Ford’s Argo AI begins driverless vehicle operations in Austin and Miami

Ford’s self-driving Argo AI unit has hit a major milestone. On Tuesday, it began driverless operations in Austin and Miami. The company’s cars aren’t carrying paying customers just yet, but they’re now allowed to ferry Argo AI employees without a safet…

Meta has nearly doubled the amount of violent content removed from Facebook

Meta has nearly doubled the amount of violent content it removes from Facebook. During the first quarter of 2022, the company took down 21.7 million pieces of content for breaking its rules around violence and incitement of violence, an increase from 12.4 million in the previous quarter.

Takedowns were also up for the quarter on Instagram, but only slightly. The company removed 2.7 million posts for breaking its rules around violence, up from 2.6 million during the last quarter of 2021.

The company shared the new metrics as part of its quarterly community standards enforcement report. In the report, Meta attributed the increase in takedowns to an “expansion of our proactive detection technology.” More than 98 percent of the posts it took down were removed before users reported them, according to the company.

The report comes at a moment when Meta is facing scrutiny for its response time following the recent mass shooting in Buffalo, New York. Live recordings of the shooting circulated on Facebook and other platforms and companies have been slow to take down all the new copies. One copy posted to Facebook was shared more than 46,000 times before it was removed more than nine hours after it was originally posted, according toThe Washington Post.

As with prior mass shootings like Christchurch, the ability for people to quickly download and make new copies of live recordings has tested Meta’s ability to enforce its policies.

“One of the challenges we see through events like this is people create new content, new versions, new external links to try to evade our policies [and] evade our enforcement,” Guy Rosen, Meta’s VP of Integrity, said during a call with reporters. “As in any incident, we’re going to continue to learn to refine our processes, refine our systems to ensure that we can detect we can take down violating content more quickly in the future.”

Meta also shared updated stats around content it mistakenly takes down. For violent content, the company said it eventually restored 756,000 Facebook posts that were appealed after they were initially removed. The company said it’s also “working on developing robust measurements around mistakes,” but didn’t explain what it would measure beyond restores of appealed content.

Updated to clarify that Meta shared updated numbers on takedowns that were appealed and subsequently reinstated.

Apple Store employees accuse company of union busting

Apple Store employees who are organizing in Atlanta have accused the company of union busting and violating the National Labor Relations Act. The Communications Workers of America submitted an Unfair Labor Practice filing on behalf of workers at the Cumberland Mall store. The filing claims that Apple “has conducted mandatory ‘captive audience’ meetings with bargaining unit employees regarding the upcoming election.”

For decades, companies have been allowed to conduct captive audience meetings until 24 hours before a union election begins. Employers typically use these mandatory meetings to deliver anti-union messaging.

However, as The Verge notes, National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo claimed in a memo last month that such meetings are in violation of the National Labor Relations Act. “Forcing employees to listen to such employer speech under threat of discipline — directly leveraging the employees’ dependence on their jobs — plainly chills employees’ protected right to refrain from listening to this speech,” Abruzzo wrote.

The Cumberland Mall Apple Store workers filed for a union election with the NLRB last month. The election is set for early June. The workers said that while they “love this company,” they are fighting for better pay and benefits, among other things.

Union drives are in progress at other Apple Store locations. Earlier this month, it was reported that Apple gave retail store managers anti-union talking points to use in daily “download” meetings that take place before shifts.

“Whether or not we join a union should be up to the workers at the store,” Derrick Bowles, a worker at the Cumberland store, said in a statement. “By having store managers try to persuade us not to join the union during daily downloads, Apple is putting its thumb on the scale.”

Engadget has contacted Apple for comment.

Update 5/17 1:58PM ET: Added Derrick Bowles’ statement and details from the filing.

Disney+ won’t show ads to preschoolers on its new streaming plan

You might not have to worry that Disney+ will bombard you with marketing when the ad-supported tier arrives later this year. Disney has confirmed to TechCrunch that it will limit the volume of ads to an average of four minutes per hour with this cheaper plan, or far less than the 7.4 minutes you endure with Hulu. Content aimed at preschoolers won’t include any ads, and Disney will “never” target ads at individual kids.

It’s still not clear how much the ad-backed tier will cost. However, Disney mentioned during its latest earnings call that it would likely hike the price of the ad-free version (currently $8 per month) once the more affordable plan arrives.

The restraint wouldn’t be surprising. Disney+ is mostly built around family-friendly content, and a heavy ad load could be seen as exploiting the high ratio of child viewers. It just has to look to YouTube as an example. Google’s video service drew flak from politicians and other critics for allowing targeted ads meant for kids, not to mention exploitative videos. YouTube responded by restricting ad targeting and demonetizing “low-quality” videos that are overly commercial or promote bad behavior. Limited ads could both prevent a regulatory crackdown and reassure companies jittery about where their ads appear.

As it stands, Disney can’t afford to risk alienating customers. While the company said during its call that its growth strategy is still on track, its direct-to-consumer division (which includes streaming) saw losses deepen to $887 million last quarter as licensing and other costs hit hard. The more people sign up for the ad-supported tier, the sooner Disney+ can swing to a profit.

Plant-based ‘whole’ eggs could be served in US restaurants this year

If you’re a vegan or eco-conscious consumer, there are plenty of options when you want a burger or chicken nuggets. But there aren’t many plant-based eggs. Sure, you can find powdered substitutes, but a “whole” egg with a runny yolk is a different matter. A startup wants to change that.

Yo! Egg claims to have developed the first plant-based poached and sunny-side-up eggs. Following a limited rollout in its native Israel, the company is bringing its products to the US, starting with a debut at the National Restaurant Association Show later this month. Yo! told TechCrunch it expects to have its eggs in restaurants across the Los Angeles area by the end of the year.

The company’s pitch is similar to that of other plant-based substitutes for animal products. Since its eggs are made from soy, sunflower oil, water and flour, they’re more sustainable to make. With 1 gram of protein, they’re not a one-for-one replacement for chicken eggs in terms of nutritional value, but they also don’t have any cholesterol. We’ll also note Yo!’s fried and poached eggs are separate products.

The company told TechCrunch it recently secured $5 million in seed funding and that it plans to use that money to scale production and start working on hard-boiled and scrambled egg products. “Our vision is to create the world’s largest egg company, not egg alternative company, and not the largest plant-based egg company, but the largest egg company without using chickens,” Yo! Egg CEO Eran Groner told the outlet.

What to look for in an electric lawn mower

The days of the gas-powered lawn mower and leaf blower are numbered in California. Last October, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1346, banning the sale of new gas-powered tools in the state by 2024, akin to its ban on new internal combustion vehicle sales by 2035.

And the Golden State is far from alone, “I think that the easier the manufacturers make it for other states to adopt the same sort of ban, the more states will do it,” University of Southern California environmental law professor Robin Craig told CBS. Lawmakers in Illinois and New York both are seeking to pass similar bills at the state level while cities like Brookline, Massachusetts; Montclair, New Jersey; and Burlington, Vermont, have all independently enacted seasonal bans of their own on gas-powered leaf blowers.

And it’s not just because internal combustion (IC) landscaping equipment is so loud — leaf blowers average 70 dB at 50 feet (the operator hears closer to 95-100 dB) while mowers start at around 85 dB — they are also significant emitters of greenhouse gasses. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) notes that running an IC mower for 1 hour emits the equivalent amount of carbon as driving a 2017 Camry 300 miles from LA to Las Vegas. Operating a 2-stroke leaf blower for the same amount of time produces the same amount of carbon as driving to Denver, roughly 1,000 miles from LA.

Western Cape, South Africa, Man wearing protective clothing and safety helmet trimming grass in a garden. (Photo by: Peter Titmuss/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Education Images via Getty Images

That’s actually an improvement from what we saw in the ‘80s and ‘90s before California instituted CARB. Today’s small engines are 40 to 80 percent more efficient and cleaner burning than they were before the agency got its start but, regardless, there are still some 16.7 million small (sub-19kW) engines in California — that’s three million more than the number of light duty passenger vehicles currently operating in the state. And given that the average price of a gallon of gas in America is currently $4.37 (the highest since 2000, per AAA), running all those noisy, thirsty mowers and blowers is getting untenably expensive as well.

With a long, hot summer of high gas prices imminent and the writing on the wall for 2-stroke engines, what better time than now to electrify your lawn care equipment? But before you head down to your local home improvement center, here’s some advice on what to look for in an electric mower directly from the people who design them.

Man mowing the grass with a manual petrol lawnmower.
Catherine Falls Commercial via Getty Images

Gas or Electric

Much like the auto industry’s ongoing transition from IC engines to EVs, lawn care equipment makers have spent recent years investing heavily in battery-based systems and have seen the performance of these power plants rapidly improve to be practically on par with the gas engines they’re replacing — not to mention being quieter, less expensive to operate and generally better for the environment.

For example, your average electric mower or leaf blower is going to produce around 75 dB of noise (equivalent to a running washing machine) — granted, that’s only a 10dB difference between the gas and electric motors, but because decibels are measured along a logarithmic scale, it actually sounds nearly half as loud to the human ear. And unlike gas mowers, using an electric doesn’t require you to don hearing protection (though safety glasses are always a good idea). What’s more, electric engines (with their decided lack of moving parts) wear much more gently than their internal combustion counterparts: No spark plugs to replace, oil to change, gas-oil ratios to measure and pour.

“Many professional-grade battery-powered tools come equipped with a brushless motor, which is virtually maintenance-free,” Stihl battery product manager, Paul Beblowski, told Engadget via email. “With a battery — there’s no need to buy, transport, or store fuel. There’s no tune-up for an electric motor and no need to winterize.” Aside from sharpening the cutting blade once a season or so, all owners really need to do is ensure the battery gets recharged before their next mowing session.

Vintage photograph of a woman in shorts and a sleeveless blouse pushing a gas powered lawn mover in a suburban backyard next to a swimming pool. in the 1950s. (Photo by Found Image Holdings/Corbis via Getty Images)
Found Image Holdings Inc via Getty Images

That’s not to say gas mowers are overnight relics. There are still plenty of use cases in which going with a conventional mower makes more sense, like when you need to clear more than an acre of land, or have to cut through dense, damp underbrush on difficult terrain, or are cutting on a remote field far from power outlets (sit down, Lightning Pro). A given unit of gasoline is still 100 times more energy dense than even the bloodiest-edge battery technology.

When it comes to choosing between a corded versus battery electric mower, “buyers must evaluate the size of their yard, access to outlet, and overall need for convenience,” Beblowski said. “It would make most sense to use a battery-driven mower when there is no access to an outlet or the customer wants the convenience provided by not dragging a cord through their yard. In addition, if the user is mowing around their pool or other water sources, it would make sense to stay away from cords and rely on a battery-driven mower.”

Another thing to consider is that while corded mowers will never run out of power, the amount that they can draw from a standard outlet cannot exceed 15 amps and 1800 watts (15 amps because that’s the US regulation, 1800 watts = 15 amps x 120 volts) — that’s actually the theoretical maximum and will continually throw breakers with that much load, so electric mowers typically top out at 13 amps (and therefore 1500 watts). So, if you’re looking for a heavy duty, high performance mower, especially a riding rig, battery-based systems will largely be your only electrified option.

How electric motors work

Standing in the power tool aisle of your local, prepare to be inundated with signage and branding calling out various aspects of the electric motor’s performance like “13 amps of power!” or “70 minutes of runtime!” These are helpful metrics but can be misleading and finding the right ratio of volts, watts and amps in that electric mower is paramount to getting the most out of your lawn care investment.

Lawn mower. Works in the garden. Spring season. Outdoor activity
Elena Gromova via Getty Images

For those of us that slept through that day of high-school science class, a quick analogy of how electricity works: it’s like plumbing. The given rate of water flowing through a pipe — Wattage, the electrical equivalent of gallons per minute — is determined by the ratio between the water pressure (aka Voltage) and the diameter of the pipe that it’s flowing through (the circuit’s Resistance). If you want to increase the wattage (that is boost the flow of electrons or, by this analogy, have more gallons flow per minute) you either have to increase the water pressure (increase the circuit’s voltage) or widen the pipe (i.e. use a higher amperage wire which lowers resistance).

“A good measuring tool for batteries is watt-hours (comparable to the size of a gas tank),” said Guy Dekowski, Outdoor Senior Product Manager at Dewalt. “Battery watt-hours are battery voltage multiplied by amp hours. This is a good signal of how long the mower can potentially run.”

“It’s important to differentiate between voltage and the amount of work a tool can actually do,” Beblowski said, noting that equating voltage to a motor’s overall power is a common misconception. “While voltage is a factor, the true energy capacity of a battery is measured in watt-hours… the watt-hours tell you the power of the tool. So, if you have an 80-volt system and a 2 Ah battery, you’re looking at 160 watt-hours, but if you have a 36-volt system and a 5 Ah battery, the power is actually higher at 180 watt-hours.”

Unfortunately there is no hard and fast rule governing whether high voltage – low amp tools or low voltage – high amp tools are generally superior. “There are pros and cons to both configurations,” said Dekowski. “Generally higher voltage is capable of more power; however there are variables outside of voltage and current to consider. For example, the deck and blade design have an impact on performance.”

“Hills and the thickness of their grass,” are two yard feature factors users should consider, Dekowski continued. “If a user has an incline, a self-propelled mower may suit them best. The thickness of the grass also plays a factor in the runtime of their mower. In thicker grass, the mower will pull more power driving the need for a mower capable of longer runtime.”

What to look for in an electric mower

The size and shape of your lawn will also impact the size and style of the mower that you need. Pay attention to the mower’s deck size, that indicates how wide of a swath it can clear with each pass. You’ll clear your yard in fewer passes with a 21-inch deck than you will with a 14-inch, though the corollary to that is wider mowers tend to be heavier and less maneuverable than their skinnier counterparts.

If you’ve got a compact urban backyard that needs tending, you can more likely get away with just a small push mower such as the 14-inch Worx 40V, 4Ah Power Share. More expansive suburban yards will do well with a larger, perhaps self-propelled model like the 21-inch Stihl 36V, 6Ah RMA 510 or a 20-inch, 12-amp corded Greenworks mower, while rural homeowners might need something a bit more heavy-duty like Toro’s 21-inch 60V, 6Ah Super Recycler or this 42-inch, 75Ah rideable Ryobi.

“Twenty to 21-inch decks are the most popular for a couple reasons,” Dekowski said. “First, it helps keep the weight at a minimum but the deck is still large enough to minimize work. The other benefits are maneuverability and compactness for storage.”

Like any other tool purchase, when shopping for a new mower try to stick to established, reputable brands like Stihl, Stanley Black and Decker (which owns DeWalt), Makita, Ryobi, Toro, Hart, Greenworks and Sun Joe. Pricing is going to range anywhere from around $125 for a compact, corded unit for urban yards up to a couple thousand for a burly zero-turn riding mower.

A young girl in a straw hat is mowing a lawn in the backyard with an orange lawn mower. A woman gardener is trimming grass with the grass cutter. A lawnmower is cutting a lawn on a summer sunny day.
Zhanna Danilova via Getty Images

Regardless of which brand you choose there are a few features that you should look for in a quality electric mower:

  • Deck material: Avoid mowers with plastic decks. Sure you’ll save a few pounds in weight but those made with metal housings will stand up to the elements, kicked stones and general wear and tear for far longer than their plastic counterparts.

  • Comfortable handles: You’re going to be squeezing these things for the better part of an hour as you systematically amble around the yard, better make sure they’re not going to chafe.

  • Big wheels: Getting stuck in a rut is bad enough when it’s just in the metaphorical sense. Make sure it doesn’t happen where the neighbors can see by using a mower with 10-inch rear, 8-inch front ball bearing wheels, suggests Beblowski.

  • Height adjustment: As a rule of thumb, you should be taking off about a third of the grass’ total height every time you mow (chopping it to about 2 to 3¾ inches tall). However, weather and solid conditions will impact how fast the blades grow between cuttings so having a mower that can adjust its blade height is key to maintaining a healthy lawn. Look for a model that can span from 1 – 4-inches off the ground.

  • Beware the brush: Electric motors come in two flavors — brush and brushless. The former has a tendency to overheat and stall while the latter generates more power, less heat and requires basically zero maintenance. Guess which you should choose.

  • Bagging options: Your willingness to go back and rake the whole yard vs stop occasionally to empty clippings on to the compost pile is a pretty strong indicator of whether you should spring for a side discharge, mulching or bagging mower.

  • Accessorize: One of the biggest benefits of choosing a battery over a corded mower is that manufacturers designed their battery packs to work in a wide array of power tools and gadgets, from leaf blowers and limb loppers to snowblowers and soil tillers. So if you’re looking to update more than just your mower, maybe take a look and see what other gadgets its batteries are rated for use on.

With the long Memorial Day weekend just around the corner, now is the perfect time to get your yard trimmed up and ready for post-lockdown barbeque parties — as well as defensible for what’s sure to be an unrelenting wildfire season throughout the American West.

Mastercard’s pay-with-a-smile test is bound to rile privacy advocates (updated)

Amazon isn’t the only one hoping you’ll be willing to use biometrics to pay at the store. Mastercard has unveiled a Biometric Checkout Program that aims to set standards for paying with scans or gestures. The company hopes to make the purchase as simple as smiling for a camera or waving your hand in front of a reader — you wouldn’t risk holding up the queue by reaching for your card, phone or watch.

The initiative would have you enroll either at the store or through an app. The potential standard is meant to accommodate shops of all sizes, and Mastercard is teaming with Fujitsu, NEC, Payface and other companies to establish baseline requirements for performance, privacy and security.

A pilot version is launching this week in Brazil, with Payface providing technology in five St Marche supermarkets across São Paulo. Customers will just have to smile to pay for their groceries. Tests are also planned for Asia and the Middle East, although Mastercard didn’t share more details.

Biometric checkouts may be appreciated if you’ve ever fumbled for your wallet at the cash. As with other implementations, though, it’s not clear if Mastercard will satisfy privacy concerns. Regardless of promises to protect your data, you’re still trusting companies with photos and other sensitive body info. Many people aren’t comfortable with that, and the Red Rocks Amphitheater even dropped Amazon palm scanning after a backlash from artists and activists worried about hacking and government surveillance. If Mastercard and its allies are going to establish a standard, they’ll need to reassure shoppers that spies and fraudsters won’t abuse body scans.

Update 5/17 3:58PM ET: Mastercard stressed that data would be converted into a digital template and encrypted, and that your face image stays on your device. This might not assuage everyone, but it’s worth knowing if you’re mainly concerned that someone else might have access to any photos.

We ran every test you could think of on the M1 Ultra

We’ve now tested every version of Apple’s M1 processor, from the first M1 chip in the 13-inch Macbook Pro all the way up to the M1 Ultra in the new Mac Studio, and the chip’s ability to scale performance is pretty incredible. The M1 Ultra fuses two M1 Max chips together to get you a processor with 20 CPU cores and 64 GPU cores, along with up to 128GB of RAM, and it’s one of the fastest processors we’ve ever tested.

We asked what tests you’d like to see run on the M1 Ultra and assembled quite a list, including Adobe Lightroom and Premiere Pro, Davinci Resolve and Fusion, 3D modeling in Blender, machine learning tests like TensorFlow and Pytorch, and even some gaming.

Amazingly, the M1 Ultra really does seem to be around twice as fast as the M1 Max in most applications. Whatever overhead is required to shuffle data around such a large chip, it rarely impacts CPU performance. The GPU scaling doesn’t fare quite so well. The M1 Ultra was typically 40-80% faster than the M1 Max, still speedy, but not quite as impressive in its scaling as the CPU.

The M1 Ultra does best when its hardware accelerators can kick in. These are the parts of the chip built to speed up specific tasks, namely video rendering and AI processing. In a test processing ten 8K video clips at once, the M1 Ultra did the job in just 29 seconds when its accelerators were able to help out. This was about twice as fast as the PC we were testing, despite it having a 16-core AMD 5950X processor and Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti graphics card.

Apple’s M1 ecosystem does at times feel unfinished. There were more strange bugs than I’d expected, and software compatibility can still be a problem, but it’s improving rapidly. The M1 Ultra wasn’t always faster than my PC, but in some tests it was two or three times quicker, and in only a few cases was it significantly slower. If you use Apple and need a high-end desktop, there’s really no decision, and for everyone else looking for a workstation, the M1 Ultra Mac Studio is a contender.

Check out the video above for the full details of our testing.