What happens when you throw a drone into a tornado? 🌪

A heartbeat-recognizing laser, IoT malware, and smart speakers play nurse.

Steph Newton

Published in

Hardware News

4 min readJul 3, 2019

What’s New In Hardware:

There’s new IoT malware called Silex going around: protect yourself. (Fortune)
Sony’s new Aibo is undeniably adorable while also presenting a privacy risk to you and everyone else in your house. (CNET)
Smart devices are about to get more expensive thanks to Trump’s trade war with China. (The Verge)
San Francisco has approved a ban on e-cigarettes that takes effect next year. (CNN)
According to one theory, robots could replace a lot of jobs — so many jobs, in fact, that the resulting growth economy might create more than we lose. (BBC)

Offbeat Tidbits You Might’ve Missed:

The Pentagon has invented a laser that can identify people by their heartbeat. (Engadget)
You can learn a lot about tornadoes by throwing a drone into them. (Gizmodo)
It’s possible to train a smart speaker to recognize the sound of a person having a heart attack, which could cut emergency response time significantly. (IEEE Spectrum)

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3D printing platform Carbon has raised $260 million in a recent round of funding. Madrone Capital Partners and Baillie Gifford co-led the round and were joined by Sequoia Capital, Adidas Ventures, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Fidelity Management & Research Company, JSR Corporation, Temasek, and Arkema.
Picosun, a Finnish manufacturer of atomic layer deposition reactors, has raised $13.6 million in funding, which was led by CapMan Growth fund, Finnish Industry Investment Oy, and First Fellow Partners.
Saluda Medical, an Australian developer of a neuromodulation device for treating axial back pain, has raised $75 million in a recent funding round that was led by Boston Scientific and Redmile Group.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a startup focused on developing commercial fusion energy, has raised $115 million and closed its series A round. Investors include Future Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Lowercase Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures, Safar Partners, Schooner Capital, and Starlight Ventures.
Software Motor Company, a startup creating a software-optimized electric motor system, has raised $31.4 million in series A-2 funding. Investors include JLL Spark and Meson Capital.
Physical security robot creator Cobalt Robotics has raised $35 millionin a recent series B funding round led by Coatue.
RealWear, a California-based maker of head-mounted tablet computers for industrial workers, has raised $80 million in series B funding. Teradyne led and was joined by Bose Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Kopin Corp, and JPMorgan Chase.
Apple has purchased Drive.ai, an autonomous driving startup once valued at $200 million, and hired dozens of Drive.ai engineers. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Apple has invested $100 million in Japan Display, a Japanese electronics screen maker. Apple will join a consortium led by Harvest Group that will invest up to $743 million in the firm.
Resideo Technologies has acquired Pittsburgh-based LifeWhere, a company that uses machine learning to predict the failure of home appliances such as water heaters and HVAC equipment.
Electronics components manufacturer TDK has launched TDK Ventures, a $50 million corporate venture capital fund focused on investing in early-stage startups in material science, energy and power, and related areas such as semiconductors.