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When I’m marathon training, my schedule revolves around logging miles. Between work, relationships, and hitting the pavement for my training runs, finding time for strength training feels impossible. However, avoiding my dumbbells is a costly mistake: Without complementary strength work, runners often develop muscle imbalances that can lead to injury. So, what I needed was an efficient (read: quick) routine that specifically targets the major muscle groups important for running performance. And that’s exactly what I’m sharing with you today.

Before we dive in, allow me to (yet again) preach the beauty and utility of adjustable dumbbells: no gym membership required, no waiting for equipment, and no excuses about not having enough space. I can knock out this workout in my living room before my morning run, or squeeze it in during lunch breaks, and adjustable dumbbells mean I can switch up the amount of weight I’m lifting within a few seconds. As you’ll see in the photos below, for this workout I’ve been sticking to my extremely lightweight Merach adjustable dumbbells, but when I need to go beyond 10 pounds, I prefer my Nüobells. Let’s get started.

Merach Adjustable Dumbbells, 2.2–8.8 lbs

$50.99
at Amazon

$50.99
at Amazon

Nüobell Adjustable Dumbbells, 5–80 lbs

$785.00
at Amazon

$785.00
at Amazon

Why runners can’t skip strength training

You don’t have to be a runner to get the most out of this 15-minute dumbbell routine, but I did aim to incorporate movements specifically for my needs during marathon training. Running is essentially a series of single-leg jumps, requiring sustained strength, stability, and coordination. After all, each stride places a force of close to three times your body weight through your legs, making strength training not just beneficial but essential for long-term running success.

It tracks that common weaknesses in runners include underdeveloped glutes, tight hip flexors, weak posterior chains, and poor core stability. This routine specifically addresses these issues while building the power and stability that should hopefully translate to faster, more efficient running.

My 15-minute full-body strength training routine

This circuit-style workout alternates between upper and lower body exercises, keeping your heart rate elevated while allowing different muscle groups to recover. Perform each exercise for 45 seconds, followed by 15 seconds of rest to transition to the next movement. I do three rounds, five minutes each. Easy as pie. Here are the movements you need to know.

Goblet squats

Stay tall with your chest upright, weight held close to your ribs, and chin tucked into your chest.
Credit: Meredith Dietz

Hold one dumbbell vertically at chest level, elbows pointing down. Squat down by pushing your hips back and bending your knees, keeping your chest up and core engaged.

This exercise is gold for runners because it strengthens the glutes, quads, and core simultaneously while improving ankle mobility. Strong glutes are crucial for preventing knee injuries and maintaining proper hip alignment during long runs. The goblet position also forces you to maintain an upright torso, mimicking the posture you want while running.

Push-press

Pay special attention to the explosive overhead movement.
Credit: Meredith Dietz

Start with dumbbells at shoulder height, palms facing forward or in. Use a slight knee bend to generate momentum, then explosively press the weights overhead.

This exercise develops power in your shoulders and core while teaching you to transfer force from your lower body through your torso—exactly what happens when you drive your arms during sprint intervals or hill climbs. The explosive nature mirrors the quick, powerful arm swing that propels you (assuming you’re practicing proper running form).

Romanian deadlifts

Go as far down as you can comfortably go while pushing the hips back.
Credit: Meredith Dietz

Hold dumbbells in front of your thighs, feet hip-width apart. Hinge at your hips by pushing them back, lowering the weights while keeping your back straight and chest up.

This movement is essential for runners because it strengthens the entire posterior chain—glutes, hamstrings, and lower back. These muscles provide the power for each stride and help prevent the forward lean that can develop from too much running without adequate strength work. Strong hamstrings also help decelerate your leg at the end of each stride, reducing impact stress.

Bent-over rows

Hinge forward at your hips, keeping your back straight.
Credit: Meredith Dietz

Keep your back straight and elbows close to your body.
Credit: Meredith Dietz

Hinge forward at your hips, keeping your back straight. Pull the dumbbells to your ribs, squeezing your shoulder blades together. Runners often develop rounded shoulders from desk work and the forward posture of running.

This exercise counteracts that tendency by strengthening the rhomboids, middle traps, and rear delts. Better posture means more efficient breathing and less energy wasted fighting against poor alignment during long runs.

Reverse lunges

Let your back knee kiss the floor under you.
Credit: Meredith Dietz

A true classic for runners. Step back with one leg, lowering your back knee toward the ground while keeping your front shin vertical. Push through your front heel to return to standing, then alternate legs.

This move targets the glutes and quads in a way that closely mimics the landing and push-off phases of your running stride. The reverse motion is easier on the knees than forward lunges, making it perfect for runners who already put significant stress on these joints. To avoid stressing your knees, make sure you’re really pushing through your heel, and keep your hips in line with your shoulders.

Make your at-home dumbbell workout work for you

If you’re new to strength training, start light—somewhere between 5-10 pounds is perfect. Focus on getting your form right first. Once that feels solid, you can slowly increase the weight to keep challenging yourself.

The timing of this workout matters, with the understanding that the best workout for you is the one you actually will do consistently. I’ve found three approaches that work well with running schedules. On easy run days, I’ll do the strength circuit first as a dynamic warm-up, using lighter weights and focusing on movement quality. After hard running workouts, I’ll wait at least four hours before lifting to avoid compromising recovery. On rest days from running, this becomes my primary workout, allowing me to use heavier weights and really focus on strength gains.

Again, I think my adjustable dumbbells are key to this flexibility. I can quickly dial in the right weight for each exercise and my current energy level. My goblet squats call for 35 pounds, while my push-press works better with about 15 pounds per hand.

Whatever moves you choose, finding a quick circuit workout for you can truly pay dividends in running performance and injury prevention. Fifteen minutes, three times per week is a small price for becoming a stronger, more resilient runner.

This is a video from Hyundai Motor Group demonstrating a pair of robots that can scoot under cars to lift them and move them around at will (and, eventually, hacked to steal supercars). I like how the robots showboat for a while after parking the first car before moving on to the second. Just to be clear though, they will be docked pay and electrical nourishment for the unscheduled break.

Chinese propaganda and social engineering operations have been using ChatGPT to create posts, comments and drive engagement at home and abroad. OpenAI said it has recently disrupted four Chinese covert influence operations that were using its tool to generate social media posts and replies on platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Reddit and X.

The comments generated revolved around several topics from US politics to a Taiwanese video game where players fight the Chinese Communist Party. ChatGPT was used to create social media posts that both supported and decried different hot button issues to stir up misleading political discourse.

Ben Nimmo, principal investigator at OpenAI told NPR, “what we’re seeing from China is a growing range of covert operations using a growing range of tactics.” While OpenAI claimed it also disrupted a handful of operations it believes originated in Russia, Iran and North Korea, Nimmo elaborated on the Chinese operations saying they “targeted many different countries and topics […] some of them combined elements of influence operations, social engineering, surveillance.”

This is far from the first time this has occurred. In 2023, researchers from cybersecurity firm Mandiant found that AI-generated content has been used in politically motivated online influence campaigns in numerous instances since 2019.

In 2024, OpenAI published a blog post outlining its efforts to disrupt five state-affiliated operations across China, Iran and North Korea that were using OpenAI models for malicious intent. These applications included debugging code, generating scripts and creating content for use in phishing campaigns.

That same year, OpenAI said it disrupted an Iranian operation that was using ChatGPT to create longform political articles about US elections that were then posted on fake news sites posing as both conservative and progressive outlets. The operation was also creating comments to post on X and Instagram through fake accounts, again espousing opposing points of view.

“We didn’t generally see these operations getting more engagement because of their use of AI,” Nimmo told NPR. “For these operations, better tools don’t necessarily mean better outcomes.”

This offers little comfort. As generative AI gets cheaper and smarter, it stands to reason that its ability to generate content en masse will make influence campaigns like these easier and more affordable to build, even if their efficacy remains unchanged.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/foreign-propagandists-continue-using-chatgpt-in-influence-campaigns-161509862.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader shares a report: Vibe coding might sound chill, but Andrew Ng thinks the name is unfortunate. The Stanford professor and former Google Brain scientist said the term misleads people into imagining engineers just “go with the vibes” when using AI tools to write code. “It’s unfortunate that that’s called vibe coding,” Ng said at a firechat chat in May at conference LangChain Interrupt. “It’s misleading a lot of people into thinking, just go with the vibes, you know — accept this, reject that.”

In reality, coding with AI is “a deeply intellectual exercise,” he said. “When I’m coding for a day with AI coding assistance, I’m frankly exhausted by the end of the day.” Despite his gripe with the name, Ng is bullish on AI-assisted coding. He said it’s “fantastic” that developers can now write software faster with these tools, sometimes while “barely looking at the code.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week has brought some exciting news that is thrilling to me not only as a diehard Peloton user, but someone with a well-documented obsession with buying and selling things on resale platforms: Peloton is rolling out its own marketplace for pre-owned fitness equipment. Called Repowered, it currently allows users to list their Bikes, Treads, and other equipment and soon will allow shoppers to buy them.

How Peloton: Repowered works

When you navigate to the Repowered site, you’re greeted with a welcome message, plus the information that the site is “currently only open for listing items, with the ability to purchase items coming soon.” You’re prompted to enter your email address if you want to be the “first to know” when the marketplace actually goes live.

Listing your equipment

You can start the process of listing your Peloton equipment now—after all, the site needs inventory before anyone can buy anything. You can list a Bike, Tread, or Row, but only if you’re in the Boston, New York City, or Washington, DC, metro areas. You can also list smaller accessories no matter where you live.

You’ll be prompted to enter your device’s serial number if you’re selling one of the larger pieces of equipment. For smaller pieces, like weights, you can use the search function to input your item. You’ll be able to set your own price, but the site will suggest a price for you based on information you provide, like age, condition, etc.

Actually selling your stuff

Once you have listed an item and the marketplace formally opens to buyers, it’s going to be your responsibility to arrange a pickup with the buyer or schedule delivery. Accessories and smaller items can be shipped separately, similar to how it works when you sell something on, say, Poshmark or Depop. From there, you’ll get paid.

Additionally, when you sell on Repowered, you get up to $600 off a future Peloton purchase. Essentially, if you’ve been considering, say, upgrading from a Bike to a Bike+, you can sell your Bike and receive a discount on a newer model. Here’s what you get off from each product if you make a Repowered sale:

• Bike+: $400 off

• Tread: $200 off

• Tread+: $600 off

• Row: $200 off

Because the platform is so new (and not fully operational), it’s not clear exactly how you’ll get paid or how much people are listing their goods for. You’ll get 70% of your earnings, though, which is a decent split. When I sell on Poshmark, I keep 80% of my sale price. When I sell on Depop, I keep 90%. There, though, I’m selling clothes and small electronics—items that don’t have a big sticker price. For something like a high-tech, at-home workout bike, 70% seems to be, in my professional opinion, a pretty decent split, not to mention that the discount toward a new Peloton purchase.

Why this is a great option

There are two main reasons this has the potential to be better than buying or selling on another platform, like Facebook Marketplace.

First, you never have to worry about scams because Peloton itself is coordinating the sale and every part of the transaction takes place on the app. Second, as long as you’re in one of those main markets, Peloton handles delivery, just as they do with their new and refurbished products. You can schedule pickups directly with buyers and sellers, but the platform will only provide a general radius of the product’s location. If you’re selling, this means no one will ever get your address and you have the freedom to meet in a public place within that radius.

Repowered is in its early stages, but it could fill a gap in the market by providing a trustworthy source of at-home fitness equipment for those who might otherwise find the cost prohibitive. Peloton has announced that the activation fee for used equipment is down from $95 to $45, too. The All Access Membership, required to take classes and use the devices to their maximum capabilities, is still $44 per month.

NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas—Abigail Lindsey worries the days of peace and quiet might be nearing an end at the rural, wooded property where she lives with her son. On the old ranch across the street, developers want to build an expansive complex of supercomputers for artificial intelligence, plus a large, private power plant to run it.

The plant would be big enough to power a major city, with 1,200 megawatts of planned generation capacity fueled by West Texas shale gas. It will only supply the new data center, and possibly other large data centers recently proposed, down the road.

“It just sucks,” Lindsey said, sitting on her deck in the shade of tall oak trees, outside the city of New Braunfels. “They’ve come in and will completely destroy our way of life: dark skies, quiet and peaceful.”

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Father’s day is around the corner, and this year, I think you should be smart about what you get him. With all the wifi and app enabled tech on the market, your gifts can do more than offer dad a quick laugh or another tie or coffee mug he won’t get much use out of

These nine smart tech gifts can free up more time he can spend with family, and inspire his inner nerd, sports geek or home brewer.

Mini Robot Lawnmower

$1,999.00
at Amazon

$1,999.00
at Amazon

Fitbit Sense 2

$199.95
at Amazon

$249.95
Save $50.00

$199.95
at Amazon

$249.95
Save $50.00

Chilipad Bed Cooling System

$679.15
at Amazon

$679.15
at Amazon

Brisk It Zelos-450 AI Powered and WiFi Grill

$349.99
at Amazon

$399.99
Save $50.00

$349.99
at Amazon

$399.99
Save $50.00

Huppe Smart Basketball Hoop

$599.00
at Huupe

$799.00
Save $200.00

$599.00
at Huupe

$799.00
Save $200.00

This robot lawnmower

There is no better gift than removing a chore from dad’s to-do list. There are now lots of robot lawnmowers on the market, but few are as good as those in Mammotion’s lineup. The new Luba mini is perfect for lawns up to a quarter-acre and is half the price of the full size Luba 2. Setting up this particular mower is also pretty fun—you can think of it like a big remote control car. 

Credit: Amanda Blum

The Fitbit Sense 2

If dad’s been holding back on getting a fitness wearable, Fitbit’s current sale, well-timed for Father’s Day, drops the price of the Sense 2 by 20%. The Sense 2 tracks steps, sleep, ECG, oxygenation, heart and even offers GPS. The band comes in a few different manly colors, including graphite, platinum and blue mist, and your purchase includes a six month membership to the Fitbit app. 

The ChiliPad smart bed-cooling system

There is no marriage conflict more universal than the battle over what temperature to keep the bedroom (and how many blankets to pile on the bed). But smart climate control systems for sleep are now available, and can turn this eternal struggle into a bad memory. Using a Chilipad allows each person to control their precise sleeping temperature: Cooled or heated water passes through the coils in the sleeping pad, and each person controls their own side via the app or controls on the machine itself. 

The Brisk It Zelos smart smoker

Credit: Amanda Blum

People who like to smoke meat spend a lot of time standing over a grill—even overnight. Brisk It, a smart smoker, does away with that requirement, managing the smoking process to your precise specifications, without you’re direct involvement. You can use it to control and monitor every aspect of the process through the beautifully designed and easy-to-use app. Brisk It grills also come with Vera, an AI system that will find recipes for anything you’re trying to create and send the relevant program directly to the grill to execute. 

The Huupe Mini smart basketball hoop

A baseball hoop is a dorm room classic, but the Huupe is the adult version—perfect for offices, the den, and even the family room. It has an LED screen (which doubles as a TV, and is loaded with lots of streamer apps) that provides different backgrounds based on the game you choose. You can boot it up and play against family members or people around the world. The kit comes with everything from a remote and door hanging hardware to a pump for the basketball. 

A Smartref refractometer

Any dad who is into home brewing (or winemaking, mead-making or any alcohol-making, really) has likely have been sweating over some of the more critical stages of fermentation. The Smartref is a modern take on an old tool: the refractomoter, which measures sugar content and moisture levels. This app enabled version can take lab quality measurements of brix and wort, and even suggest how to correct issues with a brew. 

A Ting fire monitor and Aqara water valve controller

In combination, these two devices can do more than give dad a discount on home insurance—they can provide legit peace of mind. The Ting plugs into any outlet and keeps a consistent eye on possible electrical problems that could lead to fires. The Aqara water valve controller connects to your main water line and checks for suspected leaks anywhere in the home, stepping in if there’s unexpected usage. Both are passive tools you monitor from a phone, and in concert, give any home-owning dad (or anyone who owns a home) one less thing to stress about.

Rayban Meta glasses

If you haven’t tried smart glasses yet, they are a true delight, at first and over the long haul—you can’t help but smile like a loon when you put them on and feel like you’re experiencing the future. These Meta Rayban specs are particularly well priced, and give you the ability to take pictures on the fly, listen to audio and take calls via the built-in speakers, and most importantly, ask questions and get immediate answers from Meta’s AI. One of Lifehacker’s resident dads, Stephen Johnson, gave them a solid thumbs up.

California’s carbon allowance auction results released May 29th revealed prices had hit rock bottom, signaling weak corporate demand and casting doubt over the future of the nation’s fourth-largest carbon market. Companies that typically purchase quarterly credits to cover their greenhouse gas emissions are skipping auctions while waiting to see whether the cap-and-trade program will survive beyond its current 2030 expiration date.

The poor auction performance compounds California’s existing $12 billion budget deficit, as the state relies on carbon credit revenues to fund climate programs. Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing to reauthorize the program through the annual budget bill, which must pass by mid-June, but lawmakers are debating fundamental changes to pricing mechanisms and spending priorities.

The uncertainty extends beyond California’s borders, with Washington state exploring whether to link its carbon market to California’s system and Oregon lawmakers reviving their own cap-and-trade legislation.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tesla has asked a judge to block a request for the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to disclose certain data related to crashes involving vehicles that have self-driving features, as Reuters reports. The company claimed in a filing the information is confidential, and that releasing it publicly would give competitors the ability to analyze the effectiveness of each version of the self-driving tech and potentially figure out the number of crashes that are linked to various systems.

The Washington Post last year filed a lawsuit against the NHTSA last year to obtain access to more details about crashes that happened while driver-assistance systems, such as Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD), were engaged. The agency has said the data being requested is exempt from public records laws. The Post contended that while the NHTSA does publish information regarding crashes, it “withholds critical details about the technologies in use and the circumstances and locations of the crashes.” 

Tesla has argued that the company and the NHTSA should be able to keep certain information related to crashes private. This includes details about driver behavior and road conditions, as well as specific versions of driver-assistance tech that may have been in use. 

However, the Post‘s lawyers claimed that information about the versions of hardware and software that may have been in use at the time of crashes isn’t confidential information, since drivers can access that through their vehicle dashboards. Tesla argued in its filing this week that, “Even where Tesla’s individual vehicle owners might know certain information about their own vehicles, such as the version of the ADAS software installed, where a safety incident occurred, the conditions of the road during the accident, and what they were doing leading up to the accident, this information is shared with Tesla with the expectation that it will be kept private.”

According to Electrek, Tesla takes advantage of NHTSA loopholes to have most data relating to crashes involving its vehicles redacted. The company contends that its “self-driving” tech doesn’t make its cars autonomous and that drivers are required to actively supervise its use. In other news, Tesla expects to start deploying its first Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, this month.

Until late May, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency. That initiative is said to have cut about 10 percent of the NHTSA’s staff at the beginning of this year — including about half of a small team that oversees the safety of autonomous vehicles.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/tesla-is-trying-to-stop-certain-self-driving-crash-data-becoming-public-150946549.html?src=rss

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Right now, you can get the EGO Power+ self-propelled lawn mower for 43% off, marking its lowest price ever, according to price trackers. While it’s not quite as hands-free as a robot mower, a self-propelled electric lawn mower can make mowing less physically taxing, noisy, and time-consuming. 

EGO Power+ Self-Propelled Lawn Mower

$599.99
at Amazon

$1,048.99
Save $449.00

$599.99
at Amazon

$1,048.99
Save $449.00

If you’re shopping for an eco-friendly, battery-powered alternative to a gas-powered mower, this cordless option from EGO Power+ offers a mix of features designed for ease of use. Equipped with a 56V 7.5Ah ARC Lithium battery that lasts up to 60 minutes on a single charge, it also comes with a bonus 5.0Ah ARC Lithium battery that extends runtime With the rapid charger, it charges in 40 minutes, and an integrated fuel gauge allows you to stay aware of how much time you have before running out of power.

The gas-free mower features a multi-blade system that lets you switch between modes like mulching, bagging, or side discharge, while self-propelling technology reduces the physical effort often associated with mowing the lawn. Users can choose from eight cutting height positions, and speed can be adjusted by scrolling a dial. You can also mow in low light with the help of the included LED headlights.

Amazon reviewers praise its performance on various terrains, as well as on mixed grass and weeds, its minimal noise level, and ease of use. The self-propelling feature stands out as the major highlight to customers. However, some reviewers state that the Touch Drive tech can be awkward to maneuver at first and may take some getting used to. Additionally, the extra charger has a shorter runtime than gas-powered mowers, which may be a downside for large lawns. Still, if you want to ditch gas-powered mowers for an eco-friendly model that doesn’t sacrifice cut quality and performance, the EGO Power+ self-propelled lawn mower is a strong contender, especially at $449.00 off. 

It’s been a long wait for diehard fans of Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise, but we finally have a fittingly sinister official trailer for the spinoff prequel series, Alien: Earth, coming this summer to FX/Hulu.

As previously reported, the official premise is short and sweet: “When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet’s greatest threat.”

The series is set in 2120, two years before the events of the first film, Alien (1979), in a world where corporate interests are competing to be the first to unlock the key to human longevity—maybe even immortality. Showrunner Noah Hawley has said that the style and mythology will be closer to that film than Prometheus (2012) or Alien: Covenant, both of which were also prequels.

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California law prohibits “operating” a mobile phone while driving. And that makes it illegal for a driver to hold a cellphone in order to look at a map, a state appeals court ruled this week. From a report: In a 2016 law intended to strengthen previous restrictions, “the Legislature intended to prohibit all handheld functions of wireless telephones while driving” and “to encourage drivers to keep their eyes on the road,” said the 6th District Court of Appeal.

A Superior Court panel had reversed a driver’s conviction for a traffic infraction and $158 fine in San Jose, ruling that the law prohibited only “actively using or manipulating” a hand-held phone for actions such as talking or listening, browsing the internet or playing video games while driving. The appeals court reinstated the conviction and the fine, in a ruling that could set a statewide standard unless it is narrowed or overturned on appeal.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Thursday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei argued against a proposed 10-year moratorium on state AI regulation in a New York Times opinion piece, calling the measure shortsighted and overbroad as Congress considers including it in President Trump’s tax policy bill. Anthropic makes Claude, an AI assistant similar to ChatGPT.

Amodei warned that AI is advancing too fast for such a long freeze, predicting these systems “could change the world, fundamentally, within two years; in 10 years, all bets are off.”

As we covered in May, the moratorium would prevent states from regulating AI for a decade. A bipartisan group of state attorneys general has opposed the measure, which would preempt AI laws and regulations recently passed in dozens of states.

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