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Enlarge / Amazon has provided an educational video explaining how to use a grocery cart when it is also the register. (credit: Amazon)

Amazon is working to expand its grocery business—not Whole Foods, which already has more than 500 store locations, but its Amazon-branded line of register-free stores. While it's easy for a customer to carry a small bag of items around a convenience store like in the first Amazon Go, it's a lot harder to schlep around the volume of groceries one often buys at a regular supermarket. So Amazon is doing what Amazon does and is making the shopping cart itself an essential part of its high-tech retail experience.

The Amazon Dash cart will launch along with the company's Los Angeles supermarket later this year, the company said today. The smart cart requires a customer to log in to the cart using the Amazon app on their phone, then uses a system of cameras and sensors to take stock of what a shopper puts in the basket. It also has a touchscreen panel on the front handle, so consumers can purchase items that don't have barcodes, such as fresh produce. When a shopper is done with their grocery trip, they roll the cart out of the "dash lane," grab their now paid-for groceries, and saunter away.

Amazon's camera-heavy, cashier-free convenience stores first opened to the public in 2017. Earlier this year, the company followed suit with a slightly larger Amazon Go Grocery location in Seattle, which Ars' own Sam Machkovech tested to see exactly how accurate the panopticon supermarket setup is. (Spoiler: It's not completely foolproof, but it can identify if you try to steal a banana.)

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by a new low price for Razer's Viper Ultimate wireless gaming mouse, which is currently down to $100 on Amazon as part of a wider one-day Gold Box sale on Razer gaming products. Normally, the Viper Ultimate retails closer to $130 online.

The Viper Ultimate is the top gaming recommendation in our guide to the best wireless mice. It's expensive, even at this discounted price, but it's tremendous in both comfort and performance. It's lightweight at 74 grams, and while its relatively flat shape makes it a bit better for claw and fingertip grips than palm grips, it's sized well enough to be comfortable for most people. It's primarily made of plastic, but it's tightly built, with grippy rubberized sides, springy click buttons, and PTFE feet that glide smoothly. Its scroll wheel could be quicker, but it's precise, and while it unfortunately uses microUSB instead of USB-C, it can work with an included (and highly flexible) cable. It does have a modicum of RGB lighting built into the logo on the front of the mouse, but for a gaming mouse, its effects are minimal enough to work in an office setting.

Beyond that, the Viper Ultimate should present no issues with accuracy, latency, or responsiveness. It has a high tracking speed (up to 650 IPS) and a massive CPI range of 150 to 20,000. You'll never need to increase the sensitivity that much, but since you can adjust it in 50 CPI increments, all this means you have room to fine-tune the mouse to a place you find comfortable, be it for twitchy shooter games or everyday office work. You can swap between five different sensitivity presets from the mouse itself. This is also a truly ambidextrous design, with a pair of macro buttons on either side, so lefties aren't left out in the cold.

Enlarge / Imahara at w00tstock in 2012. (credit: uncle_shoggoth)

Grant Imahara, a roboticist and electrical engineer whose work appeared in films and TV series such as Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, The Matrix Reloaded, and MythBusters, died suddenly on Monday following a brain aneurysm. He was 49 years old.

Imahara worked for nine years at storied special-effects firm Industrial Light and Magic, where he worked on films such as A.I: Artificial Intelligence, Galaxy Quest, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, the two sequels to The Matrix, and George Lucas' Star Wars prequel trilogy. On the last of those, he was responsible for restoring and recreating the iconic R2D2 robot for the new films. Imahara also created Geoff Petersen, the comedic robot co-host from The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

But he is probably best-known to most people as a member of the build team on MythBusters for many years, with co-hosts Tory Belleci and Kari Byron. On the show, Imahara was often portrayed as the geek of the group as he worked on robots and computers related to the myths that were tested over the course of the series. He was an infectiously positive personality on screen and was beloved by fans.