TechCrunch
중도 성향
IT/기술
Amazon Prime Day 2026 takes place June 23-26
Groceries and household essentials will be a main focus of this year's deals event.
🇺🇸 미국 · "ESSENTIAL" · 총 72건
필터 보기현재 지수
50.0
0 = 부정 우세
50 = 중립
100 = 긍정 우세
최근 7일 기준 11,800건을 분석한 결과, 뉴스 심리지수는 50.0(균형)입니다. 긍정 1건(0.0%)·중립 11,798건(100.0%)·부정 1건(0.0%)이며, 중립 비중이 뚜렷하게 높습니다. 성향 지수는 종합 18.9(중도 균형)입니다.
Groceries and household essentials will be a main focus of this year's deals event.
The four-day sale runs June 23–26, with produce and personal care items among the featured discounts as consumers face economic pressure
As the world confronts challenges of aging populations and healthcare workforce shortages, smart healthcare is no longer optional — it’s essential. And Taiwan is a proven expert. A nationwide digital health infrastructure delivering visible, transformative results. 13 Taiwanese hospitals among Newsweek’s 2026 World’s Best Smart Hospitals, ranking second in Asia. More than 50 artificial intelligence-driven […]
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called the semiconductor company “so essential” to the development of artificial intelligence.
From furniture and ink to professional printing services, use an Office Depot discount code to maximize your savings on every workspace essential.
Give your mattress a refresh without spending a fortune. Shop cleaning essentials from Black+Decker, Utopia Bedding and more, with deals up to 43% off.
Children born after 2013 are the first generation to grow up fully immersed in digital systems, which weren’t designed with them in mind. One‑third of the world’s Internet users are younger than 18, according to UNICEF, yet these systems shaping their daily lives were built for adults. They were optimized for engagement and designed long before people understood how profoundly digital environments influence children. For engineers and technical professionals, online safety is not an abstract policy debate. It is a design challenge that demands rigor, systems thinking, and ethical foresight. Governments around the world are also beginning to recognize the problem. Policymakers from across Australia, Brazil, the European Union, Indonesia, and the United States are responding to risks engineers have long understood: Addictive features, inappropriate content, opaque data practices, and algorithmic systems shape user behavior in ways that their creators did not fully predict. For years, technology moved faster than governance. Now governance is trying to catch up. Global Shift Toward Design Reform Supporting National Digital Ambitions In Athens this year I met with senior leaders of Greek government agencies and key national research institutions. Greece is moving quickly on digital transformation and responsible technology governance, and our discussions reinforced IEEE’s role as a trusted, neutral collaborator. We focused on supporting Greece’s ambitions in digital modernization and public‑sector innovation. We also discussed responsible AI and age-appropriate digital design in Europe and elsewhere. These engagements, grounded in shared values and long‑term commitment, strengthened IEEE’s presence within the European ecosystem and opened new pathways for collaboration on trustworthy AI and child‑focused digital well‑being. The European Union and the United Kingdom have been among the first to act, embedding age‑appropriate digital design into their broader children’s rights agenda. Drawing on IEEE expertise and global best practices, Indonesia is the first country in Asia, and Brazil is the first country in Latin America, to adopt age-appropriate design regulation. Australia is aiming to limit access to harmful content and addictive design features through age restrictions on certain platforms. And in the United States, in addition to federal efforts, states including California, New York, and Utah are enacting approaches including age-appropriate design principles. Across these efforts, a shared realization is emerging. Protecting children online is not simply about filtering content or adding parental controls. It requires rethinking the architecture of digital systems regarding how data is collected, how algorithms make decisions, how interfaces influence attention, and how AI interacts with the developing minds of young users. Engineers and technical professionals understand that design choices are never neutral. They encode values, incentives, and assumptions. When the user is a child, those choices carry greater weight. This is where IEEE’s work becomes more essential. Protecting Children Online For more than a decade, IEEE has been building technical and ethical foundations for safer digital experiences. The first IEEE standard on age-appropriate design in 2021 marked a turning point. It offers a structured, principled approach to designing with children’s rights in mind. The Institute’s 2022 article “Use a New IEEE Standard to Design a Safer Digital World for Kids” highlights how the standard helps translate those principles into engineering practice. Today the IEEE Standards Association’s (SA) Trustworthy Digital Experiences portfolio provides a practical, technically grounded framework for governments and industry. Spanning ethical design, data governance, algorithmic transparency, and child‑focused digital well‑being, it has already initiated discussions with government stakeholders around the world. This work helps bridge the gap between engineering realities and policy ambitions. No single country can solve these challenges alone. Many policymakers lack access to the combined expertise in technology, governance, and children’s rights needed to act quickly and effectively. This collaborative effort helps close that gap. The stakes are high. Without coordinated action, public policy will continue to lag behind technology, leaving children exposed to risks that could have been mitigated through thoughtful design. But with the right frameworks, governments can ensure digital systems respect children’s rights, support healthy development, and promote well‑being. IEEE’s emerging standards and collaborative technology policy work offer a path forward. By grounding national efforts in evidence‑based, rights-aligned design principles, IEEE is helping governments move from reactive regulation to proactive, coherent, and globally informed strategies for protecting children online. Safeguarding childhood in the digital age is both a moral imperative and an engineering challenge. And IEEE is helping to lead the way. —Mary Ellen Randall IEEE president and CEO Please share your thoughts with me: president@ieee.org. This article appears in the June 2026 print issue.
Hoyt Richards was the quintessential “all-American” guy. Tall, tan and blond, Richards was awarded a football scholarship to Princeton before becoming the world’s first male supermodel — jet-setting all over the world to work campaigns for top fashion houses such as Versace, Valentino, Ralph Lauren and Burberry, and posing for the likes of Helmut Newton […]
“With her memoir, Biden has essentially confirmed the speculation that she was part of a cover-up,” Nia-Malika Henderson Henderson wrote on Friday.
After decades of families performing small miracles to afford childcare and sitting for years on waitlists, politicians are finally treating early childhood education like the essential economic infrastructure it is. Around the country, states and cities are pursuing universal preschool and childcare programs. It’s exactly the kind of bold, life-changing social policy that those of […]
This year marks 70 years since President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 into law. For Kansans, that anniversary carries special meaning. Eisenhower understood that a strong transportation network was essential to the safety, commerce, and unity of the United States. His vision helped connect a growing country and gave future […]
All the essential Microsoft programs are available in one bundle for a one-time fee
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more news about gadgets and smartphones, follow Dominic Preston. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started In 2023, the European Union agreed on two landmark pieces […]
Kourtney Kardashian stocks up on the essentials while Olivia Rodrigo puckers up.
Marcia Lucas, who won an Oscar as editor of the original 1977 “Star Wars" and was part of a group of women whose editing was essential to film's New Hollywood era, has died. The post Marcia Lucas, Oscar-Winning ‘Star Wars’ Editor and Ex-Wife of George Lucas, Dies at 80 appeared first on Breitbart.
Energy shocks tied to Middle East turmoil are now feeding into housing, travel and everyday essentials, leaving Kevin Warsh’s Fed with a tough choice.
Every artist needs one key tool to do their job. In a special edition of Variety’s For the Love of the Craft presented by Netflix, senior artisans editor Jazz Tangcay caught up with the artisans behind some of the streamer’s biggest shows to learn about the one essential they need to do their work. “Stranger […]
Electrons are great. We use them to move vehicles, illuminate cities, and, of course, compute. But computation is not confined to the world of electronics. And shifting to alternative nonelectronic realms can unlock unique advantages: Photonic chips, for instance, process information with light while generating little heat. Another compelling alternative is fluidics, which uses pressurized gases or liquids to build logic circuits. Pioneered in the 1960s but sidelined by microchips, the field reemerged in the 1990s as “microfluidics.” This approach aims to shrink laboratories onto a single chip by creating microscopic fluid channels with integrated micropneumatic control systems. Today, there is a second fluidic revival, this time in the domain of soft robotics. Scaling microfluidic designs up to the millimeter-scale range (millifluidics) enables the higher flow rates necessary to drive robotic actuators. These robots exploit the nonlinear behaviors of soft materials to create lifelike motion and safer interactions, often utilizing pressurized air. By building systems that “think” with the same air that powers them, we can drastically reduce the need for bulky electronic-to-pneumatic interfaces. This is the focus of my Soiboi Studio robotics lab. With millifluidic logic, I have steadily scaled the complexity of my designs. What began with a simple oscillator has most recently evolved into a clock featuring a soft, four-digit, seven-segment display. What Is Millifluidics? Building on microfluidics research from the early 2000s and recent developments from the Grover Lab at the University of California, Riverside, I’ve developed millifluidic devices using standard 3D printing and silicone casting. The basic architecture is simple: A flexible membrane is sandwiched between rigid layers embedded with networks of air channels. Just as electronics rely on differing voltage potentials, these fluidic circuits operate on the pressure difference between atmospheric pressure (logical 0) and a near-vacuum at around −60 kilopascals of relative pressure (logical 1). Using negative pressure means the membrane is pulled into openings. This creates robust seals that allow me to replicate electronic building blocks. A cast silicone membrane forms the face of the clock [top], while behind it sits 3D-printed millifluidic blocks [middle rows]. An Arduino Uno controls driver boards that operate solenoids, which are connected to valves that are attached to a vacuum pump [bottom row].James Provost While fluidic resistors are easily realized by adjusting the channel geometry, the heart of the system is a valve that mimics a metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor, or MOSFET. This vacuum “transistor” features a flow layer with two chambers (the source and drain) divided by a central valve seat and a control layer containing a cavity (the gate). A membrane runs between the control and flow layers and normally prevents airflow between the source and drain chambers. To switch the transistor on, a vacuum is applied to the gate chamber, sucking the membrane into the cavity and lifting it off the seat. This opens a path for airflow, equivalent to closing an electric circuit. By adding a small aperture to the membrane, I created a check valve—the fluidic equivalent of a diode. By combining transistors and resistive “pull-down” channels, I can build a full suite of logic gates. The original microfluidic designs that inspired me were fabricated from etched glass and milled acrylic. Adapting them for a standard 3D printer required reengineering the logic elements and mastering two critical fabrication techniques. First, I need airtight prints, yet printed plastic is notoriously porous. By printing at elevated temperatures, slow speeds, and slight overextrusion, I was able to fill microscopic gaps. When you’re using transparent filament, there’s a handy visual indicator: The more transparent the plastic appears, the lower its porosity. Second, I used glass for my print bed. By printing the upper and lower chambers directly against this bed, I got the interface surface to become mirror smooth. This finish is essential for creating reliable, airtight seals. A 0.3-millimeter silicone membrane is placed between the layers and secured with screws. How Does the Soft Clock Work? The clockface is a cast silicone membrane. Each digit segment is formed by a small underlying cavity. When air is evacuated from this cavity, the membrane is sucked inward to create a concave hollow; when atmospheric pressure is restored, the silicone pops back flush with the surface. The result is a mesmerizing, organic motion. The “brain” of the clock is an Arduino Uno, while the fluidics significantly reduce the hardware footprint. A four-digit, seven-segment display with two separator dots would require 29 solenoid valves to control directly. My clock needs just 11 valves. A pneumatic transistor is off when its upper control chamber is at atmospheric pressure [top]. When air is removed from the control chamber, it lifts a membrane, which allows air to flow between lower flow chambers and turns the transistor on [bottom]. James Provost To understand how it works, consider a standard electronic four-digit, seven-segment LED display. This also uses 11 pins to drive its digits. (In clockface displays, an additional pin is required to drive the separator dots.) Every digit is connected to a shared data bus with seven lines, one per segment. The four control lines select individual digits. Only one digit is illuminated at time, and strobing the digits at least 50 times per second creates the illusion that all four are simultaneously illuminated. Such high-speed switching is not possible with air. Instead, I rely on memory. Each segment acts like a capacitor: By evacuating its cavity (logic 1), you “charge” the segment; by restoring atmospheric pressure (logic 0), you discharge it. Hence, each digit acts as an independent 7-bit memory. If the system is sufficiently airtight, the segments maintain their state for several seconds. Like the electronic display, the system utilizes a seven-line data bus. Each line connects to a solenoid valve that provides either vacuum or atmospheric pressure. To selectively address the individual digits, I placed a fluidic transistor between each segment and its data line. All the transistors’ control inputs for a given digit are combined into one “write enable” line connected to its own solenoid valve. Activating this valve allows me to write data into the corresponding digit’s memory. The clock updates one digit per second, meaning a full cycle across the face takes 4 seconds. This cycle also drives the separator dots: A set of fluidic diodes connects the enable lines to the dots’ cavities. Consequently, as each digit is addressed, the dots pulse automatically. This display is more than a clock; it is a soft robot that happens to tell time. By offloading computation to the same air that powers movement, the clock approaches a new class of machines that are simpler, lighter, and more integrated. I’m now developing a guide for getting started with vacuum-powered logic and may release a refined version of this clock in the future. Watching the silicone skin morph serves as a fascinating reminder that not all logic needs silicon; sometimes, all you need is flexible silicone and a flow of air. This article appears in the June 2026 print issue as “The Soft Clock.”
The Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act is based on the simple idea that workers should be able to pay for daily essentials before they are taxed.
As a woman who's traveled alone to many countries, I never leave home without packing my essentials, like a 55-liter backpack and a water filter.