ICE, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, is partnering with index provider Ornn to launch cash-settled futures contracts tied to GPU computing costs. The move comes days after rival CME Group announced its own compute futures, signalling that Wall Street is racing to turn AI computing power into a standardised, tradable commodity.
TL;DR
Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, is preparing to launch futures contracts tied to the cost of computing power, marking the latest sign that Wall Street sees AI infrastructure as the next great commodity market.
ICE announced on Monday that it will team with Ornn, a financial-infrastructure firm whose index products track GPU computing costs in real time, to develop the new contracts. The futures will be US dollar-denominated, cash-settled, and referenced against Ornn’s indexes covering a variety of major GPU types. The plans remain subject to regulatory approval.
The partnership pairs one of the world’s largest exchange operators with a startup that has quietly built the plumbing for compute price discovery. Ornn, formally Ornn AI Inc, publishes the Ornn Compute Price Index, which tracks live traded spot prices for GPU compute across hardware types including Nvidia’s H100, H200, and B200 chips. The index, now available on the Bloomberg Terminal, draws on real transaction data from live GPU markets and has attracted more than 400 data centre operators, investors, and AI companies to its platform.
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Trabue Bland, senior vice president of futures markets at ICE, framed the move as a response to a market that has outgrown its informal pricing mechanisms. The compute market, he said, is “in desperate need of a globally accepted pricing mechanism and risk management tool” as AI shifts from research labs to becoming a central driver of the global economy.
The contracts will settle in cash rather than through physical delivery, a structure familiar from energy and financial futures. For AI companies planning large model training runs or cloud providers locking in capacity, the instruments would offer a way to hedge against the kind of volatile compute costs that have accompanied Big Tech’s $650 billion capex surge in 2026.
ICE is not alone in spotting this opportunity. CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives exchange, announced its own compute futures contracts on 12 May, partnering with Silicon Data to build products based on daily GPU benchmark rental rates. CME’s contracts will reference the Silicon Data H100 Rental Index, which tracks the cost of renting high-end GPUs used for AI training workloads.
The fact that two of the world’s most established futures exchanges have moved on compute within days of each other signals that institutional conviction in compute-as-commodity has reached a tipping point. It mirrors the early days of energy futures in the 1980s, when competing exchanges raced to establish benchmark contracts for crude oil and natural gas. The exchange that captures the most liquidity early on will likely set the reference price for the industry, just as ICE Brent and CME WTI did for oil.
The competitive dynamic also extends beyond the big two. Architect Financial Technologies partnered with Ornn in January to launch exchange-traded perpetual futures on GPU and RAM prices through its AX platform, and prediction market Kalshi has offered contracts allowing users to wager on Nvidia GPU compute prices. But ICE and CME bring something the newer entrants lack: deep institutional liquidity, regulatory credibility, and the clearing infrastructure that large-scale GPU-as-a-service providers and their customers will demand.
Kush Bavaria, co-founder and CEO of Ornn, put the scale of the problem bluntly. Compute, he said, “has grown into a trillion-dollar market, yet it still lacks the pricing and risk-transfer infrastructure that every other major commodity relies on.”
That gap has real consequences. GPU rental prices have been wildly volatile, with Ornn’s own index showing the Nvidia Blackwell spot rental price surging 48% between mid-February and mid-April 2026, from $2.75 to $4.08 per GPU-hour. For AI companies whose training runs can cost tens of millions of dollars, that kind of price swing can blow through budgets with little warning. Cloud providers, data centre operators, and the lenders financing billions of dollars in AI infrastructure buildouts face similar exposure.
A functioning futures market would allow these participants to lock in forward prices, transfer risk to willing counterparties, and plan capital expenditure with greater certainty. It would also generate transparent price signals that the broader market currently lacks, giving investors, analysts, and policymakers a clearer view of where compute costs are heading.
The emergence of compute futures reflects a deeper structural shift. As AI moves from an experimental technology to core economic infrastructure, the inputs that power it are being financialised in much the same way that energy, metals, and agricultural products were in previous decades. The surging demand for advanced semiconductors has already reshaped chip supply chains and driven record capital investment across the technology sector.
Futures contracts add a new layer to this ecosystem. They create standardised benchmarks that can underpin lending decisions, insurance products, and investment strategies tied to AI infrastructure. A bank financing a new data centre, for instance, could use compute futures to assess the facility’s projected revenue against forward GPU prices, much as energy lenders use oil futures to evaluate drilling projects.
There are complications, of course. Unlike oil sitting in a tank, compute is what traders call a flow commodity, one that is consumed in real time and cannot be stored. Ornn has addressed this by designing its futures with Asian-style settlement, meaning contracts settle on the arithmetic average of daily index values across the contract’s tenor rather than on a single expiry-day price. This structure aligns the financial instrument with the way compute is actually purchased and consumed.
Whether ICE or CME ultimately captures the lion’s share of this market will depend on liquidity, the breadth of GPU types covered, and which index providers gain the most institutional trust. But the direction of travel is clear. Computing power, the resource that underpins everything from energy-hungry AI data centres to autonomous vehicle development, is being transformed from a bespoke procurement headache into a standardised, tradable financial asset. For an industry accustomed to negotiating GPU access through opaque, bilateral deals, that is a significant change.
Keri Rodrigues, a mother of five boys, knows the value of screens.
For her boys, four of whom receive school accommodations, screens serve a practical purpose at school.
“When you get a kid who’s got [a learning plan] for anxiety and a substitute teacher that hasn’t read his 504 [plan] and there’s nobody there to de-escalate him, he’s got to use his phone to call mom so I can FaceTime with him and do a breathing exercise,” Rodrigues says.
But this use of screens bumps against a new concern. Fueled by distress over the mental health impacts of too much screen time, lawmakers have begun to pass device bans and other restrictions for schools, in a rising “techlash” across state capitols.
Now, as the country wrestles with restricting screens, some parents and disability advocates are beginning to express concerns about whether students who rely on accessibility tools are being excluded from the rulemaking process. Some of these advocates say they agree that new tech restrictions are necessary, but they are calling for careful consideration in how these rules are written.
Many neurodiverse students need assistive technologies for learning, and it’s common for digital tools to be prescribed in the plans schools use for these students. Assistive technologies support functional and social needs for these students’ daily lives, argued Sambhavi Chandrashekar, global accessibility lead for D2L, an online learning platform, in a series of emails to EdSurge.
Chandrashekar and others worry that lawmakers aren’t consulting families with neurodiverse students enough when crafting new restrictions, and that screen time laws could impinge on accessibility tools. They worry that the gains these students have made are becoming swept up in larger political battles.
Advocates are calling for a proactive approach to avoid potential problems down the road, and EdSurge has not yet found an example of a student blocked from using an assistive device because of these new bans.
Students with ADHD might use screens for reminders, alarms, timers, or even medical alerts, says Rodrigues, the mom. Students with autism use it for self-regulation, and students with anxiety, epilepsy, asthma, or vision and hearing differences rely on specific accessibility features on their phones. One of her own sons, a senior in high school, uses a meditation app to de-escalate, she says.
In her position as president of the advocacy group National Parents Union, Rodrigues wants caution from lawmakers. The new legislation is “really well intended,” she says. But: “We’ve got to make sure we’re not stomping on kids that are actually utilizing these devices for really important reasons.”
“Phones aren’t just toys for kids,” Rodigues says.
Disability laws such as the Individual with Disabilities Education Act guarantee students the right to assistive technologies, sometimes including screens.
But the new restrictions occur at a particularly tense time for these families.
Mass firings and funding cuts under the Trump administration have cast doubt on the reliability of federal civil rights protections and processes, some argue, leading to an increase in accessibility-related lawsuits, as families look to protect their rights. For instance, according to a nonpartisan government watchdog report, the Trump administration’s cuts to the office which reviews civil rights complaints contributed to a 90 percent dismissal of student civil rights complaints in the later months of 2025.
Recently, the U.S. Department of Justice delayed a long-anticipated deadline that required schools and vendors to meet widely accepted accessibility guidelines, after it became clear that schools and governments were not ready.
And advocates have already called attention to bills that would subject students with disabilities to surveillance cameras in classrooms, in the hopes of curbing physical restrains against these students, as EdSurge has reported.
As for the latest screen restrictions, many of the bills note that they do not apply to students with disabilities under law. For example, laws from Alabama and Tennessee carve out blanket exemptions for students with disability plans. And Tennessee’s bill also includes an explicit exception for literacy and dyslexia screenings.
Still, advocates are concerned.
Local and regional policies can limit access to tools like screen readers and predictive text software even if they don’t mean to, argues Andrew Kahn, an associate director for Understood, a support organization for people with learning differences. But these tools can be necessary for those students to keep up in class. It’s not obvious to everyone that these tools can help students, even some who don’t have formal plans, Kahn says.
Typically, when these rules mention students with disabilities, they will exclude anyone covered by disability law, says Lindsay Jones, CEO of CAST, a nonprofit focused on assistive technology and learning. But they are still relying on local school districts or other agencies within the state to provide guidance about how to implement the law, she adds.
Without sufficient guidance, a concern is that teachers might become uncomfortable working with students who need screens for accessibility reasons and might restrict these tools because of that, Jones says. For instance, advocates fear that a teacher, wary of breaking the new law, might tell a student not to use a screen, even though it was prescribed by an individualized education program, or IEP.
“It’s not typical that a student [with disabilities] is sitting alone at a screen, which I think is what seems to be driving much of the concern,” Jones says.
But even if students with disabilities aren’t prevented from using the screens, there’s unease about whether these new rules will contribute to shaming or separation.
Reading some of these laws without guidance, it’s unclear how to implement them without banning screens in the classroom, Jones says. In order to follow these rules, it’s possible that students who are exempt from the bans could be moved into another room, she worries.
“That’s immediately going to bring — or raises our concerns about — stigma for these kids,” Jones says. “One of the beautiful things is when technology is built into systems that we’re all using, and we can use them together, and it reduces the feeling that you’re separate and different in a way that can be especially harmful.”
It’s an apprehension that others in the space share.
“You would be restricting [students with disabilities] because the access to technology is creating that stigma and that segregation,” says Kahn of Understood. “Anything that leads to difference between kids, that accentuates and magnifies, has the really strong potential to further stigmatize and make these kids feel singled out.”
Education should always take place in the least restrictive environment possible, he adds.
Rodrigues says that she and other parents also worry about whether students will become reluctant to use their disability tools because of the stigma. “Kids might actually choose to suffer rather than being singled out socially,” she says.
But ultimately, for some proponents of accessibility tech, the disquiet is largely about who gets consulted for new rules and how they get enforced.
It’s not that these restrictions shouldn’t be pursued, but that families of students with disabilities should be more thoroughly included in the rulemaking process, these advocates argue.
“Parents with children who have a disability must have a seat at the table,” Chandrashekar wrote: “Blanket rules that are blind to fundamental human differences will do more disservice than good to students at the margins.”
Apple TV has shared the upcoming slate of Peanuts content, including a new special “There’s No Place Like Home, Snoopy” and a feature-length film “Snoopy Unleashed” alongside more classic releases.
Apple TV announced on May 19 that “Camp Snoopy” will return for a second season on June 26, followed by a new special, “Snoopy Presents: There’s No Place Like Home, Snoopy,” on July 31. The service is also bringing “This Is America, Charlie Brown” and “The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show” to Apple TV for the first time in July.
The Peanuts brand has slowly made Apple TV the modern home for Snoopy and the gang. Apple repeated that its expanded partnership with WildBrain, Peanuts Worldwide, and Lee Mendelson Film Productions runs through 2030.
Even though Apple TV has focused on exclusives and original content since its inception, a few established series and brands have made their way onto the service. The Peanuts are the most prominent example, but there’s also “Fraggle Rock” and “Long Way Up.”
Much of Apple’s early Peanuts push focused on bringing the holiday specials to the platform and a few new original specials. The latest slate shows the company moving deeper into franchise-building with returning series, library expansion, and new film development happening simultaneously.
“Camp Snoopy” season two follows Snoopy and the Beagle Scouts at Camp Spring Lake. The new July special centers on Snoopy trying to recover his accidentally sold doghouse.
Apple is also adding two older Peanuts productions that have been less visible on streaming platforms in recent years. “This Is America, Charlie Brown,” originally released in 1988, mixes Peanuts characters with episodes focused on American history and culture.
“The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show,” which originally aired from 1983 through 1986, adapts classic Charles M. Schulz comic strip storylines. Its 18 episodes from the classic series that will help increase Apple’s catalog just a little bit more.
Apple also shared that “Snoopy Unleashed” is a feature-length film coming soon. It follows Snoopy after he runs away from home, sending Charlie Brown and the rest of the gang into a large city to search for him.
“Camp Snoopy” season two follows Snoopy and the Beagle Scouts at Camp Spring LakeStreaming services are now battling it out with recognizable intellectual properties rather than just offering a vast library of content. Disney leans on Marvel and Star Wars, Netflix pours money into its established franchises, while Apple struggles with fewer major existing brands beyond Peanuts.
Unlike many streaming exclusives, Peanuts also aligns closely with Apple’s family-friendly image. The franchise carries decades of cultural familiarity without the licensing complications or tonal risks tied to larger blockbuster properties.
Apple TV currently costs $12.99 per month in the United States and is available through the Apple TV app across Apple devices, smart TVs, game consoles, Roku, Fire TV, and web browsers.
Cropin, an India-based SaaS AgTech company deployed in over 100 countries, is scaling its global agricultural analytics by integrating Sisense-powered embedded BI into its Cropin Cloud platform. The partnership gives stakeholders near-real-time dashboards and threshold-based alerts across 30 million digitised acres.
TL;DR
When it comes to feeding the planet, the old ways of farming are running up against hard limits. Climate volatility, supply-chain disruption, and the sheer complexity of managing crops across dozens of countries have made data-driven agriculture not just a nice-to-have but an operational imperative. Cropin, the India-headquartered SaaS AgTech company, is leaning into that reality by deepening its use of embedded business intelligence through a continued partnership with Sisense, the analytics platform specialist.
The company announced on 19 May that it is scaling its global agricultural analytics capabilities with Sisense-powered reporting tools baked directly into its Cropin Cloud platform. The integration gives stakeholders across more than 100 countries faster access to the visualisations and near-real-time insights they need to make better decisions about crop management, yield optimisation, and supply-chain resilience.
Founded in 2010, Cropin has quietly built what it describes as the world’s first intelligent agriculture cloud. Cropin Cloud is a multi-tenant, secure, and scalable platform designed specifically for agriculture and allied industries, including forestry, commodity trading, banking, and insurance. Its suite of applications, collectively branded Cropin Apps, captures and digitises agricultural data from farm to warehouse to fork, covering roughly 30 million acres, more than 400 crops, and upwards of 10,000 crop varieties worldwide.
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The platform’s AI engine, Cropin Intelligence, has processed and analysed over one billion acres of cultivable land globally. That analytical backbone is what distinguishes Cropin from simpler farm-management tools: it does not merely record data but actively generates predictive insights, from crop-health assessments and irrigation scheduling to yield forecasts and disease-risk modelling. The company counts AgTech innovation as core to its identity, and its investor roster, which includes Google and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Strategic Investment Fund, reflects that ambition.
Sisense, an Israel-founded analytics company that pivoted heavily towards embedded analytics in 2018, provides the BI layer that sits inside Cropin’s products. Rather than forcing users to export data to a separate reporting tool, the Sisense integration surfaces interactive dashboards, alerts, and visualisations directly within the Cropin Apps interface. For a field officer checking crop performance on a mobile phone in rural Maharashtra or a procurement manager tracking commodity flows from a desk in Amsterdam, the experience is the same: contextual, timely intelligence without the friction of switching platforms.
The upgraded SmartFarm Plus product, which forms part of the Cropin Apps suite, leverages Sisense’s flexible BI architecture and modern data-visualisation toolkit. Its multi-dimensional analysis eliminates the complexities that enterprises typically face with traditional data warehousing and OLAP modelling, allowing complex data from multiple sources to be combined into a single, up-to-date dashboard. Users can also set threshold-based alerts, so that instead of waiting for a periodic report, they receive direct notifications when a defined event occurs.
The timing is no accident. Agriculture is one of the last major global industries to undergo wholesale digital transformation, and sustainability-focused technology is accelerating that shift. The European Union’s incoming deforestation regulation, rising demand for farm-to-fork traceability, and mounting pressure on CPG companies to prove their sourcing credentials are all creating new appetites for the kind of granular, verifiable data that platforms such as Cropin can supply.
With its presence in more than 100 countries and its recognition as a 2024 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, Cropin is positioning itself as a category-defining platform rather than a point solution. It expanded its partner ecosystem in 2025 through strategic alliances with Wipro, BCG, and EIT Food, and in January 2026 launched the Cropin Ecosystem, a collaborative framework bringing together technology, satellite, climate, consulting, and development partners under a single AI-driven umbrella.
For agri-food enterprises evaluating their analytics stacks, the Cropin-Sisense pairing offers an instructive model. Instead of bolting generic BI software onto an agricultural workflow, the integration is purpose-built: precision agriculture demands precision analytics, and embedded analytics reduce the cognitive load on end users who may be agronomists rather than data engineers. It is an approach that resonates with a broader trend across SaaS companies building AI features directly into their products rather than offering them as afterthoughts.
Whether this translates into a genuine competitive moat for Cropin will depend on execution. But the direction of travel, embedding richer, faster, and more accessible analytics into the daily workflows of the people who actually grow and move the world’s food, is hard to argue with.
Nintendo just dropped a new mobile game called Pictonico, and it turns everyday photos into a nonstop stream of short, goofy challenges built around the faces staring back at you. Available on iOS and Android starting May 28, the title comes from the same studio behind the WarioWare series, and that shows in every quick burst of action. You open the app, grab shots from your phone library or fire up the camera for fresh ones, and the game spins them into dozens of tiny experiences where your friends and family take center stage. No photos leave your device. Nintendo never sees them.
You’re following your cousin’s portrait on a wild goose chase through a horde of zombies while frantically tapping your screen to clear the road. The next thing you know, Grandpa’s face is staring up at you mid-sky dive, and you’re anxiously attempting to tilt the phone just right to direct him to a safe landing. A headshot transforms into a furious game of corn-munching pandemonium, with you dragging the mouth open and shut at the perfect speed to avoid being clipped. Then there’s another round in which the crabs are pulled off someone’s cheek before they pinch too hard.
Sale
Each round lasts only a few seconds, yet the results are so replayable that you’ll stay glued to the screen. The cast of characters changes all the time because you can just feed it a fresh photo and let the fun begin. Give your uncle a ballerina costume and watch him perform on a makeshift catwalk. A married pair receives the royal treatment on a red carpet that can be controlled with a single swipe of the finger. You need to pluck the nose hairs, zip up the mouth, or extract a genie from a lamp carried by your best friend’s still smiling mug. The variety keeps piling up across roughly eighty minigames split into purchasable packs after the free starter set of three.
There’s more to the game than just the main rounds, since there are other additional modes that allow you to really stretch your legs. Want to get a high score on your favorite game? There is a mode for it. Want to combine multiple rounds to create a longer, more extended run? There is a board game map for that. Even a crazy fortune-telling segment that reads your chosen photo and makes incredibly ridiculous predictions that always seem to hit the mark. Saving all the craziness is as simple as creating it; simply press the screen, record a brief film or take a photo of the wildest moments, and send it directly to the group chat.
It’s completely self-contained, since you can play the entire game offline once you’ve downloaded the volumes you want, with data required simply to launch it for the first time or to purchase more. Volume 1 is $5.99, while Volume 2 is a little more expensive at $7.99, but it provides a very straightforward path to the entire collection without any devious hidden traps. Pre-registration is now open on the official website, and you can be one of the first to get in.
A power generator is great for emergencies, or any time you need power in areas where you don’t have access to it. But if you have a generator for your home, you may be wondering just how much life the engine has left. The answer isn’t exactly straightforward, and can vary depending on the type of generator you have. For example, an air-cooled generator usually has the shortest lifespan, often around 1,000 operating hours. This is due to higher engine temperatures and a more basic design.
But liquid-cooled generators built for more consistent use can last anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 hours, depending on operating conditions. That number jumps to 15,000 to 20,000 hours for more advanced liquid-cooled gasoline automotive generators. But it varies based on the fuel being used. Small diesel generators typically last 14,000 to 30,000 hours, and heavy-duty liquid-cooled diesel engines can range from 60,000 to 90,000 hours. These engines are converted to use natural gas and are built for continuous operation.
It’s because of these differences that industry professionals typically don’t measure generator lifespan in years. Any such figure would not accurately factor in engine wear anyway. So if you only occasionally use a generator during a power outage, it could be many years before it needs replacing. But if you use that same generator more often and under a heavier workload, it will likely reach its end much sooner. It all depends on how hard the unit has worked, and how well it’s maintained.
Getting the most out of your power generator means following a regular maintenance schedule. Every one to three months, start it up and plug in a device that is not on this list. Let it run for about 15 to 20 minutes, so the generator is working as designed. Once the time is up, turn off the fuel supply and let the generator shut down on its own. This allows any remaining fuel to be cleared from the system.
You’ll also need to check the oil regularly and change it every 100 to 200 operating hours. Replace the air filters every 300 to 400 hours depending on condition, and visually inspect the spark plug for any signs of damage. If you’re using an electric generator, keep a close eye on the battery. Be sure to test it to confirm it’s maintaining a charge.
Before storing your generator, use a stabilizer to keep the fuel from breaking down during inactive periods. Wipe off any dirt or debris and make sure the air intake and exhaust areas are clear. Keep the unit in a cool, dry place like a well-ventilated garage or shed. Don’t allow the generator to be in direct sunlight, as it can negatively impact the unit. It also shouldn’t be exposed to humidity or other conditions that can damage the generator’s parts. Keep it covered to ensure dust and moisture don’t build up over time.
If you’ve ever had a medical team investigating cardiac issues, you’ve probably had a bunch of electrodes stuck all over your chest and been hooked up to an electrocardiogram. This is the gold standard when it comes to understanding electrical activity in the heart and can diagnose a great many conditions. However, sometimes doctors just need the basic information—your pulse rate, and whether or not there’s actually any oxygen in your blood.
Thankfully, there’s a cheap and simple device that can offer that exact information. It’s the pulse oximeter, and it’s a key piece of equipment that’s just about vital for monitoring vitals. Let’s learn how it works!
If you’re unfamiliar with pulse oximeters, they’re that little plastic thing that clips on your finger at the doctor’s office. The device places two LEDs on one side of your finger, and a photodiode on the other. With just these simple components, it’s possible to determine the percentage of your blood’s hemoglobin that is currently carrying oxygen. It’s also possible to discern pulse rate, which also comes in handy when you’re trying to determine a patient’s current status at a glance.
Pulse oximetery was the brainchild of Takuo Aoyagi, an electrical engineer at Nihon Kohden in Tokyo. In 1972 he was working on a non-invasive way to measure cardiac output using the dye dilution method, which involves injecting a tracer dye and watching how its concentration in the blood decays over time. He was reading that decay optically through an ear oximeter. These devices used red and infrared light passed through the ear tissue to determine blood oxygen levels, but required frustrating calibration to work properly and often required fussy steps like first squeezing blood out of the tissues prior to measurement. The problem was that early oximeters worked based on the total absorption of light, and were affected by things like the skin, tissue, and venous blood, when really the goal was to measure the oxygen levels in the arterial blood itself.
As Aoyagi worked with the device, he noted that the patient’s pulse kept showing up as an annoying ripple in the output. He spent some effort trying to cancel that ripple by balancing red and infrared signals against each other. Then he noticed that when a patient’s oxygen saturation dropped, the cancellation fell apart. This led to the realization that the ratio of how much red and infrared light was absorbed could be used to determine the oxygen saturation of the arterial blood.
It all comes down to the nature of blood itself. Hemoglobin comes in two flavours relevant here: oxyhemoglobin, which is carrying an O₂ molecule, and deoxyhemoglobin, which isn’t. They are different colours, which is why arterial blood is bright red and venous blood is darker. They absorb light differently, to the point that it’s actually clinically useful. At a wavelength of 660 nm (red)—deoxyhemoglobin absorbs noticeably more light than its oxygenated cousin. At around 940 nm (near-infrared), oxyhemoglobin absorbs more. Almost every pulse oximeter uses these two wavelengths; both penetrate tissue quite easily, and it’s easy to find LEDs that spit out these wavelengths.
Reading the blood oxygen level is relatively straightforward. The device will typically alternate the two LEDs on and off, many times a second, also including a third phase with both off so the photodiode can subtract out ambient room light as well. The photodiode sees light that has passed through an entire finger, including the skin, bone, fat, as well as the venous and arterial blood. Most of that doesn’t change from second to second, but the arterial blood does, with every pump of the heart. Thus, when sampling light from the infrared and red LED pulses, the photodiode puts out a signal that’s mostly a continuous level from light passing through the finger, with a little wiggly bit on top that throbs at a human pulse rate. That’s due to the pulsing of the arterial blood, and the frequency can be used to measure pulse rate. Meanwhile, the continuous component is removed by subtracting the trough of both the infrared and red signals from the peak, which solely leaves the component of light absorption due to the fresh arterial blood itself.
The level of oxygenation in the arterial blood itself can then be measured by comparing the ratio of red to infrared light picked up in this part of the signal. The light ratio is converted into an human-parseable number via a lookup table, based on the Beer-Lambert law of concentration of substances in a solution. The displayed number is flagged as “SpO₂.” The “p” stands for “peripheral,” to indicate it’s an optical measurement rather than determined directly with blood-gas measurement techniques. This distinction is important, as there are a range of conditions under which pulse oximetry readings can be inaccurate. At a very base level, pulse oximeters can get confused if a patient is moving while wearing the device, which makes the pulsatile signal itself less clear. The device also cannot tell carboxyhemoglobin from oxyhemoglobin, because they absorb light very similarly at 660 nm. Carboxyhemoglobin is the result of carbon monoxide entering the blood, so a smoke inhalation victim can display a high apparent SpO₂ figure while their blood is carrying very little oxygen. Nail polish and skin tone can impact the amount of light transmitted through the finger, impacting readings, while limited bloodflow to the fingers can also frustrate things.
It may not be perfect, but pulse oximetry is nevertheless very useful a lot of the time. It enables medical teams to get a near-instant look at a patient’s most vital signs in a completely non-invasive manner. The use of this technology has revolutionized both emergency care and surgery, where it has played a huge role in patient monitoring under anaesthesia. Plus, the simplicity of the device has made this critical medical insight accessible to anyone that can afford a $20 device with a few LEDs and a photodiode in it. It’s now even possible to track your oxygen saturation during sleep with an off-the-shelf smartwatch due to developments from this technology, helping aid in the diagnosis of complex conditions like sleep apnea. All because blood tends to pass light a little differently depending on how oxygenated it is. Sometimes you have to thank nature for those little conveniences.
We do know that Booz Allen Hamilton is making much more money than it originally projected. In the contract, the company estimated that it would make $87 million in the first five years, and a total of about $182 million over 10 years if the contract was extended, which it has been.
According to their invoices, Booz Allen Hamilton billed for more than $140 million in the first four years of the contract. The Forest Service didn’t return our FOIA request for more recent numbers, but one analyst, Canadian sales strategist Blair Enns, projected that they could make $620 million by the time their contract expires in September 2028.
The uptick in traffic is one reason for that. But the model has also changed since 2016. That year there were less than 3 million reservations through the site; in 2023 there were roughly 9 million. BAH says there are now 5,800 facilities and more than 128,000 sites and activities to reserve. More facilities have shifted to using Rec.gov’s system, and things that were free, or didn’t exist, are now run through Rec.gov, where they come with a charge. That includes things like free Christmas tree–cutting permits for fourth graders (now with a $2.50 fee!) and timed entry tickets to national parks, introduced in 2021, which are nominally free but have a $2 processing fee. Booz Allen Hamilton gets a percentage of every permit application fee, even if you don’t win a permit.
That might be news to you, because it’s not clearly delineated on the site. As one former ranger, Betsy Walsh, told me, she often talked to people who were surprised. “People want to support the parks, so they’re fine with fees,” says Walsh, who worked at several parks before being let go from her job at Thomas Edison National Historical Park during the 2025 DOGE layoffs. “But you’re not supporting the parks. You’re supporting a private company.”
It’s not transparent. And in the past few years, several groups have gone to court alleging that it’s not legal, either.
In 2022, a Nevada hiker named Thomas Kotab sued the Bureau of Land Management, arguing in his complaint that the $2 fee for visiting Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area violated FLREA, which says public participation is required for setting fees and that it needs to be clear how much money stays on the landscape. The BLM moved to dismiss the case, but the district court ruled in Kotab’s favor on the public-participation aspect of his claim. The fees, however, were never changed.
The next year, seven plaintiffs filed a class-action suit, Robyn Wilson et al. v. Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleging that the company was “forcing American consumers to pay Ticketmaster-style Junk Fees to access National Parks and other federal recreational lands.” BAH filed a motion to dismiss, alleging the plaintiffs didn’t understand the contract. “To be sure,” its memorandum asserted, “certain federal agencies charge reservation fees to the users to help cover the government’s costs of operating Recreation.gov, including the USDA’s payments to Booz Allen. But those fees are charged by the agencies in their ‘sole discretion.’” More than six months after filing their lawsuit, the plaintiffs filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss their case. Their lawyers did not reply to requests for comment.
Microsoft is launching three new Intel-powered Surface devices for businesses: the Surface Pro 12, Surface Laptop 8, and a smaller 13-inch Surface Laptop model. These new machines come equipped with newer Intel chips, a few business-focused upgrades, and notably higher starting prices. “The high pricing of these three new Surface devices is a sign of things to come for whatever consumer models Microsoft is planning this year,” notes The Verge. From the report: This time around Microsoft is refreshing its Surface Pro and Surface Laptop models with Intel’s latest Core Ultra Series 3 processors first, ahead of similar models with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X2 processors later this year. The new Surface Pro 12, or as Microsoft calls it the Surface Pro for Business 13-inch (12th Edition), will be available for businesses today, starting at an eye-watering $1,949.99. The base model will include an Intel Core Ultra 5 processor, 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and the regular 13-inch PixelSense LCD display.
Businesses will have to pay extra for models with Intel’s Core Ultra 7 processor, up to 64GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of storage. The top spec Surface Pro 12 with a Core Ultra 7, 64GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage will be priced at $4,399.99, and there are also OLED screen options and models with 5G connectivity. The Surface Pro 12 5G starts at $2,249.99, with a Core Ultra 5, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. […] Microsoft is also launching two new versions of the Surface Laptop for businesses today. The Surface Laptop 8, or Surface Laptop for Business 13.8 or 15-inch (8th Edition) as Microsoft calls it, will also be available with a range of Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 chips. It launches alongside a smaller 13-inch model, which is confusingly labeled the Surface Laptop for Business 13-inch (1st Edition).
The 13.8-inch model starts at $1,949.99, and includes Intel’s Core Ultra 5 processor, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. While Surface devices for businesses have typically had higher pricing than consumer models, the $1,949.99 starting price for a Surface Laptop 8 is almost double the original price of the Surface Laptop 7. RAMageddon really has come for Microsoft’s Surface Pro and Surface Laptop devices, after recent price increases meant the existing consumer models are now $500 more expensive than their original starting price. The max configuration for the 13.8-inch Surface Pro 8 will include a Core Ultra 7, 64GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage for $4,299.99. A similar version of the 15-inch model (with an x7 processor) will be priced at $4,499.99.
Inside a quiet industrial estate along Jalan Pemimpin, a group of Singaporeans spend their evenings studying centuries-old combat manuals and crossing swords in full protective gear.
They train at Bastion, a Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) academy dedicated to “reviving the fighting systems” of medieval Europe.
Founded in 2017 by husband-and-wife duo Lucien Lee and Langley Qu, the academy has grown from a small Reddit meet-up into what they say is the largest full-time HEMA school in Southeast Asia, with about 150 active students today.
Unlike modern fencing, HEMA seeks to reconstruct historical combat from surviving manuscripts dating back hundreds of years. At Bastion, most lessons draw from German-speaking regions of the Holy Roman Empire between the 14th and 16th centuries.
“The techniques we use come from historical treatises, fighting manuals and manuscripts left behind by medieval masters,” said Lucien, 36.
On a nearby table sits a facsimile of one such manuscript, its pages filled with illustrations and handwritten Middle High German text. Beside it lies a translated English version used by instructors and students.
“The historical aspect is a huge part of what we do,” said Langley, 42. “For us, this is almost like a time machine to bring history back to life.”
The couple first discovered HEMA in Swansea, Wales, more than a decade ago. Lucien, who had long been interested in martial arts, found a local HEMA club while the two of them were studying there. Langley initially intended only to observe, but their instructor had other plans.
“The instructor basically told me, ‘It’s free if you sit and watch, and it’s free if you try, so why wouldn’t you try?’” she said.
When the pair returned to Singapore after completing their studies three years later, they wanted to continue training but found only a small local HEMA scene. So Lucien turned to Reddit, posting an invitation for anyone interested to try the sport at a void deck.
Four people showed up.
“That was basically our trial run,” said Langley. “We wanted to create the kind of community that we ourselves would have wanted.”
The pair later incorporated Bastion and promoted trial sessions on Facebook, attracting about 30 participants in the first intake.
For the first year, training sessions were still held at void decks and other makeshift spaces before they eventually secured their dedicated premises at Jalan Pemimpin. Over the years, several hundred people have trained at the academy, with some students from the original Reddit sessions still attending classes today.
Training at Bastion uses a range of weapons for Historical European Martial Arts, including foam, nylon and steel swords. The steel blades used for sparring are blunted, with flattened tips.
Participants are also required to wear full protective gear, including fencing masks, padded jackets, heavy gloves, and limb protection, depending on the intensity and material of the weapon used. Safety, the founders said, is built into every layer of training, from compulsory basics classes to structured drills that teach control before free sparring is introduced.
Much of Bastion’s equipment is imported from specialist makers in Europe, where HEMA has a longer-established supply ecosystem. But bringing those weapons into Singapore was not always straightforward.
On their return from the UK, the couple brought back 11 swords in their luggage, prompting a lengthy inspection at Changi Airport. Officers from the Singapore Police Force were brought in to assess what exactly they were dealing with.
“They all came down and we explained what we do,” said Lucien. “After about two hours of discussion, they cleared everything.”
At the time, the weapons required careful handling under Singapore’s regulations for controlled items, meaning every import had to be justified as training equipment rather than offensive weapons. The couple said transparency with authorities was key from the start.
“There’s no reason to hide what we do,” Lucien added. “These are training tools. They’re blunt, flexible, and designed for sport.”
More recently, Langley shared that the rules have become clearer. Training swords used for martial arts and sporting purposes are now generally allowed as long as they meet safety requirements and are used in controlled environments.
This change also brings HEMA equipment in line with other martial arts weapons, including those used in disciplines such as wushu, which are treated under similar conditions. While imports have become smoother, the academy said all equipment is still subject to customs checks and must comply with existing rules.
Running a full-time HEMA academy in Singapore, however, comes with challenges beyond importing equipment.
For Lucien and Langley, one of the biggest constraints is space. Because students train with long weapons that require a safe striking distance, the academy needs a large, open hall with high ceilings—a rare setup in land-scarce Singapore.
“You can’t just do this anywhere,” said Lucien. “The space really determines what you can or cannot run.”
At their current location, running the academy costs around S$30,000 to S$40,000 a month, with rent forming a significant portion of that.
Today, Bastion operates around 50 classes a week, with sessions held on weekday evenings and throughout the weekends. Each class typically has eight to 10 students.
Despite the scale, Bastion remains highly structured in its teaching approach. Students advance through a structured curriculum, and those who stay long enough may eventually find themselves on the other side—teaching the very classes they once started in.
“We need them to understand how we teach before they can teach,” said Langley.
The academy’s student base is diverse, though working adults under 40 make up the largest group. Others include National Servicemen, university students and older hobbyists. Some are drawn in by martial arts or fencing, while others discover HEMA through fantasy media such as The Lord Of The Rings, Game Of Thrones or role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons.
What keeps many of them returning, the founders said, is not just the sport itself, but the community built around it.
Beyond training, Bastion regularly organises social events such as movie nights, holiday gatherings and post-training meals. The founders said this helps create a space where students can bond outside of sparring.
“People come in for many reasons,” said Langley. “But they stay because they feel part of something.”
That sense of belonging has also shaped how the academy approaches competition. While some students do take part in local and overseas tournaments, Bastion does not position itself as competition-focused.
“We always tell them it’s not about winning at all costs,” said Lucien. “It’s about learning, testing yourself and engaging with others in the same space.”
Looking ahead, the couple hope to expand Bastion as interest grows, though space remains a limiting factor. A second location is something they are exploring, but not rushing into.
In the meantime, the academy has been reaching beyond its walls—running workshops in schools and youth organisations, where students get their first taste of HEMA and its historical roots.
For Lucien and Langley, the wider ambition is to shift how Singaporeans think about martial arts altogether.
“When people think of martial arts, they usually think of Asia,” said Langley. “But every culture had its own fighting traditions.”
For the founders, Bastion is not just about swords or sparring, but about reviving a lesser-known part of history—and building a community around it.
“As long as people are curious,” said Lucien, “there will always be something to discover in it.”
Also Read: This S’pore duo turned mental health into a board game business, raising nearly S$100K
Featured Image Credit: @bastionhema, @bai_ren via Instagram
Sony’s 1000 Series wireless headphones are turning 10, which is one of those “wait, how old am I now?” moments that sneaks up and punches you in the ribs. A decade after Sony turned the ANC headphone category into a street fight with Bose, the WH-1000XM6 now sits at the top of the line as the company’s most advanced active noise cancelling model yet. But Sony clearly wants to tilt the table again with the new 1000X The ColleXion, a 10th anniversary release aimed at reminding everyone who helped make premium ANC headphones a daily travel essential.
The market is blood sport at the very top, with Sony, Bose, Apple, Beats, and Sennheiser all fighting for a massive slice of a category worth billions. Hop on any flight, walk through any airport lounge, or sit in a crowded coffee shop, and you will see the evidence clamped to people’s heads. ANC is no longer a luxury feature. It is the battlefield.
But for some of us, noise cancelling is not the only box that matters. The Sony WH-1000XM6 took a hit in my review for comfort and style, even if it still ranked near the top for sound quality and ANC performance. That tradeoff matters at this level, especially when you are wearing them for hours and not just trying to silence a crying baby at 35,000 feet.
I pointed readers toward alternatives in the same price range that give up some noise cancelling for better ergonomics and design. Brands like Focal, Master & Dynamic, and Bowers & Wilkins, along with the ever-present Apple AirPods Max, all play in this space. They do not match Sony on ANC, but they counter with better materials, stronger visual identity, and in some cases, better long-term comfort. At this price, that is not a minor detail. That is the whole argument.
Today’s release of the Sony 1000X The ColleXion moves the 1000 Series into more premium territory, with Sony clearly aiming beyond noise cancellation alone. The ColleXion starts with a more substantial physical design. Sony has specified stainless steel for the headband, yokes, buttons, and jack housing, along with leather ear cups and bands that are wider and deeper than the XM6 while still keeping the ear cups relatively compact.
The headband is designed to distribute its 320 gram weight for longer listening sessions, while the pads are intended to improve passive isolation without turning comfort into a parole hearing. Available in platinum white or black, the stainless trim gives the headphone a more upscale visual identity than the XM6 without turning it into jewelry with Bluetooth.
This is not just an XM6 in a nicer shell. Sony has reworked the internals with thicker copper circuit boards, fewer board layers to help reduce resistance, a new V3 chipset, and a redesigned 40mm unidirectional carbon fiber diaphragm driver. The goal is lower distortion, faster transient response, and more DSP headroom than Sony has previously offered in a wireless headphone.
The added processing power brings DSEE Ultimate support, along with new music and gaming spatial modes in addition to the cinema mode already associated with the 1000 Series. Bluetooth 6.0 support adds LC3 and LDAC connectivity, while battery life lands at a claimed 24 hours, which is down from the XM6 but still enough for a full day of use unless your travel schedule was planned by someone who thinks Newark is a personality test.
Even the case has been rethought, with a new carry handle and magnetic closures designed to feel more secure and convenient. The style is more befitting to the fashion accessory that some will inevitably see it as. At launch, the ColleXion will be available in Black and Platinum (off-white) colorways.
Sony has not provided impedance, sensitivity, or frequency response specs, so anyone looking for those numbers will have to wait. What is clear is that The ColleXion is Sony’s attempt to answer the premium build and style argument without giving up the ANC DNA that made the 1000 Series such a force in the first place.
At $649, the Sony 1000X The ColleXion becomes Sony’s new wireless headphone flagship and moves directly into the path of Apple, Focal, Bowers & Wilkins, Master & Dynamic, and every other brand selling premium materials with premium attitude. What makes it different is that Sony is not walking away from the 1000 Series formula. It is adding stainless steel, leather, a new 40mm carbon fiber driver, V3 processing, DSEE Ultimate, Bluetooth 6.0, LC3, LDAC, a uniquely styled carry case and new spatial modes to a platform already known for elite ANC.
What is missing? Sony has not provided impedance, sensitivity, or frequency response specs, and the claimed 24 hour battery life is lower than the XM6. At 320 grams, comfort also needs to be proven over longer sessions. Shipping has begun, with store availability starting May 19, 2026, and we hope to have a review sample in the next few weeks for a more complete evaluation. If The ColleXion really does push the XM6 formula forward in comfort, style, and performance, it could become an early Editors’ Choice favorite for 2026. Sony clearly wants the crown back polished, heavier, and more expensive.
Where to buy: $649 at Amazon | Crutchfield | Best Buy | Sony
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