2024-12-19 23:45:26
Let this be a lesson in how not to return to the office.
Amazon announced in September that it will require workers to be in the office five days a week starting in January. Employee backlash ensued, not just because RTO mandates can be unpopular but also because Amazon is using some of the worst strategies for issuing these mandates.
Despite saying that employees would have to commute five days per week, the conglomerate simply doesn’t have enough office space to accommodate over 350,000 employees. Personnel in “at least seven cities,” including Phoenix and Austin, Texas, have had their RTO dates delayed until after January. Employees in Dallas won’t have enough space until March or April, and an office in New York City won’t have sufficient space until May, according to a new report—and that’s not even all of the hubs where the e-commerce giant has delayed RTO.
The differing messaging around workers returning to offices full-time represents another hiccup around a debated policy. Read more about Amazon’s labor woes at the link in our bio. [📸: Getty]
2024-12-19 00:15:39
Elon’s been less than transparent about where he’s been, apparently.
A new investigation suggests that the SpaceX founder has not been reporting his travel activities and other information to the Department of Defense as required by his top-secret clearance. Concerns about Musk's reporting practices have reportedly led to reviews by three different bodies within the military; the Air Force, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, and the Defense Department Office of Inspector General.
While Musk has not been accused of disclosing classified material, his behavior has raised questions from the military and some US allies. Read more of this story at the link in our bio. [📸: Brandon Bell/Getty Images]
2024-12-17 23:55:16
Today's TV selection has a serious dependency on advertisements and user tracking.
If you're looking to buy a TV in 2025, you may be disappointed by the types of advancements TV brands will be prioritizing in the new year. While there's an audience of enthusiasts interested in developments in tech like OLED, QDEL, and Micro LED, plus other features like transparency and improved audio, that doesn't appear to be what the industry is focused on.
In 2025, we expect competition in the TV industry to center around TV operating systems (OSes) and TVs' ability to deliver more relevant advertisements to viewers. That yields a complicated question for shoppers—are you willing to share your data with retail conglomerates and ad giants to save money on a TV?
We read the tea leaves on what to expect in the next twelve months while unpacking how privacy-sensitive consumers can navigate these rough waters. Read more at the link in our bio. [📸: Getty]
2024-12-17 01:00:29
Gymnastics is still a Turing test for AI video, it seems.
ICYMI: Last week, a video from OpenAI's newly launched Sora AI video generator went viral on social media, featuring a gymnast whose body horrifically transforms before our eyes.
In the video, we see a view of what looks like a floor gymnastics routine. The subject of the video flips and flails as new legs and arms rapidly and fluidly emerge and morph out of her twirling and transforming body. At one point, about 9 seconds in, she loses her head, and it reattaches to her body spontaneously.
It turns out the nonsensical synthesis errors in the video—what we like to call "jabberwockies"—hint at technical details about how AI video generators work and how they might get better in the future. Read our assessment of why exactly Sora went headfirst into the uncanny valley via the link in our bio. [📸: OpenAI / Deedy]
2024-12-13 01:40:27
What downed the little chopper that could?
Eleven months after the Ingenuity helicopter made its final flight on Mars, engineers and scientists at NASA and a private company that helped build the flying vehicle said they have identified what probably caused it to crash on the surface of Mars.
It is not easy to conduct a forensic analysis like this on Mars, which is typically about 100 million miles from Earth. Ingenuity carried no black box on board, so investigators have had to piece together their findings from limited data and imagery.
Yet even with limited info, NASA believes they’ve pinpointed a culprit in the helicopter’s onboard navigation sensors (which had a hard time with the relatively smooth Martian surface). Read more on their findings at the link in our bio. [📸: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS]
2024-12-12 01:05:18
Let’s take stock of spaceflight now that we’re a quarter of the way through the century.
There’s no quantitative way to rank amazing things that happen in space—you simply can’t measure their absolute magnitude nor assign them a numerical value, and trying to do so is something of a fool’s errand. That said, we’re fools who like to have a little fun.
Our completely subjective list will probably have many of you disagreeing with our choices and their ranking (which is totally fine—that’s what the comments section is for). But the point here is simply to bring some of these incredible moments back onto the front burner so we can all bask in their glory once again. Each of these achievements deserves our celebration and appreciation.
Check out our ranking at the link in our bio.
📸: Trevor Mahlmann for Ars Technica (Slide 1), NASA (Slide 2), SpaceX (Slides 3 and 4), NASA/Johns Hopkins University/SWRI (Slide 5)
