ArduinoMania

Amazon is rethinking its retail ambitions after years of expansion. The company informedReuters it was closing all 68 of its physical bookstores, pop-up locations and 4-star shops in the US and UK. The company maintained in a statement to the New York Times that in-person retail was still important and that it would focus on its cashierless Just Walk Out tech, its grocery stores and its recently announced Los Angeles clothing store.

Closure dates will vary depending on the store. Workers at affected locations may receive jobs at nearby Amazon shops, the company said.

The company opened its first physical bookstore in November 2015, and its first 4-star outlet in September 2018. Both represented experiments in combining Amazon's online shopping data with the retail world — the in-store selection reflected what was popular or likely to sell. It's not certain how well they fared in practice, but it's safe to say they weren't as disruptive as Amazon's internet-based book sales.

Not that Amazon is worried. The company is still opening more cashier-free Go stores, and third parties like Starbucks and Sainsbury's are testing Just Walk Out. It also has plenty of Whole Foods locations, and in 2020 opened its first Amazon Fresh grocery store. This is more of a shift in strategy than a retreat, even if it suggests some of Amazon's initiatives are more successful than others.

Twitter is reportedly working on a podcasts tab. The feature was unearthed by developer Jane Manchun Wong who shared a screenshot of the new UI element on Wednesday. Based on the image, you’ll access the tab from the bottom of Twitter’s mobile interface. What’s interesting about the screenshot is that there’s no dedicated tab for Spaces, which is something that exists in the current iteration of the app.

It’s hard to imagine Twitter pivoting away from live audio in such a way, particularly after investing so much into the format. As such, we wouldn’t read too much into the screenshot just yet. That said, we’ve reached out to Twitter to see if the company has anything to say about the matter. If the company is about to add a podcasts tab, it wouldn’t be surprising. Podcasts have become big business in recent years, particularly for companies like Spotify that have invested heavily in original content. 

After nearly two years working from home, Google employees in the Bay Area and several other cities will be back at the office on April 4th. The announcement came in an email from John Casey, Google’s vice president of global benefits, reported CNBC. Casey cited the steady drop in COVID-19 cases in the Bay Area, advances in treatment and improved safety measures as reasons behind the return’s timing. Google, along with much of Silicon Valley, initially planned a January return-to-work date, but was forced to delay it due to the Omicron surge. Since then, the company has allowed workers to voluntarily return to its Mountain View and San Francisco offices if they agree to wear a mask and are fully vaccinated.

Google is taking a slow approach to transitioning its entire workforce back to the office. Last year CEO Sundar Pichai laid out a "hybrid work" plan, with most employees having the option to work remotely for at least part of the week. We'll see this plan in action in April, with most Google employees still working from home two days a week. Employees can work at the office more often if they choose, or file for an extension of their work-from-home arrangement if they’re not ready to return. 

Springtime seems to be when much of Big Tech is eyeing a return to campus. Microsoft employees returned to work at the Redmond, Washington headquarters this week, but with the expectation that most employees will spend about 50 percent of their time working remotely. Most Meta employees will be returning to the office on March 28th. Twitter employees can opt to work remotely forever, but has allowed employees access to their San Francisco and New York City offices if they show proof of vaccination.

President Joe Biden called for the “vast majority” of federal employees to return to the office in his State of the Union Speech on Tuesday. So it’s likely we’ll see even more companies announce their re-opening dates soon, especially if cases continue to decline and cities drop mask mandates.

Apple's Beats brand is borrowing a page from the apparel industry: it's resurrecting a product to appeal to gotta-have-it collectors. Beats has partnered with the street fashion label Stüssy on a limited edition revival of the recently discontinued Pill+ speaker known simply as Stüssy and Beats By Dr.Dre. The Bluetooth device is exactly the same as the one your friend had circa 2015, just with bone artwork on the grille and Stüssy's signature logo on the back — though that may be enough if you're looking for a technological conversation starter.

The Pill+ was Beats' first speaker under Apple, and it clearly predated the conveniences you'd come to expect from AirPods or later Beats products. Its most cutting edge features were a DJ mode for parties and a stereo pairing with another Pill+ unit. The speaker was discontinued in January this year. You're buying this for the exclusivity and Beats' signature boomy sound, not for clever tricks or raw fidelity.

The Stüssy and Beats By Dr.Dre speaker will be available to order through Stüssy's website for $185 starting March 4th at 1PM Eastern, and should arrive in April. That's less than the original $230. You'll want to act quickly, though. The companies haven't said how many special-run speakers will be available, and this is the last time you'll get to buy any Pill+ brand new (outside of the occasional stray in a store, at least). Think of this as a last gasp rather than a change of heart.

After a week of negotiations in Nairobi, the United Nations has agreed to start working on a first-ever global plastic pollution treaty, Reuters reports. It's not projected to be completed until 2024, but according to the UN it could end up being as important as the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the most significant global effort to curb climate change yet. In 2019, the organization found that humanity is damaging nature at an "unprecedented" rate, with plastic pollution growing by more than ten times since 1980. Heck, we've even found microplastics in the Arctic, one of the most remote areas on Earth.

The real question, of course, is how UN members plan to address the scourge of plastics. As the New York Times reports, the agreement would involve coming up with legally binding measures to clean up plastic waste. But crucially, it would also involve limiting plastic production, a move that's certain to face industry pushback.  

As you'd expect, different countries also have different priorities. While major plastic producers like the US and Japan objected to language in the agreement, developing nations stressed the need for more involvement. In particular, the agreement highlighted the importance of waste pickers, who work long hours sorting trash, all the while breathing in toxic fumes.  

Elden Ring isn’t the only recent game with a new update out today. Guerrilla Games has released patch 1.06 for Horizon Forbidden West and it addresses a number of issues that have been part of the experience since it came out on February 18th. In particular, it resolves a handful of bugs that prevented players from completing the “Reach for the Stars” main quest. For instance, Varl won’t get stuck swimming anymore and therefore won’t prevent a prompt from showing up that you need to move the mission forward.

A separate fix resolves an infinite black screen bug that occurred when players stored the Champion’s Spear and then started a tutorial or a challenge in the Chainscrape Melee Pit. But the one particular change that caught our eye is that Aloy won’t mention her stash as frequently after installing the patch. That should make your adventures in Horizon Forbidden West a bit more meditative. You can read the full list of changes patch 1.06 makes to the game over on Reddit.

EA says it's removing the Russian national team and clubs from FIFA 22, FIFA Mobile and FIFA Online. The move follows FIFA kicking Russia out of World Cup 2022 qualifying and UEFA suspending club teams from international competitions.

"EA Sports stands in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and, like so many voices across the world of football, calls for peace and an end to the invasion of Ukraine," a statement shared on Twitter reads. The publisher said it was "actively evaluating related changes to other areas of our games" and that it would keep players informed about actions it takes.

In addition, EA will drop Russian and Belarusian national and club teams from NHL 22 in the coming weeks. The International Ice Hockey Federation banned teams from both countries from its competitions until further notice.

Earlier on Wednesday, Ukraine's vice prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov urged Sony, Microsoft and other gaming companies to suspend Russian and Belarusian player accounts. He called on esports organizations to ban Russian and Belarusian teams and players from international events too. "We are sure that such actions will motivate the citizens of Russia to proactively stop the disgraceful military aggression," Fedorov wrote in an open letter.

The backlash to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to build. According to Variety, Netflix has “paused” all future projects it had planned to undertake within the country. The company had four original productions underway in Russia, including one directed by Dasha Zhuk that was in shooting before the decision. According to Deadline, Netflix has one untitled series that will be completed. The fate of the two other projects is less clear. In particular, the company reportedly hasn't made a decision about what to do with Anna K, its high-profile adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

The move comes after Netflix said it would not comply with Russia’s Vitrina TV law. The measure requires that audiovisual companies with more than 100,000 subscribers carry 20 free state channels, including NTV and Spa. In December, the country’s Roskomnadzor telecom regulator said Netflix would have to comply with the law, but Russia had yet to enforce it before the company made its decision at the start of the week. At the time, Netflix said it had “no plans” to offer the required programming due to the “current situation.”

Like that move, the decision to halt a handful of productions may be more of a symbolic gesture than a major sacrifice on Netflix’s part. The company only began offering a localized version of its platform in Russia about a year ago, and it reportedly has fewer than 1 million subscribers in the country. It also doesn't have an office in the country, nor any employees.   

We've reached out to Netflix for comment. 

Chiplets (blocks of integrated circuits) are increasingly common in chip design, and some of the tech world's biggest companies want to make them more ubiquitous. Tom's Hardwarereports a coalition including AMD, ARM and Intel has launched a Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) standard meant to ease "die-to-die" connections in hardware and software. If all goes well, a designer could "mix and match" chiplets from different companies to create an ideal system-on-chip.

The alliance has already ratified a UCIe 1.0 specification. The partners include a mix of chip and cloud heavyweights like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung and TSMC.

It could take a long while before you see chips built using the new standard. The UCIe group still has to work on defining the form factor, protocols and other details.

The appeal for the companies involved is clear, though. Companies could speed up development of CPUs and SoCs by using ready-made chiplet designs instead of crafting their own from scratch. They could also sell chiplets to other companies and increase the reach of their technology. Chips might become more homogenous, but they might show up sooner or deliver more consistent performance. That could be helpful in a whole host of devices, ranging from phones through to the servers that power cloud services.

Russia's space agency has refused to launch OneWeb internet satellites unless the company provides assurances they won't be used for military purposes and the UK sells its stake in OneWeb. Roscosmos was scheduled to launch 36 satellites on a Soyuz rocket on Friday.

Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said the agency made the demands in response to the UK issuing sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, as CNBC reports. Among other things, the government banned Russian ships from entering UK ports and sanctioned most of Russia’s financial system.

Kwasi Kwarteng, the UK's business and energy secretary, suggested Roscosmos' demands were a non-starter. "There's no negotiation on OneWeb: the UK Government is not selling its share," he wrote on Twitter. "We are in touch with other shareholders to discuss next steps." Rogozin said he'd give the UK two days to reconsider.

To date, 428 OneWeb satellites have been launched to low Earth orbit on Soyuz rockets. OneWeb plans to provide global internet coverage from space using 648 first-generation satellites.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has delivered Starlink satellite internet terminals to Ukraine following a pledge by Elon Musk. It's believed that the government may use Starlink to stay online as the conflict continues.