Month: May 2021

Pasta comes in many shapes and sizes, which is part of its inherent delight. But all those irregular shapes tend to be inefficient when it comes to packaging. So what if you could buy your pasta of choice in a simple, compact 2D form and then watch it take on the desired final 3D shape as it cooks, thereby doubling the fun factor? Scientists at Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU) have figured out a simple mechanism to do just that, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances.

"We were inspired by flat-packed furniture and how it saved space, made storage easier, and reduced the carbon footprint associated with transportation," said co-author Lining Yao, director of the Morphing Matter Lab at CMU's School of Computer Science. "We decided to look at how the morphing matter technology we were developing in the lab could create flat-packed pastas that offered similar sustainability outcomes." According to the team's calculations, even if you pack macaroni pasta perfectly, you will still end up with as much as 67 percent of the volume being air. The ability to make flat pasta for shipping that takes on a specific 3D shape when cooked is one potential solution.

Yao and co-author Wen Wang, also at CMU, began experimenting with what they term "transformative appetite," or shape-changing food, several years ago, inspired by their work with a bacterium that would shrink or expand in response to humidity—the same bacterium used to ferment soybeans to create natto, a popular Japanese breakfast dish that frankly smells a bit like aged cheese (and hence can be an acquired taste).

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  Plume's new Wi-Fi 6 Superpods are visually indistinguishable from the older 802.11ac version, pictured here. [credit: Plume ]

Today, Wi-Fi mesh vendor Plume released its newest gear—a Wi-Fi 6 enabled version of its flagship Superpod design. We were the first to get our hands on the new Superpods, which retail at $159 apiece. Plume recommended four Superpods total for our 3,500-square-foot test house, so that's precisely how we tested.

To give the Superpod design every chance to shine, we used a new Wi-Fi 6 enabled test fleet—one equipped with Intel AX201 Wi-Fi 6 adapters in place of the 802.11ac Intel 7265 adapters in our old test fleet. But replacing the test fleet means needing to generate new baselines. So rather than re-using old tests, we broke out our original 802.11ac Superpods and a three-piece 802.11ac Amazon Eero mesh kit to serve as a competitive measurement baseline.

All three of these kits are top performers—including the Amazon Eero, which routinely beats much higher-spec and higher-priced kits in our testing. And Plume's Superpods have been leading the pack in our various iterations of The Great Ars Mesh Wi-Fi Throwdown for at least five years now.

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  The YouTube Shorts beta. It's like TikTok. [credit: Ron Amadeo ]

YouTube's TikTok clone, "Shorts," is out of beta and should roll out to everyone in the US by next week. Shorts are 15- to 60-second videos that, on mobile, launch in a full-screen, vertical video interface that users can swipe between. Shorts are just an alternative interface for YouTube videos, and on the desktop site or on a channel page, Shorts appear as regular videos in the normal YouTube interface.

A big draw for TikTok is the video editor, which comes with all sorts of effects, music, filters, and variable playback speeds. YouTube's Shorts editor doesn't have nearly as many features as Tiktok, but Google says that "over the next year, we'll be releasing a ton of new filters and effects so you can get the vibe you want."

Even if you don't want to watch Shorts, the most noticeable change from this rollout will be a new "Shorts" tab in the mobile app. The tab will live in the bottom app-wide tab bar. This will give users a dedicated space to explore all the TikTok-type content people have been creating, and it provides a blazingly bright app-wide advertisement for the new feature. The bottom tab bar is premium real estate in the YouTube app—it's present on nearly every screen of the app, and it elevates Shorts to the same importance level as "Subscriptions," "Library," and the home page. Previously, Shorts only appeared in an easily ignorable horizontal carousel on the home screen. Shorts will be taking the spot of the "Explore" tab, which shows trending videos. The Explore page has been demoted to the home page.

Enlarge / The running deck of a Peloton Tread treadmill during CES 2018 at the Las Vegas Convention Center on January 11, 2018. (credit: Getty | Ethan Miller)

Interactive fitness company Peloton has agreed to recall two treadmills nearly two months after the company reported that a 6-year-old child died after being pulled under one of the devices.

Peloton has received at least 72 reports of adults, children, pets and/or objects getting dragged under their Tread+ treadmill. In those incidents, 29 children suffered injuries, which included second- and third-degree abrasions, broken bones, and lacerations, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission noted.

In February, a father reported to the CPSC that his 3-year-old son was pulled under a Tread+ and trapped. When the father discovered his son and was able to free him, the toddler was pulseless and not breathing, according to the report. Fortunately, the boy was resuscitated, but he “now has significant brain injury.” The boy had tread marks on his back matching the slats of the Tread+, as well as a neck injury, and petechiae (small blood spots) on his face, presumably from blood flow being cut off.

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  Returnaling, over and over, to remember the things we shot. [credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment / Housemarque ]

It's not too surprising that a game like Returnal would have some hidden cheat codes allowing players to lighten the game's punishing difficulty. But the method—which requires players to plug a USB keyboard into their PS5—for entering those newly discovered "debug mode" codes has some wondering if developer Housemarque intended for them to be accessible in the final product.

YouTuber TheRandomizer was among the first to publicize the cheats, posting a video showing a Returnal player dropping new weapons at will and teleporting to previous locations in the middle of play. A Reddit thread goes into more detail on the keyboard combinations required to get the codes to work, including warnings for certain situations where they may permanently ruin a run.

Developers traditionally use "debug modes" during a game's development to test specific in-game situations without having to go through the sometimes arduous process of setting them up. There's a long history of games that make extant debug modes accessible to players on the final released version, sometimes through hidden codes, sometimes through external cheat devices, and sometimes through an on-screen "debug console" that lets players type complex commands directly.

Enlarge / Screenshot from the Starlink order page, with the street address blotted out. (credit: SpaceX Starlink)

SpaceX has received more than 500,000 orders for Starlink broadband service, the company said yesterday.

"'To date, over half a million people have placed an order or put down a deposit for Starlink,' SpaceX operations engineer Siva Bharadvaj said during the launch webcast of its 26th Starlink mission," CNBC reported.

SpaceX opened preorders for Starlink satellite service in February and is serving at least 10,000 users in its beta in the US and overseas combined. The preorders required a $99 deposit for service that would be available in the second half of this year. The 500,000 total orders presumably include both US residents and people in other countries; we asked SpaceX for more details and will update this article if we get a response.