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An analysis argues that premium brands undermine their own positioning on Amazon when they rely on constant, deep discounting rather than pricing strategies that reinforce perceived value. It points to persistent markdown badges as a key culprit, suggesting there are more profitable alternatives to chasing sales through discounts.
According to a New York Times report, Netflix executives have discussed integrating third-party streaming services such as Peacock and Fox One directly into its app. It's not yet clear whether this would mean selling subscriptions to those services or embedding their content, and no deal is currently imminent.
Georgia's GBI arrested three former Savannah Police Department officers and one former civilian staffer for improperly accessing Flock Safety's license plate reader network for non-law-enforcement purposes. The officers face two counts of misuse of a license plate reader system plus a violation of oath of office charge, while the civilian employee faces two misuse counts. Savannah PD uncovered the abuse through an internal audit, fired the individuals, and referred the case to state investigators.
YouTuber JerryRigEverything's durability test found the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold cracked along both antenna lines near its hinge, and the outer display detached completely without tools. This marks the fourth straight year a Google foldable has failed at the same structural point, despite Google's claim that this model's build is three times stronger than before.
Seven prominent architecture firms are developing their own AI tools instead of waiting for frontier labs like Anthropic to serve their needs, since the specialized data behind architectural work—3D models, technical drawings, hand sketches—sits locked in private firm archives rather than on the open web. This scarcity of scrapable data makes architecture a much harder AI target than domains like coding or writing, pushing firms to build in-house solutions using their own proprietary project records.
A new leak from Weibo tipster Digital Chat Station claims the OnePlus 16 will feature the thinnest bezels of any OnePlus phone yet, paired with a custom-built, high-clarity screen. The device is also expected to carry a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro chip, a 6.78-inch panel, and design cues similar to the OnePlus 15's square camera module.
Researchers highlight a stark 'data efficiency gap': large language models require orders of magnitude more text than a human child hears to master language basics. Stanford's Michael Frank and Georgetown's Ethan Wilcox note that while frontier models train on trillions of tokens, children pick up language fundamentals from a fraction of that input within their first year or two of life. Scientists are studying how kids achieve this to both understand human cognition and potentially inform more efficient AI training methods.
Developer Daniel Palmer has written new patches for Linux's Tdfxfb driver that let the kernel initialize 3dfx Voodoo3 graphics cards even on systems lacking a standard BIOS, such as the Amiga 4000. Palmer used AI assistance to read data directly from the card's own BIOS to force it out of an 'unbooted' state and produce a video signal, and the code is set to ship in Linux 7.3. He is also extending the work toward Voodoo4/5 support and Voodoo3 emulation in QEMU.
A new essay traces how societies historically punished people who deviated from norms, forcing most individuals to conform or face death, ostracism, or ridicule. It notes that cultures built temporary escape valves—festivals, frontier lands, and designated social roles like jesters or outcasts—to let some unconventional behavior exist without threatening the system. The author argues that this dynamic is now reversing, with modern conditions increasingly favoring those who diverge from average behavior.
A blogger built a customer analytics drilldown dashboard using only a 40MB pre-aggregated Parquet 'data cube' stored in R2, an 18KB browser-based Hyparquet reader, and HTTP range requests, avoiding any database or query engine. The demo rolled up NYC's 34-million-row 311 service request dataset into a compact cube that supports fast filtering by reading only small slices of the file at a time.
Meteoric Technologies, founded by two Cambridge engineers, wants to deploy fleets of autonomous drones into low- and mid-altitude clouds above solar farms to alter water droplets and reduce cloud reflectivity without chemicals. The startup claims this could boost annual power generation from existing solar assets by 10-30%, though this figure comes from a computer model rather than field measurements at an actual solar farm. Its only public evidence so far is a claimed 13% dissipation of an artificial cloud in an undisclosed cloud-chamber test.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shared her egg-freezing journey with followers on Instagram, including footage of her first hormone injection. She addressed common questions about the procedure, such as cost and duration, that many women typically navigate privately without workplace disclosure.