Month: March 2022

(credit: Deanna Barch)

One of the unfortunate realities of science is that small data sets often produce unreliable results, as any minor, random fluctuations can have a large impact. One solution to this issue has been building ever-larger data sets, where these fluctuations tend to be small compared to any actual effects. One of the notable sources of big data is the UK Biobank; brain scans from people in the Biobank were recently used to identify changes in the brain driven by SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Now, a large team of researchers has turned this idea upside down in a new paper. They took some of the biggest data sets and divided them into smaller pieces to figure out how small data sets could go before things got unreliable. And for at least one type of experiment, the answer is that brain studies need thousands of participants before they’re likely to be reliable. And even then, we shouldn’t expect to see many dramatic effects.

Associate all the things

The research team behind the study termed the type of work they were interested in “brain-wide association studies,” or BWAS. It’s a pretty simple approach. Take a bunch of people and score them for a behavioral trait. Then give them all brain scans and see if any brain structures have differences that consistently correlate with the behavioral trait.

Enlarge / Web-based cloud-streaming is now live and awesome on Steam Deck, courtesy of… Microsoft? Sure. We’ll take it. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

The Steam Deck’s viability as an all-in-one portable gaming machine just became stronger, as it now formally supports a one-click option to get any web-based cloud gaming service working—including Stadia and Xbox Cloud Gaming.

While the Deck comes with both Firefox and Chrome preinstalled, this update does not work with either of those browsers. Rather, Steam Deck owners will need to install and configure the latest Linux beta of Microsoft Edge. Yes, Linux users, Microsoft has come to your rescue.

The process, as detailed on the official Microsoft Edge Reddit community, requires jumping through a few hoops in the Deck’s Arch Linux environment, but it’s a mostly painless way to get a web browser to recognize and translate the Steam Deck’s buttons, triggers, and joysticks as video game input—something the other browsers haven’t gotten around to yet.

Enlarge / Apple’s Studio Display. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Ever since Apple released the $5,000-and-up Pro Display XDR in 2019, rumors have persisted that the company was also planning a more affordable screen to fill the same niche as its Thunderbolt Display. You could connect the Pro Display XDR to a MacBook Air that costs one-fifth its price, and Apple always went out of its way to mention that M1 MacBooks were technically capable of driving its 6K display resolution. But it wasn’t exactly an appealing value proposition.

Enter the new Studio Display. With a design that strongly recalls 2011’s Thunderbolt Display and a name that harks back to its late-’90s namesake, the display is tailor-made for anyone who wanted the 5K screen from the dearly departed 27-inch iMac without the computer that was attached to it.

It’s certainly not for everyone, and at $1,599, it’s not the first external display I’d recommend for all Mac owners (especially people who tend toward the cheaper Mac mini and MacBook Air end of the spectrum). But as its enthusiastic reception from several Ars staffers suggests, it will find an audience by virtue of being a 5K Apple-branded monitor, and its design and features are a solid step up from the 5K LG UltraFine display that Apple has sold for the last few years.

Enlarge / The US Food and Drug Administration in Silver Spring, Maryland. (credit: Getty | Xinhua News Agency)

Vaccine-makers Moderna and Pfizer have now both submitted requests for the US Food and Drug Administration to authorize fourth doses—second boosters—of their COVID-19 vaccines.

Pfizer, along with vaccine partner BioNTech, announced Tuesday that they had asked the FDA to authorize fourth doses for adults age 65 and above. The move followed days of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla saying in press interviews that a fourth shot is “necessary” for everyone.

Late Thursday, Moderna announced that it, too, had asked the FDA to authorize fourth doses—for all adults. Moderna addressed the broader request in its announcement, saying it’s intended to “provide flexibility” for the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to decide for themselves who should get a fourth dose—whether it’s specific age groups and/or groups with higher risks of disease.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | fotograzia)

Minnesota state lawmakers are trying to prohibit social media platforms from using algorithms to recommend content to anyone under age 18. The bill was approved Tuesday by the House Commerce Finance and Policy Committee in a 15-1 vote. The potential state law goes next to the House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee, which has put it on the docket for a hearing on March 22.

The algorithm ban applies to platforms with at least 1 million account holders and says those companies would be “prohibited from using a social media algorithm to target user-created content at an account holder under the age of 18.” There are exemptions for content created by federal, state, or local governments and by public or private schools.

“This bill prohibits a social media platform like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, TikTok, and others, from using algorithms to target children with specific types of content,” the bill summary says. “The bill would require anyone operating a social media platform with more than one million users to require that algorithm functions be turned off for accounts owned by anyone under the age of 18.” Social media companies would be “liable for damages and a civil penalty of $1,000 for each violation.”

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

A developer has been caught adding malicious code to a popular open-source package that wiped files on computers located in Russia and Belarus as part of a protest that has enraged many users and raised concerns about the safety of free and open source software.

The application, node-ipc, adds remote interprocess communication and neural networking capabilities to other open source code libraries. As a dependency, node-ipc is automatically downloaded and incorporated into other libraries, including ones like Vue.js CLI, which has more than 1 million weekly downloads.

A deliberate and dangerous act

Two weeks ago, the node-ipc author pushed a new version of the library that sabotaged computers in Russia and Belarus, the countries invading Ukraine and providing support for the invasion, respectively. The new release added a function that checked the IP address of developers who used the node-ipc in their own projects. When an IP address geolocated to either Russia or Belarus, the new version wiped files from the machine and replaced them with a heart emoji.