Author: easyfilo

Enlarge / Just some of the prizes available in this year’s Ars Technica Charity Drive Sweepstakes.

[Dec. 22: As we approach Christmas and the midway point of this year’s Charity Drive, we’ve now raised over $18,000 from nearly 200 separate donations. Child’s Play is in the lead over EFF, approximately $9,600 to $8,400, for those who keep track of such things.

That’s a great start, but we still have a ways to go to beat last year’s $58,000 record. Read on below to find out how you can take part!]

If you’ve been too busy playing Halo Infinite to take part in this year’s Ars Technica Charity Drive sweepstakes, don’t worry. You still have time to donate to a good cause and get a chance to win your share of over $1,600 worth of swag (no purchase necessary to win).

Enlarge / LG DualUp Monitor (28MQ780). (credit: LG)

If you haven’t noticed, screens have been getting taller. Laptops are the most obvious example, with more of them opting for 16:10 this year than we’ve seen in years, with even a 3:2 aspect ratio being an option. LG has now brought this taller view to external PC monitors by announcing today the LG DualUp Monitor (28MQ780), a 27.6-inch monitor with a 16:18 aspect ratio.

It’s not like LG just took a traditional monitor’s form factor and turned it sideways. The DualUp is closer to a square than more common 16:9 displays. At 16:18, the monitor’s length and height are closer to the same measurement, but the monitor is still taller than it is wide. If you’re sick of scrolling through long articles, spreadsheets, lines of code, and your everlasting newsfeed, this option is something to consider.

Some will appreciate having a less narrow view. (credit: LG)

While taller screens are increasingly common in laptops, they’re incredibly rare in PC monitors. There are plenty of ultra-wides filling the peripheral vision of gamers and productivity hounds, but it’s nearly impossible to find a vertical PC monitor. We recently covered a much skinnier 7:32 vertical monitor, but it’s primarily available in Japan, and as a portable monitor, it’s much smaller at 8.8 inches. In terms of mainstream, widely available monitors in the US, the DualUp Monitor should be one of a kind whenever it comes out—LG didn’t share a price or release date.

Enlarge / An Apple Store in Cambridge, UK. (credit: Martin Pope | Getty Images)

The Securities and Exchange Commission has rejected Apple’s petition to block three shareholder proposals from going to a vote at its next annual meeting—a win for activists that signals trouble for other US companies hoping the regulator will allow them to fend off unwanted attention.

The resolutions call for detailed reports regarding allegations of forced labor in Apple’s supply chain, explanations of why certain apps are deleted from the App Store in China, and a public report of what risks the iPhone maker could face by allegedly using nondisclosure agreements in the context of workplace harassment and discrimination.

The Financial Times reported in October that Apple asked the SEC for permission to block six shareholder petitions, the highest amount of proposals the company has had since 2017. Apple’s reasoning was that it had “substantially implemented” what the petitioners were asking for. Of the remaining three proposals, one was rejected and two remain outstanding.

Enlarge (credit: Chesnot | Getty Images)

December has been a rough month for Amazon—at least for Amazon Web Services. The massively popular cloud computing platform suffered its third outage of the month Wednesday, affecting Slack, the Epic Games Store, and several other services. 

The AWS Service Health Dashboard shows the problem lies within a data center in northern Virginia and affects customers in the US-EAST-1 Availability Zone. The first outage was reported at 7:35 am EST. 

Slack users began seeing problems shortly after the outage, and the Epic Games Store noted that the AWS outage was causing problems “affecting logins, library, purchases, etc.”

Enlarge / Rebuilding the lower jaw of the Gray mastodon. (credit: ETSU Gray Fossil Site & Museum)

Something has been discovered in Tennessee—something that only exists in one museum. It’s something enormous, slightly puzzling, and possibly the first of its kind discovered. Five years after its excavation, it remains incomplete.

The mastodon skeleton slowly taking shape in Tennessee is no secret. Pictures and descriptions of its progress have been posted on social media from the beginning, and while those who are aware of it are intrigued, it hasn’t made many headlines. Yet.

Out of the gray

The Gray Fossil Site near Gray, Tennessee, was found by accident during road construction in 2000. Thanks to the efforts of local people and the state government who recognized the importance of the site, construction halted. A museum was erected several years later. Bits of bones and one shattered tusk were all that had been found when the site was preserved, but the area is proving to be voluminous in its fossil content.

Enlarge / Sky Force Reloaded running on a Tesla’s central screen while the car is driving down the road. (credit: YouTube / Cf Tesla)

Earlier this month, we covered a software update issued by Tesla that allowed games to be played on the infotainment display while the car was in motion. We pointed out at the time that this new capability would likely draw the attention of state and federal regulators. To no one’s surprise, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Wednesday announced a formal safety investigation over the update.

According to the NHTSA, the feature has been around since December 2020 for Teslas equipped with “Passenger Play.” Prior to that, games could only be played on the center screen when the vehicle was in park.

The NHTSA’s investigation covers approximately 580,000 Tesla Model S, 3, X, and Y vehicles covering model years 2017 through 2021. The agency said it will be evaluating “aspects of the feature, including the frequency and use scenarios of Tesla ‘Passenger Play.'”