All posts tagged: burned

Your smartwatch may not be telling you the whole truth about calories burned, researchers say

Your smartwatch may not be telling you the whole truth about calories burned, researchers say

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the Well Enough newsletter with Harry Bullmore for tips on living a healthier, happier and longer life Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore Your smartwatch may not be telling you the truth about the calories you burn in a workout – with possible consequences for your weight loss, a new study says. A test of four fitness trackers against clinical lab equipment showed that the devices overcount how many calories people burned, Florida International University said Monday. Unfortunately, the errors were the greatest for people with the highest body fat – who may be more likely to track calories, the researchers said. “You can’t treat the calories burned number it gives you as an accurate number, because it’s not,” lead author Jason Kostrna, an associate professor of kinesiology and exercise science, explained in a statement. “You could be off hundreds of calories each week and easily end up in a calorie surplus when you think you’re in a calorie deficit.” Florida International University Professor …

Your smartwatch may be overestimating calories burned by 25 percent

Your smartwatch may be overestimating calories burned by 25 percent

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. One of a smartwatch’s main selling points can be its ability to track the calories burned while exercising. But similar to the health tech industry’s “10,000 steps” selling point, new research strongly suggests a wearable’s workout assessment may overestimate your efforts—and in some cases, the readings are off by as much as 25 percent. “You can’t treat the calories burned number it gives you as an accurate number, because it’s not,” Florida International University kinesiologist Jason Kostrna said during a recent profile. Kostrna and his colleagues compared four of the most popular fitness wearables on the market: the Apple Watch Series 8, Samsung Galaxy Watch 5, Fitbit Sense 2, and Garmin Forerunner 955 against clinical-grade measurement equipment. They then asked 58 adult volunteers …

85% of companies burned by an AI mistake are racing to cut the humans who might catch the next one

85% of companies burned by an AI mistake are racing to cut the humans who might catch the next one

Published by skeptic

Enterprises that already got burned by an AI agent passing its evals and then failing in production are moving faster toward removing humans from deployment decisions, not slower — even as trust in automated evaluation is rising across the board, new VB Pulse research shows. In July, 13% of 108 enterprises surveyed said they trust automated evaluation, up from just 5% the month prior. Meanwhile, survey respondents citing poor alignment between tests and real-world results as their biggest concern fell 10 points, from 29% to 19%, month over month. Yet, 49% of survey respondents said that an AI agent or LLM-powered feature that had cleared company testing subsequently created a problem visible to customers, essentially unchanged from 50% in June. And nearly a quarter, 24%, said this troubling outcome had occurred more than once. The latest findings from VentureBeat Intelligence uncovered a more troubling phase of the enterprise agent rollout: the gap is no longer only between how much autonomy companies give agents and how well they can verify them. It is increasingly a gap …

Travis Barker shares harrowing new details about 2008 plane crash: ‘65% of my body was burned’

Travis Barker shares harrowing new details about 2008 plane crash: ‘65% of my body was burned’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the inside track from Roisin O’Connor with our free weekly music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This Travis Barker has opened up about the horrific injuries he suffered in a 2008 plane crash, recalling: “I broke all of my ribs. Fractured my back in four different places… 65% of my body was burned.” The 50-year-old Blink-182 drummer was a passenger on a private jet that crashed during takeoff from an airport in South Carolina on September 19, 2008. Four of the six people onboard died in the crash, including both pilots, Barker’s security guard, Charles Still and his personal assistant, Chris Baker. In the aftermath, doctors feared for Barker’s life due to the extensive third-degree burns he suffered while escaping from the fiery wreckage. “My brain wasn’t functioning. I was on morphine and all sorts of medicine, so I didn’t really understand the severity of it all,” says Barker in the new Hulu documentary Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear. He …

Agentic reliability and evaluations : Enterprises that got burned by a bad eval are the most likely to remove humans from the loop, not the least

Agentic reliability and evaluations : Enterprises that got burned by a bad eval are the most likely to remove humans from the loop, not the least

Published by skeptic

Across 108 enterprises, trust in automated agent evaluation rose sharply in July — and the failure rate it is supposed to predict did not move at all. The share of organizations that fully trust automated evaluation nearly tripled, from 5% in June to 13%, and the complaint that evaluations don’t match real-world outcomes fell 10 points. Yet the same share as last month — just under half — shipped an agent that passed its evals and then failed a customer. The reason is visible in the cross-tabs: the new trust belongs almost entirely to enterprises that have not yet been burned. Among those that have, 4% trust automated evaluation; among those that haven’t, 24% do. And getting burned does not slow the march to autonomy — it speeds it up. This is the second wave of the VentureBeat Pulse Research agent reliability tracker, and the first fielded on an instrument identical to the month before it. That makes July the first read on direction rather than position: what moved, what held, and what the movement …

Fires Near Spokane, Washington, Have Burned 600 Structures and Forced 60,000 Evacuations

Fires Near Spokane, Washington, Have Burned 600 Structures and Forced 60,000 Evacuations

Published by Sam Flores

Wildfires in eastern Washington state forced the evacuation of 60,000 people in the Spokane area while destroying at least 600 homes, businesses and other structures, authorities said Sunday. The fires in and around Spokane, the state’s second largest city, burned about 8.2 square miles (about 21 square kilometers) over the weekend and were among dozens of wildfires across the Western U.S. that stretched the ability of federal, state and local agencies to fight them. A total of about 390 square miles (1,000 square kilometers) has burned across the state, and some of the fires, including those in the Spokane area, have not been contained. No one hurt or unaccounted for — so far Fire and law enforcement officials said there had been no reports of injuries or people unaccounted for — but they stressed it was early in the response effort. Officials also said that the evacuees in Spokane included patients at its U.S. Veterans Affairs hospital. Video from the Spokane area showed buildings on fire, black smoke billowing up near neighborhoods, and the smoking …

People Who Are Mentally & Emotionally Burned Out Say 8 Phrases In Casual Conversation

People Who Are Mentally & Emotionally Burned Out Say 8 Phrases In Casual Conversation

Published by Jenni Sidey

When people suffer from burnout, it’s not always easy to recognize the signs. At first, they may feel overly tired, but at some point their confidence suffers and their emotions become unpredictable.  A person who is mentally and emotionally burned out may also use certain language that doesn’t sound like their true selves. It points to how overwhelmed they are, and how they may be asking for help without outright saying it. When people are mentally and emotionally burned out, they tend to say these phrases in casual conversation: 1. ‘I’ve just been having a tough time’ psdphotography from Getty Images via Canva When someone notices them acting differently and asks what’s wrong, a burned out person may admit that they’re having a tough time. However, they may not want to get into the specifics of it. Feeling burned out can affect your brain beyond just having lower energy levels. It affects your overall well-being. Unfortunately, when people fail to address their exhaustion and continue to push themselves, they become more anxious and stressed, and …

“We’ve Burned Through All Buffers”: Oil Traders Warn Market Running On Fumes

“We’ve Burned Through All Buffers”: Oil Traders Warn Market Running On Fumes

Published by Jenni Sidey

Brent crude futures jumped a little more than 4% to nearly $88 a barrel, putting the crude oil benchmark on track for its biggest weekly gain since April. That move followed an Axios report that said the Trump administration had notified Israel it was deploying additional aerial assets to the region, signaling the US military could expand strikes on Iran as soon as this weekend. Financial Times spoke with energy traders at the end of the week who warned that slowing tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz could trigger a more severe supply crunch than the first round of the US-Iran war because emergency reserves and stockpiles around the world that cushioned the earlier disruption have been mostly depleted. “We’ve burned through all of the buffers we had. Everything,” said one trader. “All of that’s now gone. Related: Bloomberg noted: Fuel markets strengthened again, with the ICE gasoil crack closing at the highest on record and the Nymex heating oil crack the strongest since March. More narrow Brent put spreads around the low $70s …

Your burned CDs and DVDs are decaying, and the photos on them may already be gone

Your burned CDs and DVDs are decaying, and the photos on them may already be gone

Published by skeptic

A few weeks ago, I found an old spindle of burned CDs and DVDs tucked into a drawer, each one labeled in faded Sharpie: “Family Photos,” “College Backup,” and “Vacation,” and other little time capsules from an era when putting files on a disc was the equivalent of storing files in the cloud. The first five I tried were not encouraging. Two read normally. Three mounted, struggled, clicked around for a while, and then gave me file errors. That spindle was supposed to be my insurance policy against losing those photos. Unfortunately, the policy had been expiring the whole time it sat in that drawer, and I never received a renewal notice. Related Why CDs Are Still Worth Buying in 2026 (Yes, Seriously) Want your music to sound better? Dust off that CD collection. A brief history of premature archiving We were sold permanence, not a promise Between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, CD and DVD burners went from expensive extras to features you expected to find in almost any half-decent computer. Blank …