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Small businesses are feeling the squeeze heading into midterms, with inflation and Trump administration tariffs hitting hard — particularly in the restaurant industry. Still, a new Chamber of Commerce survey found seventy-one percent of small businesses describe themselves as in good health, suggesting a complicated and uneven picture across the economy.
On the hardware side, a new split mechanical keyboard called the Vantex V one is now available for preorder, starting at one hundred twenty-nine dollars wired and one hundred fifty-nine wireless. The three-pound aluminum board features sixty keys, four programmable layers, and a central touchpad built right in — no separate mouse required, and notably, no Copilot key in sight.
And for anyone who's ever wanted to get lost in Wikipedia but wished it felt more like a video game, a project called WikiCity is rendering one hundred thousand Wikipedia articles as an explorable three-dimensional city. It's a genuinely creative rethinking of how we navigate information — turning a flat encyclopedia into something you can walk through.
That's your briefing for today. Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
