Month: October 2022

Enlarge / Looking sharp.

At this point in the history of tech product marketing, consumers generally know what it means when a company sticks the word “Pro” at the end of a device name. From iPads and AirPods to the Microsoft Surface and Galaxy Watch, “Pro” models generally offer the same underlying device and core platform with a few “nice to have” top-of-the-line features for enthusiast users who want the best experience.

To get those Pro features, consumers generally have to pay a “Pro premium” of somewhere between 25 to 60 percent over the most expensive “non-Pro” model of the same product. Even the biggest Pro-version outliers we could find in the tech world barely top a 100 percent increase over their non-Pro progenitors.

Despite the name, the Meta Quest Pro doesn’t really belong in the same marketing universe as these previous “Pro” products. Meta’s new standalone VR headset costs $1,500 at launch, a whopping 275 percent more than its $400 predecessor, the Meta Quest 2 (which has sold quite well for its still-young market segment). The premium increases to 400 percent if you compare the Quest Pro to the $300 Meta was asking for a Quest 2 just a few months ago.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Chesnot )

Elon Musk reportedly appointed himself to the CEO role at Twitter and is expected to reverse lifelong bans on users—including the ban imposed on former President Donald Trump.

As reported last night, Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter and immediately fired CEO Parag Agrawal and several other high-ranking executives. Bloomberg reported today that Musk appointed himself CEO but cited an anonymous source as saying that Musk "may eventually cede the Twitter CEO role in the longer term." Musk is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.

Bloomberg's source provided details on Musk's plan to reverse lifelong bans:

Enlarge (credit: Reynold Andika Tinus / 500px)

In 2008, the United States embassy in Beijing installed an air-quality monitor and started tweeting out its findings every hour. Since then, these monitors have popped up in more than 50 embassies in countries and cities around the globe.

Something unexpected happened in each of the cities in which the monitors appeared. Researchers found that, overall, air quality improved in the cities where embassies were tweeting out air-quality data. “We were surprised,” Akshaya Jha, assistant professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the paper’s authors, told Ars.

Monitoring micrograms

According to the World Health Organization, in 2019, more than 90 percent of the world’s population lived in areas with dangerous levels of air pollution. Further, according to Jha’s paper, this phenomenon tends to be worse in low- and middle-income countries. However, air-quality monitoring in those countries is quite rare.