Month: February 2023
Chinese chip companies cement IP defence by aggressive patent filings
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MLS opening weekend on Apple TV points to an expensive future for sports streaming
Lorenzo Insigne during his brief appearance this weekend. | Photo: Randy Litzinger/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
On the field, things didn’t get off to the best start for the opening weekend of Major League Soccer, which kicked off a new 10-year-long streaming deal with Apple. The weekend’s marquee match between crosstown rivals Los Angeles FC and the Los Angeles Galaxy was postponed due to “inclement weather,” and later on, Italian superstar Lorenzo Insigne (the league’s most expensive player) was forced off early with an injury. The opening matches were thusly a little less star-studded — but the product off the field was surprisingly solid, even if it points to a very expensive future for sports fans.
This isn’t the first time someone has streamed professional sports, of course, but the MLS deal represents the biggest effort to date. While some MLS matches will still be broadcast on traditional TV networks like EPSN and TSN, every single game will be available through a subscription called MLS Season Pass available through Apple TV. It costs $12.99 a month if you’re an Apple TV Plus subscriber ($14.99 if you’re not). Crucially, it does not include local blackouts, which has hampered streaming offerings in the past; I’m not paying $13 a month if I can’t watch my beloved Toronto FC continue to disappoint me.
While it’s far from the biggest sports league, MLS represents an interesting test case for going (mostly) all in on streaming. It’s a large and growing league — it just added a 29th team in St. Louis this year — and is also relatively young, without the baggage of some of its more established contemporaries. MLS fans don’t have entrenched broadcasts like Monday Night Football or Hockey Night in Canada that could be upended by a shift to streaming. It’s as close to a blank slate as you can get for a league with an existing fan base.
I spent the weekend watching several hours of the service’s big debut, and a few things struck me. First, Apple is not shy about cross-promotion. A monologue touting this “new era” for the league played several times and was performed by Cristo Fernández, who plays the lovable Dani Rojas on Ted Lasso on Apple TV Plus. Later, ahead of the opening match in Nashville, viewers were pointed to an Apple Music playlist that somehow related to a new Johnny Cash-themed jersey (which, like all of this season’s kits, has an Apple TV logo on it). I’m surprised there was no one telling me to play Football Manager on Apple Arcade.
Photo: Matthew Maxey/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Nashville showed off new Johnny Cash-inspired jerseys in the opening match against New York City.
Once you got into the actual games, though, things were much like a traditional broadcast. I watched the opening game between Nashville and New York City, followed by Toronto against DC United, and the standard broadcasts felt, well, standard. The play-by-play broadcasters are all known quantities, and the analysts are made up of former MLS stars. Aside from the fact that I was watching them via the Apple TV app, though, there wasn’t much to differentiate the experience of watching a game from cable. It was neither better nor worse.
That said, MLS has added a few features that it hopes will make the subscription worth it. One is a show called MLS 360, which features “whip around” coverage similar to NFL RedZone. Essentially, the idea is that when a whole bunch of games is airing simultaneously — as was the case this weekend — MLS 360 will jump around between them, showcasing highlights from each match as they happen. Personally, I don’t think this format works well for soccer, where the building of momentum is so important, and you miss a lot just watching highlights. But the show was well produced and features a very expensive-looking set.
It did give me a chance to test out the picture-in-picture feature, which works similarly to the rest of Apple TV Plus. While MLS 360 was on, I kept the match I actually cared about — with Toronto giving up a lead in the dying moments, as per usual — pinned to the top-left corner. It was information overload, which, I assume, is what Apple and MLS are going for. The kind of person who will pay $80 per year to watch every MLS match probably wants to soak in as many matches as humanly possible. Later on, I was able to keep tabs on Vancouver vs. Salt Lake using PiP while I watched old episodes of Seinfeld.
From my brief experience over the weekend, it all works as advertised, including the ability to queue up games to play when they start and an option to watch full broadcasts of matches you couldn’t catch live. Mechanically, it’s a solid service.
But the success of something like MLS Season Pass could have a major impact on the future of sports broadcasting. I’m sure there are some people who only follow MLS, and for them, splurging on a single subscription would make a lot of sense. But the culture of sports, and soccer in particular, is rarely so clear-cut. Part of what makes soccer so fun to follow is that there is so much of it: in addition to catching up on MLS opening weekend, I also watched Bayern Munich hold onto their German title aspirations with a blowout win and saw the two powers from Madrid battle to a draw in Spain. For those, I stuck with the old standby: cable, which I keep around purely because it lets me watch lots of different sports.
Now, imagine MLS Season Pass is a hit that gives all of those other leagues the same idea. Paying a separate subscription to watch each of LaLiga, the Bundesliga, or the Premier League sounds like a nightmare that would very quickly get out of hand financially — and that’s not even including all of the other teams and leagues I follow from other sports. It almost makes cable seem appealing. In that future, it’s likely only the bigger most globally known leagues would gain traction in streaming, which could have an adverse impact on things like the burgeoning world of women’s club soccer. MLS has a head start, but it, and other comparatively small but growing leagues, might struggle once some real competition rolls around.
For now, the product is solid, and it does eliminate the small stress of figuring out where to watch an MLS match. But I can’t help but worry about a few years down the line — and how much more this very expensive hobby will cost me.
Lorenzo Insigne during his brief appearance this weekend. | Photo: Randy Litzinger/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
On the field, things didn’t get off to the best start for the opening weekend of Major League Soccer, which kicked off a new 10-year-long streaming deal with Apple. The weekend’s marquee match between crosstown rivals Los Angeles FC and the Los Angeles Galaxy was postponed due to “inclement weather,” and later on, Italian superstar Lorenzo Insigne (the league’s most expensive player) was forced off early with an injury. The opening matches were thusly a little less star-studded — but the product off the field was surprisingly solid, even if it points to a very expensive future for sports fans.
This isn’t the first time someone has streamed professional sports, of course, but the MLS deal represents the biggest effort to date. While some MLS matches will still be broadcast on traditional TV networks like EPSN and TSN, every single game will be available through a subscription called MLS Season Pass available through Apple TV. It costs $12.99 a month if you’re an Apple TV Plus subscriber ($14.99 if you’re not). Crucially, it does not include local blackouts, which has hampered streaming offerings in the past; I’m not paying $13 a month if I can’t watch my beloved Toronto FC continue to disappoint me.
While it’s far from the biggest sports league, MLS represents an interesting test case for going (mostly) all in on streaming. It’s a large and growing league — it just added a 29th team in St. Louis this year — and is also relatively young, without the baggage of some of its more established contemporaries. MLS fans don’t have entrenched broadcasts like Monday Night Football or Hockey Night in Canada that could be upended by a shift to streaming. It’s as close to a blank slate as you can get for a league with an existing fan base.
I spent the weekend watching several hours of the service’s big debut, and a few things struck me. First, Apple is not shy about cross-promotion. A monologue touting this “new era” for the league played several times and was performed by Cristo Fernández, who plays the lovable Dani Rojas on Ted Lasso on Apple TV Plus. Later, ahead of the opening match in Nashville, viewers were pointed to an Apple Music playlist that somehow related to a new Johnny Cash-themed jersey (which, like all of this season’s kits, has an Apple TV logo on it). I’m surprised there was no one telling me to play Football Manager on Apple Arcade.
Photo: Matthew Maxey/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Nashville showed off new Johnny Cash-inspired jerseys in the opening match against New York City.
Once you got into the actual games, though, things were much like a traditional broadcast. I watched the opening game between Nashville and New York City, followed by Toronto against DC United, and the standard broadcasts felt, well, standard. The play-by-play broadcasters are all known quantities, and the analysts are made up of former MLS stars. Aside from the fact that I was watching them via the Apple TV app, though, there wasn’t much to differentiate the experience of watching a game from cable. It was neither better nor worse.
That said, MLS has added a few features that it hopes will make the subscription worth it. One is a show called MLS 360, which features “whip around” coverage similar to NFL RedZone. Essentially, the idea is that when a whole bunch of games is airing simultaneously — as was the case this weekend — MLS 360 will jump around between them, showcasing highlights from each match as they happen. Personally, I don’t think this format works well for soccer, where the building of momentum is so important, and you miss a lot just watching highlights. But the show was well produced and features a very expensive-looking set.
It did give me a chance to test out the picture-in-picture feature, which works similarly to the rest of Apple TV Plus. While MLS 360 was on, I kept the match I actually cared about — with Toronto giving up a lead in the dying moments, as per usual — pinned to the top-left corner. It was information overload, which, I assume, is what Apple and MLS are going for. The kind of person who will pay $80 per year to watch every MLS match probably wants to soak in as many matches as humanly possible. Later on, I was able to keep tabs on Vancouver vs. Salt Lake using PiP while I watched old episodes of Seinfeld.
From my brief experience over the weekend, it all works as advertised, including the ability to queue up games to play when they start and an option to watch full broadcasts of matches you couldn’t catch live. Mechanically, it’s a solid service.
But the success of something like MLS Season Pass could have a major impact on the future of sports broadcasting. I’m sure there are some people who only follow MLS, and for them, splurging on a single subscription would make a lot of sense. But the culture of sports, and soccer in particular, is rarely so clear-cut. Part of what makes soccer so fun to follow is that there is so much of it: in addition to catching up on MLS opening weekend, I also watched Bayern Munich hold onto their German title aspirations with a blowout win and saw the two powers from Madrid battle to a draw in Spain. For those, I stuck with the old standby: cable, which I keep around purely because it lets me watch lots of different sports.
Now, imagine MLS Season Pass is a hit that gives all of those other leagues the same idea. Paying a separate subscription to watch each of LaLiga, the Bundesliga, or the Premier League sounds like a nightmare that would very quickly get out of hand financially — and that’s not even including all of the other teams and leagues I follow from other sports. It almost makes cable seem appealing. In that future, it’s likely only the bigger most globally known leagues would gain traction in streaming, which could have an adverse impact on things like the burgeoning world of women’s club soccer. MLS has a head start, but it, and other comparatively small but growing leagues, might struggle once some real competition rolls around.
For now, the product is solid, and it does eliminate the small stress of figuring out where to watch an MLS match. But I can’t help but worry about a few years down the line — and how much more this very expensive hobby will cost me.
You Can Still Use Those Expired Vitamins You Have. Here’s What to Know – CNET
You don’t need to throw out those expired vitamins just yet.
You don’t need to throw out those expired vitamins just yet.
New Meta-Backed Platform Designed to Stop Online Sextortion – CNET
The new tool is designed to make it easier to remove nonconsensual pornography from Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.
The new tool is designed to make it easier to remove nonconsensual pornography from Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.
SepPure’s nanofilters massively reduce energy cost of industrial separation processes
As pressure grows on companies to reduce reliance on gas and oil, established processes even at industrial scales are being questioned, offering an opportunity for tech to step in. SepPure is looking to replace the complex gas-based distillation of oils with a membrane engineered at the nanometer scale, and its approach has attracted $12 million
SepPure’s nanofilters massively reduce energy cost of industrial separation processes by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch
As pressure grows on companies to reduce reliance on gas and oil, established processes even at industrial scales are being questioned, offering an opportunity for tech to step in. SepPure is looking to replace the complex gas-based distillation of oils with a membrane engineered at the nanometer scale, and its approach has attracted $12 million in a new funding round.
Oils of all kinds must be extracted and purified from their source, which might be a seed, fiber, or some other organic material. Of course you can crush an olive and get a lot of the oil out of it, but nowhere near all of it; to do that, the pulp is immersed in a massive amount of solvent, like acetone or hexane, which pulls out the remaining oil. The resulting mixture is then heated, usually via natural gas or oil, and the solvent and oil separate.
This fuel-intensive process has persisted for decades, partly because the high temperatures required preclude the use of solar or wind as the heat source.
A potential alternative appeared in the water purification space many years ago, which for a long time also used a distillation process to separate H2O from contaminants. Membranes can be engineered to allow through certain substances while others are blocked, letting for instance water molecules but not large organic ones. This approach has been taking over the water industry, because it’s cheaper, simpler, and uses less energy (look for “reverse osmosis” on the label).
SepPure founder and CEO Mohammad Farahani explained that the pressures of climate change and gas prices (not to mention cost savings) have caused others to look at membranes as a possibility. Divigas, for instance, created a membrane that separates hydrogen from carbon dioxide, and Membrion made one to remove heavy metals from water. But water isn’t a particularly harsh substance, unlike many chemical precursors to useful oils and other molecules.
“It took a long time to get a good solution for water, and basically every company making membranes focused on water,” said Farahani. “Maybe only 10 years ago, people started to research chemical-resistant membranes. We think we’re at the same place as when water membranes were introduced 40 years ago — basically it’ll start to be implemented everywhere.”
A computer displays a cross-section of SepPure nanofilter tubes.
SepPure makes what’s called a hollow fiber nanofilter, which is exactly what it sounds like: a hollow polymer fiber with a surface engineered at the nanometer scale to allow only certain molecules through. Pack a bunch of them together and stick them in a tube, and push liquid through the tube to filter it. Though the membrane doesn’t separate 100% of the two substances, it vastly reduces the scale of the distillation step. The concept isn’t new, and in fact is used across the membrane industry, but where SepPure’s diverges is in its durability and compactness.
“Strong solvents can easily dissolve polymers — you have to make polymeric membranes using solvents, but then they need to withstand solvents. That’s a challenging thing and a lot of research was done to get there,” said Farahani. “The beauty of what we’ve done is creating fibers to withstand harsh chemicals, high temperature, and high pressure.”
Water and gas aren’t so demanding in those categories, so they’ve received the bulk of the attention, but now a version exists that can split off oils from solvents, or other valuable molecules from a similarly difficult mixture. That has applications in any industry that still uses distillation due to the fragility of old membrane processes — and there are a lot. Separation processes make up a meaningful proportion of global energy use and emissions.
SepPure has a competitor in Germany’s Evonik, which creates a similar product. But Farahani said that while this earlier version of the technique is fine for high-margin products like in the pharmaceutical industry, it’s too slow and bulky to use in high-volume, low-margin processes like food oil production.
In the lab, hollow fiber nanotubing is created, and a small version of the final filter is shown.
Filters tend to come in a standard size: a pipe 4 inches in diameter and 40 inches in length. SepPure claims it can put five times as much membrane in that space, improving efficiency and reducing cost: push five times as much stuff through the same number of pipes, or filter the same amount in far less space. And that’s without reckoning for increased pressure and other combinatorial factors.
Overall, through these gains and the reduction of fuel-based heating, Farahani estimates they could reduce the cost of producing (as an example) 100,000 tons of oil in a year from around $7.5 million to about $2.5 million. And apparently the filter fibers, once exhausted after a couple years of use, can be reused to create flame-retardant fabrics.
The $12 million A round was led by SOSV, with participation from Anji Microelectronics, Real Tech Fund, Seeds Capital, EPS Ventures, and others. The company previously raised $2.5 million in 2019.
The money will be used to complete construction of its first filter production facility, in Singapore.
“As soon as we begin implementing our technology solutions at customer sites, we will quickly reach maximum capacity. In anticipation of growing demand for our modules, our team is already working on expansion plans,” said Farahadi.
SepPure’s nanofilters massively reduce energy cost of industrial separation processes by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch
Fifth Wall Ventures closes a record $1.5B in new funds in 2022 to invest in real estate and PropTech startups
The real estate market is the largest asset class in the United States with investments reaching $43 trillion, The market is expected to grow over the next two decades. Despite the market size, real estate and PropTech startups still struggle
The real estate market is the largest asset class in the United States with investments reaching $43 trillion, The market is expected to grow over the next two decades. Despite the market size, real estate and PropTech startups still struggle […]
2 million Cosori air fryers are being recalled – do you have one?
Cosori air fryers are being recalled due to reports that certain models are catching fire, burning, melting, overheating and smoking.
Two million Cosori air fryers are being recalled due to safety concerns. The firm is voluntarily recalling and replacing certain models of air fryer after an investigation identified that the closed-end crimp connectors within the recalled air fryers – responsible for establishing electrical connections between certain wires – can pose an increased risk of fire and burn hazards.
Cosori makes some of the best air fryers, and is one of the leading air fryer brands in the US as a result, so there are lots of these models out there. In cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Health Canada, and Mexico Procuraduría Federal del Consumidor (Profeco), Cosori has announced a consumer notice. Here are the affected air fryers, and what to do if you have one.
Which Cosori air fryers are affected?
(Image credit: Cosori)
The affected models were sold between June 2018 through December 2022 for between $70 and $130. They were sold at Best Buy, Target and The Home Depot stores nationwide, along with popular online resellers such as Amazon, Lowe’s and Walmart.
The units are 3.7qt and 5.8qt and were sold in black, gray, white, blue and red colors.
3.7qt models
CP137-AF-RXB
CP137-AF-RXR
CP137-AF-RXW
CO137-AF
5.8qt models
CP158-AF-R19
CP158-AF-RXW
CP158-AF-RXR
CAF-P581-BUSR
CAF-P581-AUSR
CAF-P581-RUSR
CO158-AF
Smart 5.8qt models
CS158-AF
CS158-AF-RXB
CS158-AF-R19
CAF-P581S-BUSR
CAF-P581S-RUSR
CAF-P581S-AUSR
Other models
CP137-AF
CP158-AF
CO158-AF-RXB
CP258-AF
How to check which Cosori air fryer you have
To find out if you have an air fryer on recall, you’ll need to locate the model number and batch number (B/N) on your product. These can be found on the underside of your appliance.
To find your model number…
(Image credit: Cosori)
To find your manufacturing batch number (B/N)…
(Image credit: Cosori)
What to do if you have a Cosori air fryer on recall?
If your Cosori air fryer is one of the above mentioned then you need to stop using it immediately.
You’ll need to complete the recall registration form by inputting your model and B/N, and upload three images in order to email at CosoriRecall@Sedgwick.com, or visit cosori.com and click on the “Important Voluntary Safety Recall. Learn More” banner at the bottom of the page for more information. You can head to that page directly by clicking here.
Cosori is offering a replacement air fryer to all affected customers free of charge. Even if the air fryer isn’t in a working condition or you don’t have the original receipt you still claim for a replacement. And if you don’t want a replacement air fryer then you can chose from a selection of other Cosori products including a kettle, toaster or pressure cooker, depending on the model of your air fryer.
To check the status of your replacement you can login with your registered email and registration number. If you have any further questions, there’s the toll-free recall support hotline at 888-216-5974 Monday – Friday, 8 am – 5 pm EST that you can reach out on.
Does this mean that all Cosori air fryers are not safe?
Rest assured; you can still cook french fries in an air fryer, french toast in an air fryer and even fudgy brownies in an air fryer in a Cosori air fryer as long as it’s not affected. Here’s what Cosori has to say about offering this recall:
“The health and safety of COSORI users is our highest priority. All of our products are rigorously and routinely tested for consumer safety and are in full compliance with established industry standards. COSORI is committed to the safety of those who use and love our products, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.”
SpaceX: Starship’s Upcoming Orbital Test Flight Will Be ‘Must-See TV’ – CNET
The rocket’s first trip to space could happen as soon as next month.
The rocket’s first trip to space could happen as soon as next month.