Derek Gee-West has signed a three-year contract with Lidl–Trek it was revealed today, after a difficult departure from Israel–Premier Tech last year.
A press release from Lidl–Trek said Gee-West’s move to the team “marks the beginning of a new chapter, as he looks to take the next step in his career within a new environment and ambitious long-term project.”
“The ambition, the structure, and the depth of talent across the Team are impressive, and it feels like the right environment for the next phase of my career,” Gee-West said.
The Canadian national champion claimed a stage win at the 2024 Critérium du Dauphiné, and bagged a top 10 finish at the Tour de France in the same year.
Last year, he finished fourth at the Giro d’Italia, but left Israel–Premier Tech shortly before the Vuelta a España, which was subject to protests against the participation of the team due to Israel’s war on Gaza.
“I terminated my contract with just cause, as is every person’s right when they are unable to continue performing their work under existing circumstances,” Gee-West said in a statement at the time.
“The decision was not taken lightly – it followed an irreparable relationship with the team principal, as well as serious concerns related to racing for the team, both from a safety and personal-belief standpoint that weighed heavily on my conscience.”
The 28-year-old later said that he faced €30m damages from Israel–Premier Tech over the termination of his contract.
After pressure from protests, professional cyclists and its title sponsors, Israel–Premier Tech became NSN Cycling Team in November 2025.
The team now races under a Swiss licence with a base in Spain and is co-owned by sports and entertainment company NSN and Stoneweg, a global investment platform based in Geneva, Switzerland.
NSN Cycling Team has not responded to BikeRadar’s questions about the claim for damages that Gee-West faced.
Open-source developer Sebastian Wick has written a blog post outlining work to improve the graphics driver situation for Flatpaks. Particularly around situations like the NVIDIA driver stack that may depend upon a specific kernel version or where a Flatpak runtime may be end-of-life, dealing with GPU drivers in Flatpaks can be a burden. A solution being explored is GPU virtualization to deal with those GPU driver handling challenges while still providing robust and secure GPU access…
Yesterday when Intel formally introduced Panther Lake as the Core Ultra Series 3 with pre-orders set to begin today and available globally later this month, one of the key questions remaining was around pricing… I’ve been scouting various Internet retailers today and so far have found a Ultra X7 358H model with the 12 Xe cores for the Xe3 integrated graphics to be priced around $1299 USD with 32GB of RAM…
Last year AMD announced GAIA as short for “Generative AI Is Awesome”. It started off as a Windows-only AI demo but over time added Linux support along with introducing different AI agents. For going along with AMD’s AI announcements at CES 2026, AMD released GAIA 0.15 where they are now positioning this software as a framework/SDK for building AI PC agents…
On Monday the first release candidate of the GStreamer 1.28 multimedia framework was released. As is a recurring focus in recent releases, more GStreamer code is written in Rust for memory safety especially around decoding content…
Nutrition is a key part of making sure you’re fit and healthy, and the latest Garmin Connect app update should make measuring your food intake easier.
Garmin says its new nutrition tracking feature will help “users track their calories and macros (proteins, fats and carbs) and receive Active Intelligence insights to help them achieve their nutrition goals”.
The feature is designed to help you achieve your “nutrition goals” and provide a “holistic” view of your wellbeing, as well as seeing how training and performance are impacted by what you consume.
The catch is the feature is available only for subscribers to Garmin Connect+, the £6.99 per month subscription plan Garmin launched in March 2025.
So how does it work?
You can scan barcodes to log food items. Garmin
To track your food intake, you can enter what you’ve eaten in the Garmin app. Garmin says you can search for food items using a “global food database”, and even scan a barcode or use your smartphone’s camera for AI-powered image recognition of food.
You can also use the new feature to create custom entries to track your “most-loved meals and recipes”.
But this isn’t just a diary. Garmin will provide you with daily, weekly, monthly and yearly reports for consumed and targeted calories and macronutrients.
It will also provide personalised calorie and macronutrient recommendations based on your height, weight, gender and activity levels, with the option to customise the recommendations to suit your goals.
Garmin’s Active Intelligence feature, which uses AI to provide personalised insights and suggestions, and was introduced with Garmin Connect+, can now include how late-night eating has impacted your sleep, and “can encourage users to adjust their habits”.
Compatible Garmin smartwatches
You can receive a quick overview of your nutrition on certain Garmin smartwatches. Garmin
If you have a compatible smartwatch, you can receive a quick overview of your nutrition, and track your favourite and recently logged foods from the watchface. You can also use voice commands to open the nutrition app on certain smartwatches, such as the Garmin Venu X1, to quickly log foods.
The nutrition widget is native on the following Garmin smartwatches:
D2 Mach 2
Enduro 3
Fenix 8
Fenix 8 Pro
Fenix E
Forerunner 570
Forerunner 970
Instinct
Instinct 3 Tactical Edition
Quatix 8
Tactix 8
Venu 4
Venu X1
Vivoactive 6
You can download the widget to other Garmin smartwatches via the Connect IQ App. There is a full list of compatible devices on Garmin’s website.
Susan Lyman, Garmin’s vice president of consumer sales and marketing, said: “Our nutrition feature is designed for all users, no matter where they are in their health journey. Whether they’re just starting to build healthy habits, wanting to maintain a healthy lifestyle, or looking to perform at their absolute best, users can now track their nutrition, health and fitness data in one app – giving them a simplified approach to reach their goals.”
To support the feature launch, Garmin is providing a 14-day free trial to customers who have already used Garmin Connect+. Completely new customers can try the app for free for 30 days.
Research indicates that teaching learners to use and create with data-driven technologies such as AI and machine learning (ML) requires an entirely different approach for solving problems compared to traditional programming activities.
In this blog, we share the new data paradigms framework that we have developed through research and used to help improve our understanding about how to teach and learn about AI and data science. We also invite you to register your interest in participating in our next collaborative study on the topic.
Knowledge-based approaches to systems design
Let’s start by highlighting an important distinction between different approaches to designing systems. In a knowledge-based approach to system design, a set of rules (e.g., if-then statements) are written for the system to execute. Every rule is explicitly defined. This approach is called ‘rule-based’, ‘symbolic’, or ‘logic-based’. For example, a developer could create a program that simulates dialogue by writing specific lines of code to handle a greeting, such as “IF user says “Hello” THEN output “Hi!”. If the user types “Greetings!” instead, the program fails because it has no rule for that specific word.
Knowledge-based models are often said to be explainable by design. This means the logic is accessible and interpretable and developers can trace the exact steps taken to produce an output. For example, if developers manually classify restaurant reviews as positive or negative using a pre-defined set of criteria, the rules their restaurant classifying system follows are entirely explicit, and the path from input to output is clear and explainable.
Data-driven approaches to systems design
By contrast, in a data-driven approach to system design developers do not write specific rules. Instead, they collect lots of data and train a model. In the dialogue simulator example, they would collect hundreds of examples of greetings and train a model to the pattern of a greeting. If the user types “Greetings!”, the system generates a response based on the patterns in its training data.
Data-driven models are often opaque. In other words, the internal workings of these ML models are hidden. While we can see our input and the system’s output, the internal mathematical process is so complex — often involving layers of calculations and abstractions — that we cannot simply “explain” why a specific output was produced. For example, developers can create a classification model by training a neural network using thousands of images. Due to the large quantity of data used to train the model, and complex internal parameters and hidden layers, developers and users of the system cannot understand or explain the logic or features that lead to a specific output. These kinds of models are often referred to as a “black box” (as opposed to a “glass” or “clear” box).
Comparing knowledge-based and data-driven approaches
Researchers have argued that the move from knowledge-based (or rule-based) programming to data-driven system design represents a paradigm shift and creates unique challenges for educators. The challenge is helping students shift from the expectation that a system produces a single ‘right’ answer — characteristic of traditional rule-based programming — toward an understanding that systems trained on large quantities of data produce outcomes that aren’t always fixed or explainable. If the current instruction in the classroom still relies heavily on traditional rule-based programming approaches, we might be setting students up for misconceptions.
Data paradigms: A framework for analysing data science education approaches
In our research work on AI and data science at the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre, we analysed 84 research studies about the teaching and learning of data science. We categorised learning activities used in the studies to understand whether they were (i) knowledge-based or data-driven, and (ii) the extent to which the underlying models used were transparent or opaque. This led us to define four distinct data paradigms:
The data paradigms framework
Knowledge-based and transparent (KB + T): Activities in this paradigm are ones where students write rules for systems, or work with systems that use rules, where the logic is fully explainable by design. For example, if students manually classify data (e.g. creating simple ‘if-then’ statements to predict an outcome), the path from input to output is clear.
Data-driven + Transparent (DD + T): In this paradigm, activities involve students working with models trained on data, but the trained model’s logic remains explainable and interpretable. For example these could be models using k-nearest neighbors (KNN) algorithm to group data points based on proximity, or using linear regression to predict a trend. Even though the model produces an output, the student can look at the inner workings of the model and see how the decision is made.
Data-driven + Opaque (DD + O): This paradigm’s activities require students to work with data-driven ML models where the models’ internal logic is hidden, for example an image classification model using a type of neural network (e.g. CNN). The model produces an output (e.g. classifying an image as ‘This is a dog’), but the student cannot inspect the system to find a rule or clear path explaining why that specific output was produced. To understand these systems, it’s necessary to use additional testing and evaluation tools.
Knowledge-based + Opaque (KB + O): Activities in this paradigm would involve systems with human-written rules that are not explainable. In our review of K–12 activities, we found no examples of activities within this paradigm.
The data paradigms framework helps us to distinguish between different kinds of modeling activities students take part in and how instructional approaches could be classified across one or more paradigms. For instance, we found that most data-driven activities were also opaque (DD + O), usually meaning that students collected and used data to train a model, but how the system worked was opaque. This pattern, where the data is visible but the model is not explainable, risks students forming misconceptions about the capabilities and limitations of data-driven systems. Without understanding how outputs are generated, students may expect data-driven ML systems to operate like fully explainable (or transparent) ones.
We think that lessons are needed in the data-driven opaque (DD + O) quadrant to explicitly teach students about how data-driven systems work and the role they play in everyday contexts. However, when teaching data-driven opaque (DD + O) activities, learners’ attention needs to be directed to concepts such as model confidence, data quality, and model evaluation. Since an ML model is not inherently explainable, we need to teach students to use post-hoc explanation methods, such as testing different inputs to see how a system’s output changes. To prepare students for this learning experience, we think that first introducing activities about rule-based systems (knowledge-based + transparent; KB + T) or simple data exploration, such as linear regression or data visualisation (data-driven + transparent; DD + T) may serve as a ‘bridge’ to understanding data-driven modeling by helping students to distinguish between systems built from specific logical rules and systems trained on data.
We believe the idea of data paradigms can serve as a way of framing teaching activities about data science and help educators and students to consider the transition between different paradigms when engaging with the systems we interact with every day.
Teachers in England, participate in our new study
We’re launching a new study to explore how to teach learners aged 9 to 11 about data-driven computing. The study will take place in collaboration with upper key stage 2 teachers in England and look at:
What key ideas pupils need to understand
How teachers currently approach topics related to data-driven computing
How pupils make sense of data and probability
Our goal is to find practical ways to help teachers build children’s confidence in working with data in computing lessons. The study will be collaborative, with two workshops held throughout 2026, and we’re inviting upper KS2 teachers in England to take part.
You can express your interest in participating by filling in this form:
Noted turntable manufacturer Victrola just announced the Soundstage speaker at CES. This thin little doodad actually sits underneath turntables, removing the need for a full stereo set-up. The Soundstage isn’t the first speaker that offers this functionality, but this one has tech-forward features.
It offers multiple connection options, including Bluetooth. Many newer Victrola turntables can do Bluetooth streaming, so adding this speaker to a setup would be extremely simple. Otherwise, companies offer Bluetooth receivers for turntables.
It also allows for traditional wired connections, and there’s an option for USB-C. In other words, the Soundstage should easily connect to other audio sources like smartphones and computers. It even integrates with Auracast for multi-speaker setups.
Victrola
As for sound, Victrola promises superior audio thanks to a “vibration-isolated design.” There’s a specialized woofer for bass response and balanced mode radiators (a type of driver) for stereo separation. It likely won’t sound as good as a full sound system but, again, think of all of those annoying wires.
The Soundstage will be available this summer and costs $350. There will be multiple colorways, including walnut and black.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/speakers/this-speaker-by-victrola-sits-underneath-turntables-and-streams-audio-via-bluetooth-100021991.html?src=rss
Dell has reversed course and resurrected the XPS brand as its “premium consumer” brand of laptops, admitting it was a mistake to kill it in the first place. Slashdot reader joshuark shares a report from Gizmodo: At last year’s CES, Dell made the eyebrow-raising decision to ax all its legacy laptop brand names and instead opt for Apple-like conventions. Instead of XPS, we were forced to comprehend the differences between a “Dell,” a “Dell Pro,” a “Dell Premium,” and a “Dell Pro Max.” “This complicated brand we called Dell last year was trying to cover this very large consumer space with lots of similar products,” Jeff Clarke, Dell’s chief operating officer said. Now those non-XPS products are mostly dedicated to the base consumer and entry-level laptops, “no pluses, minuses, squares, or whatever the hell else we called them.”
“We won’t chase every competitor down every rabbit hole,” he added. What that means is we probably won’t see any kind of handheld PC from Alienware, like that age-old UFO design showed off back in 2020. Just as well, Dell isn’t remodeling its entire laptop lineup for a second time in two years. The company isn’t bringing back brand names like Inspiron (which became mere “Dells) or Latitude (which transformed into “Dell Pro). According to Clarke, Dell Pro “still tests well.”
Cambridge Audio has three new active speakers at CES 2026. The L/R Series is a trio of active bookshelf-style speakers, each with wired and wireless modes.
The flagship L/R X is an 800W model (400W per speaker). The largest of the three, it unsurprisingly carries the highest price, at $2,299. It uses a 2.5-way acoustic design: a 28mm Torus tweeter alongside dual 5-inch woofers. The L/R X has a pair of 6-inch force-canceling passive radiators, a 64-bit audio pipeline, DynamEQ and Wi-Fi streaming (via Cambridge Audio’s StreamMagic app). It even adds LED underlighting for an extra aesthetic touch.
The walnut variant of the L/R X
Cambridge Audio
In the middle is the $1,599 L/R M. Cambridge Audio describes it as using the same foundations as the flagship model (including the 2.5-way acoustic design), but with only 300W of power. This model has smaller (4-inch) dual woofers alongside the same 28mm tweeter. Its smaller force-canceling passive radiators measure 4.75 inches each. Like the larger model, the L/R M supports Wi-Fi streaming and includes LED underlighting.
The smallest and most affordable of the three is the $549 L/R S. This 100W speaker pairs a 21mm hard-dome tweeter with a 3-inch long-throw woofer. Although you can save money on this model, you’ll miss out on Wi-Fi streaming. (In its place is Bluetooth aptX HD.) It also lacks the LED underlighting found in the L/R X and L/R M.
Each speaker is available in black, white, green, blue, orange and walnut colors. Cambridge Audio says all three tiers of L/R speakers will be available “later in 2026.” You can learn more at the company’s website.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/speakers/cambridge-audio-unveils-three-wireless-bookshelf-speakers-at-ces-100000178.html?src=rss
Shokz may have made its name with bone-conduction headsets, but the company has also built open-style earbuds in recent years. At CES 2026, the company is debuting its most recent model, the OpenFit Pro, which combines effective noise reduction with Dolby Atmos support in a premium set of wireless buds. As the name suggests, these sit outside of your ears, secured by an over-the-ear hook, so that you can stay in tune with your surroundings at all times.
To me, the main appeal of the OpenFit Pro is the new Noise Reduction Mode that acts as a bit of active noise cancellation (ANC) for the open earbuds. The feature is adjustable, allowing you to slide between Reduced, Default and Enhanced levels of said reduction. I’m happy to report the tool does make a difference, even at its lowest setting, by assisting with background noise like raucous HVAC units. Shokz says the OpenFit Pro’s noise reduction is best suited for moderately noisy environments — like cafes, gyms and offices. And when you don’t need it, you can switch back to Open Mode for a fully unfiltered line to reality.
Shokz OpenFit Pro
Billy Steele for Engadget
The other attractive feature on the OpenFit Pro is Dolby Atmos spatial sound and Dolby Audio with Dolby head tracking. Streaming music in Atmos really shows what the OpenFit Pro is capable of, putting the “ultra large” 11mm x 20mm synchronized dual-diaphragm drivers at the forefront. Shokz promises more powerful bass and “more authentic” sound in this model, and I’d say the company delivers on that promise based on my initial testing. The only issue is that your neighbors will be able to hear your tunes at moderate volumes. My colleagues sitting across the table as I write this commented on my selection of “The Fate of Ophelia.” Call me Tay-curious.
You can expect up to six hours on a charge and up to 24 hours of use with the case with Noise Reduction Mode enabled. Turn that feature off and you’ll get up to 12 hours on the earbuds themselves. Plus, there’s IP55 protection, wireless charging and wear detection, so the OpenFit Pro will be both durable and convenient to use.
The OpenFit Pro is available for preorder starting today (January 6) for $249.95. You can make your early commitment at the Shokz website or Best Buy.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/ces-2026-shokz-new-earbuds-effectively-reduce-noise-while-keeping-your-ears-open-080000996.html?src=rss
BBB says its new CoreCap adaptor removes the weak points of Presta valves while retaining “universal” pump compatibility.
Designed to replace the core on a standard Presta valve, BBB’s CoreCap is claimed to provide “up to 300 per cent more airflow” and to solve the “long-standing issues of fragility, air restriction, and maintenance”.
After decades of technological stagnation in this space, the fight to determine the next valve standard for cycling has become unexpectedly heated in recent years.
Is it about time riders sat up and took notice? Let’s find out.
BBB says the CoreCap offers “universal” pump compatibility. BBB
The CoreCap is made from machined aluminium and simply screws onto existing Presta valve stems in place of the valve core.
The Dutch brand says it wanted to tackle the Presta valve’s shortcomings because, while it acknowledges they are “effective”, they’re nevertheless “prone to bending, clogging and breaking during frequent use”.
Given this, the brand says its engineering team set out to “redesign the system from scratch, removing the weak points while retaining universal compatibility”.
The latter is a key differentiator from competitors such as the Schwalbe Clik Valve (SCV), which requires the use of a specific bike pump head or adaptor (which is included with Clik valve conversion kits).
BBB’s CoreCap threads in place of a standard Presta valve core. BBB
It can also be used with tubeless tyre systems or with inner tubes (provided the latter have replaceable valve cores, of course).
BBB’s CoreCap is available in two forms and multiple colours – as a complete valve set, featuring removable CoreCaps (two colours) or as an ‘upgrade set’ for existing Presta valves with removable cores (in six colours).
The CoreCap can be had in a range of anodised colours. BBB
Prices for the CoreCap AL valve set are:
40mm: £24.99 / €29.95
60mm: £27.99 / €32.95
80mm: £31.99 / €34.95
The upgrade sets cost £14.99 / €16.95.
Why should we care?
BBB’s CoreCap isn’t the first attempt at revolutionising bicycle valves – but could it be the one that catches on? BBB
BBB’s CoreCap is the latest in a series of bicycle valve replacements and/or modifiers, each promising to upend the way we inflate our tyres.
So far, though, none has managed to break the dominance of existing options. Perhaps it’s simply too early to tell – Schwalbe Clik might eventually become the new ‘industry standard’ it was intended to be, after all.
BBB’s solution looks promising on paper, thanks to its retrofitable design and claimed universal pump compatibility.
On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether a brand such as BBB can exert enough influence over the bicycle industry and riders to herald such a wholesale change, even if the performance claims hold water.
Either way, we’re intrigued to find out how the CoreCap performs compared to standard Presta valves and its competitors, so watch this space to find out more.
At CES 2026 today, Hyundai and Boston Dynamics publicly demonstrated its humanoid robot Atlas, showing off fluid movement and announcing plans to deploy a production version in Hyundai’s EV factory by 2028. NBC News reports: “For the first time ever in public, please welcome Atlas to the stage,” said Boston Dynamics’ Zachary Jackowski as a life-sized robot with two arms and two legs picked itself up from the floor at a Las Vegas hotel ballroom. It then fluidly walked around the stage for several minutes, sometimes waving to the crowd and swiveling its head like an owl. An engineer remotely piloted the robot from nearby for the purpose of the demonstration, though in real life Atlas will move around on its own, said Jackowski, the company’s general manager for humanoid robots.
[…] Hyundai also announced a new partnership with Google’s DeepMind, which will supply its artificial intelligence technology to Boston Dynamics robots. It’s a return to a familiar partnership for Google, which bought Boston Dynamics in 2013 before selling it to Japanese tech giant SoftBank several years later. Hyundai acquired it from SoftBank in 2021. […] At the end of Monday’s live Atlas demonstration, which appeared flawless, the humanoid prototype swung its arms in a theatrical gesture to introduce a static model of the new product version of Atlas, which looked slightly different and was blue in color. “I think the question comes back to what are the use cases and where is the applicability of the technology,” said Alex Panas, a partner at consultancy McKinsey who helped lead a CES robotics panel that attracted hundreds of people earlier in the day. “In some cases, it may look more humanoid. In some cases, it may not.”
Either way, Panas said, “the software, the chipsets, the communication, all the other pieces of the technology are coming together, and they will create new applications.”
You can watch a video of the demonstration on YouTube.
Just like last year, NVIDIA has used some of its time on the CES stage to introduce an upgraded version of its real-time image-upscaling technology. The new DLSS 4.5 promises sharper visuals with the 2nd Generation Super Resolution Transformer, which the company says will deliver better temporal stability, reduced ghosting and improved anti-aliasing. The DLSS 4.5 also includes Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, which maximizes frame per second to monitor refresh rate, delivering up to 4K 240Hz path traced performance.
The 2nd Gen Transformer Super Resolution is available now for all RTX GPUs, while the Dynamic 6x Frame Generation will arrive some time in spring 2026 for the RTX 50 series. It will also be available for more than 400 games through the NVIDIA app.
Another new feature is RTX Remix Logic, which allows real-time environmental reactions to in-game events. For instance, when a door is opened on screen, the NVIDIA tech can present changes to volumetric conditions, display different weather simulations with particles or alter materials. More than 30 different common events can be detected, and the RTX Remix Logic can make adaptations to volumetrics, particles, material properties and light properties.
NVIDIA noted that it now has native clients for both Linux and Fire TV. That’s the roundup of major gaming updates from the company’s CES presentation, but NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang had plenty to talk about earlier today.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nvidia-announces-dlss-45-at-ces-2026-053000128.html?src=rss
NVIDIA’s consumer graphics presentation at CES 2025 was more interesting than many, although we’ll spoil the surprise up-front: there wasn’t any new hardware. If you’re holding onto hype about new GeForce GPUs, well, you might as well return to hibernation. Or keep playing ARC Raiders, or Chaos Zero Nightmare, or Helldivers 2, or Warframe,
It’s January 2026, and Google is finding innovative new ways to make one of its services worseImportant news for Gmail power users: Google is dropping the feature whereby Gmail can collect mail from other email accounts over POP3.…
The Canada-based development studio that describes itself as “VR’s Creative Heart” laid off 70 percent of its staff.
CEO Denny Unger of Cloudhead Games released a statement announcing deep cuts at the studio behind Pistol Whip and The Gallery.
“Due to industry forces beyond our control, Cloudhead must make the difficult choice to reduce our workforce effective January 7th 2026. 30% of us will remain to continue the mission,” a note from Unger reads. “Our belief remains in the power of VR as a medium, as a shared dream machine that will one day transform humanity. We have no doubt VR’s mainstream relevance is predestined, with future devices that do “everything”, but it will take studios like ours to be there when that time comes.”
Unger promised further updates about the “challenges and potential opportunities of our industry” while posting a document titled “reverse recruitment” with contact details for more than 30 staffers departing Cloudhead in the layoffs. Most are based in Canada and list a preference for a remote job.
16 people remain at Cloudhead following the cuts, according to Unger.
Cloudhead released Pistol Whip in 2019 to wide acclaim. I rated it “fantastic” at launch and, in the years after, the studio stacked on considerable updates including multiple campaigns and even a “growing library of explosive Scenes created by the Pistol Whip modding community directly in-game.” At $29.99 today on Steam, Quest, and PlayStation VR2, the title remains a fantastic cinematic action experience delivered in one big package rather than metered out as paid DLCs.
Pistol Whip is also a member of Meta’s Horizon+ subscription games program and the title is offered at a discount with new membership in Sony’s program. A large number of other top tier VR developers have their games in those games programs, which have helped supplement income from sales in the past.
We’ll be curious to hear more from Unger about his particular path at Cloudhead. In 2019, the studio was buoyed by the development of Aperture Hand Lab for Valve as a sampler experience for the Valve Index. With Steam Frame around the corner, Cloudhead will have a new surface for Pistol Whip sales in 2026, but the layoffs would suggest no partnership materialized for a project specific to the system.
The layoffs are unlikely to be the last major reduction in the VR space for an experienced development studio – Myst creator Cyan let half go last year among many others – as creative groups continue to be shocked by shifting platform priorities.
Please reach out to ian@uploadvr.com if you have anything to share regarding funding and recruitment in the VR and AR space.
For better or worse, CES 2026 is already shaping up to be a big year for humanoid robots. Chinese company Agibot showed up with two: the roughly human-sized A2 and the slightly smaller X2, both of which were displaying their surprisingly impressive dancing abilities.
We watched both robots walk around, wave at passersby and show off their best moves. The larger A2 mostly kept its legs still and danced mainly with its arms. The smaller X2 on the other hand is a bit more nimble — it has a larger set of “feet” to give it more stability — and those abilities were on full display.
At the time we saw them, the robots were controlled partially by an Agibot rep using a dedicated controller, but the company told me the robots are able to move autonomously in spaces once they’ve been able to use their onboard sensors to map out their environmentThe company, which has already shipped several thousand robots in China and plans to make them available in the United States this year, says both the A2 and X2 are intended to provide a flexible platform so people can interact with the robots in a variety of situations.
Agibot envisions the larger A2 as a kind of hospitality helper robot that can greet visitors at museums or conferences (like CES) and provide directions or even walk alongside their human guests.
The smaller X2 on the other hand could be suited for educational purposes or other scenarios when you might want a robot with slightly more human-like movements. It could even be a good TikTok companion, as Agibot’s head of communications, Yuheng Feng explained to me. “Take a Tiktok video, for example,you can use that video to train the robot, [so] it can also dance exactly like you did in the video.”
The company hasn’t given details on when its robots might show up in the US or how much they might cost. Feng told me a lot will depend on how companies want to use them because their hardware is able to be customized depending on the use case. For now, though, we’ll just soak in the dance moves.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/agibots-humanoid-robots-can-give-directions-and-learn-your-tiktok-dances-045049798.html?src=rss
One surprising find at CES 2026 comes from OhDoki, the Norwegian makers of The Handy, a smart stroking device. It turned up to the desert with two new products, the Handy 2 and the Handy 2 Pro. Fundamentally, they’re the same device, but the Handy 2 Pro comes with a far bigger battery, taking the usable life from one hour on the standard model all the way to five. That extra power enables you to run the 2 Pro far faster and harder than the original once you set it into Turbo mode. In fact, I was told the hardware can essentially be “overclocked,” although I wouldn’t recommend it. Because the motor action was so aggressive that even just holding it in the hand, I’d be worried about breaking bones.
There are plenty of useful new features, including using the Handy’s beefy battery to charge your other USB-C devices. In addition, the sleeves are now be mounted to the motor arm with a click on motion, so you don’t have to wrestle with the (very) weighty hardware when you don’t have to. There are even tripod screws on both the side and bottom of the unit, enabling you to mount the Handy 2 to any compatible equipment. And, if you don’t want to use your phone to control the action, there’s a dot matrix display on the side which will show you both speed and stroke length.
Naturally, the company’s representatives were keen to highlight the connectivity features beyond just connecting to your own phone. As well as allowing other people to control the device, it’ll sync with various VR and video content platforms as well as tube sites like Xhamster. And the company has recently teamed up with a cam platform for more remote opportunities for intimacy.
The Handy 2 and Handy 2 Pro launch January 6, with the regular model priced at $299 and the Pro going for $499.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-handy-2-pro-is-an-overclockable-sex-toy-044456140.html?src=rss
