A recession is coming, and ESG investors may be among those who stand to lose the most. That’s

If you have an iPhone, you can identify plants without downloading a third-party app.

Online gamblers bet hundreds of thousands of dollars on whether the submarine that went missing on a recent expedition to the Titanic, in what online critics called a “dystopian” use of digital finance. Since Wednesday, people wagered at least $300,000 on the fate of the vehicle using the crypto platform Polymarket, Mother Jones reports. On the site, betters buy and sell shares on the outcomes of events using cryptocurrency, and can redeem their shares for $1 each if their guesses are correct. Follow the latest updates on the missing Titanic submarine here “For the purposes of this market, the vessel need not have been rescued or physically recovered to be considered ‘found,’” reads the description page for the submarine bets. “If pieces are located, but not the cabin which contains the vessel’s passengers, that will not suffice for this market to resolve to ‘Yes.’” One user, asking only to be identified by his first name, Rich, told Mother Jones he made around $3,250 betting. He argued what he was doing was morally defensible because unlike the regular stock market, it had no impact on the fate of the entity being wagered upon. “My answer would be that markets are fundamentally immoral. There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism,” Rich said. Others weren’t so sure. Social media users racked up thousands of likes criticising such gamblers. “Actually insane,” one commenter wrote. “Imagine making money off of if someone is gonna die or not.” Polymarket defended its offerings on the submarine, arguing that it was a neutral way of calculating the likelihood of a rescue. “If the families were privy to Polymarket, they could use the market as a way to obtain the real-time, unbiased probability of the submarine being recovered,” the company said in an email to Gizmodo. “That is a far more valuable service to them than sensationalist media coverage: with our markets at least they understand the true probabilities.” Bookmakers take bets on nearly everything, from sports to sex tapes, but the industry does have some lines regarding poor taste. According to Betting Gods, a gambling industry tip site, most major bookmakers refused to take bets regarding the death of Queen Elizabeth. “Major bookmakers won’t bet on the Queen dying as it would offend most of its regular customers. Whether they all agree with Britain having a royal family or not, most people would prefer to bet on a variety of other things such as sports,” the site wrote in an article. “When asked the question of why bookmakers won’t bet on what age the queen will die, the spokespeople of all the major bookmakers were unanimous in saying that it was important that people understand where the parameters of bad taste bets can’t be crossed.” Read More US launches prosecutions of Chinese companies on charges of trafficking fentanyl ingredients Titanic sub latest - Coast Guard makes stunning admission about ‘explosion’ when submersible lost contact OceanGate CEO said he was ‘personally insulted’ by ‘baseless cries’ about Titanic sub’s deadly safety flaws Federal court halts ‘suppressive’ Florida drag ban Florida's law targeting drag shows is on hold under federal judge's order Recovery could cost millions as Coast Guard stunningly admits submersible ‘explosion’

RWE AG is drawing up plans to pull out of a controversial liquefied natural gas project on the

Fly.io, a tech startup whose public cloud infrastructure enables developers to deploy applications, has raised $70 million in

By Jane Lanhee Lee OAKLAND, California Lightmatter, a Boston-based startup using light for AI computing, said on Wednesday

By Jonathan Allen and Brendan O'Brien NEW YORK (Reuters) -Torrential downpours after a week of mostly steady rainfall brought flash

Best Amazon Prime Day robot vacuum deals Arguably the most flex-worthy of all floor types,

The same day owner Elon Musk abruptly dropped Twitter's name and bird logo as part of its supposed transition to an “anything app,” TikTok impishly announced it will begin letting its users post — you guessed it — text-based messages

Wahoo has launched the Kickr Move, a new indoor cycling trainer aimed at improving the experience of riding indoors - and overcoming a range of problems experienced by home training companies in recent years. The new Kickr Move adds movement to indoor cycling. Until now, riding a bike indoors has almost uniformly meant mounting a bike onto a smart trainer that allows for little movement, either sideways or forwards. That lack of movement in turn leads to problems with comfort, as well as realism, given that riders are stuck in the same position. In recent years, indoor cyclists have undertaken increasingly complicated ways of solving that problem, including putting their bikes and turbo trainers onto large “rocker plates” – essentially big wooden platforms intended to allow them to move a little more. Wahoo said that building a system like that was never on the table. While those rocker plates showed there was clearly an "unmet need", the company's founder Chip Hawkins told The Independent that "doesn't make any sense at all" and that the company therefore set about building a new kind of solution. Without that kind of movement, the forces that usually move a bike do not happen on a fixed trainer, which leads to "unnatural pushing and pulling", Hawkins said, which can make long rides inside uncomfortable and unrealistic. Fixing that added a completely different appeal that aims to make indoor riding more appealing, he said. Wahoo did so by taking its existing smart trainer and essentially mounting it on a track, to allow movement back and forth, with about 14cm of space back and forth. If a rider gets out of the saddle, for instance, the bike will drop back and then forward again – something that’s so natural in the real world that it hardly takes any thought, but which has been almost entirely missing in indoor cycling. (Wahoo’s rival, Tacx, released its own “Motion Plates” last year, but they are added on to the trainer separately.) The Wahoo Kickr that is on the market today looks almost identical to the one sold ten years ago, though there has been the addition of new technologies such as built-in WiFi; the new Move is the first noticeable different smart trainer Wahoo has released in years. Even in the new release, the changes are minimal: the Kickr Move takes most of the components from Wahoo’s existing smart trainer and puts them in that track. At the same time, it has also announced a new, cheaper version of its premium Kickr Bike, an entire indoor bike, aimed at broadening the appeal. But even if the changes are humble, the new Kickr Move marks the first major change to the design of indoor bike training equipment in years. And, perhaps more importantly, they come at a time when the future of indoor cycling's future is being decided. Indoor cycling as an industry and an activity has been no stranger to dramatic movements in recent years. When the pandemic began, early in 2020, many took to working out indoors, and the connected fitness and indoor training industry experienced a surge in demand so strong that it became a problem. For the first year, Wahoo and other indoor training companies couldn't make enough stock to sell, and as soon as turbo trainers appeared on retailers' websites they would disappear again. Orders came in and shops stocked up heavily, to avoid any similar difficulties in the years to come; factories were coming back online and were ready to make those smart trainers. "And then everyone went outside," Hawkins recalls. All of the indoor training equipment that had been ordered had nowhere to go. "Our sales took a horrible nosedive." Prices were reduced to clear out those now full shelves at bike shops, and sales fell too. "It was a really, really tough year last year," Hawkins says. This time around, as the autumn approaches and trainer season begins again, the industry is having the opposite problem: for the most part, that glut of trainers has been sold, but bike shops are anxious about ordering too much to replace them. What's more, the effect of the pandemic on bikes was much the same – bikes were impossible to buy, so more were made, and they are now stuck on shelves – meaning that those shops might not have space or money to buy trainers even if they wanted to. At the same time, things were looking especially shaky at Wahoo. At the height of covid – when people wanted indoor fitness equipment, and investors wanted the companies that make them – Wahoo was sold to a private equity firm. Wahoo commanded a chunky valuation as the lockdown sales rolled in, benefiting from the same excitement that also sent the share price of rivals Peloton soaring. Then lockdowns eased, and people started leaving the house. Interest in indoor cycling started to fall away. Peloton’s stock plummeted; it has lost 97 per cent of its value since its highs in early 2021. Wahoo’s financial analysts started to use words like “unsustainable” about the company, and it looked as if its debt problems could lead the company to collapse. Some 18 months after a sale built on frenzied excitement about indoor cycling, Wahoo looked in peril. The debt taken on to support the sale was called in and the company was taken over by the banks, and the "shareholders lost everything", Hawkins said. Wahoo's marketing activities went away, product development slowed, staff were let go, and the company looked in danger. Then Hawkins stepped back into buy the company, along with three other strategic investors. It was a "fresh start", he says, and the company was free of its debt. Wahoo's operations "never really missed a beat" throughout the financial chaos, and so the company was able to get back to work again. "We're not trying to raise quick bucks or anything – I'm really trying to set us up for long-term success, which is exciting", he says. The Kickr Move and the Bike Shift are the first major new products to come out of Wahoo since all of that happened. As well as the new products, it comes with a new approach: more sustainable packaging, and a new setup experience – as well as a new, higher price. The Kickr Move costs £1,399 – £300 more than the existing Kickr smart trainer, which will stay on the market. Encouraging people to pay that extra might be difficult, given so many cyclists have just bought trainers in recent years, especially through the pandemic. But Hawkins says that while the market might look mature, there are still plenty of people out there still to be reached. Hawkins' instinct is that indoor cycling is a mature market, but Wahoo's data suggests that only 11 per cent of "committed cyclists" have a smart trainer. "There is still a tonne of people that haven't discovered smart training yet – I don't know exactly where they are, but it seems like there is a lot of room for kind of continuing to expand the category". The Kickr Move is another attempt to reach those people, as well as being extra innovation intended to make those with older trainers upgrade. In use, the Kickr Move is considerably more comfortable: it is hard to understand how much discomfort is caused by a lack of movement until you're able to move back and forth. And the relative lack of innovation elsewhere means that setting up the new trainer is familiar and simple, and that it works easily with Wahoo's other products. (The only problem is Wahoo's Kickr Climb, which allows people to tilt the front of their bike up and down as if they were ascending and descending, and which needs an extra foot to be compatible with the Kickr Move, sold separately.) The new trainer is far from the only innovation planned by Hawkins in the time to come. "You've got other things coming besides this launch," he teases; "we are 10, 12 years old in this market, compared to 150-years or something for cycling. So I think we've got a long way to go." Read More Apple is about to launch what could be the most controversial iPhone in years Apple is about to reveal the new iPhone – and a lot more Here’s when you will actually be able to get the new iPhone Apple is about to launch what could be the most controversial iPhone in years Apple is about to reveal the new iPhone – and a lot more Here’s when you will actually be able to get the new iPhone

Apple's got big plans for the AirPods Pro. A new report by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman

Apple says that its App Store has helped generate more than a trillion dollars for the first time, just days ahead of its major developer event. The App Store ecosystem facilitated $1.1 trillion in developer billings and sales last year, according to an independent study from The Analysis Group and commissioned by Apple. That is the result of rapid growth over recent years: that number rose 29 per cent on last year, and by 27 per cent in each of the two years before that. Those increases were partly a result of an increase in the apps that people use as the world opens up, such as taxi services, the report said. Apple’s announcement came just days ahead of its Worldwide Developers Conference, which begins on Monday. That is likely to see a whole new platform for developers to build apps for, with the launch of its new augmented reality headset. The report also comes amid increasing criticism over Apple’s power over the App Store, which is the only way to get apps onto the iPad and iPhone. Critics have argued that control means that Apple is able to make unfair demands on developers, including taking a cut from some sales made within apps and deciding what apps are available. Apple has commissioned a number of such reports in recent years, aimed at highlighting the economic impact of the App Store and the positive effects that can have for developers. The new report focused not on the money made by Apple, or through the store. Instead, it aimed to quantify how much money is made through the ecosystem built around the App Store, which includes billings and sales that are made through apps but without Apple’s involvement. More than 90 per cent of the billings and sales went specifically to the developers, with Apple not taking a cut, the report said. While Apple takes a cut from the sale of apps and digital goods and services within those apps, companies selling physical goods and other services are able to keep the full amount. Of the $1.1 trillion made last year, App Store developers generated $910 billion in total billings and sales from the sale of physical goods and services, $109 billion from in-app advertising, and $104 billion for digital goods and services, Apple said. Last year, that came particularly from travel apps and ride-hailing. Travel sales on iOS were up 84 per cent last year, the report said. It was not possible to say how much of that gain was the result of the world opening back up after lockdowns and other issues, compared with the specific work of Apple and those App Store developers, economists from Analysis Group said. The report also comes on the 15th anniversary of the App Store, which was launched in 2008. Apple said that iOS developers have earned more than $320 billion on App Store in those 15 years. “We’ve never been more hopeful about — or more inspired by — the incredible community of developers around the world,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “As this report shows, the App Store is a vibrant, innovative marketplace where opportunity thrives, and we’re as committed as ever to investing in developers’ success and the app economy’s future.” Read More Major leak reveals details of Apple’s VR headset days before unveiling Apple is going to reveal something else alongside its headset, rumours suggest Trust and ethics considerations ‘have come too late’ on AI technology New iPhone update ‘completely changes how the lock screen works’ Apple lays bare danger of losing your health data Apple is making a ‘mixed reality’ headset. Here’s what that future might look like