Beyond measure

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today: Berlin is offering tourists rewards for cleaning up; A virtual heart is helping surgeons repair real ones; and Paul and Ringo announce a duet! 👀

Let’s get into it!

Anyone who’s been to Berlin recently will tell you two things: the place is undeniably cool, and there’s too much litter.

To tackle the problem the city is launching a program called BerlinPay.

The idea was borrowed from the Danish capital’s CopenPay, which incentivized tourists of Copenhagen by rewarding them for sustainable behaviour instead of punishing them for bad behaviour. In this case, visitors were given perks like free lunches, museum passes, kayak rentals, and others for things like arriving in the city on a train and picking up litter.

The same system appears to be coming to Berlin when BerlinPay launches this summer, according to euronews. Specifically, it’s expected to focus on water maintenance.

Berlin reportedly spent €13.1 million last year just cleaning up trash, which was up from €10.3 million just the year before.

The city has said the problem isn’t just a consequence of tourists making a mess, but the reality is the problem has gotten worse since the pandemic ended and pent up demand for global travel exploded—especially in major European markets.

Ventricular tachycardia (VT) is among the most notoriously difficult-to-treat arrhythmias, responsible for roughly 350,000 sudden cardiac arrests in North America every year.

Scientists just finished prototyping digital replicas of hearts with this condition, and identified ways to treat the condition without risking patient lives.

VT occurs when damaged tissue in the heart’s lower chambers (the ventricles) causes the organ’s electrical system to short circuit. Study lead and Johns Hopkins biomedical engineer Natalia Trayanova described this as a “quivering heart” that’s beating rapidly, but is unable to effectively pump blood throughout the body.

Traditionally, heart surgeons will attempt to fix the issue by burning the damaged tissue through a process called ablation, which clears the way for the electrical waves to return to normal. However, ablation requires much trial and error, and often means more tissue than necessary is burned, resulting in the need to implant a defibrillator in the patient’s chest.

The digital replica allows the trial and error to happen on a virtual heart, giving doctors the ability to see which ablation strategy fixes the electrical system with the most efficiency and least damage.

Meta revealed a $50 price hike for its Quest 3S VR headset and a $100 price hike for the Quest 3 last week, citing the global RAM shortage as the culprit.

The same shortage is now making it likely Apple will have to delay the release of the upgraded Mac Studio, which is a high-powered, professional-level desktop computer. The new-and-improved version was initially expected this summer, and is now more likely to be released no earlier than October, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

The touchscreen MacBook Pro was also expected at some point this year, but Gurman says it now may be pushed back until some point in 2027.

The RAM shortage is certainly being exacerbated by the Middle East crisis, but its main cause is the rise of AI and the demand its producers have for memory chips.

Japan’s Nikkei Asia magazine recently speculated production would have to rise 12% per year in order to meet current levels of demand for price growth just to level off, but as it stands, production is only able/expected to grow at an annual rate of about 7.5%.

At a small listening session hosted with producer Andrew Watt for a private audience on Thursday night, Paul McCartney casually confirmed that his upcoming album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, will feature a duet with Ringo Starr.

The two living Beatles will come together on a song called Home To Us, which McCartney revealed was the product of a confusing process that at one point left him thinking Starr was snubbing him and didn’t like the song.

"I think Ringo thought that all he had to do was play a little bit of drums, and Andrew would make some marvelous thing out of it," McCartney told the audience, according to Variety, before asking Watt to hit play on Starr’s parts.

"Just see what he did, out of curiosity...I thought, 'Wow, that's really good...We should make the track that Ringo hoped, and then get it over to him and complete the circle.'"

Starr initially only thought he was supposed to sing on the chorus, so when he sent that demo to Paul, the bassist thought Ringo mustn’t have even like the song. The two finally just discussed what was needed, and the drummer finished his drum parts, along with the rest of the vocals.

"It's a duet," McCartney said. "It was really nice, because we've never done that. Ringo's never just taken a duet with one of the Beatles, you know? So, there you go."

Well there you have it. A Ringo/McCartney duet will finally come to life when the album is released on May 29.

Quotable quotes

Just one more thing, Staker! That’s right, it’s time for today’s trivia and we’ve got 10 questions for you featuring iconic quotes, and catchphrases.

Give it a go, complete the game, and you’ll earn a shot at a $25 eGift card.

Winner will be notified on Wednesday afternoon. Keep an eye on your inbox and don’t forget to check your spam folder! *