Month: June 2020

Guinness World Records has reinstated a number of classic video game world records held by Billy Mitchell.

The move comes just over two years after Mitchell's records were expunged following an investigation by Twin Galaxies International Scoreboard, which partners with Guinness to adjudicate video game records.

That investigation found that recordings of some of Mitchell's record performances on Donkey Kong were not achieved on legitimate arcade hardware, based on extensive video analysis. Twin Galaxies has not changed its position on Mitchell's records, resulting in a split between the two record-tracking organizations.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by another round of deals on various Amazon devices, covering Echo smart speakers and displays, Kindle ebook readers, and Fire TV media streamers. Amazon is promoting these as Father's Day deals, and while most of the offers don't match the all-time low prices we've typically seen on Black Friday or Amazon Prime Day—many are about $5-10 more expensive—there are still a few good discounts worth noting.

You can find our recommended deals below, but the highlights include the latest Kindle Paperwhite, our current pick for the best ebook reader, available for $100. We've seen it drop as low as $85 a couple times in the past, but this deal is still $30 off the waterproof e-reader's usual going rate. The standard Amazon Kindle, meanwhile, is our pick for the best budget ebook reader and is down to $65, which is $5 off the lowest price we've seen.

If you have an older 1080p TV that you want to supply with streaming capabilities, the base Fire TV Stick is $10 off at $30, while the 4K- and HDR-capable Fire TV Cube includes Alexa speaker functionality and is $20 off at $100. (Just note that Roku's Premiere and Streaming Stick+ are on sale as well if you don't want to deal with Amazon's busy Fire OS.) Beyond that, several Echo devices are discounted, ranging from the Echo Dot with Clock for a new low of $35 to the bigger and strong-sounding Echo Studio for a new low of $170. While Echo devices can be plenty useful for people looking to build a smart home, we do have to give the caveat that they're designed to collect user data and have the potential to be abused by malicious apps. Per usual, you'll have to weigh any privacy concerns against that utility.

Enlarge / Instagram photo of a masked woman, identified by the FBI as Lore-Elisabeth Blumenthal, on May 30, 2020 in Philadelphia. (credit: FBI)

To some extent, every Internet user leaves a digital trail. So when a masked arsonist was seen on video setting fire to a police car on the day of a recent protest in Philadelphia, the fact that her face was hidden didn't prevent a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent from tracking down the suspect. The keys ended up being a tattoo and an Etsy review the alleged arsonist had left for a T-shirt she was wearing at the scene of the crime, according to the FBI.

The alleged arsonist—identified by the FBI as Lore-Elisabeth Blumenthal, 33—was wearing a mask, goggles, fire-resistant gloves, and a T-shirt with the slogan "Keep the immigrants, deport the racists" when her crime was captured live on an aerial news feed from a helicopter, FBI Special Agent Joseph Carpenter wrote in an affidavit filed Monday in US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. After an investigation, she was arrested and charged with arson of two police vehicles. She appeared in federal court on Tuesday, and the government said it "will be filing a motion for the defendant to be detained pending trial."

In the news video, a police sedan was already "engulfed in flames" when the suspect "entered from the top of the frame and removed a flaming piece of a wooden police barricade from the rear window of the sedan that was already on fire, and then shoved the flaming wood into the SUV that was not on fire. Within minutes of that, the SUV was then completely engulfed in flames." This happened on May 30 after a protest over the death of George Floyd. The affidavit says, "While the protest earlier in the day was peaceful, violence erupted later on in the day," including the arson of police cars.

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  Hopefully something we never have to see in person—an inflated three-chamber airbag. You can see here how the two outboard chambers are connected by a fabric sail. [credit: Acura ]

Cars, trucks, and SUVs are safer today than they've ever been, but with 22,891 recorded US passenger vehicle fatalities in 2018, it's obvious we still have some way to go. That's where today's invention comes in—it's a new kind of airbag developed by Acura, designed to reduce brain injuries in front seat passengers. Instead of the single-chamber passenger airbag you probably have in the dash of your car, this one uses three individual chambers that work like a baseball catcher's mitt, allowing your head to decelerate more gently and without the kind of rotation that causes diffuse axonal injuries.

The project started off with a new crash test dummy called Thor, which more accurately reproduces the kinds of injuries suffered by humans when they're brought to a sudden stop in a vehicle crash. "Through that additional biofidelity, specifically as we talk about torsions and spinal stiffness, as well as through the head and neck and thorax, we are better able to predict real-world injuries with this new dummy, so it's given us new insight into how we can further improve our restraint system," explained Eric Heitkamp, principal engineer, crashworthiness, at Honda R&D Americas.

As the pictures above show, when the airbag deploys, outboard chambers inflate, linked by a fabric "sail." Behind that sail and in between the two outboard chambers is a third, central chamber—this is the one your face eventually decelerates into, although by the time that happens, it has already been slowed somewhat. The three work together to prevent the passenger's head and neck from twisting, which could otherwise end up moving them toward the centerline or the door of the car.