Tesla’s Desktop Supercharger is the desk charger your phone deserves

Tesla’s Desktop Supercharger and Powerbank are expensive, but boy do they look good.

Tesla recently held an event in New York City to announce its all-new semi truck and updated Roadster 2.0, and if you’re still riding the Tesla high after reserving a couple Roadsters for the cool price of $50,000 each, the company now has a couple of mobile accessories so you can show off your Tesla pride wherever you go.

Tesla Desktop Supercharger

The first, and arguably best, accessory is the Desktop Supercharger. This is an exact replica of the Superchargers that Tesla uses to charge up its vehicles, but it’s been shrunken down to fit on your desk and charges your phone rather than your car. The same 3D CAD data that’s used to manufacture that real Superchargers was used to create this model, and even if you don’t own a Tesla like me, you’ve got to appreciate the sleek design of the thing.

Tesla Powerbank

In addition to the Desktop Supercharger, you can also buy Tesla’s Powerbank. This is a portable charger with a 3350 mAh capacity, outputs at 5V/1.5A for fast top-up times, and has integrated lightning and microUSB cables. The Powerbank’s design is based off Tesla’s Supercharger monument found at the Tesla Design Studio, and while the price is pretty high considering the mAh count and lack of USB-C, it also looks wickedly good.

Both the Desktop Supercharger and Powerbank cost $45, and if you’re interested, you can buy them from Tesla’s website right now.

See at Tesla

What’s on TV: ‘Godless,’ ‘Marvel’s Runaways’

As we get ready for the holiday later this week, there are plenty of new streaming options in case you’ve already cleared your DVR. Hulu premieres its new Marvel series Runaways, while Netflix offers its western Godless and Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It. Axiom Verge is getting a physical release on PS4, while Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets arrives on 4K Blu-ray. Look after the break to check out each day’s highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed).

Blu-ray & Games & Streaming

• Despicable Me 3 (VOD)
• Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (4K)
• The Hitman’s Bodyguard (4K)
• Jabberwocky (Criterion)
• The Villianess
• Leap!
• Porco Rosso
• Good Time
• The Secret World of Arrietty
• Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier (PS4)
• Gear.Club Unlimited (Switch)
• Battle of the Bulge (PS4)
• Transcripted (Switch)
• Worms W.M.D. (Switch)
• Let’s Sing 2018 (Switch)
• Crimsonland (Switch)
• Axiom Verge (PS4)
• Monster of the Deep: Final Fantasy XV (PS VR)

Monday

• Falcons/Seahawks, ESPN, 8:15 PM
• Baltimore Rising, HBO, 8 PM
• Lucifer, Fox, 8 PM
• Kevin Can Wait, CBS, 8 PM
• The Voice, NBC, 8 PM
• Dancing with the Stars, ABC, 8 PM
• WWE Raw, USA, 8 PM
• Supergirl, CW, 8 PM
• Man with a Plan, CBS, 8:30 PM
• 9jkl, CBS, 9 PM
• Valor, CW, 9 PM
• The Gifted, Fox, 9 PM
• Robert Kirkman’s Secret History of Comics, AMC, 10 PM
• Scorpion, CBS, 10 PM
• The Brave (fall finale), NBC, 10 PM
• The Good Doctor, ABC, 10 PM
• Ill Behavior, Showtime, 10:30 PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11 PM

Tuesday

• Marvel’s Runaways (series premiere), Hulu, 3 AM
• Brian Regan: Nunchucks and Flamethrowers, Netflix, 3 AM
• Beat Bugs: All Together Now, Netflix, 3 AM
• Saving Capitalism, Netflix, 3 AM
• Lethal Weapon, Fox, 8 PM
• The Flash, CW, 8 PM
• Finding Your Roots, PBS, 8 PM
• The Voice, NBC, 8 PM
• NCIS, CBS, 8 PM
• WWE Smackdown, USA, 8 PM
• The Middle, ABC, 8 PM
• Fresh Off the Boat, ABC, 8:30 PM
• The Challenge (season finale), MTV, 9 PM
• Major Crimes, TNT, 9 PM
• The Mick, Fox, 9 PM
• DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, CW, 9 PM
• Black-ish, ABC, 9 PM
• Bull, CBS, 9 PM
• This is Us, NBC, 9 PM
• Inside the NFL, Showtime, 9 PM
• Fantomworks, Velocity, 9 PM
• Who Killed Tupac? (series premiere), A&E, 9 PM
• The Mayor, ABC, 9:30 PM
• Brooklyn Nine-nine, Fox, 9:30 PM
• The Mane Event, BET, 10 PM
• Undercover High, A&E, 10 PM
• Cyberwar (season finale), Viceland, 10 PM
• Chicago Med (season premiere), NBC, 10 PM
• NCIS: NO, CBS, 10 PM
• Hunt for the Zodiac Killer, History, 10 PM
• The Challenge, MTV, 10 PM
• Tosh.0 (season finale), Comedy Central, 10 PM
• The Jim Jefferies Show (season finale), Comedy Central, 10:30 PM
• Drop the Mic, TBS, 10:30 PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11 PM

Wednesday

• Chance, Hulu, 3 AM
• Godless (S1), Netflix, 3 AM
• Barbra: The Music, The Me’ries, The Magic!, Netflix, 3 AM
• Survivor, CBS, 8 PM
• The Wall, NBC, 8 PM
• Seal Team, CBS, 9 PM
• Shannara Chronicles (season finale), Spike TV, 9 PM
• American Housewife, ABC, 9:30 PM
• Mr. Robot, USA, 10 PM
• Criminal Minds, CBS, 10 PM
• Liar, Sundance, 10 PM
• Are You the One, MTV, 10 PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11 PM

Thursday

• She’s Gotta Have It (S1), Netflix, 3 AM
• The Stinky & Dirty Show (S2), Amazon Prime, 3 AM
• Giants/Washington, NBC, 8:25 PM
• Supernatural, CW, 8 PM
• Young Sheldon, CBS, 8:30 PM
• Mom, CBS, 9 PM
• Arrow, CW, 9 PM
• Life in Pieces, CBS, 9:30 PM
• 30th Anniversary of Soul Train Special, BET, 10 PM
• SWAT, CBS, 10 PM
• Desus & Mero, Viceland, 11 PM

Friday

• Frontier (S2), Netflix, 3 AM
• The Many Faces of Ito (S1), Netflix, 3 AM
• Trailer Park Boys: Out of the Park (S1), Netflix, 3 AM
• Cuba and the Cameraman, Netflix, 3 AM
• Texas Tech/Texas college football, Fox, 8 PM
• Trolls Holiday Special, NBC, 8:30 PM
• Grammy’s Greatest Stories: A 60th Anniversary Special, CBS, 9 PM
• A Football Life: Joe Gibbs, NFL Network, 9 PM
• Z Nation, Syfy, 9 PM
• Tracey Ullman’s Show (season finale), HBO, 11 PM

Saturday

• Notre Dame/Stanford college football, ABC, 8 PM
• Washington State/Washington college football, Fox, 8 PM
• Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, BBC America, 9 PM

Sunday

• No Activity, CBS AA, 3 AM
• The 66th Miss Universe Competition, Fox, 7 PM
• Packers/Steelers, NBC, 8:20 PM
• 2017 Soul Train Awards, BET, 8 PM
• Outlander, Starz, 8 PM
• Wisdom of the Crowd, CBS, 8:30 PM
• Outlander, Starz, 8 PM
• Shameless, Showtime, 9 PM
• The Walking Dead, AMC, 9 PM
• The Girlfriend Experience, Starz, 9 PM
• NCIS: LA, 9:30 PM
• Smilf, Showtime, 10 PM
• Nude, Starz, 10 PM
• Talking Dead, AMC, 10 PM
• Good Behavior, TNT, 10 PM
• Madam Secretary, CBS, 10 PM
• Search Party, TBS, 10 PM
• Curb Your Enthusiasm, HBO, 10 PM
• White Famous, Showtime, 10:30 PM

[All times listed are in ET]

Octinion’s strawberry-picking bot is quick, nimble, and ready to replace humans

With everything from self-driving tractors to robots being able to monitor crops, it’s no secret that agriculture is currently in the middle of a high-tech revolution. Well, robots just added another farmyard job they can do better than us puny humans: Picking strawberries.

The robot in question is designed and built by Belgian engineering company Octinion. Using some smart machine vision algorithms and a 3D-printed hand, it’s able to work out when a particular strawberry is ripe for plucking, and then pick it off the forb (yep, we hadn’t heard that word either!) without causing any damage.

“We have developed a fully autonomous strawberry picking robot,” CEO Tom Coen told Digital Trends. “It’s able to navigate autonomously with centimeter precision. Thanks to local beacons, no structural changes to a greenhouse are necessary. Using our own 3D vision system, the robot can perfectly detect and localize ripe strawberries. Our patented soft touch gripper then picks strawberries without bruising, just like a human picker.”

While robots have been getting way better at the kind of fine-grain movements required to pick strawberries, Coen said the team still faced challenges developing their bot. One of the big ones was the risk of bruising the fruit, which they eventually solved using a “soft touch gripper that spreads the pressure evenly over the surface of the strawberry.”

Another challenge was figuring out whether the strawberries were ripe, which was achieved by training a dedicated AI system for the task, and also picking the strawberry without any of the attached greenery. This last challenge required turning the strawberry at an angle of 90 degrees, which required the creation of an entirely new robotic arm different to others on the market.

“The robot currently picks at a speed of one strawberry every five seconds, which is close to a human picker,” Coen said. But while humans may be able to beat the robot in terms of speed, the robot has the edge when it comes to not damaging the fruit, as well as being just as keen to pick at night (and on weekends and holidays) as during the day. “Most importantly, the robot picking cost is now competitive to the human picking cost,” Coen continued.

Next up, the robot will expand its skills to also cover sorting the fruit in both size and quality, picking conditionally depending on strawberry characteristics, predicting harvests and precision farming, and packaging the strawberries up ready for shipping.

“Our robots will be picking strawberries for pilot partners in 2018,” he said. “We expect that we will have about 100 robots in greenhouses worldwide in 2019.”

Editors’ Recommendations

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• Cornell engineers show why a robotic third arm is the ultimate productivity hack
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The SureFly two-person drone taxi will make its maiden flight at CES 2018

Ohio-based company Workhorse has announced that its innovative SureFly octocopter, essentially a human-sized drone for up to two people, is set to make its manned maiden voyage on January 8 in Las Vegas, prior to next year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

“CES is the perfect venue to show the SureFly,” Mike Dektas, a media spokesperson for Workhorse, told Digital Trends. “It is the premiere tech show in the world, and SureFly is a great example of how tech has entered the VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) world.”

The futuristic carbon fiber SureFly vehicle was first shown off earlier this year at the Paris Air Show. Following its (weather permitting) voyage at CES, it will be on display at the event. It can carry up to 400 pounds, driven by eight separate propellers, and is powered by a hybrid system combining gas combustion engine and parallel battery pack.

Early versions of the craft will reportedly be user piloted, but an autonomous version isn’t out of the question for the future. In the air, it is able to cruise a maximum of 70 miles (with a maximum speed of 70 miles per hour) on a single tank of fuel — although we happen to think it’s pretty nifty on the ground as well, where its propeller arms fold down to allow the SuperFly to fit comfortably into a regular car garage.

“The SureFly reinvents the helicopter,” Dektas continued. “Pilots like that the SureFly is flown using a joystick, much the same as flying a drone — simple and easy to pilot.”

Deltas said that the octocopter wasn’t designed with a particular customer in mind, but that, “we feel the market will tell us who the customers for this are.” That might include precision agriculture, emergency responders, city commuters, military, cargo carrier, and others.

Personally, we just like the idea of arriving at the office via giant drone taxi. At an estimated retail cost of $200,000 when it hopefully goes on sale by late 2019, we’d essentially be working for free for several years to pay it off — but it would totally be worth it for the look on our colleagues’ faces!

Editors’ Recommendations

• Want a drone to deliver your online purchases? Move to Iceland
• GoPro launches Hero6 Black and Fusion cameras, reveals new details
• A drone hit a passenger plane in Canada in first reported incident of its kind
• Aerial-to-aquatic RoboBee can dive into water, swim, and launch itself back out
• Tesla’s electric semi is weeks away, but Cummins beat it to the punch

Amazon releases a (RED) Echo to help fight AIDS

Echo in (RED).

The second-generation Amazon Echo speaker was released earlier this year with an updated fabric design, featuring different color options than the original Echo.

As CNET reports, Amazon is releasing a red variant of the smart speaker in order to help raise money for AIDS research.

Amazon has recently partnered with (RED) on a number of products and is pledging portions of sales toward (RED)’s fight against AIDS. Amazon will give $10 for ever red Echo sold between now and December 31, 2017. Bank of America will also give 30 cents for every dollar spent on Amazon’s (RED) product line during the same period, up to $1.5 million (U.S. sales only).

You can preorder the red Echo now and it’s the same price as its charcoal, gray, and sandstone line mates, at $99. The red Echo will be released on December 6, but all proceeds starting now are considered for Amazon’s donation.

See at Amazon

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Gear S3 gets Tizen 3.0 update with enhanced UI, fitness tracking, and more

Tizen 3.0 is available to download now through the Samsung Gear app on your phone.

Samsung’s Gear S3 was widely considered to be one of the best smartwatches around when it debuted in late 2016, and that’s a point that’s still often associated with it to this very day. Tizen 3.0 is now being rolled out to the Gear S3 as part of Samsung’s “Value Pack Update”, and there’s a lot that’s included with it.

Tizen 3.0 ships on the Gear Sport out of the box, so while the features here aren’t entirely new, they are things we haven’t yet seen on its older brother. One of the biggest improvements with the 3.0 update is an even heavier focus on fitness tracking. With Tizen 3.0, you can use the Gear S3 to continuously monitor your heartbeat with improved accuracy, add food eaten throughout the day to keep track of calories, and use Samsung’s Health Fitness Program that allows you to control workout videos on your smart TV and even see your heart rate in real-time on the big screen.

If fitness tracking really isn’t your thing, the update also allows you to now create contacts and events right on your watch, view and edit checklists, as well as edit how often you’re notified of web and video reminders.

The UI as a whole retains the same look, but there are a few smaller updates that make interacting with it all the more enjoyable. Widgets have been reworked to showcase more information on the Gear S3’s circular display, rotating the bezel quickly will allow you to see more options at once when changing your watch face, and you can go from a text message notification right to the reply field by just rotating your bezel as well.

Top this off with the ability to reorder apps based on how recently they’ve been used, swipe up or down from any screen to access the new Moment Bar, and a more modern look for the companion Samsung Gear app on your phone, and you’re looking at a lot of new goodies.

Samsung’s Value Pack Update with Tizen 3.0 is available to download now through the Samsung Gear app.

Samsung’s Gear Sport is currently the best alternative to Android Wear

Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp available on Android November 22

Hope you weren’t planning on being too productive this week.

Following Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heros, Nintendo’s proven to know a thing or two when it comes to mobile gaming. The company’s third title – Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp – was hit with a delay in January of this year with a new launch date anywhere between April 2017 and March 2018.

Thankfully, according to Nintendo’s official Twitter account, we’ll finally be able to get our hands on the game beginning Wednesday, November 22.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp places you in a campground setting within the Animal Crossing world, and it should play out a lot like other entries in the series. You can go fishing, decorate your home, hang out with virtual friends, complete tasks for villagers, and plenty more.

Players will be rewarded for logging in daily like in other Animal Crossing games, but there will also be microtransactions. We’re crossing our fingers that Nintendo uses these properly, because as we’ve seen with a certain other game, mishandling them can cause for a whole lot of trouble.

Best zombie games for Android

‘Bait!’ brings an ice fishing expedition to Facebook’s social VR

Facebook launched its social VR Spaces beta last April, finally showing us a compelling experience that helped put the social media company’s acquisition of Oculus in the first place. Recently, Oculus showed off a little ice fishing game from casual game studio Resolution Games at the Oculus Connect 4 conference. Now, the game — dubbed Bait! — is ready to take you and a friend into Spaces VR together.

Bait! is an experiment for Facebook social VR gaming, but shows off the potential of VR with friends. The game is already doing well on Gear VR, says Facebook’s Mike Booth, but bringing it to Spaces allowed the team to use it as a prototype for building third-party developer tools for more 3D games.

This ice-fishing title is intentionally casual, as well. “…fishing is one of those activities that allows you to be socially active and doesn’t require 100 percent of your mental bandwidth,” said Resolution Games’ Tommy Palm (one of the folks behind mega-hit CandyCrush). “With this mix, you can engage in a really fun way, while also having conversations with your friends.”

Source: Oculus

Hulu lawsuit centers on lack of audio options for blind users

While captions help deaf and limited hearing viewers enjoy video content, a separate audio track describing actions helps blind watchers understand what’s going on. But not all content platforms have the latter feature. A group of blind and visually-impaired clients has sued Hulu for failing to both provide audio-description support for any streaming video in its catalogue and for making its menus incompatible with screen readers.

Assistive tech has been somewhat integrated into public media. Comcast trumpeted that it would add an audio description track to its broadcast of the play The Wiz two years ago, the first for a live taping in the US. But a year ago, the DOJ had formally force cinemas to integrate blind and deaf-assisting tech.

But all streaming services have been slow to provide assistive technology. They practically fell over each other adding closed captions in 2012, with Hulu and HBO announcing they’d bring it first and Netflix following, but not visually-impaired assistance. Hulu’s rival Netflix has audio-descriptive tracks, but only after a very public snafu when it failed to provide them for its show Daredevil, which features a blind protagonist.

Source: PR Newswire

‘Rez Infinite’ arrives on your phone through Daydream VR

Rez Infinite is a sublime experience in virtual reality, but there’s a catch: that requirement for PlayStation VR or a PC usually means you’re tied down. That won’t be an issue after today, provided you have the right hardware: Enhance Games has released Rez Infinite for Android. You’ll need a Daydream-compatible VR headset with a controller (and the phone to match, of course), but you too can soar through virtual worlds and shoot enemies to a trance beat. And yes, the Infinite-only Area X is as visually intense as ever — modern mobile hardware is clearly up to the job.

The game is free to download, but only as a trial. If you want to unlock the full experience, you’ll need to pay $20 to unlock the full experience. Let’s be honest, though: you probably want to. While Rez has never been a particularly long game (a good player can blast through the core experience in less than an hour), it’s both very memorable and has extensive replayability. As it is, this is the most affordable way to play Rez Infinite in VR if you already have an eligible phone — you don’t need to buy a high-end headset (or consider upgrading your PC) just to see why its uniquely music-driven gameplay is so special.

Source: Google Play