year that he believes the experience in a physical store wins out when compared to shopping online with Amazon or elsewhere. Customers engage with other books and other customers about books.
“You will have an experience, and when you walk out of the store with [a book] in your bag it will lift you,” Daunt said. “It’s the same book, but I promise you it’s a better book, and the reading of it will be more pleasurable because you bought it in a bookstore.”
Barnes & Noble left its Pacific Place location at 600 Pine St. in Seattle in January 2020, after 22 years. Shoppers told GeekWire at the time that they were saddened by the loss of downtown’s only bookstore.
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The chain still operates locations in the Northgate and University District areas of Seattle and has several locations in Western Washington. The opening of a new location at Bellevue Square attracted a steady stream of book lovers in January 2025.
The company, which peaked at 726 locations nationwide in 2008, has undergone a revival since the pandemic, opening nearly 60 stores in 2024 and dozens more in 2025. It has plans to open 60 more this year and is already back over 700 stores.
FOX 13 reported in December that the new downtown Barnes & Noble space will be 17,538 square feet and offer an array of books, toys, games, magazines, gift items and more. The company signed a 10-year lease — the largest retail lease in downtown Seattle since 2020.
In a recent statement, Mozilla argued that Microsoft’s design choices – particularly those that link the Windows experience tightly to Edge and Copilot – undermine genuine user control. When Microsoft embeds features that favor its own browser and AI tools, it removes opportunities for competing software to be used at… Read Entire Article Source link
While it’s not unusual for networks to promote new shows by releasing full episodes on YouTube, AMC is doing something a bit different for its Silicon Valley-focused comedy “The Audacity.”
The show’s premiere will be available on TikTok, starting on Sunday morning. It will be split into 21 segments, each lasting about three minutes, according to Deadline. The segments will be numbered, allowing users to watch the premiere in its entirety if they choose.
And if you don’t want to watch in three-minute segments, you can catch the full premiere on AMC and its streaming service AMC+. It will also stream simultaneously on Samsung’s free service Samsung TV Plus.
The webinar explores how security teams can monitor early warning signs across underground communities and translate them into actionable defense.
We will examine how threat actors use dark web forums, Telegram channels, and access broker marketplaces to coordinate attacks, share vulnerabilities, and advertise compromised access, often revealing their intentions weeks before an attack is launched.
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Flare Systems, a threat intelligence firm specializing in monitoring external threat surfaces, helps organizations detect these early signals across the dark web and other hidden channels. By providing visibility into attacker behavior and emerging threats, Flare enables security teams to move from reactive defense to proactive risk reduction.
In this session, attendees will learn how to identify meaningful signals within online “chatter,” track evolving adversary tactics, and turn intelligence into prioritized defensive actions before attackers gain a foothold.
Threat actors don’t operate in silence
From vulnerability discussions and leaked credentials to access broker listings and Telegram coordination, attackers frequently communicate and prepare in ways that can be observed.
However, these signals are often fragmented, noisy, and difficult to interpret without the right approach.
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This webinar will explore how to cut through that noise, identify patterns, and understand what truly indicates an impending attack versus background activity.
The upcoming webinar will cover:
How to monitor underground forums, dark web sites, and Telegram channels for early attack signals
How to identify shifts in attacker tactics and priorities
How to translate threat intelligence into defensive priorities
How to proactively reduce risk before intrusions begin
Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to move from reactive defense to proactive security strategy.
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