Michael Straight, a former jockey paralyzed from the waist down, was left unable to walk for two months after the company behind his $100,000 exoskeleton refused to fix a battery issue, as reported earlier by the Paulick Report and 404 Media. “I called [the company] thinking it was no big deal, yet I was told they stopped working on any machine that was 5 years or older,” Straight wrote on Facebook, referring to a wiring problem in the watch he wears to operate the machine. “I find it very hard to believe after paying nearly $100,000 for the machine and training that a $20 battery for the watch is the reason I can’t walk anymore?” he wrote. Straight has been using the ReWalk exoskeleton since 2014, following a horseback riding accident...

The US is offering four more at-home tests to every household. Here's how to get yours.

The head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee took a Zoom call with someone using deepfake technology to pose as a top Ukrainian official, The New York Times reports. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) received an email last Thursday that appeared to be from Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s former foreign minister, asking him to meet on Zoom. The person on the other end of the call reportedly looked and sounded like Kuleba but was acting strangely. He asked Cardin “politically charged questions in relation to the upcoming election,” according to an email Senate security officials sent legislators that was obtained by the Times. The fake Kuleba demanded that Cardin give his opinion on foreign policy questions, including whether he supported firing...

Shark intestines are naturally occurring Tesla valves; scientists have figured out how to mimic their unique structure. Scientists at the University of Washington have re-created the distinctive spiral shapes of shark intestines in 3D-printed pipes in order to study the unique fluid flow inside the spirals. Their prototypes kept fluids flowing in one preferred direction with no need for flaps to control that flow and performed significantly better than so-called "Tesla valves," particularly when made of soft polymers, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As we've reported previously, in 1920, Serbian-born inventor Nikola Tesla designed and patented what he called a "valvular conduit": a pipe whose internal design ensures that fluid will flow in one preferred direction, with no need for moving parts, making it ideal for microfluidics applications, among other uses. The key to Tesla's ingenious valve design is a set of interconnected, asymmetric, tear-shaped loops. In his patent application, Tesla described this series of 11 flow-control segments as being made of "enlargements, recessions, projections, baffles, or buckets which, while offering virtually no resistance to the passage of fluid in one direction, other than surface friction, constitute an almost impassable barrier to its flow in the opposite direction." And because it achieves this with no moving parts, a Tesla valve is much more resistant to the wear and tear of frequent operation.

The recently launched Google Nest Learning Thermostat has its first notable discount, as Wellbots is offering it in all three color options for $259.99 ($20 off) with checkout code NLT4VERGE. Google took nearly nine years to replace the last model with this sleeker, Pixel Watch-looking design, but you only had to wait about a month and a half to save a few bucks. The new Nest isn’t just a prettier face, as it also brings Matter and Apple Home support — making it more flexible if you don’t want to solely live in Google’s smart home ecosystem. As indicated by its name, the Learning Thermostat familiarizes itself with your habits and preferences for how to heat and cool your home and starts to anticipate your needs to keep you comfy and...

Mira Murati, chief technology officer of OpenAI, speaks during The Wall Street Journal's WSJ Tech Live Conference in Laguna Beach, California, on October 17, 2023. On Wednesday, OpenAI Chief Technical Officer Mira Murati announced she is leaving the company in a surprise resignation shared on the social network X. Murati joined OpenAI in 2018, serving for six-and-a-half years in various leadership roles, most recently as the CTO. Also on Wednesday, OpenAI Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew and VP of Research Barret Zoph resigned independently of each other, but perhaps precipitated by the Murati news, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. "After much reflection, I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI," Murati wrote in a letter to the company's staff. "While I'll express my gratitude to many individuals in the coming days, I want to start by thanking Sam and Greg for their trust in me to lead the technical organization and for their support throughout the years," she continued, referring to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman. "There's never an ideal time to step away from a place one cherishes, yet this moment feels right." At OpenAI, Murati was in charge of overseeing the company's technical strategy and product development, including the launch and improvement of DALL-E, Codex, Sora, and the ChatGPT platform, while also leading research and safety teams. In public appearances, Murati often spoke about ethical considerations in AI development.

Enlarge Battery-electric vehicles accounted for 8 percent of new vehicle sales in June and July of this year and should be above 8 percent for September, according to estimates from S&P Global Mobility. While growth has slowed from the 50 percent year over year we experienced in 2023, the trend is still positive, with market share increasing from 7 percent in the first three months of the year. That also has to be seen in the wider context of overall new vehicle sales, which are expected to drop by 12 percent this month. "New vehicle sales remain stuck in neutral," said Chris Hopson, principal analyst at S&P Global Mobility. "The overall tenor of the auto demand environment remains one of consistent, but unmotivated volume levels as consumers in the market continue to be pressured by high interest rates and slow-to-recede vehicle prices, which are translating to high monthly payments." The rapid growth of BEV sales in the US was, until recently, mostly a tale about Tesla. During the pandemic, it flourished, as car buyers could order their Tesla online, and the automaker displayed far more flexibility over supply-chain hiccups than its legacy rivals. Sales soared, but not as much as the share price.

Pre-orders are open for Sony's new PS5 Pro and 30th Anniversary Collection.

Earlier this month, Volvo became the latest automaker to announce that it was delaying its plans to sell only electric vehicles. The decision was a reflection of the stark reality of the market: the demand was just not there. “We reduced the ambitions we had set to go 100 percent electric by 2030,” Vanessa Butani, head of global sustainability at Volvo, said in an interview. “We’re pushing that back a bit, not committing fully to a year right now, because we see that even though we’re fully ready to do it, the market’s not really with us.” Several years ago, automakers were tripping over themselves in a rush to declare their intentions to go all in on EVs. Volvo...

Bruce Campbell, Julie Bowen, and Anna Camp star in the devilish new series, arriving with a binge release October 18.

Enlarge couldn't be reached after a US district court judge, Colleen McMahon, ordered what TorrentFreak called "one of the broadest anti-piracy injunctions" ever issued by a US court. In her order, McMahon sided with textbook publishers who accused Libgen of willful copyright infringement after Libgen completely ignored their complaint. To compensate rightsholders, McMahon ordered Libgen to pay $30 million, but because nobody knows who runs the shadow library, it seems unlikely that publishers will be paid any time soon, if ever.

The first trailer for director Len Wiseman’s awkwardly named ​​From the World of John Wick: Ballerina spinoff film is here, and while it doesn’t feature a premiere date, it does have an unhinged spin on Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” that honestly kinda works. Set some time between John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and Chapter 4, Ballerina revolves around Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), an orphan-turned-assassin who is taken in by Continental hotel owner Winston Scott (Ian McShane) after the loss of her family. Rather than keeping Ballerina’s connections to the larger John Wick universe rather subtle, the new film brings Eve directly into the orbit of John Wick (Keanu Reeves) as she becomes an increasingly high-profile contract killer. The...

Enlarge Intel has spent most of 2024 investigating and trying to fix a problems that was causing crashes and instability for owners of its high-end 13th- and 14th-generation Core desktop processors. In April, Intel suggested that motherboard makers could be the problem because many motherboards used power settings that exceeded Intel's defaults. By the summer, Intel had tracked down one root cause of the problems and had released a microcode update to resolve it: The CPUs were making “elevated voltage requests,” which could degrade performance and stability and damage the hardware over time. The company and motherboard makers released separate BIOS updates to fix the incorrect default power settings and the elevated voltage requests, but Intel said in August that it was still looking into other possible problems and fixes. Today, the company is releasing what should be the final fix for the problem, which, as Tom's Hardware reports, is a confluence of four issues: too-high motherboard defaults, a bug that kept some CPUs from downshifting when they were running too hot, a bug where CPUs were being given too much voltage for an extended period, and a bug where CPUs were given too much voltage when they were idle.

A Spanish biotech company sees the carbon material as a way to power the brain-computer interfaces of the future.

Shelves sit empty where Boar's Head meats are usually displayed at a Safeway store on July 31, 2024, in San Anselmo, California. A 10th person has died in the nationwide Listeria outbreak connected to Boar's Head deli meats, which otherwise appears to be slowing, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. In an update about the outbreak on Wednesday, the CDC said that since its last update on August 28, only two new cases have been identified, bringing the outbreak's current total to 59 cases in 19 states. All 59 cases were hospitalized. One new death was reported in New York, bringing the total deaths to 10. In an alert to the media, the agency noted that "Illness reports have started to decrease, and CDC will update this notice less frequently." However, the risk of more life-threatening infections is not yet over.