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We all have those thoughts, the ones that come to us in the small hours of the night. Who am I? Why are we here? What if my cellphone ran on vacuum tubes instead? Randall Munroe has the answer to, well, only one of those questions, but also the answers to a whole bunch of others collected together into What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Yes, that is a T-Rex eating an airplane. In the excerpt below Munroe examines what it would take to haul an average sized human in a chair over Australia’s tallest skyscraper, using only the power of pigeons. Lots and lots of pigeons.     

Excerpted from What If? 2 by Randall Munroe. Copyright © 2022 by Randall Munroe. Excerpted by permission of Riverhead, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

How many pigeons would it require in order to lift the average person and a launch chair to the height of Australia’s Q1 skyscraper?

In a 2013 study, researchers at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics led by Ting Ting Liu trained pigeons to fly up to a perch while wearing a weighted harness. They found that the average pigeon in their study could take off and fly upward while carrying 124 grams, about 25 percent of its body weight.

The researchers determined that the pigeons could fly better if the weights were slung below their bodies, rather than on their backs, so you would probably want pigeons to lift your chair from above rather than support it from below.

Let’s suppose your chair and harnesses weigh 5 kilograms and you weigh 65 kilograms. If you used the pigeons from the 2013 study, it would take a flock of about 600 of them to lift your chair and fly upward with it.

Unfortunately, flying with a load is a lot of work. The pigeons in the 2013 study were able to carry a load 1.4 meters upward to a perch, but they probably wouldn’t have been able to fly too much higher than that. Even unencumbered pigeons can only maintain strenuous vertical flight for a few seconds. One 1965 study measured a climb rate of 2.5 m/s for unencumbered pigeons,* so even if we’re being optimistic, it seems unlikely that pigeons could lift your chair more than 5 meters.†

No problem, you might think. If 600 pigeons can lift you the first 5 meters, then you just need to bring another 600 along with you, like the second stage of a rocket, to carry you the next 5 meters when the first flock gets tired. You can bring another 600 for the 5 meters after that and so on. The Q1 is 322 meters high, so about 40,000 pigeons should be able to get you to the top, right?

No. There’s a problem with this idea.

Since a pigeon can carry only a quarter of its body weight, it takes four flying pigeons to carry one resting pigeon. That means each “stage” will need at least four times as many pigeons as the one above it. Lifting one person may only take 600 pigeons, but lifting one person and 600 resting pigeons would take another 3,000 pigeons.

This exponential growth means that a 9-stage vehicle, able to lift you 45 meters, would need almost 300 million pigeons, roughly equal to the entire global population. Reaching the halfway point would require 1.6 × 1025 pigeons, which would weigh about 8 × 1024 kilograms—more than the Earth itself. At that point, the pigeons wouldn’t be pulled down by the Earth’s gravity—the Earth would be pulled up by the pigeons’ gravity.

The full 65-stage craft to reach the top of the Q1 would weigh 3.5 × 1046 kilograms. That’s not just more pigeons than there are on Earth, it’s more mass than there is in the galaxy.

You could make things more efficient by reusing pigeons. In the 2013 study, the researchers gave the pigeons 30 seconds to rest on the perch before bringing them down for another trial. If each “stage” is two seconds, and pigeons are refreshed after 30 seconds, you could fly arbitrarily high with a 15-stage craft—but that would still require trillions of pigeons.

A better approach might be to avoid carrying the pigeons with you. After all, pigeons can get up to the top of the skyscraper themselves, so you might as well send them ahead to wait for you there instead of having their friends carry them up with you. If you could train them well enough, you could have them glide along at the appropriate height, then grab you and tug you upward for a few seconds when you reach their altitude. Keep in mind that pigeons can’t grab and carry things with their feet, so they’d need little harnesses with aircraft-carrier-style hooks to intercept you.

With this arrangement, it’s possible you could fly yourself to the top of the tower with just a few tens of thousands of well-trained pigeons. You should probably make sure you have some kind of safety system that will keep you from plunging to your demise every time a falcon flies by and spooks the pigeons.

The craft wouldn’t just be more dangerous than an elevator, it would also be a lot harder to pick your destination. You might plan to go to the top of the Q1, but once you take off… you’ll be completely under the control of anyone with a bag of seeds.

The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max may have only arrived yesterday but developers are already dreaming up fun and interesting use cases for Apple’s new Dynamic Island interface. Take Apollo creator Christian Selig, for instance. On Friday, he updated his Reddit client to implement support for “Pixel Pals.” The feature adds a Tamagotchi-like critter that does cute things on top of your phone’s Dynamic Island while you have Apollo open. You can even choose between multiple creatures, including a cat, dog, hedgehog, fox or axolotl.

If you don’t have an iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max, don’t worry. You can also add the creatures to your phone as lock screen widgets – provided you have iOS 16 installed. On the subject of iPhone widgets, Google teased one that will function as a shortcut to Chrome’s Dino game.

Selig isn’t the only person doing something creative with the iPhone 14 Pro’s Dynamic Island. In a tweet spotted by The Verge, WaterMinder creator Kriss Smolka showed off Hit the Island, a game that uses the UI element for a Pong-style game. You can download it from the App Store. I can only speak for myself, but these apps make me a bit jealous I’m still rocking an iPhone 12.  

Tesla has crossed another significant manufacturing milestone. As caught by Electrek, the automaker shared on Saturday that its Texas Gigafactory recently produced its ten thousandth Model Y SUV. The achievement could be good news for those hoping to buy a Cybertruck next year. Tesla plans to build the pickup truck primarily in Texas. The automaker initially expected to begin volume production in 2021 but then delayed the Cybertruck to 2022 and then 2023.

According to multiple reports, one of the reasons Tesla’s next EV hasn’t arrived yet is due to a bottleneck related to the company’s next-generation 4680 battery cells. In 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the technology would lead to electric vehicles that cost less than cars with combustion engines. At that point, however, Tesla and battery partner Panasonic had yet to produce the cells at scale, and it was only this past June that they looked ready for a production surge.

That’s why the Model Y milestone is interesting. In April, Tesla began selling a new variant of the SUV that features 4680 battery cells. It can travel 279 miles on a single charge and starts at $59,990. On Saturday, Tesla didn’t say how many of the new Standard Range AWD variants it has produced to date. However, Electrek estimates the Texas Gigafactory is currently manufacturing more than 1,000 Model Y vehicles every week and that the plant is likely on track to begin making 2,000 units every seven days. 

If Half-Life: Alyx left you with an itch to revisit its seminal 2004 predecessor, now you can do so in virtual reality. On Friday, a group of fans known as the Source VR Mod Team released Half-Life 2: VR Mod. As long as you own the original, you can download and play the mod free through Steam.

While it’s currently in public beta, the mod allows you to play through Half-Life 2’s single-player story from start to finish. The Source VR Mod Team integrated a handful of features found in Half-Life: Alyx to modernize the experience and make it playable in VR. For instance, you switch between weapons using the same selection grid found in Valve’s 2020 game.

Other VR-minded tweaks include the addition of optional laser sights, over-the-shoulder ammo storage, manual reloading and two-handed weapon handling. There’s even support for room-scale movement. The Source VR Mod Team says the project isn’t finished, but that hasn’t stopped people from enjoying the experience, with the mod currently holding an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on 732 reviews.

Like Black Mesa before it, Half-Life 2: VR Mod has been a long time coming. As Eurogamer notes, the project was first announced in 2017 and went through development hell before remerging in 2021. The fact you can play it today is thanks to a recent influx of new team members who “revitalized” development.

The Department of Justice has asked a US federal judge to participate in the upcoming appeals case between Epic and Apple, according to court documents seen by Reuters. The companies will return to court next month to argue over the outcome of their 2020 antitrust case.

The Justice Department filed a brief to enter the case at the start of the year. The agency said it was concerned that Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers had improperly interpreted US antitrust law. In 2019, reports surfaced that the DOJ was preparing to launch a probe of Apple’s business practices. A decision to uphold the company’s win over Epic could limit the DOJ’s ability to sue it for antitrust violations.

“The United States believes that its participation at oral argument would be helpful to the court, especially in explaining how the errors (in antitrust law interpretation) could significantly harm antitrust enforcement beyond the specific context of this case,” the Justice Department wrote on Friday.

The agency has asked for 10 minutes of the court’s time. Neither side is against the Justice Department’s involvement, though Apple has requested that the DOJ’s argument time count against Epic’s total time allotment or that the court extends the proceedings.

If you plan to purchase Apple’s second-generation AirPods Pro, you should consider buying them from Amazon. Ahead of their September 23rd release date, the retailer has priced the earbuds at $240, or $10 less than MSRP. It’s a modest discount, to be sure, but it’s also not often that you can get new gadgets at release for less than their suggested retail price.

Buy Apple AirPods Pro at Amazon – $240

Engadget hasn’t had a chance to review the 2022 AirPods Pro yet, but the current generation model earned a score of 87 from us in 2019. Based on the improvements Apple detailed at its recent iPhone 14 event, the new AirPods Pro look like a solid upgrade. They feature Apple’s new H2 chip, leading to significantly improved active noise cancelation performance and a more functional transparency mode, according to the company. Additionally, they include volume touch controls, a feature missing from the first-generation model. Apple has also improved playtime with a charging case it claims can provide the AirPods Pro with up to 30 hours of battery power.

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The next time you build a gaming PC, you probably won’t be adding an EVGA GPU to your list of possible components. The company, which is best known for manufacturing NVIDIA GeForce-based video cards, is getting out of the GPU-making business. As Tom’s Hardware and Ars Technica report, company CEO Andrew Han sat down with YouTubers JayZTwoCents and Gamers Nexus in a closed-door interview to reveal EVGA’s decision. He also talked about his grievances with NVIDIA.

Han told the YouTubers that NVIDIA had stopped treating EVGA as a true partner over the years despite their history. NVIDIA had allegedly stopped informing EVGA about new product announcements and important information, such as suggested retail pricing and availability. That left add-in board partners like EVGA to find out details about the latest products on stage, the same time we all do. Further, NVIDIA’s first-party Founders Edition cards undercut the prices of their counterparts from EVGA and other partners, forcing the vendors to mark down their prices. 

EVGA, Han said, will continue selling cards based on older GeForce GPUs like the RTX 3000 series. After it runs out of stock, though, that’s it — the company has no plans to team up with NVIDIA rivals AMD or Intel. EVGA has been selling other computer components and accessories, such as power supplies and gaming mice, for a while now. But according to Gamers Nexus, 80 percent of the company’s revenue comes from GeForce sales, so this decision could put the company’s very existence in jeopardy. When the YouTuber commented that this must have been a difficult decision to make, the CEO reportedly replied that this was easy and it was working with NVIDIA that was hard.

In its forums, EVGA has posted the following statement:

EVGA will not carry the next generation graphics cards. EVGA will continue to support the existing current generation products. EVGA will continue to provide the current generation products. EVGA is committed to our customers and will continue to offer sales and support on the current lineup. Also, EVGA would like to say thank you to our great community for the many years of support and enthusiasm for EVGA graphics cards.

As for NVIDIA, Bryan Del Rizzo, the director of global public relations for GeForce, told Tom’s Hardware:

We’ve had a great partnership with EVGA over the years and will continue to support them on our current generation of products. We wish Andrew and our friends at EVGA all the best.

LastPass admitted in August that a “unauthorised party” gained access to its system.Any news about a password manager being hacked can be concerning, but the company is now assuring its users that their logins and other information were not compromised as a result of the incident.LastPass CEO Karim Toubba provided an update on the incident, stating that the company’s investigation with cybersecurity firm Mandiant revealed that the bad actor had internal access to its systems for four days.They were successful in stealing some of the password manager’s source code and technical information, but their access was restricted to the service’s development environment, which is not connected to customers’ data or encrypted vaults.Toubba also stated that LastPass does not have access to users’ master passwords, which are required to decrypt their vaults.There is no evidence that this incident “involved any access to customer data or encrypted password vaults,” according to the CEO.” They also discovered no evidence of unauthorised access beyond those four days, nor any evidence that the hacker injected malicious code into the systems.”Toubba explained that the bad actor was able to compromise a developer’s endpoint and infiltrate the service’s systems.”Once the developer had successfully authenticated using multi-factor authentication,” the hacker impersonated him.”LastPass suffered a security breach in2015, exposing users’ email addresses, authentication hashes, password reminders, and other information.”A similar breach would be even more damaging today, given that the service allegedly has over 33 million registered users.While LastPass isn’t asking users to do anything to protect their data this time, it’s always a good idea to avoid reusing passwords and to enable multi-factor authentication.Related
According to Kiwi Farms, its website was hacked on September19, 2022.
In “Technology,” Uber claims that the hack was carried out by Lapsus$, the group responsible for the Microsoft and T-Mobile attacks.
19 September 2022
Uber reports in “Technology” that it is looking into a “cybersecurity incident.”
16 September 2022
In the category “Technology.”

Once upon a time, desktop computer speakers actually mattered. That was more than a decade ago, long before gaming headsets filled the land and wireless Bluetooth headphones were any good. In the early 2000’s, more people also had actual desktops computers chained to desks, so it was worth investing a bit in decent audio. SteelSeries’ new Arena 9 surround sound PC speakers reminds me of that era, a time when I eagerly strung cables throughout my dorm room to connect Logitech’s legendary Z-680 surround sound speakers. (Apologies for anyone who lived near me. I tried to keep things civil, I swear!)

Luckily, it’s not as tough to go surround sound today – though it will still cost you a ton. The $550 Arena 9 connect over USB, so you don’t have to worry about a specialized sound card, and they feature wireless rear satellites, which only need to be connected to power and each other. There’s no need to string anything to the front speakers. That solves a huge pain point, and it makes the Arena 9 a far more viable option for the cable-averse. But is setting up a surround sound system worth it when gaming headphones are cheaper, more immersive and kinder to your neighbors? You’ll have to decide that for yourself.

Assuming you do want to fill your room with speakers, the Arena 9 are notable for existing at all. There aren’t many PC alternatives today, and they’re mostly several years old, like Logitech’s Z906 (released in 2011). You could, of course, set up an amplifier and connect whatever speakers you’d like, but anyone doing that probably isn’t in the market for a self-contained kit. SteelSeries is striking a delicate balance between complexity and convenience – for the most part, I think the Arena 9 is a success.

In the box, you’ll find two front speakers (both equipped with RGB lighting along their base and rears), two wireless rear satellites, a center channel, a control module, and a 6.5-inch downward-firing subwoofer. The two-way speakers don’t exactly feel high-end, but their matte plastic casing should blend in with your keyboards and other PC components. They’re also far lighter than I expected, which is rarely a good sign with audio gear. My biggest gripe, though, comes down to the cabling. The front and center speakers are hard-wired to the rear of the subwoofer. From what I can tell, there’s no easy way to replace those cables, so you’re stuck chucking the entire speaker if something goes wrong (or getting very familiar with soldering). I’d much rather have removable cables instead of superfluous RGB lighting.

I can understand why SteelSeries chose to include all of its audio inputs behind the subwoofer. It gets more cables away from your desk, and it’s a smart place to house the amplifier and power components. But that’s also the only place with an aux connection, so you’ll need to string a long 3.5mm cable if you want to plug in any other devices. Thankfully, there’s also Bluetooth support, which gives you an easy way to wirelessly stream tunes when your computer is off. For devices with digital audio, like the PlayStation 5, you can connect them via an optical cable (there’s also optical output port to pass sound to other gear).

Unfortunately, the PS5 can only output 2.1 sound (two front speakers and the subwoofer) over optical or USB. You could upmix that audio across all of your speakers via the control pod, but that would still just be simulated surround. That’s a shame for anyone who wants a system that can seamlessly work across their gaming systems and computers. It’s also doubly disappointing since the Logitech Z-680 handled Dolby Digital and DTS surround processing from consoles and other devices all the way back in 2003 for just $400. For the price, I’m surprised the Arena 9 can’t handle their own decoding.

At least SteelSeries isn’t trying to push the Arena 9 as an ideal surround sound system for your home theater. What’s notable is that it’s the first 5.1 gaming speakers that work over a single USB connection. Typically, PC speakers either rely on three 3.5mm jacks or a digital connection like optical or coaxial. Since it’s relying on USB, setup is simple – even for laptop users, who would typically have to get some sort of external sound card to use a 5.1 system.

It only took a few minutes to get the Arena 9’s front and center speakers hooked up to the subwoofer, while the rears found homes on bookshelves behind my desk chair. Those took a bit more effort, since I had to find a nearby outlet to power the right rear speaker, as well as string a cable across the floor to the left one. (If you’ve got a large space, you can also use an extra long RCA cable to connect those speakers.) On my desk, the Arena 9 looks cleaner than the huge KEF Q150 bookshelves I typically use.

I’ll be honest, though, I care far more about sound quality than aesthetics when it comes to speakers. Despite their relatively small size and average build quality, the Arena 9 sounds fantastic across games and movies. The opening monster attack in Netflix’s The Sea Beast rocked my office with explosions, the sounds of giant waves and the rumble of a pissed off monster. While playing Halo Infinite, I felt fully immersed in every firefight, so much so that I could clearly hear enemies creeping up behind me on the rear speakers. One Halo Infinite match, which equipped everyone with rocket launchers and skewers, sounded like I was front row in a 15-minute long fireworks show.

The Arena 9s are best when you can crank the volume as much as possible – making them ill-suited for apartments and smaller homes. (Do as I say, not as I did.) They’re peppy and energetic enough for games and films with large soundscapes. I would have liked to see a larger subwoofer, though. A 6.5-inch ported unit for a system this expensive just feels limiting. I had to push the subwoofer’s volume dial almost to its maximum to get a satisfying amount of low-end punch. A larger sub wouldn’t need to work so hard.

Unfortunately, the Arena 9s aren’t as well-suited to music, something that seems to be the case for most gaming speakers. They handled some of my typical speaker and headphone testing tracks just fine, like Clint Mansell’s “Death is the Road to Awe” from The Fountain, as well as George Benson’s “White Rabbit.” But the sound felt trapped by the small front boxes, and the sub was far too boomy for my tastes. Maybe my ears have been spoiled by my KEF speakers, but I would have liked a larger sense of presence from the Arena 9. Flipping on the simulated surround sound, which plays music across all of the speakers, just made the limitations of the entire system all the more clear.

I’ll admit, the Arena 9 have a bit more depth than the Logitech Z-680s, but they can’t touch Klipsch’s classic ProMedia 2.1 speakers when it comes to music. That system is legendary at this point – it was originally released in 2000 (which is when I bought it for college), but the same exact hardware is still being sold today. These complaints won’t matter much if you’re focused on gaming, but discerning audiophiles would be better off with a bigger set that’s better suited to tunes.

As much as I love great gaming headsets, like SteelSeries’ own Arctis Pro and Nova Pro, there’s something more visceral about having speakers moving the air around you. If you’re a gamer looking for something a bit different, and you have the money and space to spare, the Arena 9 could help you appreciate your favorite titles in entirely new ways. But if you don’t have the freedom to blast your nightly Halo Infinite runs at full volume, it doesn’t make sense to spend $550 on PC surround sound speakers. Get a decent 2.1 system for music, and stick with your headphones for gaming.

You might have a rough time activating your iPhone 14. As MacRumorsreports, Apple has fixed an iOS 16 bug that broke activation of iMessage and FaceTime on open WiFi networks. Your brand new device might not work properly out of the box, depending on your situation. You only have to install an iOS 16.0.1 update to address the bug, but you may need to restore the phone with a computer to load the new software.

It’s not clear whether Apple will have a solution apart from shipping future devices with iOS 16.0.1. MacRumors says it obtained a company memo indicating the problem was “under investigation,” while the support document for the patch only tells users to update. We’ve asked Apple for comment.

The flaw likely won’t last for long and should only affect a small number of users. Still, the timing is less than ideal. The iPhone 14 lineup is just reaching customers as of this writing — their first experience might not be very smooth if they expect to use iMessage and FaceTime on day one.