Amazon is integrating a new robotics system into its warehouses to improve delivery times, safety and general operations. The AI-powered technology, known as Sequoia, could improve the speed of finding and storing products by up to 75 percent and order fulfillment by up to 25 percent, the Wall Street Journal reports. The system was already introduced in one of Amazon’s Houston-based warehouses.
Sequoia involves vehicles transporting totes of products to a sorting machine. It uses robotic arms and computer vision to identify the inventory before sending it to employees for delivery. One of the safety claims is that this process provides workers with items at waist level, eliminating the need for them to reach for things on high shelves. Sequoia follows the 2022 warehouse introduction of Sparrow, an AI-powered robotic arm that can identify and move the products that remain after this step.
Despite naming safety as a motivator for Sequoia and Sparrow, Amazon’s record isn’t great in this area. A 2020 report from the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal publication found that, between 2016 and 2019, Amazon employees working at automated warehouses sustained injuries at a rate double that of those not working alongside robots. The use of robots increased the number of items employees needed to scan from 100 to up to 400 per hour. It’s also unclear if Sequoia’s implementation will lead to layoffs.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-says-its-new-ai-powered-robots-reduce-fulfilment-time-by-25-percent-122517342.html?src=rss
Panasonic’s 25.2-megapixel Lumix G9 II arrived with a lot of fanfare, as it’s the company’s very first Micro Four Thirds camera with hybrid phase-detect autofocus. And from the first day of launch, Panasonic promoted it as the ultimate small-sensor wildlife and action camera, thanks to the hyper-fast 60 fps shooting speeds and relatively high resolution.
However, I (and others) noticed that it held a lot of promise for content creators, too. The superior hybrid AF is also better for video than past models and it offers up to 5.8K 60p video, 4K at 120p, incredible stabilization and even SSD ProRes capture. On paper, it’s superior to the company’s vlogging-dedicated GH6, though it lacks the latter’s fan and a few other minor features.
That gives the G9 II a bit of an identity crisis. Is it the ultimate content creator camera, an action shooter’s dream or the ultimate hybrid camera? To find out, I’ve got a retail camera with the final production firmware and RAW photo support.
Body
Physically, the G9 II is more like the full-frame S5 II than the six-year-old G9. Gone is the softer, rounded G9 design, in its place a more angular, hard-edged body. It’s relatively large for a Micro Four Thirds camera, weighing 658 grams (OM system’s OM-1 weighs 599 grams), though it has exactly the same heft as the original G9.
The design is more businesslike than pretty, but I like the practicality of it. The ridged grip is secure, and it has every control you need, including a joystick, front, back and rear control dials, a setting dial, shooting dial and numerous buttons. A few things have changed from the G9, as the dual dial on the left is now just a single shooting dial, the on/off switch is in a better location and it has a front shooting dial. This is now a template for Panasonic cameras, so if you’re used to models like the GH5, you’ll adapt quickly.
The menus are easy to use as well, but I wish it had a dedicated photo/video switch with separate controls. For instance, if you set V-log on video, that setting carries over to photos too – and you definitely don’t want that. To keep photos and video apart, you’ll need to employ one of the custom “C” dial settings.
The 1,840K dot LCD display fully articulates for vloggers and self-shooters, of course, and most controls are available by the touchscreen. It comes with a decent 3,680K dot OLED viewfinder that’s on par with other cameras in this price range, like Fujifilm’s X-T5. I’d prefer a little more EVF resolution on a flagship camera, particularly for bird shooting, but it’s not bad.
The G9 II uses the same battery as the S5 II, allowing for a middling 390 shots on a charge. Video endurance is better than the GH6, though, lasting nearly 100 minutes at 4K 60p.
A feature I didn’t expect is SSD recording. That lets you record high-bandwidth ProRes files to an external drive via the USB-C port. It does require some rigging, but is an amazing time saver, as you can edit the files directly with no transcoding needed. It also has a pair of SD UHS-II card slots, but no support for CFexpress like the GH6.
There’s a nice full-sized HDMI port, but the G9 II doesn’t yet support RAW video recording. You also get microphone and headphone jacks, along with a USB-C port that supports 10Gbps transfer speeds and fast PD charging.
Performance
Steve Dent for Engadget
With a new sensor and processor, the G9 II is a speed demon – but this is Panasonic’s first crack at phase-detect autofocus. That does show at times, via issues like occasional lag and an AI feature set lacking compared to rivals.
It can shoot RAW plus JPEG bursts with the mechanical shutter at up to 10 fps, or 60 fps in the SH60 electronic shutter mode with continuous autofocus. If you don’t need that kind of speed (and don’t want to fill the buffer up too rapidly), it also offers 20 fps bursts in electronic mode. Panasonic also introduced a pre-burst mode, which continuously cycles bursts through 1.5 seconds before you fully press the shutter – helping you catch a shot even if you’re a bit slow.
It has a large buffer that allows for over three second bursts at 60 fps and non-stop shooting with the mechanical shutter. However, it takes longer than other cameras to clear the buffer – up to a minute in some cases – due in part to the slowish SD ports. This can be quite annoying, as the camera effectively stops working while the buffer clears.
Steve Dent for Engadget
Still, that kind of speed is impressive – provided the autofocus can keep up. Luckily, the new phase-detect system on the G9 II is mostly up to the task. Shooting at 60fps with eye-detection enabled, the large majority of my shots were in focus with a subject running toward the camera.
It wasn’t quite as reliable for more distant subjects when using Panasonic’s new 200-800mm equivalent telephoto, and didn’t initially lock in as fast as I’d like. The eye detect autofocus, however, was generally reliable for both human and animal subjects. It lacks a specific setting for birds, but the system does seem to automatically switch between birds and deer, for instance, if you’re shooting in the woods.
It can also track motorcycles and cars, and though I didn’t test it on the former, it does a good job tracking vehicles. There’s no “auto” setting either like you’ll find on Canon’s latest models, so you have to go in and switch focus modes manually if you’re shooting a pet and its owner.
Steve Dent for Engadget
In other words, Panasonic is off to a good start but has a way to go to catch up to Sony’s ultra-reliable and more intelligent AF. I expect that to improve over time, though.
If you’re concerned about rolling shutter in electronic mode, don’t be. Readout speeds are fast for a non-stacked sensor, so skew and other issues aren’t an issue except in extreme situations like airplane propellers.
Panasonic has included the same in-body stabilization system as the GH6, so it can reduce shake by up to 8 stops, or 7.5 stops with ultra telephoto lenses. It’s very effective for shooting handheld, letting you grab photos at a quarter second or less with no blur.
Image quality
The G9 II has the same 25.2-megapixel resolution dual gain sensor as the GH6 but image quality for photos is better, with less noise at lower ISO levels.
With five extra megapixels over the original G9, it takes sharper shots and provides some extra detail over rivals like the OM-1 – letting you crop in a bit more. JPEG colors straight out of the camera look great and require little retouching.
The dual-gain sensor also makes it good in low light for a Micro Four Thirds Camera. Very little noise is visible up to ISO 1600, and it’s well managed beyond that up to about ISO 12,800, as long as you expose correctly. That said, it’s always better to have more light with a small-sensor camera, as noise levels can quickly get out of control, particularly with underexposed shots.
RAW files are relatively easy to edit and give you room to dial down highlights or bring up detail in shadows. Again, the small sensor puts it at a disadvantage to full-frame cameras in that regard, however, as more noise will appear at higher ISOs.
The G9 II now has a dynamic range boost function applied automatically. It uses both the high- and low-gain circuits, and combines them into one photo, HDR style. That helps boost dynamic range in bright sunlight and other tricky situations.
The handheld high-resolution mode, meanwhile, combines multiple images into a single 100-megapixel shot, with no tripod required. It works surprisingly well for shots like landscapes with limited movement, drastically boosting resolution. I did notice that the high-resolution JPEG files have an artificial look when you zoom in though, as if the camera is trying to add non-existent detail. For that reason, I’d suggest enabling RAW when using the feature.
Finally, Panasonic took a page from Fujifilm with a new black and white color profile called Leica Monochrome. It was developed in partnership with Leica, obviously, and features brighter highlights and more contrast. It’s easily the nicest photo “look” setting I’ve seen on any Panasonic camera (it’s great for black and white video, too).
Video
Steve Dent for Engadget
Panasonic might not want to hear this, but if I was a content creator looking for a Micro Four Thirds camera, I’d purchase this model over the like-priced GH6.
Yes, the GH6 has a few advantages. It can capture ProRes video directly to CFexpress cards, while you need to rig up an SSD to do the same on the G9 II. It also has a fan that allows unlimited video recording, so it is better for event videographers. Finally, you can output RAW video to an external recorder.
Aside from that, the G9 holds its own. Both can capture 5.7K at up to 60fps, or 120p 4K, and the G9 II supports 10-bit V-Log recording and 4K internal capture with high data rates and easy-to-edit I-frame files, exactly like the GH6. And you can do high-bandwidth ProRes recording via the USB-C port – again, just like the GH6.
The lack of a fan limits the G9 II’s recording times, but not substantially. 4K and 5.7K recording times are effectively unlimited at 30 and 60 fps. Even 4K at 120fps can go over 20 minutes, and few users would ever need that.
And the G9 II does things the GH6 can’t. The phase-detect AF is clearly superior for video, eliminating wobble and focusing much quicker (though the same AF caveats for photography apply). It also has a lower 500 ISO floor for dynamic range-boosted V-log recording, compared to ISO 2,000 for the GH6. That makes it more practical to shoot in sunlight, where the benefits of log and dual-gain are greatest.
Steve Dent for Engadget
As with the GH6, stabilization is excellent for video, though Sony’s ZV-E1 is a touch better. Boost Mode provides near-tripod levels of smoothness for static shots only. Turning on E-Stabilization eliminates the need for a gimbal in some cases (though the electronic IBS on Sony’s ZV-E1 is a hair better). That mode also corrects warping at the edges with wide-angle lenses, a first for mirrorless cameras. As a content creator myself, the stabilization alone would make me reach for the G9 II instead of potentially more capable cameras like Canon’s R6 II – because I know I can capture great footage without a tripod.
4K video is oversampled and thus very sharp, though the cropped 4K 120p is a bit softer. Dynamic range is outstanding in V-log mode, so it’s easy to adjust later, especially at the base ISO 500. Colors are natural, and low-light capability is solid for a small-sensor camera thanks to the dual gain system. So video quality-wise, I have no complaints.
That said, there are a few handy content creator features found on Sony and Canon cameras missing here, like Sony’s dedicated product showcase and focus breathing compensation.
Wrap-up
Steve Dent for Engadget
With all that, the $1,900 G9 II is one of the most capable hybrid cameras I’ve seen. The handling, speed and improved autofocus make it a compelling option for wildlife photographers. But the excellent video capabilities and quality makes it a great choice for content creators as well.
Panasonic’s main competition on the photography side is the $2,000 OM-1. The G9 II has more resolution, but the OM-1 has a faster stacked sensor. For photos, either is a good choice, depending on what you need. However, the G9 II is far superior for video.
On the content creation side, Sony’s $2,200 ZV-E1 is a clear rival, and is a touch better for vloggers. Panasonic’s own GH6, currently discounted to $1,700, is another option. However, neither of those models can touch the G9 II on the photography side. Perhaps the best fully hybrid alternative would be Fujifilm’s X-H2, as it offers both speed and video chops, but it costs $600 more. All told, if you’re someone who tends to do both photography and video, the G9 II is a great choice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/panasonic-g9-ii-review-its-best-micro-four-thirds-camera-to-date-120020562.html?src=rss
Between credit and debit cards, digital wallets, peer-to-peer apps, and bank transfers, sending money digitally has become the norm these days. While this convenience is great, it also comes with risks, especially if you don’t take the proper security precautions. And when it comes to choosing a specific payment…
After weeks of speculation, X has confirmed it will charge new users for the service previously known as Twitter. The company shared details about a new subscription called Not a Bot, which it’s currently testing in New Zealand and the Philippines. The subscription requires new users to pay the equivalent of $1 USD per year to post. “As of October 17, 2023, we’ve started testing Not A Bot, a new subscription method for new users in two countries,” X explained.
X
X also announced major changes to its crowd-sourced fact-checking tool, to stem the flow of misinformation. The company now requires volunteer contributors to include sources on every community note they write. X announced the change after Wired reported that some community notes contributors are worried the tool is being manipulated by bad actors, worsening X’s misinformation problems amid the ongoing Israel–Hamas war. European Union officials have already raised concerns, pointing to the viral spread of video game footage and other unrelated content falsely claiming to depict scenes from the conflict.
Following Musk’s purchase of Twitter, now X, the company cut the teams responsible for curating reputable information about breaking news events, removed misinformation-reporting tools and slashed safety team staffing. Requiring a linked source may be X’s attempt to increase the quality of its notes, but there are still no guidelines about the types of sources that can be cited.
— Mat Smith
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The Netflix Cup will pair up the stars ofFormula 1: Drive to Survive and Full Swing.
Netflix is getting into live sports streaming, but it’s not shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars on NFL games, Formula 1 races or the English Premier League quite yet. It’s cheaping out on hosting a pro-am golf tournament with athletes from its Formula 1: Drive to Survive and Full Swing docuseries. You can watch the event starting at 6PM ET on Tuesday, November 14 — just a few days before F1’s inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Netflix’s first livestreamed event was a Chris Rock standup special, which it edited lightly after the live broadcast. The company ran into technical problems with its second planned livestream, a Love is Blind cast reunion, instead filming the reunion then uploading it.
Apple has unveiled a new Apple Pencil for $79 and will be available in early November. It pairs and charges with a USB-C cable and is compatible with every iPad that has USB-C. While it’s the company’s most budget-friendly Apple Pencil yet ($20 less than the original model and $40 cheaper than the second-gen Pencil), there’s no pressure sensitivity this time, so it’s aimed at early-stage artists and sketchers. This is Apple’s latest step in its transition away from the Lightning port, which was largely prompted by European Union rules. What’s next, the Magic Trackpad?
It didn’t say when the login solution will be available for other devices.
WhatsApp just made logging in a much simpler and faster process, at least on Android devices. The Meta-owned app has launched passkey support for Android, which means users no longer have to use OTPs from two-factor authentication to log into their account. Passkeys are a relatively new login technology designed to be resistant to phishing attacks and password leaks. They’re made up of cryptographic pairs comprising one public key and one private key, which lives on the user’s device. The services that support passkeys don’t have access to that private key, and it also can’t be written down or given away.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-x-starts-charging-new-users-1-per-year-to-send-tweets-111548967.html?src=rss
Tesla is now attempting to gauge the tiredness of its drivers through a new feature rolling out called “Driver Drowsiness Warning.” It uses the cabin-facing camera — built to ensure the driver was watching the road and not on their phone — to gauge facial characteristics of drowsiness, such as the frequency of yawns and blinks. Rumors of the new feature first circulated in May when a Tesla hacker, known as Green, found indications of drowsiness tracking in Tesla’s software.
In action, the Driver Drowsiness Warning tool looks at both facial characteristics and driving behavior. An alert will appear on the touchscreen in the cards area, and an internal alarm will sound if the system records indications of tiredness. Drivers can choose to disable the feature by navigating to Controls and then Safety. Though, unless it’s constantly beeping anytime the car moves from the direct center of a lane, there is little reason to do so.
In any case, the Driver Drowsiness Warning should automatically turn back on during a new drive. However, the feature only activates when the car goes over 40 miles per hour and if Autopilot is not switched on. Even if an alert occurs, the warning system will deactivate if the car drops below that minimum speed. Tesla includes the usual disclaimer in its announcement, cautioning drivers that it’s their “responsibility” to stay alert and focused on the road ahead.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/teslas-new-driver-drowsiness-warning-feature-counts-yawns-and-blinks-105500510.html?src=rss
It’s already that time of the Qt 6.5 long-term support (LTS) cycle where The Qt Company has shifted it over to being focused on access only to their commercial customers…
In my previous article, I walked you through the easy steps to install Ubuntu 23.10 Desktop. For this article in the series, I’ll start configuring Ubuntu 23.10. As this distro has been only out for a few days, I’ll be regularly updating/refining this particular article over the coming days and weeks. As always, comments are very welcome.
One of the world’s largest private BitTorrent trackers, Filelist, has announced it will shut down soon. The site has been in operation for sixteen years and enjoys millions of monthly visits, mostly from Romania. Site admin EboLLa has chosen to devote time to other parts of life and without a trusted successor, it’s best to close the doors. TorrentFreak reports: Many private trackers have come and gone over the years. The Romanian-based tracker FileList.io is one of the bigger ones to survive, although it came close to shutting down a few years ago when Romanian authorities seized its domain name. The enforcement action was a wake-up call for both staff and users of the members-only tracker, but it didn’t mark the end of the road. FileList simply switched from the seized .ro domain to an .io version and with the database unscathed, it kept on going. According to recent traffic stats from SimilarWeb, the tracker hasn’t lost its appeal. With an estimated average of roughly six million monthly visits, the site continues to draw a massive audience. That, however, is about to change.
A few hours ago, FileList sysop “EboLLa” informed the site’s members that the doors will permanently close in a few weeks. This isn’t the result of legal pressure; it’s a conscious and well-evaluated life choice. “Unfortunately, I no longer have the time to run the site. A site like this requires quite a lot of commitment and my priorities in everyday life have changed in recent years. Time is the most precious resource for all of us and I have invested enough time here,” the operator writes. The decision was a difficult one. FileList’s operator long considered handing the reigns to a successor, but that is easier said than done, especially after the dream candidate was no longer an option.
“I don’t have anyone to leave it to. ToXiC, the one who was going to take my place is no longer with us,” EboLLa writes. […] “It is quite difficult to find a person who is integrated here and shares the same values and has the same dedication that you have enjoyed for the last 16 years. I decided that the best thing to do is to close the site rather than risk something like this.” “During this time you can still enjoy the site, download what you need from here and post your goodbye message in the thread. After ~3 months, sometime around January 2024, the site will be closed permanently,” EboLLa concludes.
BMW’s North American EV customers should have an easier time finding charging stations in the future. The company has announced it’s adopting the North American Charging Standard (NACS) for all its battery-powered EVs in the United States and Canada. The changeover should be official beginning in early 2025.
The rollout coincides with all BMW and Rolls-Royce EVs built with a Combined Charging System (CCS) getting access to specific Tesla Supercharger stations. “With six fully electric BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce models now available in the US market, and more to come, it is our top priority to ensure that our drivers have easy access to reliable, fast charging,” Sebastian Mackensen, President and CEO, BMW of North America, said in a statement. “This agreement is the latest in our longstanding and continued effort to expand charging options for our customers as we continue on the road to electrification.”
BMW was one of the last car manufacturers in the region which had yet to adopt the NACS. The company follows Ford, General Motors and Volvo — among others — who have recently made the change. Toyota, Volkswagen and Honda are all still holdouts, though the latter two have been in talks with Tesla about making the shift.
In July, BMW announced a joint venture with six other car manufacturers — including General Motors and Honda — to build a minimum of 30,000 charging stations in urban areas and highways. They should each offer compatibility with the CCS and the NACS. The joint venture plans to start rolling out locations across the US in early 2024 and in Canada at a later point.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/bmw-becomes-the-latest-car-maker-to-adopt-teslas-ev-charging-standard-094519794.html?src=rss
Fans planning to see the Pokémon exhibit at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam may want to take note that they can no longer purchase the Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat promo card from its gift shop. The museum has updated the exhibit FAQ to notify visitors that it has removed the limited edition card from its offerings to ensure that they can enjoy their day “in a safe and enjoyable manner.” It explained that it had to make “the difficult decision” after “a small group of individuals… created an undesirable situation.” The museum didn’t elaborate beyond that, but as Polygon reports, people descended upon the museum’s gift shop when the exhibit opened in September.
Based on the videos that came out, pandemonium broke out at the shop as visitors fought over merchandise to buy. A good chunk of the buyers may have been scalpers, as well, seeing as there’s now a bunch of the Van Gogh-style Pikachu cards being sold on eBay.
The Pokémon account on X announced right after the exhibit opening that the franchise merchandise sold at the Van Gogh museum had sold out. In a newer announcement, it said that fans shopping at Pokémon Center in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada will soon receive one of the limited edition Pikachu cards with their trading card orders worth at least $30, at least until supplies last. The card will also be sold through participating retailers in the Netherlands early next year, but it won’t be sold at the museum gift shop again. That said, the Van Gogh-inspired Pokémon paintings will remain available for viewing until the exhibit leaves the museum on January 7, 2024.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/van-gogh-museum-pulls-its-pokemon-promo-card-after-opening-day-chaos-083349757.html?src=rss
Michael Kan reports via PCMag: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has announced a new spacecraft that promises to help humanity build and maintain projects in outer space. The company today debuted Blue Ring, a so-called “space platform” that can orbit Earth, but also travel around the Moon, with the goal of providing delivery and logistics support to other space projects. To do so, Blue Ring functions as a maneuverable platform that can host, transport, and refuel other spacecraft. In addition, it can relay data while also offering an “in-space” cloud computing capability, according to Blue Origin’s announcement.
Other rockets, particularly those from rival SpaceX, can already send satellites up into predictable orbits around Earth. In contrast, Blue Ring is designed to serve customers for more “dynamic” space projects at varying orbits, Blue Origin Lars Hoffman VP tells Aviation Week. “It has a lot of capability and a lot of energy. It is a platform that has versatility across multiple missions and multiple customers on any given launch,” Hoffman says.
The company adds that Blue Ring can travel with payloads of over 6,600 pounds. According to Aviation Week, Blue Origin is eyeing 2025 as a realistic launch date for the spacecraft, which has already received some interest from customers. Hoffman also says Blue Ring will be “launch-vehicle agnostic,” allowing it to fly on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket or Blue Origin’s own New Glenn, which is aiming to be used in its first mission next year.
It looks like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) truly was working on a free TurboTax alternative like earlier reports had claimed. The US tax authority has announced that it will start pilot testing its new Direct File program for the 2024 filing season, though it will initially be available for select taxpayers in 13 states only. During its pilot period, Direct File will only cover individual federal tax returns and won’t have the capability to prepare people’s state returns. That’s why 9 out of the 13 states testing it — namely Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming — don’t levy state income taxes.
Arizona, California, Massachusetts and New York, the other four states in the list, worked with the IRS to integrate their state taxes into the Direct File system for 2024. The IRS says it invited all states to join the pilot program, but not all of them were in a position to participate “at this time.” In addition to being only available in certain locations, Direct File will only be accessible by people with “relatively simple returns” at the beginning. It will cover W-2 wages and tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, for instance, but it will not cover self-employment income and itemized deductions. However, the agency is still finalizing the tax scope for the pilot, so it could still change over the coming months.
Based on the screenshots the IRS shared with The Washington Post, taxpayers will only have to answer a questionnaire to be able to file their taxes directly, simplifying the process without having to pay for a third-party service. An IRS official told the publication that select eligible taxpayers in the aforementioned states will start getting invitations to use the service sometime around mid-February next year. The agency says it will begin with a small group of taxpayers before expanding access to more and more people as the filing season for the 2023 federal tax return progresses.
“This is a critical step forward for this innovative effort that will test the feasibility of providing taxpayers a new option to file their returns for free directly with the IRS,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in a statement. “In this limited pilot for 2024, we’ll be working closely with the states that have agreed to participate in an important test run of the state integration. This will help us gather important information about the future direction of the Direct File program.”
The IRS is hoping to gather data and feedback during the pilot to be able to analyze how effective Direct File is. It’s also hoping to identify areas of improvement for a “potential large-scale launch in the future.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/irs-will-start-piloting-its-free-turbotax-alternative-in-2024-065553528.html?src=rss
The 158th installment of the 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup is here for the week ending on October 15th, 2023, keeping you guys up to date with the most important things happening in the Linux world.
Hitting the snooze button on your wake-up alarm might just be fine, new research out this week suggests. In a pair of studies, scientists found evidence that a majority of people regularly hit snooze and that the habit doesn’t seem to noticeably harm our sleep. It could even help make some people more alert in the…
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Fewer than 26% of US households still have someone working remotely at least one day a week, a sharp decline from the early-2021 peak of 37%, according to the two latest Census Bureau Household Pulse Surveys. Only seven states plus Washington, DC, have a remote-work rate above 33%, the data shows, down from 31 states and DC mid-pandemic. […] At the state level, the data shows all 50 have seen work-from-home rates drop from their pandemic highs. But the unevenness in their rates of decline suggests the trend doesn’t have one cohesive explanation, and is instead the result of a hodgepodge of migration, socio-economic, gender and race factors, and possibly even politics — Democratic states tend to have higher remote-work rates than Republican ones. Illustrating the complexity: States whose remote-work rates have fallen by as much as half to around post-pandemic lows include Mississippi and Louisiana, which weren’t able to widely embrace remote work due to a reliance on in-person industries like manufacturing and oil and gas, but also more white-collar states that did welcome it, like California and Connecticut.
The latest Census data also underlines that employees’ demand for remote jobs is outpacing the number of companies offering them. In 157 of the largest metro areas in the US, more than half of job applications were for fully remote or hybrid roles in August, according to LinkedIn data generated for Bloomberg, but postings for those jobs have been falling since early 2022, data from Indeed Inc. shows. In Colorado — widely seen as a work-from-home haven and one of the few states that has maintained a rate above one third — 76% of job applications in Colorado Springs were for fully remote or hybrid roles in August, the LinkedIn data showed.
Some areas are capitalizing on that scarcity. Alabama, with a work-from-home rate of just 15% according to the Pulse data, offers $10,000 to remote workers who move to the state’s northwest Shoals area. The program has attracted about the same number of applications so far this year as in all of 2021 and 2022 combined, about 3,400. All 50 states pale in comparison to their largest cities’ metro areas. In Washington, DC, where government bureaucrats are loath to go back to their offices, the remote-work rate is above 50%, the data shows. Similarly, Seattle, Boston and San Francisco all had rates near or above 40%. Average office attendance across ten big US cities remains about 50% of pre-pandemic levels, according to security firm Kastle Systems International LLC, no higher than where it was early in 2023.
In an analysis piece for The Guardian, Sean Ingle discusses some of the smart technology and artificial intelligence being used in sports to fight against brain injuries. From the report: There was a hidden spectator of the NFL match between the Baltimore Ravens and Tennessee Titans in London on Sunday: artificial intelligence. As crazy as it may sound, computers have now been taught to identify on-field head impacts in the NFL automatically, using multiple video angles and machine learning. So a process that would take 12 hours — for each game — is now done in minutes. The result? After every weekend, teams are sent a breakdown of which players got hit, and how often.
This tech wizardry, naturally, has a deeper purpose. Over breakfast the NFL’s chief medical officer, Allen Sills, explained how it was helping to reduce head impacts, and drive equipment innovation. Players who experience high numbers can, for instance, be taught better techniques. Meanwhile, nine NFL quarterbacks and 17 offensive linemen are wearing position-specific helmets, which have significantly more padding in the areas where they experience more impacts. What may be next? Getting accurate sensors in helmets, so the force of each tackle can also be estimated, is one area of interest. As is using biomarkers, such as saliva and blood, to better understand when to bring injured players back to action.
If that’s not impressive enough, this weekend rugby union became the first sport to adopt smart mouthguard technology, which flags big “hits” in real time. From January, whenever an elite player experiences an impact in a tackle or ruck that exceeds a certain threshold, they will automatically be taken off for a head injury assessment by a doctor. No wonder Dr Eanna Falvey, World Rugby’s chief medical officer, calls it a “gamechanger” in potentially identifying many of the 18% of concussions that now come to light only after a match.
The country was reimagined by Joseon King Andrew Lee as a digital nation without territory or borders. In this status, it was recognized by Antigua and Barbuda: the two countries inked a treaty that supports education, economic investment and other developmental initiatives and provides the basis for long-standing friendly relations.
Speaking to U.Today, representatives of the country stressed its unique legal design and state management model:
“Joseon is a crypto safe haven in this world where you can legally engage in crypto without any risk of any kind because sovereignty is the absolute authority in this world and another sovereignty doesn’t have authority over another sovereignty”
Per their official statement, cryptocurrencies represent legal tender in Joseon and can be used for investments, daily payments and cross-border transactions.
Another report from Bitcoinist details several companies launching in Joseon, including First Day Out Collective which represents a song from Rundown Spaz and Kanye West:
Let’s talk about the banger that’s making this all come alive: “First Day Out,: a fire track by Rundown Spaz featuring none other than Kanye West, now owned by a DAO and legally recognized corporation in the progressive cybernation of Joseon, which itself is a legally recognized nation-state.
