Author: easyfilo

Enlarge (credit: Cooler Master)

OLED is so popular among shoppers seeking high-end image quality that its acronym is expanding (see: QD-OLED). But in PC monitors, OLED means limited size options and lofty prices. Mini LED is a strong alternative but has long carried high price tags as well, partially due to the devices being so frequently marketed to creative professionals. But with this week’s mini LED PC monitor announcement, the technology is getting cheaper than ever.

Mini LED monitors can fit more LEDs into their backlight because each individual light-emitting diode in a Mini LED monitor is about half the size of the diodes in regular LED monitors. In a full-array local dimming (FALD) monitor, which has independently controlled lighting zones, this should lead to greater contrast, since the display has greater control over brightness in different areas of an image. Contrast, however, won’t be as extreme as what you can expect from OLED.

The Cooler Master GP27-FQS monitor will come out sometime between late Q2 and early Q3 with an MSRP of $699. However, a Cooler Master representative told Ars Technica that there will “most likely” be sale prices “closer to $550.”

Enlarge / Signage on a window of a coffee shop informs customers of their masking policy in San Francisco, California, US, on Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2022. The state’s indoor mask requirement, which requires everyone to wear face coverings indoors regardless of vaccination status, expired on Wednesday. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

With national cases of COVID-19 dropping precipitously, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will soon release new guidance on how states and local governments can ease out of health restrictions, including indoor mask wearing. According to news reports citing unnamed officials, new guidance could come as early as next week.

The CDC’s guidance will arrive well after several states and local governments charged ahead with plans to pull back pandemic restrictions, particularly indoor masking. The moves have left some questioning whether the CDC is, once again, struggling to keep up with the pandemic’s shifting conditions.

In a press briefing last week, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky stood by the current guidance, noting that “our hospitalizations are still high, our death rates are still high.” While the agency was “encouraged” by current downward trends, “we are not there yet,” Dr. Walensky said of easing guidance.

Enlarge / What’s happened to Russia’s flag? (credit: Sean Gladwell / Getty Images)

Hackers backed by the Russian government have breached the networks of multiple US defense contractors in a sustained campaign that has revealed sensitive information about US weapons-development communications infrastructure, the federal government said on Wednesday.

The campaign began no later than January 2020 and has continued through this month, according to a joint advisory by the FBI, National Security Agency, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The hackers have been targeting and successfully hacking cleared defense contractors, or CDCs, which support contracts for the US Department of Defense and intelligence community.

“Persistent access,” “significant insight”

“During this two-year period, these actors have maintained persistent access to multiple CDC networks, in some cases for at least six months,” officials wrote in the advisory. “In instances when the actors have successfully obtained access, the FBI, NSA, and CISA have noted regular and recurring exfiltration of emails and data. For example, during a compromise in 2021, threat actors exfiltrated hundreds of documents related to the company’s products, relationships with other countries, and internal personnel and legal matters.”

Enlarge / Wedding bells are ringing for Russian Sims fans.

Last week, the team behind The Sims 4 “My Wedding Stories” expansion pack—which includes a heavy focus on same-sex marriages—said that the expansion wouldn’t be released in Russia where “our storytelling would be subject to changes because of federal laws.” Now, video game company EA has reversed that decision, saying the expansion will in fact be released in Russia “unaltered and unchanged” alongside the rest of the world.

In an update posted Wednesday afternoon on the Electronic Arts website, The Sims team writes that it previously believed that “our team could not freely share the storytelling of same-sex couple Cam and Dom in Russia.” That’s an apparent oblique reference to Russia’s Article 6.13.1 law, which prohibits “propaganda or homosexualism among minors.” Given that law, the team had decided that “the best way to uphold our commitment to sharing their story was to not release this pack [in Russia].”

Now, the team behind the game says it has “reassessed our options and realized we can do more than we initially believed…” The “My Wedding Stories” pack will now launch in Russia and the rest of the world on February 23, a delay of a few days from its original planned launch date of February 17.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

October 14, 2025, marks the end of support and security updates for the Home and Pro versions of Windows 10. That means it’s also the end of official guaranteed feature and security updates for Windows PCs that don’t meet Windows 11’s hardware requirements.

Viewed from early 2022, that date is still comfortably far off. Many Windows 10 PCs will break over the next three and a half years, and plenty of people who want to upgrade to nicer or faster hardware will have opportunities to do so. But those who enjoy repairing, maintaining, and upgrading older hardware to keep it useful will be peering over the edge of that Windows 10 update cliff before they know it.

So what happens to that hardware when Windows 10 goes away? Running Windows 11 on unsupported hardware is one possible solution, but we have no idea how long Microsoft will allow users to install, run, and update Windows 11 on older PCs. The company could cut off these computers’ security updates tomorrow, or it could allow them to run the new OS indefinitely. That uncertainty is hard to plan around.