Never run out of dog food with YaDoggie’s subscription service and Smart Scoop

Why it matters to you

Constantly running out of dog food? Are you over-feeding your dog? YaDoggie’s Smart Scoop can help fix these habits.

Worried your dog is eating too much or too little? Didn’t realize your son fed the dog already? Ran out of food for your hungry pooch? These are all questions a new California-based startup called YaDoggie wants to help answer with its subscription service, and a smart scoop.

“There’s a huge opportunity to simplify dog food,” Sol Lipman, CEO of YaDoggie, told Digital Trends. “When you sign up for YaDoggie, you tell us all about your dog: Your dog’s breed, weight … to determine if your dog’s overweight, and what are your goals for your dog. We actually get to know you as a customer. No one does that.”

The core service YaDoggie offers is selling you high quality dog food. Currently there’s only three types of kibble you can order through a companion app: Buffalo and duck meal, Lamb and sweet potato, and turkey and pea limited ingredient (for sensitive or selective dogs). The company said the choices are all 100 percent grain free; manufactured in the United States, with ingredients from the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and Europe; with “guaranteed amounts of Omega-3 and 6.”

The service works best with the YaDoggie Smart Scoop. It’s a large, red, dog food scoop with volume measurements, but it also packs an accelerometer and Bluetooth. When you make a scoop motion, it detects you just dropped food into a dog bowl, and everyone with the YaDoggie app in the household will get a notification saying the dog has been fed. The company said it tested the motion many times to make sure it was accurate — waving the scoop around won’t trick it.

If the Smart Scoop isn’t near its paired device, it will store the last known data within a certain time period. So if the light indicator on the scoop is green, it means no one has used the scoop recently and the dog needs to be fed. A red light means the dog has already been fed.

This data from the scoop is also used to figure out when the company needs to send you more dog food. This improves as time passes and the more you use the Smart Scoop. If you need more dog food earlier, it’s a simple few taps in the YaDoggie app.

The Smart Scoop costs $49, but it won’t be available until November. If you subscribe to YaDoggie’s service now until the scoop starts to ship, you’ll get it for free as an early adopter bonus. Speaking of the service, put down $1 and you’ll get a starter kit mailed to you. This includes a trial bag of YaDoggie duck, lamb, or turkey kibble, a bag of YaDoggie treats, biodegradable poop bags, and a tennis ball. There’s also a handy instruction chart on how to slowly ween your dog off his current diet.

The perks of joining the YaDoggie club are: A custom feeding plan for your dog, predictive delivery, high-quality dog food, free shipping, the ability to track and pause deliveries, the option to set reminders for dinnertime in the app, and free poop bags. Lipman said the average dog in the U.S. is 40 pounds, and the service will cost approximately $50 a month for a dog of that size.

YaDoggie’s subscription service has been in beta in the Santa Cruz area since early this year, but you can now sign up on the company’s website to get the starter kit for $1. The idea isn’t new as many companies have attempted to help track your dog food habits with tech gadgets; few actually offer their own food, but PetMio is a similar service that’s still a Kickstarter.

Amazon reportedly working on Alexa-powered smart glasses and security systems

Why it matters to you

Amazon wants to bring Alexa to your glasses — and your security system.

Leave it to Amazon, one of the world’s largest retailers, to seek to disrupt augmented reality and home security. The Seattle, Washington-based retailer is actively developing Alexa-enabled “smart glasses,” according to an exclusive report in the Financial Times, alongside a “smart” security camera.

Amazon’s smart glasses, which are said to resemble an off-the-shelf pair of spectacles, pack a microphone, a wireless chip of some kind, and an earbuds-free bone-conduction system that pipes Alexa’s voice straight to your inner ear. It’s reportedly being spearheaded by Babak Parviz, the founder of Google Glass, who joined Amazon in 2014, and could launch as soon as “year-end.”

It’s not the only skunkworks project at Lab 126, Amazon’s secretive hardware research division. Engineers are reportedly developing a home security camera that would tie into Amazon’s growing Echo lineup — the Echo Dot and Echo Tap speakers, the screen-touting Echo Show, and the fashion-focused Echo Look camera. The Echo Protect would show a live video feed on the Echo Show’s screen, for example, and alert you when an Amazon package arrived at your doorstep.

Amazon isn’t the first tech giant to try its hands at AR eyewear. Google Glass, a heads-up eyepiece with bone-conduction audio and Bluetooth connectivity, quickly became the subject of controversy. Privacy advocates claimed that its built-in camera let wearers surreptitiously record the people around them, and Glass was banned from shops, bars, and restaurants before Google pulled the plug on public sales in 2014.

Others have had more success. Snapchat’s Spectacles, a colorful pair of camera-equipped shades that record ten-second videos to Snapchat, quickly sold out at pop-up vending machines across the country.

And companies like Microsoft, Facebook, and Magic Leap continue to refine their own AR solutions. As recently as August, Apple was said to be working on Project Mirrorshades, a pair of Google Glass-like AR glasses with motion sensors, transparent displays, and integrated touch panels.

But despite the challenges, Amazon sees the move into AR and home security as natural extensions of its existing ecosystem. Company executives see the Echo family, which has sold in the “tens of millions of units,” as a key way to “listen and respond” to customers needs, according to the Financial Times.

It remains to be seen if the retailer can carve out niches in these challenging markets, though. AR glasses and heads-up displays have yet to take off in the way that the Echo has, and formidable competitors like Alphabet-owned Nest, Ring, August, Netgear, and Lighthouse already offer “smart” home security cameras.

Amazon reportedly working on Alexa-powered smart glasses and security systems

Why it matters to you

Amazon wants to bring Alexa to your glasses — and your security system.

Leave it to Amazon, one of the world’s largest retailers, to seek to disrupt augmented reality and home security. The Seattle, Washington-based retailer is actively developing Alexa-enabled “smart glasses,” according to an exclusive report in the Financial Times, alongside a “smart” security camera.

Amazon’s smart glasses, which are said to resemble an off-the-shelf pair of spectacles, pack a microphone, a wireless chip of some kind, and an earbuds-free bone-conduction system that pipes Alexa’s voice straight to your inner ear. It’s reportedly being spearheaded by Babak Parviz, the founder of Google Glass, who joined Amazon in 2014, and could launch as soon as “year-end.”

It’s not the only skunkworks project at Lab 126, Amazon’s secretive hardware research division. Engineers are reportedly developing a home security camera that would tie into Amazon’s growing Echo lineup — the Echo Dot and Echo Tap speakers, the screen-touting Echo Show, and the fashion-focused Echo Look camera. The Echo Protect would show a live video feed on the Echo Show’s screen, for example, and alert you when an Amazon package arrived at your doorstep.

Amazon isn’t the first tech giant to try its hands at AR eyewear. Google Glass, a heads-up eyepiece with bone-conduction audio and Bluetooth connectivity, quickly became the subject of controversy. Privacy advocates claimed that its built-in camera let wearers surreptitiously record the people around them, and Glass was banned from shops, bars, and restaurants before Google pulled the plug on public sales in 2014.

Others have had more success. Snapchat’s Spectacles, a colorful pair of camera-equipped shades that record ten-second videos to Snapchat, quickly sold out at pop-up vending machines across the country.

And companies like Microsoft, Facebook, and Magic Leap continue to refine their own AR solutions. As recently as August, Apple was said to be working on Project Mirrorshades, a pair of Google Glass-like AR glasses with motion sensors, transparent displays, and integrated touch panels.

But despite the challenges, Amazon sees the move into AR and home security as natural extensions of its existing ecosystem. Company executives see the Echo family, which has sold in the “tens of millions of units,” as a key way to “listen and respond” to customers needs, according to the Financial Times.

It remains to be seen if the retailer can carve out niches in these challenging markets, though. AR glasses and heads-up displays have yet to take off in the way that the Echo has, and formidable competitors like Alphabet-owned Nest, Ring, August, Netgear, and Lighthouse already offer “smart” home security cameras.

An Android One version of Motorola’s Moto X4 is coming to Google’s Project Fi

Why it matters to you

Looking for a new midrange phone with pure Android? The Android One version of the Motorola Moto X4 could be the device for you.

Android One is a Google program that offers ultra-low cost phones running pure Android, with a promise of fast version and security updates. The program has seen fewer and fewer enrolled devices over the past year or two, but there’s been a bit of a revitalization this year. Xiaomi recently announced its own Android One smartphone, and now Motorola is releasing an Android One version of its latest device, the Moto X4.

Perhaps more importantly, however, is the fact the Android One Moto X4 will also be available on Google’s wireless carrier service, Project Fi. The U.S. service relies on T-Mobile, Sprint, and U.S. Cellular’s networks, but it requires a compatible phone to be able to switch between the three depending on network congestion and signal strength. Most phones work with Project Fi, but compatible phones can make use of this specific feature.

Until now, compatible phones have been Google devices, from the Nexus 6 to the Pixel XL. The Moto X4 is the first non-Google device to work perfectly with Fi, and that also makes it an affordable option for people interested in the service. It’s also the first Android One phone in the service.

The Android One Moto X4 comes with free Google Photos storage — so you won’t have to worry about photos taking up too much storage. Google said the device will get Android 8.0 Oreo before the end of the year. Google manages the development, marketing, and support for Android One devices, essentially meaning that all the original manufacturer does is build the hardware.

Under the hood, the Moto X4 is a pretty great mid-range phone. It’s powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 630 processor, along with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage — which can be expanded through the MicroSD card slot. On the back, you’ll find a dual camera with one 12-megapixel sensor and one 8-megapixel sensor. On the front is the 16-megapixel selfie cam, which is located above the 5.2-inch Full HD display. You can check out our first impressions of the Moto X4 here.

You can pre-order the Moto X4 in blue or black directly from the Google Project Fi website now, and it’ll cost $400. You can also trade-in an old Nexus phone if you’re already on Project Fi, and select Nexus phones will get you up to$165 in credit. Google said if you start your trade-in before October 5, you can get $50 in Fi credit.

STEMosaur is an educational talking toy dinosaur kids can build and program

Why it matters to you

The earlier kids start coding, the better their prospects in later life, and educational toys like STEMosaur can help inspire an interest.

There’s a lot of buzz nowadays about toys and activities that awake interest in children for coding and engineering. The STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) toy scene has really exploded in the last couple of years and we’ve seen some intriguing STEM toys hit the market. The latest entrant designed to catch your kid’s eye and inspire them to be the next Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg is STEMosaur.

STEMosaur is a cute, 7-inch, plastic dinosaur that can talk to your kids, tell them jokes and stories, quiz them, and answer some basic questions. It’s Wi-Fi connected and easy to set up via an Android or iOS app. There’s a button on its belly that your child presses to pose a question and the STEMosaur’s mouth lights up to show when he’s listening. His Yoda-like voice comes out of the speaker in his left nostril.

It comes in eight parts and your child’s first task is to work out how to assemble it. Once they’ve constructed their own robot dinosaur, giving them a brief introduction to engineering, they can go online to access the coding panel. This is where the real fun and learning begins.

The coding panel is a simple browser-based flow chart that teaches kids the building blocks of programming with triggers and responses. It allows them to customize their STEMosaur’s conversations and create their own set of questions and responses. This means they can set up their STEMosaur to tell jokes they’ve concocted, dictate who its favorite super hero should be, or change how it responds to specific conversational prompts.

Elemental Path

Elemental Path

“Having kids construct it right from the beginning seems to add to their feeling of ownership,” David Coolidge, CEO of Elemental Path told Digital Trends. “The coding panel teaches kids how to program conversational agents, so they might start with something simple like a favorite color, but then go more in-depth and create conversation trees and complex stories.”

STEMosaur is the latest “CogniToy” from Elemental Path. You may remember our CogniToys Dino review from last year. The Dino was the first release and it came assembled with no coding option. It was originally powered by IBM’s Watson AI, but Elemental Path is now using its own proprietary technology.

While STEMosaur has all the same features and a very similar design to Dino, he must be built before he can be used and the ability to program him is new. You’ll also notice that he’s translucent now, so the kids can see the components inside. STEMosaur is recommended for girls and boys aged 7 years and over, and the building and coding is ideally something that parents will engage in with their kids.

There is also a parental learning panel, which can be accessed by parents online, that shows all the activities your child has been engaging in with their STEMosaur. You can see at-a-glance what stories they listened to or the games they played. New content is pushed out weekly and it changes based on the time of year, so you get special content for holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving.

While every STEMosaur will initially have the same voice, Coolidge told us there are plans to allow kids to choose their own voices in future and to tweak the tone and pitch. The coding panel is still relatively new, so the hope is that early backers will provide valuable feedback to help Elemental Path develop it further and possibly roll it out into future products as well.

“Our goal with STEMosaur is really to get kids excited about creation, engineering, and coding,” says Coolidge. “We want to inspire a new generation of innovators.”

It’s a laudable aim. There’s plenty of competition, with toys like Anki’s Cozmo and platforms like Sony’s Koov also aiming to get kids building and coding, but the conversational element of STEMosaur sets it apart.

You can pre-order a STEMosaur now at Indiegogo. The early bird price is $120 and it will cost $140 when it goes on general sale later this year.

STEMosaur is an educational talking toy dinosaur kids can build and program

Why it matters to you

The earlier kids start coding, the better their prospects in later life, and educational toys like STEMosaur can help inspire an interest.

There’s a lot of buzz nowadays about toys and activities that awake interest in children for coding and engineering. The STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) toy scene has really exploded in the last couple of years and we’ve seen some intriguing STEM toys hit the market. The latest entrant designed to catch your kid’s eye and inspire them to be the next Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg is STEMosaur.

STEMosaur is a cute, 7-inch, plastic dinosaur that can talk to your kids, tell them jokes and stories, quiz them, and answer some basic questions. It’s Wi-Fi connected and easy to set up via an Android or iOS app. There’s a button on its belly that your child presses to pose a question and the STEMosaur’s mouth lights up to show when he’s listening. His Yoda-like voice comes out of the speaker in his left nostril.

It comes in eight parts and your child’s first task is to work out how to assemble it. Once they’ve constructed their own robot dinosaur, giving them a brief introduction to engineering, they can go online to access the coding panel. This is where the real fun and learning begins.

The coding panel is a simple browser-based flow chart that teaches kids the building blocks of programming with triggers and responses. It allows them to customize their STEMosaur’s conversations and create their own set of questions and responses. This means they can set up their STEMosaur to tell jokes they’ve concocted, dictate who its favorite super hero should be, or change how it responds to specific conversational prompts.

Elemental Path

Elemental Path

“Having kids construct it right from the beginning seems to add to their feeling of ownership,” David Coolidge, CEO of Elemental Path told Digital Trends. “The coding panel teaches kids how to program conversational agents, so they might start with something simple like a favorite color, but then go more in-depth and create conversation trees and complex stories.”

STEMosaur is the latest “CogniToy” from Elemental Path. You may remember our CogniToys Dino review from last year. The Dino was the first release and it came assembled with no coding option. It was originally powered by IBM’s Watson AI, but Elemental Path is now using its own proprietary technology.

While STEMosaur has all the same features and a very similar design to Dino, he must be built before he can be used and the ability to program him is new. You’ll also notice that he’s translucent now, so the kids can see the components inside. STEMosaur is recommended for girls and boys aged 7 years and over, and the building and coding is ideally something that parents will engage in with their kids.

There is also a parental learning panel, which can be accessed by parents online, that shows all the activities your child has been engaging in with their STEMosaur. You can see at-a-glance what stories they listened to or the games they played. New content is pushed out weekly and it changes based on the time of year, so you get special content for holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving.

While every STEMosaur will initially have the same voice, Coolidge told us there are plans to allow kids to choose their own voices in future and to tweak the tone and pitch. The coding panel is still relatively new, so the hope is that early backers will provide valuable feedback to help Elemental Path develop it further and possibly roll it out into future products as well.

“Our goal with STEMosaur is really to get kids excited about creation, engineering, and coding,” says Coolidge. “We want to inspire a new generation of innovators.”

It’s a laudable aim. There’s plenty of competition, with toys like Anki’s Cozmo and platforms like Sony’s Koov also aiming to get kids building and coding, but the conversational element of STEMosaur sets it apart.

You can pre-order a STEMosaur now at Indiegogo. The early bird price is $120 and it will cost $140 when it goes on general sale later this year.

STEMosaur is an educational talking toy dinosaur kids can build and program

Why it matters to you

The earlier kids start coding, the better their prospects in later life, and educational toys like STEMosaur can help inspire an interest.

There’s a lot of buzz nowadays about toys and activities that awake interest in children for coding and engineering. The STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) toy scene has really exploded in the last couple of years and we’ve seen some intriguing STEM toys hit the market. The latest entrant designed to catch your kid’s eye and inspire them to be the next Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg is STEMosaur.

STEMosaur is a cute, 7-inch, plastic dinosaur that can talk to your kids, tell them jokes and stories, quiz them, and answer some basic questions. It’s Wi-Fi connected and easy to set up via an Android or iOS app. There’s a button on its belly that your child presses to pose a question and the STEMosaur’s mouth lights up to show when he’s listening. His Yoda-like voice comes out of the speaker in his left nostril.

It comes in eight parts and your child’s first task is to work out how to assemble it. Once they’ve constructed their own robot dinosaur, giving them a brief introduction to engineering, they can go online to access the coding panel. This is where the real fun and learning begins.

The coding panel is a simple browser-based flow chart that teaches kids the building blocks of programming with triggers and responses. It allows them to customize their STEMosaur’s conversations and create their own set of questions and responses. This means they can set up their STEMosaur to tell jokes they’ve concocted, dictate who its favorite super hero should be, or change how it responds to specific conversational prompts.

Elemental Path

Elemental Path

“Having kids construct it right from the beginning seems to add to their feeling of ownership,” David Coolidge, CEO of Elemental Path told Digital Trends. “The coding panel teaches kids how to program conversational agents, so they might start with something simple like a favorite color, but then go more in-depth and create conversation trees and complex stories.”

STEMosaur is the latest “CogniToy” from Elemental Path. You may remember our CogniToys Dino review from last year. The Dino was the first release and it came assembled with no coding option. It was originally powered by IBM’s Watson AI, but Elemental Path is now using its own proprietary technology.

While STEMosaur has all the same features and a very similar design to Dino, he must be built before he can be used and the ability to program him is new. You’ll also notice that he’s translucent now, so the kids can see the components inside. STEMosaur is recommended for girls and boys aged 7 years and over, and the building and coding is ideally something that parents will engage in with their kids.

There is also a parental learning panel, which can be accessed by parents online, that shows all the activities your child has been engaging in with their STEMosaur. You can see at-a-glance what stories they listened to or the games they played. New content is pushed out weekly and it changes based on the time of year, so you get special content for holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving.

While every STEMosaur will initially have the same voice, Coolidge told us there are plans to allow kids to choose their own voices in future and to tweak the tone and pitch. The coding panel is still relatively new, so the hope is that early backers will provide valuable feedback to help Elemental Path develop it further and possibly roll it out into future products as well.

“Our goal with STEMosaur is really to get kids excited about creation, engineering, and coding,” says Coolidge. “We want to inspire a new generation of innovators.”

It’s a laudable aim. There’s plenty of competition, with toys like Anki’s Cozmo and platforms like Sony’s Koov also aiming to get kids building and coding, but the conversational element of STEMosaur sets it apart.

You can pre-order a STEMosaur now at Indiegogo. The early bird price is $120 and it will cost $140 when it goes on general sale later this year.

How fast? How far? Chips inside the NFL’s new footballs track every last stat

During Monday night’s showdown between the New York Giants and the Detroit Lions, I looked up from my seat and saw Jamal Agnew maneuver though a sea of Giants ready to take his head off en route to a stunning 88-yard punt return touchdown at Metlife Stadium. Seconds after he deflated a stadium full of fans, I looked down at a Microsoft Surface tablet and saw who kicked the ball, how fast it traveled, and even how fast Agnew was running.

The RFID chips in the footballs will track data such as velocity, rotation, ball speed, and location.

Are you ready for some football … tracking? The NFL has placed coin-sized radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips from Zebra Technologies inside footballs for every game this season to provide a deeper dive into statistics, information the league has never effectively captured. The advanced stats the NFL will collect from players and footballs could be used in fantasy football — but the NFL tracking footballs might not be as dramatic as some might hope.

The RFID chips in the footballs will track data such as velocity, rotation, ball speed, and location. Traditionally, an 80-yard pass attributed to a quarterback could have resulted from a 10-yard pass followed by 70 yards of running after the catch by the receiver. With chips in footballs, the NFL can more accurately track how many yards the ball was thrown before it was caught. The days of Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton’s stats hiding behind his star wide receiver A.J. Green’s elite speed could be numbered.

Zebra Technologies

The NFL began tests in 2015 that focused on putting Zebra’s chips in its footballs. Last season, the NFL extended the in-game testing to include preseason and Thursday Night Football games. Wilson, the official football provider of the NFL, worked with Zebra to make sure the chip made no changes to the ball that would be noticeable to players or coaches. As a result, Zebra had to reduce the chip’s weight from 12 grams to less than 4 grams. After being placed in other areas, the chip is now “fused to the bladder” of the football opposite the valve opening where air is pumped in, according to a Zebra rep.

As part of Zebra’s system, between 20 and 22 RFID receptors are lined across the ribbon board atop each stadium, ready to transmit the positional information provided by the tracking chips. The technology is smart enough to turn a football field into data points, but once received, a human is still required to have it all make sense when it gets in to the NFL’s hands. “Every game has operators in it that will add contextual information as it happens on the field. That is delivered in real time to the NFL,” John Bacon, Zebra Technologies‘ director of operations, told Digital Trends. For the average game, Zebra tracks more than 670 million bytes of data.

For the past three years, Zebra has placed its chips on players’ shoulder pads, on referees, and on first-down measuring sticks to cull information for the league’s Next Gen Stats initiative, which was started in 2013 to deliver more in-depth stats. When Adrian Peterson rushed for an 80-yard touchdown against the Oakland Raiders in 2015, Zebra’s chips in his shoulder pads revealed what his max speed was during the run. While these chips have been used to produce highly detailed and stylized highlight reels, they have mostly helped the NFL in ways the average fan would not think twice about.

“It might just be literally to help the broadcasters know who’s on the field now.”

“It might not be a speed trail, necessarily, or some interesting graphic. It might just be literally to help the broadcasters know who’s on the field now,” Bacon said. Even if you are at a game, you probably wouldn’t know that the football zipping around is actually transmitting stats unless someone told you. “The real-time effects, I don’t often see it up on the big board,” Bacon said.

Bacon says the NFL is currently testing its chips on pylons and measuring sticks used to judge the spot of the ball. The chips can only provide location within six inches of accuracy and have not yet been placed on body parts that determine field position, such as a player’s feet and knees. Those six inches could be the difference between a fourth-down play that extends a drive and one that ends the game.

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The NFL has been going through a not-so-subtle transformation in the last two years. In that time, the league has taken its game to virtual reality, streamed Thursday Night Football games on Twitter and Amazon, and made a commitment to reduce commercial time during games. Maybe with the NFL tracking player’s movements, players can get more accurate Madden ratings.

Beyond the NFL, Zebra says its next logical step is working with the NCAA. It began working with Ohio State University in 2016, with plans to expand to more teams. Zebra’s deal with the NFL will run until the end of the 2018 NFL season, including playoff games. Your favorite quarterback could be slinging a tracking chip-embedded football during the next two Super Bowls, and most fans may never realize it.

Pimax 5K and 8K VR headsets hit Kickstarter starting at $350

Why it matters to you

These high-resolution VR headsets represent one further advance in the virtual reality space.

Pimax’s highly hyped ultra high-resolution virtual reality headsets have now hit Kickstarter. Slated to begin shipping around January 2018, there are options for versions of the high-end headset with claimed 5K and 8K resolutions, as well as a field of view as broad as 200 degrees. With prices starting at $350 and support for existing HTC Vive trackers, interest is already high.

As excellent as the first generation of consumer virtual reality headsets like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift were, it’s easy to see where they could be improved. While new wireless tracking and improved headstraps are great, most people are excited by the potential of higher resolution displays and improved field of view. Those are two key technological improvements that the Pimax headsets make in giant strides.

The resolution of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are both 1,080 x 1,200 pixels per eye, with a 110-degree field of view and a refresh rate of 90Hz. The Pimax 5K offers the same refresh rate, but ups the ante with 2,560 x 1,440 pixels per eye and a 200-degree field of view. And the Pimax 8K takes things a step further with a resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 per eye.

If you have existing HTC Vive Lighthouse trackers, you can use those for tracking the headset, though Pimax also offers its own laser trackers in the more expansive Kickstarter reward tiers.

With modular support for additional features like hand motion, wireless operation, and eye-tracking, the Pimax headsets appear to be covering just about every base possible. Reports from early testers are strong, with some suggesting that the higher resolution means an end to the screen-door effect, no visible sub-pixels, and an overall improved immersion produced by the bolstered visuals.

If you want to get yourself one of the world’s first consumer ultra high-resolution headsets, you can put down everything from $350 for an early bird Pimax 5K “Basic” headset, to as much as $1,000 for the limited edition “8K X Full Package,” which comes with base station sensors and controllers. The developers do warn though, that even the most powerful PCs may struggle to run anything at the native resolution. You’re almost guaranteed to find very few compatible experiences, too.

It’s also important to note that even the best laid plans can fall apart on Kickstarter. While there is every indication that the Pimax developers will follow through with their claims, we have seen many campaigns fall apart in the past, so go into this one with some caution.

What’s trending on Twitter? Popular Articles offers a comment-free look

Why it matters to you

Twitter is making it easier to see what articles are most popular among the users you follow.

Finding the most popular articles just got a bit simpler. Twitter recently confirmed the global rollout of a new feature called Popular Articles, which creates a list of the most talked-about links on the 140-character social media platform.

Popular Articles is a new section inside Twitter’s search menu or explore tab within both the iOS and Android apps. Users need to scroll past a few other popularized categories to find it. Inside the Popular Articles feature, Twitter lists the most discussed articles but doesn’t include any of the commentaries. The feature lists the article’s link preview, without any of the accompanying Tweets or even who shared the article.

The articles included in the section will vary a bit based on the user — the section features articles that are most popular among other users that you follow. These articles can also be influenced by location, according to BuzzFeed News. Links open in a new tab within the app to read the entire article. A “show more” option, however, will remove that personalization and display the most popular related articles, regardless of who you follow on Twitter.

Twitter has only had the Explore section where the new Popular Articles are located since the start of the year, an update to the Moments section that launched in 2015. Along with the new Popular Articles, the Explore tab serves as a home for easily finding live videos and the most popular hashtags. Moments, or articles created directly on Twitter itself, also lives in the Explore section.

Ranking the most popular articles isn’t a new idea — Facebook has a trending news section as well. Designing an appropriate algorithm to determine which stories should go in that section is not easy, however, as Facebook learned when fake news stories were included in the section.

Curating the most popular articles is also popular within third-party apps, like Nuzzel. Unlike Twitter’s new built-in articles feature, Nuzzle leaves the Twitter commentary intact and will display who tweeted the link.

Twitter started out the year with a string of updates designed to curb abuse with expanded algorithms and mute and filter tools, followed by a Twitter Lite, a version of the app designed to use less data. Now, hidden code suggests an automatic tweet series is on the platform’s radar for potential upcoming updates.