https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev An Astro theme for technology publications: devices, tools, platforms, security, robotics, and the culture around them. en https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/humanoids-are-a-software-problem-now/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/humanoids-are-a-software-problem-now/ Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT The legs work. The hands are getting there. What is holding humanoid robots back has moved decisively into the layer above the hardware. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/the-foldable-finally-stopped-being-a-party-trick/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/the-foldable-finally-stopped-being-a-party-trick/ Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Six years of awkward hinges and plastic creases later, the folding phone has settled into something ordinary. That is the highest compliment hardware can earn. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/what-actually-happens-when-you-press-send/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/what-actually-happens-when-you-press-send/ Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT A message crosses a dozen systems in under a second. Understanding which of them can lose it changes how you design everything downstream. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/the-terminal-is-having-a-design-moment/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/the-terminal-is-having-a-design-moment/ Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT After forty years of being deliberately ugly, the command line has picked up typography, colour theory, and animation. Some of it helps. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/the-city-that-watches-back/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/the-city-that-watches-back/ Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Municipal camera networks grew by accident, one procurement at a time. Nobody designed the system that now exists, which is exactly the problem. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/smartwatches-are-quietly-becoming-medical-devices/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/smartwatches-are-quietly-becoming-medical-devices/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT The step counter was the marketing. The real change is a regulated sensor stack on millions of wrists, and a health system that has not decided what to do with it. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/the-conference-talk-just-moved-house/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/the-conference-talk-just-moved-house/ Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Attendance is down, ticket prices are up, and the forty-minute keynote is not what it was. What replaced it is more useful and less visible. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/your-second-monitor-might-be-slowing-you-down/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/your-second-monitor-might-be-slowing-you-down/ Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT More screen space feels like more capacity. The research on visual search and task switching suggests the relationship is not that simple. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/the-factory-arm-that-learned-to-improvise/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/the-factory-arm-that-learned-to-improvise/ Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Industrial robots were built on the assumption that the world holds still. Removing that assumption changes what a production line can be. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/camera-bumps-are-a-design-decision-not-an-accident/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/camera-bumps-are-a-design-decision-not-an-accident/ Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Everyone complains about the lump on the back of their phone. It is the most deliberate part of the device, and the constraints behind it are more interesting than the complaint. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/latency-is-a-product-feature-not-a-metric/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/latency-is-a-product-feature-not-a-metric/ Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Teams track p99 and celebrate when it drops. Users experience something else entirely, and the gap between them explains a lot of unhappy dashboards. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/pair-programming-survived-the-remote-years/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/pair-programming-survived-the-remote-years/ Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT A practice built around sitting shoulder to shoulder should not have made it through distributed work. It did, in a form its originators would find strange. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/note-taking-apps-keep-solving-the-wrong-problem/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/note-taking-apps-keep-solving-the-wrong-problem/ Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Every year brings a new tool with better linking, better search, and better structure. The bottleneck was never storage. It was retrieval intent. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/your-photos-know-more-than-you-do/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/your-photos-know-more-than-you-do/ Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Every image you take carries a small dossier. Most of it is useful, some of it is surprising, and almost none of it is visible before you share. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/drones-got-quiet-and-that-changed-everything/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/drones-got-quiet-and-that-changed-everything/ Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Noise was the constraint nobody put in the specification. Reducing it opened use cases that no amount of flight time could unlock. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/the-edge-quietly-moved-into-the-city/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/the-edge-quietly-moved-into-the-city/ Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Compute is being installed in cabinets on ordinary streets. The reasons are less about latency than most of the marketing suggests. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/every-team-needs-a-writer/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/every-team-needs-a-writer/ Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Not a technical writer, and not a manager who writes. Someone whose job is to make the team's thinking legible to the team itself. https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/passwords-are-finally-getting-boring/ https://relay.xocoweb.workers.dev/post/passwords-are-finally-getting-boring/ Sun, 12 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Passkeys removed the interesting failure modes from signing in. The remaining problems are administrative, which is a considerable upgrade.