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How Energy-Generating Sidewalks Work

We walk here, we walk there, we walk everywhere. Maybe you’re headed to work or to lunch in a busy city. You’re expending energy, and the exercise is good for you. But what if, on top of that, we could recapture all that freely supplied energy and convert it to usable electricity? This is a real thing. Systems have been installed in dozens of countries. Check out this video. And why stop there? You could put them in discotheques and harness that fancy footwork to power the strobe lights. Or bui

Is Data Modeling Dead?

Ok, not going to lie, I rarely find anything of value in the dregs of r/dataengineering, mostly I fear, because it’s %90 freshers with little to no experience. These green behind the ear know-it-all engineers who’ve never written a line of Perl, SSH’d into a server, and have no idea what a LAMP stack is. Weak. Sad. We used to program our way to glory, up hill both ways in the snow. All you do is script kiddy some Python code through Cursor. A recent post on Data Modeling, specifically that dat

Hundreds of Google AI Workers Were Fired Amid Fight Over Working Conditions

More than 200 contractors who worked on evaluating and improving Google’s AI products have been laid off without warning in at least two rounds of layoffs last month. The move comes amid an ongoing fight over pay and working conditions, according to workers who spoke to WIRED. In the past few years, Google has outsourced its AI rating work—which includes evaluating, editing, or rewriting the Gemini chatbot’s response to make it sound more human and “intelligent”—to thousands of contractors empl

‘JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run’ Anime to Stream Worldwide on Netflix

The upcoming season of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure anime, Steel Ball Run, is set to stream worldwide on Netflix. The announcement came alongside a press release to celebrate the streaming platform’s tenth anniversary in Japan, Deadline reported. The anime series, based on Hirohiko Araki’s manga, follows the Joestar family’s bloodline across generations as they face a variety of eccentric foes, including the time-rewinding Dio Brando. This series’ core gimmick features heroes and villains alike uti

Amazon’s Thursday Night Football broadcasts add more AI to the NFL

is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Amazon’s Prime Video is bringing more AI to the football field with new features designed to give viewers more insight into Thursday Night Football games, as highlighted earlier by Deadline. One feature, called Pocket Health, uses AI to analyze “tens of thousand

16-inch softball

Variant of softball 16-inch softball (sometimes called clincher, mushball,[1] cabbageball,[2][3] puffball, blooperball, smushball,[4] and Chicago ball[5][6]) is a variant of softball, but using a larger ball that gradually becomes softer the more the ball is hit, and played with no gloves or mitts on the fielders. It more closely resembles the original game as developed in Chicago in the 19th century by George Hancock, and today it remains most popular in Chicago,[7] New Orleans, Atlanta, and P

16-Inch Softball

Variant of softball 16-inch softball (sometimes called clincher, mushball,[1] cabbageball,[2][3] puffball, blooperball, smushball,[4] and Chicago ball[5][6]) is a variant of softball, but using a larger ball that gradually becomes softer the more the ball is hit, and played with no gloves or mitts on the fielders. It more closely resembles the original game as developed in Chicago in the 19th century by George Hancock, and today it remains most popular in Chicago,[7] New Orleans, Atlanta, and P

Why it’s so hard to make a ‘safer’ football helmet

When players take the field at the start of the NFL season, many will be sporting the new, subtly different F7 Pro helmet, which some have speculated might be the safest one football has ever seen. That’s significant for a sport that, over the past two decades, has become as well known for concussions as end zone celebrations. Schutt Sports, which makes the F7 Pro, claims that 35 percent of active NFL athletes have already adopted the helmet. Football is a sport with a traditionalist bent, part

Commercials Are Coming to NFL RedZone This Season... Sigh

The game of football is perfectly suited for television. Like most sports, football provides a natural break at the end of each quarter or half of play, as well as after a team scores, where the TV broadcast can cut to a commercial. Unlike other sports, a change in possession in football requires a full replacement of every player on the field, giving broadcasters additional opportunities for ad breaks as players run off and on the field. Football fans know this much before sitting down to watc

Comic Sans typeball designed to work with the IBM Selectric typewriters

YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN'T PRINT THIS! Update, July 7 2023: Dave Hayden took the resin-printed typeball concept and improved on it greatly. I'm extremely grateful that he took on all the hard work of iteratively going through and dialing in the perfect values to make a functional ball, and I'm pleased to think I contributed in some way to his achievements. ----------------------------------------- This is a Comic Sans typeball designed to work with the IBM Selectric typewriters that take 88-c

$1B Powerball Is Minting Social Media Gold

Powerball just hit a billion dollars, and people are freaking out about it. For 39 draws in a row, no ticket matched all six numbers for the Powerball jackpot. The last draw was on Saturday night. Now, for the next drawing on Labor Day, the jackpot has snowballed to $1.1 billion and will be the game’s fifth-largest prize ever, according to a statement from the lottery. The largest jackpot prize ever was cashed out in November 2022 by Edwin Castro, a California man who scored a $2.04 billion do

Fox and Google Reach Agreement to Keep Fox Channels on YouTube TV

Fret not, football fans, Fox channels are staying on YouTube TV. Google and Fox reached an agreement to end their dispute that could have led to the removal of Fox channels from Google-owned YouTube TV. Google announced the deal last night in a YouTube blog post stating, "We're happy to share that we've reached an agreement with Fox to keep their content on YouTube TV, preserve the value of our service for our subscribers and offer more flexibility in the future. This means that Fox channels, i

The best MacBook accessories for 2025

There is a mouse graveyard in my office cabinet — devices I’ve tried and discarded because they didn’t help with my shoulder aches. The solution was a roller ball mouse and Logitech’s MX Ergo is the best I’ve found. It tilts for a more natural “handshake” grip and has a slow-mo option for more precise movements in Photoshop and other apps. The scroll wheel is speedy but precise, as is the trackball and you can switch between two devices with the pairing button. You can even program the various b

The Unforgotten

Open Extended Reactions THEY WERE BOTH SO YOUNG. One would be entering his old age now, with most of a long life behind him. The other would just be entering his senior year in high school, working to fulfill a life of great promise. A vast gulf of time separates them. But nobody knows them now except by memory, so time is also what ties them together. And it is time that tells their story. They were both so young, are both so young still. In the early days of football, President Theodore

Will Bardenwerper on Baseball's Betrayal of Its Minor League Roots

Journalist Will Bardenwerper joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new book, Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America, which explores the consequences of Major League Baseball cutting 40 affiliated minor league teams, each one only as expensive as an average Major League salary. He explains how the accessibility and affordability of minor league baseball has made it a unique gathering point for working-class communities like the one in

The Pixel Watch 4 can track 12 new sports, and I’m really excited about one of them

TL;DR The Google Pixel Watch 4 adds support for 12 new sport modes. The watch now tracks more than 50 unique activity types. Among the added sports is Pickleball, a widely popular court sport that I love. The Pixel Watch 4 just gave athletes and casual movers even more reasons to lace up. Google’s latest smartwatch now supports tracking for more than 50 sports and activities, up from just over 40 on the previous generation. That’s a solid bump for anyone who likes to dabble in different worko

Can AI Predict Powerball Numbers?

With the Powerball ballooning to $650 million after Wednesday’s drawing, hopeful players have been asking: Is winning the lottery a matter of luck or something that science and artificial intelligence can predict? Three students at the University of Salento in southern Italy say that science wins out. They say they used AI to analyze patterns from past draws to predict future winning numbers. Their experimental approach resulted in a €43,000 jackpot in April, which now has people wondering if

I Don't Care What Steph Curry Says, Google's AI Doesn't Know Ball

Google announced a multiyear deal with NBA star Steph Curry on Wednesday at its Made by Google event. As part of the deal, Curry will use AI from Google's Cloud to get better at the game he's played for years. And while I respect Curry landing this gig, no one can convince me that AI knows ball. Let's start with the idea that 11-time All-Star, 4-time NBA Champ and 2-time Scoring Champ (to name a few of his accolades) Stephen Curry knows less about basketball than Google's AI. That's absurd. Did

Topics: ai ball curry google help

Google says Steph Curry will use its AI to get better at basketball

Google has announced a multi-year partnership with Steph Curry at its Made by Google event, and as part of that team-up, it says the NBA superstar will use AI from Google Cloud to improve his performance on the court. Yep, the company is claiming that Google Cloud AI can help the four-time NBA champ, two-time MVP and two-time scoring champion get even better at basketball. According to the company, AI insights can analyze his shot quality as well as sharpen his workout plans. Google's AI Basketb

Ikea’s most Ikea product ever

Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Ikea is teaming up with a Swedish designer for its latest collection, and the first product being teased is a dedicated plate for Ikea’s greatest product: meatballs. The 12-piece Gustaf Westman collection that’s launching on September 9th includes a chunky blue serving dish that is shaped to fit exactly 11 of the delicious morsels “in a celebratory row.” “I love designing objects for a specific function – i

Report: Apple strikes out of baseball coverage on Apple TV+, Friday Night Baseball to end

A package of MLB baseball rights are currently up for grabs. As recently as last week, Apple was said to be a front runner to land expanded baseball streaming coverage. But according to Yahoo Sports reporter Kendall Baker, that is no longer the case. According to the report, Apple has elected to exit its relationship with Major League Baseball altogether. That means it will add no new Sunday games, and it also implicates the future of Friday Night Baseball. Friday Night Baseball currently strea

Robinhood Tries to Rebrand Sports Betting as Investing

Robinhood has gotten a reputation as a platform where people make wildly speculative investments without sufficient guardrails. So it’s only right that it’s getting into the sports betting business. The company announced on Tuesday that it is launching “prediction markets” for college and professional football as part of a partnership with Kalshi. According to the company, it’ll start listing “contracts” for NFL and NCAA games in the coming days, with plans to make each matchup open for two wee

Best Outdoor Games to Play in 2025

Pickleball started to gain attention during the COVID-19 pandemic when people discovered it was a sport that could be played outdoors. Pickleball is a mix of tennis, ping-pong and badminton and is played using a tennis net, wooden paddles and a small ball. It can be played with two people (similar to tennis) or four people with two players making up one team. It's the ideal game to play if you have enough people at your get-together and the best part is it often comes in portable kits. The Fran

Apple TV+ among ‘final contenders’ for MLB Sunday Night Baseball, playoff games

Apple TV+ currently offers baseball fans Friday night games, but it sounds like Apple may soon be able to up its MLB offerings for subscribers. The Athletic says MLB rights are down to either Apple or Peacock Andrew Marchand writes at The Athletic: Apple and NBC/Peacock appear to be the final contenders for the “Sunday Night Baseball” package and, presumably, [first-round] playoff games. Apple already pays $85 million annually for exclusive Friday doubleheaders. It is possible MLB could split

I Tried Out ChatGPT's New Personalities, and It Mocked Me

ChatGPT got sassy with me and told me "human hope is adorable" when I asked it about my favorite college football team's prospects this season. It offered me tips for "petty human revenge" when my cat wakes me up in the middle of the night. And then, with a couple of clicks, it changed its tone to be sympathetic and earnest. It's the result of a new feature OpenAI unveiled with the chatbot's GPT-5 model, released this week. With one quick selection, you can change the entire tone of ChatGPT's a

The spellbinding Ball x Pit will hit PC and consoles on October 15

Back in June, publisher Devolver Digital decided to switch up its usual Summer Game Fest showcase format and dedicate it to a single game, Ball x Pit by indie developer Kenny Sun and a few collaborators. The demo sunk its claws into me , and I've been looking forward to the full game ever since. During Nintendo's Indie World stream on Thursday, it emerged that Ball x Pit is coming to Switch, PC , PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Game Pass on October 15. A Switch 2 version will arrive later this year. B

Cockatoos know 30 distinct dance moves

Snowball the dancing cockatoo gets down with his bad self to the Backstreet Boys. In 2008, a YouTube video featuring an Eleanora cockatoo named Snowball dancing to the beat of the Backstreet Boys went viral. His killer moves stunned scientists, since the ability to synchronize body movements to music was believed to be a uniquely human activity. Nor is Snowball an isolated case. Griffi the Dancing Cockatoo has his own YouTube channel, for example, and a recent TikTok video showed two sister coc

Show HN: I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display

August 2, 2025 TL,DR: I built the world's most impractical 1000-pixel display and anyone in the world can draw on it If you just want to play with it, goto kilopx.com. The backstory Six years ago I had an idea to build a large, inefficient display with a web interface that anyone could interact with. I've enjoyed Danny Rozin's unconvenional mirrors over the years and was inspired by an eInk movie player that played at 24 frames per hour that got me thinking about a laborious display that cou

Best Outdoor Games for 2025

Pickleball started to gain attention during the COVID-19 pandemic when people discovered it was a sport that could be played outdoors. Pickleball is a mix of tennis, ping-pong and badminton and is played using a tennis net, wooden paddles and a small ball. It can be played with two people (similar to tennis) or four people with two players making up one team. It's the ideal game to play if you have enough people at your get-together and the best part is it often comes in portable kits. The Fran

NBA quietly trials smart basketballs with embedded sensors and AI tracking

In brief: Kinexon and other companies have spent years refining connected-ball technology to enhance sports analytics, improve training, and collect more data than ever. As professional leagues begin adopting the new tech, questions remain about potential minute changes to basketball physics. Unbeknownst to most players, about half of the NBA games played in Las Vegas earlier this month used balls equipped with smart tracking technology. The league is considering full adoption, but one company