Month: December 2021

Enlarge / Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to the president, delivers an update on the Omicron COVID-19 variant during the daily press briefing at the White House on December 1, 2021 in Washington, DC. The first case of the omicron variant in the United States has been confirmed today in California. (credit: Getty | Anna Moneymaker)

The omicron coronavirus variant has now been detected in at least 24 countries in five of six global regions—and as of this afternoon, that includes the United States.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed this afternoon that the first US case was detected in a person in California who had returned to the US from South Africa on November 22 and tested positive on November 29. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco carried out genomic sequencing identifying the omicron variant in the person, and the CDC confirmed that sequencing.

The CDC reported that the person was fully vaccinated and had only mild symptoms that are improving. In a press briefing Wednesday afternoon, top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said it appeared the person had not yet received a booster shot. Public health experts suggest that booster shots will significantly improve protection against the new, still poorly understood variant.

Enlarge / If Microsoft really wants to "put you first," it needs to tweak its strategy with Edge. (credit: Microsoft)

I've been a Microsoft Edge user for a little over two years now, starting right around when the first macOS preview version was released. As with many decisions, I arrived at it using a combination of evidence-based reasoning (it works on all the platforms I use, it retains the speed and compatibility of the Chromium engine, its memory and battery usage and privacy controls seemed at least marginally better than Chrome's) and gut feelings that felt right to me regardless of whether they were factually true (that giving more personal data to Microsoft bothers me less than giving it to Google and that a big company's browser would be supported better in the long run than smaller, less-used browsers like Brave or Opera).

I've mostly been happy living on the Edge since I switched, and I certainly don't miss Chrome. But in the last few months, I've been progressively more annoyed by some of the "value-add" features Microsoft has tacked on to the browser and by the way Microsoft pushes Edge on people who use Windows (and Bing on people who use Edge). This annoyance has come to a head with Microsoft's addition of a buy-now-pay-later service called Zip to the newest version of Edge. This addition seems superfluous at best and predatory at worst, and it has spawned a backlash among users, Microsoft-adjacent tech media, and IT professionals.

One of many screens you'll see in Edge prompting you to set your default search engine back to Bing. (credit: WindowsLatest.com)

I don't like the Zip integration and I don't plan to use it, but I wouldn't be so annoyed by it if it weren't part of a pattern that has emerged (or, at least, become more obvious) in the last year or so. The price comparison and coupon features that Microsoft added a year or so ago generate a huge amount of automatic on-by-default pop-ups, and when you disable those pop-ups or turn the features off entirely, they don't sync to your other PCs along with your bookmarks and other settings.

We're just a few weeks away from the release of The Matrix Resurrections, and Warner Bros. is whetting our appetites with a shiny new trailer.

As we've reported previously, series writers/directors Lilly and Lana Wachowski didn't originally intend to make another Matrix film after Revolutions, but rumors about a possible fourth film have been swirling since 2012. Lilly Wachowski went so far as to call the prospect "a particularly repelling idea in these times" in a 2015 interview—a sharp critique of Hollywood's preference for sequels, reboots, and adaptations.

Nonetheless, Warner Bros. officially announced the fourth film in August 2019. Lana Wachowski signed on to direct and co-write the film with novelist David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) and Aleksandar Hemon (Sense8). Lilly Wachowski gave the project her blessing but declined to be involved, partly because she was busy with Showtime's Work in Progress.

Enlarge / Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos Inc., arrives at federal court in San Jose, California, on Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021. (credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)

At this point in her criminal trial, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes' best chance for acquittal is for the jury to believe that she was a puppet being controlled by her boyfriend, company president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. Yesterday, the prosecution attempted to pick apart that defense.

In Holmes' first several days on the stand, jurors heard about Balwani’s abusive behavior. He forced Holmes to have sex with him, prescribed her meals and schedule, and told her that she needed to “kill” herself to be reborn as an entrepreneur, Holmes testified. Balwani has denied the claims of abuse. When recounting various episodes, Holmes broke into tears several times. Based on her testimony and her contemporaneous notes submitted as evidence, it certainly sounds like it was a toxic relationship.

The question for the jury, though, is whether that influenced Holmes’ actions. Was she in control of Theranos? Did her relationship with Balwani make her oblivious to a fraudulent scheme? To be convicted of wire fraud, which Holmes has been charged with, a person’s participation must be both willful and knowing. Yesterday, the prosecution set out to make it clear that Holmes was both in control and aware that what she was doing was wrong.

Enlarge / President Joe Biden speaks about the authorization of the COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5-11 on November 03, 2021, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Drew Angerer )

A federal judge yesterday blocked a Biden administration COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers, granting a request for preliminary injunction filed by Republican attorneys general from 14 states.

US District Judge Terry Doughty ruled that the government lacks authority to implement the rule that "requires the staff of twenty-one types of Medicare and Medicaid healthcare providers to receive one vaccine by December 6, 2021, and to receive the second vaccine by January 4, 2022." Providers that don't comply face penalties, including "termination of the Medicare/Medicaid Provider Agreement."

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) mandate regulates over 10.3 million health care workers in the US, of which 2.4 million are unvaccinated. The Biden vaccine rule is being challenged by the attorneys general from Louisiana, Montana, Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio. The Republican AGs' lawsuit was filed against CMS and the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Enlarge / This is Chinatown in Angel Shores, a substitute for the Bay Area in Bus Simulator 21. (credit: Astragorn)

Have you ever had a game you really wanted to love, but it just didn't work out? For me, Bus Simulator 21 is that game. News of its impending release caught my eye in late summer, and I knew I had to try it. Almost all of my gaming these days involves a handful of racing sims, but the idea of a lower-stress driving experience seemed like an attractive distraction from the world outside.

At this point, any actual bus drivers reading this will be shaking their heads. Because as I have come to learn, driving a bus is pretty stressful.

The conceit of Bus Simulator 21 is extremely straightforward: you manage a transportation company and drive buses across a number of different environments. There are fictional open-world environments—one in the US and one in Europe—and real buses, including double-deckers and even fully electric ones.