Month: March 2021

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  Google Maps has a new route-selection screen, and you can set preferred modes of transportation. [credit: Google ]

Google Maps has announced a slew of new features coming soon, ranging from on-map weather updates to AR-powered indoor navigation. There's a lot to cover, and the company says it is on track to deliver "over 100 AI-powered improvements to Google Maps" this year.

First, there's a new UI for directions. Today, the direction UI uses tabs for each transportation type: one for driving, then mass transit, walking, ride shares, and biking. In this redesign, everything appears in a flat list, but now you can hit the "options" button and set preferred modes of transportation. You can prioritize routing options for driving, walking, trains, buses, motorcycles, bikes, ride shares, "bike and scooter shares," and ferries. You can even pick multiple items, so all your top choices will be first in the list.

Some of the route options will have a little green leaf next to them, which is part of Google Maps' new focus on promoting cleaner methods of transportation. For driving, Google Maps' routing screen will soon take into account fuel efficiency, and you'll start to see a green leaf next to the fuel-efficient routes, too. For many places, the shortest route is the most fuel-efficient, so not much will change. But Google Maps will calculate things like traffic, starts and stops, and road elevation (a major concern in Google's backyard of California) to come up with a CO₂ rating for each trip. If it finds a route that is more fuel-efficient but longer, it will tell you about it, and if both routes take the same amount of time, fuel efficiency will be used as the tiebreaker for the default route.

Enlarge / How much is preserving something like this worth? (credit: Karen Chan 16, Miguel.v, and Jorge Morales Piderit)

Is there a way to put a dollar amount on pristine forests or marshlands? The United Nations believes so—and that the ability to do it might be a valuable step toward combating the slew of environmental challenges the world faces. In mid-March, the UN adopted the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting—Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) framework, a “landmark” way for countries to report on their own natural capital.

“Our dependence [on nature] must be acknowledged, must be recognized. It must be captured and accounted,” said Pushpam Kumar, chief environmental economist of the United Nations Environment Programme.

The framework’s focus is on natural capital, a monetary representation of the value of nature—and its ability to provide food, air, water and income for humans. Proponents of natural capital say that it can help countries, businesses, and other organizations make more informed decisions about how they use natural resources. However, some criticize the idea that nature should be measured this way.

Enlarge / Scarlet macaws (credit: Abul Az Abu Jamil)

Centuries ago, indigenous South Americans brought live parrots hundreds of kilometers across the Andes Mountains, then raised them in captivity in the Atacama Desert, according to a recent study.

The Atacama is one of the last places you’d look for tropical parrots. It’s the world’s driest desert, and it stretches along the Pacific coast of Chile to the west of the Andes Mountains. Most communities in the Atacama are hundreds of kilometers from the nearest place a tropical bird might find livable. But Pennsylvania State University archaeologist Jose Capriles and his colleagues recently examined the skeletons and mummies of 27 Amazonian parrots, representing at least six species, that had been buried as funeral offerings for the dead at several pre-Columbian sites in the Atacama.

They found that the birds had most likely been kept in captivity and plucked often for their bright red, yellow, blue, and green feathers. To get to the desert, the birds must have been captured in their tropical Amazon habitats and carried across the Andes along trade routes. Captured parrots probably arrived on the llama caravans that frequented oasis communities like Pica, in northern Chile.

Enlarge / Artist's conception of Sega lawyers coming for SteamDB...

Here at Ars Technica, we've covered plenty of examples of somewhat overzealous uses of DMCA takedown notices, to say the least. But Sega's latest takedown request, for an innocuous page on a Steam data-tracking site, might take the cake.

As SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik shared on Twitter Monday, Sega's lawyers asked that the site and its host take down a page for Yakuza: Like a Dragon. The takedown request alleges that SteamDB is distributing or linking to pirated copies of the game, even though a quick glance at an archived version shows that's not true.

That page, like every other on SteamDB, simply compiles historical data on pricing, concurrent players, and other statistics from Steam's own API and public store pages. While there is a link to install the game near the top, that link directs users to Steam itself, which will attempt to install a legitimate copy if the user owns it.

Amazon.com Inc. signage is displayed in front of a warehouse in Staten Island, New York, on Tuesday, March 31, 2020. (credit: Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images)

As Amazon came under fire last week for working conditions in its warehouses and among its delivery drivers, the company went on the offensive on Twitter, aggressively replying to members of Congress.

Amazon’s tweets were so aggressive that one of the company’s own security engineers filed a support ticket—titled “Suspicious activity on @amazonnews Twitter account”—that aired concerns about whether the posts were evidence of the company’s Twitter account being hacked.

“These tweets are unnecessarily antagonistic (risking Amazon’s brand), and may be a result of unauthorized access by someone with access to the account’s credentials,” the ticket said. The engineer included links to eight tweets sent between March 23 and March 25.