Month: January 2023

Enlarge / Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel during a Bloomberg Television interview on the closing day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on May 26, 2022. (credit: Getty | Jason Alden)

Moderna is considering raising the price of its COVID-19 vaccine by over 400 percent—from $26 per dose to between $110 and $130 per dose—according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.

Ars has reached out to Moderna for comment but has not yet received a response. The plan, if realized, would match the previously announced price hike for Pfizer-BioNTech's rival COVID-19 vaccine.

The Journal spoke with Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco Monday, who said of the 400 percent price hike: "I would think this type of pricing is consistent with the value.”

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Matt Anderson Photography)

Nevada's US senators say the Federal Communications Commission's new, more detailed broadband maps have tens of thousands of mistakes in their state alone.

"Nevada’s Office of Science, Innovation, & Technology (OSIT) has found over 20,000 purported broadband-serviceable locations on the map that they believe overstate coverage. They also have found incorrect information on the quality of service available to some locations and in some cases, missing serviceable locations," Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) wrote in a letter to the FCC last week.

The FCC's new broadband-availability information shows which addresses have service based on data submitted by Internet service providers, so mistakes would indicate that broadband companies are claiming to serve more homes and businesses than they actually do. The senators' reference to "missing serviceable locations" also suggests the FCC failed to include every home or business location in its list of addresses.

Marvel has been notably restrained about its marketing for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. The film will be released in February, and we've had just a few sneak peeks and exactly one trailer over the last few months that told us very little about what to expect. Now we finally have the latest trailer, and it's an eye-popping visual extravaganza in which Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) faces off against Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) in an epic battle in the Quantum Realm. And we catch a glimpse of MODOK. for good measure.

As we've reported previously, the release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever marked the end of Phase Four of what's officially being called The Multiverse Saga (encompassing Phases Four, Five, and Six). Quantumania kicks off Phase Five. Per the official premise:

Superhero partners Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) return to continue their adventures as Ant-Man and the Wasp. Together with Hope’s parents Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), the family finds themselves exploring the Quantum Realm, interacting with strange new creatures, and embarking on an adventure that will push them beyond the limits of what they thought was possible.

We met a version of Kang in the first season of Loki: He Who Remains, the creator of the Time Variance Authority. Quantumania features a different version from another timeline who has been trapped in the Quantum Realm. Kathryn Newton plays 18-year-old Cassie Lang. Randall Park reprises his role as FBI Agent Jimmy Woo, and Gregg Turkington is back as Dale, the Baskin-Robbins manager from 2015's Ant-Man.

Enlarge / The iPhone 14 Pro. (credit: Apple)

For years now, Apple has wanted to replicate its success in processors with its own in-house cellular modems. The company spent $1 billion to buy Intel's modem technology in 2019, and since then the company has perennially been just a year or two away from replacing Qualcomm's modems in new iPhones (alleged 2021 and 2022 timelines have come and gone, and Qualcomm seems to think that 2023 won't be the year either).

Undeterred by these setbacks, the company plans to expand its wireless ambitions to encompass Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, according to a Bloomberg report. Apple is supposedly hoping to ship these chips in new products starting in 2025, working toward an eventual goal of building Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular modem capabilities into a single chip.

Apple has relied on Broadcom chipsets for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity across all its products for years. Even when Macs used Intel processors, Apple declined to use or support the Intel Wi-Fi and Bluetooth products that are ubiquitous in most other laptops. Apple and Broadcom last signed three-and-a-half-year supply deals in early 2020 that were said to be valued at $15 billion. Apple is also said to be working on separate RF and wireless charging chips to replace Broadcom-provided parts.

Enlarge / Nyxi's GameCube-style button layout shows how much more we could be doing with joy-cons. (credit: Nyxi Gaming)

Back in 2018, when Nintendo released its official wireless NES controllers for the Switch, we talked about how nice it would be to see "joy-con options that offer a split-handed version of the GameCube control scheme, for instance." Just over four years later, peripheral-maker Nyxi Gaming is doing what Nintendon't with the Nyxi Wizard, a set of two joy-cons that takes obvious inspiration from the GameCube's iconic controller. And the release got us thinking about what other unique Switch joy-con designs deserve to see the light of day.

Nyxi's product page makes a lot out of the Wizard's special features, including "adjustable turbo and mapping functions," light-up face buttons, and Hall Effect joysticks that they promise will "never develop drift in a lifetime." But it's the unique GameCube-style button layout that caught our eye, complete with a huge, central green A button orbited by weird, bean-shaped X and Y buttons and a tiny auxiliary B button.

This isn't the first GameCube-style controller released for the Switch, of course. Nintendo released an official GameCube controller adapter years ago and even sells new wired GameCube controllers to go with them. On the third-party side, PowerA offers its own wireless "GameCube Style" option for players who trained their muscle memory on Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Enlarge / A view of a broken window after the supporters of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro participated in an anti-democratic riot at Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil on January 9, 2023. (credit: Anadolu Agency / Contributor | Anadolu)

Claiming “election interference” in Brazil, thousands of rioters on Sunday broke into government buildings in the nation’s capital, Brasília. The rioters relied on social media and messaging apps to coordinate their attacks and evade government detection, The New York Times reported, following a similar “digital playbook” as those involved in the United States Capitol attacks on January 6, 2021. Now, social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube have begun removing content praising the most recent attacks, Reuters reported, earmarking this latest anti-democratic uprising as another sensitive event requiring widespread content removal.

Disinformation researchers told the Times that Twitter and Telegram played a central role for those involved with organizing the attacks, but Meta apps Facebook and WhatsApp were also used. Twitter has not responded to reports, but a Meta spokesperson told Ars and a Telegram spokesperson told Reuters that the companies have been cooperating with Brazilian authorities to stop content from spreading that could incite further violence. Both digital platforms confirmed an uptick in content moderation efforts starting before the election took place—with many popular social media platforms seemingly bracing for the riots after failing to quickly remove calls to violence during the US Capitol attacks.

“In advance of the election, we designated Brazil as a temporary high-risk location and have been removing content calling for people to take up arms or forcibly invade Congress, the Presidential palace, and other federal buildings,” a Meta spokesperson told Ars. “We're also designating this as a violating event, which means we will remove content that supports or praises these actions.“