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Last Updated: 2022-06-11 4:30:01 PM
Publish Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2022 15:27:00 +0000
Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)
It's the weekend, which means the time has come for another Dealmaster. Our latest roundup of the best tech deals from around the web includes a nice offer for those who've been interested in trying out Apple Music or just want to wring out a few free months of music streaming. As of this writing, Best Buy is offering six months of service to new subscribers of Apple's Spotify rival at no cost. If you're a returning subscriber, meanwhile, you'll get five months for free. Apple normally provides a one-month free trial to new users before charging a $10 monthly fee, so this deal works out to a $50 discount in total.
You'll need to supply Best Buy with an email address to redeem the offer, and, sadly, the deal doesn't apply to current Apple Music subscribers. Once you activate the extended trial, your subscription will be set to auto-renew by default, but the Dealmaster can confirm that you're able to turn that off in your account settings without losing access to the free months of service. It took about five minutes for Best Buy to email us a redemption code after putting in an order, so don't be alarmed if you don't receive the deal immediately after purchase.
We covered the pros and cons of Apple Music in our guide to the best Spotify alternatives earlier this year. Compared to its biggest competitor, Apple's service tends to put more emphasis on music curation by actual people. It's not devoid of algorithm-based recommendations by any means, but in general, Spotify's are better-tuned. Apple's approach could be good or bad depending on how in tune you feel Spotify is with your taste, but either way, both services have a massive music library that you can sort into playlists and listen to à la carte as you please. Unlike Spotify, Apple doesn't offer a free tier to fall back on, but it can integrate music you may already own (on iTunes) with its streaming library, and it offers higher-quality audio with some content (for now, at least). Naturally, it's also more tightly integrated with other Apple products—here's looking at you, HomePod owners—though it has apps for both iOS and Android.
Publish Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2022 12:31:10 +0000
Enlarge / The genetic code. Note that a lot of the amino acids (the outer layer, in grey) are encoded by several sets of three-base codes that share the first two letters. (credit: Wikipedia)
Mutations are the raw ingredient of evolution, providing variation that sometimes makes an organism more successful in its environment. But most mutations are expected to be neutral and have no impact on an organism's fitness. These can be incredibly useful since these incidental changes help us track evolutionary relationships without worrying about selection for or against the mutation affecting its frequency. All of the genetic ancestry tests, for example, rely heavily on tracking the presence of these neutral mutations.
But this week, a paper provided evidence that a significant category of mutations isn't as neutral as we thought they were. The big caveat is that the study was done in yeast, which is a weird organism in a couple of ways, so we'll have to see if the results hold in others.
True neutral?
One of the reasons that most mutations are neutral is that most of our DNA doesn't seem to be doing anything useful. Only a few percent of the human genome is composed of the portion of genes that encode proteins, and only some of the nearby DNA is involved in controlling the activity of those genes. Outside of those regions, mutations don't do much, either because the DNA there has no function or because the function isn't very sensitive to having a precise sequence of bases in the DNA.
Publish Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2022 11:40:21 +0000
Enlarge (credit: Frost Giant)
Frost Giant Studios, co-founded by former Blizzard real-time strategy masterminds Tim Morten and Tim Campbell, has finally unveiled the trailer for its first game, Stormgate, which enters beta on Steam next year. The trailer provides a peek at the feel of this upcoming real-time strategy throwback.
This first look was only a teaser, however, so I sat down with two key Frost Giant employees, writer Micky Neilson and assistant art director Jonathan Ryder, to dig into the game’s backstory and learn how Frost Giant plans to follow in Blizzard’s footsteps without repeating its mistakes.
Low-fi sci-fi
The first moments of the Stormgate trailer evoke the feel of StarCraft. It’s in the ghostly blue hue of a holographic projector, the subtle mumble of an AI assistant, and the thunderous arrival of a chunky sci-fi mech suit. Instead of going for a purely retro aesthetic, however, the trailer mashes modern, high-resolution art with the gritty, lived-in feel that defines the StarCraft franchise. This carries over to the game itself, which is built on Unreal Engine 5.
Publish Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2022 11:00:22 +0000
Enlarge (credit: Prakash Singh | Getty )
R Lakshmanan has been making steel frames in the southern Indian city of Chennai for 20 years. His job involves standing for long hours outdoors at construction sites, pounding screws with careful precision onto steel rods. Each day he makes nearly 600 frames, which end up becoming the skeleton of a home. Often he works 12-hour shifts, beginning at 6 am. He always feels fortunate when he gets to work under a shady tree.
But this year, that protection hasn’t been enough. Ever since temperatures in March hit a sizzling 38° Celsius—4° above normal for Chennai—the conditions have been stifling. The metal frames Lakshmanan works with have been too hot to touch, the steel burning his fingertips and leaving behind painful sores. He has seen construction workers, especially women, collapse around him, and has had to take breaks during the workday to cope with fits of dizziness and nausea. “On some days, there’s so much heat, it feels like you’re living in a fireball,” he says.
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 21:24:28 +0000
(credit: CDC | UK Health Security Agency)
The US has now identified 45 monkeypox cases scattered across 15 states and the District of Columbia, while the multinational outbreak has reached more than 1,300 confirmed cases from at least 31 countries. No deaths have been reported.
In a press briefing Friday, US health officials provided updates on efforts to halt the spread of the virus and dispel unfounded concerns that the virus is spreading through the air.
To date, no cases of airborne transmission have been reported in the outbreak, which has almost entirely been found spreading through sexual networks of men who have sex with men. Monkeypox may spread through large, short-range respiratory droplets, and health care providers are encouraged to mask and take other precautions during specific procedures, such as intubation. But the general potential for spread via smaller, long-range aerosols is more speculative and theoretical.
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 19:21:52 +0000
In 1682 a royal ship carrying the heir to the English throne ran aground and sank off the Norfolk Coast. The wreck was discovered by two brothers in 2007 and has remained a closely kept secret until now.
At 5:30 am on May 6, 1682, a ship called the Gloucester ran aground on a sandbank off the coast of Norfolk and sank within the hour. Among the passengers was James Stuart, Duke of York and future King James II of England, who escaped in a small boat just before the ship sank. Had he perished, British history might have played out quite differently. Yesterday we learned that the wreck of the Gloucester was discovered by a pair of brothers in 2007, although it took several more years to verify that the wreck was indeed the Gloucester. Its discovery has been a closely guarded secret until now.
"Because of the circumstances of its sinking, this can be claimed as the single most significant historic maritime discovery since the raising of the Mary Rose [Henry VIII's favorite warship] in 1982," said maritime history expert Claire Jowitt of the University of East Anglia (UEA). "The discovery promises to fundamentally change understanding of 17th-century social, maritime, and political history." Jowitt is the author of a new paper published in the journal English Historical Review, outlining the significance of the find.
This was a particularly fraught historical period, rife with political intrigue and religious tensions. In January 1649, King Charles I was executed and Oliver Cromwell came into power as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Ireland, and Scotland. The executed king's sons, Charles (the heir) and James, fled to France where they lived in exile.
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 18:37:12 +0000
Enlarge / AMD has revealed more high-level details about Zen 4, along with a few other announcements. (credit: AMD)
CPUs based on AMD's new Zen 4 architecture won't arrive until this fall, but the company is already dropping hints about what comes next. As reported by AnandTech, AMD is planning a new Zen 5 architecture, which is scheduled to come to desktop and laptop PCs in 2024. The company is also planning to bring the Zen 4 architecture to laptops in 2023, while the desktop CPUs remain on track to launch in 2022.
AMD also provided more information about Zen 4's performance. The company said at Computex that the Ryzen 7000-series chips would sport roughly 15 percent faster single-threaded performance than Ryzen 5000. The company said Friday that Zen 4 was between 8 and 10 percent faster than Zen 3 at the same clock speeds, accounting for most of the speed improvement, while the remaining 5 to 7 percent will come from higher clock speeds for Ryzen 7000 CPUs. Zen 4 can also deliver roughly 25 percent higher performance-per-watt than Zen 3.
3D V-Cache will make a return in some Zen 4 chips, though it won't be available in all of them. (credit: AMD)
The company will bring back its 3D V-Cache technology for some Zen 4 CPUs as well. This allows AMD to stack additional L3 cache on top of the CPU die, providing a big boost to the amount of cache without increasing the footprint of the CPU die or the CPU package. As we saw in our review of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the technology helps with game performance in particular, though the chip also ran a bit hotter than Zen 3 CPUs without 3D V-Cache, and its somewhat lower clock speeds made it perform a bit worse in non-gaming workloads.
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 17:05:09 +0000
Enlarge / Mario doing his best "sport anime" impression.
When it comes to sports video games, I'm of the opinion that the wackier they are, the better. If I want a game that captures every detail of a real sport accurately and authentically, I'll just go outside and play that sport myself, or maybe watch some professionals do the same. In a virtual version, I want to see the sport enhanced with features that would be impossible on a real field of play.
Much like its predecessors, Mario Strikers: Battle League fulfills this video game sports fantasy quite nicely, offering what is essentially the Super Mario Kart version of simplified soccer. And while the game has some balancing issues (especially in single-player mode), as a whole, it's a frenetic and fun take on the sport that could easily sustain a strong online multiplayer community.
The more things change
If you played the original Super Mario Strikers on the GameCube or its 2007 sequel on the Wii, you know the basics here. While the game is ostensibly a four-on-four game of soccer (without the possibility of the ball going out of bounds), it more closely resembles a knock-down, drag-out brawler most of the time.
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 16:19:00 +0000
Enlarge (credit: Insteon)
As suddenly as it disappeared, Insteon has returned. The smart home company's services started coming back to life this week, and on Thursday, Insteon announced that a group of customers had purchased and are resurrecting the business.
In April, Insteon made news when it abruptly shut down its cloud servers without telling customers, bricking their smart home devices in the process.
Days later, Insteon explained that supply chain disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic led to the company looking for a buyer in 2021, but none materialized. The goodbye message said that a financial services firm was appointed "to optimize the assets of the company" but left a window open, expressing "hope that a buyer can be found for the company." It turns out the buyers were right under Insteon's nose.
Publish Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2022 11:45:48 +0000
Enlarge / Dell UltraSharp U2723QE 4K USB-C monitor. (credit: Scharon Harding)
Specs at a glance: Dell UltraSharp U2723QE
Panel size
27 inches
Resolution
3840Ă—2160
Refresh rate
60 Hz
Panel type and backlight
IPS Black, LED
Ports
2x USB-C upstream, 1x USB-C downstream, 1x HDMI 2.0, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x DisplayPort 1.4 out, 5x USB-A, 1x RJ45, 1x 3.5 mm jack
Size
24.07Ă—7.28Ă—15.16-21.07 inches with stand
(611.4Ă—185Ă—353.01 mm)
Weight
14.64 lbs (6.64 kg) with stand
9.88 lbs (4.48 kg) without stand
WarrantyÂ
3 years
Price (MSRP)
$655
Apple's Studio Display, a 27-inch 5K IPS panel that offers USB-C connectivity, a polished finish, and some Apple-style perks, is a solid display. But what if you're a Mac owner who doesn't need 5K, or what if you don't want to spend $1,600 on a monitor? What if you need to work across operating systems and want a stylish display with a unique boost in image quality?
Enter the Dell UltraSharp U2723QE ($655 MSRP as of writing). Dell's USB-C-equipped UltraSharp line is a popular option for Mac and Windows users, though the U2723QE comes at a premium over other displays in the lineup because it introduces LG Display's IPS Black technology, which aims to deliver twice as much contrast as the average IPS screen. You might not be able to tell 5K from 4K, but it's easy to see the rich contrast the U2723QE delivers over standard IPS monitors, including the Studio Display.
For those seeking a 27-incher with enough extra oomph to make a difference but not completely break the bank, the U2723QE presents an attractive combination of good looks, superior image quality, and enough connectivity to drive a seriously productive setup.
Publish Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2022 22:36:52 +0000
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images / iStock)
Researchers have unearthed a discovery that doesn’t occur all that often in the realm of malware: a mature, never-before-seen Linux backdoor that uses novel evasion techniques to conceal its presence on infected servers, in some cases even with a forensic investigation.
On Thursday, researchers from Intezer and The BlackBerry Threat Research & Intelligence Team said that the previously undetected backdoor combines high levels of access with the ability to scrub any sign of infection from the file system, system processes, and network traffic. Dubbed Symbiote, it targets financial institutions in Brazil and was first detected in November.
Researchers for Intezer and BlackBerry wrote:
Publish Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2022 22:06:40 +0000
Enlarge / E3? What's E3?
E3 might not be happening this year, but Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest has stepped in to provide the fire hose of hype-filled trailers and game announcements that would usually happen during an E3 week.
Don't have two hours to spare watching the livestreamed kickoff event? No problem. Simply skim through this page to catch up on all the announcements.
Aliens Dark Descent showed off a heavily cinematic trailer that featured the titular aliens and strongly evoked James Cameron's movies. Brief gameplay scenes showed a squad of marines shooting at Xenomorphs from an isometric perspective. Coming in 2023 to Xbox and PlayStation consoles as well as PC.
Publish Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2022 21:47:13 +0000
Enlarge / An Apple-made image of the 13.6-inch MacBook Air that was revealed earlier this week. (credit: Apple)
Apple is working on a 15-inch MacBook Air and a new 12-inch MacBook, according to Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with Apple's plans. The sources also revealed details about the M2-family chips coming to Apple's high-performance MacBook Pro computers.
The 15-inch Air will use the same overall design as the 13.6-inch MacBook Air revealed at the company's WWDC keynote on Monday. That means an ultra-thin design with no tapered edges, plus a screen notch and a keyboard with function keys and Touch ID. The laptop is expected to use the same M2 processor as the one found in its smaller sibling.
The new laptop could arrive as soon as spring of 2023, the sources say. They also say Apple is working on a 12-inch MacBook that could arrive in late 2023 or early 2024—but that one is far enough out that Apple could still abandon its plans.
Publish Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2022 21:33:48 +0000
Enlarge (credit: Getty | Spence Platt)
With pandemic funding running out, the Biden administration is repurposing $10 billion to buy next-generation COVID-19 booster doses for the fall, as well as treatments, including the anti-viral Paxlovid and monoclonal antibodies.
The funding will be pilfered from federal programs that support COVID-19 test availability and domestic production, as well as stockpiles of essential resources, such as personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators. Funding for research on coronavirus vaccines and new treatments will also take a hit.
"These were incredibly painful decisions," White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha said in a press briefing Thursday.
Publish Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2022 21:04:22 +0000
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Sjoerd van der Wal)
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has upgraded an investigation into Tesla's Autopilot system in a move that could lead to a recall.
The NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation opened the probe of Tesla Autopilot in August 2021 due to "eleven crashes in which Tesla models of various configurations have encountered first responder scenes and subsequently struck one or more vehicles involved with those scenes." Five other crashes have since been added to the analysis, which covers 830,000 Tesla Model Y, Model X, Model S, and Model 3 cars released from 2014 to 2022. The crashes being investigated resulted in 15 injuries and one death, the NHTSA said.
An NHTSA notice published Thursday said the investigation has been "upgraded to an Engineering Analysis (EA) to extend the existing crash analysis, evaluate additional data sets, perform vehicle evaluations, and to explore the degree to which Autopilot and associated Tesla systems may exacerbate human factors or behavioral safety risks by undermining the effectiveness of the driver's supervision. In doing so, NHTSA plans to continue its assessment of vehicle control authority, driver engagement technologies, and related human factors considerations."
Publish Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2022 20:27:59 +0000
This purported Meta Watch prototype image appeared in a Facebook app in October. (credit: Facebook via Bloomberg)
Development of a Meta smartwatch is on pause, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing an anonymous "person with knowledge of the matter."
Facebook's parent company never confirmed it was making a smartwatch to rival the Apple Watch and Samsung's Galaxy Watch. It also declined to comment on Bloomberg's story. However, Bloomberg claimed that Meta has been working on a smartwatch, codenamed Milan, "for at least two years."
The publication said Meta was aiming to release its smartwatch next spring for about $350, but workers "were told this week that the device is no longer on track for production."
Publish Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2022 19:56:00 +0000
Enlarge / Is the truth out there? NASA's going to figure out what kind of data it would need to start asking the question scientifically. (credit: David Wall)
On Thursday, NASA announced it's going to start working on a report about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), which are more commonly referred to as UFOs. The goal of the report isn't intended to draw any conclusions about their identity (or identities); instead, its goal is to figure out what data NASA either already has or could gather that would help us understand what they are and subject them to scientific study, if possible.
Although lots of the interest in UFOs is anything but scientific, NASA is putting this initiative in its Science Mission Directorate, and Thomas Zurbuchen, the head of that directorate, took part in a press call announcing it. The "UAP" nomenclature used in the announcement is important from NASA's perspective, in that there's currently no indication that any of the unidentified things we've observed are flying in any sense—they could easily be optical illusions or natural phenomena.
Zurbuchen made it clear that NASA doesn't expect to have any answers to the question of the identity of UAPs when the report is released in a year or so. Instead, the goal of the effort is to figure out how, in Zurbuchen's words, to "take a field that is data-poor and make it into something that's data-rich."Â He noted that NASA performs a lot of observations of Earth's atmosphere in a variety of wavelengths, so it may potentially already have data that can help determine what's going on if we could identify how to pick out the right data. Alternatively, if the report identifies that new sensors are needed, then NASA is well-positioned to build and operate them.
Publish Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2022 18:55:25 +0000
Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer star in Jordan Peele's latest film, Nope.
Universal Pictures dropped the final trailer for Jordan Peele's latest film, Nope. We finally learn something about the plot, and yep, it looks like aliens. Maybe. Probably.
As we've reported previously, trailers for Peele's films never reveal too much since much of the pleasure of his movies comes from their frequently bizarre twists. We wouldn't have it any other way. All we knew thus far about Nope is that Daniel Kaluuya (who was nominated for an Oscar for Get Out), Keke Palmer (Hustlers, Black Panther), and Steven Yeun (Minari, Okja) play "residents in a lonely gulch of inland California who bear witness to an uncanny and chilling discovery."
The first trailer dropped in February—very moody and atmospheric but offering few details. In April, Universal Pictures marked the start of the NBA Playoffs by dropping a brief teaser featuring eight-time NBA All-Star Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors. There were no new details, and the highly photogenic Curry won't be winning an Oscar any time soon, but it was a cute meme-worthy marketing move by the studio.
Publish Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2022 18:00:03 +0000
Enlarge / Google's Sycamore processor. (credit: Google)
People have performed many mathematical proofs to show that a quantum computer will vastly outperform traditional computers on a number of algorithms. But the quantum computers we have now are error-prone and don't have enough qubits to allow for error correction. The only demonstrations we've had involve quantum computing hardware evolving out of a random configuration and traditional computers failing to simulate their normal behavior. Useful calculations are an exercise for the future.
But a new paper from Google's quantum computing group has now moved beyond these sorts of demonstrations and used a quantum computer as part of a system that can help us understand quantum systems in general, rather than the quantum computer. And they show that, even on today's error-prone hardware, the system can outperform classical computers on the same problem.
Probing quantum systems
To understand what the new work involves, it helps to step back and think about how we typically understand quantum systems. Since the behavior of these systems is probabilistic, we typically need to measure them repeatedly. The results of these measurements are then imported into a classical computer, which processes them to generate a statistical understanding of the system's behavior. With a quantum computer, by contrast, it can be possible to mirror a quantum state using the qubits themselves, reproduce it as often as needed, and manipulate it as necessary. This method has the potential to provide a route to a more direct understanding of the quantum system at issue.
Publish Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2022 17:13:42 +0000
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | artas)
People who buy or sell guns on Facebook can violate the social network's ban on gun purchases 10 times before they're kicked off the service, The Washington Post reported Thursday. Facebook's 10-strikes rule is detailed in "internal guidance obtained by The Washington Post," the article said:
The policy, which has not previously been reported, is much more lenient than for users who post child pornography, which is illegal, or a terrorist image on Facebook, which prompts immediate removal from the platform.
A separate five-strikes policy extends even to gun sellers and purchasers who actively call for violence or praise a known dangerous organization, according to the documents.
The policy apparently used to be even more lenient. "Until 2020, the strike threshold for guns was more than 10," the Post wrote, citing anonymous sources. "That threshold seemed 'too high' to many employees, who argued to reduce it to 10 strikes or lower."
Facebook banned gun sales in 2016. Its gun policy says the "purchase, sale, or trade of firearms, ammunition, and explosives between private individuals isn't allowed on Facebook."