Hasta La Gadget!

Apple is the latest tech company to mull the state of the coronavirus pandemic and wearily shrug as to when it will finally ask workers to return to the office, according to multiple news reports.

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The number of recent cases climbed to an estimated 100 players.

“We’re frustrated and disappointed,” said Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat.

DirecTV may have promised no hidden fees following its spinoff from AT&T, but it’s not shy about raising the prices themselves. Varietyreports the TV provider will hike the prices of most current and legacy streaming packages on January 23rd, 2022. Only “minimum service” offerings will remain untouched. Everything else is going up. Some increases are modest, such as for Optimo Mas and Choice ($4 and $5 respectively), but grandfathered users subscribed to tiers like Ultimate or Premier will pay $10 more per month.

The move raises the base pricing of DirecTV’s Stream Choice to $90 per month, while Premier will cost $150 per month. Satellite customers won’t be immune to increases, either. Outside of minimum service and ChineseDirect Plus, you’ll see increases on January 23rd between $1 (for most Basic and Family plans) to $10 (for Max and Plus). And while some regional sports fees are dropping in price, there’s now a fifth, $12 per month tier on top of the previous $10 maximum. You may see a price drop or increase depending on your ZIP code.

The firm wasn’t shy about its reasoning. While hikes like these are frequently pinned on steeper programming costs, DirecTV said “higher-than normal inflation” from suppliers was also to blame. It costs more to offer service, and the company is passing on at least some of those costs to its customers.

These increases are common in the TV industry, and that includes streaming rivals. Hulu recently revealed it would raise its Live TV pricing by $5, and YouTube TV now costs $65 per month where it started at just $35. DirecTV is relatively expensive, though, and the higher prices might not help matters.

Spot and the rest of the Boston Dynamics family may get all the attention, but Hyundai has a robotics division separate from the firm it acquired earlier in the year. This week, the automaker unveiled the Mobile Eccentric Droid or MobED, a new mobility platform for taking on even the trickiest surfaces and uneven ground.

The company’s Robotics Lab says it developed MobED to overcome the limitations of existing indoor and service robots. Each of the robot’s wheels features independent power and steering control systems that allow it to rotate in place and move in any direction. It also has an eccentric drive system, hence the name, that allows it to independently adjust the height of each of its wheels. As you can see from the video, that means it can provide a stable platform for something as delicate as glass.  

MobED can expand its wheelbase up to about 25 inches when it needs as much stability as possible. It can also contract to about 17 inches when it finds itself in more complex environments. All told, the platform is approximately 26 inches long, 23 inches wide and 13 inches tall. A 2 kWh battery allows the robot to drive for approximately four hours on a single charge.

Outside of working as a service robot, Hyundai envisions MobED helping out in places like the movie industry where film crews could mount their equipment to the platform. It could also be used for deliveries and other purposes where stability is essential. We’ll get a chance to see more of the robot when Hyundai demos it at CES 2022 next month. However, the company hasn’t said if it plans to commercialize MobED.