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Daily Tech News Roundup - 2025-12-14

1. India’s Spinny lines up $160M funding to acquire GoMechanic, sources say
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/13/indias-spinny-lines-up-160m-funding-to-acquire-gomechanic-sources-say/
Summary: Spinny is set to be valued at about $1.8 billion post-money in its latest funding round.

2. DoorDash driver faces felony charges after allegedly spraying customers’ food
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/13/doordash-driver-faces-felony-charges-after-allegedly-spraying-customers-food/
Summary: A woman is facing felony charges in Evansville, Indiana over a DoorDash delivery in which she allegedly sprayed the food with a substance that made the customers vomit.

3. AI data center boom could be bad news for other infrastructure projects
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/13/ai-data-center-boom-could-be-bad-news-for-other-infrastructure-projects/
Summary: Improvements to roads, bridges, and other infrastructure could take a hit as data center construction accelerates.

4. A Kinect for kids is outselling Xbox to become the hot console this holiday
Source: https://www.theverge.com/news/844380/nex-playground-outselling-the-xbox
Summary: It's a small sample size, likely driven by Black Friday discounts and temporary virality, but the Nex Playground has gone from little-known console curiosity to best-seller. It's now on track to quadruple its sales from last year. According to research firm Circana, the Playground was the second best-selling console in the US for the week […]

5. Slab is the first MIDI controller built exclusively for Serato Studio
Source: https://www.theverge.com/tech/839732/serato-slab-midi-controller-studio
Summary: Native Instruments and Ableton have had incredible success with their custom MIDI controllers that integrate with their DAWs (digital audio workstations), Maschine and Live, respectively. Native Instruments' Maschine (yes, it's the name of the hardware and the software) and Ableton's Push are pretty much the gold standard for integration between music-making software and hardware. Serato […]

6. This $1,500 robot cooks dinner while I work
Source: https://www.theverge.com/tech/840599/posha-robot-chef-review
Summary: As I'm sitting in my office writing this review, delicious, cheesy, garlicky scents are wafting up the stairs. I can hear whizzing and whirring, and the occasional clunk, as a robot chef in my kitchen is making macaroni and cheese. Its app tells me there are three minutes left in the process, and based on […]

7. The Nex Playground and Pixel Buds 2A top our list of the best deals this week
Source: https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/844093/nex-playground-google-pixel-buds-2a-deal-sale
Summary: The Nex Playground is apparently one of the hottest consoles this holiday season thanks to its kid-friendly games and fun, motion-controlled gameplay. And now through December 14th, the cube-shaped console is on sale for its Black Friday low of around $199 ($50 off) at Amazon. There are some other great deals still available you might […]

8. The best thing I bought this year: a portable mechanical keyboard
Source: https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/843455/mechanical-keyboard-nyphy-favorite
Summary: As a writer, I take the tools of my trade relatively seriously. I’m not crazy enough to drop $3,600 on a keyboard, but I also find typing on a MacBook for extended periods of time deeply unsatisfying — and distracting. So this spring, I started looking into distraction-free writing setups, which included an e-reader / […]

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