Technology

The US government will make 400 million N95 face masks available for free at pharmacies and health centers, sourcing them from the Strategic National Stockpile, the White House tweeted on Wednesday. The announcement comes not long after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledged that the cloth masks worn by most people don’t provide as much prevention of coronavirus transmission as N95 masks or KN95 masks, the international equivalent. Some health experts have argued that the cloth masks are particularly ineffective against the highly contagious omicron variant of COVID-19 that has pushed infection rates higher in recent weeks. N95 masks are made with several layers of material that have better filtration than cloth masks and fit more snugly than other nonsurgical ma...

When Nvidia announced the rollout of the Shield Experience 9.0 (Android 11) update for its Android TV devices, we were impressed by the simple fact that it would include Shield TV models dating back to 2015 — but the buzz was short-lived as many owners are reporting major bugs on even the latest models. As 9to5Google reports, people that ran the update on their Shield TVs lost access to their Plex media servers — a popular use case for the devices thanks to their powerful processor and a USB port that supports storage devices. Nvidia is taking action on the matter: it posted a support page explaining how to give apps (like Plex) permission to use storage devices in Android 11, and at least one Reddit user wrote that it fixed their Plex server. The company also opened a support forum to col...

AMD claimed back in 2020 that 4GB of VRAM was “insufficient” for modern PC games and could result in error messages, warning limits, lower framerates, and even gameplay stutter or pop-in issues. Today, AMD is launching the $199 RX 6500 XT with… 4GB of VRAM, and the blog post featuring AMD’s original claims has mysteriously disappeared. KitGuru reports that AMD has hidden the blog post today, as it was previously accessible yesterday, and a Google cached view version from January 16th has the post in full. “AMD is leading the industry at providing gamers with high VRAM graphics solutions across the entire product offering,” said Adit Bhutani, a Radeon marketing specialist for AMD, in the blog post from 2020. “Competitive products at a similar entry level price-point are offering up to...

AT&T is lighting up its expanded 5G service in just eight metro areas in the US on Wednesday, including Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Chicago, Detroit, Jacksonville, Orlando, and South Florida (PDF). This comes after both AT&T and Verizon voluntarily limited the activation of C-band spectrum around airports after facing mounting pressure from airlines. “Today’s introduction begins in limited parts of 8 metro areas across the U.S. It will expand rapidly as our thoughtful and efficient deployment ramps up throughout the year,” Chris Sambar, AT&T’s executive vice president of technology operations, explains in the post announcing the expansion. “With 17 C-Band-capable devices already available online and in our stores, you can start seeing those speeds today.” Meanwhile, Ver...

A Samsung support page for, of all things, Bixby, may have just given us our first official look at the company’s upcoming flagship tablet. The picture, which was spotted by 91Mobiles, shows a familiar looking Samsung smartphone alongside a very unfamiliar looking tablet, complete with a display notch that Samsung savagely mocked when first introduced on the iPhone X. Reports suggest this new tablet will be called the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra, and it may be announced as early as next month. The design shown in the image on Samsung’s site corresponds with unofficial renders of the tablet released last October, leaked images from December, and leaked details from WinFuture from this month. If these unofficial details are to be believed, the Android tablet will have a 14.6-inch OLED displa...

Netflix’s foray into the mobile gaming subscription market is showing no signs of slowing down. This week it added a pair of new titles to its service, a card-battling roguelike called Arcanium: Rise of Akhan, and a hidden object game called Krispee Street. Both are available to download on iOS or Android free of charge if you’re already subscribed to the streaming service. Arcanium follows an increasingly familiar template for Netflix’s mobile game releases, in that it’s a pre-existing title added to the subscription service. The game originally launched in early access on Steam back in 2020, where it currently boasts “Mostly Positive” user reviews. Its Steam listing describes it as an “open-world, single-player strategy card adventure” and fusion of the roguelike and deckbuilding genres....

Nintendo has announced the next game coming to its Switch Online service: Nintendo 64 platforming classic Banjo-Kazooie. The game is inextricably associated with the N64 — it’s a collect-a-thon with blurry cartoon graphics and cute animal characters — but this will actually mark the first time you’ll have been able to play it on Nintendo hardware since Microsoft bought original developer Rare in 2002. Rare did release a couple of spin-off titles for the Game Boy Advance, but the last major Banjo-Kazooie game was 2008’s Nuts & Bolts for the Xbox 360. That game, as well as 360 ports of the original Banjo-Kazooie and sequel Banjo-Tooie, are also available on modern Xbox consoles through Game Pass and a compilation called Rare Replay. Banjo-Kazooie will be available on Thursday for subscri...

It looks like the FAA may have made a whoopsie. Remember when the US aviation authority suggested that FedEx might possibly potentially maybe be able to stick a laser onto its cargo planes to knock missiles out of the sky? Yeah, no: “further internal study is necessary,” the FAA wrote on Thursday (via Reuters), adding that the proposal “is not moving forward at this time.” Before you say that of course the FAA wasn’t going to let a private company mount a frickin’ laser beam (sorry, old reference) to their airplanes, you should know that we’re not exactly talking about the kind of high-energy solid state lasers that can literally blast things till they catch fire and/or explode — though the US military has certainly tested those sorts of lasers aboard large aircraft, too. No, FedEx’s propo...

Microsoft released an out-of-band (OOB) update yesterday to fix some Windows issues caused by last week’s monthly patching cycle on Patch Tuesday. The January 2022 updates that shipped last week included security patches and a fix for Japanese text appearance issues in Windows 11 (KB5009566) and Windows 10 (KB5009543) — along with a secret payload of issues, including unexpected restarting of Domain Controllers and VPN connections using L2TP failing. One of the major issues that came up during the week for IT admins included finding that Windows Server 2012 became stuck in a boot loop, while other versions suffered broken Windows VPN clients, and some hard drives appeared as RAW format (and unusable). Many IT Admins were forced to roll back the updates — leaving many servers vulnerable wit...

Emirates, Air India, ANA, and Japan Airlines have all announced they’re canceling some flights to the US due to this week’s rollout of C-band 5G over concerns it could potentially interfere with some instruments. This comes as cell carriers, federal agencies, airlines, and airplane manufacturers struggle to reach an agreement on policies regarding how the rollout should be handled. Emirates’ announcement is one of the clearest about what’s being canceled. The airline says that it’s “suspending flights to the following US destinations from 19 January 2022 until further notice,” listing Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Miami, Newark, Orlando, San Francisco, and Seattle. Emirates says it’s “working closely with aircraft manufacturers and the relevant authorities” The airline will ...

Federal authorities have a new plan to protect communities across the western US from increasingly explosive infernos by fighting fire with fire. In a shift from old-school firefighting strategies that attempted to stamp out naturally occurring blazes, the USDA and Forest Service will focus on thinning out forests to minimize “mega fires.” The agencies released a 10-year strategy today that includes removing trees and using “controlled burns” to reduce the amount of vegetation that feeds flames. The plan is to treat up to 20 million more acres of national forest land than is currently managed, plus work with partners to employ the tactics on an additional 30 million acres on other federal, state, tribal, and private lands. All in all, it’ll take an estimated $50 billion to accomplish, the ...

As the Senate Judiciary Committee inches towards passing legislation that could loosen Big Tech’s grasp on consumers, Big Tech is expectedly outraged. Both Apple and Google have written letters publicly opposing new pieces of legislation, while a coalition of smaller tech companies has voiced their support. The outcry comes in response to two pieces of proposed legislation: The American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which prevents Big Tech from favoring their services over others, and the Open App Markets Act, which aims to promote competition on app stores. Apple’s senior director of government affairs, Tim Powderly, penned a letter, viewed by Bloomberg, to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL), Antitrust Subcommittee Chair Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the panel’s ranking Repub...