Karl Urban, Lewis Tan, Hiroyuki Sanada, and others will “Finish Him!” October 24.

Black hole singularities might be the beginning rather than an end, new research suggests.

Starlink is cheap to deploy, but could leave rural Americans “stranded” with slower speeds and higher costs.

Google Assistant is not long for this world. Google confirmed what many suspected last week, that it will transition everyone to Gemini in 2025. Assistant holdouts may find it hard to stay on Google’s old system until the end, though. Google has confirmed some popular Assistant features are being removed in the coming weeks. You may not miss all of them, but others could force a change to your daily routine.

As Google has increasingly become totally consumed by Gemini, it was a foregone conclusion that Assistant would get the axe eventually. In 2024, Google removed features like media alarms and voice messages, but that was just the start. The full list of removals is still available on its support page (spotted by 9to5Google), but there’s now a new batch of features at the top. Here’s a rundown of what’s on the chopping block.

• Favorite, share, and ask where and when your photos were taken with your voice
• Change photo frame settings or ambient screen settings with your voice
• Translate your live conversation with someone who doesn’t speak your language with interpreter mode
• Get birthday reminder notifications as part of Routines
• Ask to schedule or hear previously scheduled Family Bell announcements
• Get daily updates from your Assistant, like “send me the weather everyday”
• Use Google Assistant on car accessories that have a Bluetooth connection or AUX plug

Some of these are no great loss—you’ll probably live without the ability to get automatic birthday reminders or change smart display screensavers by voice. However, others are popular features that Google has promoted aggressively. For example, interpreter mode made a splash in 2019 and has been offering real-time translations ever since; Assistant can only translate a single phrase now. Many folks also use the scheduled updates in Assistant as part of their morning routine. Family Bell is much beloved, too, allowing Assistant to make custom announcements and interactive checklists, which can be handy for getting kids going in the morning. Attempting to trigger some of these features will offer a warning that they will go away soon.

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With all this talk about spring cleaning, you could be forgiven if you focused on, well, just cleaning in the spring. But the real beauty of spring cleaning is that it can be a jumping-off point for a clean year. Yes, you can put in extra effort right now, restocking and upgrading your cleaning supplies and doing all those intense annual tasks, but if you don’t keep up with your tidying all year round, you’ll be stuck doing another exhausting round next spring. Use this as a starting point for a big year of your cleanest home ever.

First, commit to a cleaning schedule

While you’re undertaking spring cleaning this year, keep track of what tasks you enjoy (or just hate less than the others), what takes the most time, and when you feel most motivated. You’re going to want to know all of that as you set out to create a manageable and personalized schedule for the rest of the year.

There are a lot of ways you can structure your schedule, but what’s most important here is finding a time that really works for you, whether it’s the morning, afternoon, or evening. It will depend on your existing schedule of work and responsibilities, plus when you feel most motivated and how you choose to approach cleaning.

I recommend only cleaning in 15-minute chunks each day to keep the whole endeavor manageable and stop it from getting overwhelming, but you can divide those up however you like. Micro-cleaning and -decluttering are a great option, as they ask you to pick a small space every day (think: a cabinet or a tabletop, not a whole room or even a whole closet) and focus on that. Over time, cleaning every small space will result in a cleaner home, but there will still be times you need to call in the big guns and tackle a large project, like a kid’s room or a kitchen that’s seen better days. Block out a day every month to do a whole-house tidying.

Otherwise, really stick to your scheduled 15 minutes every day. If you’re finding that, after a few weeks, the time you selected doesn’t work, switch it up. It’s better to make some adjustments early on than to fall behind because you’re determined to stick with something that’s not working.

Pick cleaning approaches that work for you

Once you get a handle on the times you commit to cleaning, you need to figure out what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. The micro-cleaning approach of picking a small space every day works well, but you still need a plan for what you’re doing to that micro-space.

There are a few techniques out there that lend themselves to long-term home maintenance more than others, like 365 Less Things and the “calendar” method. Both of those are centered on decluttering, but can be modified for general cleaning tasks, too. With 365 Less Things, you commit to throwing away or donating one piece of clutter every day; with the calendar approach, you toss or donate one thing on the first of the month, two things on the second, and so on until you are up to 30 things on the 30th and 31 on the 31st. These are great for decluttering and habit-building, so use them as intended at first, but feel free to switch it up. Instead of getting rid of six things on the sixth, think of something you could clean six of, like the six upholstered chairs around your dining table or the six mirrors on the upstairs landing.

Here is a list of my favorite decluttering techniques and here are my favorite cleaning techniques. There are a ton out there, from books by cleaning gurus to methods discovered and disseminated by regular people on social media, and trying them out during your scheduled cleaning time can keep you engaged and help you find the approach that works best for your home.

Adjust as necessary

Like I said, you should be keeping track of how this goes. You don’t have to keep hyper-detailed data, but it’s helpful to make note of what’s working and what isn’t. Changing the time you typically clean, trying a new technique, or playing around with the rewards system you want to use for yourself are all fine and even good. It takes a long time to build a habit and sink into a quality routine, but the goal should be to use spring cleaning as an opportunity to see how great your home can look and spend the next 11 months keeping it that way.

One thing that is pretty helpful here, at least for me, is calling in reinforcements. I don’t mean a professional cleaner—although I have found that hiring one every month or two is super helpful, as they notice spots that need attention that you may overlook, plus I counterintuitively clean extra well before one comes out of fear of being embarrassed. I mean using an app. There are a handful of apps out there that can help you build the perfect cleaning schedule, keep tabs on what’s been tended to and what hasn’t, and even send you push notifications reminding you when a certain area needs your attention. Apps, cleaning pros’ books, and CleanTok influencers’ posts can all help guide you, motivate you, inspire you, and altogether push you toward getting better at keeping up with your cleaning.

Then again, you can read, watch, and log in to as much as you want, but none of it matters unless you get after it in real life, so start building your schedule, download my checklists, and prepare for spring, summer, fall, and winter cleaning now.

Across high-income countries, humans’ ability to reason and solve problems appears to have peaked in the early 2010s and declined since. Despite no changes in fundamental brain biology, test scores for both teenagers and adults show deteriorating performance in reading, mathematics and science. In an eye-opening statistic, 25% of adults in high-income countries now struggle to “use mathematical reasoning when reviewing statements” — rising to 35% in the US.

This cognitive decline coincides with a fundamental shift in our relationship with information. Americans reading books has fallen below 50%, while difficulty thinking and concentrating among 18-year-olds has climbed sharply since the mid-2010s. The timing points to our changing digital habits: a transition from finite web pages to infinite feeds, from active browsing to passive consumption, and from focused attention to constant context-switching.

Research shows that intentional use of digital technologies can be beneficial, but the passive consumption dominating recent years impairs verbal processing, attention, working memory and self-regulation.

Some of the cited research in the story:
New PIAAC results show declining literacy and increasing inequality in many European countries â” Better adult learning is necessary;
Have attention spans been declining?;
Short- and long-term effects of passive and active screen time on young children’s phonological memory;
Efficient, helpful, or distracting? A literature review of media multitasking in relation to academic performance.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Upgrade your living room entertainment situation as this Amazon Fire TV drops to $180.

Alphabet is letting its laser-based internet company Taara fly and be free, according to reporting by Financial Times. Google’s parent company is spinning off the service from X, its moonshot incubator system (not to be confused with X the social network.)

Taara uses light beams to provide high-bandwidth internet and phone services to hard-to-reach areas of the world. This places it in direct competition with Elon Musk’s Starlink network of satellites.

Taara now has two dozen staff members and is “hiring aggressively.” It has secured backing from Series X Capital. Alphabet will retain a minority stake, but it remains tight-lipped regarding seed funding details or potential financial targets.

“They’re going to be able to get connected quickly to market capital, bring in strategic investors and generally be able to scale faster this way,” said Eric Teller, X’s Captain of Moonshots.

Taara already operates in 12 countries throughout the world and has provided supplemental service during events like Coachella. The tech works by firing beams of light to and from various terminals. Alphabet says the system can transmit data at 20 gigabits per second over an area of around 12 miles. The company also says that these systems are relatively easy to build and maintain, especially when compared to satellites in space.

It has its origins in an Alphabet-created concept called Loon. This was a modified version of the same idea that shot beams of light to and from groups of balloons floating on the edge of space. There are strict governmental and regulatory hurdles to flying thousands of balloons near space, however, so it wound down in 2021. Loon’s loss was Taara’s gain, as the newer entity uses the same lasers.

Mahesh Krishnaswamy, Taara’s general manager and a lead engineer, says that the next step is to develop a silicon photonic chip that will eliminate the need for many of the mirrors and lenses currently positioned on system terminals.

The newly-minted startup has a long way to go to catch up to Starlink, which has over four million subscribers worldwide. Taara doesn’t even sell subscriptions directly to consumers. Instead, it partners with existing telecommunication companies like T-Mobile to extend their networks to remote locations.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/alphabets-starlink-competitor-taara-is-spinning-off-into-an-independent-company-154653176.html?src=rss

Formula 1’s four-wheeled circus got underway this past weekend in Melbourne, Australia. Held on the roads around a lake in Albert Park, the track is one of F1’s trickier challenges, made more so on Sunday thanks to rain that eased off before the start of the race, only to return with a vengeance a dozen or so laps before the end. It proved to be a tough day for four of the sport’s six new drivers, as well as some more well-known names, and it gave us a clearer idea of the pecking order between the teams, at least for now.

True F1 junkies were probably following the preseason test earlier this month in Bahrain, as the sport now helpfully shows those three days of running on its streaming platform. But those devoted enough to watch the cars circulate for hours with nothing on the line also know you shouldn’t read too much into a preseason test, especially one held at a circuit that is unrepresentative of most of the others that F1 visits—and in unseasonably cold weather, to boot.

Little has changed in the way of the technical regulations between the end of last year and the start of this one, other than an increasing scrutiny on the front and rear wings’ ability to flex when they’re not supposed to. Flexing or deflecting under load at opportune times reduces the drag and allows a car to go a little faster in a straight line for the same amount of power, giving that car an unfair advantage.

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Many variables can affect the quality of a steaming cup of espresso, including so-called “channeling” during the brewing process, in which the water doesn’t seep uniformly through the grounds but branches off in various preferential paths instead. This significantly reduces the extraction yield and thus the quality of the final brew. Scientists from the University of Warsaw have gleaned insights into the underlying physics of channeling that will help coffee lovers achieve more consistent results when brewing espresso. They presented their preliminary findings at the American Physical Society’s Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California, this morning.

As previously reported, there’s an official industry standard for brewing espresso, courtesy of the Specialty Coffee Association, which sets out strict guidelines for its final volume (25–35 mL, or roughly 1 ounce) and preparation. The water must be heated to 92° to 95°C (197° to 203°F) and forced (at a specific pressure) through a bed of 7 to 9 grams (about a quarter of an ounce) of finely ground coffee for 20 to 30 seconds. But most coffee shops don’t follow this closely, as the brewing machines allow baristas to configure water pressure, temperature, and other key variables to their liking. The result of all those variations in technique is a great deal of variability in quality and taste.

Naturally, scientists find this fascinating. For instance, in 2020, Christopher Hendon’s lab at the University of Oregon helped devise a mathematical model for brewing the perfect cup of espresso over and over while minimizing waste. Hendon is a computational materials chemist, and his lab holds regular coffee hours for the Eugene campus community. The researchers focused on an easily measurable property known as the extraction yield (EY): the fraction of coffee that dissolves into the final beverage. That, in turn, depends on controlling water flow and pressure as the liquid percolates through the coffee grounds.

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It’s spring again: The time of renewal, rebirth, and cleaning your damn house. I mean really cleaning—not just picking up a little, but moving the couch, wiping the blades of the ceiling fan, and getting behind the fridge. Spring cleaning.

If you’re putting effort into it, you can make both the returning Messiah and the Easter Bunny proud, but you’ll need to avoid these common spring cleaning mistakes.

Doing all the heavy lifting yourself

I’m putting this one first because moving the furniture is what separates spring cleaning from regular cleaning. That said, a spotless home is not worth screwing up your back. Like anything else, there’s technique to moving furniture: keep heavy objects close to your body, don’t bend at the waist, lift with your legs. Remember to breathe. Improper technique leads to injury. For a deeper dive on injury-free furniture moving, check out our guide—but the best advice, is “if you think it’s too heavy, get some help.”

Mixing cleaning products

Personally, I can’t understand people who prefer to clean with vinegar, lemon juice, or other wimpy options. It’s not really clean to me unless dangerous chemicals are involved. But dangerous chemicals demand respect: cleaners like ammonia, bleach, and oven cleaners are probably going to be caustic, poisonous, fume-releasing, and otherwise capable of killing you, your pets, or your loved ones if used (or mixed) incorrectly. So read the warning labels carefully, actually follow their guidelines, and have the number of poison control on hand.

Trying to do it all at once (or without a plan)

Honor your moment of sudden motivation, but instead of an “I’m cleaning everything right now” vibe, use your energy to plan first. Break your spring clean into smaller, manageable tasks, or you’ll end the day with all the furniture moved and everything in disarray. Spring cleaning is a project, and like any project, it will come out better if you make a realistic plan. For the specifics, start with taking the advice of professional housekeepers.

Cleaning before decluttering

When I’m cleaning, there’s little worse than spending all day scrubbing, only to have my place still look cluttered. Too much crap around makes me feel like my whole life is disorganized, so I use deep cleaning days as “getting rid of things” days, too. If I haven’t used it since the last time I cleaned, I seriously consider a trip to the local thrift store. Lifehacker’s decluttering queen Lindsey Ellefson has many more tips to get you started.

Forgetting the mattress (and garbage cans)

Even if it isn’t stained and smelly, your mattress is probably disgusting. You spend eight hours a night there sweating, drooling, and shedding dead skin cells. You probably let your dog up there, too. It’s a hassle, but there are a lot of ways to clean a mattress. Don’t forget the inside of your garbage cans either. And the inside of your refrigerator. And your remote controls. I could go on all day—you’re probably forgetting a lot of places you should be cleaning.

Not having the right cleaning supplies

You don’t need a ton of gear to deep clean, but you can’t clean your house with a single old rag either. A basic surface cleaning kit should include all-purpose cleaning liquid, window cleaning liquid, cloth (microfiber, if possible), a scrub-brush, and a hand duster. You also need a mop and bucket, a broom, more garbage bags than usual, and a vacuum with attachments. Optional are things like ivory polish, guitar wax, and other specialized-to-you cleaning supplies.

Want a clear rundown of what you need to take on this annual task and keep your home clean all year long? Here’s a guide.

Relying on a moment of inspiration

I always mean to clean my house. I have the best intentions, but then there’s something to watch on TV or I decide to get some empanadas, and before I realize it, the day is over. But if I’ve invited people over, I’m going to clean, because I don’t want other people to see how I live. Perhaps you can relate. If you’re having motivation problems, nothing solves them like fear of other people judging you. So throw a springtime party. If your house really sparkles, all your friends will silently feel shame for their own slovenliness, and that’s a win-win.

Although the future of TikTok remains uncertain, the app continues to get new features. The latest is called Security Checkup, which is a centralized dashboard designed to help you protect your account.

You can find the tool by going to Settings and privacy > Security & permissions in the TikTok app. The idea behind Security Checkup is to make it easy for you to do things like link a phone number and email address to make sure you have a backup login method, turn on two-factor authentication, set up a passkey and enable biometric login options such as facial recognition.

In addition, you’ll be able to see which devices are logged into your account, so you can revoke access for any that you don’t recognize or no longer use. Handily, TikTok will flag any unusual behavior that it detects on your account and you can review any oddities here.

We’ve seen other major platforms introduce similar features in the past. Instagram, for instance, rolled out a tool that’s also called Security Checkup back in 2021. Still, it’s better late than never to add handy features, especially when it comes to helping users secure their accounts.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/tiktok-rolls-out-a-security-checkup-tool-to-help-protect-your-account-152819724.html?src=rss

Save 20% on the SRS-XB100 Bluetooth travel speaker over at Amazon.

Amazon is nixing one of the few privacy protections against accessing users’ voice data, and you can blame AI for the change.

Abstract of a paper published on National Bureau of Economic Research: This paper investigates self-reported wedges between how much people work and how much they want to work, at their current wage. More than two-thirds of full-time workers in German survey data are overworked — actual hours exceed desired hours. We combine this evidence with a simple model of labor supply to assess the welfare consequences of tighter weekly hours limits via willingness-to-pay calculations. According to counterfactuals, the optimal length of the workweek in Germany is 37 hours. Introducing such a cap would raise welfare by .8-1.6% of GDP. The gains from a shortened workweek are largest for workers who are married, female, white collar, middle aged, and high income. An extended analysis integrates a non-constant wage-hours relationship, falling capital returns, and a shrinking tax base.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In Orb: On the Movements of the Earth‘s theological and philosophically-heavy debates, beliefs are worth dying for.