Month: January 2024

Enlarge / FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel at the National Press Club on September 19, 2022. (credit: Getty Images | Tom Williams )

The Federal Communications Commission is about to start winding down a program that gives $30 monthly broadband discounts to people with low incomes, and says it will have to complete the shutdown by May if Congress doesn't provide more funding.

The 2-year-old Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) was created by Congress, and Democrats have been pushing for more funding to keep it going. But Republican members of Congress blasted the ACP last month, accusing the FCC of being "wasteful."

In a letter, GOP lawmakers complained that most of the households receiving the subsidy already had broadband service before the program existed. They threatened to withhold funding and criticized what they called the "Biden administration's reckless spending spree." The letter was sent by the highest-ranking Republicans on committees with oversight responsibility over the ACP, namely Sen. John Thune (R-SD), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), and Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio).

Enlarge / Month by month, 2023 stood far above the rest. (credit: C3S/ECMWF)

The confused wiggles on the graph above have a simple message: Most years, even years with record-high temperatures, have some months that aren't especially unusual. Month to month, temperatures dip and rise, with the record years mostly being a matter of having fewer, shallower dips.

As the graph shows, last year was not at all like that. The first few months of the year were unusually warm. And then, starting in June, temperatures rose to record heights and simply stayed there. Every month after June set a new record for high temperatures for that month. So it's not surprising that 2023 will enter the record books as far and away the warmest year on record.

The EU makes it official

Several different organizations maintain global temperature records; while they use slightly different methods, they tend to produce very similar numbers. So, over the next few weeks, you can expect each of these organizations to announce record temperatures (NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will do so on Friday). On Tuesday, it was the European Union's turn, via its Copernicus Earth-observation program.

Enlarge / None of this would be necessary if it weren't for your inferior eyes, which retain the colors of pixels for fractions of a second longer than is optimal for shooting dudes. (credit: Nvidia)

Gaming hardware has done a lot in the last decade to push a lot of pixels very quickly across screens. But one piece of hardware has always led to complications: the eyeball. Nvidia is targeting that last part of the visual quality chain with its newest G-Sync offering, Pulsar.

Motion blur, when it's not caused by slow LCD pixel transitions, is caused by "the persistence of an image on the retina, as our eyes track movement on-screen," as Nvidia explains it. Prior improvements in display tech, like variable rate refresh, Ultra Low Motion Blur, and Variable Overdrive have helped with the hardware causes of this deficiency. The eyes and their object permanence, however, can only be addressed by strobing a monitor's backlight.

You can't just set that light blinking, however. Variable strobing frequencies causes flicker, and timing the strobe to the monitor refresh rate—itself also tied to the graphics card output—was tricky. Nvidia says it has solved that issue with its G-Sync Pulsar tech, employing "a novel algorithm" in "synergizing" its variable refresh smoothing and monitor pulsing. The result is that pixels are transitioned from one color to another at a rate that reduces motion blur and pixel ghosting.

Enlarge / The three recalled pouches linked to lead poisonings. (credit: FDA)

The Food and Drug Administration has discovered a second metal contaminant—chromium—in the recalled cinnamon applesauce pouches found to contain cinnamon contaminated with extremely high levels of lead. The products have now poisoned nearly 300 young children in 37 states.

The health implications of the additional contaminant are not clear. There is no antidote for chromium exposure, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends supportive care. But the finding does hint at the possible motivation behind the tragic poisonings.

In the FDA's announcement, the agency noted that "The lead-to-chromium ratio in the cinnamon apple puree sample is consistent with that of lead chromate (PbCrO4)." This is a notorious adulterant of spices used to artificially bolster their color and weight.