James Bruton’s latest creation stands out even among his many engineering oddities and builds on the kind of inventive spirit that we saw in his earlier two-ball omnidirectional bike. The British engineer turned full-time YouTuber has now built an electric bike that balances on a single giant ball and can move in any direction based on how the rider leans and how its control systems respond.
The One-Ball Bike has a roughly 2-foot red spherical ball that supports the entire machine and the rider above it. Around this sphere sit three omnidirectional wheels, arranged in an equilateral triangle under the bike’s frame, each driven by a motor capable of pushing the ball forward, backward, or sideways. These omni-wheels have two rows of smaller passive rollers mounted around their circumference, giving the ball smooth omnidirectional movement while distributing the load across many contact points.
Designer: James Burton
Balancing on a single contact point with the ground is a technical challenge that goes far beyond traditional bicycles or even Segway-style scooters, which correct in one axis. The One-Ball Bike must remain stable front-to-back and side-to-side simultaneously, and this is managed by a central control system built around a microcontroller like the Teensy 4.1 and an inertial measurement unit (IMU). The IMU tracks the bike’s orientation in real time, while a PID (proportional-integral-derivative) controller constantly adjusts the speed and direction of the motors to keep the frame upright.
Power comes from multiple lithium polymer battery packs configured to supply around 50 volts to the drive motors. The bike’s structure combines aluminum extrusion for strength with a range of custom-fabricated parts, many of which Bruton 3D-printed himself. This hybrid approach keeps the overall weight manageable while allowing rapid iteration during the build process.
Ride control looks very different from conventional bikes. There are twist grips mounted where handlebars would normally be, letting the rider influence forward and lateral motion by adjusting how they lean and where they apply torque. Steering, in particular, remains a work in progress because the single ball doesn’t behave like a wheel that naturally points in one direction. Bruton has experimented with air-resistance control surfaces and even a makeshift foam wing to bias the bike’s direction when simple wheel control isn’t enough.
Another quirky challenge has been static electricity. The friction between the plastic ball and the surface generates a charge that can disrupt electronics, occasionally causing unexpected shutdowns during testing. Bruton has been investigating shielding and grounding solutions to address this. Bruton’s open-source ethos means all code, CAD designs, and build documentation have been published online, giving other makers a foundation to experiment with and improve upon his design.
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The Samsung Galaxy S27 Ultra, set to debut in early 2027, is generating buzz for its advanced connectivity features, but it’s important to clarify its position in the 6G landscape. According to Miror Pro, the device is not a true 6G phone but rather a high-performance 5G device built with future networks in mind. At […]
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Claude Code skills offer a structured way to enhance AI-driven workflows by combining precision, scalability and adaptability. As Simon Scrapes explains, these skills function like digital standard operating procedures (SOPs), allowing AI agents to execute tasks consistently and efficiently. A defining feature is their use of “progressive disclosure,” where only essential information is initially loaded […]
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Samsung is poised to elevate the smartwatch landscape with the Galaxy Watch 9, a device that signifies a pivotal shift in its technological approach. Moving away from its traditional Exynos chips, Samsung has embraced Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear Elite processor. This transition introduces a new era of performance, efficiency, and AI integration, setting a higher standard […]
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I’ve always believed that the best lighting doesn’t just illuminate a room. It changes the entire mood of a space, the way a good film score changes a scene. And for years, the Melt collection from Tom Dixon has been one of the strongest arguments for that idea. Now, with the Melt Small Portable Light, that same strange, beautiful glow can follow you just about anywhere, and I think that’s a bigger deal than it sounds.
Let me back up a little. The original Melt debuted around 2014, born from a collaboration between Dixon and FRONT, the Swedish design collective known for pushing conceptual boundaries. The inspiration behind it was wonderfully odd: melting glaciers and deep space. Not exactly the kind of mood board you’d expect for a home lighting fixture, but that’s precisely what made the result so arresting.
Designer: Tom Dixon
Through blow molding and vacuum metallization of polycarbonate, the team created these distorted, half-mirrored orbs that look like they were pulled from the surface of another planet. When switched off, the Melt is a sleek, reflective object. When turned on, it becomes translucent, casting a warm, almost liquid glow that feels alive. It’s a genuinely rare trick: a light that is two completely different objects depending on whether it’s working. The Melt went on to become one of Dixon’s signature pieces, taking shape as pendants, chandeliers, floor lamps, and surface lights. You’ve probably seen it in upscale restaurants or on the pages of interior design magazines without even knowing its name. It has that kind of quiet ubiquity among design-literate circles.
So what happens when you take all of that visual drama and shrink it down into a cordless, rechargeable form? You get the Melt Portable, and I think it represents something worth paying attention to beyond just its looks. Portable designer lighting has been having a moment. As rechargeable batteries and LEDs have gotten better and cheaper, brands from Umbra to Hay have released their own cordless lamps aimed at people who want flexibility without sacrificing aesthetics. It’s no longer just about a candle on the dinner table. But most of these portable options, as nice as they are, tend to play it safe with clean geometric shapes and neutral tones. The Melt Portable doesn’t do safe. It carries all the organic, almost alien character of its larger siblings into a palm-sized object, and that commitment to personality is refreshing.
On the practical side, the specs are solid for what it is. The 2.5W LED puts out 100 lumens at a warm 3000K color temperature, which is right in that sweet spot for ambient, relaxing light. It’s touch-dimmable, runs for up to 10 hours on a single charge, and recharges via a magnetic USB-A connection in about five hours. It also carries an IP44 rating, meaning it can handle a splash of water, so taking it out to the patio or poolside isn’t going to end in tears. It comes in black, silver, gold, copper, and even a newer fluoro finish for those who want to go bolder.
At around $275 to $330 depending on where you buy it, the Melt Portable is not an impulse purchase. That’s real money for a small rechargeable light. But I’d argue you’re not really paying for lumens here. You’re paying for a decade-old design legacy that’s been miniaturized without losing its soul. Most portable lamps disappear into a room. The Melt Portable is the kind of object that starts conversations, that makes a nightstand or a garden table feel considered and intentional.
What I appreciate most is the underlying philosophy. Tom Dixon has always operated at the intersection of industrial process and visual drama, finding beauty in manufacturing techniques that most designers would treat as purely functional. The vacuum metallization that gives the Melt its signature look is borrowed from the way sunglasses are coated. That kind of cross-pollination between industries, repurposing a process from one field to create something unexpected in another, is what keeps design interesting.
The Melt Portable won’t be for everyone. If you want maximum brightness or the most efficient cost-per-lumen ratio, look elsewhere. But if you believe that light is as much about feeling as it is about function, and that good design deserves to be untethered, this little glowing orb makes a compelling case for itself.
The post This $300 Lamp Looks Like Melted Metal and Runs for 10 Hours first appeared on Yanko Design.
The recent leak of GPT-5.4 has sparked significant interest, offering a detailed glimpse into the model’s upgraded capabilities. Universe of AI highlights one of the standout features: an expanded context window capable of processing up to 1 million tokens in a single session. This improvement allows users to handle large-scale data more efficiently, whether analyzing […]
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Apple has officially launched the M4 iPad Air, the latest iteration in its widely acclaimed tablet lineup. This new model brings a blend of performance enhancements and connectivity upgrades while maintaining the familiar design and price point that users have come to expect. It is particularly targeted at individuals with older iPads, offering a significant […]
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You'd be forgiven for thinking that the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra looks a lot like the last four models. That's because it does, right down to its general design and rear camera layout. But on Samsung's latest flagship phone, some stealthy upgrades are hidden beneath its classic blocky silhouette that might go unnoticed by the casual observer. Those help make this year's release feel like a better deal than its most recent predecessor. It remains rather expensive, starting at the same $1,300 as before, but considering the price of RAM these days, that almost feels like a blessing. So while it won't hit you over the head with monumental changes year over year, it's subtly one of the best Ultras we've gotten in the past half-decade.
After dabbling with titanium frames on the last two Ultras, Samsung returned to aluminum for 2026. The company says this makes it easier to color-match the phone's chassis to the Corning Gorilla Armor 2 panels on the front and back, though it's incredibly difficult to see the impact on my black review unit. Elsewhere, the company shaved a few grams off its total weight and a few millimeters off its thickness (7.9mm and 214 grams), but even when directly comparing the new model to last year's S25 Ultra (8.2mm and 218 grams), that difference is basically imperceptible. I almost think the S26 Ultra's extra sleekness was just so that people would stop saying the Z Fold 7 is lighter than Samsung's most premium traditional candybar-style handset.
As always, there's a built-in storage slot for Samsung's S-Pen, which is essentially a carbon copy of what we got last year without any functional changes. However, because the phone's corners are more rounded than ever, one small peculiarity is that now there's a right and wrong way to insert it. No matter what you do, the stylus will stay put, but if you don't align the curve on the end of the S-Pen with the shape of the phone's corner, it just doesn't look right.
The S26 Ultra's 6.9-inch screen is easily its most undercover upgrade because it sports essentially the same specs as last year. You still get 2,600 nits of peak brightness with a variable 120Hz refresh rate and a max resolution of 3,120 x 1,440. The secret is that with the touch of a button, you can activate Samsung's Privacy Display, which effectively stops others from spying on your screen when viewed from acute angles (both from the side and up and down).
When you turn the Privacy Display on and look at the phone less than head-on, everything sort of fades to black. Depending on the angle, you may still see an outline of UI elements and some bright spots depending on your content, but the wider you go, the fainter things get. The way it works is that the phone has two sets of subpixels, narrow and wide, the latter of which get turned off when the feature is active. And if you're really concerned about people snooping on you, there's an extra level called Maximum Privacy Protection that makes almost everything completely go gray, though there are trade-offs for this.
When using the standard Privacy Display mode, there's very little impact on image quality and brightness, so it's not that big of a deal to leave it on all the time. If you look closely, you may notice what appears to be a small drop in resolution, though this requires some serious pixel peeping and good eyesight. But with maximum protection on, there's a noticeable drop in contrast and luminance that, for me, isn't worth the increased privacy.
Thankfully, there's a third option, which is to have the phone selectively activate Privacy Display under certain conditions. You can have it automatically turn on when you get notifications or open selected apps (like for banking or authenticators), which is what I prefer. The phone can also enable the feature when you need to enter a PIN, pattern or password. The caveat is that this only applies to system-level prompts like your lock screen. Theoretically, there's no reason the S26 Ultra can't do this anytime you're presented with a password or PIN prompt, but every app needs to be optimized properly, so that isn't a thing just yet. Regardless, it's a powerful tool that can prevent people from gleaning sensitive info while you're and about and I really hope it becomes standard inclusion on all premium phones going forward.
The main engine powering the S26 Ultra is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip for Galaxy along with 12GB or 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage. Its biggest strength lies in its improved NPU, which is 39 percent more powerful than the previous generation, paving the way for improved AI-based features. That said, the rest of the processor provides some nice but not especially impressive gains in processing speed. Its CPU boasted 19 percent better performance while its GPU is around 24 percent beefier. In Geekbench 6, this translated to a multi-core score of 11,240 for its CPU (up from 9,828 on the S25 Ultra) and a GPU score of 25,403 (up from 19,863). Granted, it's not like its predecessor ever struggled with performance, but it's still worth noting that this is essentially as fast as an Android phone can get right now.
Of course, as we progress deeper into the AI era, Samsung has come up with a boatload of new and improved AI-powered tools as well. The most useful of these is Photo Assist, which serves as a one-stop shop for all your editing and content creation needs. In addition to fixing things like reflections or deleting objects in an image, you can use natural language text prompts to generate completely new elements like hats for your pets or pretty much anything else you can think of. And if that's not enough, there's also Samsung's Creative Studio, which is a playground for making all sorts of fun digital art like wallpapers, stickers and greeting cards.
Elsewhere, there's also an improved document scanner and a call screener that's better at blocking spam and robocalls. All told, they're welcome upgrades and they work rather well. Samsung even borrowed an idea from Google's Magic Cue with its Now Nudge feature, which can surface relevant photos based on context anytime you’re using the Samsung keyboard. Unfortunately, what’s arguably the S26 Ultra's coolest new feature, Automated App Actions, isn't available for another week. But the bigger issue is that almost all of these features are things we've seen before on rival devices like the Pixel 10 Pro. While they're nice to have, it's gotten to the point where these tools are more like table stakes for high-end phones nowadays instead of being reasons you might want to upgrade.
While the sensors on the S26 Ultra haven't changed since the previous model, Samsung didn't completely forget about photo upgrades. Alongside its 10-megapixel 3x telephoto, 50MP ultra-wide and 12MP selfie cam, its 200MP main cam and 50MP 5x telephoto camera have larger apertures at f/1.4 and f/2.9, respectively (up from f/1.7 and f/3.4). So on top of already being able to take excellent photos during the day, the UItra's primary shooter is noticeably better at night.
In a shot of some Transformers in a dimmed room, the S26 Ultra basically matched what I shot with a Pixel 10 Pro — aside from some minor differences in white balance. Details were sharp and Samsung's photo was less noisy, which is due in part to a change in the phone's image processing. But the most impressive example of the Ultra's improved picture quality was when I took a very challenging backlit shot of a Grogu doll, in which the S26 did a better job of exposing Baby Yoda's face compared to the P10 Pro. So even without new sensors, Samsung has managed to make an already great main camera just a bit better.
The Galaxy S26 Ultra features a 5,000mAh battery, just like what we got on the previous model. That means it's largely relying on power efficiency gains from its new chip for improved longevity, which it delivers, but it's not a major leap. On our local video rundown test, the S26 Ultra lasted 30 hours and three minutes, which is only about half an hour longer than before. That said, considering the only phones that have fared better were the OnePlus 15 and 15R, it's hard to be upset about its overall runtime.
As for charging, the Ultra has gotten a big leap in speed (assuming you have compatible power adapters) compared to its less expensive siblings. When using a cable, it now supports up to 60 watts versus 45 watts for the S26+ or just 25 watts for the base S26. And it's a similar story when charging wirelessly, with the Ultra now capable of hitting 25 watts when plopped on a pad compared to 20 watts for the S26+ and 15 watts for the S26.
The major annoyance is that Samsung still hasn't given any members of the S26 family a built-in magnetic ring for Qi2 charging or other magnetic accessories. The company claims this was done to help keep the phone as thin as possible, but honestly, I thought we had gotten over the desire for needless sleekness long ago. Sure, you can add that functionality back in by choosing the right case, but that's not a very premium experience and I sincerely hope this is the last time Samsung makes this omission on its flagship phone line.
There's a strange feeling I often get when testing phones. After I got everything updated and set up the way I like, I noticed it even more with the S26 Ultra. The issue is that despite using a brand new device with shiny hardware, better performance and a more refined design, I'm still largely doing the same things and using the same apps as I was before (like Google Maps, Gmail and whatever my go-to mobile games are at the moment). This means my daily flow is basically unchanged from device to device.
However, if you're paying attention, you'll notice things like higher framerates while gaming, sharper and more well-exposed photos at night and helpful suggestions like when the phone surfaces relevant photos in the middle of a text conversation. This goes double for the S26 Ultra, whose biggest upgrade — the Privacy Display — is something meant to stop other people from snooping at what you're doing. When it's on, you probably won't even be able to tell, which is kind of the point.
There’s no doubt that the S26 Ultra is an improvement over last year’s phone. It’s faster, it takes better low-light photos and thanks to all of its new AI features, the handset feels smarter too. But it takes a discerning eye to spot and feel all these differences, particularly if you’re upgrading from a device that’s only a year or two old. So while the S26 Ultra remains the top pick as a phone that can do pretty much everything really well, in the grand scheme of things, it’s more of a stealthy, undercover update than an eye-catching new crown jewel.
Sahko’s cyberpunk-inspired DIY watch blends futuristic aesthetics with practical engineering, offering a unique take on wearable technology. Unveiled at the Open Sauce event in San Francisco, the watch features a flexible circuit board and wraparound high-brightness displays. Its compact design integrates key components like a microcontroller and charging circuitry, while salvaged materials such as disposable […]
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