Month: May 2021

Enlarge / A child with measles. (credit: Greene, Charles Lyman)

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s “Vax-a-Million” program began Wednesday, running the first of five $1-million weekly lottery drawings open to residents who have been vaccinated. The effort is one of many incentive programs across the country aimed at getting vaccine-hesitant groups to roll up their sleeves, get vaccinated against the deadly coronavirus, and help end the pandemic.

But, while the lottery has already been hailed as a success in boosting vaccination numbers, conservative lawmakers in the Buckeye State appear to be diligently working toward reversing that trend.

Lawmakers are working on legislation to call off the lottery immediately. They’re also trying to head off any plans for “vaccine passports.” And last month, they introduced a sweeping antivaccination bill that would essentially demolish public health and vaccination requirements in the state—and not just requirements for COVID-19 vaccines, requirements for any vaccine.

Enlarge / A child with measles. (credit: Greene, Charles Lyman)

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s “Vax-a-Million” program began Wednesday, running the first of five $1-million weekly lottery drawings open to residents who have been vaccinated. The effort is one of many incentive programs across the country aimed at getting vaccine-hesitant groups to roll up their sleeves, get vaccinated against the deadly coronavirus, and help end the pandemic.

But, while the lottery has already been hailed as a success in boosting vaccination numbers, conservative lawmakers in the Buckeye State appear to be diligently working toward reversing that trend.

Lawmakers are working on legislation to call off the lottery immediately. They’re also trying to head off any plans for “vaccine passports.” And last month, they introduced a sweeping antivaccination bill that would essentially demolish public health and vaccination requirements in the state—and not just requirements for COVID-19 vaccines, requirements for any vaccine.

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  Another successful robo-safari for Aloy in Horizon Forbidden West. [credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment / Guerrilla Games ]

Aloy, the braided-hair hero of Sony's 2017 smash Horizon Zero Dawn, is set to return to consoles later this year in the series' first sequel, and on Thursday, we finally learned how that sequel video game will look.

On the cusp of 2021's kinda-sorta virtualized E3, creators Guerrilla Games premiered an uninterrupted, 14-minute gameplay sequence from this year's upcoming (and undated) Horizon Forbidden West. The sequence centers on an early-game mission to save a captured ally, and it has all the hallmarks of a flashy press conference reveal: familiar characters, slow-motion pans over insane-looking robot monsters, and a conveniently linear path full of perfectly placed midbattle dialogue.

Performance savings via new hairdo?

Still, what we saw actually looks like a real-deal, Horizon-branded video game—and arguably one that will neatly scale to Sony's past-gen PlayStation 4 console, since it leans less on flashy new tech like ray tracing or uninterrupted landscapes. This gameplay reveal was advertised as running on real PlayStation 5 hardware, however, so exactly how the game will downscale to base PS4 consoles remains to be seen. (Lower frame rates? Fewer water effects? Aloy's signature braids chopped off and replaced with a buzz cut?)

Enlarge / The Apple Watch Series 6. (credit: Corey Gaskin)

The wearables category of consumer devices—which includes smartwatches, fitness trackers, and augmented reality glasses—shipped more than 100 million units in the first quarter for the first time, according to research firm IDC. Q2 2021 saw a 34.4 percent increase in sales over the same quarter in 2020.

To be clear: wearables have sold that many (and more) units in a quarter before, but never in the first quarter, which tends to be a slow period following a spree of holiday-related buying in Q4.

For the past several years, wearables like the Fitbit Versa have made up one of the fastest-growing categories of personal electronics, but the devices still lag far behind smartphones in terms of total units moved each quarter or year.

Enlarge / A Charter Spectrum service truck in McKinney, Texas, on Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

It's no surprise that cable companies charge lower prices for broadband when they face competition from fiber-to-the-home services. But an article yesterday by Stop the Cap provides a good example of how dramatically promotional prices for Charter's Spectrum Internet service can vary from one street to the next.

In this example, Charter charges $20 more per month for slower speeds on the street where it faces no serious competition. When customers in two areas purchase the same speeds, the customer on the street without competition could have to pay $40 more per month and would have their promotional rates expire after only one year instead of two.

Stop the Cap said it examined promotional offers to new customers in the metro Rochester, New York, market, "where Spectrum faces token competition from Frontier's slow speed DSL service" and more robust competition in limited areas from Greenlight Networks' fiber service. Greenlight fiber is available in 23 percent of Rochester, while Charter cable is available to homes throughout the city, according to BroadbandNow. Greenlight prices start at $50 per month for 500Mbps.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

With an upcoming virtual E3 set to unveil several new video games, now is looking like a good time to pick up plenty of older titles on the cheap. Less than a week after the Dealmaster highlighted Epic's PC gaming "Mega Sale," today's Dealmaster puts the spotlight on Sony, which kicked off its annual "Days of Play" sale earlier this week, bringing a range of noteworthy deals on PS4 and PS5 games along with it at various retailers.

If you're a PlayStation owner looking for something to play during the (relatively) slow summer release schedule, we've pored over the offers and picked out a few highlights below. Among the Ars-approved notables is the samurai action game Ghost of Tsushima, which is down to $40, tying the lowest price we've tracked. Similarly, the more polarizing but recently-updated-for-PS5 zombie drama The Last of Us Part II is down to a joint-low of $30. Dedicated PS5 games we like such as the Demon's Souls remake and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales have received rare discounts as well, and a number of older PS4 classics like God of War, Uncharted 4, and Bloodborne are available for $10.

Sony says the sale will last until June 9. If your gaming backlog is suffering enough as it is, though, our deals roundup has plenty of offers beyond the glut of video games, including good prices on Apple's latest MacBook Air, a few well-reviewed monitors, smart thermostats, and much more. You can have a look at the full selection below.

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  The dream team. [credit: Gearbox Software ]

Borderlands 3 players on Xbox consoles, Windows, Stadia, and the Mac will soon be able to band together across platforms thanks to a coming cross-play update. But players on the PS4 and PS5 will be left out of that group and will be forced to play only with other users on the PlayStation Network.

Gearbox co-founder and CEO Randy Pitchford discussed the situation in a tweet Thursday morning, saying that "an update for Borderlands 3 has been prepared for release that includes full cross-play support across all platforms" but that "for certification, we have been required by the publisher [presumably Take Two] to remove cross-play support for PlayStation consoles."

Sony, you may remember, consistently blocked cross-platform capabilities on PlayStation consoles for years before finally opening up its walled garden to cross-platform play in late 2018. Even after that, though, some developers publicly accused Sony of "playing favorites" regarding which specific games were allowed to use the feature.