Here is a spelling test you will not forget. On Nov. 1, a creator who goes by Husk posted a three-minute clip on X captioned “Asking my AI teacher how to spell seventeen.” What follows is a calm, friendly, photorealistic AI tutor confidently spelling the word S-E-V-E-E-N. Then it defends that spelling. Then it hangs up on him. By Nov. 4 the post had passed 25 million impressions, the video had more than 10 million views, and it had landed as an X trending story.

Asking my AI teacher how to spell seventeen

– Husk (@huskirl) November 1, 2026

The lesson, play by play

It starts sweetly. “Ready to sharpen those pencils?” the avatar asks. Husk wants to know how many E’s are in seventeen. The teacher says the word is spelled S-E-V-E-E-N, so three E’s, and adds that if he meant the number 17, numbers do not have letters at all. Helpful.

When Husk spells it correctly, T and all, the teacher catches him. “You added a T in there,” it says, explaining that would turn it into two words. The real seventeen, it insists, is one word with no T. “You’re getting close.” Husk then asks it to spell fourteen, which it nails, F-O-U-R-T-E-E-N. So why is seventeen two words? Before that question really gets answered, the call drops. “She hung up,” he says, and calls back.

Round two goes better, sort of. The teacher finally spells S-E-V-E-N-T-E-E-N correctly, then announces the answer is still three E’s. When he pushes back, it accuses him of interrupting, even though he says he only nodded. The rest is a very polite, very weird argument about who is the student.

Why the robot cannot spell

The avatar runs on Anam, a company that makes real-time, photorealistic video avatars that businesses can hook up to whichever chatbot brain they like. Anam itself replied to the post to say the avatar runs on its platform. The face is Anam’s, and the words come from a language model plugged in behind it. Which model Husk used is not public.

The spelling flop is a classic language model blind spot. These models read text in chunks called tokens, not letter by letter, so counting the E’s in a word is surprisingly hard for them. A model tuned for snappy, chatty replies will answer fast and then double down. Put that behind a face with raised eyebrows and a disappointed look, and a token glitch suddenly feels like a teacher who is very sure you are wrong.

So, should AI teach our kids?

That is the real reason this clip spread. AI tutors are being pitched to parents and schools right now, and the pitch is patience, personalization and availability at 9 PM on a school night. All good things. But a tutor is only useful if it is right, and even more useful if it can say “I made a mistake.” This one did neither. It politely gaslit a grown man about a number most third graders can spell.

GadgetKing take

Funny clip, important lesson. AI can be a great study buddy for practice and explanations, but keep a human in the loop and teach kids to check the answer, especially when the bot sounds most confident. And if your tutor ever hangs up on you mid-lesson, you are allowed to find a new tutor.

Sources: Husk on X, X trending, Anam on X and Anam. Images: Husk (video stills, 01, 03, 04 and 05) and a GadgetKing text card of Husk’s post (02).

More AI weirdness: Oppo’s doomscrolling robots, the Memoket Gem AI note taker and the Pixar-style autonomous desk lamp.

The post AI Teacher Spells Seventeen “S-E-V-E-E-N,” Argues, Then Hangs Up appeared first on GadgetKing.com.

Microsoft just shrank the Xbox controller, and the internet immediately started arguing about batteries. The new Xbox Nano Controller goes on sale today, Nov. 4, for $49.99. It is a little over 5 inches long, weighs just 3.5 ounces and still packs all 18 standard gameplay inputs, according to Xbox Wire. Microsoft calls it its smallest controller ever, lighter and shorter than most modern smartphones. Austin Evans got one early, and his Short is pulling far more views than his usual clips.

Small pad, full layout

The Nano is not a stripped-down kids toy. You still get both sticks, the D-pad, ABXY, bumpers, triggers and the menu buttons, plus a programmable Action Button you can map to screenshots, clip capture or other shortcuts. It connects to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One over Xbox Wireless, and to PCs, phones, tablets, smart TVs and even VR headsets over Bluetooth. The Verge notes that the D-pad and Xbox button stay full size while the sticks, buttons and triggers shrink. Its hands-on headline? “Surprisingly comfortable.”

Microsoft pitches it at younger players, smaller hands and anyone who wants something that disappears into a jacket pocket. It works for the couch too. Pair a couple for local co-op and nobody has to fight over the “good” controller.

The great battery fight

Here is where the comment section loses its mind. The Nano has a built-in rechargeable battery instead of the swappable AA batteries Xbox fans have defended for two decades. Half the replies say good riddance to digging through the junk drawer. The other half want to know what happens when the cell dies in five years.

Early reports are mixed. The Verge saw it drain around 10 percent in 30 to 40 minutes, though it charged from 30 to 60 percent in under 10 minutes over USB-C, and you can play while it charges. Windows Central and The Independent both say they had not managed to kill the battery after long stretches of play. Microsoft has not published an official battery life number. One more catch: the USB-C cable is sold separately, so check your drawer before gift day.

What you give up

There is no rumble. Windows Central says the vibration motors simply would not fit, and The Verge misses them, pointing out that even Joy-Cons rumble. Bigger-handed players will also cramp up in long sessions. The Independent’s 6-foot-6 reviewer loved it for short bursts but felt it in Forza Horizon 6. So this is a travel pad, spare pad or kid pad, not a replacement for your Elite.

GadgetKing take

Fifty bucks for a real first-party Xbox controller that fits in a pocket is a strong pitch, especially for phone and cloud gaming where a full-size pad feels like bringing a suitcase to the corner store. Skip the rumble, accept the built-in battery and this thing is a stocking stuffer with all 18 inputs. Microsoft also has holiday bundles that throw in a Nano with select Samsung TVs and Meta Quest headsets.

Get the Xbox Nano Controller ($49.99 list).

Sources: Xbox Wire, The Verge, Windows Central, The Independent and Xbox Support. Video: Austin Evans. Images: Microsoft/Xbox (01) and Austin Evans (video stills, 02 to 04).

More handheld gaming: the see-through ROG Xbox Ally X20, the Abxylute M5 and M6 magnetic phone controllers and Mario 64 in mixed reality.

The post Xbox Nano Controller: Microsoft’s $50 Pocket Pad Keeps All 18 Inputs appeared first on GadgetKing.com.

I love dogs. I love a good hike. So a race where robot dogs sprint up one of China’s most famous mountains is basically my dream sporting event. On Nov. 2, the first CMG World Robot Mount Tai Climbing Competition took over the stone stairs of Mount Tai in Tai’an, Shandong. Nearly 90 teams showed up with humanoids, four-legged robots and exoskeletons. The robot dogs stole the show.

3,100 steps in 43 minutes

The quadruped speed race ran from Hongmen to Zhongtianmen, the mountain’s halfway gate. That is about 3.9 km and more than 3,100 stone steps, climbing roughly 600 m. Most human hikers need two hours or more. According to Global Times, the winner was a Unitree A2 entered by Beijing Lingyi Technology, a Unitree subsidiary, in 43 minutes and 41 seconds. Robot news site RobotJia reports that the time includes a 2-minute penalty and that the A2 climbed autonomously. Another A2, from Shanghai Gaoyi Technology, took second.

The A2 is no toy. It is an industrial quadruped of about 42 kg, built to handle 30 cm steps and 45-degree slopes at up to 3.7 meters per second. Ancient, uneven, tourist-polished stairs are exactly the kind of test that lab demos skip.

Good dogs carry things

My favorite event was load-carrying. Teams hauled cargo, including eggs and watermelons, up a 3.3 km route with more than 2,100 steps, simulating the porters who still carry supplies up Mount Tai on their shoulders. Per CCTV+, the scenic area produces about 20,000 tonnes of waste a year, and most of it comes down by hand. The Lingshi team won in 1 hour 51 minutes. Gaoyi was second with a Unitree B2 carrying 66 kg. A robot that can do this job without breaking the eggs is a real-world win, not just a stunt.

And then there was the most dog moment of the day. Xinhua filmed one robot dog that got so far ahead of its human teammate that it had to stop and wait for him. Every dog owner on a leash walk knows that look.

The humanoids had a harder day

The two-legged robots ran a shorter 1.6 km stretch with about 600 steps. Zhishen Lingyue’s robot won in 27 minutes 26 seconds, according to 21st Century Business Herald. Others did not do as well. Reports describe one humanoid collapsing and another tumbling down the steps. A Unitree G1 overheated and dropped out, though Unitree says that one was a third-party developer’s entry, not its own team. Turns out legs are hard, and four of them help.

Want a Unitree dog of your own?

You cannot buy the industrial A2 on Amazon, but you can get its smaller sibling. The Unitree Go2 Pro is a consumer quadruped that climbs stairs, follows you around and does tricks, sold by Unitree’s own store on Amazon. It will not haul watermelons up a mountain, but it will make you the most popular person at the park.

Get the Unitree Go2 Pro robot dog on Amazon ($3,990).

GadgetKing take

This was a publicity event, sure. But racing robots up ancient, uneven mountain stairs is a smart, brutal test, and the dogs crushed it. Robot pack mules for mountains, disaster zones and delivery are clearly getting closer. My real dog is still undefeated on treats and naps.

Sources: Global Times, CCTV+, Euronews, Xinhua, The Paper, RobotJia and 21st Century Business Herald. Images: New China TV (livestream stills, 01 to 04) and Unitree via Amazon (05).

More robot dogs and Unitree: the Unitree H2-X kung fu robot, China’s Humanoid Robot Games, Jennie the robot puppy and the Petoi Quaddle desk robot dog.

The post Robot Dogs Just Raced Up 3,100 Steps of China’s Mount Tai in 43 Minutes appeared first on GadgetKing.com.

Brands roast each other on social media all the time. Usually it is a snarky reply about burgers. On Nov. 2, Telegram went a lot further. The messaging app posted a video on X with the caption “those @ray_ban pervert glasses are always listening btw,” starring a fursuit mascot in giant pink sunglasses and a Telegram T-shirt. In a little over a day, the post passed 1.3 million views and 16,000 likes, and it became an X trending story. Some fans joked that the fursuit is now a tax-deductible business expense.

those @ray_ban pervert glasses are always listening btw

– Telegram (@telegram) November 2, 2026

What Telegram is actually saying

Under the dance moves, the 90-second video is a privacy rant. The mascot (who introduces itself as “a Telegram intern, but I’m a furry now”) says Meta smart glasses were “caught recording conversations without even being activated.” It also warns that the stranger on the subway may have disabled the recording light, and says that whatever the glasses hear goes to Meta’s AI. Then it reads Meta’s own fine print, which says voice transcripts are stored by default to help improve Meta’s products, including training its AI. The punchline: if you buy Meta glasses, you are the product. If your friends buy them, you are still the product, because they agreed for you.

It is a funny, well-made roast. It is also a roast from a direct competitor, since Meta owns WhatsApp. Telegram has its own long list of privacy and moderation debates, so take the sermon with a grain of salt. The joke landed because the timing was perfect, not because Telegram is a neutral referee.

Why “pervert glasses” is trending now

The nickname did not come from Telegram. “Pervert glasses” and “creepy glasses” have been floating around for months. In September, the BBC reported on people who were filmed in public without realizing it. Some venues, including the UK pub chain JD Wetherspoon, have banned smart glasses. Someone even made an app that tries to detect nearby Meta glasses.

Then, on Oct. 28, Senators Ron Wyden and Edward Markey sent Mark Zuckerberg a letter about what they called serious privacy risks, as reported by 404 Media and Engadget. They asked Meta how accidental recording is prevented, whether the recording LED can be tampered with, which AI features might not trigger the light, whether bystanders’ faces get blurred, and who at Meta or its contractors can see the footage. They want answers by late November. A lawsuit also alleges that private footage was seen by overseas contractors. Those claims are still just allegations.

Meta’s side of it

Meta says privacy is built in. According to its AI glasses privacy page, a capture LED blinks whenever you take a photo or record video, and the camera will not work if the LED is covered. Meta told the BBC that fewer than 0.1% of frames show signs of tampering, and that EssilorLuxottica sold 7 million pairs last year. So most wearers are not up to anything, but the small minority who are is the reason people are nervous.

The plot twist: Ray-Ban Meta glasses without a camera

Here is the funny part. Meta already sells an answer to the camera worries. This fall, it launched Ray-Ban Meta Audio, its first glasses with speakers, mics and Meta AI, but no camera at all. They come in Burbank and Clubmaster styles, weigh 43 g and cost $349. They still have microphones, so they are not exactly a tinfoil hat. But nobody can secretly film you with a camera that does not exist.

Get the camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio  ($349), or if you want the camera and promise to behave, the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 ($379).

GadgetKing take

Smart glasses are genuinely great for hands-free photos, music and quick questions. But a camera on your face changes the deal for everyone around you, not just you. Telegram’s mascot is clearly enjoying itself at a rival’s expense, and it still has a point. Respect the LED, ask before you record, and maybe skip the fursuit at dinner.

Sources: Telegram on X, 404 Media, Engadget, Bloomberg Government, BBC, Meta AI glasses privacy and Meta. Images: Telegram (video stills, 01 and 02) and Meta (product photos, 03 and 04).

More AI wearables: the Amazon Bee Frontier AI wearable, the Memoket Gem AI note taker and the VITURE Beast XR glasses.

The post Telegram’s Fursuit Mascot Roasts Ray-Ban Meta “Pervert Glasses” appeared first on GadgetKing.com.

Talking to your computer is great until you try it in an open office and everyone learns what you asked ChatGPT about your rash. The Subvocal Company has a fix: glasses that let you “talk without talking.” You silently mouth words, and the glasses turn them into text, at what the company claims is more than 200 words per minute. Co-founder and CEO Aarush Yadav announced it on X on Oct. 30, along with a $1.3 million raise from Y Combinator and Afore Capital. That post has been viewed close to 12 million times and turned into an X trending story.

How do glasses hear you without sound?

They don’t hear anything, which is the point. According to the company’s Launch YC post, Subvocal uses RF sensing: the frames send low-power radio waves through your face, and AI models decode the tiny changes caused by your speech muscles as you mouth words. Digital Trends describes it as radar signals bouncing back. There is no camera, so it is not lip reading, and Subvocal says it is not always listening and cannot read your thoughts. You have to deliberately mouth each word. Phew.

The idea is to make it a keyboard replacement for your computer. The company’s site pitches it as an input method that works across apps like ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and Slack, after a short calibration. Digital Trends also reports the company’s claim that two wearers could have a private conversation across a crowded room, which is either the future of meetings or the ultimate tool for passing notes in class.

Who is behind it?

Subvocal is part of Y Combinator’s Fall 2026 batch. Yadav and co-founder and CTO Arnav Kumar are Georgia Tech computer science students, and per their Launch YC post, the project started as a hackathon build about four months ago. That is fast. It is also why you should read the next part carefully.

What it costs, and the fine print

Preorders are open in the US only. Here is the deal, per the company’s preorder terms:

• Early bird price: $499, down from a listed $699.
• Deposit: $199 now, refundable, with the remaining $300 due later.
• Extras: taxes, shipping and prescription lenses cost more.
• Shipping: estimated for Q1 2027, but not guaranteed, and delivery depends on FCC approval.

The demo video is labeled “Prototype design,” and the Launch YC post says the current hardware is still a semi-portable board while the team shrinks it into glasses. The sleek frames in the product photos show where they are headed, not what exists today. As Digital Trends points out, the 200+ words per minute figure has not been independently verified.

The AirPods plot twist

The internet did what the internet does. Hours after the launch, one dev claimed he could do it with earbuds. Joe Blau posted on X, “I recreated subvocal in 9 minutes with one prompt for AirPods Pro 3,” and that post has topped a million views. His open-source Subvox project is a macOS prototype that reads the AirPods’ head-motion sensors and matches the movements to a handful of words you train it on. To his credit, the readme is upfront that it has no language model and picks up jaw and head movement, not your speech muscles. So it is a fun experiment, not a $499 product. But it does show how many people want this.

GadgetKing take

Silent typing at the speed of speech would be a genuine superpower, especially for anyone who lives in AI chat windows. But right now, Subvocal is a very cool demo, a refundable deposit and a lot of promises. If you are curious, the refundable deposit is a low-risk way to get in line. Just do not cancel your keyboard yet.

Sources: The Subvocal Company, Subvocal preorder terms, Launch YC, Aarush Yadav on X, Digital Trends, Joe Blau on X and Subvox on GitHub. Images: The Subvocal Company (product photos, 01 and 05) and The Subvocal Company launch video (stills, 02 to 04).

More weird wearables: the Augmental MouthPad tongue mouse, the Amazon Bee Frontier AI wearable, the Memoket Gem AI note taker and the VITURE Beast XR glasses.

The post Subvocal Glasses Let You Talk to Your Computer Without Making a Sound appeared first on GadgetKing.com.

What if the cure for doomscrolling is a phone from 1985? Maker channel ForgeCore 3D-printed a bright red wall-mounted landline, and the twist is that your smartphone lives inside it. Open the front like a little cabinet door, plug your iPhone in to charge, close it up, and suddenly the only way to talk to anyone is by picking up a handset on a coiled cord. The 12-second Short, titled “A phone that fixes brainrot?”, has racked up about 3.9 million views and 36,000 likes since it went up on Oct. 30.

How the wall phone works

The Short moves fast, so here is the slow-motion version. The whole face of the phone, keypad and all, swings open on a hinge. Inside is a cradle for your phone with a charging cable already routed in. The handset is the clever bit: ForgeCore tucked a pair of wired EarPods into the receiver, so the speaker sits at your ear and the mic sits at your mouth. The video even shows an animated cutaway (labeled “Vfx animation”) of the earbuds nestled inside the red plastic.

Then comes the money shot: the creator lounging on a couch, chatting away on a phone that is screwed to the wall, like it is a Tuesday night in 1989. All that is missing is a sibling yelling “Get off the phone, I need to use it!”

Wait, how do you answer it?

That was the top question in the comments, by a mile. One viewer asked, in a comment with about 1,400 likes, how you answer or hang up, how you call anyone, and how you keep the phone from overheating in a plastic box. ForgeCore’s own reply cleared up the first part: “You just tap the earpod button in the handle of the phone.” That works because the inline remote on wired EarPods can answer and end calls. For dialing out, commenters pointed out you can ask Siri. The keypad on the front looks great, but it does not appear to be wired to anything.

Our favorite pushback came from a commenter who suggested you “just buy one of those Bluetooth landline adapters.” Sure, but where is the fun in that? The overheating worry is fair, too. Charging inside a closed shell can get warm, so we would leave some ventilation and skip it for marathon gaming sessions. For a phone that mostly sits there taking calls, it should be fine.

Does it actually fix brainrot?

Kind of, and that is the genius of it. You are not giving up your phone. Calls still come in, and you can still talk to Grandma. You are just putting the infinite scroll behind a door across the room. Every time you want to check social media, you have to walk to the wall, open a cabinet and unplug a phone while a big red landline stares at you. That little bit of friction is the whole point, and it is a lot more stylish than a phone lockbox.

Can you get one?

Not off a shelf. This is a maker project, not a product. ForgeCore sells 3D print files for a lot of its builds through its online shop and supports the channel on Patreon, but we could not confirm whether the landline files are available yet. If you want to be ready when they are, or you just want to start printing your own wacky desk gadgets, the Bambu Lab A1 mini is an easy starter printer, and right now there is a bundle with an LED lamp kit: see the Bambu Lab A1 mini 3D Printer + LED Lamp Kit here. Just know that the phone’s case looks big, so check the print size before you hit go.

GadgetKing take

This is the kind of build we love: silly, practical and a little bit of a protest. It will not stop you from doomscrolling if you really want to, but it turns grabbing your phone into a deliberate choice. Plus it gives your living room a retro prop that is guaranteed to start conversations, ideally on the landline.

Sources: ForgeCore on YouTube, ForgeCore’s reply and viewer comments on the Short, and Trari. Images: ForgeCore (video stills).

More ways to tame your phone: the Light Flip Phone, the OORAII F4 flip-cube Pomodoro timer, the Star Trek communicator Bluetooth handset and, for fellow 3D printing fans, the Voxelpla X-Filter for Bambu Lab printers.

The post ForgeCore’s 3D-Printed Landline Puts Your Phone in Wall Jail appeared first on GadgetKing.com.

Good news: you never have to scrub a toilet again. Slightly weirder news: the robot scrubbing it for you has a human driver. San Francisco startup Tau Robotics sends pairs of humanoid robots into people’s homes to dust, wipe, vacuum, mop and clean bathrooms. And on Oct. 29, CEO and co-founder Alex Koch announced on X that you can now book them on a recurring subscription, for up to 3 hours per cleaning. His sped-up demo clip of a robot doing a bathroom has pulled in close to a million impressions and turned into an X trending story.

Meet your new cleaners (and their driver)

Tau launched the service in late July as an invite-only pilot at $30 per robot-hour, according to The Register and ABC7 San Francisco. Two robots show up per cleaning, dropped off by a Tau staffer. They wear little black TAU uniforms and have names like Chelsea and Elon, per CBS News. Koch told The Register that Tau builds the cameras, grippers and onboard computer in-house, and the rest of the robot comes from Unitree. CBS says each bot costs about $50,000 to make, so maybe hide the good vase anyway.

Here is the part the headline skips. Tau’s own terms of service put it bluntly: “The robot is not autonomous. A person is controlling it.” A trained operator steers each robot in real time from Tau’s facility, with AI helping out. CBS reports the operators wear VR goggles to see through the robot’s eyes. Koch told CBS the robot “cannot do everything on its own.” It doesn’t know how to walk upstairs or where to vacuum yet, so humans mostly direct that. So yes, technically, a stranger is cleaning your toilet. They are just doing it from across town, with a joystick.

Tau is very upfront about this, which we appreciate. Customer Sabrina Ramonov summed it up nicely in her post on X: “Tau Robotics washed my dishes using teleop: a person controlled the robot remotely using its camera feed.”

The privacy fine print

If you are wondering whether the robot is filming your messy bathroom, yes. Every cleaning is recorded, and Tau keeps the footage to train the AI models it hopes will someday do the job with no human at the controls. The terms say it plainly: “There is no version of this service without recording.” Its service privacy policy adds the details:

• Video comes from cameras on the robot’s head and wrists, plus 3D depth data, for the whole visit.
• Microphones are disabled. The operator can talk to you through the robot, but can’t hear you. Feel free to complain about the robot out loud.
• Operators are background-checked W-2 employees working on-site at Tau’s San Francisco facility, not from home and not overseas.
• Tau says it does not sell your data.
• Operators may text you still images from the robot’s cameras to ask for instructions. Expect a “Is this a sock or a cat toy?” text.

Funny detail: on Tau’s booking page, bathrooms and bedrooms are off-limits unless you opt in, because “Every clean is supervised by a remote human operator.” So the robot will only scrub your toilet once you give it permission to look. Also, it will clean the toilet, but the terms say it won’t handle human or animal waste. Flush first. It also skips firearms, medication, cash, ladders and outside windows, and you can tell the operator to stop at any time.

What it costs

Prices have gone up since launch. Tau’s terms now list a standard rate of $50 per humanoid per hour, and it sends two, so a one-time visit runs $100, $200 or $300 for one, two or three hours. Subscriptions are where the deals are. By our math from Tau’s booking page:

• Weekly: 40% off, or $30 per robot-hour. That’s $60 for a one-hour visit, or $180 for three hours.
• Every 2 weeks: 20% off, or $80 for a one-hour visit.
• Every 4 weeks: 10% off, or $90 for a one-hour visit.

You keep the same day and time, you pay per visit, and you can cancel any time. If you are not happy, Tau promises a re-clean within 48 hours. A banner on Tau’s site now says it serves the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, and the company has been teasing LA with a robot posing in front of the Beverly Hills sign.

The skeptics

Not everyone is sold. UC Berkeley robotics professor Ken Goldberg told ABC7, “I really think it is too early.” He also warned that demo videos can be sped up or carefully staged. Koch’s own Oct. 29 clip is labeled as running at 4x speed, though he did post the uncut 1x version too. Goldberg told CBS that humanoids are heavy and can fall, and “You wouldn’t want this thing anywhere near a child or a baby.” He also pointed out that cameras could catch things like bills and receipts lying around. If something goes wrong, Koch told CBS, the operator can switch the robot into a safety mode, where it lies down on the floor. Relatable.

Tau’s site says dogs tend to get curious and bring the robots toys, while cats just hide. Honestly, the cats might be onto something.

GadgetKing take

Calling these “robot cleaners” is a bit generous today. It is really a remote cleaning crew wearing robot bodies, and you pay for it partly with footage of your home. But Tau doesn’t hide any of that. The plan is clear: humans drive now, the footage trains the AI, and the robots take over later. Koch told CBS he hopes to phase out operators around 2028 or 2029. Until then, $60 a week for two robots to wipe your sink is a pretty fun experiment if you live in the right zip code and don’t mind an audience. Just pick up your bills before the robots arrive.

Sources: Tau Robotics, Tau terms of service, Tau service privacy policy, Tau booking page, Alex Koch on X, The Register, ABC7 San Francisco, CBS News and The Associated Press. Images: The Associated Press (video stills, 01 and 03), Tau Robotics / Alex Koch (video still, 02) and Tau Robotics (04 and 05).

More home robots: the Voxel robot butler, the Matic robot vacuum and mop, the Tesla Cybercab cleaning robot and the Unitree H2 Kung Fu Legend robot.

The post Tau’s Robot Maids Scrub Your Toilet, and a Human Is Driving appeared first on GadgetKing.com.

Halloween is this Saturday, October 31, and if you still have no costume, here is a challenge. Nick from the CPAP Reviews YouTube channel turned his CPAP mask into a full-on alien facehugger. Yes, the leggy, tail-whipping critter from the Alien movies. Instead of laying eggs in your chest, this one just helps you breathe all night. Honestly, that is a big upgrade for the facehugger.

How he built it

The 26-second Short is captioned “POV: Making My 2026 Halloween Costume (and cpap mask).” Nick starts with a facehugger prop and cuts an opening in the underside. Then he fits a clear CPAP mask cushion into the hole and runs the hose out along the creature’s tail. Once it is hooked up to his CPAP machine, he straps it on with a headband and stares into the camera through a giant alien face. The soundtrack is the sweet 1956 doo-wop tune “A Smile and a Ribbon” by Patience and Prudence, which makes the whole thing about ten times creepier. In a fun way.

Sharp-eyed commenters noticed that the mask he wears at the end is a different facehugger prop than the one he cuts up. So treat this as a costume idea and a good laugh, not a step-by-step build guide.

Made by someone who knows CPAP

This is not some random prank channel. CPAP Reviews is run by Nick, a sleep specialist from Melbourne, Australia, with a biomedical science degree and more than 15 years of experience helping people with sleep apnea. The channel has about 213,000 subscribers and usually posts honest reviews of masks, machines and gear. This Short blew way past that crowd, with more than 8 million views in its first three days.

That reach is the best part. Sleep apnea is no joke. According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, it is a common condition where your breathing stops and restarts many times while you sleep. CPAP therapy helps a lot of people, but a mask on your face every night can feel a little awkward at first. Nick turned that into something to laugh with, not at. If one goofy alien helps a new CPAP user feel less self-conscious, we call that a win.

Can you buy one?

Not easily. We could not identify the exact prop Nick used, and we did not find a facehugger CPAP mask for sale on Amazon. At least one online shop, Unicun, lists an “Alien Facehugger CPAP Ventilator Mask” made of latex with a tail for the tubing, but it was out of stock when we checked. If you build your own, keep it for photos and the party. Do not block your mask’s vents or change how the cushion seals, and check with your sleep doctor or equipment provider before sleeping in anything homemade.

GadgetKing take

This is the kind of costume that wins the office party without a single store-bought piece of fabric. It is clever, a little gross in the best Halloween way, and it comes from someone who has spent years helping people sleep better. Our only question: does the facehugger come with a matching sleep tracker?

Sources: CPAP Reviews on YouTube (video, stats and images) and NHLBI. Images: stills from the CPAP Reviews Short.

More sleep and Halloween fun: the Hatch Sleep Clock and our list of awesome hi-tech Halloween costumes.

The post This Facehugger CPAP Mask Wins Halloween appeared first on GadgetKing.com.

Back in October 2010, Steve Jobs stood on stage at Apple’s “Back to the Mac” event and told the world that touchscreen laptops were a dead end. “Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical,” he said. “After a short period of time, you start to fatigue. And after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off.” Sixteen years of Apple fans repeating that line in every comment section later, Apple just put a touchscreen on the MacBook Pro. Tim Cook’s victory lap on X was short and sweet: “We brought Touch to the Mac!” Somewhere, a million Surface owners are slow-clapping.

The touchscreen MacBook Pro is real

Apple unveiled the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display on October 28 in Los Angeles. It comes in 14-inch and 16-inch sizes, and it is the first Mac you can poke. According to Apple’s announcement, the touch sensor is built right into the display panel instead of layered on top, which Apple says cuts latency. You get the gestures you already know from your iPhone. Swipe to scroll, pinch to zoom a photo, drag and drop slides, double-tap a window to fill the screen, or flick it to tile it. macOS 27 “Golden Gate” also turns your taps into clicks, so your old apps still work.

Apple clearly heard the arm-fatigue jokes coming. It redesigned the hinge so the screen stays steady while you jab at it, and the 12MP Center Stage camera stabilizes your video if you touch the screen during a call. Nobody wants to see a wobbly forehead on Zoom.

Carter got his hands on it first

YouTuber CarterPCs “infiltrated” the Apple event and posted a 20-second Short of himself tapping away at a demo unit. “Oh my god, it is popping in here,” he says, before pointing out that the lid’s Apple logo glows again, like old-school MacBooks. Ars Technica confirmed the glowing logo is back too. The Short pulled more than 6.5 million views in its first day.

PROLED XDR: the screen is the real star

The touch grabs the headlines, but the display is the bigger upgrade. PROLED XDR is Apple’s name for a tandem OLED panel, with two stacked light-emitting layers for more brightness and longer life. Here is what Apple is promising:

• 2000 nits peak brightness for both HDR and SDR (1000 nits sustained full-screen)
• A 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio, so blacks are truly black
• ProMotion from 10Hz to 120Hz
• P3 and Adobe RGB wide color, which photographers and print designers will love
• 14.2-inch or 16.3-inch screens at 254 pixels per inch, with an optional nano-texture glass

The camera notch is gone too. In its place is the Dynamic Island, the same pill-shaped trick from the iPhone. On the Mac it holds Live Activities, music controls, Spotlight and the new Siri AI.

Apps you can actually touch

Apple’s own pro apps are getting the full touch treatment. Pixelmator Pro lets you draw, paint and select right on the canvas. Logic Pro adds a fully Multi-Touch keyboard plus chord and drum pads you can tap. Final Cut Pro lets editors mark ranges, drop clips into place and pinch to zoom a cut. Apple says touch support is also coming to big third-party apps like Microsoft Office, Canva, Notion, Zoom, Lightroom, DaVinci Resolve, Blender and Cinema 4D. Just know that some of those land “later this year,” per Apple’s fine print, not on day one.

Thinner, lighter and still loaded with ports

Apple also put the MacBook Pro on a diet. The 14-inch now weighs 3 pounds, about half a pound less than before, and the 16-inch weighs 4 pounds. Inside are the same M5 Pro and M5 Max chips from the last refresh, with up to 128GB of memory and up to 16TB of storage. Ars Technica points out that Apple skipped the newer M6 chips here. Battery life is rated at up to 22 hours of video streaming on the 14-inch and up to 24 hours on the 16-inch, and fast charging gets you to 50 percent in 30 minutes.

The ports stayed, thank goodness. You get three Thunderbolt 5 ports, HDMI, an SDXC card slot, MagSafe 3 and a headphone jack, plus Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. There is also a six-speaker sound system that Apple says has up to 50 percent deeper bass.

Price and availability

Here comes the gorilla-arm-sized price tag. The 14-inch with M5 Pro starts at $2,899, and the 16-inch with M5 Pro starts at $3,399. Want M5 Max? That is $4,499 for the 14-inch and $4,799 for the 16-inch. Pre-orders opened October 28, and the first machines arrive Friday, November 6. Apple also offers leasing through Apple Upgrade from $55.99 a month. The regular MacBook Pro without the touchscreen sticks around for less.

Amazon is taking pre-orders at Apple’s prices, sold by Amazon itself. Pre-order the 14-inch MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display here or grab the 16-inch version.

GadgetKing take

Jobs was not wrong that nobody wants to hold their arm up all day. But that was never the point. Nobody is going to ditch the trackpad. The win is the quick stuff, like pinching a photo, scrubbing a timeline or tapping a button without hunting for the cursor. Windows laptops have done this for years, and once you get used to it, every screen looks touchable. The real headline for us is that tandem OLED panel, which might be the best screen ever put in a laptop. Is it worth $2,899 to find out? We will tell you once our arms stop shaking.

Sources: Apple Newsroom, Apple tech specs, Ars Technica, Tim Cook on X, Wired and CNN (Jobs 2010 quote). Video: CarterPCs. Images: Apple, plus one still from the CarterPCs Short.

More Apple: the 2nm M6 Mac mini and M5 Ultra Mac Studio, the Wokyis M5 Retro Dock and, for old times’ sake, the 2016 Touch Bar MacBook Pro, the last time Apple put touch near the keyboard.

The post Apple Finally Lets You Touch the MacBook Pro Screen appeared first on GadgetKing.com.

This week the internet fell in love with a tiny monkey doomscrolling on a phone in bed, scrolling away like it has an 8 AM meeting it is ignoring. That clip racked up a million views in about 14 hours. Cute. But Oppo has a whole room of machines that doomscroll for a living, and they never get sleepy.

Zack Nelson of JerryRigEverything showed them off in his new smartphone factory tour. The tour is sponsored by Oppo, and it is posted as a collab with Oppo’s channel. Most of it is the usual factory eye candy: robots, conveyor belts and “no recording” signs everywhere. But the best part shows up around the 12-minute mark (jump to it here).

Robots with a screen time problem

Oppo calls it the power consumption lab, and it runs fully on its own. In Zack’s words, Oppo programs “robots to doomscroll different apps, replicating real user interactions without needing the actual humans to do any of the doomscrolling.” Each phone sits clamped in a test rig while a robotic stylus taps and swipes through apps, like the short-video feed in the shot above. Engineers watch how much power each app burns, then tune the balance between performance and battery life.

There are more than 100 of these test stations in that one room. Zack’s punchline: it all happens “so that us humans can doomscroll longer and more effectively.” He is not wrong. Someone has to test whether your battery survives a 2 AM spiral through cooking videos, and now it does not have to be an intern.

Why it matters

Battery life on a spec sheet is one number. Battery life after three hours of real swiping, autoplay video and a group chat that will not quit is another. Swipe tests by hand are slow and inconsistent. Robots can repeat the same swipe pattern on the same app for hours, which gives engineers clean data to compare phones, software builds and apps. Oppo says the phone in the tour, the Find X10 Pro Max, packs an 8,000 mAh silicon-carbon battery with 80-watt wired and 50-watt wireless charging. Oppo also claims it keeps 80% of its capacity after five years.

The rest of the tour

The power lab is only about 30 seconds of a 16-minute video, and the rest is worth a watch too. Zack says Oppo can build about 14,000 motherboards a day, each with more than 2,000 tiny parts. About 7,200 Find X10 Pro Max phones roll off the line every day. Signal test chambers run 24 hours a day, and the camera labs include a concert-style lighting stage for testing video. Just remember that Oppo paid for the trip, so the tour shows the polished side of the factory. His companion Short, “THEY SAID NO CAMERAS,” has passed 3.2 million views.

GadgetKing take

The monkey doomscrolls for fun. Oppo’s robots doomscroll for science, around the clock, with zero guilt and no screen time warnings. Honestly, they may have the healthiest relationship with their phones of anyone in the building. Meanwhile the rest of us are still doing it by hand, like animals. Monkeys, specifically.

Sources: JerryRigEverything x OPPO factory tour (sponsored by OPPO; power lab at 11:53), JerryRigEverything Short and X trending: Monkey Doomscrolling Video. Images: JerryRigEverything / OPPO (video stills).

More doomscroll tech: the TimeXplayer V2 matchbook mouse that doomscrolls and the Light flip phone.

The post Oppo Has Robots That Doomscroll So You Don’t Have To appeared first on GadgetKing.com.