Month: November 2022

Enlarge / Dell's UltraSharp U3223QZ 4K monitor. (credit: Scharon Harding)

I get it; not everyone finds monitors as exciting as I do. For most people, a little extra color or a larger range of tones don't really differentiate one screen from another. So I don't blame Dell for stuffing the UltraSharp U3223QZ 4K monitor with fluff like motion-activated controls, monstrous speakers, and a webcam with presence detection. But after weeks with the monitor, I found none of those extra features as exciting as the monitor's IPS Black panel.

The U3223QZ has a lot to prove. For one, it debuted at the same MSRP as the 5K Apple Studio Display (starts at $1,600). Since then, Dell has made the price more competitive ($1,280 as of writing), but it's still expensive for a 31.5-inch monitor. Dell's U3223QZ is also one of the few monitors to use IPS Black technology, which is supposed to yield about twice the contrast as the typical IPS monitor. I confirmed this with a colorimeter and, more enjoyably, with my eyes.

The bonus features on the U3223QZ have their pluses. The speakers are louder than average and the webcam can automatically log you in and out. But for many people, it makes sense to save money and buy the version of this monitor without the webcam... and without a dedicated Microsoft Teams button.

Enlarge (credit: Drew Angerer / Staff | Getty Images News)

Here to add another layer of dread ahead of the upcoming tax season, The Markup reported that some of the biggest online e-filing services—unbeknownst to millions of users—have been sharing sensitive user financial information with Meta. Some services linked user names and email addresses with detailed information like income, refund amounts, filing status, and even the amount of dependents’ college scholarships.

These services include H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer, which transmit data via a tool that Meta provides for businesses called the Meta Pixel. The Markup published the data sent to Meta by these companies, which it confirmed was sometimes generated and shared “regardless of whether the person using the tax filing service has an account on Facebook” or other Meta service.

Meta provides the Meta Pixel as a code that businesses can customize and embed on their websites to gather information to help businesses improve targeted marketing campaigns on Meta platforms. In return for this service, Meta gets to use the shared data to drive its own algorithms in its mission to know just about everything that can be known about its own users.

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  The Android App Bundle logo. [credit: Google ]

Android TV is going to be less storage-greedy in the future. Google announced that Android's space-saving app file format, Android App Bundles (AABs), will finally be the standard on Android TV. By May 2023—that's in six months—Google will require all Android TV apps to switch to the new file format, which can cut down on app storage requirements by 20 percent.

Storage for Android TV is always tough because hardware manufacturers want to make smart TV and set-top-box hardware as cheaply as possible, and that often means shipping with a minimal amount of storage. Google says that "in 2022, smartphones often have a minimum storage size of 64GB, but smart TVs have an average of just 8GB." Google itself is actually a big offender here, with the Google Chromecast with Google TV shipping with only 8GB of storage. That's nowhere near enough, and many people run out of storage on the new Chromecast with only the bare minimum of content apps installed. There are 10,000 Android TV apps out there, with some of the biggest reaching 10GB+, but most Android TV users can't install them.

Android App Bundles won't be a magic bullet for poorly designed devices with insufficient storage, but every little bit will help. Android App Bundles were announced with Android 9 in 2018 as a way to save device storage by breaking an app up into modules, rather than one big monolithic APK (the old Android app format) with every possible piece of data. Android apps support a ton of different languages, display resolutions, and CPU architectures, but each individual device only needs to cherry-pick a few of those options to work. Android App Bundles integrate with the Play Store to create a dynamic delivery system for each module. Your phone communicates which modules it needs to the Play Store, and Google's servers bundled up an appropriate package and sent it to your device. It's even possible for developers to move some lesser-used app functionality into a bundle that can be downloaded on the fly if a user needs it.

Enlarge / Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House chief medical adviser, speaks alongside COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha during a briefing on COVID-19 at the White House on November 22, 2022, in Washington, DC. Fauci spoke on the updated COVID-19 booster shots and encouraged individuals to get their vaccines. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) (credit: Getty | Win McNamee)

The updated bivalent COVID-19 booster vaccine increased protection against symptomatic disease compared with the original monovalent vaccine given as recently as two months ago.

That's the takeaway from a study released Tuesday morning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which offered the first clinical efficacy data for the bivalent shot since its national rollout in September.

In adults, the relative effectiveness of the bivalent vaccine's protection against symptomatic infection ranged from about 30 percent to up to 56 percent compared with that of the monovalent vaccine, with the relative efficacy estimated to be larger the more time had passed since a person's last monovalent shot.

Enlarge / LG's UltraGear 27GR95QE-B OLED monitor. (credit: LG)

LG continues to show a commitment to diversifying OLED monitor options. And that's particularly exciting when it comes to users seeking smaller sizes and lower prices. The company recently listed a 26.5-inch OLED monitor for $1,000 that offers more speed than most people need but adds variety to today's scant selection of desktop-size OLED monitors.

As spotted by a few sites, including Wccftech on Sunday, LG has listed the 26.5-inch UltraGear 27GR95QE-B; however, it doesn't seem available to purchase online in the US yet. We reached out to LG about US availability and will update this article if the company responds.

The monitor prioritizes pushing frames over pixel count, sporting a 2560×1400 resolution and a 240 Hz refresh rate. LG's gaming monitor also has an aggressively fast 0.03 ms gray-to-gray response time, plus Nvidia G-Sync Compatibility and AMD FreeSync Premium for fighting screen tears. This is a screen built for gamers who would rather have fast-paced action that looks super-smooth than the sharpest display. And if you're not convinced of this screen's gamer heritage, just check out the hexagonal RGB lighting area on the monitor's backside:

Enlarge / Pumpkin pie isn't complete without a dollop of whipped cream. Danish scientists concocted a fat-free analog from bacteria. (credit: Getty Images)

The human love affair with whipped cream dates back to at least the 16th century, and it's a staple of all our favorite holiday desserts. Is that slice of Thanksgiving pumpkin pie truly the same without a dollop of whipped cream on top? But whipped cream also contains 38 percent saturated fat. That's one reason it's so delightfully fluffy and pleasurable to eat, but it's also not great for our health, and dairy farming is a major source of greenhouse gases. So food scientists at the University of Copenhagen decided to explore possible low-fat, sustainable alternatives. They successfully created a fat-free prototype based on bacteria, according to a recent paper published in the journal Food Hydrocolloids. Someday, per the authors, the whipped topping on our holiday desserts could be made from beer-brewing residues or plants.

"We usually associate bacteria with something to keep away from food," said co-author Jens Risbo, a food scientist at the University of Copenhagen. "But here, we base a beloved food product on good bacteria found in nature. This has never been seen before. This is advantageous, both because it is a renewable resource grown in a tank, and because it creates a healthier, less energy-dense, fat-free product."

Whipped cream is a type of liquid foam, a category that also includes hair styling mousse and shaving cream. Such foams are created by beating air into a liquid formula that contains, among other ingredients, some kind of a surfactant (active surface agent)—a collection of complex molecules that link together to stiffen the resulting froth into a substantial foam. The surfactant—usually fats or proteins in edible foams, or chemical additives in shaving cream or styling mousse—keeps surface tension from collapsing bubbles by strengthening the thin liquid film walls that separate them. Cream, with its high-fat content, serves as the surfactant in whipped cream.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )

Having gutted Twitter's staff, Elon Musk told remaining employees he plans to hire new engineers and salespeople, The Verge reported Monday. "During an all-hands meeting with Twitter employees today, Musk said that the company is done with layoffs and actively recruiting for roles in engineering and sales and that employees are encouraged to make referrals, according to two people who attended and a partial recording obtained by The Verge," the report said.

Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter on October 27 and laid off about half of the company's 7,500 employees. He sent an ultimatum to the remaining staff last week, saying they must commit to "working long hours at high intensity" to keep their jobs; the ultimatum came with the choice of staying at the company or resigning with three months of severance.

Some sales employees who opted to stay after Musk's ultimatum were reportedly laid off shortly after. With the latest departures, Twitter was reportedly left with about 2,700 employees. Musk also laid off about 5,000 contractors and banned remote work while warning staff of a "dire" economic outlook.