⚡ 30AUG2026 - Mac geeks of a certain age

Happy Sunday everyone!

This week, I've been downloading these gorgeous, colorful light halos as my iPhone home screen wallpaper, contemplating buying this new AI wearable for an elderly family member, adding this new FX mic from Teenage Engineering to my Christmas list, and barely resisting getting this official Cyberpunk 2077-themed Commodore 64 revival.

I also shared a video demo of this fun pocket oracle hardware project I’ve been working on—it’s a tiny e-ink display in a 3D printed case that draws a random tarot card every morning at 7am, and at any time with the push of a button. I made it just for me, but a whole bunch of people seemed to like the idea and expressed interest in building/buying one. Sooooo, I’m going to explore open sourcing it and maybe putting together a small batch to offer for folks that don’t have the tools/inclination to build it themselves. Since posting the demo on Friday, I've now also added the ability to switch between Tarot, I Ching, and Runes, and added reversals for the Tarot and Runes, all with pushes of the onboard buttons. It's been a blast to work on. More info to follow.

Note that some of the links in this issue of the Hiro Report are affiliate links and may earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you.

On to the good stuff!

📰 ReTerminal Sticky E-Paper Reader - The Sticky is a magnetic e-ink/e-paper display that’s about the same size as my beloved Xteink X4. The Sticky features a touchscreen, a microphone, USB-C, temperature/humidity and gyro sensors, and heavy duty magnets, all packaged up and ready to be flashed with one of the many great custom display and/or reader firmware options out there like CrossPoint Reader, SnailOS, TRMNL, CrossInk, and more. This looks like a great option if you’re wanting something a little more capable than what Xteink is offering right now (and at a lower price).

🤖 Microduck — Reinforcement Learning Robot - Pollen Robotics launched pre-orders for the Microduck this week. It’s effectively a 10-inch-tall robot that features a camera, LiDAR, 15 motors, and a beak that can quack and grab things. It comes equipped with a bunch of basic tricks like walking, kicking, roller skating, and standing up from a fall, but the REAL magic is in the reinforcement learning that you can train it on in a virtual simulator on their website. People have already created a bunch of new skills for it like doing headstands and dancing. It looks like a ton of fun and is due to ship before Christmas.

🌬️ Matic - Vacuum and Mop Robot - I’ve written before about how much I love this smart, home cleaning robot. One of the best things about it is how committed the team is to continuing to push out new software updates for it. Apart from recently adding HomeKit integrations, so that you can use Shortcuts and Siri to give the robot home automation commands, this week they rolled out Matic cues and gestures. Now it can listen on device for a wake phrase ("Hey Matic") and then it will response to voice commands like "vacuum the kitchen" or "mop all the tile floors." It also supports gestures, so you can say, "Hey Matic, please clean up this mess," and you can point at the exact spot on the floor where you want it to come vacuum and/or mop. It’s super impressive tech, and my kids absolutely love being able to give the robot chores.

🖥️ Afterglow — classic After Dark screen savers for macOS - Afterglow is a free Mac app that lets you bring the classic After Dark screensavers from the early 1990’s to your modern Macs. For those Mac geeks amongst us of a certain age, seeing Flying Toasters, Fish!, Starry Skyline, Bad Dog, etc. flash across the screen triggers a TON of nostalgia.

🖨️ nurb — describe the part, print the part - I’ve been slowly teaching myself CAD for 3D printing via various YouTube videos and Shapr3d on the iPad. It’s super fun, but I suck at it, and iteration is slow and a pain in the butt. I asked folks online what AI-powered 3D print software they’ve been using for utilitarian print design, and someone recommended nurb… I’ve been totally blown away. You basically plug in the AI service of your choice (Claude, ChatGPT, etc.), and then just describe what you want and it will mock up a 3D model for you. You can then just describe the changes/fixes you want it to make, and it will do so. It will also double check that the file is 3D print ready (no hanging pieces, steep overhangs, etc.) before spitting out an STL or 3MF file for you. Best of all, it can look up the dimensions of things for you and/or use photos and 3D scans you take with your iPhone to get even more accurate in its modeling. It’s free and I’m totally loving it.

That’s it for this week—may your cold drinks be just a little bit colder, and may your hot drinks stay warm just a little longer.