Devin Coldewey
Writer & Photographer
The Latest from Devin Coldewey
Gates-backed Lumotive upends lidar conventions using metamaterials
Pretty much every self-driving car on the road, not to mention many a robot and drone, uses lidar to sense its surroundings. But useful as lidar is, it also involves physical compromises that limit it
Original Content podcast: ‘Shrill’ stays positive, despite bad boyfriends and terrible bosses
Many of the themes and stories found in Hulu’s “Shrill” will be familiar to fans of writer Lindy West — after all, it’s based on her book “Shrill: Notes from a Loud Wom
The 9 biggest questions about Google’s Stadia game streaming service
Google's Stadia is an impressive piece of engineering to be sure: Delivering high definition, high framerate, low latency video to devices like tablets and phones is an accomplishment in itself. But t
Google scores a custom AMD GPU to power its Stadia cloud gaming hardware
Google's new Stadia game streaming service may be great for people who don't own a powerful PC or console, but those games have to run somewhere — specifically, in a Google datacenter. And the hardw
Intel and Cray are building a $500 million ‘exascale’ supercomputer for Argonne National Lab
In a way, I have the equivalent of a supercomputer in my pocket. But in another, more important way, that pocket computer is a joke compared with real supercomputers — and Intel and Cray are putting
Successful launch propels OneWeb to $1.25B in new funding
Following the successful launch and deployment of the first six satellites in a planned constellation of hundreds, OneWeb has raised $1.25 billion in funding to kickstart mass production. It’s a
‘Ape Out’ and ‘Baba Is You’ demonstrate the depth of simplicity
The games we see advertised the most aren't necessarily the best representatives for what has become an incredibly diverse medium. Yearly AAA installments and massive open worlds are all well and good
Kamala Harris wants to quadruple the US Digital Service budget and bring it to states
Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA), who has already announced her presidential campaign, has introduced a bill that would double down on one of the rare successful tech upgrade programs in the government to
Tiny claws let drones perch like birds and bats
Drones are useful in countless ways, but that usefulness is often limited by the time they can stay in the air. Shouldn't drones be able to take a load off too? With these special claws attached, they
Opportunity’s last Mars panorama is a showstopper
The Opportunity Mars Rover may be officially offline for good, but its legacy of science and imagery is ongoing — and NASA just shared the last (nearly) complete panorama the robot sent back before
The legendary and indescribable Dwarf Fortress goes non-ASCII and non-free for the first time
Among the growing field of indie games, one truly stands alone: Dwarf Fortress. The unbelievably rich and complex and legendarily user-unfriendly title has been a free staple of awe and frustration fo
Blind users can now explore photos by touch with Microsoft’s Seeing AI
Microsoft's Seeing AI is an app that lets blind and limited-vision folks convert visual data into audio feedback, and it just got a useful new feature. Users can now use touch to explore the objects a
Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (if you have a Pixel)
Voice recognition is a standard part of the smartphone package these days, and a corresponding part is the delay while you wait for Siri, Alexa, or Google to return your query, either correctly interp
Harvard-MIT initiative grants $750K to projects looking to keep tech accountable
Artificial intelligence, or what passes for it, can be found in practically every major tech company and, increasingly, in government programs. A joint Harvard-MIT program just unloaded $750,000 on pr
OpenAI shifts from nonprofit to ‘capped-profit’ to attract capital
OpenAI may not be so open going forward. The former nonprofit announced today that it is restructuring as a "capped-profit" company that cuts returns from investments past a certain point. But some wo
Niantic’s Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is a sorcerous smorgasbord for the Pokémon GO generation
Niantic's follow-up to the absurdly popular Pokémon GO, the long-awaited Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, has one major drawback: unlike its predecessor, you can't explain it in a single sentence. There'
MyEquifax.com is yet another security disaster
One would think that having one of the most high-profile breaches in recent memory would make a company take security to heart, but Equifax is full of surprises. The latest is that its MyEquifax.com s
SpaceX makes history by completing first private crew capsule mission
SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule has safely splashed down in the Atlantic, making it the first privately built crew-capable spacecraft ever to complete a mission to the International Space Station. It's o
Leica’s Q2 is a beautiful camera that I want and will never have
Leica is a brand I respect and appreciate but don't support. Or rather, can't, because I'm not fabulously rich. But if I did have $5,000 to spend on a fixed-lens camera, I'd probably get the new Q2, a
FCC ‘looking into’ reported error throwing broadband deployment numbers off by millions
It's the FCC's official duty to promote connectivity throughout the U.S., and as part of that it issues a yearly report on improvements to broadband deployment. The latest report, however, seems to co