Category: Technica Aquarius

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.

Enlarge (credit: Apple | Getty Images | Aurich Lawson)

With the new Mac Studio and Studio Display, Apple has essentially told enthusiasts and professionals that if they want higher-performance computing, they’ll need to move on from the 27-inch iMac all-in-one. That means buying two separate products that are made in two separate locations, shipped on two separate planes and trucks and arriving in two separate boxes.

If you’re an enthusiast or pro who is looking to maximize performance while minimizing your climate impacts, that doesn’t seem to be a winning combination. But according to Apple’s environmental reports, the combination of a Mac Studio and Studio Display produces nearly 50 percent fewer carbon emissions over its lifetime than the iMac Pro.

How did that happen?