Once home to most electric scooters in the US, Miami is turning its back on the micromobility vehicles. Per the Miami Herald, city commissioners voted on Thursday to end a multi-year pilot that had allowed companies like Bird and Lime to operate shared scooter rentals within the city’s core. Those companies now have until 5PM on Friday, November 19th, to collect their electric scooters. If they don’t comply in time, the city will impound the vehicles.
“We’re shutting it down,” Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla told the outlet. “That’s it.” Like in many other cities across the US and other parts of the world, electric scooters were a source of controversy in Miami. Supporters claimed they were an effective solution for last-mile travel, while detractors said they made city sidewalks unsafe. It’s that latter point of view that swayed the commission’s vote.
“On Biscayne Boulevard, at whatever hour of the day, you see kids on these scooters,” said Commissioner Díaz de la Portilla. “This is an accident waiting to happen.” Ken Russell, the lone commissioner who voted against ending the program, pointed out it had been a revenue generator for the city. Miami had earned approximately $2.4 million through the pilot program, and it had used that money to fund new bike lanes.
The vote caught the scooter companies off guard. “We’re extremely disappointed in the Commission’s hasty and short-sighted action to end the scooter program, taking away a safe and popular transportation option used by thousands of Miami residents daily and putting dozens of workers out of a job the week before Thanksgiving,” said Caroline Samponaro, vice president of transit, bike and scooter policy at Lyft, in a statement shared with Engadget.
As the Miami Herald points out, there is a chance scooters could return to Miami. City staff are drafting rules that would allow rental companies to bid for a contract to operate in the city as part of a permanent program. But based on the fact the Miami City Commission would need to vote to authorize such a program, it’s not clear if there’s enough support.
We’ve all had a rough couple of years (decades?), but that doesn’t mean everything will continue to slide downhill. Maybe I’m a foolish optimist, but it’s the holidays, and these 10 technologies and trends make me genuinely hopeful for the future. Maybe we’ll wind up living in the hopeful sci-fi vision of the ‘50s,…
In a ceremony held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel last night, Scarlett Johansson become the 35th actor to win the American Cinematheque Award, which is “presented annually to an extraordinary artist currently making a significant contribution to the art of the Moving Picture.” People who came to praise her and her work…
Many local governments see a silver lining in the shortage of semiconductor chips that has contributed to a slowdown in the global economy. From a report: The shortage of computer chips has zapped energy from the global economy, punishing industries as varied as automakers and medical device manufacturers and contributing to fears about high inflation. But many states and cities in America are starting to see a silver lining: the possibility that efforts to sharply increase chip production in the United States will lead to a busy chip factory in their backyard. And they are racing to get a piece of the potential boom. One of those towns is Taylor, a Texas city of about 17,000 about a 40-minute drive northeast of Austin. Leaders here are pulling out all the stops to get a $17 billion Samsung plant that the company plans to build in the United States starting early next year.
The city, its school district and the county plan to offer Samsung hundreds of millions of dollars in financial incentives, including tax rebates. The community also has arranged for water to be piped in from an adjacent county to be used by the plant. But Taylor is not alone. Officials in Arizona and in Genesee County in upstate New York are also trying to woo the company. So, too, are politicians in nearby Travis County, home to Austin, where Samsung already has a plant. Locations in all three states “offered robust property tax abatement” and funds to build out infrastructure for the plant, Samsung said in a filing. Congress is considering whether to offer its own subsidies to chip makers that build in the United States.
Where Samsung’s plant will land remains anyone’s guess. The company says it is still weighing where to put it. A decision is expected to be announced any day. The federal government has urged companies like Samsung, one of the world’s largest makers of the high-tech components, to build new plants in the United States, calling it an economic and national security imperative. Intel broke ground on two plants in Arizona in September and could announce the location for a planned manufacturing campus by the end of the year. This could just be a warm-up act. The Senate passed a bill to provide chip makers $52 billion in subsidies this year, a plan supported by the Biden administration that would be Washington’s biggest investment in industrial policy in decades. The House has yet to consider it. Nine governors said in a letter to congressional leaders that the funding would “provide a new, powerful tool in our states’ economic development toolboxes.”
We’re officially one week out from Black Friday and it seems most retailers have launched at least a portion of their deals and sales already. You can find the exhaustive list on our deals homepage, but we’ve gathered the highlights here. Bose’s new QuietComfort 45 headphones remain on sale for $279, while the Mac Mini M1 is still $100 off. A bunch of Amazon and Google devices have been discounted, and you can still get the second-generation Apple Pencil for $100. Here are the best early Black Friday tech deals that you can still get today.
Bose QuietComfort 45
Billy Steele/Engadget
Bose’s new QuietComfort 45 headphones are on sale for $279 right now, or $50 off their normal price. We gave them a score of 86 for their clear, balanced audio, improved ANC and long battery life.
Apple’s Mac Mini M1 is on sale for $600 thanks to an automatically applied coupon at Amazon. It was already the most affordable M1 machine you could get, but these deal makes it even cheaper. It’s the best option if you need a compact desktop that runs macOS and has a newer, more powerful processor.
The new colors of the HomePod mini are $5 cheaper right now at B&H Photo, bringing them down to $95 each. It’s not a huge discount, but we rarely see these smart speakers drop below $85 – $90 a piece. We gave the HomePod mini a score of 84 for its solid audio quality, cute and compact design and improved Siri smarts.
The second-generation Apple Pencil is on sale for $100 right now, which is an all-time-low price. It works with all iPads except for the latest 10.2-inch entry-level model, which still supports the first-gen stylus. It’s a must-have if you plan on taking notes or creating artwork with your iPad.
Samsung’s latest foldables are on sale for Black Friday, and you can get a free pair of Galaxy Buds 2 when you buy. The Z Flip 3 is down to $850 while the Z Fold 3 is on sale for $1,500 — if you buy through Amazon, you just have to apply the free-earbuds promotional offer on the product page before checking out.
A number of Google gadgets have been discounted ahead of Black Friday. Key among them are the Pixel 6 smartphone for up to $100 off, the Nest Hub for half off and the Nest Audio for only $60.
Sony’s WH-1000XM4 headphones are on sale for $248, which is a record-low price. These are our current favorite ANC cans and we gave them a score of 94 for their excellent sound quality, good ANC and multi-device connectivity.
Sony’s excellent WF-1000XM4 earbuds are still down to $248. We gave them a score of 86 for their great sound quality, powerful ANC and improved battery life.
Jabra’s Elite 75 earbuds are on sale for $80, which is $70 off and a record low. While not the latest earbuds from Jabra, they remain some of our favorites thanks to their solid audio quality, comfortable design and new ANC abilities that came through a recent software update.
The 4th-generation August WiFi smart lock is on sale for $179 right now. We gave the smart home gadget a score of 80 for its minimalist design, easy installation process and mandatory two-factor authentication.
Samsung’s T7 portable SSD in 1TB has dropped to a record low of $130. You can also grab the 2TB model on sale for $250 right now, too. We like these compact drives for their durable yet sleek design, speedy performance and optional password protection.
Roku’s Streambar is on sale for $80 right now, or $50 off its normal price. That’s the best price we’ve seen on the compact soundbar. It earned a score of 86 from us for its solid audio quality, Dolby Atmos support and built-in 4K streaming technology.
Amazon’s slashed the prices of most of its Echo devices ahead of Black Friday. Of note are the Echo smart speaker for $60 and the latest Echo Show 5 for $45. The sale includes other items like the Echo Buds and the Echo Frames, and we recommend grabbing Echo devices now while they’re at all-time-low prices and before shipping times get too long.
The new Fire TV Stick 4K Max is on sale for $35, or $20 off its normal price. It has all of the same features as the standard 4K streaming stick that Amazon sells, but it also supports WiFi 6 and picture-in-picture live view.
The basic Kindle is on sale for $50, which is a record-low price. While it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the Paperwhite, it remains a solid e-reader thanks to its front-lit display, sleek design and improved contrast display.
Most Blink security cameras have been discounted ahead of Black Friday: a one-pack of the Outdoor cam is on sale for $60, the same configuration for the Indoor camera is down to $50 and the tiny, wired Blink Mini is on sale for $20.
Solo Stove’s early Black Friday sale knocks up to $200 off its fire pits. The midrange Bonfire is on sale for $225, which is $125 off its normal price. These stainless steel fire pits have made it into some of our outdoor-focused guides, and we like them for their attractive designs and their ability to create a cozy fire that doesn’t emit tons of smoke.
New Adobe subscribers can get the All Apps plan for only $30 per month, which is 40 percent off its normal price. That gets you Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro and Acrobat, which are most of Adobe’s most popular programs. Students can save even more: the discount is $16 per month for them, or 70 percent off the normal rate.
Arturia’s early Black Friday sale knocks 50 percent off software through December 8th. That includes the FX Collection 2 vintage plugin set, which is now $199, the V Collection 8 synth keyboard pack for $299 and the Pigments soft synth with the Spectrum sound pack for $99.
Jabra’s 85h wireless headphones are back down to their lowest price yet, only $150. We gave them a score of 84 when they first came out in 2019 for their custom EQ and ANC modes, solid onboard controls and insane battery life.
NordVPN has a promotion going on right now that gets you two years of the service for $89. That’s 68 percent off its normal price. We like NordVPN for its speed, its no-logs policy, the thousands of servers it has to choose from and that one account supports up to six connected devices.
Wellbots has the Segway Kickscooter Max for $150 off, bringing it down to $799 when you use the code ENGADGET150 at checkout. This model has the longest driving range of all Ninebot scooters, pneumatic inflatable tires, 6-hour fast charging and more.
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Some Warhammer 40,000 players think the game’s fascist Imperium of Man faction is awesome, and actually has a few good ideas. It does not. To clarify this point—which more than one Warhammer 40K fan appears to have missed—maker Games Workshop put out a statement saying that you do not, under any circumstances, “gotta…
Linux kernel 5.15 arrived on Halloween with many great new features, such as a brand new NTFS file system implementation contributed by Parangon Software to finally provide Linux users with fully functional NTFS support, realtime preemption locking, in-kernel SMB3 server, as well as DAMON (Data Access MONitor).
On top of all that, Linux 5.15 is an LTS (Long-Term Support) kernel branch, which will be supported for at least a couple of years. As usual, Collabora have made some important contributions themselves to the Linux 5.15 LTS kernel series.
If software development has absorbed a single lesson in the last two decades it’s that there’s an urgent need to integrate security at an early stage rather than leaving flaws to rot dangerously inside compiled code. Optimistically, dubbed shift left, the trick has been working out what this means in an era undergoing an historic transformation of development models.
Enlarge/ A close-up view of Ingenuity on Mars, as seen by the Perseverance rover, in April. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)
Back in early September the small Ingenuity helicopter that NASA sent to Mars along with the Perseverance rover made its 13th flight on the red planet.
It was a technically demanding flight, traversing nearly 210 meters across rocky terrain largely impassable to the rover. Ingenuity reached a maximum altitude of about 8 meters before landing safely again. But what makes this flight truly special is that Perseverance was able to track the helicopter’s takeoff and flight.
Imagery from this flight was only recently relayed back to Earth, and the Mars rover team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has compiled the data into a video showing nearly the entire flight. This footage offers by far the best view we’ve ever seen of Ingenuity flying across the surface of Mars.
While it wasn’t available when the Pixel 6 first went on sale last month, Google has finally added an official listing for the Pixel Stand 2 on the Google Store.
From the moment that Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebopwas announced, fans of the original anime wanted to know what showrunner André Nemec could possibly bring to the classic story that wasn’t already baked into the source material. Rather than simply wondering, io9 asked Nemec directly.
The Halo series has seen plenty of changes over the years, but the core gameplay loop of the single-player campaigns has remained largely the same. You march (or drive or fly) through corridors, chambers, and open-air compounds, gunning down waves of bad guys to get to the next goal and the next cutscene. Then you go somewhere else and march from point A to point B again, maybe with a few small detours for hidden secrets along the way.
Halo Infinite starts out the same way, with two broad tutorial missions set in broken, collapsing space stations that good ol’ Master Chief does his best to help break, at points. After that quick introduction, though, you take an elevator up to the lush outdoor environments of Zeta Halo, where you’re greeted with a much more open-ended gameplay experience than you might expect from the franchise.
I’ve only just scratched the surface of that open-world design while playing with a limited preview build of the game this week, ahead of its launch December 8. Thus far, though, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Halo Infinite is still very much a Halo game, even if the path you take from point A to point B winds a little more than usual.
In the “smart nation,” robot dogs enforce social distancing and flying taxis are just over the horizon. The reality is very different. From a report: Singapore is often rendered as an aspiring techno-utopia. In World Economic Forum videos, in-flight magazines and its own pliant state-backed media, it offers a soft-focus science fiction backdrop where driverless buses ply routes between beach clubs and tech hubs, where robot dogs enforce social distancing and flying taxis flit between glass-fronted public housing overflowing with lush “sky gardens.” It’s a place where pilot projects hint at a future — just over the horizon — where the intractable problems of today are automated out of existence. Where vertical farms and “NEWater” made from treated sewage cut the island’s reliance on neighbouring Malaysia for food and water. Where robots care for the elderly and drones service freighters. Where warehouses and construction sites are staffed by machines, obviating the need for the migrant workers who make Singapore function, but make Singaporeans uncomfortable. Technology keeps them safe, fed and independent; secure in a scary world, but connected to it through telecoms and air travel.
That safety requires constant vigilance. The city must be watched. The smart cameras that are being trialled in Changi are just a part of a nationwide thrust towards treating surveillance as part of everyday life. Ninety-thousand police cameras watch the streets, and by the end of the decade, there will be 200,000. Sensors, including facial recognition cameras and crowd analytics systems, are being positioned across the city. The technology alone isn’t unique — it’s used in many countries. But Singapore’s ruling party sees dangers everywhere, and seems increasingly willing to peer individually and en masse into people’s lives. “What [technology] will do for people is make our lives a hell of a lot easier, more convenient, more easily able to plug into the good life,” Monamie Bhadra Haines, an assistant professor at the Technical University of Denmark, who studies the intersection between technology and society. “But … the surveillance is what is here, now.”
Nonprofit organization Girls Who Code, which specializes in teaching computer science to young women and other marginalized groups, will no longer affiliate itself with Activision Blizzard, after the multibillion-dollar corporation came under fire yet again in a scathing new round of allegations.
The House of Representatives just narrowly passed a more than $2 trillion spending package that will include the first true climate change legislation passed since 2009.
“Most Powerful” is bold talk. But it ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up, right?
“… it boots faster, uses fewer resources, and outperforms Fedora 33 in benchmarking.”
As SystemWeakness.com’s don pablo reports, the Intel-built OS is definitely optimized for Intel hardware, but that “many of the performance gains noticed in Clear Linux for Intel hardware can also be experienced on competing devices.”
When you’re heading somewhere likely to have spotty internet coverage, downloading your favorite TV shows and movies beforehand is always a solid plan. Most streaming services allow you to do this to some extent, but until recently, you could only download Amazon Prime Video content onto a mobile device. Well, no…
How we both create and view art is being changed right before our very eyes. Along with artificial intelligence (AI), LG OLED displays are being used to change the very landscape of the art world.
When one thinks about an art exhibit, the images of exquisite paintings hanging on walls come to mind. Artist Refix Anadol has taken a slightly
As wireless connectivity continues to become more of a necessity than a luxury, engineers and companies are pushing the envelope and we’re seeing innovations arrive at a faster clip than ever before. Namely the emergence of Wi-Fi 6E, which is grabbing the baton from Wi-Fi 6 far earlier than previous wireless upgrades. Companies are hopping
