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The Dreame D10 Plus Gen 2 combo vacuum and mop is down to its Black Friday price at Amazon

Mashable

SAVE 140: The Dreame D10 Plus Gen 2 combo robot vacuum and mop is on sale for just 259.99 at Amazon, down from the normal price of 399.99. That's a 35% discount that matches the lowest price we've ever seen at Amazon. Cross "clean the floors" off your 2025 chore list. Just a few years ago, using a robot vacuum came with some harrowing risks, like watching it take a nose-dive down the stairs or getting tangled in a throw rug's tassels. But those days are long gone, and robot vacuums are some of the most beneficial smart home cleaning options around.


The Acura RSX calls dibs on Honda's proprietary Asimo OS

Engadget

Honda has announced that its first original EV design, the Acura RSX, will use its proprietary Asimo operating system, according to The Verge. If those names sound familiar it's because RSX is a Honda nameplate from the early 2000s, and Asimo was a Honda project to build humanoid robots from the area, which was finally mothballed in 2018. Everything old is new again. Asimo OS was mentioned at CES 2025 alongside its 0 Series SUV and Saloon sedan EV concepts, but the Acura RSX will be the first production vehicle to get it. The operating system uses technology similar to its namesake robot to recognize external environments and understand people's intentions, according to the company.


The answer to Britain's pothole crisis? Futuristic supercar can jump more than 20ft over holes in the road - but it has an eye-watering price tag

Daily Mail - Science & tech

If you're sick of carefully driving over Britain's pothole-filled roads, there's good news - as a futuristic car could make navigating these divets much easier. An impressive promo clip from BYD shows its Yangwang U9 sports supercar jumping over obstacles, including a 20ft pothole. The autonomous vehicle speeds along at nearly 75mph as it performs little bunny hops into the air, without anyone in the driver's seat. Like an agile land mammal, the U9 shrinks down first, then bounces up, briefly launching all four wheels off the ground at the same time. The vehicle boasts some impressive specs as it is able to go from 0-62mph in just 2.36 seconds, with a straight-line top speed of 243.54 mph (391.94


Ukraine captures North Korean soldiers; Russia readies for talks with Trump

Al Jazeera

Russia appeared to ready itself for talks on the future of Ukraine with United States President-elect Donald Trump ahead of his swearing-in on Monday. "No special conditions are needed for this. What is required is the mutual intent and political will to have a dialogue," said Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Saturday. But Russia expressed its parameters very quickly. Putin aide Nikolai Patrushev told Russian news outlet KP that a Ukraine settlement should be reached by the US and Russia, without Ukraine and without the European Union.


The Download: China's marine ranches, and fast-learning robots

MIT Technology Review

A short ferry ride from the port city of Yantai, on the northeast coast of China, sits Genghai No. 1, a 12,000-metric-ton ring of oil-rig-style steel platforms, advertised as a hotel and entertainment complex. Genghai is in fact an unusual tourist destination, one that breeds 200,000 "high-quality marine fish" each year. The vast majority are released into the ocean as part of a process known as marine ranching. The Chinese government sees this work as an urgent and necessary response to the bleak reality that fisheries are collapsing both in China and worldwide. But just how much of a difference can it make? This story is from the latest print edition of MIT Technology Review--it's all about the exciting breakthroughs happening in the world right now.


DJI will no longer block US users from flying drones in restricted areas

Engadget

DJI has lifted its geofence that prevents users in the US from flying over restricted areas like nuclear power plants, airports and wildfires, the company wrote in a blog post on Monday. As of January 13th, areas previously called "restricted zones" or no-fly zones will be shown as "enhanced warning zones" that correspond to designated Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) areas. DJI's Fly app will display a warning about those areas but will no longer stop users from flying inside them, the company said. In the article, DJI wrote that the "in-app alerts will notify operators flying near FAA designated controlled airspace, placing control back in the hands of the drone operators, in line with regulatory principles of the operator bearing final responsibility." It added that technologies like Remote ID [introduced after DJI implemented geofencing] gives authorities "the tools needed to enforce existing rules," DJI's global policy chief Adam Welsh told The Verge.


Top 3 best robot vacuums from CES 2025, from coolest to most practical

Mashable

After a year of pretty practical innovations initially kicked off at CES 2024, it was tricky to predict the direction that CES 2025 robot vacuums would head in. This year, robot vacuums were finally on par with the weirdness of the rest of CES. Last year, one big feature seemed to take over: self-washing and -drying mopping pads (among other expected upgrades like stronger suction power and more precise small obstacle avoidance). Now that most brands have at least one model that can pretty much take care of vacuuming and mopping without daily human intervention, smart map the home, and avoid obstacles without human intervention, the direction these brands would go in for 2025 felt... open-ended. It turns out that big brands like Roborock, Eufy, and Dreame all had different ideas of how to ramp up robot vacuum autonomy.


Why every arm of an octopus moves with a mind of its own

Popular Science

There are many remarkable things about octopuses--they're famously intelligent, they have three hearts, their eyeballs work like prisms, they can change color at will, and they can "see" light with their skin. One of the most striking things about these creatures, however, is the fact that each of their eight arms almost seems to have a mind of its own, allowing an octopus to multitask in a manner that humans can only dream about. At the heart of each arm is a structure known as the axial nervous cord (ANC), and a new study published January 15 in Nature Communications examines how the structure of this cord is fundamental to allowing the arms to act as they do. Cassady Olson, first author on the paper, explains to Popular Science that understanding the ANC is crucial to understanding how an octopus's arms work: "You can think of the ANC as equivalent to a spinal cord running down the center of every single arm." Olson explains that "there are many gross similarities [between the ANC and vertebrates' spinal cords]--there is a cell body region, a neuropil region, and long tracts to connect the arms and brains in each."


Six Palestinians killed by Israeli drone attack on Jenin camp

Al Jazeera

At least six Palestinians were killed in an Israeli drone attack on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, where a child was reportedly among the victims.


6 killed in Israeli drone strike on occupied West Bank's Jenin refugee camp

Al Jazeera

A Palestinian teenager and three brothers were among at least six people killed in an Israeli air attack on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, according to reports. The Palestinian news agency Wafa said that an Israeli drone fired three missiles at a group of people near a traffic roundabout in the camp on Tuesday evening, killing six people, including a 15-year-old boy, and injuring several others. Five other victims of the attack were aged between 23 and 34, and included three brothers, Wafa reports. Earlier this month, an Israeli drone strike on the occupied West Bank's Tammun town killed two Palestinian children and a 23-year-old from the same family. Al Jazeera's Hamdah Salhut said the drone strike on the Jenin camp comes amid intense Israeli military raids on local communities and the killing by Israeli forces of almost 800 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since October 7, 2023 – as well as the arrest of several thousand others.