Month: April 2022

Enlarge / Health care workers wearing personal protective equipment transport the body of a deceased patient onto a hearse outside the mortuary at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Hong Kong, China, on Wednesday, March 2, 2022. Hong Kong reported more than 55,000 cases on Wednesday, its hospitals are inundated, and the city’s morgues are nearly full. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

For much of the pandemic, China kept the coronavirus at bay. The country adopted an aggressive COVID-Zero plan, rigorously identifying, containing, and tracing cases to prevent the viral spread. It appeared to work remarkably well—until the arrival of the ultratransmissible omicron variant.

The seemingly uncontainable virus is now exploding in China, smashing records daily and laying bare a tragic fault in China’s COVID policies: the country’s most vulnerable—older people—are among the least protected by vaccination. As such, death rates are bound to soar.

This has already played out in Hong Kong, which saw its own towering omicron wave between January and March. In its wake was one of the highest death rates the world has seen amid the pandemic. In a study published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US CDC partnered with the CDC China for a postmortem on the deadly spike. The analysis highlighted the fatal flaw when neglecting to vaccinate older people.

Enlarge (credit: iFixit)

iFixit has signed a deal with Google to make Pixel repairs much easier. iFixit.com will sell genuine Google parts individually and in kits later this year. Both companies have published blog posts about the collaboration.

Google says that parts will be offered for the “Pixel 2 through Pixel 6 Pro, as well as future Pixel models, in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and EU countries where Pixel is available.” iFixit is the leading site for consumers wanting to find parts and instructions on how to fix devices, and soon, it will sell Pixel screens, batteries, cameras, and more. If you don’t want to fix the phone yourself, Google points out that it also has authorized repair deals with uBreakiFix in the US and Canada and “similar partnerships with walk-in support providers in Canada, Germany, Japan and the UK.”

Google’s deal with iFixit comes on the heels of a similar agreement with Samsung, which is also planning to offer smartphone parts through the repair site. Samsung’s partnership with iFixit starts this summer and only covers the S20, S21, and Tab S7+, though Samsung says it wants to expand the program over time. Google’s deal with iFixit covers everything back to the 2017 Pixel 2, which is surprising given that many earlier pixels were made in partnership with Android OEMs like LG or HTC. Apple is also embracing the DIY repair market with its own in-house parts service.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Jeffrey Coolidge)

Cable TV provider Cox is facing hundreds of arbitration demands alleging that it failed to adequately disclose its “Broadcast Surcharge” and “Regional Sports Surcharge” and that it used these fees to raise prices on customers who were promised fixed rates.

The Hattis & Lukacs law firm last night “filed 295 individual consumer arbitrations against Cox with the American Arbitration Association,” representing clients in 17 of the 19 states Cox operates in, attorney Daniel Hattis told Ars. Hattis said he aims to file thousands more arbitration cases against Cox, which has an estimated 3.4 million TV customers. The arbitration filings describe claimants as “victim[s] of Cox’s bait-and-switch scheme whereby the Company charges customers more for its Cable TV service plans than Cox advertised and promised.”

Cox’s customer service agreement has a mandatory arbitration clause, which customers can opt out of within 30 days of getting service. “Cox is currently under the mistaken impression that the arbitration clause is a liability shield such that they’ll never have to face consequences for their past deception because class actions aren’t possible, and consumers won’t bother filing a bunch of individual arbitrations for $100 or so in damages,” Hattis told Ars in an email.

Enlarge (credit: German Archaeological Institute)

All that’s left today of an ancient boat discovered in 2018 in what was formerly Uruk is the bitumen, black tar that once coated its framework of reeds, palm leaves, or wood. That fragile organic material is long gone, leaving behind only ghostly imprints in the bitumen. But there’s enough left for archaeologists to tell that in its heyday, the boat would have been a relatively slender craft—7 meters long and about 1.5 meters wide—well-suited to navigating the rivers and canals of ancient Sumer.

Archaeologists found the boat in an area that, 4,000 years ago, would have been the bustling hinterlands of the largest city in the world: Uruk. Founded in 5000 BCE from the merger of two smaller settlements on the bank of the Euphrates River, Uruk was one of the world’s first major cities and possibly even the birthplace of the world’s first writing (the oldest known writing samples in the world are tablets from Uruk). The Sumerian King List claims the legendary hero-king, Gilgamesh, ruled from his seat at Uruk in the 2600s BCE, which is not long before the recently excavated boat was built, sailed, and sank.

At its height around 3000 BCE, Uruk boasted 40,000 residents in the city, with a total population of about 80,000 or 90,000 people in the surrounding hinterlands. The area outside the city boasted smaller communities, farms, ancient manufacturing workshops, and networks of canals. Uruk was beginning its long, slow decline by 2000 BCE, around the time our boat was built.

Enlarge / Nissan is hoping that it can use computational materials science to find new battery materials faster. (credit: Nissan)

Nissan is partnering with NASA on a computational approach to developing all-solid-state batteries that don’t rely on rare or expensive metals, the AP has reported.

The automaker, which was the first to market with an affordable, mass-produced electric vehicle in the Leaf, is clearly hoping to make up for lost time. Nissan has floundered of late with its electrification strategy. Its second EV, the Ariya, is scheduled to arrive this fall, some 12 years after the first Leaf was sold. The company hopes that its in-house solid-state batteries will debut in passenger vehicles by 2028.

To get there, the company said it’s opening a pilot solid-state battery plant in 2024. The small-scale factory will be a key step in rolling out solid-state technology; many of the concepts that underpin the batteries have been demonstrated in laboratories time and again, but making the leap to manufacturing often reveals unexpected problems that can take years to solve.

Enlarge / Who’s that Pac-lady in the pink hat, and what has she done with Ms. Pac-Man? (credit: @nickisonlinet / Twitter)

Obsessive Pac-fans of a certain age may remember Ms. Pac-Man’s cameo appearance in Pac-Land, the 1984 side-scrolling spin-off that first gave Pac-Man legs. This week’s re-release of the game on the Switch seems to have thrown the “miss” down the memory hole, though, an odd retcon that may be the result of the complicated legal history surrounding Ms. Pac-Man‘s creation.

Pac-Man book contributor Ryan Silberman and artist Nick Caballero were among the first to note the apparent change on Twitter this week. They highlighted Pac-Land Switch screenshots in which Ms. Pac-Man’s iconic bow and high, red boots have been replaced with a character sporting pink high heels and a matching hat. The sprite for the baby-sized Jr. Pac-Man has been similarly changed to remove the trademark red bow that was first seen in 1983’s Jr. Pac-Man.

Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man as they appeared in the original release of Pac-Land. The pair have been edited out of this week’s Switch re-release. (credit: @nickisonlinet / Twitter)

Leaving the sprites in their original form would have obviously been the simpler choice for Hamster, which publishes the Arcade Archives series on Switch. And the description for Pac-Land‘s Arcade Archives re-release notes that the “series has faithfully reproduced many classic Arcade masterpieces,” making such a minor change even more bizarre. What’s going on here?