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Google now lets you manage all of your old Nest Cams from the Home app

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Google now lets you manage Nest Cam IQ indoor and outdoor cameras — which were both released in 2017 — through a public preview in the Google Home app, meaning that you can now technically manage all Nest cams from as early as 2015 from the Home app instead of the Nest app.

Google has been slowly making it possible to bring Nest cams into Home over the past year and change. When you transfer your Nest Cam IQ cameras over to Home, you’ll be able to “review video history in event and timeline views, access camera settings, and more without switching between the Nest and Google Home apps,” Google says. From Home, Google also lets you view live streams from cameras in your favorites tab and set up automations.

You can join the public preview...

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freeAgent
1 day ago
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They also broke all the notifications in the Nest app as an added bonus!
Los Angeles, CA
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A California Republican won an Assembly seat he didn’t want. Now taxpayers are paying for a new election

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BY RYAN SABALOW

San Joaquin Valley Republican Vince Fong was on the ballot this fall for an Assembly race, but he didn’t want to win it. After all, he left that job for Congress earlier this year, and he planned to stay in the nation’s capital.

He even went so far as to endorse the Bakersfield city councilmember who was listed as running against him on the November ballot.

But voters chose Fong anyway for the Assembly. They chose him again for Congress, too, since he was listed on the same ballot twice. And they did so overwhelmingly. By last count, Fong had more than 33,000 votes over fellow Republican Ken Weir for the Assembly seat.

Now, since Fong “won” his Assembly race, Kern and Tulare County taxpayers in Assembly District 32 will end up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a special election to fill the seat that Fong doesn’t want any more.

The good news for California voters and taxpayers is that a new law, passed this year in response to Fong’s ballot conundrum, will hopefully prevent future confusion over a candidate appearing on the same ballot for two different races.

In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1748. The law prevents a candidate from appearing on the same ballot for simultaneous races. The legislation came in response to judges telling California election officials that Fong had to stay on the ballot for both races.

The confusion arose last winter when U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from Bakersfield and the former House speaker, resigned after a brutal battle within the GOP caucus. Fong, a longtime McCarthy acolyte who once served as his district director, announced he was running for his mentor’s seat with McCarthy’s endorsement.

But by that point, Fong, who’d been an Assemblymember since 2016, had already filed papers declaring his Assembly candidacy for the March primary.

Democratic California Secretary of State Shirley Weber argued that elections officials had long maintained that the state’s election code prohibited a candidate from running in two races simultaneously. Weber moved to block Fong from appearing on the ballot for the congressional seat.

2024 Election: Derek Tran maintains slim lead in California’s 45th congressional district

Fong challenged Weber in Sacramento Superior Court. Judge Shelleyanne Chang overruled Weber, despite noting “it may result in voter confusion and the disenfranchisement of voters if Fong is ultimately elected for both offices but does not retain one.”

“Moreover, it somewhat defies common sense to find the law permits a candidate to run for two offices during the same election,” she wrote in her ruling. “However … the Court is compelled to interpret the law as it is written by the Legislature.”

Weber appealed, but the 3rd District Court of Appeal upheld Chang’s ruling.

“If the Legislature wants to prohibit candidates from running for more than one office at the same election, it is free to do so,” the appellate court ruled. “Unless and until it does so, however, we must take (the law) as we find it and enforce it as written.”

After, Weber said the courts’ rulings left “the door open to chaos, gamesmanship and voter disenfranchisement, and disadvantages other candidates.”

Law aims to prevent election confusion

In response, Democratic Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, a former Santa Cruz County elections chief, and her colleagues introduced AB 1748, which expressly prohibits a candidate from seeking two seats simultaneously. The law also creates a process that allows a candidate to officially withdraw from one race to run in another.

“The judge ruled it’s unclear,” Pellerin said Monday. “So we’re going to make it clear and make sure that that doesn’t ever happen again.” Her bill passed this fall with bipartisan support.

Meanwhile, Fong remained on the ballot for the March primary for his Assembly seat, running without a formal opponent. He urged voters to write in Weir, the Bakersfield city councilman who got enough votes to qualify for the November general election.

In May, Fong won the special election to serve the remainder of McCarthy’s term which ends in January. He had to run again in November to serve another two years in Congress.

Fong again told voters to vote for Weir.

“Well, look, I don’t think there’s going to be much chaos,” Fong told a local television news reporter last month. “The message is clear: Vince Fong for Congress, Ken Weir for the Assembly.”

Not enough voters in Assembly District 32 got the message. Fong’s campaign didn’t return a message from CalMatters.

Mike Gatto, a former Democratic Assemblymember from Los Angeles, said the confusion that resulted from Fong’s departure is a reminder that when it comes to down-ballot races, most voters don’t really pay that close attention to state political candidates.

“So many people in the Legislature have big egos,” he said, “but when all is said and done, it’s not like we are top of mind for the average voter.”

Now, Newsom will have to call a special election in Tulare and Kern counties to fill Fong’s Assembly seat. It could come as early as March.

Pellerin said when she was an election official, it typically cost local taxpayers $4 to $8 per registered voter to hold a one-off special election. That would mean a cost of at least $1.2 million since there were around 305,000 voters in Fong’s district as of February.

Election officials in Kern County, which makes up the bulk of Fong’s district, didn’t return messages seeking an estimate of how much the special election would cost taxpayers.



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freeAgent
1 day ago
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Los Angeles, CA
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Chinese startups supported by Microsoft and Google incubator programs worked with police

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Silicon Valley tech giants, including Microsoft and Google, have supported tech companies that provide censorship and policing technologies in China, according to publicly available corporate and promotional materials reviewed by...

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freeAgent
1 day ago
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We have to be on the cutting edge of enabling a dystopian police state.
Los Angeles, CA
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Novo Nordisk sells hit weight-loss drug in China—at fraction of US price

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Patients in China will be able to purchase the blockbuster weight-loss drug Wegovy for 1,400 yuan, or about $193, just a fraction of the US list price of $1,349, according to media reports.

The price in China is in line with pricing elsewhere outside of the US. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) noted in a September Senate hearing, Wegovy, made by Novo Nordisk, is sold for $265 in Canada, $186 in Denmark, $137 in Germany, and just $92 in the United Kingdom. In the hearing, Sanders and other senators grilled Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Jørgensen on the "outrageously high prices" in the US of Wegovy and the company's other popular GLP-1 drug, Ozempic, used for diabetes.

"What we are dealing with today is not just an issue of economics, it is not just an issue of corporate greed. It is a profound moral issue," Sanders said in opening remarks about the prices of the highly effective drugs.

About 42 percent of US adults have obesity—that's more than 100 million people—and 9 percent (more than 22 million) have severe obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yale epidemiologists have estimated that more than 42,000 deaths could be averted each year in the US if Wegovy and other GLP-1 class weight-loss drugs were more accessible.

Novo Nordisk did not immediately respond to a request for comment about pricing from Ars.

In China, survey data has suggested that more than half of adults in the country have overweight or obesity, with rates expected to continue rising. Novo Nordisk estimates that 180 million of the country's 1.4 billion people have obesity.

Wegovy is not covered by China's national health insurance program.

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freeAgent
1 day ago
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The massive discrepancy in drug pricing between the US and most other areas of the world is infuriating and solvable, but where would the campaign contributions come from?
Los Angeles, CA
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Huge leak reveals what iPhones and Androids the secretive tech tool Graykey can unlock

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Leaked documents reveal Graykey struggles with iOS 18, extracting only partial data from modern iPhones and some Android devices. Read more...
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freeAgent
1 day ago
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Los Angeles, CA
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HALF-LIFE 2 turns twenty years old

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November 16th marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2, one of the most iconic and influential video games of all time.

The original Half-Life had come out in late 1998 and established new standards for first-person shooters. The game focused on total immersion, with the protagonist, Gordon Freeman, never speaking and the player never seeing outside of Gordon's POV, even in cutscenes (which were fully interactive, with Gordon able to walk around during them). The game had very sophisticated AI for the time, and ferocious combat with both alien creatures and cunning enemy soldiers. The game was noted for its bonkers ending, which saw Freeman recruited by the mysterious "G-Man" to work for him in some unspecified fashion.

Valve subsequently published two expansions, Opposing Force (1999) and Blue Shift (2000), which focused on other characters during the events of the original game, as well as revising and expanding the original for ports to the Sega Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. Valve also welcomed the activities of modders, commercially releasing the multiplayer titles Team Fortress Classic (1999) and Counter-Strike (2000), as well as the single-player Gunman Chronicles (2000), which all came from the modding community.

Most fans were clamouring for a direct sequel but Valve remained tight-lipped on the subject. In the spring of 2003 they confirmed that yes, Half-Life 2 was real and would be released that year. But, famously, Valve were hacked and an early build of the game was leaked onto the Internet. Valve furiously reworked almost the entire game in response, rebuilding it from the ground up over less than a year, something that was hugely expensive and annoying, but later was credited with making the game better.

Half-Life 2 finally released in November 2004 and, despite the backlash over the required use of the Steam software (see below) to authenticate and play the game, the game was a huge success, selling hundreds of thousands of copies in its first few days on sale. That may not sound like much by modern standards, but by 2004 the PC platform was starting to slide into sales decline, and a PC-only action game requiring an Internet connection and a reasonably robust graphics card was a fairly challenging requirement, so its success was impressive. Sales would dramatically accelerate over the following years, with over 12 million copies sold by 2011 and more than 30 million of the entire franchise by 2020. The game also achieved immediate critical acclaim, with PC Gamer awarding it 98%, a score that would not be equalled until the release of Baldur's Gate III in August 2023. Maximum PC magazine memorably gave the game 11/10.

Half-Life 2 is also notable the first (and, for several years, only) release requiring the installation and use of the Steam distribution platform. Steam itself had launched a year earlier but the release of Half-Life 2 introduced it to vast numbers of people for the first time. Valve's use of Steam was highly controversial, especially with people who only planned to play Half-Life 2 offline for the story and campaign, but still had to authenticate the game online.

The game's critical reception was down to its incredible sense of atmosphere, its moody restraint with moments of quiet punctuated by satisfying action set-pieces and moments of visceral horror (Half-Life 2 is as much a horror game as it is an SF action blockbuster, sometimes that tended to get overlooked at the time). The setting was incredible, with a sense of melancholy bleakness you'd be hard-pressed to find in any modern shooter. The story was low-key but solid and the supporting cast of supporting characters incredibly popular, with Valve using cutting-edge tech to help them emote and act more believably like real people (well, by the standards of the day). The game did have some tough competition from the recently-released Far Cry, which had far superior environments and use of vehicles, but Half-Life 2 boasted a better story, more interesting characters, stronger music and a more unsettling atmosphere.

Half-Life 2 ended on a huge cliffhanger, one that was swiftly resolved in Half-Life 2: Episode One, released in mid-2006, and then Half-Life 2: Episode Two, released in late 2007 as part of a compilation called The Orange Box, alongside legendary multiplayer game Team Fortress 2 and the experimental puzzle game Portal (which not so much stole Episode Two's thunder as also had its lunch and then tapdanced on its head). Episode Two ended on a cruel humdinger of a cliffhanger, with Valve assuring fans that Half-Life 2: Episode Three was in development.

Except, infamously, Episode Three never appeared. Valve would periodically say it was on its way but instead released other games: Left 4 Dead (2008), Left 4 Dead 2 (2009), Alien Swarm (2009), Portal 2 (2011), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (2012) and Dota 2 (2013). Steam, that much maligned online launcher, had started generating insane revenues for Valve, rising to billions of dollars a year within a decade, removing the financial impetus to release a new Half-Life title. Eventually Valve acknowledged that Episode Three was dead, with instead the story more likely to continue in a Half-Life 3, but that was never formally announced or confirmed to be in development either.

In 2020, Valve abruptly announced a new Half-Life game. Half-Life: Alyx would be an interquel set between Half-Life and Half-Life 2, and focusing on the popular side-character of Alyx Vance. The game would be VR only, upsetting long-term fans of the franchise who could not afford a VR setup or could not use one for medical reasons. The game had a surprise ending, which revisited the ending of Half-Life 2: Episode Two from a different perspective and seemed to finally hint that a proper, full sequel was possible.

Four years on, there has been no further news on that front, although Valve have released Counter-Strike 2 and have announced a new hero shooter game, Deadlock. But still, hope springs eternal.

To celebrate Half-Life 2's 20th Anniversary, Valve have released a new documentary about the making of the game, an update to HL2 revising some of the level design quirks they'd been meaning to fix for years and updating the game's lighting, and announced a new edition of the iconic Raising the Bar book about the making the game. The new edition of Raising the Bar launches in early 2025 with new sections about the making of the episodes.

Oh yes, and you can get Half-Life 2, Episode One and Episode Two for free for the whole weekend, which is a very good price for total gaming classics.

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freeAgent
4 days ago
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I remember downloading this in advance on Steam so I could play it as soon as it unlocked. It was worth it. What a great game.
Los Angeles, CA
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