NWN launches an AI-powered security platform to tackle tool sprawl, alert fatigue, and modern cyber threats in the era of agentic enterprises.
The post Why Operationalizing AI Security Is the Next Great Enterprise Hurdle appeared first on TechRepublic.
Google Chrome is rolling out vertical tabs and a full-page Reading Mode, giving users new ways to manage clutter and focus on content.
The post Google Chrome Adds Vertical Tabs, Improved Reading Mode in New Update appeared first on TechRepublic.
The craze for handhelds over the last 24 months has driven a surge in portable gaming consoles. We’ve seen it all, right from retro handheld devices to modern consoles that can handle AAA titles without breaking a sweat. GAMEMT has been in the thick of things with a Android handheld released last month and a unique portable console with a dial knob.
Now the Chinese manufacturer has revealed yet another handheld, which is an eye turner for sure. This is the E5 MODX console based on the original E5 released in 2024. The console has a removable modular display that can be connected to your MagSafe-compatible smartphone. It would be safe to say that the handheld draws inspiration from the MCON controller, but we haven’t seen a detachable-display handheld yet. Now, that’s downright cool.
Designer: GAMEMT
In its native form, the handheld looks and feels just like any other 3:4 display device. However, when you detach the 5.5″ screen (1024 x 768) and connect its controller module magnetically to a mobile phone, it turns into an altogether different beast. The gaming machine comes with the MTK6771 Helio P60 chipset, which is not that highly rated in the tech circles, given its inconsistent performance. Still, it’ll be interesting to see what GAMEMT has managed to achieve with this microchip in terms of hardware and software compatibility in the E5 MODX. The chipset is paired with a 3GB RAM for optimized performance, and 32 GB internal memory is more than enough to store the suite of AA games.
You can expect to emulate PS1 games, or the option to pair with the Dreamcast/N64/PS2 and GameCube emulation. Clearly, you would better explore the retro arcade game library with this one, to be honest. The real magic happens when you connect the device to your flagship smartphone, and the fun of playing AAA games is again real. For now, it is unclear whether the magnetically detachable accessory pairs via Bluetooth or works with the physical connection, and also for low latency.
According to GAMEMT, the first 3D prototype of the E5 Modx is in the works, and there is no word yet on when the handheld will be released. For now, the idea sounds very interesting, given the landscape of handheld consoles that gamers now can choose from.
The post GAMEMT E5 MODX handheld’s detachable control module can be connected to Magsafe phones first appeared on Yanko Design.
Vous vous souvenez de Civilization III ? Hé bien des fans ont décidé de le recréer de zéro en open source avec OpenCiv3 , et franchement ça a de la gueule, vous allez voir !
En fait, leur idée c'était pas juste de cloner le jeu de Sid Meier tel quel, mais plutôt de le réimaginer en corrigeant tous les trucs qui étaient cassés à l'époque, mais aussi en virant les limites arbitraires du moteur original et en poussant le modding aussi loin que possible. En gros, ils nous ont pondu un Civ3 comme il aurait dû être si les développeurs avaient eu le temps de tout finir.
Côté technique, c'est du Godot avec du C#, ça tourne sur Windows, Linux et Mac et c'est sous licence MIT. Du coup vous pouvez forker le truc et en faire votre propre version si ça vous chante.
Après, voilà, on est encore en pré-alpha. La version 0.3 "Dutch" est sortie en décembre dernier, et permet de lancer une partie, explorer la carte, créer des villes et taper sur vos voisins. Mais la fin du jeu n'est pas encore là. Et le truc sympa, c'est que contrairement à d'habitude, le jeu fonctionne en mode standalone avec des graphismes de remplacement, donc pas forcément besoin d'avoir Civ3 installé. Après si vous avez l'édition Conquests ou Complete qui traîne quelque part sur votre disque dur, OpenCiv3 est capable d'importer les graphismes originaux pour un rendu fidèle !
Mais comme vous l'avez compris, le vrai kiff du projet, c'est le modding. Le Civ3 original vous laissait modifier trois bricoles via des fichiers texte, et c'était pas ouf... Mais OpenCiv3, lui, veut ouvrir toutes les portes en changeant les règles de combat, en ajoutant des mécaniques de jeu, en créant des scénarios complets, voire en inventant de toutes pièces de nouvelles civilisations... bref tout est prévu pour être modifiable. Ça rappelle un peu ce qu' UnCiv fait avec Civ V sur Android , sauf que c'est sur PC.
Voilà, c'est encore super jeune mais si vous avez la nostalgie des soirées "encore un tour", ça vaut le coup de garder un œil dessus !
À découvrir ici : OpenCiv3
The retro handheld market has a strange problem. The hardware keeps getting better, the screens get sharper, the processors get faster, and yet most of these devices land looking like prototypes someone forgot to finish. Generic shells, forgettable proportions, and LED lighting as a substitute for actual design thinking. For a category built entirely on nostalgia, very few of these devices actually look like they belong to any era at all.
That tension is what one Reddit user decided to address. Starting with a Retroid Pocket 5, a $199 Android handheld running a Snapdragon 865 and a 5.5-inch AMOLED display, the mod layers Sony and Nintendo branding onto the same shell. Vinyl decals, translucent polycarbonate, a 3D-printed volume rocker from Etsy, and a cable replaced in PS2 color. The result looks less like a sticker job and more like a concept render from an alternate 1999.
Designer: Mitchieyan
The translucent shell is doing most of the work. It pulls from the visual language of the N64’s Funtastic series, those clear and atomic-purple controllers Nintendo released in the late 1990s, where showing the circuitry was the design choice rather than concealing it. Over a piano-black grip body with PlayStation-colored face buttons, the frosted polycarbonate shifts from grey to near-white depending on the light. It shouldn’t feel considered. It does.
The branding placement is where intent becomes clear. The Sony wordmark sits centered on the upper face, exactly where it appeared on a PSOne. Below it, the PlayStation four-color logo. At the bottom bezel, the Nintendo badge mirrors its position on a Game Boy Advance SP. None of it is licensed, of course. These are adhesive vinyls placed by someone who grew up with both systems and wanted their coexistence on one device to feel inevitable rather than absurd.
Not everything here reaches backward. The analog sticks are translucent caps over hall-effect sensors, lit teal on the left and purple on the right, owing nothing to 1999. That generation didn’t have RGB anything. The lighting reads as a concession to the present; the one feature announcing this is still an Android device in 2025, not a prototype from some alternate Sony-Nintendo licensing meeting. Whether it sits comfortably alongside the retro shell is a fair question.
The rear view shifts the frame again. A large dual-grip body in smooth black rubber dominates the back, a clear plastic hinge connecting the screen to grip in full view, structural and unapologetic. The 3D-printed volume rocker at the top edge puts a physical control where fingers naturally land. The back half feels closer to a DualShock than a Game Boy, which is either the point or the problem, depending on what you wanted this thing to be.
Flip to the front screen, and the emulator grid makes the whole thing literal. DuckStation for PS1, Dolphin for GameCube, PPSSPP for PSP, melonDS for Nintendo DS, and a live PS2 wallpaper cycling behind all of it. This device runs both companies’ libraries simultaneously without asking permission from either. The branding on the shell, in that context, stops being a novelty and starts reading as a plain statement of what the hardware already does.
The retro handheld category is large enough now that sameness has become its default. The Retroid Pocket 6, the current flagship from the same manufacturer, drew community criticism for being indistinguishable from competitors: glass front, LED sticks, rounded edges, and no particular character. A fan mod building identity out of borrowed logos is one response to a problem the manufacturers haven’t solved. It’s also just someone enjoying a hobby and being honest about what they want.
The hardware to play PS1, PS2, GameCube, and Game Boy Advance all on one screen already exists and costs under $200. What the market hasn’t resolved is what that device should actually look like, or whose name should go on it. This mod doesn’t answer either question. It just makes the gap between what’s technically possible and what anyone has bothered to design feel a little harder to dismiss.
The post This Fan Made the Sony-Nintendo Handheld the Companies Never Would first appeared on Yanko Design.
At GTC 2026, Jensen Huang, Aravind Srinivas, Harrison Chase, Mira Murati, and Michael Truell made a compelling case that the future of AI belongs to open agent systems, not just open models.
The post Nvidia’s Open Model Super Panel Made a Strong Case for Open Agents appeared first on TechRepublic.
Learn more about how AI agents are reshaping enterprise workflows in TechRepublic’s latest generative AI coverage.
The post Xiaomi Unmasks Mystery AI Model Behind DeepSeek Buzz appeared first on TechRepublic.
llamafile est un projet complètement barré qui va vous permettre de transformer des modèles de langage en exécutables. Derrière se cache en fait la fusion de deux projets bien badass : llama.cpp , un framework open source de chatbot IA, et Cosmopolitan Libc , une libc portable pour compiler des programmes C multiplateformes. En combinant astucieusement ces deux technos, les petits gars de Mozilla ont réussi à pondre un outil qui transforme les poids de modèles de langage naturel en binaires exécutables.
Imaginez un peu, vous avez un modèle de langage qui pèse dans les 4 gigas, dans un format .gguf (un format couramment utilisé pour les poids de LLM). Et bien avec llamafile, vous pouvez le transformer en un exécutable standalone qui fonctionnera directement sur le système sur lequel il est sans avoir besoin d'installer quoi que ce soit. Ça va permettre de démocratiser l'utilisation et la diffusion des LLM.
Et niveau portabilité, c'est le feu puisque ça tourne sur six OS, de Windows à FreeBSD en passant par macOS. Les devs ont bien bossé pour que ça passe partout, en résolvant des trucs bien crados comme le support des GPU et de dlopen() dans Cosmopolitan et croyez-moi (enfin, croyez-les) ça n'a pas été une mince affaire !
Niveau perf aussi c'est du brutal ! Sur Linux llamafile utilise pledge() et SECCOMP pour sandboxer le bousin et empêcher les accès fichiers non désirés et avec les derniers patchs de
Justine Tunney
, la perf CPU pour l'inférence en local a pris un boost de malade du genre 10 fois plus rapide qu'avant. Même sur un Raspberry Pi on peut faire tourner des petits modèles à une vitesse honnête.
Bonne nouvelle, le projet est loin d'être mort puisque la version 0.10 vient de sortir (mars 2026) et elle apporte pas mal de changements. Déjà, le projet a migré de Mozilla Ocho vers Mozilla.ai , ce qui montre que Mozilla prend le truc au sérieux côté IA.
Le gros morceau de cette release, c'est un tout nouveau build system. Fini le bazar monolithique, maintenant llama.cpp, whisper.cpp et Stable Diffusion sont intégrés comme des sous-modules Git. L'avantage c'est que ça permet de suivre beaucoup plus facilement les dernières versions de llama.cpp et donc de supporter les modèles les plus récents dès leur sortie.
Côté utilisation, on a maintenant trois modes bien distincts :
Connexion
llamafile "c'est quoi un llamafile ?" et hop, la réponse arrive direct--server, ça lance le serveur llama.cpp classique pour exposer une API compatible OpenAIAutre truc cool, le support multimodal est là avec le nouvel argument --image. Vous pouvez balancer une image au modèle et il l'analyse. Ça marche avec des modèles comme Qwen3-VL, LLaVA 1.6 ou Ministral 3.
Côté GPU, Metal fonctionne nativement sur macOS (ARM64) sans bidouille, et le support CUDA est restauré sur Linux. Par contre, le GPU sur Windows n'est pas encore de la partie, et le sandboxing via pledge()/SECCOMP a été temporairement retiré dans cette version.
Bref, si vous aviez testé llamafile il y a un moment et que vous aviez trouvé ça un peu limité, c'est peut-être le moment de retélécharger la bête et de voir ce que ça donne avec les modèles de 2026. C'est toujours aussi simple : un fichier, on le rend exécutable, on le lance, et c'est parti.
Alors on dit merci qui ?
Merci Mozilla ! 🙏🦊
Amis crafteurs, préparez-vous à voir votre monde d'une toute nouvelle façon car il est désormais possible de recréer votre ville, votre quartier ou même la Cathédrale de Clermont-Ferrand dans Minecraft (Java ET Bedrock) avec une précision chirurgicale. C'est ce que permet de faire Arnis , un projet open source vraiment très cool.
Développé en Rust, Arnis fait le pont entre notre bonne vieille Terre et l'univers cubique de Minecraft en exploitant tout simplement la puissance d'OpenStreetMap. Pour rappel, c'est une formidable base de données cartographique collaborative qui recense routes, bâtiments et points d'intérêt du monde entier.
Le principe est donc simple mais efficace : vous sélectionnez une zone géographique avec l'outil de sélection intégré, vous choisissez votre monde Minecraft (de préférence un monde plat), et Arnis se chargera automatiquement de :
La beauté d'Arnis réside dans sa capacité à retranscrire les moindres détails. Les bâtiments conservent leurs proportions, les routes suivent leur tracé réel, et même les zones vertes sont fidèlement reproduites. Le système gère intelligemment les bâtiments avec leur hauteur relative, les routes et autoroutes, les espaces verts et plans d'eau, les points d'intérêt particuliers et tout ce qui est fontaines et structures spéciales.
Niveau personnalisation, Arnis propose également :
D'ailleurs, la version 2.5 sortie en février 2026 (baptisée "Metropolis Update") a apporté pas mal de nouveautés bien senties. Déjà, Arnis supporte maintenant Minecraft Bedrock en plus de Java, du coup ça marche aussi sur console et mobile. Ensuite, le générateur intègre les données d'élévation pour un terrain réaliste avec de vraies collines et vallées... plus besoin de se contenter d'un monde plat. Et le truc franchement cool, c'est la génération d'intérieurs de bâtiments avec du mobilier. Pour les grosses zones ou si vous êtes sur mobile, y'a aussi MapSmith, une alternative qui tourne directement dans le navigateur.
Pour tirer le meilleur parti d'Arnis, vous devrez utiliser Minecraft 1.17 minimum (Java) ou la dernière version Bedrock, initialiser un monde tout plat pour éviter les conflits de terrain, et une fois la génération terminée, vous n'aurez plus qu'à vous téléporter aux coordonnées 0 0 0 (/tp 0 0 0). Pensez à explorer vers les X et Z positifs si vous ne voyez rien immédiatement et si vous êtes sur Windows, installez l'Evergreen Bootstrapper de Microsoft si nécessaire.
La communauté bosse activement sur le projet. Et si vous voulez pas installer Rust et compiler, y'a des binaires prêts à l'emploi sur la page des releases . Hop, on télécharge, on lance, et on se balade dans son quartier version cubique !
Article publié initialement le 11 février 2025 et mis à jour le 19 mars 2026.
Most people who game on a PC own two things that do roughly the same job at different times: a mouse for the desk and a gamepad for the couch. They live side by side, occasionally getting in each other’s way, and neither one is going anywhere. Pixelpaw Labs, a hardware startup from Bangalore, India, thinks that arrangement is wasteful and has built something to prove it.
The Phase is a wireless mouse that physically separates down the middle into two independent halves. Snapped together, it sits on a desk and works like a normal mouse. Pull it apart, and each half reveals a joystick, triggers, a D-pad on the left side, and face buttons on the right, a split gamepad that was hiding in plain sight the whole time.
Designer: Pixelpaw Labs
That missing scroll wheel is not an oversight. Fitting a traditional wheel in the center of the body would have made the split mechanism impossible, so Pixelpaw replaced it with a capacitive touch strip along the top of the left button. Flicking a finger across it scrolls through documents and web pages, with a glide feature that lets the momentum coast rather than stop abruptly. It’s a trade-off that works around a real geometric constraint.
As a mouse, the Phase is competitive on paper. A 16,000 DPI optical sensor pairs with a 1,000 Hz polling rate when connected via the included 2.4 GHz USB dongle. Bluetooth LE is available for convenience and multi-device pairing across up to three devices, though the polling rate drops to 125 Hz in that mode, a gap that matters in fast-paced PC games.
Up to 18 customizable buttons are mappable through the Pixelplay companion app, and a Layer button doubles each button’s function capacity without adding physical complexity. Battery life is rated at 72 hours per charge over USB-C, which is more than enough to outlast dedicated gaming sessions on either side of its personality.
The controller halves use mechanical tactile switches, which is more than most mobile gaming clip-ons bother with. Pixelpaw also has an accessory called the Phasegrip, a bracket that holds the two separated halves apart with a smartphone mounted in the center, turning the setup into a handheld console for mobile gaming. The Phase works across PC, Android, iOS, iPadOS, and ChromeOS, so switching between devices doesn’t require swapping hardware.
Everything shown so far is pre-production, and the company has been upfront that the final surface finish will differ. That’s a meaningful caveat for a product whose physical fit and feel will determine whether the concept actually holds up. Whether they’ll be able to deliver this Holy Grail of PC gaming, however, is the real question that can only be answered in time.
The post This Wireless Mouse Splits in Half to Reveal a Hidden Game Controller first appeared on Yanko Design.
Most garden structures ask one thing of you: sit still and enjoy the shade. A pergola is a pergola, a gazebo is a gazebo, and neither one particularly cares what the afternoon light is doing. Michael Jantzen’s Interactive Garden Pavilion operates on a different premise entirely, one where the occupant has as much say over the structure as the designer did.
Built from sustainably grown stained wood and painted a uniform forest green, the pavilion sits on an octagonal support frame fitted with 30 slatted hinged panels across its walls and roof. Each panel pivots independently, sliding and rotating along the frame before locking into position. Open them wide on a hot afternoon, and the interior breathes. Angle them down against the glare, and the space dims considerably.
Designer: Jantzen
That last point is where the design earns its name. Most adjustable outdoor structures offer a single variable, usually an awning or a retractable canopy, within an otherwise fixed form. Here, the entire skin of the building is the variable. The wall panels, roof panels, and ground-level platform extensions can all be repositioned, which means the pavilion can look substantially different from one afternoon to the next.
Pull the panels shut on three sides, and the structure becomes a genuinely private enclosure. Splay them open, and the interior connects fully to the garden around it. In one arrangement, it reads as a dense closed form. In another, the structure opens up entirely, and the slatted framework becomes almost sculptural against the lawn.
Inside, two benches with adjustable backrests run the length of the interior, facing each other. The seating is built into the frame, which keeps the floor plan clean and leaves room to recline fully. When the overhead panels are partially open, sunlight enters in sharp parallel bands that shift across the benches as the day moves, a quality that is either meditative or distracting depending on what you came in for.
The construction logic is also notably practical. The pavilion is a prefabricated modular system, so the components can be scaled before assembly or joined with additional units to form a larger cluster. No foundation is required in most configurations. Given its size and type, a building permit is unlikely to be needed in many jurisdictions, which removes one of the more tedious barriers between an interesting design and an actual garden.
Jantzen has spent decades proposing architecture that responds dynamically to its occupants, much of it remaining on paper. This pavilion is one of the cases where the idea got built, and the result holds up at close range. The slatted wood is honest about what it is, the green paint ties the structure to the garden without trying to disappear into it, and the hinge mechanism does exactly what it promises.
The post Michael Jantzen’s Garden Retreat Has 30 Panels to Rearrange by Hand first appeared on Yanko Design.
How a small IT team at the South Mississippi Housing Authority used AI and hybrid cloud technology to handle 68% of calls and modernize legacy infrastructure.
The post What IT Leaders Can Learn From a Housing Authority’s AI Transformation appeared first on TechRepublic.
Microsoft says Xbox mode is coming to Windows 11 in April, bringing a console-style interface, faster game loading tools, and a unified PC strategy.
The post Microsoft Plans ‘Xbox Mode’ for Windows 11 PCs Starting in April appeared first on TechRepublic.
Google vient de lancer Gemini Embedding 2, son premier modèle d'embedding nativement multimodal. Texte, images, vidéo, audio et documents sont projetés dans un même espace vectoriel, ce qui permet de faire de la recherche sémantique croisée entre différents types de contenus.
Jusqu'à présent, les modèles d'embedding se limitaient au texte. Vous vouliez indexer des images ou de la vidéo, il fallait un autre pipeline. Gemini Embedding 2 fait tout d'un coup : vous lui envoyez du texte, des images (jusqu'à 6), de la vidéo (jusqu'à 120 secondes) ou de l'audio (jusqu'à 80 secondes), et il vous renvoie un vecteur dans le même espace. Le modèle gère plus de 100 langues et prend en charge jusqu'à 8 192 tokens en entrée pour le texte.
Côté technique, le modèle utilise le Matryoshka Representation Learning, ce qui permet de choisir la taille des embeddings entre 128 et 3 072 dimensions. Google recommande 768 dimensions pour un bon compromis entre qualité et stockage, ce qui divise par quatre l'espace disque par rapport à la taille maximale.
Le texte est facturé 0,20 dollar par million de tokens, avec un mode batch à moitié prix. Les images montent à 0,45 dollar, l'audio à 6,50 dollars et la vidéo à 12 dollars par million de tokens. Un palier gratuit est disponible pour tester.
Côté performances, Google affiche de bons scores sur les benchmarks MTEB : 69,9 en multilingue et 84,0 en code. Mais pour du texte seul, OpenAI reste bien moins cher avec son text-embedding-3-small à 0,02 dollar par million de tokens, soit dix fois moins.
Le modèle est disponible via l'API Gemini et Vertex AI, et compatible avec LangChain, LlamaIndex, Weaviate ou ChromaDB.
Le vrai argument de Google ici, c'est le multimodal. Si vous avez besoin d'indexer des catalogues produits avec photos et descriptions dans le même vecteur, ou de faire de la recherche dans des archives vidéo, il n'y a pas d'équivalent chez OpenAI pour le moment.
Mais pour du texte pur, la différence de prix est quand même importante. On attend de voir comment ça se comporte en production, et si les scores MTEB se confirment sur des cas d'usage réels.
Source : Blog Google
The combination of rare earth materials and cryogenic temperatures could be the key to transforming power infrastructures in preparing for AI applications.
The post High-Temperature Superconductors Could Redefine Data Center Power Density appeared first on TechRepublic.
Anthropic rolls out Claude Sonnet 4.6 as its new default model, bringing stronger reasoning and coding power to free and paid users alike.
The post Anthropic Launches Claude Sonnet 4.6 as Default Model for Free and Paid Users appeared first on TechRepublic.
What if we designed homes the way cats would design them? Not human homes with a token scratching post in the corner but true spatial systems built around curiosity, vertical exploration, territorial comfort, and play. The N Plus Magic House begins precisely at that question, reframing pet furniture not as an accessory but as architecture scaled for feline psychology. Instead of treating a cat house as a static object, this project treats it as a living spatial framework, one that evolves alongside its inhabitant.
Today’s pet owners increasingly see their cats as emotional companions rather than animals that merely coexist in domestic space. That shift has quietly created a design problem. Traditional cat houses, even elaborate ones, tend to be fixed structures. They may be visually impressive, but they impose constraints on placement, adaptability, and long-term usability. The N Plus Magic House flips that paradigm by introducing modularity as its core philosophy. Rather than selling a finished form, it offers a system of standardized units that can be assembled, rearranged, expanded, or reduced as needed. The result is less like furniture and more like a customizable habitat kit.
Designer: Taizhou Hake Technology Co., Ltd
The genius of the design lies in its simplicity. Each module functions independently yet connects securely through precision-engineered connectors. Owners assemble structures by inserting panels into slots and stacking them like building blocks. No technical expertise, tools, or installation manuals are required. This intuitive construction method does something subtle but powerful. It turns pet care into participation. Instead of buying a finished object, users become co-designers of their cat’s environment. That interaction strengthens the emotional bond among the owner, the pet, and the space.
Material choices reinforce the system’s practicality. The structure combines impact-resistant PP resin, transparent PET panels for visibility, and carbon steel mesh for structural integrity. These materials balance durability with safety while allowing owners to monitor their pets without disturbing them. The manufacturing processes, such as injection molding and automatic wire welding, ensure consistency, precision, and reliability across units. Every element reflects careful alignment with feline behavior and safety requirements.
Behind the scenes, the development team approached the project with a research-driven mindset. They studied cats’ behavioral patterns, analyzed existing products on the market, and mapped owner expectations. One of the biggest technical challenges was maintaining structural stability while preserving modular flexibility. The solution was a custom connector engineered to withstand pressure and weight while preventing slippage. Its textured surface increases friction, ensuring modules remain firmly locked during use. This small component is arguably the system’s unsung hero. It transforms a playful concept into a reliable architectural structure.
Developed in Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, between July 2023 and November 2024 and later exhibited internationally, the N Plus Magic House represents a broader shift in product design thinking. It signals a move away from static ownership toward adaptive systems, objects that respond to changing needs over time. In a world where personalization defines modern consumer expectations, this approach feels less like a novelty and more like a glimpse into the future of domestic product design.
The post The Modular Cat Habitat That Turns Playful Curiosity Into Living Architecture first appeared on Yanko Design.
Screens are on all day, and hands tend to find something to do when focus slips. Pen clicking, phone picking, knuckle cracking, the nervous tics of modern desk work. Most “mindfulness” solutions are still apps, which is a bit ironic when the problem is too much screen time. There’s something to be said for a small mechanical object that gives your brain a reset without asking for any attention in return.
Amsterdam Dynamics’ ST-01 is a modular spinning top and tactile focus object built for desks, hands, and minds that rarely get a break. It’s intentionally simple but not single-purpose, offering multiple mechanical interactions with no correct sequence. You use one when you need it or work through all of them. No app, no setup, no instructions, just the object and whatever your hands feel like doing with it.
Designer: Antonio Lo Presti (Amsterdam Dynamics)
A gentle twist sets ST-01 rotating smoothly, and it’s engineered to keep going for over two minutes. That’s long enough to watch while thinking through a problem, waiting for a file to render, or cooling down after a difficult meeting. It functions as a visual anchor, something calm and physical in a field of notifications and browser tabs that all want something from you.
Pressing the top triggers a satisfying mechanical click with clear tactile feedback, the kind of repeatable, purposeful sensation that replaces the nervous habit of clicking pens or tapping a keyboard. Amsterdam Dynamics calls it “reset focus,” which is accurate if not exactly humble. The middle disc can also be flipped like a coin, adding a small decision-making tool and another texture to the interaction when you need a nudge in either direction.
Of course, there’s a modular construction underneath all of that. ST-01 is built from three parts that can be taken apart and snapped back together, held in alignment by two precisely positioned magnets. That magnetic core keeps the structure stable during spinning while making it easy to disassemble by hand. There’s also a built-in magnet that lets it stick to metal surfaces, which is either a neat trick or a genuinely useful parking spot depending on your desk.
CNC-machined, anodized aerospace-grade aluminum means it’s solid in the hand, balanced, and finished in a way you notice the first time you pick it up. Cheap fidget toys flex, squeak, and wear out quickly. ST-01 is designed to stay on the desk for a long time, with Amsterdam Dynamics framing it as “a beautiful object, made to last a lifetime” and something that can eventually be passed on.
That’s an unusual positioning for what is essentially a desk toy, but it fits the overall idea. ST-01 doesn’t ask for a lifestyle change, a daily streak, or a subscription. It just gives your hands a few repeatable interactions and a place to return when the work gets loud, which turns out to be the kind of quiet, mechanical company a desk actually needs.
The post Forget Mindfulness Apps, This Desk Top Spins for 2 Minutes Instead first appeared on Yanko Design.
UpScrolled says it has passed 2.5 million users after TikTok’s US ownership change, as the rival app scrambles to scale and set moderation rules.
The post This New Social Network Says It Won’t Sell Your Data — and It Just Hit 2.5M Users appeared first on TechRepublic.
