Welcome to Week in Review: TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the week’s biggest news. This week Apple unveiled new iPad models at its Let Loose event, including a new 13-inch display for the iPad Air, as well as Tandem OLED and a new M4 chip for the iPad Pro. But its ad for the new iPad Pro […]
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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is making strides in astronomy with its 122-megapixel primarily infrared photos taken 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth. Impressive stuff. The space agency’s newest sky-peeper takes a different approach, however, performing groundbreaking space science with 36 pixels. It’s not a typo—36 pixels, not 36 megapixels.
The X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), pronounced “crism,” is a collaboration between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The mission’s satellite launched into orbit last September and has been scouring the cosmos for answers to some of science’s most complex questions ever since. The mission’s imaging instrument, Resolve, has a 36-pixel image sensor.
It’s been a hot minute since we could count the individual pixels on an imaging chip, but here we are… The array measures 0.2 inches (5 millimeters) on a side. The device produces a spectrum of X-ray sources between 400 and 12,000 electron volts — up to 5,000 times the energy of visible light — with unprecedented detail. Image credit: NASA/XRISM/Caroline Kilbourne
“Resolve is more than a camera. Its detector takes the temperature of each X-ray that strikes it,” said Brian Williams, NASA’s XRISM project scientist at Goddard, in a press statement. “We call Resolve a microcalorimeter spectrometer because each of its 36 pixels is measuring tiny amounts of heat delivered by each incoming X-ray, allowing us to see the chemical fingerprints of elements making up the sources in unprecedented detail.”
Equipped with an extraordinary array of pixels, the Resolve instrument can detect “soft” X-rays, which possess an energy approximately 5,000 times greater than visible light wavelengths. Its primary focus is exploring the hottest cosmic regions, the largest structures, and the most massive celestial objects, such as supermassive black holes. Despite its limited pixel count, each pixel in Resolve is remarkable, capable of generating a rich spectrum of visual data encompassing an energy range from 400 to 12,000 electron volts.
The agency says the instrument can perceive the motions of elements within a target, essentially offering a three-dimensional perspective. Gas moving towards us emits slightly higher energies than usual, while gas moving away emits slightly lower energies. This capability opens up new avenues for scientific exploration. For instance, it enables scientists to understand the flow of hot gas in galaxy clusters and to meticulously track the movement of various elements in the remnants of supernova explosions.
I finally received the rabbit r1 (the company insists on this lowercase styling) I’ve been writing about since its debut at CES in January. And I was able to tell within about 30 seconds of turning it on that it was shipped a couple months too soon — but honestly…that’s fine? It’s weird, relatively cheap, and obviously an experiment. To me that’s something we should be rallying behind, not dunking on.
The actual issues with the r1 are obvious: it doesn’t have enough app integrations, and it “could just be an app.”
As to the first problem, well, it’s completely true at present. There are only four things to connect to: Uber, DoorDash, Spotify, and Midjourney. Leaving aside the clearly too-small number, these aren’t useful for me. I don’t take many cars (and I often use Lyft); I don’t order much food (DoorDash is a bad company); I don’t use Midjourney (and if I did, I wouldn’t use a voice interface); and I don’t use Spotify (Winamp and Plex, if you can believe it). Obviously your mileage might vary, but four isn’t a lot.
As to whether it could just be an app, and for people hung up on the idea that it runs on Android or uses some established APIs — maybe you missed the whole pitch, which is that we already have way too many apps and the point is to offload a lot of common tasks and services to a simpler, less distraction-inducing device.
Clearly I’m not the target audience for this thing. But I’m still the guy holding one and writing for a big tech publication, so let’s take this seriously.
Image Credits: rabbit
The simple truth is I like the idea of the rabbit r1, and I’m OK with waiting until that idea has some time to mature. Rabbit is trying to build version 1.0 (though it’s more like 0.1 at this point) of the all-purpose AI assistant that Google, Apple, and Amazon have been faking for the last decade. Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa… they’re all just natural language command lines for a collection of APIs. None of them really know what to do so they’re just backing one of the fast horses and hoping to catch up at some point. Rabbit has said that their intention was to move fast and ship something while the 900-pound gorillas of the industry are flailing.
The problem comes in separating a company’s ambition from the product you actually pay for. Certainly rabbit’s device is nowhere near the state that CEO Jesse Lyu showed off in various demos and videos. We have perfectly good explanations for that, but it doesn’t change the fact that the r1 is shipping in a totally barebones state.
I can’t in good conscience advise anyone to buy one now. I mean, for me, it does almost nothing. But that hasn’t stopped 100,000 people from doing so already, and I don’t think they’ve been deceived in any way. Rabbit has been pretty open about the fact that it’s going to market as fast as possible (which, despite delays, has still been pretty fast) with a minimum viable product, and will add the features it has talked about later.
In the meantime, you have a few popular apps to use and a competent conversational AI (one you’d normally have to pay for) that can look things up for you, or identify stuff in pictures. There are like…three settings.
A wealth of choices
So it works — for a limited definition of “works.” Sounds like an MVP to me. Is that worth $200 to you? What if they added video calls via WhatsApp? Will it will be worth that $200 when they add Lyft, Tidal, audio transcription, Airbnb, navigation, and Snake? What about next year when you can train it on whatever app you want? (Assuming the company’s vaunted Large Action Model works.) I’m not being facetious; it really is just a question of what you think is worth paying for.
$200 isn’t nothing, but when it comes to consumer electronics — especially in these days of $1,000+ iPhones — it’s not exactly a big ticket item, either. People pay $200 for RAM, for a smart measuring tape, and for nice mechanical keyboards every day. If you told me I could get an Feker 75 Aluminum for $200 right now, I’d order two and never regret it! (If you have one email me!) Meanwhile you’ll never catch me paying full price for a MacBook Pro. Again, it’s up to each of us to decide. (Though you might wait for a security audit too, considering they’ll have authorized sessions for a lot of your accounts.)
Personally, I think it’s a fun peep at a possible future. My phone is in my bag but the r1 is in my pocket, and I can pull it out on a walk and ask “what kinds of hawks and eagles live around here?” rather than opening up the Sibley app and filtering by region. Then I can say, “add prairie falcon to the list of birds I’ve seen in Simplenote.” Then I can say “call a car to the parking lot of Golden Gardens to take me home, and use the cheap option,” and that happens. Then I ask it to record and identify the song playing by someone’s bonfire. (Just ask? In Seattle it isn’t done). And so on.
Sure, I could do all that on my phone. I don’t know about you, but I get kind of tired of holding that thing, and swapping between apps, and getting notifications for stuff that isn’t actually important right now.
The rabbit r1 in use. Hand model: Chris Velazco of the Washington Post.
I like the idea of a more focused device. I like that it’s smallish and safety orange and it has a really bad camera with a complicated swivel mechanism for basically no reason (they make double-ended camera stacks for this exact reason).
Companies used to make all kinds of weird stuff. Remember Google’s weird Nexus Q music thing? Remember how wild smartphones used to be, with unique keyboards, trackballs, cool materials, and weirdo launchers? Tech is so boring now. People do everything on the same device, and everyone’s device is almost exactly the same as everyone else’s.
“What song is this?” Out comes the phone, unlock, swipe swipe tap tap.
“We should see if we can find a cabin out that way for Memorial Day weekend.” Phone, swipe swipe type type scroll scroll.
“Who were the two guys in the Postal Service again?” Phone, tap type scroll tap.
Every day, every thing, same handful of actions. It’s useful, but it’s boring. And it’s been the same for years! Phones are where laptops were in 2007 and smartphones came along to let us know there’s another way to do it. Rabbit is hoping to do the same thing to a lesser extent with the r1, and to be fair so is Humane, though it kind of sounds like the latter has more fundamental problems.
I like that the r1 exists and that it is simultaneously both amazingly futuristic and hilariously limited. Tech should be fun and weird sometimes. Efficiency and reliability are overrated. Plus let me tell you, the homebrew and hacking community are going to go to town on this thing. I can’t wait til I’m playing Tempest on it or, honestly, scrolling down a social media app or reader. Why not? Technology is what we make of it. Rabbit is leaning into that, and I for one think that’s cool.
Razer is in trouble with the FTC over masks it made and sold during the COVID pandemic. The matter is going to cost it around $1.1 million, and some bad press.
Yeah, masks. Not what comes to mind when you think of the word “Razer,” right? You probably associate the brand with gaming keyboards and mice. Heck, I have a Razer mouse plugged into my work computer right now. It’s great. But the company’s masks were not, and that’s a problem.
Not getting its putatively N95 masks properly tested and vetted has landed Razer in trouble with authorities, but the entire saga got us thinking. In an era when we’re seeing buggy electric cars, AI handsets and pins that don’t quite live up to expectations, and even masks that don’t quite mask as promised, are we living in an era of half-baked hardware?
Thinking about this, I wonder if an issue at play is that folks who are pushing the boundaries of what we can build, and how quickly, are applying software strategies — MVPs, quick iterations, etc — to hardware, and it’s not quite converting. The good news is that Razer gaming hardware is still pretty good, even if I suspect the company today regrets digging into the mask space. Hit play, let’s have some fun!
After a successful unveiling at CES, Rabbit is letting journalists try out the R1 — a small orange gadget with an AI-powered voice interface. This comes just weeks after the launch of the Humane Ai Pin, which is similarly pitched as a new kind of mobile device with AI at its center.
While we’re still waiting on in-depth reviews (as opposed to an initial hands-on) of the R1, there are some pretty clear differences between the two devices.
Most noticeably, the Ai Pin is screen-less, relying instead on a voice interface and projector, while the R1 has a 2.88 inch screen (though it’s meant to be used for much more than typing in your WiFi password). And while the AI pin costs $699, plus a $24 monthly subscription, the R1 is just $199. Both, according to TechCrunch’s Brian Heater, show the value of good industrial design.
It sounds like neither the Ai Pin (which got some truly scathing reviews) nor the R1 makes a fully convincing case that it’s time to replace our smartphones — or that AI chatbots are the best way to get information from the internet. But if nothing else, it’s exciting that the hardware industry feels wide open again. Press play, then let us know if you’re playing to try either the R1 or the Ai Pin!
If there’s one overarching takeaway from last night’s Rabbit R1 launch event, it’s this: Hardware can be fun again. After a decade of unquestioned smartphone dominance, there is, once again, excitement to be found in consumer electronics. The wisdom and longevity of any individual product or form factor — while important — can be set aside for a moment. Just sit back and enjoy the show.
Despite flying out of an airport on a monthly basis, last night was my first night at the TWA Hotel nestled among the labyrinthian turnoffs of JFK’s Terminal 5. One rarely stays at hotels where they live, after all. The space is a nod to another era, when people dressed up to board flights and smiling chefs carved up entire legs of ham.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
A rented DeLorean decked in Rabbit branding was parked out front, serving as a postmodern homage to the event’s decade-agnostic embrace of the past. Less glaring was the Ritchie Valens song sandwiched between Motown hits on the elevator speakers as we rode three floors down to the subterranean event space.
Hundreds of attendees were already lined up by the time I arrived at the space. Familiar faces from the world of tech journalism mulled about, but a considerable number were excited early adopters. The two groups were distinguished with “Press” and “VIP” lanyards, respectively. A man standing in front of me in the queue volunteered that he had flown out from Los Angeles specifically for the event.
Like Humane, the team at Rabbit is clearly invested in spectacle. The approaches are similar, but different, with the former investing a good deal of funding into viral videos, including an eclipse teaser that clearly fancied itself a kind of spiritual successor to Apple’s famous “1984” spot. One gets the sense, however, that Rabbit genuinely didn’t anticipate just how much of a buzz the company’s CES 2024 debut would generate.
“When we started building r1, we said internally that we’d be happy if we sold 500 devices on launch day,” the company posted on X. “In 24 hours, we already beat that by 20x!”
It would have been difficult to time the release better. Generative AI hype had reached a fever pitch. Humane had unveiled but had yet to release its Ai Pin. Intel was declaring 2024 the year of the AI PC and soon enough, Samsung would be doing the same for the smartphone. Apple, meanwhile, was promising its own big news on that front in the coming months.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
When putting on a big show, a tech company also needs to dress the part. The focus on product design is another key parallel between Rabbit and Humane. While the form factors are vastly different, both the Ai Pin and R1 are testaments to value of industrial design. For its part, Rabbit took a page out of the Nothing playbook, contracting the stalwarts at Teenage Engineering to create a wildly original-looking product. Indeed, the R1 looks as much like an art piece as anything. It’s a squat, orange object — something you might want to mount to the handlebars of your bicycle for inclement weather.
While the Ai Pin’s defining physical characteristic is its absence of a display, Rabbit embraces the screen — if only modestly so. The display is a mere 2.88 inches and at times feels almost incidental to the cause. That goes double for its touch functionality. While, much like the Ai Pin, a bulk of your interactions are performed with voice, a combination analog scroll and button mostly fill in the gaps.
Beyond entering a Wi-Fi password, there aren’t a ton of reasons to touch the screen. That’s for the best. The most monumental and ongoing task facing the nascent AI device space is justifying its existence outside of the smartphone. After all, anyone with a half-decent mobile device (and plenty of non-decent ones) has access to generative AI models. These are largely accessed via browsers or stand-alone apps at the moment, but models like ChatGPT and Google Gemini will be increasingly baked into mobile operating systems in the months and years to come.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
When I posed the question to Humane, co-founder and CEO Bethany Bongiorno offered the following anecdote: “[Humane’s co-founders] had gone to this dinner, and there was a family sitting next to us. There were three kids and a mom and dad, and they were on their phones the entire time. It really started a conversation about the incredible tool we built, but also some of the side effects.”
The Ai Pin’s absence of a screen is, in essence, a feature. Again, there’s plenty of cause to question the wisdom and efficacy of that design decision, but regardless, it’s crucial to the product. It’s worth noting that at $199, the barrier of price justification is significantly lower than the Ai Pin’s asking price.
Brian Heater
The truth is that, at this early first-gen stage, novelty is a massive selling point. You either see the appeal of a devoted LLM accessing device or you don’t. Rabbit’s relatively affordable price point opens this world quite a bit. You should also consider that the R1 doesn’t require a monthly service fee, whereas Humane is charging you $24/month for functionality. That, coupled with the (albeit limited) touchscreen and really stellar design, and you can understand why the product has taken a good bit of wind out of the Ai Pin’s sails.
Neither of the devices trade in apps the way modern smartphones do. You interact exclusively with the onboard operating system. This can, however, be connected to other accounts, including Spotify, Uber, Midjourney and DoorDash. The system can take voice recordings and do bidirectional translations. The system can also gain environmental context via the onboard camera.
Among the first tests I threw at it was offering a description of my bookshelf. I pointed the camera at a row of four hardcovers: “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville; “The Barbary Coast” by Herbert Asbury; “Understanding Media” by Marshall McLuhan; and “Dodsworth” by Sinclair Lewis. It universally had difficulty with the last book — understandably, as it was the least clear of the group.
It largely spotted and understood what it was seeing with “Moby Dick,” calling it a “classic” and sometimes offering a brief synopsis. It recognized the middle two books 50% to 75% of the time. It also attempted to offer some context as to the curatorial choices and sometimes went out on a limb to compliment said curation.
There were times, however, when the context was a bit much. I asked the R1 when the Oakland A’s are playing (I added the city after an initial inquiry for just “A’s” showed up as “Ace”), and it gave me tonight’s game time, before running down a list of the next 10 or so teams they’re playing. But hey, I’m a lifelong A’s fan. I relish such defeats.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
Something worth noting for all of these early-stage write-ups is that these sorts of devices are designed to improve and customize results the more you use them. I’m writing this after having only picked up the device last night. I’m going to send it off to Devin for a more in-depth write-up.
Having only played around with the R1 for a few hours, I can definitively tell you that it’s a more accessible device than the Humane Pin, courtesy of the touchscreen and price. It doesn’t solve the cultural screen obsession Humane is interested in — nor does it seem to be shooting for such grandiose ambitions in the first place. Rather, it’s a beautifully designed product that offers a compelling insight into where things may be headed.
Hardware maker Rabbit has tapped a partnership with ElevenLabs to power voice commands on its devices. Rabbit is set to ship the first set of r1 devices next month after getting a ton of attention at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at the start of the year.
The Rabbit r1 will ship with ElevenLabs’ tech, which will enable voice commands from the users and how the pocket AI device talks back to them. At launch, the feature will be available only in English with one voice option. ElevenLabs said that while r1 was poised for voice interaction from the start, the company’s low latency models will make interactions more human-like.
“We’re working with rabbit to bring the future of human-device interaction closer. Our collaboration is about making the r1 a truly dynamic co-pilot, ” ElevenLabs’ CEO Mati Staniszewski said in a prepared statement.
In January, Rabbit said that it will use Perplexity AI’s solutions to answer users’ questions on the device.
Earlier this week, Rabbit said that its first batch of $199 r1s will leave the factory by March 31, and will reach users within a few weeks. The company said users will be able to interact with chatbots, get answers from Perplexity, use bi-directional translation, order rides and foods, and play music through the device right out of the box.
The company’s CEO Jesse Lyu said earlier this month at a StrictlyVC event that rabbit is close to having 100,000 device orders.
Earlier this year, ElevenLabs raised $80 million in Series B from investors like Andreessen Horowitz, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and entrepreneur Daniel Gross to get to the unicorn status. The company has been focusing on providing voice cloning services for creating audiobooks and dubbing movies and TV shows, ads and video game characters. Most recently, India’s audio platform PocketFM, which raised $103 million from Lightspeed, said that it is using ElevenLabs’ services to let creators convert their writings into audio series.
But ElevenLabs has faced its fair share of criticism, with users trying to fool a bank’s authentication system, 4chan users mimicking celebrities and journalists documenting that it is easy to set up voice clones to generate problematic content. The startup has rolled out a tool to detect speech created by its platform and is also working on a tool to detect synthesized audio and distribute it to third parties.
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