ArduinoMania

LED and LCD displays are a technological marvel. They’ve brought the price of televisions and monitors down to unheard-of levels since the days of CRTs, but this upside arguably comes with an aesthetic cost. When everything is covered in bland computer screens, the world tends to look a lot more monotonous. Not so several decades ago when there were many sharply contrasting ways of displaying information. One example of this different time comes to us by way of this split-flap display that [Erich] has been recreating.

Split-flap displays work by printing letters or numbers on a series of flaps that are attached to a spindle with a stepper motor. Each step of the motor turns the display by one character. They can be noisy and do require a large amount of maintenance compared to modern displays, but have some advantages as well. [Erich]’s version is built out of new acrylic and MDF, and uses an Arduino as the control board. A 3D printer and CNC machine keep the tolerances tight enough for the display to work smoothly and also enable him to expand the display as needed since each character display is fairly modular.

Right now, [Erich]’s display has 20 characters on two different rows and definitely brings us back to the bygone era where displays of this style would have been prominent in airports and train stations. This display uses a lot of the basics from another split flap display that we featured a few years ago but has some improvements. And, if you’d prefer restorations of old displays rather than modern incarnations, we have you covered there as well.

Thanks to [Bob] for the tip!

Woot's following up its Xbox sale from a few days ago with a Prime-exclusive deal on the Nintendo Switch Lite. Prime members can get $10 off the handheld console, bringing it down to $190. You'll have to sign in with your Prime account credentials before you can add the Switch Lite to your cart and see the discount automatically applied at checkout.

While it's a modest discount, $10 off is still a good deal, particularly on a console like this that rarely goes on sale. The standard Nintendo Switch has its perks, especially the OLED version that just came out, but the Switch Lite remains the better option if you're going to primarily play on the go. You can't connect the Switch Lite to a TV, nor can you remove the Joy-Cons from its sides. But those are small sacrifices to make if you care most about portability.

The 0.6-pound console feels light and comfortable to hold, and the attached controllers actually help it feel quite sturdy. It has a 5.5-inch display that's more than suitable for all kinds of games, but considering it is smaller than that on the standard Switch, you may find yourself squinting to read text. It has 32GB of onboard storage, but like the standard Switch, you can easily expand that with a microSD card. We were also happy to find that the Switch Lite has a battery life of up to seven hours, depending on the types of games you're playing. It's not quite as long as the refreshed, non-OLED Switch, but it's close and should be enough to keep you busy during a long car ride or flight.

As always, we recommend checking out Woot's return policy before you buy. The online retailer is owned by Amazon, and although this is a Prime-exclusive deal, the return policy you may be used to with Prime doesn't apply here as Woot has it's own rules.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Rivian has raised the original $67,500 base price of its quad-motor R1T electric pickup with large battery packs to $79,500 (sans destination charges). That's a whopping $12,000 increase that will apply to most reservation holders except for those in the very final stages of purchase. The price of the R1S SUV (below) is also being hiked by $12,000 from $72,500 to $84,500.

"Like most manufacturers, Rivian is being confronted with inflationary pressure, increasing component costs, and unprecedented supply chain shortages and delays for parts (including semiconductor chips)," said Rivian's chief growth officer Jiten Behl.

Rivian

If you were still hoping to pay the lower prices, there is another option. Rivian has introduced dual-motor versions of the R1T and R1S EVs, with both starting at the original $67,500 and $72,500 prices. You also have the option of equipping the dual-motor vehicles with the large battery packs, priced at $73,500 for the R1T and $78,500 for the R1S. 

However, neither of those vehicles will be available until 2024, and both will have smaller "standard" battery packs that deliver less range than the large packs (260 miles instead of 310 miles). So you'll be getting quite a lot less vehicle for the same money. 

The dual-motor variants (one at each axle) will have motors designed, engineered and manufactured by Rivian. They'll deliver 600 HP and 600 pound-feet of torque, according to Rivian, delivering a 4.0-second 0-60 mph time. That's about a second slower than the fastest quad-motor R1T (835 HP and 908 pound-feet of torque), but still pretty darn fast.

In his first State of the Union address, President Biden has asked Congress to implement new laws to increase child safety on Facebook, TikTok and other social media platforms. "It's time to strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children, demand tech companies stop collecting personal data on our children," he said on Tuesday evening. 

To get started on implementing those changes, the White House will specifically ask for funding to study the question of child safety on social media. Biden also plans to request $5 million in next year's budget to research the mental health impact of social media, while launching a "national Center of Excellence on Social Media and Mental Illness." The aim of that is to develop new guidance on the impact of adolescent social media use.

Much of the motivation for the changes appears to have come from the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who attended the address as a guest of Jill Biden. She recently testified before Congress, accusing Facebook parent Meta of disregarding child safety on the platform. 

Her revelations impacted politicians on both sides of the aisle, who agreed that stronger rules were required. Last month, Democrat Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal introduced a bill, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), that would give parents and children more control over their privacy and safety on social media, while setting new rules for social media platforms.

"As Frances Haugen, who is here with us tonight, has shown, we must hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit ," the President said.

During his first State of the Union address, President Biden announced that the same website where Americans could order free at-home covid tests will open up for a second round of distribution next week. 

The effort to mail out free tests began in mid-January, from an initial stockpile of 500,000,000. While the initiative was a welcome change — especially as an agreement between the White House and several retail chains to keep costs of these tests down had just expired — it was also criticized as being inadequate. Its major shortcoming was limiting each recipient address to four tests, an insufficient number for some households. 

Presumably this limitation was to prevent the nation's cache of tests from becoming depleted. But according to reports late last week, around half of that initial half-billion are yet to be claimed.

Unfortunately, this next round of distributions will be much like the first. While Biden was not specific in his speech to the nation, the covidtests.gov site states that "Starting next week, every home in the U.S. will be able to order an additional set of 4 tests." 

Covid testing in clinics around the country remain free, even to those without insurance coverage. The number of new cases continues to fall after the winter Omicron spike, and the CDC recently updated its guidance to suggest that the majority of Americans no longer need to wear masks in most circumstances. 

SEC officials do not know the whereabouts of Satish Kumbhani, the founder of crypto trading platform BitConnect, who was charged last week with defrauding investors of $2.4 billion in a Ponzi scheme. This puts the SEC in quite a bind, since they have to serve the 36-year old entrepreneur with his court papers. In a court filing from Monday, the SEC stated that they did not have an address for Kumbhani, an Indian citizen, and suspected that he likely fled to another country. 

The DOJ is charging Kumbhani with a number of offenses, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodity price manipulation and conspiracy to commit international money laundering.

“Kumbhani’s location remains unknown, and the Commission remains unable to state when its efforts to locate him will be successful, if at all," wrote the SEC in its filing.

In order to buy some time, the SEC is asking the US District Court for the Southern District of New York for an extension of 90 days. Since BitConnect is an unincorporated entity and not a formal corporation, all court papers have to be served to Kumbhani himself.

First founded in 2016, BitConnect attracted a lot of attention on social media for its “Lending Program” which allowed users to lend their Bitcoin in exchange for a propriety Bitconnect cryptocoin. The program claimed it could guarantee returns by using investors’ money to trade on the volatility of the cryptocurrency markets." 

“Under this program, Kumbhani and his co-conspirators touted BitConnect’s purported proprietary technology, known as the 'BitConnect Trading Bot' and 'Volatility Software', as being able to generate substantial profits and guaranteed returns by using investors’ money to trade on the volatility of cryptocurrency exchange markets. As alleged in the indictment, however, BitConnect operated as a Ponzi scheme by paying earlier BitConnect investors with money from later investors,” wrote the DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs in a press release.

After years of crypto existing in a legally murky universe, U.S. government officials are cracking down on cryptocurrency fraud and scams at an increasing rate. Last year, the DOJ launched a national cryptocurrency enforcement team to handle complex cryptocurrency investigations, and recently appointed veteran cybersecurity prosecutor Eun Young Choi as its director.

BitConnect is just one of many cryptocurrency schemes that law enforcement has pinned down in recent months. The founders of BitMex, a crypto derivatives exchange, plead guilty to skirting anti-laundering laws in the US and were ordered to pay $20 million in fines. Earlier this month, the DOJ arrested Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, two entrepreneurs who allegedly attempted to launder more than 25,000 Bitcoins stolen from the 2016 Bitfinex hack.

As part of a new eight-year deal between the United States Soccer Federation and Turner Sports parent company Warner Media, HBO Max will stream at least 20 US national team matches every year moving forward from 2023. The agreement will make the streaming platform and Turner Sports channels TBS and TNT the exclusive English-language home of World Cup qualifier games played by both the men’s and women’s national soccer teams, as well as friendlies, send-off matches and special events leading up to the Olympics and World Cup.

Not included in the deal are the broadcast and streaming rights to World Cup tournament games. Fox Sports will continue to hold the men’s rights through to 2026 and 2023 for the women’s team. The deal builds on a similar one Turner Sports signed last year with the NHL. That agreement saw the company secure streaming rights to 72 regular season games, including the league’s annual Winter Classic match.

Liveuamap, a tool journalists and relief organizations have used to follow the conflict in Ukraine, was the target of a DDoS attack earlier today that lasted approximately 18 hours, according to The New York Times. The website was founded in 2014 by Ukrainian journalists and software developers and mainly operates out of the Eastern European country. At 12:48PM ET, Liveuamap said its website was slowly coming back online with help from Cloudflare. The company’s mobile app was still experiencing some issues at the time.

It’s unclear who was behind the attack. In the lead-up to Thursday's invasion, Ukraine blamed Russia for a series of cyberattacks that hobbled dozens of government websites. Since then, the country has called on an “IT Army” of international volunteers to disrupt Russian government websites. That same weekend, Anonymous claimed responsibility for a DDoS attack on the website of Russia’s Ministry of Defence.

When your Kia electric vehicle is out of power, you can now order a technician who will arrive with a battery and charge it for you. The automaker is partnering with Currently, an on-demand mobile EV charging app, to service Kia customers in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose. While there’s no shortage of public chargers in these cities (San Jose has the highest number of public chargers per capita in the country), Kia is only using these three cities as a launching pad. It plans to expand Currently service to other cities in the future.

In order to use the service, simply download the Currently app and book a time and place for the charge. A Currently technician will then arrive at your location with a portable charging system. Drivers don’t have to be present during the charging, but should make sure their charging port can be accessed by their technician.

Under the partnership, Kia EV drivers will receive two free months of service with Currently. Following the trial period, Currently subscriptions range from $25 a month (for two charge deliveries) to $80 a month (for six charge deliveries). But note that Currently will only deliver a charge that the company says is good for 50 miles, and that can vary depending on your specific vehicle.

Unfortunately, if you’re ever stranded on the highway, it’s best to call your roadside assistance service. Currently doesn’t dispatch its technicians to highways. While it’s unlikely all drivers will want mobile EV charging regularly (especially in large EV markets with plentiful public chargers), it could be convenient for those who are time-strapped or in an emergency.

Apple is doing more in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine beyond cutting off services. As BuzzFeed News' John Paczkowski notes, the tech firm has halted "all product sales" in Russia. Visit the company's Russian online store and every product is listed as unavailable. In a statement, Apple made clear this was in response to the invasion — the iPhone maker "stand[s] with all of the people" hurt by the incursion, and is joining those "calling for peace."

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