It was one of the most-watched regular-season games this year and the most-streamed regular-season game on Max.
February 2025
Luka Dončić’s 1st game against the Dallas Mavericks draws 2.5 million viewers, among most watched this season
It was one of the most-watched regular-season games this year and the most-streamed regular-season game on Max.
In return to L.A., Anthony Davis recounts ‘all the emotions’ since his shocking trade
Anthony Davis spoke with The Times about the disbelief he felt over being traded to the Dallas Mavericks for Luka Doncic this month.
The Pixel Watch 3 Will Be Able to Detect If You Lose a Pulse
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
Google just announced that its “loss of pulse dectection” feature for the Pixel Watch 3 has received FDA clearance and will be available to U.S. users by the end of March. Read on for more on what this feature does, how well it works (according to one early study), and how you’ll be able to enable it.
The feature has been available in several European countries since late 2024. According to a Google help page on the feature, it’s currently available in “Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.”
What is “loss of pulse detection”?
According to documents from Google, the feature is meant to sound an alarm and contact emergency services whenever the person wearing the watch loses their pulse. This could be from a heart attack, poisoning, overdose, or other cause of respiratory or circulatory failure, according to Google’s documents on what they had in mind when developing the feature.
When the watch detects a “loss of pulse event” (it thinks you are wearing the watch but cannot detect a pulse with the regular heart rate sensor), the watch is programmed to do the following, in order:
-
Perform additional checks (taking about 20 seconds) to be sure that it’s not detecting movement or a pulse. For example, it can use brighter lights in the optical heart rate sensor, and check for movement from accelerometers.
-
Buzz your wrist and ask if you are OK. You can tap an “I’m OK” button to clear the alert. This phase lasts for 15 seconds.
-
Play an audible alarm while displaying a 20-second countdown stating that it will place an emergency call (“No pulse detected / Calling 911 in…”)
-
Call 911 through the watch’s LTE connection, or through a connected phone, and play a recorded message to them (not audible to you or to bystanders). The message states that your watch detected a loss of pulse and that you are unresponsive, and it gives your approximate location.
-
While the call is ongoing, there is a “talk to 911” button displayed on the watch. You (or a bystander) can tap that button to interrupt the recorded message and speak to emergency services as a regular phone call.
What is (and isn’t) loss of pulse detection good for?
The loss of pulse detection feature is promising for what are sometimes called “unwitnessed” cardiac arrests, as a group of Italian healthcare professionals wrote in the journal Resuscitation. I wasn’t able to find any real-world accounts of this feature saving someone’s life, but to be fair it’s only been available for a few months.
Google emphasizes that the feature is not intended to provide any treatment or be expected to save your life, and definitely cannot replace medical monitoring devices that may have been prescribed or recommended to you by your provider. It can’t prevent a loss of pulse, or determine the cause of a loss of pulse, and it can’t even be sure that its emergency calls will go through.
Importantly, the loss of pulse detection process has not been tested in a variety of real-world situations that may increase the risk of false alarms, or of missing a real event. These are some of the people who might be most interested in this feature, so it’s worth noting that the feature has not been tested for people identified as high risk for sudden cardiac death, or for people who are pregnant, under 22 years of age, who have chronic pain, poor blood flow to the wrist, peripheral nerve conditions, cognitive impairment, sickle cell disease, or who have a tattoo on their wrist that may interfere with the sensor.
How well does loss of pulse detection work on the Pixel Watch 3?
Google has published a brief summary of the results of their testing from the watch, as part of this document that gives instructions for use. They tested the feature on 135 volunteers, including—according to a press release—stunt actors who simulated falls while wearing a tourniquet.
The sensitivity in a clinical trial was 69.3%, meaning that the feature was activated 69.3% of the time that a person had an actual loss of pulse. The other 30.7% of the time, it didn’t activate. That’s not great, but the idea seems to be that it’s a lot better than nothing.
The other metric of accuracy, specificity, Google described as amounting to “1 false positive call over 7.75 user-years” with 131 of their users. (That would be compatible with 131 users wearing the watch for about three weeks each, resulting in one person getting a false positive, but Google didn’t release the full results so we can’t say whether that’s exactly how the study went, or how their use compared to what you might be doing with your watch over the next 7.75 years.)
If you do get a false positive, you’ll have a few chances to cancel the alert before it gets as far as calling emergency services. If you tap that “I’m OK” button, the watch will ask if you were doing anything innocuous that may have triggered it. Sleeping on your arm is one of the options; so are a loose fit on the watch band, and not wearing the watch at all. Google also notes that other factors like ambient light, or pressure on the skin, may sometimes result in false positives.
How to enable (or disable) loss of pulse detection on the Pixel Watch 3
Once the feature is available here, it will be an option when you’re setting up a new watch. (So far it hasn’t been announced for any Fitbit models or older Pixel watches, just the Pixel Watch 3 in both sizes.) To turn on loss of pulse detection for the Pixel Watch 3 that you already have, go into the Pixel Watch app, tap Safety & Emergency, and look for Loss of Pulse Detection. There is a switch that allows you to turn the feature on or off.
Vagabond Athletics enter Sacramento era with improved roster, playoff expectations
The Athletics have moved about an hour east from Oakland to the Sacramento area, where they will be based in a minor league ballpark for the next three seasons while hoping a more permanent home in Las Vegas will be ready in 2028.
Brewers pitcher JB Bukauskas likely to miss entire season because of lat surgery
The 28-year-old missed most of the 2024 season with a lat injury as well.
Blake Snell happy with velocity after tossing scoreless inning in his spring training debut with Dodgers
Two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell pitched a scoreless inning in his spring training debut with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Sennheiser Accentum Earbuds Are 50% Off Right Now
We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
The market for earbuds can be hectic if you’re not on top of it, with many brands and new models coming out regularly. I do keep up with them, though, and can tell you which ones are worth your money. The Sennheiser Accentum earbuds are a great value right now, after a 50% discount that lowers their price to $99.95 (originally $199.95), the lowest price they’ve ever been, according to price-tracking tools.
The Sennheiser Accentum earbuds came out in the summer of 2024 with an “excellent” review from PCMag. They stand out in their bass frequency and sound quality as well as their ANC performance, and they use tap controls that are fully customizable in their companion app.
There is also a customizable EQ in case you like your sound signature to sound a certain way. If you’re not sure how to choose your EQ, there is a feature that lets you choose while you listen to different media or genres of music so you can have a set EQ profile for every scenario (like a preset for podcasts, the gym, running outdoors, etc). Combine that with the Sound Zone feature, which automatically chooses an EQ preset depending on your location, and you have yourself a sound set just for you no matter where you go (picture walking into your office and automatically blocking out noise with ANC and setting your preferred EQ automatically).
The earbuds have an IP54 rating for water- and dust-resistance, so you can take them outdoors. Just be aware that these earbuds are bigger than most (some people might find that uncomfortable). The earbuds automatically pause when you take them out of your ears, which is always a nice feature. They have Bluetooth 5.3 with Appex, AAC, and SBC codecs and you can expect about six hours of battery life and 20 hours from the carrying case.
For $100, these earbuds are a great value, and perfect for people who value ANC and like bass.
This Google Tool Can Help Hide Your Personal Info From Search
“Don’t Google yourself” is terrible advice. If there’s personal information about you floating around on the web, you should be aware of it—because, despite common misconceptions, the internet is not written in ink. If your info is popping up on Google Search, you might be able to get rid of it.
On Wednesday, Google announced its redesigned “Results about you” tool. This feature, first rolled out in 2023, looks out for your personal information on Google Search, including your name, phone number, email addresses, and home addresses. The tool then tries to remove any information it does find. Note that this doesn’t necessarily delete that information from the website in question; rather, it affects outdated info that appears in Search. For example, you requested a site take down your address, or you edited a webpage to reflect your new phone number, but that deleted data still shows up when people search your name.
Using Google’s “Results about you” tool
Here’s how the tool works. First, head to the “Results about you” website. If this is your initial experience with Results about you, click Get started. You’ll be presented with a series of pop-ups, walking you through what to expect: You share your personal info, and Google scans the web looking for that info. If Google finds that info, you can ask the company to remove it.
Click Next through each pop-up, then punch in your personal information, which includes your full name, nicknames, home address, phone number, and email. For example, I included my full name, a nickname, two recent addresses, my phone number, and three email addresses. Confirm you are indeed the person who this contact info belongs to, then hit Continue.
From here, you’ll have the option to choose how you want to receive alerts if Google finds your information on the web. You can have Google email you, send you push notifications through the Google app, or both. Once these settings are confirmed, you’re done! Google says the process usually takes a few hours, and the company will notify you when it is finished—presumably via the alert method you previously chose.
Heading back to the Results about you dashboard, you’ll find a “Results found” section, which will list any personal information Google happened to find in its search. There are two categories: “Results to review,” which lists any data Google returns, and “Reviewed,” which stores any results you’ve already checked out. Under Settings, you can change how Google notifies you with its results, as well as any of the data you want Google looking for.
When you do ask Google to remove a piece of personal information from Search, you’ll find that inquiry is added to a section beneath “Results found” called “Removal requests.” Here, you’ll see whether your requests are in progress, approved, denied, or undone (if you decide to undo a request).
You can also send a request to remove a result from the search page itself. Just click the three dots next to any given search result, and choose “Remove this result.” Then, select the reason why—likely, “It shows my personal info and I don’t want it there.”