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Acer hat sein erstes E-Bike Ebii vorgestellt. Es steht auf 20-Zoll-Reifen, verfügt über einen abnehmbaren Akku und wiegt 16 kg. (Acer, E-Bike)
There’s no price or release date for Acer’s utilitarian, lightweight e-bike.
Acer's ebii, an out-of-left-field attempt at an e-bike from a company best known for affordable PCs. [credit: Acer ]
When you think of Acer you probably think of PCs, whether they're cheap beater laptops and tablets, slightly nicer but still budget-focused ultrabooks and gaming laptops, or weird swing-and-a-miss experiments. But today the company announced something else entirely—the "ebii," a lightweight e-bike that, aside from an associated smartphone app, has nothing to do with PCs or tablets.
We've reviewed e-bikes with stylish designs and appealing curvature, but the ebii looks decidedly more utilitarian. The chunky "ebii Box" in the middle houses the control box, battery pack, and headlight, and the seat and handlebars jut upward out of it. In a nod to its history as a PC and tablet maker, the ebii's 460 W battery can be removed and used as a portable charging station for USB-C devices.
At just over 35 pounds (16 kg), the ebii is lightweight—it saves weight partly by using a single-sided fork for the front tire. Acer says it can accommodate most riders between 4.75 and 6 feet tall (145 to 185 cm), meaning that especially tall riders probably won't find it comfortable. The bike also won't break any speed or distance records, with a top speed of around 15 mph and a 68-mile range.
Candida auris is considered an “urgent threat” and is rising fast.
Enlarge / The director of Germany's National Reference Centre for Invasive Fungal Infections holds a petri dish containing the yeast Candida auris in a laboratory at Wuerzburg University. (credit: Getty | Nicolas Armer)
A deadly, drug-resistant fungus emerging in the US gained ground faster and picked up yet more drug resistance amid the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday.
The yeast Candida auris has been considered an "urgent threat"—the CDC's highest level of concern—since it was first reported in the US in 2016. The yeast lurks in health care settings and preys upon vulnerable patients, causing invasive infections with a fatality rate of between 30 to 60 percent.
In 2019, before the pandemic began, 17 states and Washington, DC, reported a total of 476 clinical cases. But in 2020, eight additional states reported cases for the first time, with the national clinical case count jumping 59 percent to 756. In 2021, 28 states were affected, with the clinical case count nearly doubling to 1,471. Asymptomatic cases detected through patient screening also jumped amid the pandemic, tripling from 1,310 cases in 2020 to 4,041 cases in 2021. The data appeared Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
On the iPhone, 8BitDo’s SN30 Pro is a waste with no emulator support.
Enlarge / The 8BitDo SN30 Pro is now supported on Apple platforms. (credit: 8BitDo)
The 8BitDo SN30 Pro has repeatedly been called one of the best controllers for playing retro console games, particularly those originally made for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)—which makes sense, since its design is based on the SNES controller.
Now that controller works much better on Apple platforms like the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV thanks to new firmware updates from 8BitDo. That's great news for folks who want to play 16-bit classics on their Macs, but the lack of retro console emulators on the iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV makes it a bit of a waste on those platforms.
Granted, the firmware update applies to more than just the SN30 Pro. 8BitDo's Ultimate Controller 2.4g, Pro 2, and Lite SE also got the firmware update—as well as the SN30 Pro variants, the SN30 Pro Plus and the SN30 Pro for Android. The Ultimate Controller, Pro 2, and Lite SE aren't so much meant as retro controllers as just good all-arounders, and so that's welcome for folks who enjoy games on Apple Arcade and the like.
In 2022, a group of major recording labels won $47 million in damages from Internet provider Grande Communications. Now, just a few months later, the music companies say they’re entitled to more. To compensate for attorneys fees and interest, the labels are seeking over $12 million, a request that has sparked opposition from Grande.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Last fall, several of the world’s largest music companies including Warner Bros. and Sony Music prevailed in their lawsuit against Internet provider Grande Communications.
The record labels accused the Astound-owned ISP of not doing enough to stop pirating subscribers. Specifically, they alleged that the company failed to terminate repeat infringers.
The trial took more than two weeks to complete and ended in a resounding victory for the labels. A Texas federal jury found Grande guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement, and the ISP was ordered to pay $47 million in damages to the record labels.
U.S. District Court Judge David Ezra confirmed the judgment on January 31st, but the legal dispute is not over yet. Grande asked the court to either overrule the verdict or grant a new trial. If those options fail, the Internet provider plans to file an appeal.
While Grande is playing defense, the major music labels are taking a more offensive approach with demands for more compensation. In addition to the previously awarded $47 million in damages, they recently requested an additional $12.7 million in attorney fees, interest, and other costs.
Courts have the freedom to issue this type of compensation when warranted. The labels say this is a prime example of when such an award is appropriate.
In a detailed motion, the music companies explain that Grande was well aware of its misconduct. The company willingly ignored piracy notifications and stopped terminating subscribers based on these accusations, as was admitted at trial.
“[R]ather than acknowledge its wrongdoing and address its role in contributing to the widespread infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrights, Grande litigated this case aggressively from start to finish.
“At trial, Grande still did not acknowledge any wrongdoing, but instead manufactured arguments about the reliability of the notices of infringement it received that were admittedly never asserted (or even considered) by Grande during the relevant time period.”
Grande has repeatedly argued that it didn’t act on the notices sent by tracking firm Rightscorp because it doubted their accuracy. The ISP was under the impression that it didn’t have to act on the notices and suggested that it would continue to ignore them if the jury agreed.
The labels say that Grande made no attempts to determine the accuracy of the notices before the ISP was taken to court. According to the music labels, the suggestion that the ISP might not have to act on piracy notices is illustrative of Grande’s “disdain” for the law.
“Most egregiously, Grande even argued to the jury that, if it were found not to be liable in this case, it would again ignore the infringing conduct of its subscribers,” the labels write.
The labels conclude that since Grande’s “intentional flouting of and disdain for the law” must be deterred, the additional $12.7 million in attorney fees, interest, and other costs is warranted.
Grande opposed the request a few days ago. Calling on the court to deny the music companies any additional money, the ISP says that the statutory damages awarded by the jury already represent a windfall for the labels.
Grande believes the $47 million award is already more than any actual losses attributable to piracy activity.
“Plaintiffs have already obtained a recovery that far exceeds any reasonable estimation of actual harm they suffered — indeed, Plaintiffs never even attempted to prove the amount of any loss. Thus, there is no rationale supporting an additional monetary award,” Grande writes.
The ISP also rejects suggestions that it flouted the law or that its defense was unreasonable. On the contrary, whether the copyright notices sent by Rightscorp were sufficient to establish liability was a key question to be answered at trial.
Based on these and other arguments, Grande believes that the court should reject the labels’ motion for attorneys fees, interest, and additional costs.
Whatever the court decides, this case is far from over. And with dozens of millions at stake, both sides are expected to fight tooth and nail.
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A copy of the music labels’ motion is available here (pdf) and Grande’s response can be found here (pdf)
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
A federal judge will soon decide if digital lending violates copyright laws.
Enlarge (credit: feellife | iStock / Getty Images Plus)
Today, the Internet Archive (IA) defended its practice of digitizing books and lending those e-books for free to users of its Open Library. In 2020, four of the wealthiest book publishers sued IA, alleging this kind of digital lending was actually “willful digital piracy” causing them “massive harm.” But IA’s lawyer, Joseph Gratz, argued that the Open Library’s digitization of physical books is fair use, and publishers have yet to show they’ve been harmed by IA’s digital lending.
“There’s no evidence that the publishers have lost a dime,” Gratz said during oral arguments at a New York district court.
It’s up to a federal judge, John Koeltl, to decide if IA’s digital lending constitutes copyright infringement. During oral arguments, Koeltl’s tough questioning of both Gratz and the plaintiff’s attorney, Elizabeth McNamara, suggested that resolving this matter is a less straightforward task than either side has so far indicated. Koeltl pointed out that because publishers have a right to control the reproduction of their books, the “heart of the case,” was figuring out whether IA’s book scanning violates copyrights by reproducing an already licensed physical book and lending it without paying more licensing fees to publishers.
The Mac Mini sees its biggest discount yet, while others match Black Friday lows.
If you've been eyeing some specific Apple devices but either missed your chance to snag record-low prices during the holidays, or in the case of the newest Mac Mini, haven't seen a substantial discount yet, today's Apple deals might be what you've been waiting for.
The M2-powered 512GB Mac Mini is at its lowest price of $700, typically $800, while the Apple Watch Series 8 and second-gen SE are matching their lowest recorded prices of $329 and $220, respectively. Those looking for a pair of AirPods can get the latest noise-canceling AirPods Pro for $200 ($250) or forego noise cancellation and add about 90 minutes of battery life with the third-generation AirPods for $150 ($170), both of which are discounted to prices we haven't seen since Black Friday. You can also nab a four-pack of Apple AirTags for $90, which is $10 off their usual price.
Apple's 2023 Mac mini. If you've seen one, you've seen them all, but it's what's on the inside that counts. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)
Apple's 512GB Mac Mini desktop computer, released January 2023, is seeing its biggest discount, down from $800 to $700. Equipped with Apple's M2 processor and 8GB of RAM, we found the Mac Mini to be cool, quiet, energy-efficient and packing enough power for anything short of serious gaming and heavy-duty rich media content creation. Gamers who want a Mac Mini (for the few games that run on them) and folks working in professional edit bays or the like should look to the M2 Pro-equipped Minis. Otherwise, this model is plenty capable of editing photos and videos from your phone, creating documents, and general browsing.
Data recovery firm blames SMR and size.
An analysis of 2,007 damaged or defective hard disk drives (HDDs) has led a data recovery firm to conclude that "in general, old drives seem more durable and resilient than new drives."
The statement comes from a Los Angeles-headquartered HDD, SSD, and RAID data recovery firm aptly named Secure Data Recovery that has been in business since 2007 and claims to have resolved more than 100,000 cases. It studied the HDDs it received in 2022. "Most" of those drives were 40GB to 10TB, according to a blog post by Secure Data Recovery spotted by Blocks & Files on Thursday.
Secure Data Recovery's March 8 post broke down the HDDs it received by engineer-verified "power-on hours," or the total amount of time the drive was functional, starting from when its owner began using it and ending when the device arrived at Secure Data Recovery.
It announced 18,000 job cuts in January and says yet more are likely this year.
Enlarge / Amazon has announced 27,000 layoffs since November 2022. (credit: Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)
Amazon will fire another 9,000 workers in the coming weeks. The news was delivered in an email from company CEO Andy Jassy to employees this morning and follows large cuts in November and again in January.
In his email to staff, Jassy wrote that most of the job cuts will come in four parts of the company: Amazon Web Services or AWS; "People Experience and Technology Solutions"; advertising; and the game-streaming platform Twitch, which has been owned by the Internet behemoth since 2014. Those areas of the company were also heavily affected by the earlier layoffs, which involved 18,000 workers.
"This was a difficult decision, but one that we think is best for the company long term," Jassy wrote.
The fun side of serious science: “We’re just normal, fun, creative people.”
Checkers Marshall’s award-winning dance depicted electrons moving around in crystalline materials that have a variety of applications.
University of Oregon chemist Checkers Marshall took top honors in the 2023 Dance Your PhD contest, combining hand fans, blue balloons, and original lyrics to make a dance video explaining their work on "nano-sponge" materials for use in carbon capture and drug delivery. Other winning videos provided creative takes on how local trees in the Amazon rainforest produce a protective hormone in response to drought; diffusing ions at the nanoscale, illustrated with a tango; and an artificial intelligence model called PsychGenerator that aims to bring personality and mental health attributes to AI.
As we've reported previously, the Dance Your PhD contest was established in 2008 by science journalist John Bohannon. It was previously sponsored by Science magazine and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and is now sponsored by AI company Primer, where Bohannon is the director of science. Bohannon told Slate in 2011 that he came up with the idea while trying to figure out how to get a group of stressed-out PhD students in the middle of defending their theses to let off a little steam. So he put together a dance party at Austria's Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, including a contest for whichever candidate could best explain their thesis topics with interpretive dance.
The contest was such a hit that Bohannon started getting emails asking when the next would be—and Dance Your PhD has continued ever since. It's now in its 15th year. There are four broad categories: physics, chemistry, biology, and social science, with a fairly liberal interpretation of what topics fall under each. Winners were chosen from 28 entries submitted from 12 different countries. All category winners receive $500, while Marshall, as the overall champion, will receive an additional $2,000. And the contest has a new sponsor this year: Sandbox AQ, an Alphabet spinoff focused on tackling large problems by bringing together artificial intelligence and quantum technologies.
Acer hat sein erstes E-Bike Ebii vorgestellt. Es steht auf 20-Zoll-Reifen, verfügt über einen abnehmbaren Akku und wiegt 16 kg. (
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