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As of today, you can no longer "Get the complete program." In about a year, you won't be able to use that complete program even if you bought it previously.

Xbox users who purchased training videos through the Xbox Fitness app probably thought they were buying a workout program they'd be able to use regularly for the life of the Xbox One, at the very least. Instead, those videos will soon be completely unavailable to those who paid for them up front, according to a "sunset" plan announced by Microsoft yesterday evening.

Xbox Fitness launched alongside the console in late 2013 as a unique, Kinect-powered health app, using the 3D camera to evaluate users' form as they followed along with on-screen streaming video trainers. The app provided 30 basic routines for free with an Xbox Live Gold account, but that subscriber benefit will end on December 15.

Xbox Fitness also included numerous branded training programs that cost real money up front, from $60/£40 P90X routines to Jillian Michaels videos that could run $12 each. That paid content is no longer available for purchase as of yesterday. Those who purchased it previously will be able to use it for just over one more year before the app becomes completely unavailable for download or use on July 1, 2017.

Irina Yarovaya, the driving force behind Russia's tough new anti-terrorism law. (credit: Official photographer of the Federation Council of Russia)

Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, has approved a series of new online surveillance measures as part of a wide-ranging anti-terrorism law. In a tweet, Edward Snowden, currently living in Russia, wrote: "Russia's new Big Brother law is an unworkable, unjustifiable violation of rights that should never be signed."

As well as being able to demand access to encrypted services, the authorities will require Russia's telecom companies to store not just metadata, but the actual content of messages too, for a period of six months. Metadata alone must then be held for a total of three years, according to a summary of the new law on the Meduza site. Authorities will be able to access the stored content and metadata information on demand.

Snowden pointed out the difficulties of implementing the new law: "'Store 6 months of content' is not just dangerous, it's impractical. What is that, ~100PB of storage for even a tiny 50Gbps ISP?" He added: "This bill will take money and liberty from every Russian without improving safety."

(credit: YouTube/France TV)

They call it "mechanical doping," but the name simply doesn't do it justice. Cycling is not a sport celebrated for honesty amongst even its top riders, but following several very high-profile doping cases in recent years, it seems as though the cheats have been trying a different route: hiding motors in their seat posts that help push them to superhuman feats of endurance.

The technique has been known since at least 2010; commercial versions of the motors can put out 200 steady watts of power, nearly doubling a typical pro-cyclist's output. An onboard motor can help riders go faster, and can keep their pedalling cadence—the number of revolutions through the crank per minute—up while energy dips in endurance stages.

With the biggest cycling event in the world, the Tour de France, set to begin on July 2, mechanical doping is a serious concern—one that has moved France's sports minister Thierry Braillard to tell the French press: "This problem is worse than doping; this is the future of cycling that's at stake."