US COVID vaccinations fall nearly 11% in a week as demand wanes

Enlarge / Nurses wait at empty tables for more patients to arrive to receive a dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine at a pop-up vaccination site in Gardena, California, on April 17, 2021. (credit: Getty | Patrick Fallon) Though COVID-19 vaccines are now open to all US adults, vaccinations in the country are on the decline. In the past week, the...

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Mortal Kombat film review: Why you should watch on HBO Max, not in theaters

You can probably hear the title being screamed upon seeing this image. [credit: WarnerMedia ] Mortal Kombat's third live-action movie, launching this week after over two decades of cinematic silence, is a weird one. It's not good. You wouldn't...

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This miniature version of Starry Night was made with a “laser paintbrush”

Blurring the lines between science and art: researchers used a "laser paintbrush" to create art on metallic canvases. Researchers at ITMO University in Russia have created a "laser paintbrush" capable of creating localized color on a metallic canvas, using their method to create miniaturized replicas of various works of art—including Vincent van Gogh's...

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Comcast offers tantalizing hint of a future with upload speeds above 35Mbps

Enlarge / Picture of a Comcast router/modem gateway from the company's website. (credit: Comcast) Comcast today offered the latest hint of a future in which its cable customers won't be limited to 35Mbps upload speeds. Announcing a recent lab test, Comcast said its research team "deliver[ed] upstream and downstream throughputs of greater than 4Gbps"...

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Cyberpunk 2077 refunds barely dented CD Projekt Red’s bottom line

Hard to see Cyberpunk 2077 as anything but a massive driver of a record quarter in this chart... [credit: CD Projekt ] Back in December, developer CD Projekt Red made waves by offering full refunds to Cyberpunk 2077 players who were dissatisfied...

3h

An API that can tell your EV when it’s the optimal time to charge

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images) The switch to electric vehicles is going more slowly in the US than in some other parts of the world. EVs reached a higher market share in 2020 than in any year past, but they still only accounted for 1.8 percent of all new cars and trucks. So for now, there's not really much impact on the grid from...

3h

YouTube is now building its own video-transcoding chips

Enlarge / A Google Argos VCU. It transcodes video very quickly. (credit: Google) Google has decided that YouTube demands such a huge transcoding workload that it needs to build its own server chips. The company detailed its new "Argos" chips in a YouTube blog post, a CNET interview, and in a paper for ASPLOS, the Architectural Support for Programming...

5h

iOS and iPadOS 15 will feature major changes to notifications, home screen

Enlarge / The iPhone 12. (credit: Samuel Axon) Yet another report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has emerged with details of Apple's future product plans. Citing "people with knowledge of the matter," the article broadly describes some of the key upcoming features in iOS 15 for iPhones and iPadOS 15 for iPads. Apple is likely to reveal iOS 15 and...

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Consumer Reports shows Tesla Autopilot works with no one in the driver’s seat

Enlarge (credit: Sjo / Getty) Last Saturday, two men died when a Tesla Model S crashed into a tree in a residential neighborhood. Authorities said they found no one in the driver's seat—one man was in the front passenger seat, while the other was in the back. That led to speculation that the car might have been under the control of Tesla's Autopilot...

5h

John Legere got $137 million severance for completing T-Mobile/Sprint merger

Enlarge / Then-T-Mobile CEO John Legere testifies before the House Judiciary Committee's Antitrust Subcommittee on March 12, 2019 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla ) T-Mobile paid then-CEO John Legere $137.2 million in 2020, a year in which he worked three months and then left on the day he completed T-Mobile's purchase...

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