Month: August 2022

Enlarge / Nielsen's breakdown of TV viewing in July 2022. (credit: Nielsen)

A new report from market measurement firm Nielsen says that for the first time, TV viewers watched more on streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ than they did on cable TV, making streaming the most popular way to consume content.

The shift has been predicted by analysts and commentators for years, but it has only now come to fruition. Streaming had previously outpaced over-the-air broadcast TV, but cable was still beating it until July.

In July, streaming accounted for 34.8 percent of audiences' TV viewing. The runner-up was the now-dethroned cable TV, which came up narrowly behind at 34.4 percent. The relatively distant third was broadcast at 21.6 percent.

Enlarge / Bikes, infrastructure, and willingness to use both are all needed for Netherlands-level cycling use. (credit: Scott E Barbour)

Transportation produces about a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, and passenger vehicles account for over half that figure. As such, nearly every plan for future emissions cuts includes some variant of getting people out of internal-combustion vehicles—typically into electric versions of the same vehicle. But a couple of countries have managed an alternate route to lower emissions: Denmark and the Netherlands both have bicycle-focused transportation that gets many people out of cars entirely.

An international team of researchers decided to look into what factors have enabled these countries to make that shift and what might happen if more countries adopted a similar transportation focus. Two conclusions are clear: It's hard to get reliable data on bicycles, and bicycle-focused transportation could eliminate emissions equivalent to that of a decent-sized industrialized country.

How many bikes are there?

We have very good figures on the use of motor vehicles through government-required licensing and registration data. For bicycles, this is almost never the case, so the researchers had to estimate the number of bicycles present in most countries. To do so, they took figures on the manufacturing, import, and export and combined them in a model with information on how long bicycles typically last before being junked. The data runs up to 2015, so is already a bit out of date, as the pandemic has boosted cycling in many countries, but the countries they are able to make estimates for cover 95 percent of the global GDP.

Enlarge (credit: Sean Gallup / Staff | Getty Images News)

Yesterday, the anti-vaccine group the Children’s Health Defense celebrated the spread of poliovirus in New York, mocking health officials spreading awareness that polio is vaccine-preventable. Today, CHD reports that the group was also permanently banned from Facebook and Instagram yesterday. A screenshot of Meta’s notification in its press release says that the ban is due to CHD’s practice of spreading "misinformation that could cause physical harm."

A Meta spokesperson tells Ars that Meta “removed the Instagram and Facebook accounts in question for repeatedly violating our COVID-19 policies.”

CHD says the ban came “without warning,” cutting the anti-vax group off from hundreds of thousands of followers on both social media platforms. Denying allegations that the group spreads misinformation, CHD suggested instead the ban is connected to CHD’s lawsuit against Meta that questions the validity of how Facebook and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention label health misinformation. The group's legal counsel in that lawsuit, Roger Teich, suggested that the ban was improper.

Enlarge / Logitech G705 wireless mouse. (credit: Scharon Harding)

I'll admit it; I have a lot of PC mice. And it's not just because I review them. Between traveling, multiple computers, gaming, and my living room, I have interest in multiple mice that cater to different needs.

One of those needs is portability. Sure, it's easy enough to find a mouse that's wireless and lightweight, but often that comes with limited comfort and/or pared-down features.

At first glance, Logitech's G705 wireless mouse, announced in late July, seemed too minute to pack real power or accommodate anything but smaller hands. But a few hours into using the peripheral have shown me there's more than meets the eye in this tiny mouse.