Pre-order

Tesla

2026-10-16 14:10:19

Tesla lists three new Roadster versions, with Rocket edition sold by invitation only

Tesla’s official website shows that the new Roadster will come in three versions: Performance, Thrust, and Rocket. The Performance version uses a two-seat layout and is street legal, with a $50,000 deposit in the U.S. Tesla’s China website is currently accepting pre-orders only for this model, with a deposit set at RMB 332,000. The Thrust version will be sold in limited quantities and is restricted to track use. It features cold-gas thrusters at the rear, and Tesla says it can accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in under one second. Its U.S. deposit is $250,000, purchases are limited to one car per customer, and supply depends on local regulations. The Rocket version adopts a single-seat layout and adds cold-gas thrusters around the body. Tesla says it can accelerate forward, upward, and turn laterally. The company says the model has flight capability, but it cannot be used on public roads. Sales will be handled through invitations, and online reservations are not yet available.

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Space Network

2026-09-29 12:37:09

Space Network signs $50 million binding pre-order with Philippines-based HQ Company

Space Network said it has signed a binding $50 million pre-order with HQ Company International Holdings in the Philippines to deploy its Freeport low-Earth-orbit satellite communications network in the country. The company described Freeport as a decentralized satellite internet infrastructure project it is developing. Under the plan disclosed by Space Network, the constellation is expected to scale to about 230 satellites by 2029. HQ Company will handle local commercial operations in the Philippines, including customer acquisition and spectrum licensing. The announcement points to a concrete regional deployment arrangement, with Space Network supplying the network infrastructure and its local partner taking charge of market-side execution and regulatory work tied to spectrum access.

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Microduck

2026-08-29 05:36:47

Hugging Face's Pollen Robotics Debuts $399 Open-Source Biped Robot Microduck

Hugging Face's Bordeaux robotics team, Pollen Robotics, has unveiled Microduck, an open-source biped robot retailing at $399. Standing just 25 centimeters tall, the machine is equipped with 15 motors, a camera, LiDAR, two IMUs, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, and a compute platform based on the Rockchip RK3566. All of its actions—walking, sitting, kicking a ball, roller-skating, and standing up after a fall—are learned through reinforcement learning as neural policies in a physical simulator, and can be exported directly to the hardware. The project opens up the training environment, reward functions, domain randomization settings, and the simulation-to-real scheme on GitHub. Users can train locally on a GPU using a framework built on MuJoCo Warp and PPO, obtaining a usable gait in about one to two hours, or use Hugging Face Jobs for cloud-based runs. The robot comes with seven pre-trained behaviors and supports hot-swapping of policies. Pre-orders began on August 27, 2026, with shipments planned before Christmas. While the software is released under Apache-2.0, the mechanical and electronic design files remain closed. (MarkTechPost)

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