"One more thing," Steve Jobs would say at the end of many an Apple keynote, giving his cue for announcing a surprise new product. But Apple can't keep its founder's turn of phrase for itself, a London judge ruled Monday as he sided with Swiss watchmaker Swatch Group AG in a long-running dispute over trademarks. From a report: Swatch's attempt to register the phrase might have been an attempt to "annoy" Apple, Judge Iain Purvis said in his ruling, but Apple can't block it from doing so. Purvis said in his ruling that the phrase probably originated with the fictional TV detective Columbo. A previous court officer was wrong to say that "Swatch's intentions had stepped over the line between the appropriate and inappropriate use of a trade mark," Purvis added. The dispute is part of a broader battle between the Cupertino, California-based company and Swatch over the naming of watches that goes back to the launch of Apple's own product in 2015 when Apple was prevented from calling its version the 'iWatch'. The dispute with Swatch extended to other trademarks including the watchmaker's move to register 'Tick Different' evoking Apple's own slogan of 'Think Different.'

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It can't do back flips like Atlas the humanoid robot, nor can it dance or open doors for its friends, like Spot the robotic dog can. Instead, Boston Dynamics' new robot, named Stretch, is going straight to work in a warehouse. Wired: Rolling around on a wheeled base, it's basically a large robotic arm that grabs boxes using vacuum power, and it's designed for tasks like unloading trucks or stacking pallets. If Spot and Atlas are the show-offs in the family, Stretch is the straight-up workhorse. But while these machines all look and move in wildly different ways, they actually share a lot of DNA. Stretch may seem familiar to you, because it's a sort of descendant of another machine that debuted a few years back: Handle. That robot had a similar suction arm, but it balanced on two wheels, like a Segway scooter. Handle would grab a box, scoot backward, turn 90 degrees, and roll away to stack the box somewhere else. It looked neat on video, but in practice the robot needed a lot of room to operate. It could manage unloading boxes from a truck, sure. "But it took a long time," says Kevin Blankespoor, lead of warehouse robotics at Boston Dynamics. "The truck is a pretty confined space. And so for Handle, every time it grabbed the box, it would need to roll back into some space where it could rotate freely without collisions." Which is all to say: If Handle were a human, it'd be let go. So Boston Dynamics pivoted (sorry) to a new form factor for Stretch that slapped a similar robotic vacuum arm on a base with four wheels. Each wheel can move independently, so the robot can shift side to side or forward and backward to orient itself in, say, the back of a truck. This new base granted Stretch two powers. For one thing, resting on four wheels is a whole lot more energy efficient than trying to constantly balance on two. The same is true for animals: A dog or cat is inherently more stable than a human. (Stretch will get 8 hours of battery life, and clients will have the option to upgrade to a double battery that holds 16 hours of charge.) The second advantage is that Stretch's arm can now pivot around its base, while Handle had to pivot its whole body to turn. Stretch can shift up to 800 boxes an hour.

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Apple said on Monday it is expanding its "Independent Repair Provider" to over 200 countries, nearly every country where the iPhone-maker's products are sold. From a press release: Launched originally in 2019 and expanded to Europe and Canada last year, the program enables repair providers of all sizes access to genuine Apple parts, tools, repair manuals, and diagnostics to offer safe and reliable repairs for Apple products. There are now more than 1,500 Independent Repair Provider locations serving customers across the US, Canada, and Europe. "Being a part of the Independent Repair Provider program has been a huge benefit to my business, employees, and customers," said Scott Baker, owner of Mister Mac in Wimberley, Texas. "Since joining, we've received great support from Apple, and we're able to deliver that same level of service to our customers. It has even brought genuine excitement to our town." All participating repair providers in the program have access to free training from Apple and the same genuine parts, tools, repair manuals, and diagnostics as Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASPs) and Apple Store locations.

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Even before the pandemic, Americans were already flushing far too many wipes into the sewer system. After a year of staying at home, the pipe-clogging problem has gotten worse. From a report: Just ask Larry Hare, who says he immediately observed the change from his vantage point as the manager at a wastewater reclamation facility in Des Moines, Iowa. Sewer backups are up 50%, and he attributes this to the flushing of wipes, which don't break down in water like toilet paper. "We've always had the problem, but it just hasn't been as big a problem as it is currently," Hare said. With consumers cleaning everything from counters to doorknobs in hopes of thwarting the coronavirus, sanitary wipes are more popular than ever. In the 12 months through late January, their sales surged 75%, according to data from Nielsen. But the blockages they create when flushed -- dubbed fatbergs -- have become a costly headache. The Des Moines Metropolitan Wastewater Reclamation Authority has spent more than $100,000 over the past year and deployed specialized block-clearing trucks about 30 times, according to Hare. Similar problems are plaguing cities and towns across the U.S., and they're being forced to spend more and more on fixing the problem.

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One of the biggest trends in machine learning right now is text generation. AI systems learn by absorbing billions of words scraped from the internet and generate text in response to a variety of prompts. It sounds simple, but these machines can be put to a wide array of tasks -- from creating fiction, to writing bad code, to letting you chat with historical figures. From a report: The best-known AI text-generator is OpenAI's GPT-3, which the company recently announced is now being used in more than 300 different apps, by "tens of thousands" of developers, and producing 4.5 billion words per day. That's a lot of robot verbiage. This may be an arbitrary milestone for OpenAI to celebrate, but it's also a useful indicator of the growing scale, impact, and commercial potential of AI text generation. OpenAI started life as a nonprofit, but for the last few years, it has been trying to make money with GPT-3 as its first salable product. The company has an exclusivity deal with Microsoft which gives the tech giant unique access to the program's underlying code, but any firm can apply for access to GPT-3's general API and build services on top of it./i

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A BBC undercover reporter saw practices that could mean people receiving a wrong test result.

After Amazon's public relations account sent a number of tweets taunting public officials, staffers were so concerned about the "unnecessarily antagonistic" tone that a security engineer filed a suspicious activity report, believing that the company's social media account had been hacked, according to internal company documents obtained by The Intercept. From a report: One tweet, responding to Rep. Mark Pocan's criticism of Amazon labor practices, said, "You don't really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you?" "These tweets are unnecessarily antagonistic (risking Amazon's brand), and may be a result of unauthorized access by someone with access to the account's credentials," the report states. "The tweets in question do not match the usual content posted by this account, and doesn't seem to match the quality careful wording, and doesn't report the same source-label (the offending tweets all report 'Twitter Web App' instead of 'Sprinklr')." The report was filed on Friday, according to two Amazon employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional reprisal, but was promptly closed out. An internal Amazon correspondence log provided to The Intercept said the tweets were "not a technical issue": "I got details from [redacted] that this is [an] ongoing PR issue and does not require any technical support. PR leadership are aware of it." "It basically got sent into a black hole," the employee who provided the log said. "Just resolved as no issue."

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Suspected Russian hackers gained access to email accounts belonging to the Trump administration's head of the Department of Homeland Security and members of the department's cybersecurity staff whose jobs included hunting threats from foreign countries, The Associated Press reported Monday, citing sources. From the report: The intelligence value of the hacking of then-acting Secretary Chad Wolf and his staff is not publicly known, but the symbolism is stark. Their accounts were accessed as part of whatâ(TM)s known as the SolarWinds intrusion, and it throws into question how the U.S. government can protect individuals, companies and institutions across the country if it can't protect itself. The short answer for many security experts and federal officials is that it can't -- at least not without some significant changes. "The SolarWinds hack was a victory for our foreign adversaries, and a failure for DHS," said Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, top Republican on the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "We are talking about DHS's crown jewels."

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Spaceflight and endurance swimming can both cause the heart to lose mass, say researchers.

Many internet companies posted record performance during the pandemic as consumers turned to apps and other cloud software to work, study, socialize and shop from home. But as vaccines roll out and restrictions relax, some of this unprecedented digital demand is fading. From a report: Data from research firm Apptopia reveal how the superstar apps of the Covid-19 era are faring now in the U.S. Plus, stats from New Zealand, a country that reopened earlier, show what the future might hold for these services. Here's the main takeaway: Many well-known apps are losing ground, or usage has stabilized. Some behaviors are sticking, though, suggesting the pandemic will provide a more-permanent boost for a few internet companies. Zoom Video Communications's app has been so ubiquitous during the pandemic that it's now a verb. Lately, though, workers complain of "Zoom fatigue," and data from New Zealand are ominous. Usage has dropped in that country as employees and students return to offices and schools. Even in the U.S., where most offices remain virtual, Zoom use peaked in September. The company said recently it's well positioned for strong growth. Microsoft's Teams communication software was another work-from-home hit last year. That service has seen mobile app usage decline, too, especially in New Zealand. Other staples of the virtual workplace are here to stay, according to Apptopia data. DocuSign's app, which lets you sign contracts and other documents digitally, has seen consistently high usage lately. The app has become a popular way to close real-estate transactions, so it is likely getting an extra boost from the housing boom.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The pilot was 3,000 feet over the Amazon, flying a small propeller plane on his maiden assignment for wildcat miners deep in the forest, when the lone engine cut out. He took a deep breath and scanned the vast emerald green canopy below. He had about five minutes, he calculated, to bring down the plane and its highly flammable cargo: 160 gallons of diesel fuel. He reported his imminent crash over a portable radio to whoever might be listening, noting that he was about halfway to his destination, a mine known as California. Then, as his plane barreled down, Antonio Sena aimed for a small valley lined with palm trees. "There!" he recalls thinking. "Palm trees mean there is water, perhaps a river." Since becoming a pilot nine years earlier, Mr. Sena had heard countless stories about fatal crashes. But while his plane scraped a few trees and then smashed into the ground, Mr. Sena realized something exhilarating as he rolled to a halt: He had survived. He grabbed a pocketknife, a flashlight, a couple of lighters and a phone with little juice in the battery and scrambled away from the aircraft. Moments later, it burst into flames. Then he settled down to wait for his rescue. It was a long wait. At first, Mr. Sena recounted in a phone interview last week, he camped out next to the remains of the 48-year-old Cessna 210L, figuring it was his best chance of being spotted. And search pilots did, in fact, circle the area for several days -- and then kept going. "They flew right over, but couldn't see me," Mr. Sena said. He waved and screamed each time he heard the thud of propellers, but to no avail. Giving up his hopes of being rescued near the wreckage, Mr. Sena embarked on what turned out to be a 17-mile trek through the rainforest, home to jaguars, venomous insects and anacondas. Thirty-six days later, on March 6, he emerged to tell a story that has transfixed Brazilians -- a rare piece of uplifting news for a nation badly in need of it after a year of being battered by the Covid-19 crisis. His account, though, also put a spotlight on Brazil's illegal mining industry, which has flourished in recent decades in Indigenous territories and other parts of the Amazon that are supposed to be sanctuaries. The illegal mine where he was headed is in the Maicuru reserve, where no human activities are allowed beyond those meant to protect the forest.

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Imports of coffee, cocoa and beef in rich countries cause the loss of almost four trees per person per year.

Visa said its payments network will use a stablecoin backed by the U.S. dollar to settle transactions, as cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology gain more acceptance in the established financial system. From a report: As part of a pilot program, Visa is using USD Coin to settle transactions over Ethereum, with the help of the Crypto.com platform and Anchorage, a digital-asset bank, according to a statement Monday by the San Francisco-based payments giant. Visa will offer the service to more partners later this year. Traditional financial companies are beginning to embrace cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects more than a decade after the creation of Bitcoin in 2009. Jack Forestell, Visa's chief product officer, said the firm's move is partly an effort to serve financial-technology companies.

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A joint WHO-China study on the origins of COVID-19 says that transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario and that a lab leak is "extremely unlikely," The Associated Press reported Monday, citing a draft copy. From the report: The findings offer little new insight into how the virus began to spread around the globe and many questions remain unanswered, though that was as expected. But the report did provide more detail on the reasoning behind the researchers' conclusions. The team proposed further research in every area except the lab leak hypothesis. The report's release has been repeatedly delayed, raising questions about whether the Chinese side was trying to skew the conclusions to prevent blame for the pandemic falling on China. A World Health Organization official said late last week that he expected it would be ready for release "in the next few days." The AP received a copy on Monday from a Geneva-based diplomat from a WHO-member country. It wasn't clear whether the report might still be changed prior to release, though the diplomat said it was the final version. A second diplomat confirmed getting the report too. Both refused to be identified because they were not authorized to release it ahead of publication. The researchers listed four scenarios in order of likelihood for the emergence of the coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2. Topping the list was transmission from bats through another animal, which they said was likely to very likely. They evaluated direct spread from bats to humans as likely, and said that spread through "cold-chain" food products was possible but not likely. Bats are known to carry coronaviruses and, in fact, the closest relative of the virus that causes COVID-19 has been found in bats. However, the report says that "the evolutionary distance between these bat viruses and SARS-CoV-2 is estimated to be several decades, suggesting a missing link."

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I watched CNN's two-hour special last night, with interviews with some of the doctors from the last administration on what went wrong. All of these people sold us out to some extent, including Fauci, just by staying in their jobs. None of them admitted last night that they were as complicit as they were. But Deborah Birx takes the fall for everyone, and that's wrong.

People say what if Birx had quit, with a statement about how the Trump administration was botching it, that could have made a difference. But it couldn't have. Anyone who was paying attention knew what Trump et al were doing, including news people. Yet they made the story every night about how Trump and his minions were lying.

If the press wanted to make a difference, they could have changed the story from "Trump Sucks" to "This is what we need to do today." They could have found a way to tell us where the virus was storming and where it was quiet. They could have, instead of coasting along in neutral, tried to save lives. For some reason they didn't see this as their job.

They could have done what Trump was supposed to be doing, but (guessing) they were too scared to step out of their comfortable role, which is ironically what people unfairly accuse Birx of.

But last night it was good journalism on CNN's part, now, to sit all these people down, while they're all accessible and their memories are fresh and the pandemic is still ongoing, to get them on the record. It's not an autopsy yet, as they were saying it was, because the story is not over, the patient is still alive.

The key failures in this pandemic so far have been the government and journalism, imho about equally. I'm glad we are starting to be honest about what happened in government, we probably never will be open about what's going wrong in journalism.