Obi-Wan Kenobi shifts premiere date, will air first two episodes at once

Incoming transmission from Obi-Wan Kenobi... Actor Ewan McGregor has some important news.

Disney+ originally picked an auspicious date for the premiere of its new Star Wars series, Obi-Wan Kenobi: Wednesday, May 25, the same date that Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope was released in 1977 (back when it was known simply as Star Wars). That film celebrates its 45th anniversary this year. But the streaming platform announced today—via a video featuring star Ewan McGregor—that it is shifting that premiere date to Friday, May 27, right before Memorial Day weekend.

We might have to wait a couple of extra days, but at least Disney+ will simultaneously release the first two episodes. As Deadline Hollywood pointed out, May 27 is also the premiere date for the fourth season of Stranger Things (Part 1), so our holiday weekend viewing is pretty much sorted.

Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) is on Tatooine looking after a young Luke Skywalker—from a distance. (credit: YouTube/Disney+)

We first learned in August 2019 that the rumors were true about a Star Wars spinoff series featuring Obi-Wan Kenobi. That's also when we learned that Ewan McGregor, who played Obi-Wan in the Star Wars prequels, would reprise the role. The actor made a surprise appearance at the tail end of a showcase presentation at D23 Expo 2019, Disney's annual fan extravaganza. Then came the big news that his co-star Hayden Christensen would return as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy called it "the rematch of the century" at the December 2020 Disney Investors Day.

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Researchers used a decommissioned satellite to broadcast hacker TV

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | 3DSculptor)

Independent researchers and the United States military have become increasingly focused on orbiting satellites' potential security vulnerabilities in recent years. These devices, which are built primarily with durability, reliability, and longevity in mind, were largely never intended to be ultra-secure. But at the ShmooCon security conference in Washington, DC, on Friday, embedded device security researcher Karl Koscher raised questions about a different phase of a satellite's life cycle: What happens when an old satellite is being decommissioned and transitioning to a “graveyard orbit”?

Koscher and his colleagues received permission last year to access and broadcast from a Canadian satellite known as Anik F1R, launched to support Canadian broadcasters in 2005 and designed for 15 years of use. The satellite's coverage extends below the US southern border and out to Hawaii and the easternmost part of Russia. The satellite will move to its graveyard orbit soon, and nearly all other services that use it have already migrated to a new satellite. But while the researchers could still talk to the satellite using special access to an uplink license and transponder slot lease, Koscher had the opportunity to take over and broadcast to the Northern Hemisphere.

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Meta can’t buy TikTok, so it hired GOP operatives to run a smear campaign

Enlarge (credit: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto)

If you can’t beat ’em, smear ’em.

That appears to be Facebook’s approach when it comes to countering the threat from TikTok, according to a new report in The Washington Post. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has hired Targeted Victory, a large Republican consulting firm, to place stories in op-eds in local newspapers and on local TV newscasts around the US, according to the report.

TikTok poses perhaps the most existential challenge to Meta and Facebook yet. The video-based social media platform has gained users at a swift pace, and it’s especially popular among younger users, a demographic that Facebook and Meta’s other platforms have struggled with in recent years.

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Dell’s new UltraSharp 4K monitors are “IPS Black”—what does that mean?

Enlarge / Dell's UltraSharp U3223QE is a 31.5-inch IPS Black monitor. (credit: Dell)

Dell announced two new models in its popular UltraSharp monitor lineup on Thursday. The displays have been a favorite of office workers, creatives, and—because of their USB-C connectivity—Mac users. Now, LG Display is introducing what it's calling "IPS Black," which will come to Dell's lineup in the UltraSharp 32 (U3223QE) and 27 (U2723QE) 4K USB-C Hub Monitors.

What is IPS Black, and should we expect it to give the monitors an edge over the competition?

First, what is IPS?

To understand IPS Black, a new type of IPS panel, it helps to have a basic understanding of IPS, or in-plane switching. IPS is one of the three types of LED panels in PC monitors and TVs, alongside VA (vertical alignment) and TN (twisted nematic).

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Dell’s new dock wirelessly charges your phone while supporting two 4K monitors

Enlarge / Dell's Dual Charge Dock. (credit: Dell)

When it comes to the ultimate computer setup, we often want more features but less clutter. We need more pixels, more screens, more peripherals (looking at you, USB webcam that suddenly became imperative), and more ways to power all that tech. At the same time, we seek cleaner setups and fewer cables as many laptops cut ports in favor of slimmer designs. Like any dock, the Dell Dual Charge Dock (HD22Q) announced Thursday neatly adds more ports, but its wireless charging pad brings an added feature.

Dell said the upcoming product is the first laptop docking station with Qi wireless charging (which works with supporting smartphones and wireless earbuds) that can also support two 4K monitors simultaneously. If less is more, the dock is a way to provide extra desk space for a wireless charging station.

Qi charging occurs through a "slightly angled fabric stand," according to Dell's press materials. You can charge your phone both horizontally and vertically at up to 12 W, which is close to Qi's maximum charging speed of 15 W.

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New Dell laptops use simultaneous Wi-Fi and wired connections to lower latency

Enlarge / Dell Latitude 9430. (credit: Dell)

Dell announced its new lineup of Latitude business laptops and Precision mobile workstations today. In addition to sporting trimmer builds and Intel's latest 12th Gen mobile CPUs, the new clamshells and two-in-ones also carry updated AI software for improved network latency and to help boost privacy and battery life.

Dell Optimizer software adds fresh features

Dell's Optimizer AI-based optimization software will be preloaded on its new Latitude and Precision laptops. But unlike with earlier laptops in these lines, users and IT managers will actually be able to pick the features they want and ditch the rest.

Among features up for selection is ExpressConnect. Dell updated ExpressConnect to allow the new laptops, which offer Wi-Fi 6E, to utilize a Wi-Fi network and either a second Wi-Fi network or a wired connection simultaneously to send and receive data traffic. Some laptops will require a USB adapter to connect to a second Wi-Fi network, Dell says.

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Pfizer, Moderna vaccines aren’t the same; study finds antibody differences

Enlarge / A vial of COMIRNATY (Pfizer/BioNTech) and a vial of Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. (credit: Getty | Marcos del Mazo)

The mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have proven highly effective at priming our immune systems to fight the pandemic coronavirus—preventing substantial amounts of infection, severe disease, and death throughout several waves of variants. But, despite their similar design and efficacy, the two vaccines are not exactly the same—and our immune systems don't respond to them in the same way.

An early hint of this was some real-world data that found startling differences in the effectiveness of the two vaccines, despite both shots performing nearly identically in Phase III clinical trials—95 percent and 94 percent. Amid last year's delta wave, a Mayo Clinic study found that Pfizer's effectiveness against infection dipped to 42 percent while Moderna's only fell to 76 percent.

According to a new study in Science Translational Medicine, such differences might be explained by evidence that the two vaccines spur the immune system to produce slightly different antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.

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DeepMind accused of mishandling sexual misconduct allegations

Enlarge / A Deepmind Health webpage sits displayed on the screen of an Apple Inc. iPhone in this arranged photograph in London, U.K. on Monday, Nov. 26, 2018. Three years ago, artificial intelligence company DeepMind Technologies Ltd. embarked on a landmark effort to transform health care in the U.K. Now plans by owner Alphabet Inc. to wrap the partnership into its Google search engine business are tripping alarm bells about privacy. Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images (credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images)

A former DeepMind employee has accused the artificial intelligence group’s leadership of mishandling multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment, raising concerns over how grievances are dealt with at the Google-acquired company.

The female member of staff, whom we call Julia to protect her identity, claimed in December 2019 that a senior researcher at the London-based group had sexually assaulted her twice, threatened suicide and alluded to previous instances of rape, among other concerning behaviour.

DeepMind, one of the world’s most respected AI companies, employs more than 1,000 people, including renowned research scientists. It said Julia’s “allegations were investigated thoroughly, and the individual who was investigated for misconduct was dismissed without any severance payments.”

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Intel’s long-awaited Arc GPUs begin shipping today, starting in laptops

Enlarge / Intel's Arc GPUs will begin shipping in laptops soon. (credit: Intel)

Maybe you've heard about it: After years of rumors and occasional false starts, Intel is leveraging its experience building integrated GPUs to enter the dedicated graphics business. The company's Arc GPUs will be trickling out throughout 2022, and Intel's stated goal is to shake up a market that has been dominated by Nvidia's products (and AMD's, but let's be honest, mainly Nvidia's) for years now.

That process formally begins today with the launch of the first Arc GPUs for laptops. These Arc mobile GPUs first made an appearance back in January when they were obliquely mentioned (with no model numbers, specs, or other technical information) in some of the laptop makers' product announcements. Now that those PCs are closer to shipping, Intel is talking a bit more about what you can expect from its first serious effort to produce modern dedicated GPUs.

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  The five Arc GPU models being announced today are based on two chips: the low-end ACM-G11 and the high-end ACM-G10.

The Arc mobile GPUs' branding mirrors the division between Intel's Core i3, i5, and i7 processors; the company is launching a pair of Arc 3 GPUs now, and one Arc 5 and two Arc 7 models will be coming in the "early summer." These five products are based on two different dies. The lower-end die, the ACM-G11, is the basis for the two Arc 3 GPUs, while the Arc 5 and Arc 7 are based on the larger ACM-G10.

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Exploring the counterintuitive mysteries of black holes with Paul Sutter

Produced and directed by Corey Eisenstein. Click here for transcript. (video link)

Of all the amazing and varied phenomena in the cosmological zoo, black holes are among the most mysterious. They are zombies—the all-devouring corpses of dead stars, made of trillions of tons of stellar ash compressed into an infinitely dense point called a "singularity." The gravity exerted by the singularity is so intense that it warps space-time, preventing even light from escaping.

In many ways, to look at a black hole is to look at the inevitable future of our Universe, because there will come a time—many trillions of trillions of years from now, but inevitable nonetheless—where all the sky's stars will have gone out, and black holes will be the Universe's main attraction, still gobbling down any remaining free clumps of matter and acting as the only sources of light left. And perhaps most creepily of all, if proton decay turns out to be a thing, this future black hole era will be how our cosmos spends the majority of its life—dark, silent, and forbiddingly empty.

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