Weekly recap

Weekly Tech Recap - № 261 - Mindstorms Robot Inventor, carbon mouseprints, Spot robot, Text Fragment for Chrome, Snapdragon 690

By Laurent Gloaguen,

June 19, 2020.

Lego Mindstorms Robot Inventor Kits

Mindstorms Robot Inventor. © Lego System A/S.

Lego is launching a new 949-piece set that allows you to build five different robots (Blast, Charlie, Tricky, Gelo, and a modular vehicle). The largest robot, Blast, stands 36cm tall. A free app (available for Windows 10, macOS, iOS and Android) contains building and coding instructions for each of these robots. Robot Inventor uses drag-and-drop coding language based on Scratch, but seasoned developers can also use Python. The kit will be available this fall for USD360 (CAD490), which is not cheap, but you can also buy each robot individually for USD72 (CAD98). Mindstorms Robot Inventor is targeted at children 10 years and up. We personally know lots of “and up” children :-)

⇨ Lego, “New Lego® Mindstorms® Robot Inventor lets creators build and bring to life anything they can imagine.”

⇨ The Verge, Jon Porter, “Lego’s new Mindstorms kit lets kids build their own walking, talking robots.”

Carbon mouseprints

Logitech, the well-known maker of keyboards and mice, plans to inform consumers of the carbon impact of its products. Labels with this information will appear on its gaming products by the end of the year, with a goal of eventually extending labels across its full product portfolio. The number you’ll see on the label represents the total carbon life cycle of the product. That indicates the amount of carbon emitted in the entire life of the product, including in the sourcing of a product’s materials, in its manufacturing, in its distribution, in the actual use of the product, and in its disposal and recycling. Logitech will be calculating carbon impact internally, but will work with third parties including Natural Capital Partners, iPoint Group, and an independent verifier to verify and validate product-level carbon impacts to DEKRA certification standards. In December, Logitech announced other sustainability initiatives, including that its entire lineup of gaming products was carbon neutral. That means Logitech cut down on the amount of carbon emissions those products produce and offset whatever was left.

⇨ The Verge, Jay Peters, “Logitech to display carbon impact labels on product packaging and online.”

Reserve your Spot now!

Spot. © Boston Dynamics.

Robot-maker Boston Dynamics is finally ready to sell its four-legged robot, Spot, outright. After years of development, the company had started leasing its robot last year, but only today has it started allowing American companies to actually purchase it, for USD74,500 (CAD101,342), or a tad less than the price of a Tesla Model S. Delivery takes 6 to 8 weeks (and it’s free!). Spot comes with two batteries, a charger, a tablet controller and a case for transportation. Michael Patrick Perry, vice president of business development at Boston Robotics, said that Boston Dynamics will implement a strict user guide for its robot, which cannot be used to carry weapons or to hurt or intimidate people. Which is far from reassuring; how can a company control the use of its product once it’s out of its hands?

⇨ IEEE Spectrum, Evan Ackerman, “Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot dog now available for $74,500.”

Text Fragment for Chrome

Google recently released a free and very useful extension for its Chrome navigator. Called Link to Text Fragment, it allows you to create a URL pointing to a specific fragment of text on a Web page, and highlights it. With the extension installed, simply highlight the text you want to link to, right click, and select “Copy Link to Selected Text.” The link is shareable and works even for people who don’t have the extension, as long as they have a recent Chromium-based browser (Chrome or Edge, for example). Note that these links currently do not work when served across client-side redirects that some common services like Twitter use. Regular HTTP redirects work fine. Hopefully, Firefox and Safari will implement the technology to make the links more universal.

⇨ YouTube, “Link to Text Fragment extension demo..”

⇨ Web.dev Blog, Thomas Steiner, “Boldly link where no one has linked before: Text Fragments.”

⇨ The Verge, Jon Porter, “Google’s new Chrome extension lets you link directly to specific text on a page.”

Snapdragon 690

Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 690 is the first SoC in its 6-series chips to get support for 5G — although it’ll only support the slower sub-6GHz versions of 5G, not the faster mmWave standard. The new Snapdragon 690 also promises a variety of other improvements over the previous 6-series chips. Qualcomm says it’ll offer 20 percent better CPU performance and 60 percent faster graphics rendering compared to the Snapdragon 675. But the addition of 5G support — by way of a new Snapdragon X51 modem — is particularly important for the broader adoption of 5G, given that the company’s 6-series chips tend to show up in midrange and budget phones, like those from HMD’s Nokia, Motorola, and LG. Finally, the Snapdragon 690 will support 120Hz displays for faster refresh rates, along with 4K HDR video capture (both a first for the 6-series). The Snapdragon 690 will also enable up to 192-megapixel cameras on midtier devices.

⇨ Circuit Breaker, Evan Ackerman, “Qualcomm launches new Snapdragon 690 processor to add 5G to budget phones.”