A wise man once said, "never tell me the odds" but whether you're calculating the chances of successfully navigating an asteroid field (3,720:1), shouting "Shazam" and having it work twice in a row (9 million:1), or winning the state lottery (42 million:1 in California), probabilities influence outcomes in our daily lives for events large and small alike. But for the widespread role they play in our lives, your average person is usually just pretty ok with accurately calculating them. As we see in the excerpt below from James C. Zimring's latest title, Partial Truths: How Fractions Distort Our Thinking, our expectations regarding the likelihood of an event occurring can shift, depending on how the question is posed and which fraction is focused upon.

Columbia University Press

Excerpted from Partial Truths: How Fractions Distort Our Thinking by James C. Zimring, published by Columbia Business School Publishing. Copyright (c) 2022 James C. Zimring. Used by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

Mistaking the Likely for the Seemingly Impossible: Misjudging the Numerator

The more unlikely an event seems, the more it draws our attention when it does occur and the more compelled we feel to explain why it happened. This just makes good sense. If the world is not behaving according to the rules we understand, perhaps we misunderstand the rules. Our attention should be drawn to unlikely occurrences because new knowledge comes from our attempts to understand contradictions.

Sometimes what seems to be impossible is actually highly probable. A famous example of this is found with playing the lottery (i.e., the lottery fallacy). It is well understood that it is incredibly unlikely that any particular person will win the lottery. For example, the chance of any one ticket winning the Powerball lottery (the particular lottery analyzed in this chapter) is 1/292,000,000. This explains why so much attention is paid to the winners. Where did they buy their ticket? Did they see a fortune teller before buying their ticket, or do they have a history of showing psychic abilities? Do they have any special rituals they carry out before buying a ticket? It is a natural tendency to try to explain how such an unlikely event could have occurred. If we can identify a reason, then perhaps understanding it will help us win the lottery, too.

The lottery fallacy is not restricted to good things happening. Explanations also are sought to explain bad things. Some people are struck by lightning more than once, which seems just too unlikely to accept as random chance. There must be some explanation. Inevitably, it is speculated that the person may have some weird mutant trait that makes them attract electricity, or they carry certain metals on their person or have titanium prosthetics in their body. Perhaps they have been cursed by a mystical force or God has forsaken them.

The lottery fallacy can be understood as a form of mistaking one probability for another, or to continue with our theme from part 1, to mistake one fraction for another. One can express the odds of winning the lottery as the fraction (1/292,000,000), in which the numerator is the single number combination that wins and the denominator is all possible number combinations. The fallacy arises because we tend to notice only the one person with the one ticket who won the lottery. This is not the only person playing the lottery, however, and it is not the only ticket. How many tickets are purchased for any given drawing? The exact number changes, because more tickets are sold when the jackpot is higher; however, a typical drawing includes about 300 million tickets sold. Of course, some of the tickets sold must be duplicates, given that only 292 million combinations are possible. Moreover, if every possible combination were being purchased, then someone would win every drawing. In reality, about 50 percent of the drawings have a winner; thus, we can infer that, on average, 146 million different number combinations are purchased.

Of course, the news does not give us a list of all the people who did not win. Can you imagine the same headline every week, “299,999,999 People Failed to Win the Lottery, Again!” (names listed online at www.thisweekslosers.com). No, the news only tells us that there was a winner, and sometimes who the winner was. When we ask ourselves, “What are the odds of that person winning?” we are asking the wrong question and referring to the wrong fraction. The odds of that particular person winning are 1/292,000,000. By chance alone, that person should win the lottery once every 2,807,692 years that they consistently play (assuming two drawings per week). What we should be asking is “What are the odds of any person winning?”

In probability, the chances of either one thing or another thing happening are the sum of the individual probabilities. So, assuming no duplicate tickets, if only a single person were playing the lottery, then the odds of having a winner are 1/292,000,000. If two people are playing, the odds of having a winner are 2/292,000,000. If 1,000 people are playing, then the odds are 1,000/292,000,000. Once we consider that 146 million different number combinations are purchased, the top of the fraction (numerator) becomes incredibly large, and the odds that someone will win are quite high. When we marvel at the fact that someone has won the lottery, we mistake the real fraction (146,000,000/292,000,000) for the fraction (1/292,000,000) — that is, we are misjudging the numerator. What seems like an incredibly improbable event is actually quite likely. The human tendency to make this mistake is related to the availability heuristic, as described in chapter 2. Only the winner is “available” to our minds, and not all the many people who did not win.

Similarly, the odds of twice being struck by lightning over the course of one’s life are one in nine million. Because 7.9 billion people live on Earth, it is probable that 833 people will be hit by lightning twice in their lives (at least). As with the lottery example, our attention is drawn only to those who are struck by lightning. We fail to consider how many people never get struck. Just as it is unlikely that any one particular person will win the Powerball lottery, it is highly unlikely that no one will win the lottery after a few drawings, just given the number of people playing. Likewise, it is very unlikely that any one person will be twice hit by lightning, but it is even more unlikely that no one will, given the number of people in the world.

So, when we puzzle over such amazing things as someone winning the lottery or being twice struck by lightning, we actually are trying to explain why a highly probable thing happened, which really requires no explanation at all. The rules of the world are working exactly as we understand them, but we are mistaking the highly likely for the virtually impossible.

Do not be swayed by the dulcet dial-tones of tomorrow's AIs and their siren songs of the singularity. No matter how closely artificial intelligences and androids may come to look and act like humans, they'll never actually be humans, argue Paul Leonardi, Duca Family Professor of Technology Management at University of California Santa Barbara, and Tsedal Neeley, Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, in their new book The Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI — and therefore should not be treated like humans. The pair contends in the excerpt below that in doing so, such hinders interaction with advanced technology and hampers its further development.

Harvard Business Review Press

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpted from THE DIGITAL MINDSET: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI by Paul Leonardi and Tsedal Neeley. Copyright 2022 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

Treat AI Like a Machine, Even If It Seems to Act Like a Human

We are accustomed to interacting with a computer in a visual way: buttons, dropdown lists, sliders, and other features allow us to give the computer commands. However, advances in AI are moving our interaction with digital tools to more natural-feeling and human-like interactions. What’s called a conversational user interface (UI) gives people the ability to act with digital tools through writing or talking that’s much more the way we interact with other people, like Burt Swanson’s “conversation” with Amy the assistant. When you say, “Hey Siri,” “Hello Alexa,” and “OK Google,” that’s a conversational UI. The growth of tools controlled by conversational UIs is staggering. Every time you call an 800 number and are asked to spell your name, answer “Yes,” or say the last four numbers of your social security number you are interacting with an AI that uses conversational UI. Conversational bots have become ubiquitous in part because they make good business sense, and in part because they allow us to access services more efficiently and more conveniently.

For example, if you’ve booked a train trip through Amtrak, you’ve probably interacted with an AI chatbot. Its name is Julie, and it answers more than 5 million questions annually from more than 30 million passengers. You can book rail travel with Julie just by saying where you’re going and when. Julie can pre-fill forms on Amtrak’s scheduling tool and provide guidance through the rest of the booking process. Amtrak has seen an 800 percent return on their investment in Julie. Amtrak saves more than $1 million in customer service expenses each year by using Julie to field low-level, predictable questions. Bookings have increased by 25 percent, and bookings done through Julie generate 30 percent more revenue than bookings made through the website, because Julie is good at upselling customers!

One reason for Julie’s success is that Amtrak makes it clear to users that Julie is an AI agent, and they tell you why they’ve decided to use AI rather than connect you directly with a human. That means that people orient to it as a machine, not mistakenly as a human. They don’t expect too much from it, and they tend to ask questions in ways that elicit helpful answers. Amtrak’s decision may sound counterintuitive, since many companies try to pass off their chatbots as real people and it would seem that interacting with a machine as though it were a human should be precisely how to get the best results. A digital mindset requires a shift in how we think about our relationship to machines. Even as they become more humanish, we need to think about them as machines— requiring explicit instructions and focused on narrow tasks.

x.ai, the company that made meeting scheduler Amy, enables you to schedule a meeting at work, or invite a friend to your kids’ basketball game by simply emailing Amy (or her counterpart, Andrew) with your request as though they were a live personal assistant. Yet Dennis Mortensen, the company’s CEO, observes that more than 90 percent of the inquiries that the company’s help desk receives are related to the fact that people are trying to use natural language with the bots and struggling to get good results.

Perhaps that was why scheduling a simple meeting with a new acquaintance became so annoying to Professor Swanson, who kept trying to use colloquialisms and conventions from informal conversation. In addition to the way he talked, he made many perfectly valid assumptions about his interaction with Amy. He assumed Amy could understand his scheduling constraints and that “she” would be able to discern what his preferences were from the context of the conversation. Swanson was informal and casual—the bot doesn’t get that. It doesn’t understand that when asking for another person’s time, especially if they are doing you a favor, it’s not effective to frequently or suddenly change the meeting logistics. It turns out it’s harder than we think to interact casually with an intelligent robot.

Researchers have validated the idea that treating machines like machines works better than trying to be human with them. Stanford professor Clifford Nass and Harvard Business School professor Youngme Moon conducted a series of studies in which people interacted with anthropomorphic computer interfaces. (Anthropomorphism, or assigning human attributes to inanimate objects, is a major issue in AI research.) They found that individuals tend to overuse human social categories, applying gender stereotypes to computers and ethnically identifying with computer agents. Their findings also showed that people exhibit over-learned social behaviors such as politeness and reciprocity toward computers. Importantly, people tend to engage in these behaviors — treating robots and other intelligent agents as though they were people — even when they know they are interacting with computers, rather than humans. It seems that our collective impulse to relate with people often creeps into our interaction with machines.

This problem of mistaking computers for humans is compounded when interacting with artificial agents via conversational UIs. Take for example a study we conducted with two companies who used AI assistants that provided answers to routine business queries. One used an anthropomorphized AI that was human-like. The other wasn’t.

Workers at the company who used the anthropomorphic agent routinely got mad at the agent when the agent did not return useful answers. They routinely said things like, “He sucks!” or “I would expect him to do better” when referring to the results given by the machine. Most importantly, their strategies to improve relations with the machine mirrored strategies they would use with other people in the office. They would ask their question more politely, they would rephrase into different words, or they would try to strategically time their questions for when they thought the agent would be, in one person’s terms, “not so busy.” None of these strategies was particularly successful.

In contrast, workers at the other company reported much greater satisfaction with their experience. They typed in search terms as though it were a computer and spelled things out in great detail to make sure that an AI, who could not “read between the lines” and pick up on nuance, would heed their preferences. The second group routinely remarked at how surprised they were when their queries were returned with useful or even surprising information and they chalked up any problems that arose to typical bugs with a computer.

For the foreseeable future, the data are clear: treating technologies — no matter how human-like or intelligent they appear — like technologies is key to success when interacting with machines. A big part of the problem is they set the expectations for users that they will respond in human-like ways, and they make us assume that they can infer our intentions, when they can do neither. Interacting successfully with a conversational UI requires a digital mindset that understands we are still some ways away from effective human-like interaction with the technology. Recognizing that an AI agent cannot accurately infer your intentions means that it’s important to spell out each step of the process and be clear about what you want to accomplish.

Lincoln College says it will close this week in the wake of a ransomware attack that took months to resolve. While the impact of COVID-19 severely impacted activities such as recruitment and fundraising, the cyberattack seems to have been the tipping point for the Illinois institution.

The college has informed the Illinois Department of Higher Education and Higher Learning Commission that it will permanently close as of May 13th. As NBC News notes, it's the first US college or university to shut down in part because of a ransomware attack.

Lincoln says it had "record-breaking student enrollment" in fall 2019. However, the pandemic caused a sizable fall in enrollment with some students opting to defer college or take a leave of absence. The college — one of only a few rural schools to qualify as a predominantly Black institution under the Department of Education — said those affected its financial standing.

Last December, Lincoln was hit by a cyberattack, which "thwarted admissions activities and hindered access to all institutional data, creating an unclear picture of fall 2022 enrollment. All systems required for recruitment, retention and fundraising efforts were inoperable," the college said in a statement posted on its homepage. "Fortunately, no personal identifying information was exposed. Once fully restored in March 2022, the projections displayed significant enrollment shortfalls, requiring a transformational donation or partnership to sustain Lincoln College beyond the current semester."

Barring a last-minute respite, the one-two punch of the pandemic and a cyberattack have brought an end to a 157-year-old institution. Lincoln says it will help students who aren't graduating this semester transfer to another college.

Over the last few years, ransomware hackers have attacked other educational facilities, as well as hospitals, game studios, Sinclair Broadcast Group and many other companies and institutions.

You're probably used to sorting your garbage into bins: green for paper or blue for plastic and glass. But when it comes to electronics, we're still used to selling those off or tossing them into the trash heap. Unfortunately, our gadget addiction has real consequences for the planet, making it imperative that we dispose of everything responsibly.

Sure, you can try parting with your stuff for cash, but it's a pain, and it can be tough, if not impossible, to find someone who wants a busted Xbox or 20-year-old CRT. Few places have curbside pickup — in fact, some localities make it illegal to leave electronics for the garbage collectors — so you're going to have to find a reputable center to take it. We've gathered some of the resources to help you dispense of your broken and unwanted computers, televisions and any other gadget flotsam that's been taking up space in your closet.

National chains

There is no national electronics recycling law at this time, so you won't find any federal programs to assist you with getting rid of old devices. The USPS does run a program for federal agencies and their employees, but it's not available to the general public. Instead, the rest of us have to rely on nationwide retailers to toss out our old stuff.

Best Buy

Best Buy has more than 1,000 locations in the United States, so it's likely you have one nearby where you can drop stuff off. You just need to take it to the customer service counter. They'll issue you a receipt too, but keep in mind that you can't claim the drop-off as a deduction on your taxes because Best Buy isn't a charity.

You can even recycle televisions and monitors, though you'll be charged a fee of $30 per item to cover the higher costs of transporting and disassembling them. (Consumers in California are not charged the $30 fee, while locations in Connecticut and Pennsylvania will not accept televisions at all.) If you're turning in a printer, you’ll get up to a $50 voucher toward the purchase of a new Epson EcoTank printer.

Also be aware that Best Buy limits you to three items per household per day, including up to two televisions.

Staples

Recycling your stuff at Staples is similar to Best Buy — just bring your products to the customer-service counter. But it’s more limited in that you can only bring in seven items a day, and the store won’t accept televisions at all. Staples Rewards members also receive a small credit of $2 for every used ink cartridge they turn in, up to 20 a month.

Office Depot

Office Depot has more than 1,300 locations, but unlike Staples and Best Buy, it won't recycle your old gadgets for free. If you're only getting rid of a few phones or batteries, those can be turned in at no charge. For everything else, you must purchase a Tech Recycling Box, which costs $5, $10 or $15 depending on the size. Once you have the box, you can fill it with as many items as you want, provided they all fit inside, including smaller televisions. So it's a great deal if you have a lot of stuff you want to dispose of. These can be turned in either in person or by mail.

Home Depot and Lowes

You can dispose of old rechargeable batteries, old phones and CFL bulbs in the dropoff boxes at any of 2,300 Home Depot or 2,200 Lowe’s locations. The bins are usually located in the front of the store, and Home Depot has an 11-pound limit on individual items.

Manufacturers

If you can't make it to a retail location, especially when you need to get rid of only one or two items, many companies offer recycling programs for their own products. They'll even pay for shipping. Some run their own programs while others use outside organizations. We've outlined policies from a handful of manufacturers below.

Amazon

While Amazon would love to direct you to its trade-in program, you're probably reading this post because there's stuff you can't sell, and for those items Amazon offers mail-in recycling. You can send in your busted Kindles, Fire TVs and even Dash Buttons, as well as select peripherals like keyboards and mice. You'll just need to fill out some forms online and generate a shipping label, which you can slap on any box. Drop it off at a UPS location, and you're good to go; Amazon will cover all the costs.

Apple

Apple

If your iPhone or MacBook is still in good shape, you should consider selling it, but if it's old or beat up you can still score a gift card by turning it into Apple's recycling program. For iPhones, iPad and Apple Watches you'll be asked to fill out a form attesting to the product's condition and given a trade-in quote, with a working iPhone 5 going for $35 and an iPhone 7 Plus scoring you $315. For Macs, you'll be asked to provide a serial number as well. Though Apple won't give you cash for anything it deems old or unacceptable, you can still mail it in or bring it to any Apple Store so it can be responsibly disposed of.

Dell

Dell offers drop-off recycling via a partnership with Goodwill. Not every location participates, but there are more than 2,600 that do. And, because it's a charity, you may even be able to deduct it as a donation on your taxes. Dell also has a mail-back program on its site where you can generate a shipping label and drop the package off at a FedEx location instead.

Epson

You can ship old products back to Epson by simply creating a shipping label on its site and dropping it off at a FedEx location. Or just drop it off at a Best Buy location for a $30 or $50 voucher toward a new Epson printer.

HP

If you can, HP recommends taking its products to the nearest Best Buy. But if that's not feasible, the company participates in a program that will even buy back some items. You'll be asked to fill out a form with the make, model and condition, and the recycler will email you a prepaid shipping label to mail the package within 30 days. If you're doing a buyback you'll receive a paper check in the mail. Because this isn't an in-house program with HP, you can also send in items from other companies — check the drop-down list for firms like Canon and Toshiba as well as more obscure and out-of-business manufacturers.

Other manufacturers

Many other companies use outside recyclers to dispose of their products, and you'll often see the same names popping up again and again across different manufacturers. This should simplify things in some cases — you should be able to send in products from multiple sources in one package. You just need to fill in the make and model to generate a prepaid shipping label. However, different states have different rules on what you can return, so the drop-downs for selecting your product may vary by area.

Two major recycling companies you'll notice a lot are RLGA, which covers Acer, Canon, Google, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft and Motorola, and MRM, which recycles products for Alcatel, BlackBerry, Barnes & Noble (nook), TCL and Toshiba.

Phones

Cell phones are the easiest gadget to recycle — if you haven't already decided to sell yours off on eBay or via sites like Decluttr and ecoATM. But, if you can't or won't make some cash off of it, you can send it to:

Call2Recycle, which has drop-off centers all over the country in many chain stores, including Lowes and Home Depot. It will also accept rechargeable batteries.

Cell Phones for Soldiers accepts phones in any condition and sells them to refurbishers or recyclers. The proceeds go toward purchasing phone cards for troops so they can call their friends and family back home. To be clear, the phones are not given directly to the soldiers.

The four major US carriers — Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint — all offer free recycling. You can trade in your old device in-store or send it in for a credit toward a new phone, or let them straight up recycle it. AT&T also participates in Cell Phones for Soldiers.

If you do decide to try your luck with ecoATM to see if your old phone is still worth a few bucks and it turns out it's worth nothing, you can at least rest easy knowing that the company will also recycle your phone responsibly.

States

There may not be a national law dictating that you must recycle your electronics, but at least 26 states have passed rules that vary widely on what they demand of manufacturers and consumers. Almost all states that do collect products for recycling provide this service free, with the bill footed by the companies in some way. Most provide some local programs to help you get rid of your stuff, regardless of whether recycling your gadgets is required or optional.

States where you can no longer dispose of electronics in the regular trash and must recycle them include: California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.

The following states have laws requiring manufacturers to pay for recycling, but you, the consumer, are not actually required to recycle your electronics: Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington.

The following states have some special circumstances worth noting:

Connecticut: Does not allow recycling centers to charge you a fee for turning in electronics, so many organizations and retailers that would usually charge for recycling televisions and monitors do not accept them. Because you cannot dispose of them curbside, you can take them to a municipal transfer station for free.

New York: If you live in a New York City apartment building with 10 or more units, contact your landlord about getting an ecycleNYC drop-off box installed in your building. It’s super convenient and free.

Pennsylvania: Does not allow retailers to charge you a fee to recycle, so places like Best Buy and Staples will not accept televisions or monitors. Many recycling centers have also closed as a result of underfunding. Some nonprofit recyclers may still accept the items, and you should check to see if your local government is hosting any drop-off events. Lancaster and Dauphin Counties also still run civic recycling programs.

Virginia: This state does not have a dedicated statewide recycling program, but some localities run their own programs including Fairfax, Loudoun and Rockbridge counties, and cities like Arlington. Check each municipality’s site for details.

To say the pandemic threw off my exercise routine would be an understatement. I was a gym regular who thrived on treadmills and weight machines, and I suddenly had to improvise with pushups and runs. I struggled to maintain a routine, and for a while gave up entirely. How was I going to stay fit at a time when merely ordering dumbbells was a challenge? Late last year, though, I resolved to get back into shape and bought a $599 Echelon Connect Sport exercise bike to use in tandem with an $80-per-year Apple Fitness+ membership. I haven’t regretted it.

The math behind my decision was simple: I wanted a quality bike that wouldn’t tie me to one service or empty my bank account in record fashion. That quickly ruled out Peloton, whose Bike ($1,495 as I write this) and full subscription ($39 per month) were overkill for someone who mainly wanted to shake off some cobwebs. The Connect Sport was appealing precisely because it didn’t chain me to anything; I could put my phone on the built-in stand and use a lower-priced service like Fitness+ to guide my workouts. I was poised to save hundreds of dollars per year, even if I had to buy the virtually mandatory Apple Watch. (I already own a Series 5.) An iPhone is also required, of course.

Yes, the Connect Sport amounts to a Peloton Bike doppelgänger without the screen, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Echelon’s machine feels solidly built, and it’s stable even in the midst of an intense workout. The flywheel-based mechanism is also remarkably quiet. Apart from a clacking sound that disappeared after the first three weeks, the loudest noise I’ve heard was my own breathing. The handlebars and seating are highly adjustable, and the pedals use cages to keep your feet in place (thus letting you use ordinary shoes) instead of clips. This is a bike that’s easy to live with, letting me concentrate on the task at hand rather than my equipment.

Jon Fingas/Engadget

The quirks mostly stem from the inherent nature of full-size spin bikes like this. The Connect Sport isn’t as compact as some alternatives, particularly folding models like Echelon’s own Flex Ultra. At 92 pounds, it’s also too heavy to casually move between rooms. And while you don’t need electricity unless you intend to use the built-in Bluetooth telemetry, the included power cord isn’t lengthy. I wouldn’t choose this bike if I was a space-conscious apartment dweller.

I’m happy with its Apple Fitness+ performance, though. To start a cycling workout, I just need to put my iPhone on the stand, launch the Fitness app and go. The exercise data I care about (heart rate, calories burned, duration) comes from the Apple Watch, so I don’t even need the Connect Sport’s Bluetooth functionality. I would only want to plug the bike into power if I craved the Echelon Fit app’s cadence and resistance info, which aren’t necessary with Apple’s service. Just be prepared to buy a tablet if you plan to use Echelon’s app (in its open-ended “free ride” mode) and Fitness+ at the same time, as you can’t juggle both on one screen.

Fitness+ works about as well as it did when Engadget tried it on launch, but that’s plenty for someone getting back into shape on the Connect Sport. Apple’s cycling coaches are friendly, helpful and accommodate a wide range of ability levels. Instead of demanding precise cadence and resistance ranges like you might see with some services, they frequently ask you to match a song’s beat or tweak the resistance to feel enough leg strain. That may be too fuzzy if you’re eager for consistent numbers, but for me it’s perfect: I’m measuring progress in terms of how well I can sustain an all-out push, not how closely I mimic someone else’s settings. The bike’s resistance knob is easy to adjust, so it’s trivial to ramp up the difficulty if a ride is too much of a cakewalk.

Jon Fingas/Engadget

I’ve found Apple’s cycling workouts challenging enough as someone relatively new to spin bikes while still well-acquainted with structured exercise. For one, there’s a healthy variety of classes now that Fitness+ has been available for over a year. Many of them rely on a familiar hill climb metaphor that alternates between intense pushes and easy recoveries, but I’ve sometimes encountered welcome twists, like rides that get progressively harder without significant breaks. While these classes likely wouldn’t push a pro athlete or dedicated amateur to their limits, they’ve gracefully scaled with me as my abilities improved.

More importantly, the sessions are engaging. I find myself picking workouts based on well-chosen music with some surprisingly deep cuts. Ever rally to nostalgia-inducing late ‘90s dance tracks, or a coach’s favorite heavy metal band? I have. And while the inspirational talk is borderline cliché, the personalities often shine through and help me look forward to classes from my favorite instructors. I just wish there were more episodes suiting my exact music tastes. It’s no fun to “settle” for a rock workout when I really hoped for dance, no matter how thrash-worthy that rock might be.

Jon Fingas/Engadget

As a result, the combination of a Connect Sport with Fitness+ works very well for me. Exercise is a pleasure I look forward to, and I’ve seen tangible improvements to my leg power and even my posture. I wouldn’t recommend the pairing to everyone, though. As you might have guessed, Fitness+ is a no-go if you’re either an Android user or seriously considering a switch. You’re thoroughly locked into Apple’s ecosystem if you sign up between the iPhone, Apple Watch and subscription. I would also pass if I were a pro or serious amateur racer — you just won’t get the detailed stats needed for targeted improvements. Spring for a dedicated sports watch and a more demanding membership instead.

If you do live in Apple’s universe and aren’t competing for glory, though, this duo is easy to recommend. It’s an affordable, effective way to cram some cycling into a packed schedule. Moreover, Echelon’s bring-your-own-device strategy offers a convenient escape hatch if you ever want to ditch a service without replacing your bike or rigging an ad hoc solution. For me, the results speak for themselves: I’m in the best shape I’ve been for two years, and I can’t ask for much better than that.

The SAT standardized college admissions tests will be taken exclusively on computers starting in 2024, The New York Times has reported. The new system will spell the end to tests taken on paper with No. 2 pencils, a right of passage for American high school students since the SAT was first administered nearly a hundred years ago.

Students will instead complete the exams on laptops or tablets, either their own or devices issued by the school. If students don't have a device, the board will provide one on the test day. And if a student loses power or connectivity, "the digital SAT has been designed to ensure they won't lose their work or time while they reconnect," said the College Board, which administers the tests.

On top of the technical changes, the testing time will be shortened to two hours instead of three. It'll feature shorter reading passages with one question for each, reflecting a wider range of topics more representative of what students will see in college. For the math section, calculators will finally be allowed. And students and teachers will get test scores in days rather than weeks, with educators no longer having to deal with packing, sorting or shipping test materials. 

It felt a lot less stressful, and whole lot quicker than I thought it'd be.

The College Board said that in pilot testing, 80 percent of students found the digital-only tests less stressful. "It felt a lot less stressful, and whole lot quicker than I thought it'd be," 11th grade student Natalia Cossio told the board. "The shorter passages helped me concentrate more on what the question wanted me to do."

The new testing standard was announced amid a growing trend for schools across the US to drop the SAT (or rival ACT) tests altogether. For Fall 2022, around 1,815 schools (of nearly 4,000 degree-granting institutions) have eliminated the requirement for standardized test scores, according to the FairTest non-profit foundation. 

"Schools that did not mandate ACT/SAT submission last year generally received more applicants, better academically qualified applicants and a more diverse pool of applicants," FairTest Executive Director Bob Schaeffer told the Los Angeles Times last year. 

Critics have also noted that the SAT tests handicap students who don't have access to expensive test preparation courses or who can't afford to take the $55 test multiple times. The digital SAT shift "does not magically transform it to a more accurate, fairer or valid tool for assessing college readiness," Schaefer told the NYT. The College Board, meanwhile, has said that SAT scores can actually help students who don't have top-flight grade-point averages. 

Earlier this week, Apple began requiring that students and teachers in the US verify their identity through authentication service UNiDAYS before they could take advantage of the company’s discounted education pricing. The move closed a long-standing loophole that had allowed almost anyone to save money on an Apple device as long as they weren’t caught in a random check.

However, mere days after implementing that requirement, Apple has just as quickly removed it. Per MacRumors, you can once again buy discounted Macs, iPads and other Apple products from the company’s US education website without the need to verify that you’re currently a student or a teacher. The outlet suggests the company may have made the change after some educators and school staff members complained they couldn’t verify their status through UNiDAYS properly, and therefore couldn’t obtain a discount on a product they wanted to buy.

It’s unclear if Apple plans to reimplement the requirement once it sorts out any potential issues with the system. For years, Apple has used UNiDAYS in many other countries, including the UK, to ensure only those who qualify for its education discounts can get them. We’ve reached out to the company for comment and more information.

Mark Zuckerberg's vision of a sanitized, hypercapitalist metaverse will likely never be as compelling or idiosyncratic as VRChat, the virtual reality community that's been home to anime fans, Furries and a slew of other sub-cultures since 2014. That's my main takeaway from We Met in Virtual Reality, the first documentary filmed entirely in VRChat, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival today.

There's no chance Zuck's metaverse would let people wear trademarked avatars without paying a ton, attend exotic clubs to receive (or give) virtual lapdances, or allow users to build whatever the hell they want. VRChat, as portrayed by director Joe Hunting, is basically a proto-metaverse where anything is possible. And for many, it has served as a crucial social hub during the pandemic, a place where they can forget about the world, relax with friends and maybe find love.

But of course, that's been the nature of practically every online community. We're social animals — people have always been able to connect with each other over BBS, IRC, Usenet and the plethora of forums and chat services that populated the early internet. I spent most of the '90s hanging out in anime and gaming chat rooms, the sorts of places that today's connected youth would probably find quaint. Still, the people I met there helped me survive the worst parts of middle and high school. Those relationships, and the internet itself, shaped me into who I am (for better or worse).

We Met in Virtual Reality proves that the unbridled, experimental sense of online community is still alive and well today, despite relentless consolidation from Big Tech. But now, instead of staring at tiny CRT monitors, people are slapping on VR headsets to explore fully realized environments. Hardcore VRChat users are also investing in powerful computing rigs as well as upgrades like finger and whole-body tracking. In the '90s, I was grateful to get another 16MB of RAM so that I could have more than one browser window open. Today, VRChat devotees can communicate using American Sign Language, or have their anime avatars show off their belly dancing skills.

Hunting approaches his subjects with the eye of an anthropologist, without any judgment towards their sometimes ridiculous avatars (do all the anime ladies need to have jiggly, Dead or Alive-level boob physics?). We Met in Virtual Reality begins as a chill hangout flick — we follow a group of friends as they have virtual drinks and go on joyrides in crudely-built VR cars — but it quickly moves beyond the novelty of its setting. One person credits their VRChat girlfriend for helping them to "unmute" after being silent for two years. An exotic performer explains that being able to dance for people in VRChat helped her grieve with a family tragedy and manage a bout of alcoholism.

Joe Hunting

The film chronicles how that exotic dancer, a young woman based in the UK, formed a romantic relationship with another VRChat user in Miami. These sorts of cyber relationships aren’t anything new, but the VR platform allowed them to do much more than trade links and memes over IM. They could exist in a space together, go on dates to new environments every night. I won’t spoil where things end up for the couple, but I can say that it wouldn’t have been nearly as effective outside of VR.

We Met in Virtual Reality effectively conveys why people would gravitate towards VRChat, especially during a pandemic. But it doesn't fully capture the wonder of exploring these environments yourself. Seeing people hop on a virtual rollercoaster isn't nearly as thrilling as doing it, where your entire field of vision is covered and you can easily get vertigo. But I don't blame Hunting too much for that; his job was to boil down the VR experience so people can enjoy it on a 2D screen, and the film is mostly successful in that respect. The film was shot using a virtual camera that could mimic all of the functionality of a typical shooter, from focus points to aperture levels. So even though it's produced in an alien environment most people aren't familiar with, it still feels like a traditional documentary.

Hunting has spent the past few years making VR documentaries, starting with a few short films, as well as the series Virtually Speaking. It’s clear from We Met in Virtual Reality that he’s not just dropping into the community for a quick story. Instead, he sees the humanity behind the avatars and virtual connections. These people aren't just escaping from their lives  with VR — their lives are being made richer because of it.

The wearables business is hard, especially if you’re a small startup with a device you could, perhaps uncharitably, call “niche.” Oura, which makes activity-tracking rings worn endorsed by a numberof celebrities, recently released its third-generation model. This new hardware is a technical marvel, packing many of the features that most wrist-worn devices take for granted. But the need to keep the cash rolling in has seen Oura, like Fitbit, Apple, Wahoo and others, pivot to a recurring-revenue model. Oura says that this is key to shift from the idea of buying a device that never changes, to supporting its broader goals of building an evolving fitness ecosystem.

Hardware

Daniel Cooper

Before we get into the specifics of this new Oura ring, let’s take a moment to remember that this device is still a marvel of engineering. Taking the sensors from a smartwatch or fitness tracker and shrinking them into a ring is worthy of enormous praise. For all of its imperfections, it’s amazing to see Oura push the limits of what is capable in such a small form factor. And there’s much more tech crammed in this time around, despite the size and weight remaining the same as the second-generation version. The headline features these new sensors enable include continuous heart-rate tracking, temperature monitoring, blood oxygenation and period prediction.

The sizing process is the same for pretty much every smart ring I’ve ever tried: The company sends you a set of plastic dummy rings you have to wear for a couple of days. Once you’ve determined the correct fit, which is tight and secure around the base of your index finger, but not to the point where it’s uncomfortable, you can order the real thing. This actually was the most stressful part of this review, since I felt that one size was too loose, the other too tight, but I opted for looseness rather than sacrificing a digit to the gods of fitness tracking. Oura says that the index finger is the best place for its ring, but you can stick it elsewhere if you prefer.

Unfortunately, the one thing you can’t do much about is the size of the ring itself which is a bit too big. I’m a big-ish guy with big-ish hands, but it feels a bit too ostentatious on my fingers, enough that people notice and ask me what it is as soon as they spot it. If you have more slender hands, I’m sure you might have a similar issue with folks pointing it out. I suspect that the smart thing to do is visit Parts Of 4 to get some more adornments to balance out the look.

Software

Without a screen, Oura is yoked tightly to the iOS or Android app where all of this data will be displayed. The Oura app is clean and tidy, only giving you the deepest data when you go looking for it. The app breaks down all of the information generated from your finger and compresses it into three scores, which are shown on the homescreen. These are for Readiness, Sleep and Activity, representing how prepared you are to face the day, how well-rested you are and how much exercise you’re doing.

The only other thing you’ll find on the homescreen is a breakdown of your heart rate across the day, showing you where the peaks and troughs are. You’ll also get advice on your ideal bedtime, which is useful when you’re working late nights and need to juggle sleep with getting things done. You’ll also get periodic reminders to move if the app detects you’ve been still for a while, and advice when it’s time for you to wind down for the day.

Go into one of the categories, like Readiness, and you’ll get scores for your recovery index, sleep, as well as your HRV balance, body temperature and resting heart rate. You can also see that my figures dropped quite substantially during a three-day period when I got food poisoning from a New Year’s Eve takeaway meal. During that period, I was given plenty of warnings telling me I wasn’t rested or well enough to do much else – not that I felt like I was gonna go for a run or anything.

As part of Oura’s plan to add extra value to its platform, the company is adding a series of video and audio guides for meditation, breathwork and sleeping. These guides, which are essentially guided meditation audio tracks, can be backed with a white noise option of your choice. You can pick the hum of a train station, the crunch of a forest stroll, the sound of the tide lapping at the land or rainfall, amongst others. These are a thing for people who find those things useful to fall asleep and feel restful but I, personally, do not find them that great.

That said, where Oura differs from its rivals in this space is that it’ll break down your vital signs during your meditation. If you’re wondering how to get better at meditating then you’ll be guided to more appropriate tracks that’ll help prod you toward nirvana.

Oura is working on adding more features to the Ring v3 over the next year, including more content as well as more accurate sleep and period tracking. These will not actually appear as new features so much as they are behind-the-scenes improvements in the underlying systems. Finally, at some point this year, the ring will be able to identify your blood oxygenation (SpO2) while you sleep in order to help detect disorders like sleep apnea.

In use

Daniel Cooper

The best thing about the Oura ring is that, once you’ve worn it a few days, you quickly start to ignore its presence. And while you’re not paying attention, it begins worming its way into every corner of your life, learning your working patterns and getting ready to make helpful suggestions. If you feel like crap in the morning but don’t have the mental wherewithal to comprehend why, you’ll be told as soon as you look at your phone. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing here that other platforms don’t do as well, but this is certainly an elegant implementation of the idea.

Sleep tracking is generally fine, by which I mean it works by tracking movement and therefore can’t tell when you’ve been rudely awoken but haven’t moved. As part of this new pivot, however, Oura is promising that the sleep tracking will soon become vastly more accurate as a consequence of behind-the-scenes changes. This will not be readily visible to users, however, since all you’ll get is a pop-up telling you that things just got more accurate. Still, it offers a fairly good indicator for how the night went, although I find the activity tracking to be a little more on the generous side. Yesterday morning, for instance, it told me that my morning shower was a strength training workout with plenty of burned calories for my trouble. Similarly, it’ll tell me around lunchtime that I need to take a half-hour brisk walk to finish my activity for the day, and then by early evening, having done nothing more than stand at my desk, make dinner and put my kids to sleep, it’ll tell me I’ve completed my goal.

One of the features that Oura is tempting its users with is Workout Heart Rate, which I find inadvertently amusing. Because the ring is so chunky, and it has such a hard edge, that I really don’t find it comfortable to wear during workouts. For instance, if I’ve got a pair of free weights, or I’m doing an incline push up on a Smith machine bar, the ring just pushes into the fleshy parts of my hand. For most of the proper “gym” workouts I’ve done, the ring has had to come off, lest I tap out too early or draw blood from the chubby parts of my fingers. But for more ring-friendly jobs, like running, walking, or cycling, you should find this to be a big help.

In terms of vital-signs tracking accuracy, I think it’s always wise to remember that wearables will not be as inch-perfect as a clinical-grade device. But in a number of random spot-tests, the Oura offered the exact same figures as the Apple Watch on my wrist. In fact, Oura’s reputation for accuracy has always been pretty high, and one of the reasons that the company hasn’t released some of these features is to ensure they’re ready to go when they do arrive.

Oura quotes battery life at seven days, although I rarely managed to get past five without having to drop it on the charging plate. Certainly, real-world stamina is a bit far from what the company is saying, but then it’s hardly a deal breaker since you can charge it full in two hours. It’s become common for me to take the ring off while I’m standing at my desk on Monday and Friday mornings and let it re-juice while I’m working.

Economics

The third-generation Oura ring will set you back $299, which gets you the ring in one of four finishes: Silver, Black, Stealth or Gold. In the box, you’ll receive the charging plate and a USB-C cable, and as part of the deal, you’ll get a six-month trial of Oura’s subscription service. Membership, which costs $5.99 a month for new users, will entitle you to “daily health insights,” “personalized recommendations,” as well as more video and audio sessions. Any existing Oura user who upgrades to the new ring will get a lifetime membership thrown in for free.

I want to be fair here and say that I understand why Oura is pivoting to this recurring revenue model. It’s not as if other companies in this space, like Fitbit, aren’t doing the same in the hope of bolstering their bottom lines. And that’s before we get to talk about how much lock-in the Apple Watch gets as a consequence of Fitness+. But I also think there’s a difference between the sort of product that those rivals are offering compared to Oura’s product.

After all, Apple and Fitbit can both offer coaching both on their devices and on bigger screens, which Oura can’t. Not to mention that Oura is really only able to offer guided audio clips (and short videos) through its app. And that while Apple and Fitbit are selling their devices as (having the potential to become) Capital-F Fitness gear, the Oura really isn’t. But, then again, that’s not what Oura is pitching here – it’s for the meditator, the runner, the cyclist, who doesn’t want to strap something beefy to their wrist.

Wrap-Up

Here’s the problem with reviewing Oura: It’s not a device that every fitness person will love. If you want something with more versatility, you’d buy a smartwatch and have done with it. Oura is more of a subtle product, for people who want to be less ostentatious about their health, or simply want something that slips into their lives and does the job. Honestly, since I’m not a gym bro, I really like the data the ring offers me without any fuss or muss.

As for the subscription, it’s likely that Oura will have to keep squeezing as many new features and insights as possible out of this new hardware. Between that, and vastly improving its currently slender content library, it’s worth it if you’re a paid-up member of the Oura family. But, and this is more a comment on the industry as a whole rather than a slight against Oura itself, I do find this need for every company to squeeze some rental income out of their users to be a little bit grating.

Apple has closed a loophole in the US that allowed buyers to take advantage of its education pricing even if they're not actually a student or a teacher. As noticed by a Redditor, the US Apple Store now requires buyers to verify their status via UNiDAYS to be able to purchase MacBooks, iPads and other devices from its education portal. The tech giant's education discount typically knocks off 10 percent from a device's original retail price. It applies to currently enrolled and newly accepted college or university students, as well as teachers and faculty/staff at a school for any grade level.

The change happened sometime over the past few days, based on snapshots from the Wayback Machine, which don't show the UNiDAYS verification requirement even in its latest record for January 17th. Prior to this change, Apple doesn't require its customers in the US to verify their status unlike its stores for other locations such as the UK that have long required UNiDAYS authentication. It didn't even ask for a .edu email address. The company simply occasionally checks customers at random and then charge the difference to their credit card if it determines that they're not truly eligible for the education discount. 

Now, when buyers go to the Apple Education website, they won't even be able to see the device listings. They'll have to click through to the UNiDAYS' partner page for Apple first, where they need to sign in or register for verification. Once they're in, they can buy what they want, so long as it's within the device limits for the promotion. Buyers can only avail of the discount for one desktop, one Mac mini, one laptop, two iPads and two accessories per year.