You are only seeing posts authors requested be public.
Register and Login to participate in discussions with colleagues.
Technology News
Peloton announces $95 “used equipment activation fee”
Peloton will start charging people a one-time $95 "used equipment activation fee" for used bikes purchased from outside of Peloton and its official distribution partners.
The fee will apply in the US and Canada. As pointed out by The Verge, Peloton confirmed in its fiscal Q4 2024 earnings call today that people who buy a used bike directly from Peloton or one of its third-party partners will not be subject to the fee.
During the call, Peloton's interim CEO, Christopher Bruzzo, said that the activation fee "will be a source of incremental revenue and gross profit" and support Peloton's "investments in improving the fitness experience for our members."
A Popular iOS Illustration App Is Saying No to Generative AI
A Popular iOS Illustration App Is Saying No to Generative AI
Google avoids “link tax” bill with deal to fund California journalism and AI
Google has agreed to fund local journalism and an artificial intelligence initiative in California as part of a deal that would reportedly result in lawmakers shelving a proposal to require Google to pay news outlets for distributing their content. But the deal's state financing requires legislative approval as part of California's annual budget process and is drawing criticism from some lawmakers and a union for journalists.
Governor Gavin Newsom is on board, saying that the "agreement represents a major breakthrough in ensuring the survival of newsrooms and bolstering local journalism across California—leveraging substantial tech industry resources without imposing new taxes on Californians." The deal "will provide nearly $250 million in public and private funding over the next five years, with the majority of funding going to newsrooms," said an announcement by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, a Democrat.
A "News Transformation Fund" would be created with funding from the state and Google and be administered by the UC Berkeley School of Journalism. The state would contribute $30 million the first year and $10 million in each of the next four years, according to a summary provided to Ars by Wicks' office.
The 21 Best Movies on Apple TV+ Right Now (August 2024)
FDA Approves New Covid Vaccines Amid Summer Surge
Hydrogels can learn to play Pong
Pong will always hold a special place in the history of gaming as one of the earliest arcade video games. Introduced in 1972, it was a table tennis game featuring very simple graphics and gameplay. In fact, it's simple enough that even non-living materials known as hydrogels can "learn" to play the game by "remembering" previous patterns of electrical stimulation, according to a new paper published in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science.
"Our research shows that even very simple materials can exhibit complex, adaptive behaviors typically associated with living systems or sophisticated AI," said co-author Yoshikatsu Hayashi, a biomedical engineer at the University of Reading in the UK. "This opens up exciting possibilities for developing new types of 'smart' materials that can learn and adapt to their environment."
Hydrogels are soft, flexible biphasic materials that swell but do not dissolve in water. So a hydrogel may contain a large amount of water but still maintain its shape, making it useful for a wide range of applications. Perhaps the best-known use is soft contact lenses, but various kinds of hydrogels are also used in breast implants, disposable diapers, EEG and ECG medical electrodes, glucose biosensors, encapsulating quantum dots, solar-powered water purification, cell cultures, tissue engineering scaffolds, water gel explosives, actuators for soft robotics, supersonic shock-absorbing materials, and sustained-release drug delivery systems, among other uses.
AMD explains, promises partial fixes for Ryzen 9000 performance problems
AMD recently released its Ryzen 9000-series processors, which brought the company's new Zen 5 CPU architecture to desktops for the first time. But we (and multiple other reviewers) had issues getting the chips' performance to match up to AMD's promises, something that the company wasn't able to fully resolve before the processors launched to the public.
AMD has since put out statements explaining some of the discrepancies and promising at least partial fixes for some of them.
A Windows problemThe main fix for slower-than-expected game performance, the company says, will come with the Windows 11 24H2 update later this year, which will include "optimized AMD-specific branch prediction code" that improves Ryzen 9000's performance by between 3 and 13 percent in an AMD-provided cross-section of games and benchmarks (though a handful of tests also showed no change). AMD says that these improvements will also benefit Zen 3- and Zen 4-based Ryzen processors, but that "the biggest boost" will be reserved for Ryzen 9000 and Zen 5.
The Next Frontier for mRNA Could Be Healing Damaged Organs
Town urges curfew over mosquito-spread disease that kills up to 50% of people
A small town in Massachusetts is urging residents to stay indoors in the evenings after the spread of a dangerous mosquito-spread virus reached "critical risk level."
The virus causes Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), which kills between 30 and 50 percent of people who are stricken—who are often children under the age of 15 and the elderly. Around half who survive are left permanently disabled, and some die within a few years due to complications. There is no treatment for EEE. So far, one person in the town—an elderly resident of Oxford—has already become seriously ill with neuroinvasive EEE.
EEE virus is spread by mosquitoes in certain swampy areas of the country, particularly in Atlantic and Gulf Coast states and the Great Lakes region. Mosquitoes shuttle the virus between wild birds and animals, including horses and humans. In humans, the virus causes very few cases in the US each year—an average of 11, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But given the extreme risk of EEE, health officials take any spread seriously.
Tactical Breach Wizards weaves engaging tactics with lively dialogue
Tom Francis and his Suspicious Developments team spent 6.5 years crafting the perfect finale to his defenestration trilogy, and it shows. If you liked blasting people out of windows in Gunpoint or Heat Signature—or snappy writing, endearing characters, wizards, turn-based tactical gameplay, and efficiency challenges—you are going to love Tactical Breach Wizards.
The game's name is as efficient as its design, telling you a lot about its tone and distinct offerings. You play as a small team of magic wielders, each of which you can control, one at a time, in a world where magic use, mana, and all the rest have been militarized and corporatized. There are stasis hexes put on illegally parked cars and even a Traffic Warlock, who, after getting on his bad side, will try to mow you down with an entire ghost highway full of spectral drivers.
Luckily, bad guys like him can only hit you if you don't plan accordingly. Owing to the powers of your teammate Zan, you can foresee everything that will happen within a round of combat (he's a one-second clairvoyant). Move team member Jen to this square on the grid, have her chain-zap three guys, seal the door next to her, then see what that leaves Zan to do. Don't like the outcome? Rewind repeatedly until you've gotten the most out of your team's actions or maybe achieved one of the game's optional achievements. You get "Confidence" for pulling off stunts like "knock three baddies out a window with one action," but they're entirely optional because Confidence only unlocks cool outfits, not powers or gameplay. The actual perks you unlock give you delicious choices to make, deciding which way to take each character's powers to complement or offset one another.
8 things I tried during my first week with the Pixel 98 things I tried during my first week with the Pixel 9Contributor
Apple splits App Store team in two, introduces new leadership
Apple is comprehensively restructuring its long-standing App Store team, splitting the team into two separate divisions as the executive who has run it for more than a decade says goodbye to the company.
There will now be one team for the familiar, Apple-run App Store, and another one to handle alternative app stores in the European Union. Apple recently partially opened the platform to third-party app stores in response to the Digital Markets Act, a set of European regulations meant to break up what legislators and regulators deemed to be app store monopolies.
As noted, the restructuring comes with some notable personnel changes, too. App Store Vice President Matt Fischer, who has been at the helm of the platform since 2010, will leave the company.
Search Ads 360 adds support for Microsoft automated biddingSearch Ads 360 adds support for Microsoft automated biddingManaging Director
6 design details in the new Pixel devices6 design details in the new Pixel devicesContributor
Find the best Google services with Google Essentials on Windows PCsFind the best Google services with Google Essentials on Windows PCsDirector of Strategic Partnerships
Hacker dad who faked death to avoid child support sentenced to prison
A Kentucky man has been sentenced to nearly seven years in prison after hacking into state registries to fake his own death, in hopes of avoiding about $116,000 in child support payments.
In a press release, the US Attorney's Office wrote that Jesse Kipf, 39, was sentenced for charges including computer fraud and aggravated identity theft. On top of hacking state death registries in Arizona, Hawaii, and Vermont, Kipf also "hacked into private businesses and attempted to sell access to networks on the dark web" and stole identities of real people to open two credit accounts.
Now, Kipf has agreed to pay $195,758.65 in damages, including the child support owed to his ex-wife and nearly $80,000 to repair damage to the state death registries.
Feds’ probe of hard braking in Cruise robotaxi crashes ends after recall
Following a successful recall, federal safety investigators have concluded an investigation that was sparked after a number of Cruise robotaxis crashed after braking inappropriately when being followed by other cars. It's a spot of good news for the autonomous driving startup, which has been under heavy scrutiny by federal and state regulators lately.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation opened a preliminary evaluation in December 2022 after reports emerged that Cruise's robotaxis could engage in "inappropriately hard braking" or become immobilized while driving, thus becoming obstacles and potentially causing a crash.
At the time, NHTSA had three reports of Cruise robotaxis braking hard in response to another vehicle or cyclist approaching quickly from behind, resulting in the robotaxi being rear-ended.
Ultimate Ears Everboom: Good Speaker, Tough Sell
From coal plant to data center: Old power stations are being repurposed
Booming demand for artificial intelligence is encouraging big tech companies and their suppliers to explore converting old power stations and industrial sites into data centers.
Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are pouring billions of dollars into building data centers to power cloud computing and AI services, but it has become increasingly challenging to find suitable locations with sufficient power for the energy-hungry facilities.
Many data center markets are “heavily constrained when it comes to land availability and power,” which in turn fueled interest in smaller markets and “more complicated sites” such as old power stations, said Adam Cookson, head of land transactions for real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield’s Emea data center advisory group.