Month: January 2024

Enlarge / It's not likely to totally replace your car, nor will it probably be your only bike. But access to a cargo bike can reduce car trips, and even car ownership, a study from Germany suggests. (credit: John Timmer)

Cargo bikes started as something you'd see in images from Europe—bakfiets loaded up with groceries or sometimes kids. Now they're getting more popular, and seemingly for good reason. A new study out of Germany suggests that once you let people try them, they tend to have a real impact on car use, and even car ownership.

The study, from Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, surveyed people using a cargo bike share (CBS) system from 58 different programs and initiatives in Germany, controlling a collective 751 cargo bikes. Out of the 2,386 active CBS users surveyed, 45.8 percent had one car in their home, and 54.2 percent lived without a car. As you might notice, this mix of cargo bike shares and car ownership is not representative of the US, but using a cargo bike, even one they didn't technically own, still impacted ownership decisions in even one-car households.

A bit more than 18 percent of survey respondents said they either got rid of their car or decided against buying a car, and 80 percent of those people said they did so for environmental reasons. Nearly 49 percent said they ditched a car for financial reasons, 42 percent because they had "no interest in driving a car," and about 10 percent due to the safety risks of driving a car (with the survey allowing for multiple reasons).

Enlarge / The Fitbit Charge 5 came out in September 2021. (credit: Google)

Fitbit owners are getting frustrated with Charge 5 fitness trackers quickly losing their charge and, in some cases, exhibiting additional problems. Google has denied that the problems are tied to firmware updates. But users remain skeptical, and some are fed up with Google's limited response to a recurring problem.

Charge 5 battery complaints

On December 21, Fitbit announced Charge 5 firmware update 194.91 on its support forum. On paper, the update seemed typical, promising things like new clock faces, support for right-to-left text, and "bug fixes and improvements," per the release notes.

But by early January, there were complaints on the forum from people who said they updated their Charge 5 and then saw their device's battery suddenly drain much faster. Examples include one user claiming their battery life drains from 100 percent to 0 percent in 25 minutes and others saying their Charge 5 lasts about 12 hours. Most say their Charge 5 no longer lasts for a full day despite staying powered for days between charges before the update. The problems led a user going by Ge0ffh to call his device "completely unusable."

Enlarge / Mark Zuckerberg discussed Meta's approaches to child safety at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing January 31, 2024.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing weighing child safety solutions on social media, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stopped to apologize to families of children who committed suicide or experienced mental health issues after using Facebook and Instagram.

"I’m sorry for everything you have all been through," Zuckerberg told families. "No one should go through the things that your families have suffered, and this is why we invest so much, and we are going to continue doing industry-wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer."

This was seemingly the first time that Zuckerberg had personally apologized to families. It happened after Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) asked Zuckerberg if he had ever apologized and suggested that the Meta CEO personally set up a compensation fund to help the families get counseling.

Enlarge / Michael Andretti wants to take his racing empire to Formula 1, but he's facing resistance. (credit: Daniel Kalisz/Getty Images)

The Formula 1 grid will stay at just 20 cars for the next few years. Earlier today, F1 revealed it has rejected a bid by Andretti Global to join the sport for 2025. The move was not unexpected; neither F1 nor most of the teams have shown any enthusiasm toward Andretti's entry. The sport sent out a lengthy statement explaining its reasons for turning down the Andretti entry but said that "it would look differently on an application" in 2028.

It's a blow to both Andretti and its fans, but the move also signals increasing disharmony between the FIA, the sport's organizing body, and Liberty Media, which owns the commercial rights to the F1 world championship.

Andretti Global first announced its plan to enter F1 last January, seeing it as a natural expansion for an organization that already races in IndyCar, Formula E, Extreme E, and IMSA sportscar racing, among other series. A month later the FIA formally opened an application process for new teams to enter the sport, but of the four applicants only Andretti had the backing of a major automaker behind it—in this case General Motors' Cadillac brand.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Duncan Hull / Getty)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk's $55.8 billion pay package was unfair to the electric carmaker's shareholders and must be rescinded, Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick ruled yesterday. Most of the board members were beholden to Musk or had compromising conflicts, she wrote.

"Swept up by the rhetoric of 'all upside,' or perhaps starry-eyed by Musk's superstar appeal, the board never asked the $55.8 billion question: Was the plan even necessary for Tesla to retain Musk and achieve its goals?" McCormick's ruling said.

The post-trial ruling found in favor of lead plaintiff and shareholder Richard Tornetta, concluding "that the compensation plan is subject to review under the entire fairness standard, the defendants bore the burden of proving that the compensation plan was fair, and they failed to meet their burden."

Here at Ars, we've covered versions of Doom running on everything from hacked printers to Windows' notepad.exe to a version running inside Doom itself. But these and the other many and varied examples of weird Doom platforms all lack the sheer biological oddness of a new model for displaying the game using a grid of E. coli bacteria.

MIT graduate student Lauren Ramlan outlines a method for creating the quixotic Doom display in "1-Bit Pixels Encoded in E. Coli for the Display of Interactive Digital Media," the final project for a Principles of Synthetic Biology class. Ramlan's project builds on earlier research describing how the DNA in E. coli bacteria can be used to encode full digital circuits and how the bacteria itself can be induced to fluoresce as a crude form of digital display.

The kind of cell grid that could hold a phosphorescent E. coli "display." (credit: Fisher Scientific)

Ramlan's paper doesn't go to the enormous trouble of actually encoding all of Doom to run in bacterial DNA, which the author describes as "a behemoth feat that I cannot even imagine approaching." Instead, the game runs on a standard computer, with isolated E. coli cells in a standard 32x48 microwell grid serving as a crude low-res display.