If you have your eye on a career in the robotics industry, consider upping your skills via a convenient online or in-person learning platform.

The robotics sector is fast emerging as one of Ireland’s most creative, dynamic and quickly changing spaces. We have innovators such as Clionadh Martin, Clara Mulliagan, Niamh Donnelly and Adam Dalton transforming robotics and inspiring others to follow suit.

But to match their careers, you have to start at the beginning. Although it can be beneficial to get an early start, many people’s route would be through exposure to post-secondary school education, be it online courses, higher education, further education and training or other skill development opportunities. 

Alison

Online learning platform Alison is running a free Understanding Robotics Architecture course. The website states that participation will improve a student’s understanding of robotics architecture, starting by addressing the degrees of freedom a robot may have. Students will look at robot anatomy, with an emphasis on the joints and links of a manipulator, be taught configurations for industrial robots and the characteristics of the Scara robot, and will also study the DH algorithm and direct forward kinematics.

The course is available entirely online, can be completed in roughly three to four hours and comes with a certificate of achievement upon completion. 

ATU

For those looking for a longer educational experience, Atlantic Technological University (ATU) – which has multiple locations in Galway, Sligo, Donegal and Mayo – has a four-year Robotics and Automation course, as part of the Bachelor of Engineering programme. This on-site level 8 course is full-time, available in Sligo and offers work placement.

During this programme, students will learn how to analyse and design, build prototypes, and control the machines and processes that are found in the biomedical, automotive, food processing and high volume manufacturing sectors, among other skills.

ATU’s website states that the course will enable graduates to apply for jobs in a range of areas, such as the biomedical, pharmaceutical, electronics, food processing and manufacturing sectors.

Great Learning 

Edtech platform Great Learning has a free Robotics and AI course open to prospective students. The beginner level course takes roughly an hour and a half and will teach students the fundamentals of robotics and AI, including control systems, programming and neural networks.

Students can join the course to build essential skills and stay up to date with the latest trends in robotics and AI. Those who finish the course and pass will receive a certificate of completion. 

Hugging Face

The adorably named Hugging Face, which is an AI community for enthusiasts and professionals alike, has a free programme titled Robotics Course. The website states that the course will take the student on a “journey, from classical robotics to modern learning-based approaches, in understanding, implementing, and applying machine learning techniques to real robotic systems”. Based on the site’s Robot Learning Tutorial, which is a comprehensive guide to robot learning for researchers and practitioners, the course is designed to make learning in this space more widely accessible. 

By the end of the course, students will know how robots learn from data, why learning-based approaches are transforming robotics and how to implement these techniques using modern tools like LeRobot. The course is self-paced and will include interactive quizzes, hands-on coding, progressive difficulty and real-world applications connecting theory to practical robotics problems. 

No formal certification is required, although the website recommends that students be comfortable with basic Python. Additionally, elementary linear algebra and calculus could help for a full understanding but aren’t required for participation. 

MTU

Munster Technological University (MTU) has an Automation and Robotics course open to potential students. The level 7 course is a year long, can be engaged with online, part-time and in a blended format, and is based at the MTU Bishoptown Campus in Cork. Applications are set to open in June 2026, for classes in September.

It is worth noting, however, that some elements will demand in-person attendance, so this particular course may require more commitment. Students who successfully complete the modules will be entitled to a Certificate in Automation and Control Systems, awarded by MTU.

Nvidia

Chipmaker Nvidia has multiple free online courses aimed at students or professionals looking to advance their robotics and automation skills.

Courses themed around or encompassing robotics knowledge include A Beginner’s Guide to Autonomous Robots, An Introduction to Nvidia Cosmos for Physical AI, and OpenUSD Learning Path.

Courses are self-paced and can provide students with a solid foundation in the subject. 

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Vacuum tubes are supposed to be extinct yet here we are in 2026 still arguing swapping and occasionally getting electrocuted. In this episode Mitch Anderson (@black_circle_radio), Eric Pye (@audioloveyyc), and Jeremy Sikora (@budget_audiophiler) strip the romance out of valves and talk about why they still matter without leaning on lazy audiophile clichés. 

The discussion cuts through tube rolling reality versus placebo and the ongoing new production versus NOS debate. It also looks at why Ray Tubes are suddenly on everyone’s radar and what Jeremy’s amp building class at the American Wireless Communication Museum teaches you that spec sheets never will.

Along the way, we connect the dots between Talk Talk’s obsessive studio craft, Miles Davis with Jimmy Cobb’s unshakable timing, and the Tron soundtrack, while getting very real about tube amp safety; from blown parts to painful zaps, because high voltage does not care how experienced you think you are.

Sponsors: Thank you to our sponsors SVS & Shure

This episode was recorded on December 3, 2025.

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Dooglehead’s DIY VR headset is reminiscent of the past, a purposeful step back in time. Modern VR headsets are all about blazing fast pixels and brilliant colors, but dooglehead’s design manages to get by with small old CRTs rescued from 1990s Sony Watchman pocket TVs, and it’s still good enough for virtual reality. Coming in at a mere 544 grams, nearly the same weight as an HTC Vive, you have the unmistakable mass and charm of old electronics slumped over your face.

Dooglehead begins by stating a simple truth: CRTs provide an appearance that even the greatest flat screens cannot replicate. Games and videos on those vintage CRTs have a lovely glow to them, and natural anti-aliasing smoothes out jagged edges without the use of fancy processing gimmicks. Color is absolutely out of the question here because the old Watchman CRTs are exclusively black and white, a limitation created out of their tiny design (because color would get in the way of you seeing out the side window). Each 2.7-inch CRT zaps an electron beam over the inside of a phosphor-coated glass screen, scanning line-by-line fifty times per second to provide a steady image. The beam is bent with magnetic coils, and the entire assembly must be vacuum-sealed inside the glass envelope.

The modern element of the setup is handled by a field-programmable gate array, which accepts an HDMI signal from a computer and separates it into two distinct analogue streams, one for each CRT. The left eye gets its vision, while the right eye gets its own, resulting in the stereoscopic depth required for VR. Valve’s lighthouse trackers determine where the wearer’s head is by reading infrared sweeps detected by photodiodes on the headset. Power is supplied by USB, with each tube requiring approximately 200 milliamps, which is sufficient to illuminate the phosphors without the use of an extra brick.

For the time being, cardboard serves as a makeshift shell, a hot-glued disaster taken from early Google Cardboard attempts. High-voltage parts are visible, reminding you that placing your finger in the wrong area will result in an unpleasant little shock. Plans are in the works for a suitable 3D-printed casing to clean things up and distribute the weight more equally. Until then, the equipment was kept together with flexible straps or even a ski mask (which was utilized in early tests), but converting to a genuine Vive-style harness has made it much more sturdy when playing.

Play some actual games, and the real test begins. Beat Saber requires you to be able to see what you’re doing, yet the black and white vision makes it difficult to notice impending blocks against a background of green grass. VRChat transports the wearer to familiar locales, such as a virtual McDonald’s, where the 3D effect works effectively despite the blur from uneven focus and narrow viewing angles. The interlaced 640×480 resolution at an effective 60 fields per second makes the animation fluid, and while there is some wobble when you move your head around, it’s not too horrible. The pixels simply blend into the softness of the CRT, creating a nice mild haze that is weirdly immersive.
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Much of Silicon Valley has spent years chasing mega-rounds and buzzy AI deals. Meanwhile, Stacy Brown-Philpot is running Cherryrock Capital like a throwback to venture capital’s earlier days, writing smaller Series A and B checks to founders that larger firms routinely overlook.

The former TaskRabbit CEO and decade-long Google veteran launched Cherryrock a year ago after seeing what she calls a persistent gap: access to capital for “underinvested entrepreneurs” building software companies at the crucial growth stage.

“When I left TaskRabbit, I took some time off to figure out what was next and saw this gap in the market, which was access to capital, particularly for underinvested entrepreneurs,” Brown-Philpot told TechCrunch. She’d originally come to the Bay Area 25 years ago, planning to become a VC and even writing her Stanford Business School essay about it. After spending a decade at Google and leading TaskRabbit to a successful exit to IKEA, she’s finally back to that original plan.

She circled back to it for a reason. Before launching Cherryrock, Brown-Philpot was a member of the investment committee for the SoftBank Opportunity Fund, a $100 million vehicle started in 2020 to back underserved entrepreneurs. That experience proved there was no shortage of overlooked founders.

SoftBank itself sold the Opportunity Fund to its leadership team in late 2023, divesting from the diversity-focused initiative. Brown-Philpot, meanwhile, doubled down, and launched her own fund. By the time she closed Cherryrock’s debut fund in February 2025, she already had more than 2,000 companies in her pipeline. 

Cherryrock is targeting 12 to 15 investments from its first fund — a concentrated approach and stark contrast to the seed funds that make dozens of bets, or massive funds that write nine-figure checks. Brown-Philpot’s also taking her time; a year after announcing the fund, she and her team, including cofounder Saydeah Howard, who spent nine years at the venture firm IVP, have backed just five companies, putting them about a third of the way toward their goal. In an era when many funds race to deploy capital almost as quickly as it’s raised, Brown-Philpot’s measured pace is another throwback to an earlier generation of VCs.

Brown-Philpot’s focus on “underinvested” founders — a careful choice of words in today’s political climate — means backing entrepreneurs who might not fit the typical Silicon Valley mold.

When asked directly about the current political environment, where DEI has become a lightning rod, Brown-Philpot is unfazed. “It doesn’t change the pitch at all,” she said. “When we look at the people who decided to back Cherryrock, like JPMorgan and Bank of America…these are financial institutions who expect to generate a return. Our job as investors is to do just that.”

In addition to those investors, Cherryrock’s LP roster includes Goldman Sachs Asset Management, MassMutual, Top Tier Capital Partners, and Melinda Gates’s Pivotal Ventures. Some of these have stepped back from explicit diversity pledges amid pressure from the Trump administration. Yet Brown-Philpot may find herself in an unexpectedly advantageous position. 

A new diversity reporting law in California requires VC firms with a California nexus to report demographic data on their portfolio companies’ founding teams, with the first deadline in April. Unlike some corporate diversity initiatives that have faced legal challenges, the law focuses on transparency rather than mandates, requiring reporting but not quotas. For a firm like Cherryrock that’s already tracking and prioritizing investments in diverse founders, compliance is “table stakes,” as Brown-Philpot puts it. “You accomplish what you measure.”

Brown-Philpot’s perspective is informed by her vantage point across multiple institutions. Beyond Cherryrock, she sits on the boards of HP, StockX, and Stanford University — roles that give her insight into both enterprise buyers and the next generation of founders. At Stanford, she’s watching students navigate questions about AI’s impact on employment. “What I see on campus is the students are charting a path and finding a way to create opportunities for themselves,” she said.

Her portfolio reflects her thesis. One investment is Coactive AI, led by Cody Coleman, an MIT grad with advanced degrees in philosophy and engineering from MIT and Stanford. The company provides multimodal AI infrastructure to the media and entertainment industry, a sector now under intense scrutiny following controversies around AI-generated content. Cherryrock led Coactive’s Series B alongside Emerson Collective.

Another bet is Vitable Health, founded by Joseph Kitonga, a Thiel Fellow and Y Combinator alum. The Philadelphia-based company provides on-demand, primary care-based health insurance to employers and hourly workers – the kind of population Brown-Philpot came to know well as the CEO of TaskRabbit during its last years as a standalone company. Kitonga “is the exact kind of founder that we want to back,” Brown-Philpot said. “He does what he says he’s going to do.” Brown-Philpot first invested at the seed stage of Vitable through her work with the SoftBank Opportunity Fund.

When asked about her operating philosophy, Brown-Philpot is pragmatic about exits. “It’s very difficult to go public,” she said. “Most companies don’t go public, they do get acquired.” It’s a refreshingly honest take in an industry that often overpromises on IPO prospects. She points to TaskRabbit’s sale to IKEA as proof that the right acquisition can create lasting value.

As for 2026, Brown-Philpot’s priority is simple: “We are actively deploying capital.” She’s looking for Series A and B companies that have achieved product-market fit at scale, letting founders define what that means. And while the broader venture ecosystem debates the future of diversity initiatives, she is focused on finding great founders, wherever they are.

“I’m from Detroit,” she says. “Hard things are hard, but we know how to do hard things.”

The widespread protests in Iran have exposed both Tehran’s brutal tactics in the streets, where state authorities have killed thousands of demonstrators since early January, and extreme measures to block access to the global internet.

As it has done repeatedly in the past, the Iranian regime cut off the country’s residents from the global internet during the latest anti-government uprising. But it also shut down access to the country’s intranet, known as the National Information Network, which new research found is becoming a mechanism of constant and pervasive surveillance that may ultimately be the only way Iranians can get online.

The last remaining major nuclear weapons treaty between the United States and Russia just expired. So what will take its place? Artificial intelligence, of course. At least, that’s what some researchers believe. Combined with satellite imagery and human reviewers, AI-powered systems could replace in-person inspection of countries’ nuclear facilities. Obviously, there are flaws to this plan.

Cryptocurrencies may be only 16 years old, but they’ve already become the money form of choice for the world’s worst people. Crypto-tracing firm Chainalysis this week revealed that blockchain-based transactions linked to the sale of human beings into prostitution and forced scamming has nearly doubled over the past year, with hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions annually. Chainalysis researchers say that amount is likely an underestimate.

While the Trump administration says it is winding down its immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, the damage is still being done to the US court system in that state. A WIRED analysis found that court filings meant to give people the chance to be released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody skyrocketed in January, leaving US attorneys stretched to the breaking point and people left imprisoned far beyond when they should have been let free.

Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection has signed a $225,000 deal with Clearview AI that gives Border Patrol intelligence units access to the company’s face-recognition technology.

And that’s not all. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

Ring is once again backtracking over the public’s distaste for mass surveillance. In an announcement first reported by The Verge, Ring explained that after a “comprehensive review,” it determined that its plan to integrate its sprawling network of privately owned surveillance cameras with Flock Safety, a company that sells license plate reader technology to police departments across the US, “would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated.”

“The integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety,” Ring said.

The cancellation of its Flock partnership comes just days after the company aired an ad during the Super Bowl featuring its new Search Party feature that “uses AI to help families find lost dogs.” Many people reacted to the feature by asking, essentially, “If Search Party can find lost dogs, that’s definitely going to be used to hunt down people too, right?”

Owned by Amazon since 2018, Ring for years drew condemnation from privacy advocates over its partnerships with police departments and a tool in its Neighbors app that allowed authorities to obtain surveillance footage directly from people who have Ring cameras installed rather than through any process with judicial oversight, like getting a warrant. The company eliminated the tool in early 2024. Flock has sparked similar ire due to its dragnet surveillance network that, according to 404 Media, ICE has surreptitiously tapped into as part of its relentless quest to remove immigrants from US soil.

Face recognition is not having a great moment in American society: Democratic lawmakers have asked ICE to stop using face recognition in the streets, and ICE itself keeps getting freaked out about people potentially using it on its agents.

This “dynamic political environment,” as an internal Meta memo obtained by the Times put it, is one where Meta might be updating its smart glasses to include a new face recognition feature that has internally been referred to as Name Tag.

When choosing a home security system for your home, you may be tempted to start by deciding between a DIY setup or professionally installed systems with monitoring services. Remember to make your decision after considering the equipment, installation, monitoring options and other features you want. Here are some bits of information to keep in mind about these parameters when shopping around.

Equipment choices

Do you just need to keep watch over your entryways? A good video doorbell for your front door and an outdoor camera covering the back may be all you need; easy to install and monitor yourself. If you want to keep closer tabs on your home inside and out with 24/7 monitoring and quick access to emergency response services, you’ll want a more robust system. DIY and professional brands offer home security bundles with most, if not all, of the equipment you’d need to get started and the ability to add single devices as needed.

Smart home and AI

Most home security devices are compatible with Alexa and Google Home smart hubs, but if you prefer Apple HomeKit or another smart home ecosystem, you may have to do a bit more shopping and comparing to find a system compatible with your existing smart home devices. Don’t fret over compatibility too much as Matter is making it easier to connect previously non-compatible devices (although it hasn’t quite come for security cameras yet).

Smart home features are also always changing, especially with AI. Just in the past two years, SimpliSafe has added AI face and movement detection to help its monitoring agents, ADT has added support for Nest’s familiar face AI recognition features and Arlo has increased services to include AI detection of fires, barking, screaming and more. You’ll have to pay a lot more for these features and consider your own privacy if you’re interested in the cutting-edge upgrades.

Installation

Keep in mind all that equipment will need to be installed. While there isn’t much to installing a security camera or even a wired video doorbell, whole-home systems can be a bit more demanding to install and set up. Some are DIY-friendly and use adhesive to position devices without leaving permanent marks but not all systems do this. If you’d rather leave that to an expert and have them walk you through how to use the system, a professional home security service may be the way to go.

Monitoring and alerts

Virtually all home security systems allow for self-monitoring, likely via an app on your phone. They’ll also send you push notifications when there’s an event, such as when a package is delivered to your doorstep. Basic sensors can send alerts about what specific sensor was triggered or tampered with, while adding a camera allows for more complex recognition. You can customize these alerts to get only the information you want (such as only when a person is detected), while most will automatically ignore things like vehicles.

Professional monitoring and emergency features

Consider whether you want to be in charge of all the monitoring or if you’d like some support. Most systems allow you to add a professional monitoring plan, some even require it from the beginning. These services often cost more than $30 per month and sometimes much more if AI features are added.

More advanced features, such as facial recognition, glass break sensors and communication with emergency services may not be available from all manufacturers and devices. Consider the level of monitoring you want, and who you want to do it, along with the emergency response options, when choosing a home security system.

Expandability

Most home security systems allow you to buy single sensors or compatible devices and add them, one at a time, whenever you want to upgrade or address a specific problem. But they go about this in very different ways. Some only allow you to purchase its own brand devices, while others are compatible with a variety of third-party smart home devices. Some have very limited add-on options, while others have many choices. No matter what you decide, we recommend checking out the add-on options on a security system website to see what potential upgrades will look like.

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Initial costs

We listed “cost” last for a reason. A complete home security system will likely cost you at least a couple of hundred bucks, so be prepared for that. There’s the potential to spend a lot more on equipment or a lot less. Also, keep in mind that the size of the system greatly affects the cost. Starter systems like many we listed here typically cost between $150 and $300, and allow you to add other compatible devices over time. Larger systems with 10 devices or more will cost at least several hundred dollars and can go up to $1,000 or more, depending on the tech that’s included.

Ongoing costs

Ongoing costs can carry a bit more weight when choosing the best security system. Expect ongoing monthly fees from a professional service and possibly a contract to lock you into those fees for a year or two (although we favored picks without a required contract). Signing a contract may not be ideal, but it may also come with free equipment or installation and lower upfront costs.

If you’re comfortable with self-monitoring, DIY systems may not come with any ongoing costs. Monthly subscriptions (without a contract) for cloud storage, enhanced features and possibly even professional monitoring are typically an option with DIY systems, often for lower monthly fees than professional services.

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Privacy and security

Always look for a brand that’s going to keep your data safe and has a good track record of security, encryption and protection against data breaches. That’s not always easy — many security companies have had issues in the past with breaches, privacy violations or even employees spying through home security cameras.

We look at a company’s current practices, track record and how they’ve been improving in the past few years when making recommendations. SimpliSafe is consistently one of the standout performers in security, which is one reason they earned a top spot on our list. While Ring has had missteps in the past, it’s improved in recent years and has even retracted its policy on providing police with video footage, so we feel comfortable recommending Ring at this time.