Brian Heater

Brian Heater

Hardware Editor

Brian Heater is the Hardware Editor at TechCrunch. He worked for a number of leading tech publications, including Engadget, PCMag, Laptop, and Tech Times, where he served as the Managing Editor. His writing has appeared in Spin, Wired, Playboy, Entertainment Weekly, The Onion, Boing Boing, Publishers Weekly, The Daily Beast and various other publications. He hosts the weekly Boing Boing interview podcast RiYL, has appeared as a regular NPR contributor and shares his Queens apartment with a rabbit named Juniper.

The Latest from Brian Heater

Apple dismisses Microsoft monopoly comparisons

A week after finding itself at the business end of a landmark lawsuit from the United States Department of Justice, Apple is staunchly denying any parallels between itself and Microsoft in the 1990s.

Understanding humanoid robots

Robots made their stage debut the day after New Year’s 1921. More than half-a-century before the world caught its first glimpse of George Lucas’ droids, a small army of silvery humanoids took to t

Oregon signs right to repair into law

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek on Tuesday signed Senate Bill 1596 into law, joining California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts and Minnesota in a growing list of states embracing a right to repair for cit

Orchard vision system turns farm equipment into AI-powered data collectors

Agricultural robotics are not a new phenomenon. We’ve seen systems that pick apples and berries, kill weeds, plant trees, transport produce and more. But while these functions are understood to be t

NASA’s snake robot is designed to search out life in the icy oceans of a Saturn moon

The snake robot form factor has existed for decades. In addition to the diversity it adds to the world of automation, the design has several pragmatic attributes. The first is redundancy, which allows

Apple WWDC 2024, set for June 10-14, promises to be ‘A(bsolutely) I(ncredible)’

Apple SVP Greg “Joz” Joswiak just confirmed via the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that the company’s annual World Wide Developer Conference is set for June 10-14. I

Viam looks beyond robotics with its automation platform

Since the last time we spoke, Viam didn’t pivot exactly, according to founder and CEO Eliot Horowitz — it’s more of a “rebrand.” Roughly six months ago, the Manhattan-based startup made

Large language models can help home robots recover from errors without human help

There are countless reasons why home robots have found little success post-Roomba. Pricing, practicality, form factor and mapping have all contributed to failure after failure. Even when some or all o

Here’s what the DOJ suit could mean for Apple Watch

Apple’s ecosystem play has — at once — been the envy and bane of the consumer electronics industry for decades. Following a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday, it’s no

Copilot gets its own key on Microsoft’s new Surface devices

We’re still a month or so out from Build, but Microsoft is doing a bit of a trial run this week in the form of an online-only event. What’s been billed as a Windows event is, predictably, focused

Microsoft’s new Adaptive accessibility accessories include an Atari-style joystick

Microsoft has long garnered plaudits for its focus on accessibility. It’s a large segment of the population that is too often disregarded as an afterthought when it comes to product design. The comp

Apple sued by DOJ over iPhone monopoly claims

The United States Department of Justice this morning filed a lawsuit accusing Apple of monopolistic smartphone practices. Sixteen state attorneys general joined the federal department in the massive s

White House proposes up to $8.5B to fund Intel’s domestic chip manufacturing

Well before President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law back in August 2022, Intel has been a cornerstone of U.S. efforts to increase domestic chip manufacturing. This morning, the W

Nvidia and Qualcomm join Open Source Robotics Alliance to support ROS development

The Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) this week announced the launch of the similarly named Open Source Robotics Alliance (OSRA). The new initiative is designed to maintain development for and ma

Nvidia enlists humanoid robotics’ biggest names for new AI platform, GR00T

It’s tough to argue with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang when he notes, “Building foundation models for general humanoid robots is one of the most exciting problems to solve in AI today.” The humanoid f

These 61 robotics companies are hiring

It’s extremely heartening to see our little list effectively double since the last time we did one of these. While it’s true that layoffs continue to plague the tech industry at large, the

Mercedes begins piloting Apptronik humanoid robots

Pilot season has officially begun for the world of humanoid robotics. Last year, Amazon began testing Agility’s Digit robots in select fulfillment centers, while this January, Figure announced a dea

Google I/O set for May 14, 15

The sun is peeking out behind the clouds and the birds are singing. That can only mean one thing: developer season is nearly upon us. While the rest of you are out there touching the proverbial and li

Humanoid robots face continued skepticism at Modex

If your robotics startup is looking to raise, there’s close to a 100% chance you’re going to get two questions from potential investors: 1) How are you incorporating generative AI? and 2) Have you

Behold, TruckBot

One undeniable trend from this year’s Modex conference: suddenly everyone is into truck unloading. The past couple of years have gone from a few select companies to seemingly everyone in and around
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