Amazon is reportedly (and suddenly) enforcing rules limiting employees' internal communication as workers, critical of the company's behavior, become increasingly outspoken and organized.
Internal listservs with more than 500 participants are now required to move to a moderated model where a manager must approve any content before its distribution, according to emails obtained by Recode.
Amazon had almost 800,000 total employees worldwide as of the end of 2019, a number that does not include the recent addition of another 175,000 temporary warehouse and delivery workers the company just hired to handle increased demand due to COVID-19. Of those 800,000, more than 500,000 are in the United States, and at least 275,000 of those are full-time employees.
Today's Dealmaster is headlined by a deal on Bose's Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, which are currently down to $299 at various retailers. That's $100 off Bose's list price and about $75 off the average price we see them go for online. The catch is that this deal only applies to the white (or "Soapstone") model, but if you like that look, this is the lowest price we've seen from reputable retailers to date. (We previously highlighted a deal that brought the pair down to $280, but that only applied to officially refurbished models.)
The Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 are Bose's newest pair of wireless active noise-cancelling (ANC) headphones, having launched last May. While we don't have a formal review for them on Ars, we have tested them for various gift guides over the past year. They sport a more premium-feeling design than the company's older QuietComfort 35 II, with a slick metallic finish on the headband and lusher earpads. Their active noise-cancellation is virtually identical, too, which is to say it's just about best-in-class and plenty strong enough to mute out noisy kids or the rumbling of the subway.
Their sound is more bass-forward than the more laidback profile of the QuietComfort; there's less treble detail as a result, and as is usually the case with wireless ANC headphones, you can get better pure sound out of a wired non-ANC pair at the same price. But if you prefer a more "fun" sound, they should be perfectly enjoyable. Beyond all that, their 20-hour battery life is solid, and their integrated mics provide great clarity over calls.
Wander into the wrong section of a home improvement store, and you'll discover entire aisles dedicated to a product category called "landscape lighting." Apparently, many people find it aesthetically pleasing to have systems to illuminate trees and flowers after the Sun goes down. If a group of Russian scientists has its way, however, the trees may ultimately be able to illuminate themselves.
A not-necessarily healthy glow
Plenty of living things glow in the dark. Some of these, like jellyfish and corals, rely on fluorescent proteins, which absorb energy at one wavelength and then re-emit it later at a visible one. Others, like fireflies, have enzymes that convert chemical energy to photons and so aren't limited by the need for a source of photons to power their glow. Typically, these latter organisms have a specific chemical—generically called a "luciferin"—that provides the energy. An enzyme called a "luciferase" (again, a generic term) cleaves a chemical bond in the luciferin and releases its energy as a photon.
(The use of these generic terms can be confusing, as the terms are interchangeable but the molecules are not. So, if you try to feed the luciferin from bacteria to the firefly luciferase, nothing will happen. It also means that the list of molecules in the "luciferin" category is regularly expanding as biologist categorize more systems.)
When Badr's grandparents moved from one house to another in April 2018, they had one simple request for Comcast—they wanted the cable company to transfer their Internet-only plan to the new address, with no changes to the service or price.
Badr, who helps manage his grandparents' account, thought everything had gone smoothly. "We asked to move the exact same service we had in place—just Internet. The customer service rep sent us a text message to confirm, and we confirmed," he told Ars via email.
Badr's grandparents' Internet service was transferred to the new house in Orland Park, Illinois, and the bill remained roughly the same at about $53 a month, at least for a while, he told Ars. It wasn't until much later that he realized what actually happened. The Comcast rep had "matched the old bill on the monthly cost" but added a streaming TV service that his grandparents didn't request and never used. The TV service was essentially free for the first year under the promotional deal that the Comcast rep applied to the account, but after the year was up the bill doubled, Badr said. The overcharges continued unnoticed and eventually added up to more than $600.
There was a time when the curious hardware hacker had to build their own 3D printer, because commercial models were so expensive as to be unaffordable except by well-funded institutions. We’re fortunate then to live in an era in which a good quality off-the-shelf machine can be had without breaking the bank, but that is not to say that home-made 3D printers are a thing of the past. Instead the community of rapid prototyping experimenters continue to push the boundaries of the art, and from that we all benefit. An example comes from [Morgan Lowe], whose 3DLS lead screw driven 3D printer joins the freely downloadable designs to be found on Thingiverse.
If at first sight you think it looks a little familiar, you are correct, as it takes its frame design from the popular AM8 metal frame upgrade for the Anet A8 off-the-shelf printer. It draws heavily from other A8 upgrades, and brings in some parts such as the extruder and bed from the Creality Ender3. This is the beauty of incremental open source, and the result is a belt-free printer that does a decent-looking Benchy on the bench, and as a party piece manages to print a slightly more hairy little plastic boat when suspended at 45 degrees by a rope from the ceiling.
When dipping a toe into the world of home made 3D printers it’s interesting to take a look into some of the earlier Hackaday RepRap posts, and see how far we’ve come.
In just a few short weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching effects across the country. Its contagious nature and the current lack of a vaccine or effective treatment has curtailed all but the most essential activities, particularly those that happen indoors or in enclosed spaces. Airline travel has dried to a trickle. Bars and restaurants are mostly take-out only. And we can now add the humble driving test to the list of things the coronavirus has cancelled, at least in the state of Georgia.
On April 23, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp issued an executive order packed with directives. Many of these are aimed at business that want to reopen, for Kemp has been ahead of the curve—even compared to President Trump—when it comes to relaxing rules meant to prevent the spread of the virus. But among the new instructions for businesses like cinemas and tattoo parlors that want to reopen, one of them announces that the state's Department of Driver Services is temporarily dropping driving tests for new drivers.
"[A]pplicants for a driver's license shall not be required to complete a comprehensive on-the-road driving test, [provided] all other requirements outlined in Code Section 40-5-27 are met," says the executive order.
Enlarge/ Microplastics are transported in the deep sea by turbidity currents and bottom currents, which concentrate them in hotspots known as sediment drifts. (credit: I. Kane et al. (2020))
Every year, millions of tonnes of plastic enter the oceans. If they’re buoyant, they get swept by surface currents into massive “garbage patches” like the famous ones in the North Pacific Ocean. But the tiny fragments and fibers of microplastics are harder to trace. As researchers have built up more evidence of their distribution, it’s becoming clearer that they may have a tendency to accumulate in particularly unfortunate places, like the surface currents where prey is plentiful and juvenile fish do a lot of feeding.
A paper in Science today reports a new hotspot: regions of the seafloor where sediments, swept along by deep currents, accumulate. Those same currents transport oxygen and nutrients to deep-sea ecosystems, meaning that the microplastics are probably accumulating in some of the most biodiverse spots of the seafloor.
Buried plastic
Much like weather on land, ocean currents are a morass of complex, interconnected systems, affected by local physical features. This makes it difficult to understand where plastics might end up. But we do know there's a lot to track. Right now, only around one percent of the plastic in the oceans seems to accumulate on the surface; much of the rest probably settles in the depths.
SpaceX's Starship vehicle is seen landing on the Moon. [credit: NASA ]
NASA announced Thursday that it has awarded three contracts to begin initial development of lunar landing systems that will take astronauts down to the surface of the Moon in less than five years.
With these Human Landing System awards, space agency officials reiterated in an interview that they remain committed to landing a pair of astronauts on the Moon by 2024 and building a sustainable presence by 2028. Asked if 2024 was still "on the table" despite the COVID-19 pandemic and myriad other challenges with such an aggressive timeline, NASA's chief of human spaceflight, Doug Loverro, replied, "It's not only on the table, it is the table."
The awards are notable both for their diversity and NASA's apparent willingness to take a chance on SpaceX and its out-of-the-box concept with its ambitious Starship system.
Three years on since our first drive, the Bolt EV now comes in a range of brighter colors and with a 10 percent bigger battery. But otherwise, has it been left in the dust by newer BEVs with better features? [credit: Jonathan Gitlin ]
When the Chevrolet Bolt EV first took to the streets at the end of 2016, it was a groundbreaking little car—the first battery electric vehicle with more than 200 miles (321km) of range at a price normal people could afford. But three years is an eternity in the electric car world. In the time since the Bolt showed up, similarly priced BEVs have appeared from other automakers, cars with features that the Bolt won't get until its midlife refresh—something that won't now happen until 2021 thanks to COVID-19. But Chevy did recently bump up the Bolt's range with better battery chemistry and a bigger capacity, and it's offering discounts of up to $8,500 on the once-groundbreaking BEV. We spent another week with one to see whether it still measures up.
The main difference between the model year 2020 Bolt EV and the ones we've driven in the past is in the battery. Chevrolet wanted more range, so LG Chem came up with some new lithium-ion chemistry that boosted energy density. The pack is still the same size and shape, and it's still made up of 288 individual cells, but it now has a useable 66kWh (as opposed to 60kWh), and that means an increase of its EPA range from 238 miles (383km) to 259 miles (416km).
Other than that, the compact BEV is pretty much as we knew it at launch. It still has the same 200hp (150kW), 366lb-ft (360Nm) permanent magnet synchronous motor driving the front wheels. It still only DC fast-charges at 55kW, adding 100 miles of range in 30 minutes, although software tweaks mean it should charge more rapidly than before in cold temperatures). And it still doesn't offer adaptive cruise control or the excellent Super Cruise driver assist.
I knew a lot of people that got excited when the original raspberry pi camera was announced, but quickly found themselves limited by the quality of the image. It can be really great to have that much control behind the sensor, but frustrating when your results are always a bit […]
Put that parts bin to good use and build something! That’s the gist of the Making Tech at Home contest where your inner pack rat can shine by building from the parts you have on hand.
So what are you supposed to build? We’re not particular, we just want it to be cool. Grab everyone’s attention with an awesome project, and then win our hearts with the story of where you found the components.
An excellent example is the Parts Bin Self Portrait seen here that was a runner-up in the Circuit Sculpture contest. [Daniel DomÃnguez] talks about cutting out his silhouette from a scrap of prototyping board, pulling dev boards out of the parts box, and finding a ceiling fan on the side of the road which ended up donating the wire from the windings of its motor.
Your story is what’s important here. You can build a sleek and beautiful bit of gear that doesn’t look hacky at all — tell us about what the finished project does, but we also need to hear what parts you had on hand, where they came from, and what led you to use them. There is an element of satisfaction when that broken thermostat that you’ve been squirreling way for ten years, or the accidentally ordered reel of 0402 resistors, ends up getting used. Dust off that electronics hoard and get building!
Prizes Sent Out Throughout the Contest
This contest runs until July 28th, but you won’t have to wait that long to score some loot. Thirty entries will win a grab bag of stuff from Digi-Key and we’ll pick a few projects every week as we work toward that number. Help us decide what to send in those grab bags by voting for the gear you like the most.
Once the contest wraps up, three top winners will receive a mega grab bag stuffed with $500 worth of components. You know… to add to your parts bin for all those future builds.
If you’re anything like us, people deliver their broken stuff to you because they’ve heard you build things out of broken electronics. You feel torn about keeping old hardware around, but feel guilty about sending it to the landfill. When you order parts you get multiples just so you have them on hand for the next project. You were made for this competition, and no matter who the prizes go to, we want a look inside your parts bin.
Of the 43 muscles that comprise the human face, only a few are actually important to speaking. And yet replicating the movements of the mouth by mechanical means always seems to end up only partly convincing. Servos and linkages can only approximate the complex motions the lips, cheeks, jaw, and tongue are capable of. Still, there are animatronics out there that make a good go at the job, of which this somewhat creepy mechanical mouth is a fine example.
Why exactly [Will Cogley] felt the need to build a mechanical maw with terrifying and fairly realistic fangs is anyone’s guess. Recalling his lifelike disembodied animatronic heart build, it just seems like he pursues these builds for the challenge of it all. But if you thought the linkages of the heart were complex, wait till you see what’s needed to make this mouth move realistically. [Will] has stuffed this pie hole with nine servos, all working together to move the jaw up and down, push and pull the corners of the mouth, raise and lower the lips, and bounce the tongue around.
It all seems very complex, but [Will] explains that he actually simplified the mechanical design to concentrate more on the software side, which is a text-to-speech movement translator. Text input is translated to phonemes, each of which corresponds to a mouth shape that the servos can create. It’s pretty realistic although somewhat disturbing, especially when the mouth is placed in an otherwise cuddly stuffed bear that serenades you from the nightstand; check out the second video below for that.
[Will] has been doing a bang-up job on animatronics lately, from 3D-printed eyeballs to dexterous mechatronic hands. We’re looking forward to whatever he comes up with next — we think.
We're resurfacing our Prince of Persia war story from last month to coincide with the release of PoP creator Jordan Mechner's book, The Making of Prince of Persia. If you missed the video last month, here's another chance to give it a look! And if you're interested in picking up a copy of Mechner's book, there's a link at the bottom of the piece.
I remember a lot of things about the summer of 1991 (like sneaking into the theater to watch Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead because my parents absolutely did not approve of movies that so clearly showed teenage disrespect for authority), but the thing I remember most about that summer is spending countless sun-dappled afternoon hours staring at a rotoscoped little dude on my computer screen as he died a million deaths. Sometimes he'd fall. Sometimes he'd be impaled by spikes. Sometimes he'd be chomped in half by giant steel jaws. And sometimes he'd collapse into a bleeding pile after crossing swords with pixellated bad guys.
It was, for me, the summer of Prince of Persia—and I was completely entranced.
Adding a resin printer to one’s workbench has never looked so attractive, nor been so affordable. Complex shapes with effortlessly great detail and surface finish? Yes, please! Well, photos make the results look effortless, anyway. Since filament-based printers using fused deposition modeling (FDM) get solid “could be better” ratings when it comes to surface finish and small detail resolution, will a trusty FDM printer end up retired if one buys a resin printer?
The short answer is this: for users who already use FDM, a resin-based stereolithography (SLA) printer is not likely to take over. What is more likely to happen is that the filament printer continues to do the same jobs it is good at, while the resin printer opens some wonderful new doors. This is partly because those great SLA prints will come at a cost that may not always justify the extra work.
Let’s go through what makes SLA good, what it needs in return, and how it does and doesn’t fit in with FDM.
When SLA Is Good, It’s REALLY Good
Objects with organic curves and no real “up” or “down” are much better suited to SLA than FDM.
The sweet spot for resin printing is this: small objects with smooth finishes, organic curves, and surface details. With SLA, these objects print more reliably and at a consistently higher quality than with FDM — as long as the operator does a good job with layout and support placement, anyway.
A big reason for this is that SLA does not produce layer lines the way FDM does. FDM prints are notorious for visible layer lines, and those lines are at their worst when spread across curved surfaces. SLA still creates objects one layer at a time, but the process doesn’t leave obvious lines.
There is also more freedom in part orientation when printing in resin. Unlike FDM, resin prints are isotropic. In the context of 3D printing, this means that the printed object’s physical properties do not change with respect to physical orientation. As long as a part is supported enough to print properly, a resin printer doesn’t much care in which orientation or at what angle it builds an object; the result will come out the same. This gives SLA printers more flexibility when it comes to part orientation, which helps when trying to keep presentation surfaces and details free from supports.
Niche Applications for SLA’s Strengths
One example of a niche for what resin printing is good at is gaming miniatures and figures. Tabletop enthusiasts are buying printers and resin, and designers of gaming-related models are finding success as well. The more successful ones thrive on sites like Patreon, with thousands of monthly supporters.
Engineering applications can have a place with SLA, so long as the objects are small enough. The build volume of most SLA printers is revoltingly tiny compared to FDM, but they make up for it with the ability to handle shapes and details that FDM would have problems with.
Beware SLA’s Added Costs
SLA printing brings some annoying buddies everywhere it goes in the form of added costs. These aren’t costs for the machines themselves; hobbyist SLA printers are very affordable. These ongoing costs are for consumables, increased time for upkeep and part processing, and storage space.
SLA requires more setup and cleanup than FDM. Printed parts need to be washed (usually in an alcohol bath) after printing, and possibly post-cured with additional UV exposure. Since resin is messy, disposable gloves and a spill-resistant work area are required. Another thing to consider is that resin isn’t meant to be left sitting in a printer for long periods, so when printing is done for the forseeable future, it’s time to empty the printer and clean the parts.
All of this takes time, but it also takes up valuable space in a work area. Bottles of resin, containers of alcohol, wash bins, gloves, a drip-proof work space, all of it takes up storage and table space. SLA printing as a whole will take up far more room than just the printer itself.
The other thing to consider is the need for manual post-processing. Resin prints tend to require a lot of supports, and those supports need to be removed by hand. These leave behind small marks that may need to be sanded away. With FDM, supports are a last resort that are used only if needed, but with SLA they are the rule rather than the exception.
Things FDM Is Still Good At
A well-maintained FDM printer is a fantastic tool for prototyping, iterating on designs, and creating functional parts. FDM also has other advantages that really stand out when contrasted with resin printing.
FDM is perfectly happy to wait patiently until needed, at which point a print can be started with a minimum of fuss. The consumables are few and reasonably priced. Filament is best stored in a dry environment, but besides that, it doesn’t ask for much. Swapping filament types or colors is simple, clean, and easy. Even a failed print doesn’t usually involve much more than sweeping away a mess of plastic and trying again.
The biggest disadvantages are related to layer line visibility, the resolution of surface detail, and working with curved organic shapes. None of these can be waved away, but they can be mitigated to some extent. Variable Layer Height tries to address layer line visibility, and it is a feature that has worked its way into most slicer software. The ability to render very small details and features can be improved, to some extent, by swapping a printer’s standard 0.4 mm nozzle for a smaller one.
FDM printers are most challenged by being asked to print curved objects that have no flat areas and no real “up” or “down”. One option is splitting these objects into smaller and more easily-printed ones, but that’s not always practical. Printing a tricky model will require supports, and supports with FDM always result in degraded surface quality. Water-soluble support structures can help mitigate this, but doing so requires multi-material printing. SLA, on the other hand, is far more suited to such objects.
Is There Room for Both?
Resin prints look fantastic and it may be tempting to think of SLA as superior to FDM, but that is not the whole story. They are different tools, and good at different things. Unless your needs are very specific, you’ll probably benefit from access to both.
If you need to print small objects with good surface finish and detail resolution, and you can deal with the added hassles of working with resin, then SLA is definitely for you. But even if you only print small objects, a working FDM printer can easily earn its place on your workbench with the ability to create functional parts without any significant setup and cleanup. If you’re considering an SLA printer, don’t plan to ditch FDM just yet.
I regularly use both but personally, I always choose a filament-based printer if possible; even if a final model will eventually be printed in resin, it’s simply cheaper and faster and easier to prototype and iterate with FDM.
If you have access to both, has this also been your experience? Do you know of a niche for resin printing that hits the spot in a way nothing else does, the way SLA has done with tabletop enthusiasts? We want to hear all about it, so let us know in the comments.
Enlarge/ We're not sure we love Boxes' offer to act as a RDP/VNC/Spice/SSH all-in-one client for remote systems that have nothing to do with your VMs. Convenient—or confusing? (credit: Jim Salter)
Yes, you can just install Gnome Boxes from Software Center—but I'm a sysadmin at heart; I used apt instead. [credit: Jim Salter ]
In the comments of our recent GhostBSD review, reader Enduzzer casually mentioned trying out the distribution in a Gnome Boxes VM. Linux's Kernel Virtual Machine has been a mainstay of my own system administration for more than a decade—but I use virt-manager, an excellent and deeply sysadmin-ish graphical management interface.
I generally describe virt-manager as "simple"—and in many ways it's much simpler than Boxes is—but there are different ways to interpret simplicity.
The integrated approach
We had good results with an Ubuntu Focal Fossa guest, running on our Ubuntu Focal Fossa host system. [credit: Jim Salter ]
Under the hood, Boxes shares the majority of its technical underpinnings with virt-manager: the libvirt virtualization API, the Linux Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor, and the qemu generic processor emulator. Virt-manager exposes those inner workings as much as possible while trying not to get them unnecessarily in the way.
