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Enlarge / OkCupid will soon offer vaccination badges. (credit: OkCupid)

Money can’t buy happiness, as the cliché goes. But a vaccination could get you money and happiness.

While governors in various states are offering a chance at cash prizes to those who have gotten their COVID-19 shots, dating apps are heating things up with alluring vaccination-related features like badges, super swipes, and other “premium” perks.

In a blog post Thursday, OkCupid announced that it will release “I’m Vaccinated” profile badges starting on May 24, and anyone who applies the badge in the first 48 hours will get a free “Boost.” OkCupid will also hook up unvaccinated users with resources to get a shot.

Enlarge / Apple CEO Tim Cook introduces the WWDC 2020 keynote. (credit: Apple)

Apple CEO Tim Cook faced pointed questioning from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers during his long-awaited testimony in the Epic Games v. Apple trial Friday.

Rogers wrapped up nearly three weeks of witness testimony with an extended back-and-forth with Cook. She began by asking about a hypothetical situation in which Fortnite's in-game V-Bucks currency was available for a lower price on the web than through the iOS app itself. What would be wrong with the app presenting users with the option to make that more affordable purchase—or at least providing that information to the users in the app?

Cook responded that "if you allow people to link out like that, you would essentially give up the total return on our IP." Earlier in his testimony, Cook said by way of analogy that letting apps direct consumers to commission-free purchase options outside of the App Store "would be akin to Apple going out to Best Buy, putting a sign there where we advertise you can go across the street to the Apple Store to buy an iPhone. If the effort goes into transacting with the customer [in the app], it seems like it ought to happen in the app."

The key to Mach.2's increased performance is a second set of actuator arms, which can be positioned independently from the first set. Essentially, this makes a Mach.2 "two drives in one chassis." (credit: Seagate)

Seagate has been working on dual-actuator hard drives—drives with two arms and read/write heads per platter—for several years. Its first production dual-actuator drive, the Mach.2, is now "available to select customers," meaning that enterprises can buy it directly from Seagate, but end-users are out of luck for now.

Seagate lists the sustained, sequential transfer rate of the Mach.2 as up to 524MBps—easily double that of a fast "normal" rust disk and edging into SATA SSD territory. The performance gains extend into random I/O territory as well, with 304 IOPS read / 384 IOPS write and only 4.16 ms average latency. (Normal hard drives tend to be 100/150 IOPS and about the same average latency.)

The added performance requires additional power; Mach.2 drives are rated for 7.2 W idle, while Seagate's standard Ironwolf line is rated at 5 W idle. It gets more difficult to compare loaded power consumption because Seagate specs the Mach.2 differently than the Ironwolf. The Mach.2's power consumption is explicitly rated for several random I/O scenarios, while the Ironwolf line is rated for an unhelpful "average operating power," which isn't defined in the data sheet.

Enlarge / A man uses a 24-inch orange iMac. (credit: Apple)

Several new Apple products announced earlier this month are now available for sale and shipping at the Apple Store and various other retailers.

The new products include the new 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models, a revised Apple TV 4K, a completely redesigned iMac with a 24-inch screen, and a radically redesigned Siri Remote that is compatible with older Apple TV devices.

While these devices are available for order, some are in short supply, so they aren't all necessarily shipping today.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by the return of Epic's annual Mega Sale, which includes discounts on a number of noteworthy PC games. Like last year's deals event, the sale also includes a recurring coupon that takes $10 off any eligible game priced at $14.99 or more after existing sale discounts. You'll have to be signed in to an Epic Games account to access this feature, but once used, the coupon will immediately reset and become usable for your next purchase of a game priced at $15 or more. There's no way to stack multiple coupons for one purchase, but Epic says anyone who has pre-purchased a game that launches during the sale will get a $10 refund to account for the coupon when said game comes out. The company says the Mega Sale will last until June 17.

While the Epic Games Store still isn't quite as robust or well-stocked as Steam—and while we expect Valve's storefront to launch its own annual Summer Sale sometime in the coming weeks—this sales event includes good discounts on several games we like, including former Ars Game of the Year winners Hades and Control; the recently Ars Approved Loop Hero; widely heralded titles like Disco Elysium and Outer Wilds; and blockbusters like Red Dead Redemption II, Cyberpunk 2077, and Death Stranding. Also of note, NBA 2K21 is currently available at no cost until May 27, at which point Epic will roll out a new free game. We've picked out a sampling of steeper-than-usual discounts below.

If you can't stand the thought of adding even more games to your backlog, our curated deals roundup also includes sales on Apple's Mac Mini, various iPads and Roku media streamers, Fitbit's Sense smartwatch, microSD cards, portable batteries, and more. You can check out the full roundup below.

Enlarge / Robotic arm in action. (credit: University of Pittsburgh Medical Center)

One of the most stunning examples of the promise of brain implants is shown in a video in which a paralyzed person controls a robotic arm with nothing but her thoughts. The technology alone is impressive, but the joy on the participant's face as she grabs herself a drink for the first time in over a decade really drives home just how important this technology can be.

While we're still decades away from widespread implant use, there are continued signs of progress in making implants more functional. Last week, we saw a neural implant that could turn imagined writing into real text. This week, the research community has followed up with an implant-controlled robotic arm that sends touch feedback to the user via a second implant.

Adding senses

When we go to pick up an object, we locate the object primarily through vision. From there, other senses take over. Humans have a sense called proprioception, which helps us know where our body parts are, even when they're not visible. Our sense of touch tells us when we've made contact with the object, and pressure sensation gives us an indication of how firmly we've grasped the object. The visual system quickly becomes secondary to the process.