Design:
Snap says that the 2nd version of their connected camera glasses, Spectacles, are being used 40% more than their initial product offering. Perhaps buoyed by that uptick in usage, the company has released two more frame designs.
Building Things:
Established auto manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz are figuring out how tobuild electric power into their existing product lines, which could present a significant threat to Tesla. The big auto companies have proven they can reliably crank out cars and trucks at scale, something Tesla has struggled with, and with that scale comes more pricing leverage on components from their suppliers.
Apple is increasingly a wearables company. The Apple Watch and AirPods were met with a fair amount of snark and scorn initially, but those products have flourished even among a large field of competitive, established products. For now, Apple seems to have won the wearables war by applying the same disciplined approach to building solid, desirable products with exceptionally good UX that brought them significant market share in smartphones and computers.
Waste:
Nathan Proctor makes a convincing case that Right to Repair legislation would reduce the cost of medical care by shrinking the maintenance costs associated with complex healthcare equipment like MRI machines.
Upgrading Ourselves:
The Seattle Times draws attention to an Amazon patent that would "put workers in cages" outfitted with mechanical arms, atop robotic platforms. Amazon certainly has a troubling labor history with their contract fulfillment centers, but this piece's scaremongering obscures the more interesting truth: even big, sophisticated tech companies still depend on the flexibility, speed, and complexity of the human mind.
An interesting perspective on the value of AR for people will work in the not-distant future: the tech will become the premier method for connecting blue-collar workers (referred to euphemistically as "deskless workers" in the article) to the productive powers of 21st century software and distributed computation.
Engineering Communities:
Largely left to fend for themselves by local and federal governments, organizers in Puerto Rico have taken matters into their own hands to restore power to their communities, both in the literal and figurative senses. Newsweek reports on efforts of anarchists there to create new infrastructure from the ruins.
Archiving:
Preserving "endangered" sounds, namely the blips, rumbles, and hums of earlier analog appliances and electronics.
Peruse the Web Design Museum to see (or fondly remember) what the look and feel of the internet used to be.