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Sacramento Kings guests can use ‘smart’ bottles to pour their own drinks

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The feature quietly launched in a handful of the Kings’ suites and lofts in January, but it’s now poised to reach all the remaining luxury spaces in the Golden 1 Center in the “coming months.”

It’s easy to level criticisms at the team. While a Kings spokesperson promised to The Verge that bartenders are keeping their jobs, this still reduces the need for serving staff. If you’re not a fan of cashierless stores, this won’t make you feel any better. We’d add that it might come across a somewhat stingy. When you’re paying at least $1,000 for one of these spaces, having to drink precisely measured alcohol seems like penny pinching. Still, the bartenders remain an option if you prefer the traditional experience — you can reserve these semi-smart bottles for those moments when you don’t want to leave your seat.

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Samsung may introduce a Lite version of the Galaxy Tab S6

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The apparent leak doesn’t include other details, including the launch details. However, the existing Tab S5e this likely replaces is more than a year old, and started at $399. It wouldn’t be surprising if there’s a release in the near future at a comparable price. If so, it could be a tempting option if you want a modern tablet from Samsung without splurging on the regular Tab S6.

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Walmart and Verizon may turn stores into 5G hubs

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Not surprisingly, this would have other perks: it could provide faster connections for the rest of the store and provide a speedier data link to people in and around the store.

This isn’t guaranteed to take place, although both sides have an incentive to put 5G in stores. For Walmart, this could turn its stores into medical hubs for communities where dedicated clinics (not to mention wired internet providers) are rare. You’d have a reason to visit Walmart for more than your prescription.

For Verizon, this would fit a familiar strategy: it’s determined to find uses for 5G that it can sell to companies, and it doesn’t get much bigger in the US than Walmart. Verizon’s existing 5G network is extremely finicky, with short range and poor penetration through walls, but it’s also very fast and low-latency — potentially ideal for stores that want speedy, responsive data without relying on wired broadband. That it could also fill gaps in coverage for everyday users is almost a bonus.

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AI can help find more places to store captured CO2 underground

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The team trained a convolutional neural network to find the “hidden correlations” in components of high-frequency data from simulated earthquakes. The AI learned how to find patterns that could be used to infer the ‘missing’ low frequencies, to put it another way. The result is an algorithmic system that, in the right circumstances, can estimate low frequencies and map the underground with more accuracy than before.

This isn’t ready to be used in the field. The AI is only as good as its training material, and might balk if there’s a quake that falls well outside the norm. A real-world system would need to understand virtually every kind of quake and underground material. And however well simulations work, the team still has to try this beyond a lab.

Even so, the tech is promising. It could help limit humanity’s effect on the planet by locating more places to store CO2. It might also help find more geothermal energy pockets and let countries avoid emissions-generating electricity altogether. For that matter, there’s the simple matter of understanding more about Earth. The more detailed the underground maps, the better-equipped scientists are to explain phenomenons that might have remained mysterious.

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Jeep’s all-terrain e-bike is available to pre-order for $5,899

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There may be good reasons for the price. The QuietKat-developed machine’s 750W motor may pack power as Jeep claims, and the Fire-Link suspension should help you handle rocky trails with some grace. The 40-mile range doesn’t hurt, either.

The bike doesn’t ship until June. Jeep clearly has high expectations, though. Like many automakers, it’s expanding into mobility options that go beyond the usual car sales. This lets it sell an accessory to typical Jeep buyers who want an e-bike for their backwoods excursions, but also gives it a way to court people who might not even own a car and want a bike for their wilderness adventures.

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After Math: Steven Seagal-like longevity

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The R300 GPS from Timex provides essential health tracking solutions for fitness enthusiasts with a runtime that rivals a lunar cycle. Of course that’s only if you use the onboard GPS for 20 hours or less over those few weeks.

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What’s the German word for “That thing that people had repeatedly warned you was going to happen, just happened”?

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It’s been a long year but virtual spin class attendees can once again get out of their saddles and boogie with confidence. Peloton this week announced that it had reached a settlement with the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), which had initially asked for $150 million in compensation. Details on the exact figures of the settlement haven’t yet been disclosed.

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I don’t know what you’ve been doing for the past 25-plus years of your life but Oprah’s been out here inspiring and motivating the masses. Now her classic daytime television show is back, in a new format for a new generation: podcasts! The first ten audio episodes, a curated set, drop Tuesday on iTunes. Don’t make her get the bees.

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Google’s available library of digital languages is once again growing after a multi-year hiatus. The company unveiled five new languages for its Translate app including Kinyarwanda, Odia, Tata, Turkmen and Uyghur. That’s 108 languages down, and just 7,009 known native tongues left to go!

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WHO joins TikTok to fight coronavirus misinformation

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The clips won’t compete with the latest dance tutorials or political commentary clips in terms of style, but they do appear to be getting an audience. The initial video had over 6.5 million views as of this writing, while the second had over 252,000.

Gizmodo noted that these aren’t the first worldwide organizations to use TikTok to fight misinformation. The Red Cross and Unicef have already been active. However, it’s significant that the WHO went out of its way to join the social network in the first place. It’s not just that TikTok represents a large online audience — it’s that there are already examples of TikTok users falsely claiming to have been infected or otherwise spreading panic. While TikTok said it’s providing fast access to “trusted resources” (including the WHO) to people looking for coronavirus hashtags, the WHO’s presence could be crucial to providing facts.

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VW is reportedly struggling with the ID.3’s software

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The same outlet had claimed in December that cars rolling off the line wouldn’t have a full software stack.

Not surprisingly, VW objects to any talk of delays. A spokesman told Automotive News Europe that the ID.3 was still on track to debut this summer, although he didn’t confirm or deny the number of bugs.

Whether or not the report is accurate, a lot is riding on the ID.3’s success. It’s VW’s first ground-up electric car design, and should be relatively affordable compared to luxury models from its sibling brands Audi and Porsche. The MEB platform and the software will also be crucial to VW’s future — they’ll form the underpinnings for the US-bound ID.4 and a total of 27 VW group models by the end of 2022. If there are any major setbacks, they could create problems for the company’s entire electrification strategy.

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Nearly every top-selling smartphone in 2019 was an iPhone or Galaxy

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Just where these phones dominated is another matter. It won’t surprise you to hear that Apple ruled North America, taking all of the top five slots, and took two of the top spots in Europe. In most other places, though, it’s a Samsung planet. Samsung had the most top-five phones in Europe, Latin America, MEA (Middle East and Africa) and most of the Asia-Pacific area. The only place where Apple and Samsung failed to place was, unsurprisingly, China. Oppo, Vivo and Huawei led the pack in their home country.

While this does line up with market share estimates, it doesn’t completely reflect the market. Companies like Huawei and BBK (which owns Oppo, Vivo, Realme and OnePlus) often fare well, but their phone sales tend to be distributed across many models rather than a handful of favorites. Still, this showed the lack of variety in the market, and Counterpoint warned that there appeared to be “consolidation” where fewer and fewer phone makers enjoyed success. That’s a problem if you’re eager for phone choices, especially if you live in a place where one brand reigns supreme.

Top 10 phones of 2019 by sales according to Counterpoint

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Byte’s first batch of creator partners will split $250,000

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Here’s how the program works: every 120 days, Byte will establish a pool of funds that it will divide between participating creators. Participants go up a “Viewership Bracket” ladder the more views they get, and going up a bracket means earning more money. Everyone in a bracket earns the same amount and will be paid every 30 days. The program kicks off on April 15th, and up to 100 participants will be sharing the first cash pool ($250,000). Unfortunately, only creators based in the US are eligible at the moment, though Byte says it’s working on a way to open the program to people outside the country.

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