Enlarge / From magnets we came, to magnets we return. (credit: Garner Products)

There is the mental image that most people have of electronics recycling, and then there is the reality, which is shredding.

Less than 20 percent of e-waste even makes it to recycling. That which does is, if not acquired through IT asset disposition (ITAD) or spotted by a worker who sees some value, heads into the shredder for raw metals extraction. If you've ever toured an electronics recycling facility, you can see for yourself how much of your stuff eventually gets chewed into little bits, whether due to design, to unprofitable reuse markets, or sheer volume concerns.

Traditional hard drives have some valuable things inside them—case, cover, circuit boards, drive assemblies, actuators, and rare-earth magnets—but only if they avoid the gnashing teeth. That's where the DiskMantler comes in. Garner Products, a data elimination firm, has a machine that it claims can process 500 hard drives (the HDD kind) per day in a way that leaves a drive separated into those useful components. And the DiskMantler does this by shaking the thing to death (video).

Enlarge (credit: LifeSpan)

I enjoy getting my exercise but hate doing it indoors. I'd much rather get some fresh air and watch the world drift past me as I cycle or hike somewhere than watch a screen while sweating away on something stationary.

To get a bit more of what I like, I've invested in a variety of gear that has extended my cycling season deeper into the winter. But even with that, there are various conditions—near-freezing temperatures, heavy rains, Canada catching fire—that have kept me off the roads. So, a backup exercise plan has always been on my to-do list.

The company LifeSpan offers exercise equipment that fits well into a home office and gave me the chance to try its Ampera model. It's a stationary bike that tucks nicely under a standing desk and has a distinct twist: You can pedal to power the laptop you're working on. Overall, the hardware is well-designed, but some glitches, software issues, and design decisions keep it from living up to its potential.

Enlarge / A mother with her twin 6-year-old boys who have metachromatic leukodystrophy, a genetic disease that leaves them unable to move. Photo taken on September 3, 2004. (credit: Getty | John Ewing/Portland Press Herald)

In a medical triumph, the US Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved a gene therapy that appears to trounce a rare, tragic disease that progressively steals children's ability to talk, move, and think, leading to a vegetative state and death. For those who begin to slip away in infancy, many die by age 5. But, with the new therapy, 37 children in an initial trial were all still alive at age 6. Most could still talk, walk on their own, and perform normally on IQ tests, which was unseen in untreated children. Some of the earliest children treated have now been followed for up to 12 years—and they continue to do well.

But, the triumph turned bittersweet today, Wednesday, as the company behind the therapy, Lenmeldy, set the price for the US market at $4.25 million, making it the most expensive drug in the world. The price is $310,000 higher than what experts calculated to be the maximum fair price for the lifesaving drug; the nonprofit Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, or ICER, gave a range last October of between $2.29 million to $3.94 million.

The price raises questions about whether state, federal, and private health insurance plans will be able to shoulder the costs. "Unless states have allocated appropriately for it, and looked at the drug pipeline, they may not be prepared for what could be significant cost spikes," Edwin Park, a research professor at the McCourt School of Public Health at Georgetown University, told CNN.

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket)

Once again, Cloudflare has proven that its unusual defense against meritless patent infringement claims effectively works to end so-called "patent trolling."

In a blog post, Cloudflare announced that its most recent victory—defeating a lawsuit filed by Sable IP and Sable Networks in 2021—was largely thanks to participants of Project Jengo. Launched in 2017, Cloudflare's program offers tens of thousands of dollars in awards to activate an army of bounty seekers and crowdsource submissions of evidence—known as "prior art"—that can be used to overcome frivolous patent claims or even invalidate patents that never should have been issued.

To find prior art, Project Jengo participants comb through academic papers, technical websites, and patent documents, helping Cloudflare explain in detailed petitions to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) why certain patents should be invalidated.

A typical lawn sprinkler features various nozzles arranged at angles on a rotating wheel; when water is pumped in, they release jets that cause the wheel to rotate. But what would happen if the water were sucked into the sprinkler instead? In which direction would the wheel turn then, or would it even turn at all? That's the essence of the "reverse sprinkler" problem that physicists like Richard Feynman, among others, have grappled with since the 1940s. Now, applied mathematicians at New York University think they've cracked the conundrum, per a recent paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters—and the answer challenges conventional wisdom on the matter.

“Our study solves the problem by combining precision lab experiments with mathematical modeling that explains how a reverse sprinkler operates,” said co-author Leif Ristroph of NYU’s Courant Institute. “We found that the reverse sprinkler spins in the ‘reverse’ or opposite direction when taking in water as it does when ejecting it, and the cause is subtle and surprising.”

Ristroph's lab frequently addresses these kinds of colorful real-world puzzles. For instance, back in 2018, Ristroph and colleagues fine-tuned the recipe for the perfect bubble based on experiments with soapy thin films. (You want a circular wand with a 1.5-inch perimeter, and you should gently blow at a consistent 6.9 cm/s.) In 2021, the Ristroph lab looked into the formation processes underlying so-called "stone forests" common in certain regions of China and Madagascar. These pointed rock formations, like the famed Stone Forest in China's Yunnan Province, are the result of solids dissolving into liquids in the presence of gravity, which produces natural convective flows.

Enlarge / Andrew Cunningham's modded and restored Game Boy Advance could, with enough time, sing out all the data loaded into a cartridge. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Sometimes, a great song can come from great pain. The Game Boy Advance (GBA), its software having crashed nearly two hours ago, will, for example, play a tune based on the game inside it. And if you listen closely enough—using specialty hardware and code—you can tell exactly what game it was singing about. And then theoretically play that same game.

This was discovered recently by TheZZAZZGlitch, whose job is to "sadistically glitch and hack the crap out of Pokémon games." It's "hardly a ready-to-use solution," the modder notes, as it requires a lot of tuning specific to different source formats. So while there are certainly easier ways to get GBA data from a cartridge, none make you feel quite so much like an audio datamancer.

After crashing a GBA and recording it over four hours, the modder saw some telltale waveforms in a sound file at about the 1-hour, 50-minute mark. Later in the sound-out, you can hear the actual instrument sounds and audio samples the game contains, played in sequence. Otherwise, it's 8-bit data at 13,100 Hz, and at times, it sounds absolutely deranged.

Enlarge / Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of News Media Alliance; Professor Jeff Jarvis, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism; Curtis LeGeyt, president and CEO of National Association of Broadcasters; and Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast, are sworn in during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law hearing on “Artificial Intelligence and The Future Of Journalism.” (credit: Getty Images)

On Wednesday, news industry executives urged Congress for legal clarification that using journalism to train AI assistants like ChatGPT is not fair use, as claimed by companies such as OpenAI. Instead, they would prefer a licensing regime for AI training content that would force Big Tech companies to pay for content in a method similar to rights clearinghouses for music.

The plea for action came during a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled "Oversight of A.I.: The Future of Journalism," chaired by Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, with Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri also playing a large role in the proceedings. Last year, the pair of senators introduced a bipartisan framework for AI legislation and held a series of hearings on the impact of AI.

Blumenthal described the situation as an "existential crisis" for the news industry and cited social media as a cautionary tale for legislative inaction about AI. "We need to move more quickly than we did on social media and learn from our mistakes in the delay there," he said.

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson. (credit: Eric Berger)

Sir Richard Branson has ruled out putting more money into his lossmaking space travel company Virgin Galactic, saying his business empire “does not have the deepest pockets” any more.

Virgin Galactic, which was founded by Branson in 2004, last month announced it was cutting jobs and suspending commercial flights for 18 months from next year, in a bid to preserve cash for the development of a larger plane that could carry passengers to the edge of space.

The group has said it has enough funding to carry it through to 2026, when the bigger Delta vehicle is expected to enter service. But some analysts are expecting Galactic to ask investors for more money in about 2025.

Enlarge / A photo of the Microsoft Azure Maia 100 chip that has been altered with splashes of color by the author to look as if AI itself were bursting forth from its silicon substrate. (credit: Microsoft | Benj Edwards)

On Wednesday at the Microsoft Ignite conference, Microsoft announced two custom chips designed for accelerating in-house AI workloads through its Azure cloud computing service: Microsoft Azure Maia 100 AI Accelerator and the Microsoft Azure Cobalt 100 CPU.

Microsoft designed Maia specifically to run large language models like GPT 3.5 Turbo and GPT-4, which underpin its Azure OpenAI services and Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing Chat). Maia has 105 billion transistors that are manufactured on a 5-nm TSMC process. Meanwhile, Cobalt is a 128-core ARM-based CPU designed to do conventional computing tasks like power Microsoft Teams. Microsoft has no plans to sell either one, preferring them for internal use only.

As we've previously seen, Microsoft wants to be "the Copilot company," and it will need a lot of computing power to meet that goal. According to Reuters, Microsoft and other tech firms have struggled with the high cost of delivering AI services that can cost 10 times more than services like search engines.

Enlarge / The Steam Deck OLED (bottom) sunbathing with its older brother.

When the Steam Deck first launched, our extensive review specifically called out the "ho-hum" LCD screen as “the system's biggest heartbreak.” The “washed-out” color reproduction and “obvious light bleed” were among the more obvious effects of Valve “cut[ting] corners to save cash” on the Deck’s 7-inch LCD panel.

In the many months since that launch, Valve has offered frequent software updates to fix other early issues in areas like game compatibility, stability, and system-level features. But that lackluster LCD screen has remained the Steam Deck’s biggest flaw, a headache that users need to tolerate to enjoy a portable PC gaming experience that's otherwise quite low on compromises.

With the Steam Deck OLED, Valve is ready to eliminate that issue. The new unit, which goes on sale later this week, sports a brilliant screen that’s finally on par with the one Nintendo provided to eager Switch owners over two years ago. Paired with a handful of other small quality-of-life hardware upgrades, the new version of Valve’s handheld should arouse plenty of jealousy in those stuck with a now-outdated LCD unit.

Enlarge / Mood lighting orb not included. (credit: Valve)

Given the 2021 launch of Nintendo's Switch OLED, it might seem a little weird that we've had to wait nearly two years after the original Steam Deck launch for today's announcement of an OLED-equipped version. In interviews surrounding that announcement, though, Valve says an OLED screen was never in the cards for the original Steam Deck, given the timeline involved.

Valve designer Jeremy Selan tells IGN that "the display technology for the HDR display, we kicked that off prior to even having shipped the first [Steam Deck]." Selan added to Rock Paper Shotgun that work on this OLED update started "basically immediately" after the original unit was released.

"We knew we needed a better display, even from day one," Selan told RPS. "It just takes multiple years, it takes a lot of money."

Enlarge / A look at the Nvidia T234 that could be the basis for a scaled-down custom chip in the next Nintendo console. (credit: Nvidia / Imgur)

In recent months, the long-running speculation surrounding Nintendo's inevitable follow-up to the Switch has become more frequent and more specific, pointing to a release sometime in late 2024. Now, the pixel-counting boffins over at Digital Foundry have gone deep with some informed speculation on the system, dissecting leaked details on what they're convinced is the Nvidia chip Nintendo will be putting in their Switch follow-up.

That chip is the Nvidia T239, a scaled-down, custom variant of the Nvidia Orin T234 that is popular in the automotive and robotics markets. While Digital Foundry can't say definitively that this is the next Switch chip with "absolute 100 percent certainty," the website points to circumstantial links and references to the chip in a number of leaks, a recent Nvidia hack, LinkedIn posts from Nvidia employees, and Nvidia's own Linux distribution.

"From my perspective, the bottom line is that by a process of elimination, T239 is the best candidate for the processor at the heart of the new Nintendo machine," Digital Foundry's Richard Leadbetter writes. "With a mooted 2024 release date, there have been no convincing leaks whatsoever for any other processor that could find its way into the new Switch."

Enlarge (credit: OpenAI / Benj Edwards)

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT and DALL-E 3 generative AI products, is exploring the possibility of manufacturing its own AI accelerator chips, according to Reuters. Citing anonymous sources, the Reuters report indicates that OpenAI is considering the option due to a shortage of specialized AI GPU chips and the high costs associated with running them.

OpenAI has been evaluating various options to address this issue, including potentially acquiring a chipmaking company and working more closely with other chip manufacturers like Nvidia. Currently, the AI firm has not made a final decision, but the discussions have been ongoing since at least last year. Nvidia dominates the AI chip market, holding more than 80 percent of the global share for processors best suited for AI applications. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has publicly expressed his concerns over the scarcity and cost of these chips.

The hardware situation is said to be a top priority for OpenAI, as the company currently relies on a massive supercomputer built by Microsoft, one of its largest backers. The supercomputer uses 10,000 Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs), according to Reuters. Running ChatGPT comes with significant costs, with each query costing approximately 4 cents, according to Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon. If queries grow to even a tenth of the scale of Google search, the initial investment in GPUs would be around $48.1 billion, with annual maintenance costs at about $16 billion.