While Paris-Roubaix bikes are not as wild as they once were, pros still go to great lengths to make the cobbles a little more bearable.
Riders did all sorts, including going over their bike’s frame clearance limits, fitting gravel components, and using non sponsor correct parts.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of all we saw on the morning of the race itself.
Wout Van Aert rode to a fourth place at the 2025 men’s Paris Roubaix aboard a Cervélo Soloist, featuring the Roubaix-proven Graava KAPS hub, glued on tubeless tyres, and even a nod to his time on Belgium’s version of The Masked Singer.
The choice is intriguing, because the S5 is Van Aert’s usual choice race bike, but team equipment manager Jenco Drost told me that he had deemed the Soloist a better compromise between comfort and aero efficiency.
Aside from this, the wheels are where Van Aert has made most of his changes since his last appearance at the race in 2023.
His Reserve wheels now include the Graava KAPS (Kinetic Air Pressure System), which Pauline Ferrand Prevot used to win Paris-Roubaix Femmes avec Zwift on Saturday.
We first spotted Van Aert’s use of the KAPS during a recon ride, but (of course) the Cervélo S5 that we saw in the photos was not the bike he ended up racing.
The system is now seemingly well established and allows a rider to swap between three set pressures on the fly.
Drost told us that while deflating a tyre doesn’t cost a rider any watts, inflating back up increases system drag by around 7 watts.
The system is controlled by small shifters located on the bar. The left switch decreases pressure while the right switch increases pressure.
Another interesting feature of Van Aert’s tyres is that they are glued to the rims with Vittoria’s Mastik Pro tubular glue.
Many teams have trialled tubeless inserts in an effort to aid tyre retention in the event of a blowout, but this is among the first times we’ve heard of tyres being glued.
Well, that is if you ignore tubulars, of course.
Van Aert is no stranger to a 1x gearing setup, but again we found very interesting nuggets of tech.
This includes SRAM’s fully-filled single chainring.
Drost says that WolfTooth has produced a slimmed down chain guide to provide a more aerodynamically efficient solution.
But while the Lidl Trek team used specially modified SRAM Red XPLR rear derailleurs with 12-speed road cassettes, Van Aert stuck with the regular Red AXS derailleur.
His gearing for Roubaix is huge, with a 10-30t cassette paired with an aero 54T chainring. His crank length is 172.5mm.
We’ve seen Visma Lease-a-Bike teammate Jonas Vingegaard trial very short crank arms, but that doesn’t appear to be Van Aert’s cup of tea.
The Soloist doesn’t feature a one-piece cockpit like the split stem design on the S5, so Van Aert opted for a two-piece setup from FSA.
While his stem is fairly long at 130mm, Van Aert keeps things reasonably traditional with a 400mm bar width and little-to-no tilt on his levers.
Taco van der Hoorn’s Cube Litening Aero C:68X must be the most custom bike of the 2025 men’s Paris-Roubaix.
The Cube Litening Aero C:68X is the aero bike used by the Intermarché–Wanty WorldTour team.
However, the mechanics have been tinkering with van der Hoorn’s race bike, which we were able to take a good look at before the race got underway in Compiègne.
A mail notification tool lets you know when new emails are received. A prominent feature of these tools is the non-obtrusive passive notification about important emails which will let you concentrate on your work and avoid unnecessary interruptions.
ArcoLinux announces its closure, transitioning users to Arch + Chaotic-AUR while keeping tools, code, and tutorials online for the future.
Stanford law school graduate Peter Thiel later co-founded Facebook, PayPal, and Palantir. But in 2010 Thiel also created the Thiel Fellowship, which annually gives 20 to 30 people under the age of 23 $100,000 “to encourage students to not stick around college.” (College students must drop out in order to accept the fellowship.)
And now Palantir “is taking a similar approach as it maneuvers to attract new talent,” reports financial news site The Street:
The company has launched what it refers to as the âoeMeritocracy Fellowship,â a four-month internship program for recent high school graduates who have not enrolled in college. The position pays roughly $5,400 per month, more than plenty of post-college internship programs. Palantirâ(TM)s job posting suggests that the company is especially interested in candidates with experience in programming and statistical analysis.
Palantir’s job listing specifically says they launched their four-month fellowship “in response to the shortcomings of university admissions,” promising it would be based “solely on merit and academic excellence” (requiring an SAT score over 1459 or an ACT score above 32.) “Opaque admissions standards at many American universities have displaced meritocracy and excellence…”
As a result, qualified students are being denied an education based on subjective and shallow criteria. Absent meritocracy, campuses have become breeding grounds for extremism and chaos… Skip the debt. Skip the indoctrination. Get the Palantir Degree…
Upon successful completion of the Meritocracy Fellowship, fellows that have excelled during their time at Palantir will be given the opportunity to interview for full-time employment at Palantir.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Another small but well-maintained distro with a dedicated following reaches the end of the trail.
Remember how last weekend Meta claimed its “Maverick” AI model (in the newly-released Llama-4 series) beat GPT-4o and Gemini Flash 2 “on all benchmarks… This thing is a beast.”
And then how within a day several AI researchers pointed out that even Meta’s own announcement admitted the Maverick tested on LM Arena was an “experimental chat version,” as TechCrunch pointed out. (“As we’ve written about before, for various reasons, LM Arena has never been the most reliable measure of an AI model’s performance. But AI companies generally haven’t customized or otherwise fine-tuned their models to score better on LM Arena — or haven’t admitted to doing so, at least.”)
Friday TechCrunch on what happened when LMArena tested the unmodified release version of Maverick (Llama-4-Maverick-17B-128E-Instruct).
It ranked 32nd.
“For the record, older models like Claude 3.5 Sonnet, released last June, and Gemini-1.5-Pro-002, released last September, rank higher,” notes the tech site Neowin.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Linus has released 6.15-rc2 for testing.
“Nothing particularly stands out to me, but it’s early in the release
“
yet, so let’s see how it goes.
Bungie finally took the wraps off its upcoming team-based extraction shooter, Marathon, sharing a look at gameplay and a cinematic short during its showcase this weekend. We also now know the release date: September 23. Marathon will be available on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, and support full cross play and cross save.
Marathon, a reboot of Bungie’s 30-year-old FPS series, was first announced back in 2023, and we’ve heard little more about it until now. Now, Bungie says:
In Marathon, players inhabit a Runner, a cybernetic mercenary scouring the remains of a lost colony of Tau Ceti IV for fortune and power. Players team up in crews of three as they battle rival Runner teams and hostile security forces for weapons and upgrades. Survive and everything they’ve scavenged is theirs to keep for future runs on Tau Ceti IV — or if they’re brave enough, a journey to the derelict Marathon ship that hangs above.
If you missed the live Gameplay Reveal Showcase on Saturday, you can catch up on all the highlights now on Bungie’s website and the official Discord. The team says there will be a “fairly small” Closed Alpha Test from April 23 to May 4, ahead of bigger tests leading up to the release in September.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/bungie-shares-first-looks-at-gameplay-from-its-new-shooter-marathon-alongside-a-release-date-213530509.html?src=rss
“More than three million children around the world are thought to have died in 2022 as a result of infections that are resistant to antibiotics,” reports the BBC, citing a study by two leading experts in child health that used data from sources including the World Health Organization and the World Bank:
Experts say this new study highlights a more than tenfold increase in AMR-related infections in children in just three years. The number could have been made worse by the impact of the Covid pandemic…
The report’s lead authors, Doctor Yanhong Jessika Hu of Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia and Professor Herb Harwell of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, point to a significant growth in the use of antibiotics that are meant to only be held back for the most serious infections. Between 2019 and 2021 the use of “watch antibiotics”, drugs with a high risk of resistance, increased by 160% in South East Asia and 126% in Africa. Over the same period, “reserve antibiotics” — last-resort treatments for severe, multidrug-resistant infections — rose by 45% in South East Asia and 125% in Africa.
The authors warn that if bacteria develop resistance to these antibiotics, there will be few, if any, alternatives for treating multidrug-resistant infections.
“Antibiotics are ubiquitous around us,” Professor Harwell warns in the article. “They end up in our food and the environment and so coming up with a single solution is not easy.” The article also quotes a senior lecturer in microbiology at King’s College London, who says the new study “marks a significant and alarming increase compared to previous data”.
“These findings should serve as a wake-up call for global health leaders. Without decisive action, AMR could undermine decades of progress in child health, particularly in the world’s most vulnerable regions.”
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple is said to be readying some big improvements for iPadOS that could bring it more in line with macOS. According to Mark Gurman in the Power On newsletter, Apple’s iPadOS 19 will “focus on productivity, multitasking and app window management — with an eye on the device operating more like a Mac.” It won’t quite be macOS for iPad, but Gurman notes that “the changes will likely go far enough” to please those users who are looking to get more out of the tablet’s software.
It’s expected to arrive later this year. Chances are we’ll hear all about it at WWDC 2025, which Apple has set for the second week of June. This year is rumored to be bringing some major changes to iOS and macOS as well, as Gurman previously reported. It all reportedly comes as part of Apple’s push to make its software look more consistent across its devices.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/tablets/ipad-software-will-reportedly-get-more-mac-like-with-the-ipados-19-redesign-200759136.html?src=rss
“It is somewhat remarkable that work on AmigaOS 3.X continues in 2025,” notes Tom’s Hardware, “given that Commodore International released AmigaOS 3.0 in 1992…”
AmigaOS 3.1 came in 1993. And now…
Work continues on AmigaOS 3.2 with the stewards of this classic Motorola 680×0 friendly operating system, Hyperion Entertainment, releasing version 3.2.3 a few days ago.
In a news bulletin on the official site, Hyperion highlighted that the third update for AmigaOS 3.2 includes two years of (more than 50) fixes and enhancements… Hyperion began its quest to modernize and improve this classic version of AmigaOS for Motorola 680×0 platforms in 2018 when it released version 3.1.4. The AmigaOS 3.2 lineage began in 2021…
This release is provided as a free update to owners of AmigaOS 3.2. If you don’t already have this OS, you can get it now at official resellers like RetroPassion UK… Nowadays, Arm-based accelerators seem to be the path forward for modern Amiga, as opposed to retro Amiga, enthusiasts. AmigaOS 3.2.3 has a feather in its cap as it also supports classic 68K Amigas boosted by Arm accelerators such as the PiStorm.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
One week after the Linux 6.15 merge window was capped off, the Linux 6.15-rc2 release is now available in rolling up all of the early fixes that were collected over the past week…
A creative developer has built a wearable eight-key controller that could solve one of VR’s most persistent challenges: text input.
The post DIY haptic controller brings touch typing to Virtual Reality appeared first on MIXED Reality News.
Since the 1970s, Eddy Merckx had been cycling’s undisputed greatest rider of all time – until Tadej Pogačar arrived.
The 26-year-old Slovenian announced himself on the world stage by winning his debut Tour de France in 2020 and has dominated most of the races he’s entered since – mastering Grand Tours and one-day Classics in a way that hasn’t been seen since the Cannibal hung up his wheels.
In 2024, he became only the third man after Merckx and Stephen Roche to claim cycling’s Triple Crown (winning the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and world championship in the same season). With his debut at Paris-Roubaix this Sunday, he’s not content with his lot, and has set about targetting his missing Monuments.
But who is the boyish blond-haired Slovenian? And what sets him apart from the rest of the WorldTour peloton?
As the best cyclist of his generation, it’s only fair that Pogačar is rewarded handsomely for his efforts.
La Gazzetta dello Sport reported in November 2024 that his latest contract with UAE Team Emirates-XRG sees the Slovenian earn €8 million per year until 2030, while he has a chunky €200 million buy-out clause.
His fee is the highest in the WorldTour peloton, with La Gazzetta estimating that compatriot Primož Roglič is the second-highest – earning €4.5 million per year at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe – and Jonas Vingegaard’s annual Visma-Lease a Bike take-home third at €4 million.
The training and racing commitments of a pro cyclist can make finding time for love hard.
But Pogačar has found a sympathetic partner in Urška Žigart – a fellow professional cyclist for Women’s WorldTour team, AG Insurance-Soudal.
The pair met on a City Ljubljana cycling program training camp in 2017 and have been engaged since 2021. In fact, Žigart’s non-selection for the Paris 2024 Olympics is said to have swayed Pogacar’s decision not to compete himself.
@triviumcolombia pic.twitter.com/iqQxNhowmU
— Ryan Rodman (@Rodman1_r2) September 8, 2024
The Slovenian is a beast on the bike who is just at home in one-day races as he is mountain-top finishes of a Grand Tour, and it’s largely thanks to an out-of-this-world functional threshold power (FTP).
X user, Ryan Rodman calculated that based on a screenshot of his head unit, Pog set an FTP of 415 watts during a training ride for last year’s world championships (which Pogačar went on to win).
While the Slovenian can’t be accused of being average, his height and weight are where he’s around the middle of the pack.
At 1.77m tall, he is 2cm taller than his Tour de France rival, Jonas Vingegaard, and is the same height as compatriot Roglič.
His weight fluctuates, and he revealed to longevity expert Peter Attia that his natural weight is 69kg but dropped as low as 64.5kg for the start of the 2024 Tour de France.
While a third place in 2019’s La Vuelta signalled that Pogačar had Grand Tour potential, the then 21-year-old announced himself on the grandest stage of them all by winning his debut Tour de France.
The Covid-impacted race was held in September 2020, and meant Pogačar secured his victory on the streets of Paris aged 21 and 365 days old – the youngest winner in over a century and second only to Henri Cornet, who won in 1904 aged 19 and 352 days.
Although he grew up Klanec, a small village on the outskirts of the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, Pogačar has lived in Monaco since winter 2020.
He moved to the principality for the warm weather and is among a number of professional riders to call the city-state home, including Roglič, Chris Froome and Peter Sagan.
Most professional cyclists spend their whole careers trying and failing to win a Tour de France stage. But Pog isn’t like most pros.
In his five Tours de France since his debut, he has clinched the yellow jersey three times, propelling him to joint 6th in the overall list, with only Chris Froome (four wins) and Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Jaques Anquetil and Miguel Indurain (five) ahead of him. In that time, he’s racked up 17 stage wins, putting him eighth in the overall.
Pogačar is well known for his three Tours de France wins and his 2024 Giro d’Italia maglia rosa, but even in the Grand Tours he hasn’t won, he’s never finished off of the podium.
In his Grand Tour debut, 2019’s La Vuelta, the then 20-year-old finished third, while in the two Tours de France he’s lost to Jonas Vingegaard, he’s still finished as the second-fastest overall rider.
From his seven Grand Tours, he’s also won the youth jersey five times (one La Vuelta and four Tours de France) and the mountains jersey three times (two Tours de France and one Giro d’Italia).
The Slovenian’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG team is sponsored by iconic Italian brand, Colnago.
Pog rides the manufacturer’s V4Rs Dura Ace Di2 – its pro-focused all-rounder – but it’s far from stock.
His Enve SES 4.5 wheelset are paired with Continental’s GP5000s TR tyres; Enve is also responsible for the SES Pro Team one-piece handlebar; while final flourishes include 165mm cranks, CarbonTi X-CarboRing EVO chainrings, and Di2 sprint shifters positioned beneath the brake hoods to allow him to change gear when in the drops.
Pogačar also has at his disposal – and uses – the Y1Rs aero bike, while Colnago has started to tease the V4Rs’ successor, the V5Rs.
A lot is made of Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert and Tom Pidcock’s multi-discipline mastery, but Pogačar is no stranger to dipping his toe into the world of cyclocross.
The phenom won the Slovenian national championship in 2018 and has competed in Ciklokros Ljubljana twice, winning in 2021 and finishing second in 2022. However, he’s yet to line up at a UCI CX World Cup or category-one race.
Pogačar is one of the few pros worth following on Strava, and isn’t shy about uploading the occasional race-winning ride (although his heart rate and power data is understandably hidden).
Even though he doesn’t share every training session, he’s managed to amass more than 2,500 KOMs on the app, including the Koppenberg, Mons-en-Pévèle – and Yorkshire’s very own Buttertubs Pass.
Banana Pi has shared details of its upcoming BPI-CM6 module, built with the SpacemiT K1 octa-core RISC-V processor. Though not yet launched, it is suggested for AI edge computing, robotics, industrial control, and network storage The BPI-CM6 adopts a 40x55mm form factor and uses board-to-board connectors consistent with the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, enabling […]
Quest 3S is $30 off from now until 8:59pm PT on April 26.
That means you can get the 128GB base model for $270, or the higher storage 256GB model for $370.
As with all Quest 3S purchases, the headset still comes with Batman: Arkham Shadow for free, as well as 3 months of the Quest+ games subscription.
A similar deal appears to be available in all regions where Quest 3S is sold, with the UK for example seeing £25 off, Canada C$45 off, and Europe €30 off.
While Meta officially states that the offer is only available from Meta Store, we’re already seeing some retailers such as Best Buy match the deal.
UploadVRDavid Heaney
Quest 3S is Meta’s budget headset option. It has all the same VR and mixed reality capabilities of Quest 3, and has the same chip inside, but uses older, lower-quality lenses that aren’t fully adjustable, so it may not be suitable for everyone’s interpupillary distance (IPD).
While this is an appealing deal, one of the lowest prices we’ve ever seen for a full-featured headset with color passthrough, if you’re willing to pay the extra money, we still recommend buying the proper Quest 3.
Harpagun delivers a colorful VR arcade shooter-smasher with a compelling narrative. Read on for our full thoughts.
On-rails movement isn’t the most exciting proposition for VR gaming these days, yet Harpagun shows such action titles can still get the job done. Following last year’s work on the cozy puzzle game Toy Trains, Something Random’s next title opts for a fast-paced arcade-style shooter. Despite a restrictive movement system and unpolished edges on Quest, the core action remains highly enjoyable.
What is it?: A VR shooter-smasher arcade game set on a post-apocalyptic planet.
Platforms: Quest, PC VR, Pico (coming soon) PlayStation VR2 (reviewed on Quest 3)
Release Date: Out now
Developer: Something Random
Price: $19.99
Harpagun offers humorous sci-fi absurdity with a futuristic Soviet twist while you explore a post-apocalyptic world, weaving an intriguing narrative with a satisfying resolution. Playing as a ‘Harpagun’, our titular protagonist finds their comrades missing, with armies of mutant fungus ready to kill you. Guided by two dysfunctional leaders via a floating TV, this compelling tale explores what happened to this society that leaves me invested in our hero’s survival.
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The campaign splits into bite-sized missions with three difficulty settings, which is useful if you prefer playing in short bursts. You’ll restart from a checkpoint if you die, though those are frustratingly absent during boss fights. Our goal is to find safe passage off this deserted planet and back to the mothership, armed with two gravity guns that let you shoot stuff alongside simply grabbing objects.
Standard gunfire does what’s needed, but launching objects like rubble, chairs, doors, or even parts of an enemy we’ve torn off into these fungal foes is much more entertaining. Each level is littered with throwable objects for entertaining kills, though grabbing enemies directly and destroying them by throwing them into each other is also fun.
Timed supply drops helpfully provide extra health or limited ammo types for increased damage. Killing multiple foes at once as lasers bounce across each other feels good, shotgun-style ammo for heavy hits at close range provide useful crowd control, while electric upgrades charge a lightning ball that outright smokes these wild mushrooms. It’s over the top, dramatic, and great fun all around.
I appreciate the creativity with some enemies too, and Harpagun offers a good variety as you advance through missions. For example, one foe requires you to pull them upwards with the gravity gun and use your other hand to shoot the bubble that soon appears. Another requires ripping its wings off, which sounds more brutal than it actually is. More advanced enemies and weapons gradually roll out at a good pace, though you’ll always be equipped with gravity guns.
When enemies spawn nearly as fast as you kill them, this becomes a juggling act that can overwhelm you if you aren’t careful. Throwing back a foe’s projectiles with the gravity gun feels great during these moments, as does blocking them by picking up other enemies. However, all it takes is a few hits to kill you, so you need to keep moving.
Harpagun has a strong foundation, yet its design feels constrained, and that quickly becomes apparent when fighting these enemy waves. Teleporting to set points across the map usually works well until you’re trying to dodge enemy fire, giving you limited options for where to move. You can typically strafe left, right, forwards, or backwards from the central area, and that’s it.
Something Random evidently designed Harpagun’s movement to prioritize comfort over immersion, which works as I’ve not had any issues so far even with minimal comfort settings. Still, several additional aspects could also use fine-tuning. Smooth camera turning is too fast, making it tough to be precise and unlike snap turning, the camera speed isn’t adjustable. Long loading times are also present on Quest 3, most notable when booting up the game.
Harpagun uses an on-rails system where you can move between specific spaces by teleporting using an analog stick, there’s no freedom of movement. An optional vignette can also be activated with three different strengths. The camera supports smooth and snap turning, though only the latter’s strength can be adjusted.
Presently, the game features English and Polish language support. By default, camera turning is set to the left analog stick and movement to the right analog stick, though this can be swapped. Movement speed can be adjusted too. Your health and special ammo can be seen via a floating TV that accompanies you.
Finally, the Quest 3 version supports three different quality settings: performance, balanced, and fidelity. This review used balance, and we’ve yet to confirm if similar options are available on Quest 2 or PS VR2.
I’ve also found performance hiccups on Quest 3, and the framerate drops are evident in later levels when more enemies are onscreen. I also noticed some moments where the text bubble on screen from the leaders via the TV would jitter, which wasn’t uncomfortable but your mileage may vary. I’ve yet to try the Quest 2, PC VR or PS VR2 versions, so I can’t compare any differences right now.
The main campaign takes around five hours to complete, which neither feels overly long nor too short for Harpagun. Other options are available such as a convenient arcade mode for replaying individual levels beyond the campaign, alongside an Arena mode where you fight enemy waves. I’m not particularly compelled to keep replaying the latter, though it’s a nice option to have.
What benefits Harpagun greatly on Quest 3 is the vibrant cel-shaded presentation, offering well-designed environments and an often unsettling array of enemies. The soundtrack suits the game relatively well, even if it’s not anything too riveting, and it’s great to see a choice of performance settings available for those who’d rather prioritize performance or fidelity.
Harpagun continues a strong streak by Something Random after last year’s Toy Trains, delivering an entertaining VR smasher-shooter with an intriguing narrative that immediately grabs your attention. Some rough edges on Quest dull its shine and the restrictive movement system limits combat, yet there’s still plenty to like with its strong action gameplay. As such, it comes recommended.
UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.