Month: October 2022

Enlarge / US President Joe Biden receives the latest COVID-19 booster shot in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House, in Washington, DC, on October 25, 2022. (credit: Getty | Saul Loeb)

The Biden administration is struggling to refocus the country's attention back on the pandemic as the fall booster campaign drags and the latest models project that tens of thousands of Americans will needlessly die this winter of COVID-19.

“This year, nearly every [COVID-19] death is preventable," President Biden said Tuesday just before rolling up his sleeve to receive his own updated COVID-19 booster.

Few Americans are following his lead. The White House has pushed Halloween as a soft deadline for Americans to get their updated, bivalent COVID-19 booster, arguing that such timing of the dose will allow for the immune system to mount maximal antibody and other immune responses before Americans begin gathering for fall and winter holidays, such as Thanksgiving, when transmission risks increase. But, with Halloween just days away, only 19.4 million Americans have received a bivalent booster—that's just 6 percent of the people eligible for the shot, which is free and available to everyone ages 5 and above.

Apple managed to stuff at least one more release into an already jam-packed October. A beta redesign of the web-based interface for iCloud makes it more customizable and visually appealing. It's worth bookmarking, especially if you occasionally use a mix of Apple-made devices and other computers.

The big difference is customization. The current iCloud web portal, when logged in, presents you with a grid of large buttons, which you can't move or change. It's a mild irritation if you don't use some of those services, or want to quickly create a new note, calendar appointment, or other item without having to head into the app. The beta, accessible at beta.icloud.com (or through a link on the current iCloud site), lets you choose which iCloud items deserve their own widgets, how they're arranged, and gives you a "+" button to quickly create new items, both in the widgets and in the upper-right corner.

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  iCloud's web portal, as it exists for most people, today, with a nudge to check out the beta redesign.

Apple hasn't abandoned its rigidity entirely, of course. Widgets can be two-column width when viewed in a wider browser, but only one per row, in alternating left/right alignment down the page. Most people aren't going to use iCloud's web interface as a primary interface, but it can be convenient for accessing your data when you're on non-Apple machines, or not signed in. The apps have the same interfaces and capabilities as before.

Enlarge / Current iPhones still use the Lightning port instead of the now-industry-standard USB-C. (credit: Samuel Axon)

An Apple executive publicly stated that the company plans to comply with a new European Union regulation that will require specific devices to have USB-C ports, confirming that the iPhone will soon adopt USB-C.

"Obviously, we'll have to comply," Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Greg Joswiak told attendees at The Wall Street Journal Tech Live conference on Tuesday. He took an air of resignation about it, noting that the company still disagrees with the regulation. "We think the approach would have been better environmentally and better for our customers to not have a government be that prescriptive," he said.

On Monday, the EU gave final approval to a long-under-consideration common charger law that will require all devices within specific categories—smartphones included—to standardize on USB-C. Most devices have already gone that way, including Apple's MacBook and iPad lines, but the iPhone line has stuck with Apple's proprietary Lightning connection.

Enlarge / Current iPhones still use the Lightning port instead of the now-industry-standard USB-C. (credit: Samuel Axon)

An Apple executive publicly stated that the company plans to comply with a new European Union regulation that will require specific devices to have USB-C ports, confirming that the iPhone will soon adopt USB-C.

"Obviously, we'll have to comply," Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Greg Joswiak told attendees at The Wall Street Journal Tech Live conference on Tuesday. He took an air of resignation about it, noting that the company still disagrees with the regulation. "We think the approach would have been better environmentally and better for our customers to not have a government be that prescriptive," he said.

On Monday, the EU gave final approval to a long-under-consideration common charger law that will require all devices within specific categories—smartphones included—to standardize on USB-C. Most devices have already gone that way, including Apple's MacBook and iPad lines, but the iPhone line has stuck with Apple's proprietary Lightning connection.

Enlarge / Ventura drops support for the last of the pre-Retina MacBook Airs. OpenCore Legacy Patcher can add it back, if you want. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

The macOS Ventura update ended support for a wide range of Intel Macs, including models introduced in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016. But as with older macOS releases, independent developers have stepped up to bring unofficial support for many of the Macs that no longer receive updates. Version 0.5.0 of the OpenCore Legacy Patcher project has added Ventura support for Mac models going back to 2012, giving people who don't mind a little bugginess the opportunity to keep their Mac updated with new features.

OpenCore Legacy Patcher (OCLP) is an offshoot of the OpenCore bootloader that focuses on re-adding support for older Mac hardware, instead of making macOS run on generic x86 "Hackintosh" PCs. Because Apple dropped support for so many Macs from Ventura, supporting that OS on these older machines required a lot more effort than it has in past years, which is something we've covered before.

Mac models supported by the OpenCore Legacy Patcher project. (credit: OpenCore Legacy Patcher)

The official support list, shown above, is similar to the ones for Mojave and Catalina, the first macOS releases to require a Metal-compatible GPU. The only model of this vintage not currently supported is the "trash can" 2013 Mac Pro, which is having some GPU-related booting issues that are still being sorted out. Older Macs with pre-Metal GPUs are totally unsupported, and graphics acceleration (among many other things) won't work on these Macs; the team is working on adding support for these older models, but it's unlikely that they'll ever function as well as the Metal-compatible models.

Enlarge / The Surface Duo 2 running Android 12L. (credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft is still struggling to learn what exactly it takes to be a successful Android manufactuer. The company's first self-branded Android phones, the dual-screened Surface Duo and Surface Duo 2, have tried to resurrect Microsoft's mobile ambitions after the death of Windows Phone. They leave a lot to be desired, though, and the first version went through some embarrassing fire sales. An ongoing knock against the devices has also been Microsoft's very slow OS updates. Unlike, say, Windows and Windows Update, Google's expensive and labor-intensive Android update process puts the responsibility for updates on the hardware seller, and a big part of being a good Android OEM is how quickly you can navigate this complicated process. Microsoft is proving to not be good at this.

This week, Microsoft announced the Surface Duo and Surface Duo 2 are finally getting Android 12L, an OS update that came out in March. That puts that company at a more than seven-month update time, which is worst-in-class for a flagship device, especially for one costing the $1,499 Microsoft is charging for the Duo 2. The company took a prolonged 14 months to ship Android 11 to the Surface Duo, so at least it's improving!

New for Android 12L: Click pen, get pen menu. (credit: Microsoft)

Android 12L features a bunch of changes aimed at big-screen tablet devices, but the awkward in-betweener Surface Duo seems to settle on the phone interface. The dual-pane notification panel isn't here, nor is the (ironically very Windows 11-like) taskbar at the bottom of the screen.

Enlarge / Global map of rainfall change due to warming 56 million years ago: green = wetter, brown = drier. Circles show where geological data show it became dryer or wetter, as a check on the new results. (credit: Tierney et. al.)

In a study published in PNAS, professor Jessica Tierney of the University of Arizona and colleagues have produced globally complete maps of the carbon-driven warming that occurred in the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 56 million years ago.

While the PETM has some parallels to present warming, the new work includes some unexpected results—the climate response to CO₂ then was about twice as strong as the current best estimate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But changes in rainfall patterns and the amplification of warming at the poles were remarkably consistent with modern trends, despite being a very different world back then.

A different world

The warming of the PETM was triggered by a geologically rapid release of CO₂, primarily from a convulsion of magma in Earth’s mantle at the place where Iceland is now situated. The magma invaded oil-rich sediments in the North Atlantic, boiling off CO₂ and methane. It took an already warm, high-CO₂ climate and made it hotter for tens of thousands of years, driving some deep-sea creatures and some tropical plants to extinction. Mammals evolved smaller, and there were big migrations across continents; crocodiles, hippo-like creatures, and palm trees all thrived just 500 miles from the North Pole, and Antarctica was ice-free.

Enlarge / Google's personal information removal tool is available to more people lately, allowing you to at least attempt to have your physical or email address, phone number, or other identifying information removed from search results.

Google has been pushing out a tool for removing personally identifiable information—or doxxing content—from its search results. It's a notable step for a firm that has long resisted individual moderation of search content, outside of broadly harmful or copyright-violating material. But whether it works for you or not depends on many factors.

As with almost all Google features and products, you may not immediately have access to Google's new removal process. If you do, though, you should be able to click the three dots next to a web search result (while signed in), or in a Google mobile app, to pull up "About this result." Among the options you can click at the bottom of a pop-up are "Remove result." Take note, though, that this button is much more intent than immediate action—Google suggests a response time of "a few days."

Google's blog post about this tool, updated in late September, notes that "Starting early next year," you can request regular alerts for when your personal identifying information (PII) appears in new search results, allowing for quicker reporting and potential removal.