Month: December 2022

Enlarge / A microscope image of Streptococcus pyogenes, a common type of group A strep. (credit: Getty | BSIP)

Scarlet fever is spiking in the UK, with case numbers more than fourfold higher than normal for this time of year. And a rare but serious invasive disease caused by the same bacteria that causes scarlet fever and strep throat—Group A streptococci—is also surging, killing at least eight children in the UK, according to media reports.

The unusual rise is seen as yet another anomalous disease transmission cycle rippling in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many other seasonal infections, scarlet fever cases in the UK virtually flattened at the end of the 2019–2020 season and bottomed the chart throughout the 2020–2021 season, according to data released by the UK Health Security Agency.

Now, with most pandemic-related health restrictions lifted or at least eased, a throng of seasonal infections—particularly those that hit children the hardest—have returned. Many have returned with some ferociousness, finding a yet larger pool of susceptible victims than usual after a hiatus. Many of these disease-cycle anomalies have been seen in seasonal viruses, namely enteroviruses, adenoviruses, influenza, and RSV (respiratory syncytial (sin-SISH-uhl) virus), which are currently swamping hospitals and pediatric wards in the US.

Enlarge / The social media flyer for the "no killer robots" rally. (credit: EFF)

The robot police dystopia will have to wait. Last week the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to authorize the San Francisco Police Department to add lethal robots to its arsenal. The plan wasn't yet "robots with guns" (though some police bomb disposal robots fire shotgun shells already, and some are also used by the military as gun platforms) but to arm the bomb disposal robots with bombs, allowing them to drive up to suspects and detonate. Once the public got wind of this, the protests started, and after an 8–3 vote authorizing the robots last week, now the SF Board of Supervisors has unanimously voted to (at least temporarily) ban lethal robots.

Shortly after the initial news broke, a "No Killer Robots" campaign started with the involvement of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU, and other civil rights groups. Forty-four community groups signed a letter in opposition to the policy, saying, "There is no basis to believe that robots toting explosives might be an exception to police overuse of deadly force. Using robots that are designed to disarm bombs to instead deliver them is a perfect example of this pattern of escalation, and of the militarization of the police force that concerns so many across the city.”

On December 5, over 100 protesters showed up to SF City Hall, carrying signs with phrases like, "We've all seen that movie... No Killer Robots."

Enlarge (credit: Anadolu Agency / Contributor | Anadolu Agency)

After the US Department of Health and Human Services realized its promoted tweet about updated COVID vaccines was appearing on Twitter pages of white nationalist accounts, the agency told The Washington Post it promptly moved to remove the ads from Twitter. But their promoted tweets weren’t the only ones populating near extremist tweets.

A review by the Post found “roughly 40 brands” put in the same position due to Elon Musk’s recent decision to restore controversial accounts of Twitter users known to promote white nationalist views.

Kanye West, who now goes by Ye, was among the most famous accounts that Musk restored (and then quickly banned again), but around the same time, Musk also brought back other controversial right-wing influencers, like the editor of The Daily Stormer, Andrew Anglin, and the former leader of a white nationalist group called the American Identity Movement, Patrick Casey. It was these recently reinstated influencers whose accounts raised red flags for some brands with promoted tweets that the Post reported began appearing in Anglin’s and Casey’s feeds, including Amazon, Uber, and Snap.

Enlarge / Intel is talking up big performance gains in some old, but noteworthy, games. (credit: Intel)

In the run-up to the launch of Intel's Arc graphics cards, the company emphasized for months that the cards might not perform well in games that didn't use newer graphics APIs like Vulkan and DirectX 12. The GPUs are actually quite price-competitive with aging midrangers like Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 if you’re playing newer games, but performance in older games is mixed.

For Intel Arc owners attracted to the cards’ price, salvation may come in the form of continued driver updates. Since the October launch of the A770 and A750, Intel has released a handful of driver updates, each of which fixed specific bugs or provided small performance improvements in individual games. But in today's beta driver release (31.0.101.3959, for those keeping track), Intel is offering a "significant" boost in older DirectX9 titles, with frame rates that can improve by as much as 80 percent.

DirectX9 was the graphics API of choice in the Windows XP era, and the Windows XP era lasted for a very long time. The API is also used in still-popular multiplayer games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, Team Fortress 2, and Starcraft II, making performance improvements in DirectX9 games particularly noteworthy.