As simple of a concept flow batteries are, the used chemicals can still be somewhat problematic in the context of a school experiment. To this end [Markus Bindhammer] decided to implement a flow battery version that uses compounds from green tea for its electrolyte, based on a German research paper from 2016.
These organic flow batteries can use gallic acid, pyrogallol as well as the polyphenols in green tea, making them rather safe even in the hands of more careless students. The demonstrated flow battery uses a carbon electrode with activated carbon around it to increase surface area, a platinum wire electrode, and a graphite foil as as third electrode.
In the paper a silver electrode is also used, along with the additional electrodes, and a terracotta flower pot as the barrier between the carbon and graphite electrodes, with [Markus] further explaining that there are fortunately cheaper options than what he is using, especially with the flower pot instead of a special ceramic vessel.
The electrolyte solution has epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) dissolved in it, which here comes in the form of finely ground green tea powder (commonly known as matcha), which so happens to be pretty rich in this substance. In the below graphic by [Markus] you can see the complete set of solutions and other relevant details.
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Of course, the performance of this type of flow cell isn’t amazing, with a cell voltage of less than a volt and a few mA of current, but it’s enough to spin a small fan, and to light up a few LEDs. This would be more than enough to demonstrate the reaction and flow cells in general, as long as you don’t mind donating some tasty matcha to science.
The Solius Pro hangs on a wall, scans a user’s skin and directs appropriate UVB light therapy. (Solius Photo)
A Seattle-area startup that once asked people to step inside a glowing kiosk for light therapy is now bringing that same technology into the home.
Bainbridge Island, Wash.-based Solius Labs announced $23 million in Series A funding on Wednesday along with the launch of the Solius Pro: a $2,995 UVB (Ultraviolet B) light therapy device for home and professional use.
The device, which hangs on a wall and is about the size of a large laptop computer, scans a user’s skin to calculate a personalized dose of UVB light at a targeted 293-nanometer wavelength. Solius Pro delivers light therapy to the user’s back in a single weekly session of less than five minutes, and is controlled via a smartphone app.
Chris Kiple, CEO of Solius Labs. (LinkedIn Photo)
“UVB is not new,” Solius CEO Chris Kiple told GeekWire. “We’re just the first that has made UVB safe and usable and accessible anytime in an efficient way.”
The Food and Drug Administration cleared the Solius Pro as a Class II medical device under a product code — SGZ — created for the technology, according to the company. That clearance specifically covers stimulating the body’s vitamin D production in people 22 and older, according to FDA filings.
UVB light therapy has traditionally been available in dermatology clinics, where it’s typically used to treat skin conditions including eczema, psoriasis and vitiligo.
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The skin-scanning system is patent-pending and central to Solius’s safety claim. Because UVB response varies significantly by skin type, a personalized dose is essential — too little delivers no benefit, too much risks skin damage. Kiple said Solius is the first company to develop a sensor that can calculate that dose automatically, without a clinician present.
Founded in 2013, Solius originally developed large walk-in light therapy kiosks, deploying them in clinical settings and pharmacies — including its first public installation in Vancouver, B.C., in 2018 — while running clinical trials in the Seattle area.
Kiple joined as CEO in 2023, bringing a team from Bothell-based Ventec Life Systems — which had partnered with General Motors to scale critical care ventilator production during COVID. He set about recapitalizing Solius and reinventing its technology as a smaller, more affordable home device.
The Series A round was led by Lauder Partners and included venture capital funds, family offices and individual investors. Solius has just over 20 employees and is actively hiring across engineering, quality, sales and marketing roles.
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Solius Pro is controlled through a Solius smartphone app. (Solius Photo)
The company says it has recorded more than 1,000 pre-orders ahead of the Solius Pro launch, with the device now available on its website and shipping expected to begin in July. Kiple sees opportunity across multiple markets, from direct-to-consumer home use to doctors’ offices, dermatology clinics and wellness facilities.
Solius is targeting a significant and growing health problem — vitamin D deficiency affects an estimated 1 billion people worldwide, and research increasingly links lack of sun exposure to a range of conditions including seasonal affective disorder, bone density loss and cardiovascular disease.
For a company selling sunshine, the Pacific Northwest turns out to be a fitting home base, and Kiple, who works out of Bainbridge Island, doesn’t shy away from the irony.
“We have learned to avoid the sun, and our lifestyles have evolved to avoid the sun,” he said. “Tech workers in Seattle — Microsoft, Amazon — we’re all inside all the time. In Seattle, in particular, we don’t see the sun for nine months out of the year.”
That, Kiple said, is precisely the point of Solius Pro.
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“How do we give you that benefit of the sun anytime, anywhere?”
As global investors race to fund the infrastructure underpinning the artificial-intelligence boom, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board’s CPP Investments has committed up to ₹70 billion (about $741 million) to Indian data center operator CtrlS, betting on India’s growing role in the global buildout of cloud and AI infrastructure.
Under the partnership announced on Wednesday, CPP Investments will invest ₹40 billion (around $423 million) to acquire an 8.2% stake in CtrlS and commit up to ₹30 billion (about $317 million) to a joint venture to develop hyperscale data center campuses across India.
CPP Investments will own 48% of the joint venture, while CtrlS will hold the remaining 52%, the companies said in a joint statement.
Founded in 2007, CtrlS operates more than 15 data centers across India. The Hyderabad-based company has been expanding its footprint to meet rising demand from cloud providers, enterprises, and AI workloads.
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India has become a major destination for data center and AI investments as global technology companies and investors ramp up spending to meet surging computing demand. Companies including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Uber have announced investments in the country in recent months, while operators are rapidly expanding capacity amid a broader global race to build AI infrastructure.
“As one of the world’s fastest-growing digital markets, India represents an important pillar of our global data center strategy,” said CPP Investments’ global head of real assets Max Biagosch in a statement.
CPP Investments, Canada’s largest pension investor, has been investing in India since 2009 and had net assets of about $20 billion in the country as of March 31, making it one of the largest foreign institutional investors in the market.
The investment builds on CPP Investments’ broader push into digital infrastructure. The pension fund said it has invested in the data center sector since 2017 and has built a portfolio of assets and joint ventures across major markets worldwide.
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The partnership will help CtrlS expand capacity and build infrastructure tailored for AI workloads, said CtrlS founder and chief executive Sridhar Pinnapureddy.
The CPP-CtrlS deal is the latest in a string of investments targeting India’s data center sector. Earlier this month, Blackstone-backed AirTrunk said it would invest $30 billion to build five gigawatts of data center capacity in India by 2030. Meta, meanwhile, partnered with Reliance Industries last week on a 168-megawatt AI-enabled data center in the western state of Gujarat.
New Delhi has sought to position India as a global hub for digital infrastructure through a range of policy measures, including tax exemptions for foreign cloud providers on services sold overseas through 2047, provided those workloads are run from data centers located in the country.
Indian conglomerates have also accelerated expansion plans to capitalize on the opportunity. Adani Group and Tata Consultancy Services are among the companies that have unveiled major data center projects aimed at supporting AI and cloud workloads. In 2023, CtrlS announced plans to invest $2 billion over six years to expand its data center footprint across India.
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India’s growing role in AI infrastructure has not yet been matched by similar progress in developing frontier AI models. While the country has a handful of startups building indigenous AI models, including Sarvam, much of the underlying AI technology used by Indian companies continues to be supplied by U.S. firms.
The rapid buildout of data centers is also expected to increase pressure on electricity and water resources, highlighting some of the challenges that could accompany India’s ambitions to become a major AI infrastructure hub.
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Few energy sources can top geothermal’s potential, with at least 42 terawatts of capacity available worldwide, according to the IEA, more than twice the world’s energy use last year.
The technology is shaping up to be the energy world’s dark horse, even though investment in the tech pales in comparison to startups in advanced nuclear fission and fusion power.
That makes the $19 million in seed funding raised by a startup called Critical Energy especially notable. Critical Energy hopes to fill a major gap for geothermal power plants by building modular turbines tailored to them. The funds are earmarked to build its first 2.5 megawatt project, the startup exclusively told TechCrunch.
Meanwhile the darlings of the investment world, those working on nuclear fission and fusion, are targeting the early 2030s for their first commercial deployments. By that time, geothermal startups could be building gigawatt-scale power plants.
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“Geothermal is going to beat them to it. By a lot,” Spencer Jackson, co-founder and CEO of Critical Energy, told TechCrunch. “In four or five years, I hope that we’re doing many gigawatts a year.”
Even modest expansion of geothermal could pay off to serve the world’s — and especially the tech industry’s — growing energy needs. A recent report said that advanced geothermal could power nearly two-thirds of new data centers by 2030.
But Jackson said there’s a looming shortage of compatible turbines. Many projects today are specifying large turbines, which can take months to years to assemble on site, he said. “It’s still way faster and cheaper to make it the other direction, to built it in a factory.”
Critical Energy hopes to fill the gap with modular turbines. To design them, Jackson leaned on his experience at SpaceX, where he worked on Falcon Heavy, Starship, and the Raptor rocket engine. To build them quickly, Critical Energy is working with machine shops to make the turbomachinery and other turbine components, which resemble rocket engines. It’s buying other parts off the shelf for now. In the future, the startup may decide to bring other pieces in house, similar to how Tesla and SpaceX have done, Jackson said.
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The first power plant to use Critical Energy’s turbines is scheduled to be completed by 2027 and will be installed at an existing geothermal site similar to those found in Iceland or at The Geysers in Northern California. Critical Energy is also designing a larger, 5 megawatt module targeted at enhanced geothermal companies like Fervo Energy, which drill deeper into the Earth to withdraw more heat.
By the early 2030s, Jackson hopes Critical Energy will be making gigawatts worth of turbines. “We are looking for the fastest path to gigawatts of scalable power on the grid,” he said. “Long term goal is 300 gigawatts a year in 2045.”
Though geothermal development has been quietly proceeding, Jackson expects that once the technology is more mature, oil and gas companies will dive in, speeding things up considerably.
“Geothermal is great because the oil and gas industry has the replicability to do hundreds and then thousand of wells. They’re very, very good at drilling wells,” he said. “But they need turbines and there’s going to be a massive shortage of those.”
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The seed rounds were led by Susa Ventures and Upfront Ventures with participation from MaC Venture Capital, Susquehanna Sustainable Investments, Humba Ventures, Scribble Ventures, and Underground Ventures. The startup also nabbed $3 million in venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank bringing its total early capital to $22 million.
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Nathaniel Nifong grew tired of the same scene repeating every day. Toys lay scattered near the couch. Socks and shirts dotted the floor after his kids finished playing. The mess demanded constant attention, yet it always returned. Most robot arms stay fixed to one workbench or table. Rolling robots must weave around furniture and adapt to a floor that changes constantly. Nifong wanted something that could reach anywhere in the room without those headaches.
He secured four motorized units to the four corners of a rectangular space. All of this was held together by a thick braided fishing line that ran from each anchor to a central platform. By carefully shortening or lengthening the cables in near-perfect timing, the platform may travel to any location in three dimensions below the ceiling. There is also a fifth cable that drops straight down from that platform, carrying the gripper itself. When the task is completed, the gripper retracts upward, and the entire assembly parks high and out of the way.
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Each corner anchor houses a small computer, a camera, and a motor that rotates a spool. But the motors work together to share the load, so none of them require a lot of power on their own, and one of the support lines also delivers current down to the gripper, so it never needs a battery. The entire system is always powered up and ready to go, with no need for anyone to swap cells or dock at a charging station.
The gripper features two fingers joined by a four-bar linkage, which allows it to pick up a wide range of things, from a soccer ball to a crumpled up shirt. When the motor opens them wide, the fingers extend in a broad arc. As they close, the motion changes so that they travel parallel to one other, which is ideal for picking up smaller or flatter items such as socks or even a coin. A pressure sensor in one of the fingers alerts the system when it hits anything and then switches control to a basic loop that maintains a constant force rather than simply crushing whatever it is hanging onto. There is also grip tape on the contact surfaces, which provides dependable friction without leaving any sticky residue or causing any harm.
The four anchors contain cameras that provide a 360-degree view of the area while also locating the gripper and any target objects on the floor. Along with this, there are little printed markers that you place in crucial locations, such as the rim of a washing basket, to provide the system with accurate reference points for dropping items. The gripper also includes a camera, a laser distance sensor, and a motion sensor to determine its final approach and assure a secure hold before lifting.
The system was trained using hundreds of real-life household examples, and the model learnt whether forms and textures correspond to toys, clothes, or trash, as well as how to approach each one. All of the processing takes place on a home computer, with no data being sent to outside servers unless the owner chooses to pass some data over for future enhancements. The same arrangement allows you to manually manipulate the item with a gamepad or run fully automatic cycles that last around an hour before returning everything to its resting position.
In the real world, the crane glides across the open space above the furniture with ease, only lowering to catch something. It then rises and carries the load to the appropriate bin. Demonstrations show how it collects scattered laundry or stray toys and neatly places them without bumping against walls or knocking down lamps. Because of their form, flat books occasionally slip through, but most common detritus is easily picked up. [Source]
Focal did not show the Diva Alta Utopia at High End Vienna 2026. There was no private-room tease, no covered prototype, and not even the usual carefully vague French whisper over espresso that something ruinously expensive was hiding behind the curtain. Same story at AXPONA 2026, although perhaps we should have paid more attention when Focal and Naim suggested that something was coming that would push wireless hi-fi into far more serious territory.
Now we know what that something is: the Focal Diva Alta Utopia, a new flagship wireless loudspeaker system for 2026 and the third model in the company’s rapidly expanding Diva Utopia family. Following the original Diva Utopia in 2024 and the larger Diva Mezza Utopia in 2025, the Diva Alta Utopia takes the same basic promise; a high-end Focal loudspeaker with Naim electronics, streaming, amplification, and system control built in, and pushes it into the kind of price category where most people start checking property taxes.
At $210,000 per pair, the Diva Alta Utopia is not a lifestyle speaker unless your lifestyle involves gated driveways, dedicated listening rooms, and debating whether to turn grandma’s guest room into a pickleball court. But the price also needs some context. A passive Focal/Naim system built around Utopia loudspeakers, high-end Naim amplification, cabling, racks, source components, and proper installation can easily live in the same financial neighborhood.
Focal Diva Alta Utopia in Ivory Felt with grille off/on
Looked at that way, the Diva Alta Utopia may be outrageous, but it might also be the cleaner, smarter, and possibly less expensive route in the long run for someone who wants a no-compromise Focal/Naim system without a stack of boxes.
You will still need a turntable. Civilization has limits. Bugger.
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Directly inspired by Focal’s flagship Grande Utopia EM Evo passive loudspeaker, the Diva Alta Utopia adapts several of its core acoustic ideas for an active wireless platform rather than simply duplicating the passive design. Its architecture includes a four-way driver layout, Focal’s Focus Time technology, fine-tuned filtering, and a new M-profile “W” midrange driver developed for this model. Focal says the Diva Alta Utopia is optimized for rooms ranging from 538 to 1,292 square feet.
Pro Tip: For comparison, the original Diva Utopia is optimized for rooms up to 861 square feet, while the Diva Mezza Utopia is rated for spaces up to 1,076 square feet.
What’s New Inside The Diva Alta Utopia
Although the Diva Alta Utopia draws heavily from its predecessors, it also incorporates new technologies that represent Focal’s most advanced loudspeaker engineering to date.
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New M-profile “W” Midrange and PRISM Tweeter
New PRISM Tweeter: The Diva Alta Utopia introduces a new-generation Focal PRISM tweeter. According to Focal, this tweeter combines a multi-material substrate with an advanced micro-structuring process, delivering greater rigidity than beryllium while maintaining a careful balance of lightness, damping, and rigidity. Developed through a major research program, patented, and manufactured in France, PRISM allows Focal to sculpt tweeter membranes with unprecedented precision. More than 20 years after the introduction of the company’s beryllium tweeter, PRISM marks a major step forward in Focal loudspeaker driver development.
New M-profile “W” Midrange: Previously used primarily in Focal’s Utopia M monitors, the M-profile “W” midrange driver makes its debut in the Diva Utopia range with the Diva Alta Utopia. Focal says the new driver improves midrange precision and transparency, while added carbon reinforcement in the Diva Alta Utopia is designed to push performance even further.
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Streaming, Inputs, and High-Resolution Format Support
Beyond its advanced acoustic architecture, the Diva Alta Utopia is designed as a complete Focal/Naim wireless hi-fi system with integrated amplification, streaming, and physical connectivity built in. Inputs include HDMI eARC, optical, RCA, and USB, giving owners the ability to connect a TV, digital source, analog component, or computer without building a traditional rack-based system around the speakers.
Wireless support includes Wi-Fi, AirPlay 2, Google Cast, UPnP, Bluetooth 5.3, Spotify Connect, TIDAL Connect, Qobuz Connect, and QQ Music via QPlay. Bluetooth codec support includes aptX Adaptive, SBC, and AAC.
The Diva Alta Utopia also supports internet radio through HLS, DASH, and OGG streaming containers, with MP3, AAC, Vorbis, and FLAC codec support, along with Icecast, Shoutcast, and Xperi Extended Metadata.
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File support is extensive, including WAV, FLAC, AIFF, and ALAC up to 24-bit/384kHz, MP3 and AAC up to 48kHz/320kbps, OGG up to 48kHz, and DSD64/DSD128. Focal also specifies smooth gapless playback across all supported formats.
UWB Inter-Speaker Connection: To simplify setup between the primary and secondary speakers, the Diva Alta Utopia uses Ultra Wideband, or UWB, technology. This allows the two speakers to communicate wirelessly at 96 kHz/24-bit, with no compression, no signal loss, and very low latency.
Pro Tip: For 192 kHz/24-bit playback between the two speakers, Focal provides a wired inter-speaker connection. Wireless UWB tops out at 96 kHz/24-bit.
Control Options: Like its Diva Utopia predecessors, the Diva Alta Utopia can be controlled using the supplied remote, the Focal & Naim app, supported voice assistants including Google Assistant and Siri, and smart home control systems such as Control4, Crestron, Savant, and RTI.
ADAPT Technology: You can have the most luxurious speaker system, but it can’t perform at its best unless the speakers work well with your room. With this in mind, the Diva Utopia wireless speaker line provides the ADAPT room acoustic correction system, incorporating each user’s individual hearing perception.
What’s On The Outside
The Diva Alta Utopia is not only packed with the technology needed for a serious wireless, and wired, high-end listening experience; it is also designed to make a very visible statement in the room.
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Ivory Felt (left side view) vs. Off White (right angle view) finishes
Focal gives the Diva Alta Utopia sculptural lines, balanced proportions, and a commanding, almost architectural presence. At 58 1/4 x 18 1/8 x 24 3/8 inches, or 148 x 46 x 62 cm, and 236 pounds, or 107 kg, per speaker, this is not a compact lifestyle product pretending to be high-end hi-fi. It is a full-scale luxury loudspeaker system that happens to remove the need for a traditional stack of electronics.
The Diva Alta Utopia also features interchangeable floating side panels, allowing owners to change the speaker’s appearance without altering the speaker itself. Finish options include felt panels in Grey or Ivory, along with lacquer panels in Black High Gloss, Off-White High Gloss, and Dune High Gloss.
Focal has clearly designed the Diva Alta Utopia to elevate both the listening experience and the living space it occupies. Just make sure the living space is ready for a pair of 236-pound French loudspeakers that do not exactly disappear behind a ficus or your collection of Charlotte Gainsbourg records.
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Comparison
Left to right: Focal Diva Alta Utopia, Diva Mezza Utopia, Diva Utopia
Focal Model
DIVA ALTAUTOPIA (2026)
DIVA MEZZA UTOPIA (2025)
DIVA UTOPIA (2024)
MSRP/pair
$210,000
$69,000
$39,999
Type
4-way bass-reflex active
3-way bass-reflex active
3-way bass-reflex active
Bass
4 x ‘W’ 8″ (20.5cm) with push-push configuration
4 x ‘W’ 8″ (20.5cm) push-push configuration
4 x ‘W’ 6-1/2″ (16.5cm) push-push configuration
Midbass
‘W’ 6-1/2″ (16.5cm) with TMD suspension and NIC motor
‘W’ 6-1/2″ (16.5cm) with TMD surround and NIC motor
‘W’ 6-1/2″ (16.5cm) with TMD surround and NIC motor
Midrange
5-1/8″ (13cm) W with M profile
–
–
Tweeter
PRISM 1-1/16″ (27mm) M-profile inverted dome with IAL2
IAL2 1-1/16″ (27mm) pure beryllium ‘M’ shaped inverted dome
IAL2 1-1/16″(27mm) pure beryllium ‘M’ shaped inverted dome
Bandwidth (+/-3dB)
23Hz – 40kHz
27Hz – 40kHz
27Hz – 40kHz
Low-frequency cut-off (-6dB)
20Hz
22Hz
24Hz
Maximum SPL per pair @1m
122 dB
120 dB
116 dB
Amplification Type
Class A/B
Class A/B
Class A/B
Amplifier Output
LF: 280W MF: 100W HF: 90W MB: 130W
LF: 280W MF: 130W HF: 90W
LF: 250W MF: 75W HF: 75W
Power supply
110–120V / 220–240V ~50/60Hz
110-120V/220-240V ~50/60Hz
110-120V/220-240V ~50/60Hz
Power consumption
360W
320W
280W
Network standby mode
<2W
<2W
<2W
No-network standby mode
<0.5W
<0.5W
<0.5W
Internet Radio
Yes
Yes
Yes
Dimensions (HxLxD)
58-1/4 x 18-1/8 x 24-3/8″ (148 x 46 x 62 cm)
50 x 18-1/8 x 24-7/16″ (127 x 46 x 62 cm)
47-5/8 x 16-1/2 x 22″ (121 x 42 x 56 cm)
Net Weight
236 lbs (107kg)
192 lbs (90kg)
141 lbs (64kg)
Weight (with packaging)
427 lbs (194kg)
238 lbs (108kg)
174 lbs (79kg)
Focal Diva Alta Utopia Tweeter Closeup
Features in Common
Primary loudspeaker inputs:
HDMI eARC, CEC
Optical TOSLINK
Analogue RCA
USB 2.0 Type A
RJ45 Ethernet
RJ45 Speaker Link
Secondary loudspeaker:
Audio formats:
WAV, FLAC and AIFF – up to 24 bits/384 kHz
ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) – up to 24 bits/384 kHz
MP3 – up to 48 kHz/320 kbps (16 bits)
AAC – up to 48 kHz/320 kbps (16 bits)
OGG and AAC – up to 48kHz (16 bits)
DSD64 and DSD128
Bluetooth – aptX Adaptive, SBC, AAC
Note: support for smooth, continuous playback on all formats Multiroom Synchronizes up to 32 Focal & Naim streamers, controlled from the Focal & Naim app
Wireless streaming:
AirPlay
Google Cast
UPnP
Bluetooth 5.3
Spotify via Spotify Connect
TIDAL via TIDAL Connect
QQ Music via QPlay
Qobuz via Qobuz Connect
Music streaming services via the Focal & Naim app:
TIDAL
Qobuz
Internet radio
Podcasts depend on services available in each country
The Focal Diva Alta Utopia is not merely a larger, more expensive version of the Diva Utopia formula. It is Focal and Naim pushing the active wireless loudspeaker concept into true ultra-high-end territory, with a four-way architecture, new PRISM tweeter, new M-profile “W” midrange driver, UWB inter-speaker connectivity, extensive streaming support, and 600 watts of Naim Class A/B amplification inside each speaker.
Based on our experience listening to the earlier Diva Utopia models at recent shows, including AXPONA, the promise here is not theoretical. Those systems filled a large hotel ballroom with surprising ease, even with a crowd in the room and multiple display areas competing for attention. If the Diva Alta Utopia delivers greater dynamic headroom, higher resolution, a larger soundstage, more refined low-end control, and even better midrange presence, it is clearly aimed at larger rooms and buyers who want scale without the traditional tower of electronics.
The earlier models were already as impressive as some of the $250,000 systems we heard at the show, which makes the Alta’s price easier to understand, even if it still requires a very deep wallet and possibly a quick lie-down afterward. How French.
The price might be the hard part. At $210,000 per pair, the Diva Alta Utopia three times than the Diva Mezza Utopia and over five times more than the original Diva Utopia. That puts it in the same conversation as the Bang & Olufsen Beolab 90, not the usual premium wireless speaker category. But a passive Utopia-based Focal system with high-end Naim amplification, source components, cabling, racks, and installation can also become a six-figure exercise very quickly. In that context, the Diva Alta Utopia may be outrageous, but not automatically irrational.
What is missing? Vinyl listeners will still need a turntable and a proper phono stage unless their deck already has one built in. This is also not a replacement for a full multi-channel home theater system, and at 236 pounds per speaker, nobody is casually repositioning them after dinner. The Diva Alta Utopia is for the buyer who wants ultra-high-end Focal/Naim performance without the traditional tower of electronics. Everyone else can admire it from a safe financial distance.
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Focal Diva Alta Utopia in Black High Gloss, Grey Felt, and Off White High Gloss Finishes.
Price & Availability
The Focal Diva Alta Utopia will be available beginning August 2026, exclusively through the Focal Powered by Naim network of authorized retailers for $210,000 USD and $260,000 CAD per pair.
Finishes include grey and ivory felt, three lacquered and varnished finishes, Black High Gloss, Off-White High Gloss, and Dune High Gloss. All finishes are hand-crafted in the Focal Ebénisterie Bourgogne workshop.
The Diva Utopia ($39,000/pair) and Diva Mezza Uptopia ($69,000/pair) are also currently available through Focal Powered by Naim Network and authorized dealers.
Samsung Display is using AWE 2026 to push RGB OLEDoS as a core building block for the next wave of XR hardware. The showcase centers on displays designed for mixed reality headsets and augmented reality smart glasses, where brightness, size, and efficiency all collide.
The standout spec is a 1.3-inch RGB OLEDoS panel rated at 40,000 nits. Samsung Display is presenting it in a dark-room Big Dipper installation, where only two of seven panels use the ultra-bright tech to make the brightness and color gap obvious. It’s a booth demo with a sharper message underneath.
Why brightness decides the experience
XR displays have a brutal job. They need to stay vivid and precise inside hardware that’s also fighting optics, battery life, heat, and weight.
Samsung
Samsung Display’s 40,000-nit panel targets that pressure point directly. In a headset or glasses-style device, the display can’t simply be big and bright. It has to push strong visuals through compact optical systems without turning the product into something bulky.
The company’s smaller 0.62-inch RGB OLEDoS panel points in the same direction for smart glasses. Samsung Display is using it in a prototype that can show AR information such as translation, navigation, and weather over a Long Beach backdrop.
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Can RGB OLEDoS shrink the hardware
Samsung Display is also making a production argument. RGB OLEDoS builds OLED on a wafer and uses a single-panel structure, which the company says can make manufacturing less complex than some other microdisplay approaches.
That could help smart glasses makers chase thinner designs, since optical complexity is one of the barriers between impressive demos and wearable products. Samsung Display also says RGB OLEDoS skips the color filter used in white OLEDoS, helping light efficiency, lifespan, brightness, and color performance.
Samsung
The less flashy engineering may carry the most weight. XR gets easier to wear when the display stack gets simpler.
What comes after the booth
Samsung Display is widening the showcase beyond headset and glasses panels. It’s also presenting a stretchable display that can rise from a flat surface, plus a Light Field Display that creates 3D-like visuals without glasses or a headset.
Those demos make the company’s ambition clear, but they leave the commercial picture unfinished. Samsung Display hasn’t provided product timelines, customer names, pricing, or availability details for the technologies in this showcase.
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AWE USA is a flex, not a launch. The real test is whether Samsung Display can turn these RGB OLEDoS panels into production-ready parts for headset and smart-glasses makers trying to make XR feel less awkward.
Kodak’s quirky Charmera camera is getting a nostalgic refresh with the new Charmera Millennium Edition.
It swaps the original’s retro disposable-camera styling for a collection of shiny Y2K-inspired designs. These designs look like they came straight from the early 2000s.
The update introduces seven new finishes, all inspired by the technology and aesthetics of the millennium era.
At $34.99/£35, the new models retain the same affordable price point. This helped make the original Charmera a hit among collectors and fans of lo-fi photography.
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The Millennium Edition isn’t just a cosmetic update, though. Kodak has expanded the camera’s creative toolkit with a total of seven photo filters and four retro-style frames. These can be applied while shooting. Alongside the existing black-and-white mode and high-contrast pixel filters, users now get four additional colour options: Coral, Honey, Teal, and Violet.
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Under the hood, however, very little has changed.
The Charmera Millennium Edition uses the same hardware as the original model, including a 1.6-megapixel sensor capable of capturing images at 1,440 x 1,080 resolution. Video recording is similarly basic, topping out at 30fps AVI footage. While that’s enough to store thousands of photos on a microSD card of up to 128GB, image quality remains firmly in toy-camera territory.
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That’s unlikely to be a dealbreaker for the audience Kodak is targeting. The Charmera’s appeal has never been about technical performance. Instead, it’s about embracing imperfect digital photography. Instant cameras and disposable film cameras have found a new audience in recent years.
Still, with smartphone cameras continuing to improve and retro photography trends showing no signs of slowing down, future versions may need more than fresh colourways. Additionally, they may need additional filters to stand out.
For now, though, the Charmera Millennium Edition doubles down on exactly what made the original popular: affordable, pocket-friendly fun with a healthy dose of nostalgia.
There was a time when Microsoft cared about every KB
Microsoft’s latest Windows update might or might not have improved performance for the company’s flagship operating system, but there was a time when its engineers cared about performance. A lot.
Veteran Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen on Monday hearked back to that time by telling another war story from the glory days of Windows, when a team was working on an x86-32 emulator for an unnamed processor (though it isn’t particularly difficult to identify potential candidates).
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The emulator used binary translation – native code was generated for the original x86-32 code. Chen explained, “This offered a significant performance improvement over emulation via interpreter. You can imagine that x86-32 is just a bytecode, and the emulator is a JIT compiler.”
The team came across a function that needed to allocate 64 KB of memory. Simple enough stuff – check that there is enough memory available, subtract 65536 from the stack pointer, and then initialize the memory in a loop.
Use the comments to correct me, but this sounds like loop rolling, where repetitive code gets condensed into a loop.
However, it appeared that a compiler had … optimized … the code “by unrolling the loop into 65,536 individual ‘write byte to memory’ instructions, each 4 bytes long.”
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Perhaps a bit quicker, but goodness – quite the memory hog. “All in all,” wrote Chen, “it took this program 256 kilobytes of code to initialize 64 kilobytes of data.”
Almost like a glimpse into a future where operating systems don’t appear to give two hoots about efficient use of storage. What would that look like?
As for the engineers working on the CPU emulator, Chen said, “This offended the team so much that they added special code to the translator to detect this horrible function and replace it with the equivalent tight loop.”
It would be interesting to know what that same team would make of the internals of some Windows binaries today, but it is heartening to know that, at one point, engineers cared about memory efficiency enough to reroll something. Sure, there might, just might, have been a performance hit, but spitting out 256 KB of code just to initialize 64 KB of data?
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Naughty. Very naughty. The much younger version of this hack, optimizing the heck out of code to fit within the confines of computers from yesteryear, would have been horrified. ®
UC Davis researchers say an implanted brain-computer interface has allowed Casey Harrell, an ALS patient who cannot speak, to synthesize sentences from brain activity with 99% accuracy in controlled tests and about 92% accuracy in everyday use. The Register reports that the system has remained usable at home since 2023, helping Harrell communicate naturally, control a computer, and return to full-time work without researchers needing to supervise each session. The Register reports: A team of scientists from the University of California, Davis, published a paper Monday detailing a years-long study of a brain computer interface (BCI) system implanted in a patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), which destroys motor neurons and causes loss of motor control and eventual paralysis. According to the team, their patient, Casey Harrell, has been living with BCI implants since 2023 that are still working today, giving him the ability not only to control a computer cursor with his thoughts, but also to speak. […] Davis neurosurgeon David Brandman, co-principal investigator and co-senior author of the paper published Monday, as well as the surgeon who placed Harrell’s implant, described the results his team published as the crossing of a threshold in BCI technology: Not only has Harrell’s implant been working well with daily use since 2023, but it’s also incredibly accurate.
In controlled tests, the system managed to synthesize sentences from Harrell’s brain activity with 99 percent accuracy; outside of the lab in daily use, Harrell still assessed it as being accurate 92 percent of the time. “The key thing to me is that it’s enabling everyday communication for a guy who wants to talk but can’t,” Brandman told The Register in an interview. “Despite being paralyzed [Harrell] has gone back to work full time and has meaningful conversations with his daughter who’s never heard the sound of his voice.”
Prior work in the BCI space, Brandman told us, has either required researchers to be in a patient’s home whenever they’re using the tech, or for the patient to come to the researchers. That’s not the case here, with the system allowing Harrell’s home care team to hook him up to the system themselves, enabling him to use the device for more than 3,800 hours in the past few years. Based on the time the study was filed (It published Monday but went into peer review in July 2025) that would mean Harrell was using the device for more than five hours a day, on average. “It is a life that is more full of dynamic action and with friends and family, with colleagues, and it is something that allows me to communicate more in my natural way of communicating than any other technology that I have experienced,” Harrell told UC Davis via his BCI system.
OpenAI has revealed details of fake social media campaigns designed to spread disinformation about data center projects, among others. The company says that as a result of the findings, some China-linked ChatGPT accounts have been banned.
Investigators identified two “clusters” of ChatGPT accounts that they believed originated in China and accessed the platform through a firewall to circumvent ChatGPT restrictions in the country. One of these clusters is referred to by OpenAI as Data Center Bandwagon. This group used ChatGPT to create social media posts claiming that domestic electricity prices in the US were rising due to demand from AI data centers. As well as this disinformation campaign, this group also used social media posts to target overseas Chinese dissidents. This content targeted dissidents like Li Ying (often called Teacher Li), which added to the evidence that the cluster was Chinese-based.
The second cluster of accounts changed the narrative from data centers to “technology and tariffs”. This cluster posted on suspected fake X accounts and concentrated on the US/China technological competition. The accounts used English language posts and cartoons to spread misinformation about tariffs, AI, and rare earths. The “bad actors” also created posts claiming that America is seeking global technological dominance. This group also posted Chinese-language posts that attacked the US, Israel, and Chinese dissidents.
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As noted by OpenAI in its June 2026 threat report, there is a certain irony in this: American AI models are creating content that attacks American AI infrastructure.
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How the data center disinformation campaign worked
Mattgush/Getty Images
Data centers in the US already have a bad rap, a point underscored by a recent Gallup poll finding that more Americans would oppose building a data center near them than a nuclear power plant.
It’s perhaps just as well, then, that the OpenAI investigation concluded the fake Chinese campaigns gained little traction. According to the company, the campaign ranked as a Category One on the Breakout Scale. The Breakout Scale is a method of measuring the effectiveness of disinformation campaigns. Category One is the least effective and refers to campaigns that remained isolated on a single platform. Indeed, OpenAI reported that most of the posts on X received little or no engagement.
As an example of the type of content the fake accounts produced, the company cites a set of cartoons generated by the ChatGPT platform. These were based on genuine reporting from a regional newspaper and covered a power grid operator’s auction prices and how rising demand from data centers was driving electricity prices up for domestic customers. These cartoons were posted on suspected fake X accounts and used genuine links to actual news stories to add substance to the claims.
Despite its “Category One” ranking, the company still flags the campaign as strategically important. OpenAI argues that the bigger picture is what the campaign illustrates about ongoing foreign interference and the narratives they’re attempting to push.
In its report, the company states that, “Both clusters attempted to connect US technology policies and industries to everyday economic anxieties and geopolitical instability.” In other words, these posts are designed to sow mistrust among the broader American public — mistrust that targets US institutions, technology companies, and the government.
OpenAI claims this is the first time it has seen such action against AI data centers by Chinese-linked accounts. It also stated that the accounts used in the “Data Center Bandwagon” cartoons were linked to a Chinese Government contractor.
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However, although it’s the first time OpenAI has detected such disinformation claims, it isn’t the first instance of Chinese misuse of the platform. In another reported case earlier in 2026, the company suspended the account of a user linked to Chinese law enforcement agencies. The account was being used to attempt a covert influence operation against the Japanese Prime Minister, but the safeguards built into the ChatGPT model prevented it from proceeding.
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