A team of researchers at Georgia Tech has developed a new smartphone-based system that could dramatically simplify how people interact with robots. Called COBALT, the platform allows users with little to no computing experience to remotely control robot arms from virtually anywhere in the world using just a phone and an internet connection.
The project, developed at Georgia Tech’s People, AI & Robotics (PAIR) Lab, transforms smartphones into motion controllers for robotic arms. Users simply move their phones in different directions, and the robot mirrors those movements in real time. Basic tasks such as grabbing, moving, and releasing objects can be performed through simple on-screen controls, making the experience feel more like playing a mobile game than operating industrial machinery.
Ayush Agarwal, a Ph.D. student in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing who leads the COBALT research team, said the system was intentionally designed to make robotics accessible to beginners rather than experts. During testing, participants from countries including India, Indonesia, and Pakistan remotely controlled robot arms located inside Georgia Tech’s lab despite having no prior robotics experience.
Researchers believe crowdsourcing could shape the future of robotics
The broader goal behind COBALT extends beyond convenience. Researchers believe the platform could solve one of robotics’ biggest challenges: collecting enough real-world training data to improve AI-powered robotic systems.
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Modern robots require enormous amounts of policy training data to learn how to perform physical tasks reliably. According to Assistant Professor Animesh Garg, who directs the PAIR Lab, simulation alone is not enough to train robots for large-scale deployment. Instead, researchers envision a crowdsourced network where millions of smartphone users passively contribute operational data by remotely interacting with robots.
Representative ImageUnsplash
Garg compared the idea to tapping into the nearly five billion smartphone users worldwide. By lowering the barrier to entry, the team hopes to create a scalable global system capable of accelerating robotic learning and automation.
The technology could also have major educational implications. Georgia Tech researchers recently demonstrated COBALT to students from Midtown High School in Atlanta, allowing them to remotely operate robot arms using smartphones. The simplicity of the interface could make robotics education more accessible in classrooms without expensive equipment or specialized hardware.
A future “gig economy” for robots may not be far away
The researchers also believe COBALT could eventually support entirely new forms of remote work. Garg described the possibility of a robot-powered gig economy where people remotely operate assistive robots in homes, warehouses, or factories from anywhere in the world.
In practical terms, that could mean a factory robot autonomously handles most tasks but requests human assistance when it encounters a difficult situation. Instead of requiring on-site workers, remote operators could briefly take control through their phones before handing the operation back to the AI system.
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Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Agarwal said user studies showed smartphones were preferred over VR headsets, keyboards, or traditional controllers because they felt more intuitive while still providing high-quality control data. The system also minimizes latency by using WebRTC technology, similar to platforms like Zoom and Google Meet, ensuring that robot movements and live video streams remain responsive even across long distances.
The research paper on COBALT is being presented this week at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Vienna, where the team is showcasing not just the technology itself, but the large-scale remote operation network built around it.
Bitcoin briefly fell below $60,000 on Friday, “extending its weekly loss to nearly 20% and threatening to fall below $59,000,” reports CoinDesk. Crypto was also hit by a 40%-plus plunge in Zcash after Shielded Labs disclosed a years-old bug that could have allowed undetected counterfeit ZEC creation. From the report: Now, with stocks in plunge mode — the Nasdaq down nearly 4% on Friday — bitcoin finds itself perfectly correlated. “Short term, Bitcoin feels like swallowing broken glass,” wrote Jeff Swanson Friday. “The chart goes up. It goes down. It makes grown men cry into their Robinhood accounts and CNBC anchors smugly declare the funeral, for the eleventh time.” “Here’s what uncomfortable people don’t understand: the discomfort is the yield. Every paper-handed panic seller is handing their future to someone with a longer time horizon and a colder storage device.”
[…] Earlier, Shielded Labs, a nonprofit developer on the privacy token system, disclosed a critical vulnerability in Zcash’s (ZEC) Orchard privacy pool that could have threatened the integrity of the token’s supply. The vulnerability, if exploited, could have allowed an attacker to create an unlimited number of counterfeit ZEC tokens, completely undetected. “Think of it as someone secretly gaining access to the Federal Reserve’s dollar printing press, except in this case, even the Fed wouldn’t be able to tell these extra dollars were printed,” wrote Omkar Godbole. Importantly, the vulnerability was discovered with help from Anthropic’s recently released Opus 4.8 AI model, raising difficult questions for the entire crypto industry. More to come on that. ZEC is now down 42% over the past 24 hours. On Wednesday, the Zcash Foundation said: “The vulnerability was caught before any known exploitation occurred. There is no evidence of unauthorized value creation. Zcash’s turnstile mechanism (which tracks the total ZEC balance across all value pools) confirmed that the total supply remained intact throughout. User privacy was not affected. Sapling and transparent transactions continued operating normally throughout the incident.”
Founded in 2004 in Veldhoven, The Netherlands, Grimm Audio has built its reputation around loudspeakers, music streamers, and a careful approach to signal integrity. After introducing the PW1 phono preamplifier in 2025, the company is now expanding into power amplification with the PA1, a compact monoblock amplifier making its debut at High End Vienna 2026.
Rated at 200 watts into 4 ohms and 150 watts into 8 ohms, the PA1 gives Grimm Audio a dedicated amplification platform for systems built around its existing loudspeakers and streamers. It also marks an important step for the Dutch manufacturer as it continues to move beyond source components and active loudspeaker systems into a broader high-end audio lineup.
Grimm PA1: Compact Monoblock, Serious Output
At 9.8 x 9.8 x 9.4 inches, the Grimm Audio PA1 is compact by monoblock amplifier standards, but its 33-pound weight makes it clear that this is not a lightweight design.
The PA1 is rated at 200 watts into 4 ohms and 150 watts into 8 ohms, delivering that output to a single channel. That gives Grimm Audio’s first power amplifier enough power for a wide range of demanding loudspeakers, while keeping the design focused on control, stability, and low distortion rather than unnecessary bulk.
Grimm Audio says the PA1 uses a wide-bandwidth circuit architecture designed to reduce several forms of distortion, including phase modulation, thermal distortion, and residual crossover distortion. The amplifier also incorporates an Amplimo toroidal power transformer and a 90,000 µF current buffer, giving the compact chassis a more substantial power supply than its size might suggest.
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Building on a traditional Class A/B amplifier topology, the PA1 uses symmetrical circuitry with 96 power transistors mounted on an aluminium printed circuit board. Grimm Audio says the aluminium PCB provides tight thermal coupling for the output devices, helping maintain stable operating conditions under load.
The output stage and driver stage are designed to work together to preserve the amplifier’s operating point, even when delivering substantial low-frequency current to a loudspeaker. That matters because bass demands can place significant stress on an amplifier’s power supply and output stage.
Although Grimm Audio describes the PA1 as combining some of the tonal qualities often associated with tube amplifiers with the control and stability expected from solid-state designs, the PA1 itself is a solid-state Class A/B monoblock amplifier. The company’s goal is clearly not nostalgia, but a compact amplifier that combines low distortion, current delivery, and thermal stability in a form factor that is smaller than many high-end monoblocks.
“We have developed a solid-state amplifier capable of achieving an extraordinary combination of transparency, control, and musical naturalness,” says Eelco Grimm, Creative Director of Grimm Audio.
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PA1 Monoblock Amplifier Specs
Grimm Audio Model
PA1
Product Type
Compact Monoblock Amplifier
Price
Forthcoming
Balanced Design
Yes
Amplifier Type
Class A/B
Power Output
150 watts @ 8 Ohms 200 watts @ 4 Ohms
Frequency Response
0.1 Hz – 300 kHz
Cross-over Distortion Limitation
Yes
Coupling Capacitors
None
Protection Circuitry
Yes
Inputs
1 x XLR 1 x RCA
Input Impedance
XLR – 33 kΩ. RCA -16 kΩ.
Output Impedance
<10 mΩ.
Gain
26 dB or 18 dB (selectable)
Damping Factor
800 re 8 Ω.
THD
<0.0001 % (1 W, 8 Ω)
SNR
96dB (1W,8Ω) 118dB (150W,8Ω)
Speaker Connections
1 x 4 mm banana-style binding posts
Auto on/off Function
Yes
Power Supply
>150 W in 8 Ω
Power Consumption (Operation)
65 W ~ 600 W
Power Consumption (Low Power Mode)
<5 W
Dimensions (WDH)
250 x 250 x 240 mm 9.8 x 9.8 x 9.4 inches
Weight
15Kg / 33lbs
The Bottom Line
The Grimm Audio PA1 is not trying to be an integrated amplifier, lifestyle hub, or feature-packed control center. It is a compact Class A/B monoblock built to do one job: drive one loudspeaker with 150 watts into 8 ohms or 200 watts into 4 ohms from a relatively small, very dense chassis.
What makes it interesting is the combination of size, output, thermal design, and Grimm’s use of a symmetrical circuit with 96 power transistors on an aluminium PCB. That is not a typical recipe for a compact monoblock, and it suggests Grimm is focused on bandwidth, low distortion, and stability rather than just building another large metal amplifier with handles and a mortgage application.
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The catch is obvious: you need two PA1 amplifiers for a stereo system, and Grimm has not announced pricing yet. Until that number lands, It is hard to know whether the PA1 will compete more directly with compact, high-performance monoblocks from Bel Canto and Benchmark, or with larger and more expensive designs from Bryston, Pass Labs, Michi, and others. Either way, the PA1 looks like a serious first amplifier from Grimm Audio, but the price will decide whether it is merely impressive or genuinely disruptive.
Price & Availability and Price
The release date and pricing for the PA1 have not been provided as of the publication date of this report, but in the meantime, it is being shown and demonstrated for the first time at Vienna High End 2026 in Grimm Audio’s demo space Hall X4, M01.
— After 28 years at Microsoft, Rohan Kumaris heading to Salesforce as president and chief platform officer, based out of the San Francisco company’s Bellevue, Wash., offices.
The rise of automated AI agents is “reshaping how every company thinks about work, software, data, productivity and customer relationships,” Kumar said on LinkedIn, adding that Salesforce is well positioned to harness the technology for better workflows.
Kumar most recently held the role of corporate vice president of Microsoft Security (see the next Tech Moves item for his successor). Previous positions included CVP of Azure Data and leadership roles in SQL Server, the company’s database management system.
Naseem Tuffaha. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Naseem Tuffahais back at Microsoft as CVP of Microsoft Security, stepping into the role vacated by Kumar. Tuffaha spent nearly two decades at the Redmond, Wash., tech giant before departing in 2022 for The Trade Desk and then Pearson, where he served as chief business officer for more than a year.
During his previous Microsoft tenure, Tuffaha held wide-ranging roles including VP of sales for a suite of products including Office 365 and Teams, along with oversight of marketing and operations across the Middle East and Africa.
Away from Microsoft, Tuffaha said he gained firsthand experience navigating the secure implementation of AI solutions — and now wants to improve that process. Microsoft is well-positioned “to make security easier to adopt, easier to use, and easier to trust,” he added.
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Graham Sheldon. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Graham Sheldon is now at Docusign as chief product officer, departing his CPO role at UiPath. The Seattle-area executive spent 20 years at Microsoft before joining UiPath in 2022.
He left Microsoft as CVP of product for Teams and served as technical advisor to Satya Nadella back when Nadella was in CVP and SVP roles — before his ascent to CEO. Sheldon also held an engineering manager role in dynamics applied research.
On LinkedIn, Sheldon cited Docusign’s track record of trust across the industry and said he’s excited to work on “the next frontier of agreement innovation” at the San Francisco-based company.
Hannah McClellan. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Hannah McClellan, VP of Amazon Pharmacy Operations, is leaving the company after more than 15 years. During her tenure she served as chief of staff to the CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores and held roles spanning retail automation, Amazon Freight and Amazon Fresh.
“We are grateful to Hannah for all of her contributions to Amazon and our customers, and wish her the best in her next endeavor,” a company spokesperson said. McClellan has not announced her next move.
Gurinder Raju. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Gurinder Raju is departing Amazon after more than 18 years. Most recently general manager of Amazon WorkSpaces for AWS, he previously worked on Webstore, a now-discontinued e-commerce platform for independent sellers.
On LinkedIn, Raju reflected on “owning and growing WorkSpaces into a recognized leader” and the colleagues he’s worked alongside. His summer plans include time with family and his dog, travel and indulging his “love of computer science.” Come late summer, he added, “I’ll turn my attention to what’s next. If you feel compelled to share a suggestion or idea, or want to hear mine, feel free to ping me.”
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Kate Coelho. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Kate Coelho has joined Microsoft as director of AI Transformation Change, coming over from ServiceNow where she led AI adoption in customer service and support. Previous stops include Equinix, Point B and Infosys.
“We are already in a new era of work, and Microsoft is helping shape how it continues to unfold,” Coelho said on LinkedIn. “And I get to help with the human side of that transformation. Because technology alone doesn’t change organizations. People do.”
— Chris Grusz has left Amazon after a decade, resigning from the role of managing director of technology partnerships for AWS. He was previously at IBM as director of sales.
In a LinkedIn post, Grusz said that Amazon’s “learn and be curious” principal helped change his career mindset, pushing him to take risks and embrace reinvention. Grusz did not share his new role, but said that while he’s departing from AWS, he’s not going far.
Tanya Chen. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Tanya Chen is now at OpenAI as a member of technical staff, joining the company from Atlassian where she spent three years as senior VP of engineering. The Seattle-area executive has also worked at Meta and Microsoft.
Chen described her OpenAI onboarding as “a whirlwind of rapid learning” and said she was “energized to dive in together and build next-generation products at the edge of frontier AI.”
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— Fred Hutch Cancer Center promoted Nida Shekhani to a newly created role of executive VP and chief strategy and clinical growth officer. She previously served in a deputy capacity and has been with the Seattle organization for nearly three years, joining from UChicago Medicine.
— Seattle-based shipping tech startup Shipium has promoted David Panitz to chief revenue officer. He joined in 2023 as senior VP of sales and is based in Ohio.
“(Panitz) helped us redefine what kind of company Shipium is, and is the right person to guide our massive growth journey ahead,” CEO Jason Murray said. Shipium launched in 2019 and is No. 117 on the GeekWire 200, a ranked index of the Pacific Northwest’s top startups.
— Matt Wargon has joined Everett-based fusion startup Zap Energy as a senior nuclear engineer. He comes from neighboring nuclear energy company TerraPower, where he spent more than eight years. Zap, which recently announced an expansion into traditional nuclear fission, ranks No. 13 on the GeekWire 200.
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— Alaska Air Group, parent company of Alaska and Hawaiian airlines, has appointed Mike Sievert to its board of directors. Sievert is the former CEO of T-Mobile and currently serves as vice chairman of the board at the Bellevue, Wash.-based telecom giant.
— Bothell, Wash.-based biotech Cocrystal Pharma has namedJames Sapirstein as its new CEO, succeeding co-CEOs Sam Lee and Jim Martin. Lee, a Cocrystal co-founder, will continue as president and move into the chief scientific officer role, while Martin transitions to chief financial officer. Sapirstein brings a long biotech resume, with past CEO stints at Contravir Pharmaceuticals and Tobira Therapeutics.
— NuScale Power appointed two new members to its board of directors: mining executive Stuart Harshaw and Dale Klein, an engineering professor emeritus at the University of Texas. The Corvallis, Ore.-based company is developing small modular nuclear reactors.
— And in case you missed it: LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who has served on Microsoft’s board since 2017, will not stand for re-election at the company’s 2026 annual meeting. Read GeekWire’s full coverage here.
Although no longer so common as during the heyday of the RepRap movement, it’s easier than ever to build your own largely-printed 3D printer, with designs such as Voron’s delivering excellent quality. Nevertheless, there are still niches to be filled by new designs, such as [Alex Yu]’s mostly-printed Encore design.
The Encore uses CoreXY kinematics and linear rails for the X and Y axes. Its has no internal frame; the linear rails are mounted directly to the side panels, which were printed but provided sufficient rigidity. The printer is modular, and all the parts are designed to fit within a 225 mm print bed. The Encore itself uses a 120 mm bed, a Bowden extruder, and a lightweight Bambu-style hotend. The drive motors are NEMA 17 stepper motors, and they use sliding mounts for belt tensioning. The power supply sits behind the rods supporting the Z axis, and the controller board is in the base of the printer.
Building the printer was simple; tuning it, less so. The combination of a Bambu-type hotend with a Bowden extruder created some complications, and the hotend initially received too little cooling. [Alex] solved the cooling issues by using a stronger fan on the hotend, redesigning the ventilation shroud, and adding two inward-blowing fans along the sides of the build volume. After correcting some issues with Z-axis stability, the Encore produced some quite good-looking parts. [Alex] is still improving and documenting some aspects of the printer, but he’s uploaded his progress so far to GitHub.
After 50 years of searching, astronomers say they have finally found evidence of a long-sought “wind” blowing from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. “Unless a black hole exists in a perfect vacuum, it must blow a wind somehow. And there is no perfect vacuum in the universe,” team co-leader and Northwestern University researcher Mark Gorski said in a statement. “With new observations, this is the first time we’ve had a clean enough view to see the wind’s imprint. We looked at the data and said, ‘There it is. There is the thing that everybody’s been looking for for 50 years.’” Space.com reports: Scientists have been aware for some time that feeding black holes launch powerful outflows of material around them, including jets and winds. Winds are caused when matter falling to the black hole is accelerated to near light-speed, generating pressure that pushes infalling material away. That has been seen with ravenously feeding black holes before, but not the barely feeding Sgr A*. Its sparse consumption of material and the fact it is obscured by the plane of the Milky Way from our vantage point have made tracing this wind difficult.
Gorski’s Northwestern colleague and team co-leader Lena Murchikova pointed out that the scientists were the first to detect molecular gas very close to Sgr A* feeding the supermassive black hole. That makes Sgr A* reassuringly like other supermassive black holes. “The wind is not powerful, and its direction probably wanders with time. It shows that our black hole is not unique, and our place in the universe is not unique,” Murchikova added. “To observe our own black hole, we have to look through the plane of our galaxy. That means we have to peer through gas, dust and ionized structures, and you can’t really see through all of that easily.”
While the team’s results confirm that Sgr A* is extremely quiet compared to the supermassive black holes that sit in bright, turbulent regions of other galaxies called active galactic nuclei (AGN), this black hole wind is no slouch. In fact, the scientists think that it has been raging for around 20,000 years. “The majority of other galaxies spend most of their lives in a state where they are not particularly active,” Murchikova said. “But we can only see them when they are in a fireworks stage. It is very attractive to study black holes when they are in the fireworks stage, but that’s not actually their dominant state. “Sgr A* finally gives us a window into the life of a black hole in this quiet state.”
The team’s research was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Tesla has officially pushed back the public debut of its next-generation Roadster to August or later this year. The engineers are still ironing out the bugs in the cold gas thruster kit that they are creating with SpaceX. The event is expected to take place in Texas, and it will be Tesla’s first full-fledged vehicle showcase since the Cybercab presentation in 2024.
Apparently, an early version of the thruster system arrived at Elon Musk’s desk for review in late April. Cold gas thrusters are intended to give the Roadster greater power, faster acceleration, tighter handling, and better braking, all due to how the gas flows out of those specific nozzles. According to the desired performance criteria, once all cylinders are running, a zero-to-sixty run should be doable in roughly a second. The limited edition SpaceX vehicle will apparently include a plethora of thrusters spread throughout, ten in total, plus the fuel to power them, all squeezed into the space normally occupied by the back seats. A standard version with fewer thrusters and tanks will likely be available to the general public.
The first customer automobiles are expected to leave the Texas Gigafactory in either 2027 or 2028, according to the most recent production estimates. Anyone who put down a deposit back in 2017 is still waiting for their automobile, which must be frustrating.
The car that used to be in my garage is currently in an Earth-Mars elliptical orbit and will be there for at least 10 million years https://t.co/SlBthuU5hp
They appear to have made multiple timeline modifications throughout the years; twelve years after the first idea in November 2017, they are still working on it. Customer deliveries were originally scheduled for 2020, however the timeframe was delayed multiple times. It was previously expected that the demo date would be April 1, followed by late Spring, but it has now been pushed out to late Summer. Elon stated on the April earnings call that the event could be just a month or so away, but it now appears to be a pipe dream.
The main cause of the delays is ongoing development on the A71 thruster system, which is a cold gas thruster configuration in which the gas is simply pushed via nozzles rather than burned up, as in a conventional rocket engine. This makes the hardware easier and safer to drive on the road while yet offering adequate performance. In recent weeks, several trademark applications have been filed for the new Roadster design.
Franz von Holzhausen, Chief Designer, and Lars Moravy, Vice President of Engineering, have kept the program on track despite the fact that it looks to have been completed many years ago. Perhaps August will explain how all of these components, including Tesla’s unique electric engine, thrusters, and aerodynamics package, will work together. [Source]
To emulate vintage microprocessor hardware, it’s normal to find a modern host that provides alongside the number-crunching grunt, sufficient physical connections to interface with its support hardware. Thus if you were shopping around it might be reasonable to pick something with a powerful core and plenty of pins. Yet to emulate an 8080, [Ted Fried] has eschewed both of these — opting for an ATtiny85, a microcontroller deficient in both pins and processing power.
This seemingly impossible feat is achieved by reducing the physical connection to an SPI bus and offloading the support functions to a Teensy. The emulation code is significantly optimized C, and includes a 128 byte cache to speed up matters. This delivers a speed claimed to be only very slightly slower than a real 8080 when booting CP/M, which is quite a feat.
We’re sure that CP/M enthusiasts will have fun with this project, and we especially like the full write-up. Going to the effort of making fake 1975 electronics magazine covers for the project really is going the extra mile, and we appreciate that. Meanwhile if you’d like one of your own, the whole thing can be found in a GitHub project.
Earlier this year Nieman Lab broke the story that major news publishers, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and USA Today Co., had started blocking the Internet Archive for fear that AI companies might scrape the nonprofit’s repositories for training data. As one of the last bastions of archival history, that is, in case you’re not aware, not very good for the public interest.
Four months later and Nieman Lab now notes that the number of news outlets blocking the archive has soared to around 340 organizations:
“Our new analysis shows that more than 340 local news sites across the United States are now limiting the Internet Archive’s ability to access and preserve their stories. Many sites in our sample are owned by five of the seven largest local news publishers in the country: USA Today Co., McClatchy, Advance Local, MediaNews Group, and Tribune Publishing. The latter two are both subsidiaries of the “vulture hedge fund” Alden Global Capital.”
Many of these localities are already effectively news deserts, where most real local journalism was hollowed out and replaced by a smattering of local right wing broadcasters (like Sinclair Broadcasting) or a hedge fund run “local newspaper” that doesn’t do much in the way of actual local reporting. That’s generally also been terrible for informed consensus or shedding a light on local corruption.
Some of the outlets blocking internet archive access have legitimate concerns about protecting their hard work from being repackaged and resold without compensation or citation. But an awful lot of the folks grumbling about the Internet Archive were never in the journalism business to serve the public interest in the first place.
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Regardless of motivation, hiding whatever local news remains behind paywalls, then blocking it from the Internet Archive, in turn makes it harder for everyone else to do real journalism that relies on the historical record, local journalists tell Nieman Lab:
“I cover news within a larger news desert in New York’s Rockland, Sullivan, and Rockland counties. This means I need to heavily rely on archival data of old news articles from now deceased, or zombie-fied, media outlets,” wrote B.J. Mendelson, the editor of The Monroe Gazette newsletter, in one recent petition signed by over 200 journalists. “Without the Internet Archive, my [work] would be incredibly difficult to do.”
But even beyond AI scraping, many corporate media owners simply can’t see beyond the narrow interests of paywalled revenue. And corporate power — and authoritarianism — sometimes in collaboration — both tend to benefit from a misinformed electorate that doesn’t have a firm grip on the lessons learned from historical experience, and doesn’t have easy access to the factual record.
As a journalist of several decades, the vast vast majority of my work has been deleted by website owners and companies that simply couldn’t have cared any less about archival history or any sort of permanent record. My explorations of telecom policy have disappeared, but Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast’s version of the historical record generally remains. You can probably see how that’s of benefit to corporate power.
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But again, smaller, independent, local news outlets on fixed budgets have particularly legitimate concerns about the tech giants’ plan to hijack and repackage the entirety of their work using AI without any compensation or attribution whatsoever. The Internet Archive folks say they are listening to those concerns, while also trying to train news orgs on archival preservation:
“In December, the Internet Archive partnered with the Poynter Institute and Investigative Reporters and Editors to train a cohort of 33 local and national news outlets on how to develop and implement an archiving strategy. The initiative, funded through a Press Forward grant, aims to train 300 newsrooms in digital preservation and in using the Internet Archive’s services by the end of 2027.”
Some other archival efforts exist, but they often involve paywalled access; again a problem when you’ve got an authoritarian corporate coalition driven heavily by free propaganda, while factual reality and what’s left of intelligent U.S. analysis and journalism sits hidden behind a monthly subscription fee.
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is the podcast where we make sense of the major debates shaping online speech, platform power, content moderation and the future of the internet. It’s co-hosted by Mike Masnick (Techdirt) and Ben Whitelaw (Everything in Moderation).
With many communities looking to phase out gas-powered lawn mowers, companies that trade in battery-powered tools and devices are actively expanding their presence in the lawn care market. While there are plenty of plusses that come with making the shift from gas to electric, many who have taken the battery-powered plunge for their riding lawn mower have found themselves subjected to a veritable crash course in battery longevity and maintenance.
There are, of course, different types of batteries for lawn mowers these days. While more and more mowers and yard care devices are powered by rechargeable lithium-ion battery technology, quite a few riding models are still pushing old school lead-acid power. If you’re running a riding lawn mower on one of those batteries, there are matters to consider other than those you’d encounter with lithium-ion, including its CCA rating.
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If you’re unfamiliar with that acronym, CCA stands for cold cranking amps. It is an important factor when it comes to batteries, as it measures their ability to start an engine in colder weather. More specifically, the rating measures whether a battery can provide a minimum of 7.2 volts to an engine for 30 seconds at 0 degrees Fahrenheit. The CCA standard was established more than five decades ago and remains a vital stat for lead acid batteries. Here are a few other things you should know about cold cranking amps.
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The ins and outs of cold cranking amps
Cold cranking amps are primarily associated with lead-acid batteries. It is an important measurement to consider on a good car battery, as well as smaller vehicles like ATVs and side-by-sides. The primary reason for that is that such vehicles are utilized far more often when temperatures reach 32 degrees or below. The fact of the matter is that lawn mowers are not often operated in such temperatures, since many grasses tend to be dormant during the winter months.
Nonetheless, folks who live in colder climates and regularly mow their lawns into the fall season would be wise to seek out a battery with a suitable CCA rating. But what exactly does that mean? In the simplest terms, the rule of thumb is that the higher the CCA rating, the better your lawn mower battery should perform in cold weather. For riding lawn mowers and small yard tractors, the numbers generally range between 150 CCA and 300 CCA, though they can fluctuate higher or lower based on the needs of the machine’s engine.
The quality of the battery may also affect its CCA abilities, as high performance models may still deliver solid cold cranking starts even if they have a lower rating. If you’re looking to purchase a battery for your lawn mower and want to upgrade its cold cranking amp abilities, you can often find the rating listed directly on the battery’s label. If you can’t find the number there, consult its product description or an in-store sales associate for help.
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