The floppy disk is a long expired form of tech ever since CDs and USB sticks came into the picture. It’s up there with the likes of VHS and cassettes – all of which are old and tired ‘gadgets’ that provide traces of our technological past. It’s a shame your grandchildren (or my children, for that matter) will never understand the beauty in this Floppytable. Modeled after our beloved, pre-cambrian storage medium, the Floppytable is a $940 table designed to look like a giant-sized disk – complete with the sliding shutter that reveals a hidden compartment underneath.
The retro 26-foot long coffee table is a product of Berlin-based design firm Neulant van Exel. Designers clearly have details down to a tee, carving in the arrow signifying the right insertion side right onto the table surface. The table is also made of hot-rolled steel to add sturdiness – a big upgrade from your average plastic floppy that you probably double as coasters or paper weight. It’s a shame the Floppytable won’t be able to store any memory unless you hide some photo albums under that table compartment.
The official website to order the Floppytable doesn’t provide many details except that you can definitely own one if you can afford the hefty price tag. Yep, that near $1,000 price tag is already a part of a Christmas sale, not including shipping. So, if you’re still looking for gift ideas that’ll bring back tons of technological nostalgia, or if you want to confuse the heck out of the next generation, keep Floppytable around to remind your kids of how far tech has come. Touchscreen tablets and wireless streaming didn’t happen overnight, okay?
In 1950, Alan Turing asked whether machines can think. Rather than argue over definitions, he turned the question into a party game, where an interrogator trades typed messages with hidden players and tries to work out who is who. Since then, chatbots have gotten so good that they have already fooled humans in modern versions of the test.
So, four researchers from Paris Cité University asked the obvious follow-up question in a new study published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports: can AI at least catch its own kind?
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.