NASA spacecraft falling to Earth, North Korea's Binance heist

SMRTR Tech

11/3/2026

This Strange-Looking Logging Vehicle Cuts Down Trees From 65 Feet Away

Deep in a German forest, a machine that looks like it escaped from a science fiction nightmare is actually designed to keep workers safe.

The HSM 405H4 8WD is a massive logging rig with a 65-foot boom arm and a saw at the end, built by a German consortium to replace dangerous manual timber harvesting. At nearly 40 metric tons, it's a true heavyweight, with the boom alone tipping the scales at over 8,800 pounds.

During tests in the Altdorfer Wald forest district near Ravensburg, it successfully cut through dozens of spruce and beech trees up to nearly 18 inches in diameter. The only hiccups were a bent saw blade and some stability concerns at full extension, which engineers say can be addressed by inflating the tires with water.

Powered by a 340-horsepower Volvo diesel engine, the machine is still in development, but early results suggest fully mechanized, safer timber harvesting may be closer than we think. [Read More]

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Display Tech

Scientists Just Built an E-Paper Display With 25,000 PPI – Over 50 Times Sharper Than an iPhone (4m read)

Researchers at Uppsala University built a reflective e-paper display reaching 25,000 pixels per inch, over 50 times sharper than an iPhone screen. Using tungsten oxide nanodisks smaller than a human hair, it supports full-color video and uses no backlight, making it ideal for AR/VR glasses and outdoor wearables.

New iPad mini hands-on: Refreshed design, OLED display, more (9m read)

Apple's new iPad mini gets its biggest redesign in years, featuring a thinner 5.4mm body, a larger 8.5-inch OLED display, IP67 water resistance, and the powerful A20 Pro chip. It's the first non-Pro iPad with OLED, delivering better colors and contrast, though the lack of a 120Hz display is a notable drawback. The updated model starts at $699, up from $499 earlier this year.

Did Gary Huber and I invent screen-space reflections on the Amiga in 1995? (39m read)

In 1995, software developers Gary Huber and the author built a reflective water rendering system for the Amiga computer that appears to match screen-space reflections (SSR), a technique commonly credited to Crytek's 2011 work. Their system stored per-pixel depth, elevation, slope, and reflectivity data alongside the main render, then traced reflected rays through that stored data to produce realistic water, including wave ripple and angle-based falloff, running on hardware as slow as a 7 MHz processor with no math coprocessor.

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Robots & 3D

Stringman, an $800 open-source room scale gripper robot (9m read)

Stringman is an $800 open-source robot that hangs from ceiling corners using four cables and a motorized gripper, covering an entire room instead of a fixed desktop area. With just four motors, it carries up to 1.9 kg on average across a 7x7x3 meter space, delivering roughly 500 times more work area per dollar than a comparable research arm. It runs locally on Wi-Fi, requires no coding to set up, and never sends data to external servers.

Video: Figure’s new humanoid robot workforce takes first steps outside US factory (5m read)

Figure's humanoid robot factory, BotQ, has now produced over 1,000 Figure 03 robots, with a new video showing freshly built units walking across the company's campus. Production jumped from one robot per day to one per hour, a 24-fold improvement, as Figure scales toward commercial deployment.

Bambu’s nine-nozzle H3C foretells the future of 3D printing (6m read)

Bambu Lab's new $2,499 H3C 3D printer represents a major step forward in home printing, using nine swappable print heads to combine different materials, colors, and filament sizes in a single print. Its "Swaptek" system switches between nozzles in six seconds, enabling prints that mix rigid and flexible materials or blend colors like an inkjet printer. Early testing shows promise, though some software bugs and filament-loading limitations still need fixing before it's fully ready.

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Web & Privacy

Firefox's new Mini Window is every multitasker's dream (6m read)

Firefox has rolled out a new feature called Mini Window, currently in beta through Firefox Nightly, with a stable release planned for November 10, 2025. It lets users pop out any tab or section of a tab into a floating window that hovers over other Firefox windows, keeping content visible while working elsewhere. This makes multitasking easier, especially on smaller screens, and is more flexible than Chrome's similar but media-only Picture-in-Picture feature.

Researchers warned of North Korean hacking tactics years before record $6.3B Binance heist (4m read)

Featured North Korean hackers stole a record $6.3 billion from Binance by posing as job recruiters and tricking an engineer into downloading malware, which eventually gave them access to systems controlling billions in crypto. Binance suspended withdrawals after the breach and admitted its security tools failed to detect the attack.

YouTuber shares scary audio technique that geolocates your videos to within 100m (5m read)

A YouTuber named Colsto revealed a technique that can pinpoint where a video was recorded using inaudible aircraft sounds. By matching Doppler effect audio signatures with public flight data, the method locates recordings within 100 meters, raising privacy concerns even when videos contain no visual location clues.

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Miscellaneous

A 3,200-pound NASA spacecraft could fall to Earth tonight (2m read)

Featured NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a 3,200-pound space telescope launched in 2004, is falling back to Earth after operating for over 20 years. A rescue mission to boost its orbit failed in August 2025, sealing its fate. Most of the spacecraft will burn up on reentry, with debris risk to humans estimated at 1 in 2,100, far lower than lifetime lightning strike odds.

Dinosaur blood found in fossils for the first time (3m read)

Scientists have found intact red blood cells and oxygen-carrying compounds called heme inside 115-million-year-old dinosaur fossils, a first in paleontology. The discovery, made in bones of a juvenile Brazilian dinosaur, could reshape our understanding of blood evolution, dinosaur biology, and even the possibility of ancient life beyond Earth.

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Bite-Size Stories

Would you risk your health to visit Mars? (2 min read)

Rats exposed to Mars-level cosmic radiation developed significantly more cardiac scar tissue than unexposed rats, suggesting long-duration crewed Mars missions could pose serious heart health risks for astronauts.

Netflix thinks AI might save you from scrolling aimlessly for something to watch (2 min read)

Netflix is testing an AI-powered feature that reduces endless scrolling by suggesting content based on AI-generated themes, helping users quickly find shows or movies that match their mood or interests.

How a Maker Built Fetch the Robot That Plays a Full Game of Fetch Alone (4 min read)

Built for ~$300, Sector 07's autonomous fetch robot uses 3D-printed parts, an Arduino UNO, and dual processors for vision and motor control. Trained on ~400 photos, it independently locates, grabs, and returns a ball, complete with animated eyes and voice.

Microsoft has listed some concrete ways that Windows 11 is getting better with 8GB of RAM (2 min read)

Microsoft is rolling out Windows 11 performance improvements for 8GB RAM systems, optimizing everyday apps to run more smoothly across a wider range of applications.

Will Apple Ever Merge iPadOS and macOS? John Ternus Responds (4 min read)

Apple CEO John Ternus confirmed iPadOS and macOS will remain separate, with no plans for a unified OS. However, the two platforms continue to share more features, such as touchscreen support on the latest MacBook Pro.

Doory: A Self-Hosted Canva Alternative for Making Graphics (2 min read)

Doory is a self-hosted, Canva-like design tool with templates, custom fonts, layers, and animation support. It also offers video exports, real-time collaboration, and brand kits—ideal for teams wanting full control over their data.