The verdict on the Rabbit R1

When I first saw the Rabbit R1, it was more attractive than the Humane AI Pin. The R1 had a real screen, not a dimmed projector, and it had two scroll wheels, all wrapped in a shiny, fiery orange-red casing.

Alas, as our review explains, it doesn’t work as well as promised. It doesn’t do much and is full of bugs and issues at startup. Devindra Hardawar, who reviewed it, even fiddled with the scroll wheel. nooooo

The bottom line might be: If your phone can do all these tasks just as well (or better, in most cases), what’s the point, Rabbit?

The truth may be that I just didn’t like the Rabbit R1. Even if I’m into pretty much everything Teenage Engineering designs.

— Matt Smith

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There is a difference between plans and what is needed.

New research conducted by the University of East Anglia (UEA) suggests that current decarbonisation plans will not be enough to meet the Paris Agreement’s targets of limiting global warming to 1.5C. There is a gap of up to 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) between current global plans to remove carbon from the atmosphere and what is needed to avoid the worst impacts of global warming. The study says that quickly reducing emissions is far more important than where to stuff the CO2 that’s already around.

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Or it will be on May 30.

Google has updated its inappropriate content policy to specifically prohibit advertisers from promoting websites and services that generate fake pornography. There are already restrictions in place for ads that include some types of sexual content, but this is aimed squarely at “synthetic content that has been altered or generated to be sexually explicit or contain nudity. The company will begin enforcing the rule on May 30, giving advertisers the option to remove any ad that violates the new policy.

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They are aimed at emulators.

Nintendo has issued a DMCA notice to over 8,000 GitHub repositories hosting Yuzu Switch emulator code. You may recall that the game maker said that Yuzu allows for “piracy on a colossal scale.” Redacted entities representing Nintendo claim that Yuzu’s source code “illegally circumvents Nintendo’s technological protection measures and executes illegal copies of Switch games.” All of this comes as game emulators are enjoying a resurgence. Last month, Apple loosened its restrictions on players with retro games on the App Store. However, the more serious reasons for emulating (archiving game history that might otherwise be lost; playing games that are no longer distributed) evaporate when you do it for a free copy of The tears of the kingdom.

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