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How to pick the best Apple laptop

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Now that the third generation of Apple’s in-house silicon, the M3 chip, has come to the MacBook Air, the company’s laptop lineup looks a little different. The M1-powered machines have been phased out and the M2 chip is only available in the 13-inch MacBook Air. After testing out configurations of every model Apple offers, our recommendation for most people is the MacBook Air with the M3 chip. But we still think the M2-powered Air is an impressive machine with plenty of life left (plus it has a new lower price).

Apple does things a little differently than PC makers, so we put together this guide to help you make sense of the various chips, screen-sizes, memory and storage capacities, as well as which models we think will work best for different users. Here are the best MacBooks to buy right now..

Factors to consider when buying a MacBook

Compared to PCs, Apple computers tend to have more streamlined specifications. The company has long been known for this simplicity, and the M-series “system-on-a-chip” condenses things even further. The M1, M2 and M3 chips combine, among other technologies, the CPU, graphics card and unified memory (RAM). Apple’s Neural Engine is included too, which is a specialized group of processor cores that handles machine learning tasks such as image analysis and voice recognition. While a unified chip means you have fewer decisions to make when picking a MacBook, there are still a few factors to consider, including the number of CPU cores, amount of RAM, storage capacity, screen size, and, obviously, price.

CPU cores

Currently the lowest-specced chip in a MacBook is the M2 in the 13-inch MacBook Air. It comes with an 8-core CPU and either an 8- or 10-core GPU. At the other end of the spectrum, the M3 Max chip is built with up to a 16-core CPU and a 40-core GPU. Cores are, in essence, smaller processing units that can handle different tasks simultaneously. Having more of them translates to the computer being able to run multiple programs and applications at once, while also smoothly processing demanding tasks like video editing and high-level gaming. In short, more cores allow for more advanced computing and better performance. But if your needs fall below professional-level gaming and cinematic video and audio editing, getting the highest number of cores is likely overkill — and after all, more cores equals higher cost and more power usage.

RAM

Your options for RAM, or in Apple’s terminology, Unified memory, varies depending on the chip you choose. The M2 and M3 chips can be paired with 8, 16 or 24GB of RAM. The M3 Pro chip has 18 or 36GB memory options, while the most powerful M3 Max chip supports 48, 64 or a whopping 128GB of RAM.

You’ve likely heard the analogy comparing memory to the amount of workspace available on a literal desktop surface, whereas storage is the amount of drawers you have to store projects to work on later. The larger the worktop surface, the more projects you can work on at once. The bigger the drawers, the more you can save for later.

More RAM is ideal for people who plan to work in multiple programs at once. And the more demanding each program is, the more RAM will be required. Extra memory can also come in handy if you’re the type who likes to have infinite numbers of tabs open on your browser. If your daily workflow doesn’t involve simultaneously using a vast number of memory-intensive programs, you can save yourself money and buy the RAM configuration that you’re most likely to actually use.

For casual users, 8GB may be enough, however, if you can afford an upgrade to 16GB of RAM, we recommend going doing so, as modern browsers tend to be pretty memory-hungry. Investing in more RAM now will give your new MacBook a longer lifespan of reliable use. It’s also important to keep in mind that, unlike most PCs, the RAM in current-model MacBooks is not user-upgradable, so you’ll want to get what you plan on needing at the outset.

Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch from the rear, showing off the Apple logo.

Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

Storage capacity (SSD)

Storage options range from 256GB of SSD for the M2 MacBook Air and 8TB of storage for the MacBook Pros with the M3 Max chip. If you want to rotate between a long roster of game titles or keep lots of high-res videos on hand, you’ll want more storage. If you’re mostly working with browser- and cloud-based applications, you can get away with a smaller-capacity configuration. That said, we recommend springing for 512GB of storage or more, if it’s within your budget. You’ll quickly feel the limits of a 256GB machine as it ages since the operating system alone takes up a good portion of that space. Having 1TB will feel even roomier and allow for more data storage over the life of your laptop.

When Apple announced the iPhone 15, the company also announced new iCloud+ storage storage plans, with subscriptions that allow up to 12TB of storage. You could also transfer files to an external storage device. But if you don’t want to pay for a monthly subscription and prefer the convenience of having immediate access to your files, it’s best to get the highest amount of storage space your budget allows for at the outset.

Screen size

MacBooks come in 13-, 14-, 15- and 16-inch sizes. That might not seem like a huge difference, but, as Engadget’s Nathan Ingraham noted when he reviewed the now-retired 15-inch M2-powered MacBook Air, “a bigger screen makes a surprising difference.” That’s especially true if you plan to use your laptop as an all-day productivity machine and won’t be using an external monitor. More space means you can more clearly view side-by-side windows and have a more immersive experience when watching shows or gaming.

But screen size is the main factor influencing weight. The 13-inch MacBook Air M2 weighs 2.7 pounds, whereas the top-end 16-inch MacBook Pro weighs 4.8 pounds. If you plan to travel a lot or swap your work locations regularly, a smaller screen will make life easier in the long run.

All MacBooks feature IPS LCD panels (in-plane switching, liquid crystal display), which Apple markets as Retina displays. The MacBook Air M1 has a Retina display. A Liquid Retina display comes with the M2 MacBook Air and the Liquid Retina XDR display comes with the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros. “Liquid” refers to the way the lighted portion of the display “flows” within the contours of the screen, filling the rounded corners and curving around the camera notch. “XDR” is what Apple calls HDR (high dynamic range).

Compared to most other laptops, MacBook displays are notably bright, sharp and lush. But one feature worth pointing out is another Apple marketing term: ProMotion. It’s the company’s term to describe a screen with a higher, 120Hz refresh rate, which results in smoother scrolling and more fluid-looking graphics. Only the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros offer ProMotion; the other models max out at 60Hz, which is perfectly fine for everyday browsing and typical workdays. But if you want buttery-smooth motion from your display, you’ll have to shell out more money for an upgraded model.

Price

When the MacBook Air M3 came out, Apple dropped the price of the base-model, 13-inch, M2-powered Air with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. At $999, it’s now the least expensive new MacBook you can get. Alternatively, you can spend up to $7,199 for the 16-inch MacBook Pro M3 Max with 128GB of RAM and 8TB of storage. Chip type, screen size, memory and storage capacity all influence the final price, which is why guides like this can help you determine just what you need (and what you don’t) so you can get the most cost-effective machine for you.

We recommend the MacBook Air M3 for most people, the MacBook Air M2 for students and those on a budget, and the 14- or 16-inch MacBook Pros for professionals. If you have extra money to spare once you’ve picked your machine, we recommend upgrading to at least 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage to make your machine as future-proof as possible.

Photo by Devindra Hardawar / Engadget

Screen size: 13” | Processor: M3 chip, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine | Storage capacity (SSD): 256GB | Memory: 8GB | Battery life: Up to 18 hours | Ports: MagSafe 3 charging, 3.5 mm jack, 2 x Thunderbolt/USB 4 | Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3

Read our full review of the MacBook Air M3

Our previous pick for the best overall MacBook was the MacBook Air with the M2 chip. The new M3-enabled MacBook Air isn’t a huge change from its predecessor — and that’s a good thing. Our laptop expert Devindra Hardawar reviewed the new model and confirmed that the latest MacBook Air builds on everything the M2 model got right: it has a great screen and full sound in a thin and lightweight aluminum unibody that feels premium. With the addition of the M3 chip, the performance is now more impressive, achieving even higher scores in our benchmark testing. There’s also support for Wi-Fi 6E in the new model, plus the Air can now handle two external displays instead of one, but only with the laptop lid closed.

The latest Air maintains the overall design of the previous model, with a uniformly thin profile (the wedge shape is officially gone from Apple’s lineup now that the M1 MacBook Air has been discontinued). Apple claims an 18-hour battery life with video playing and 15 hours of web browsing, and we can confirm that you’ll get significantly more than a single workday out of a charge. In Devindra’s tests, the machine dropped to 40 percent after ten straight hours playing fullscreen 4K video at full brightness.

Apple released both the M3-powered 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air simultaneously. We think the 13-inch model has the best combination of portability and performance. It weighs just 2.7 pounds and easily slips into a bag to take on the road. However, the 15-inch model may be worth it for those who constantly have dozens of windows open at once or dabble in media editing — though editing pros should probably opt for a MacBook Pro with the M3 Pro chip. The 15-inch model is also ideal for anyone dealing with visual impairment and would like an easier-to-read screen.

As for the screen itself, the 13-inch model has a Liquid Retina display with 2,560 x 1,664 resolution at 224 pixels per inch. That’s exactly the same as the M2 Air — but again, Apple didn’t mess with a good thing, sticking with a great-looking display that’s bright enough to use outside in sunlight. It still doesn’t have ProMotion, which means the refresh rate is limited to 60Hz. If you need that silky-smooth scrolling, you’ll have to bump up to a MacBook Pro.

To get the most out of the new chip, we recommend upgrading to 16GB of RAM. That will enable not just a full day of productivity, it’ll also let you play more serious games. Devindra was able to play both Lies of P in 1080p+ and the director’s cut of Death Stranding with smooth graphics at good resolutions — though he did note that you can’t crank up the graphics settings too high. The speakers are best-in-class and the webcam is great for video conferencing — particularly with Apple’s background blurring and brightness adjustments. Finally, the responsive keyboard and smooth trackpad are the ideal interface for what adds up to be a great computer.

Pros

  • Lightweight yet sturdy design
  • Fast performance from the M3 chip
  • Excellent speakers, keyboard and trackpac
  • Bright and clear screen
Cons

  • No USB-C on the right side
  • Limited to 60Hz refresh rate

$1,099 at Amazon

Photo by Devindra Hardawar / Engadget

Processor: M2 chip, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine | Storage capacity (SSD): 256GB | Memory: 8GB | Battery life: Up to 18 hours | Ports: MagSafe 3 charging, 3.5 mm jack, 2 x Thunderbolt/USB 4 | Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3

Read our full review of the MacBook Air M2

Before the release of the M3-enabled MacBook Air, the MacBook Air M2 was our pick for the best Apple laptop you can buy. Now it’s an extremely capable budget pick starting at $999 — the same list price as the now-retired M1 MacBook Air. In his review, Devindra called the M2 Air a “near-perfect Mac,” awarding it a high score of 96. This model received a complete refresh in 2022, and since the M3 is largely the same as the M2 from a design perspective, Engadget’s Dan Cooper says that the best thing about the new M3 Air may be the price drop it ushered in for the M2 model.

The M2’s gorgeous 13.6-inch Liquid Retina screen can hit up to 500 nits of brightness, making it easy to use outside. The 60Hz refresh rate doesn’t deliver the butter-smooth scrolling you get on Pro models, but it’s still lovely. The quad speaker array pumps out great sound, filling a room at max volume without distortion, and the three-mic array does a good job of picking up your voice for video calls. The 1080p webcam is an improvement over previous generations, and it even beats our top Windows laptop, Dell’s XPS 13 Plus, which still sports a 720p camera.

The M2 Air hangs on to its 3.5mm headphone jack and includes two USB-C Thunderbolt ports, for accessories like an external display, plus a MagSafe connector. The battery life is ample, lasting 16 hours and 30 minutes in our rundown test, which should be more than sufficient for a day (or two) of work.

The M2 processor finally gave the Air enough speed to play games, particularly those from Apple Arcade. Streaming and cloud gaming work well through Safari, and you’ll find a handful of compatible titles on Steam. However, if gaming is your main goal, you may want to upgrade to an M3 model, or go outside Apple’s offerings all together as not every AAA release is natively compatible with macOS. Our review unit performed well in benchmark tests, beating the Air M1 and nearly matching the performance of the 13-inch MacBook Pro M2. It’s a fanless system which means it’s quiet, but to keep things cool, the CPU does have to be throttled occasionally.

Overall, it’s an excellent choice for everyday use and can handle most tasks. Of course, if you’re planning on doing intensive video editing, you’ll likely want something more powerful, such as the MacBook Pro M3, but the Air is an affordable, multipurpose, ultraportable laptop.

For $999 you get the M2 chip with an 8-Core GPU, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. We did notice better performance when the RAM was upped to 16GB, but if you’re trying to keep things under $1,000, the base model is still plenty capable for everyday productivity. You can also look into a refurbished model, which you can buy directly from Apple with a year-long warranty.

The 15-inch MacBook Air M2 is no longer officially part of Apple’s lineup, but many retailers still have some backstock of the larger model, and again, taking advantage of refurbished offers is a good way to go in this case. In his review, Engadget’s Nate Ingraham said the extra couple inches on the 15-inch screen made a surprising difference.

Pros

  • Bright and colorful screen
  • Clear and full sound
  • Thin and light design
  • Speedy performance for everyday use
Cons

  • Refresh rate only 60Hz
  • Webcam image is drab

$980 at Amazon

Photo by Devindra Hardawar / Engadget

Processor: M3 chip, 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU | Storage capacity (SSD): 512GB | Memory: 16GB | Battery life: Up to 22 hours | Ports: MagSafe 3 charging, 3.5 mm jack, 2 x Thunderbolt/USB 4, HDMI, SDXC slot | Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3

Read our full review of the Apple MacBook Pro M3

During a late-night, pre-Halloween event, Apple revealed its new M3 chip along with the new MacBook Pros that would house it. They also officially discontinued the 13-inch touch bar MacBook Pro. There’s a new base model Pro with 8GB of memory, 512GB of storage and the standard M3 chip (the M2 generation was only available with the M2 Pro or M2 Max chips). It sells for $1,599, making it the most affordable 14-inch Pro model yet.

Unfortunately we don’t recommend you grab that one. You’ll at least want to spring for a model with 16GB of RAM to get the most out of your new M3 machine. Beyond that, it’s hard to go wrong with these new MacBooks. As Devindra points out in his review, these new chips are “incredibly efficient and powerful” and the laptops themselves are as “elegant as ever.”

For multimedia professionals, we recommend bumping up to the M3 Pro chip with an 11-core CPU and 14-core GPU. You can grab one with a 14-inch screen, 18GB of memory and 512GB of SSD for $1,999. If you’ve got demanding video and/or audio projects with big timelines, you may want to jump up to the 16-inch M3 Max MacBook Pro with a 14-core CPU and 30-core GPU. That configuration will run you $3,499 paired up with 36GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. For something in between those two picks, you could go for the 14-inch M3 Pro with a 12-core CPU and 18-core GPU paired with 18GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. It combines the speed of the M3 Pro chip, without the higher price of the Max chip, running you a more palatable $2,399.

Apart from the chips, the hardware on the M3 MacBook Pros remains largely the same. You still get a bright and vibrant MiniLED Liquid Retina XDR display with a 120Hz refresh rate for smooth scrolling and animations.

The crisp, punchy sound from the six-speaker array is better than what most laptops can deliver and the built-in mics are great for video calls. It has the same array of ports as the M2 Pros, including an SD card slot, headphone jack, HDMI port and three Thunderbolt 4 sockets plus the MagSafe charging port.

As for battery life, our rundown tests outperformed Apple’s listed estimates by a couple hours, getting 24 and a half hours on the 14-inch model and 20 more minutes than that with the 16-inch Pro. In real-world use, it took two days before needing to hook the laptops back up to the grid.

Pros

  • Good selection of ports
  • Nearly 24-hour battery life
  • Crisp and bright display
  • Powerfully fast M3 chips
Cons

  • Expensive
  • 8GB of RAM on base model isn’t enough

$1,715 at Amazon

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Samsung’s new mid-rangers deliver security tech never seen on the A-series smartphone

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Samsung is expanding its mid-range smartphones by adding two new, more secure models to its A-series: the Galaxy A35 5G and the A55 5G.

The pair’s robust security comes in multiple forms. Chief among them is the introduction of the tech giant’s Knox Vault software. What this does, according to the announcement, is it physically isolates sensitive data like passwords or encryption keys away from the smartphone’s “main processor and memory.” That way, if the device is somehow compromised, your information is safe. Knox Vault’s inclusion is notable because it marks the first time it’s being seen on a mid-ranger. Until recently, the software has been exclusive to high-end models like the Galaxy S24.

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Former PlayStation chairman sees exclusivity as ‘Achilles’ heel’ of industry, urges companies to ‘get that funnel wider’

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Former Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) chairman Shawn Layden addressed the challenges facing the modern games industry in a brand new interview, calling console exclusives the “Achilles’ heel” of the video games landscape. 

Speaking with VentureBeat, Layden stated: “When your costs for a game exceed $200 million, exclusivity is your Achilles’ heel. It reduced your addressable market. Particularly when you’re in the world of live-service gaming or free-to-play. Another platform is just another way of opening the funnel, [and] getting more people in. In a free-to-play world, as we know, 95% percent of those people will never spend a nickel. 

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Best monitors for trading in 2024

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The best monitors for trading are an essential part of your setup for navigating the financial markets and doing so profitably. These monitors will load your charts faster, run them without any lags or delays, and put little to no strain on your eyes, thereby allowing you to sit for long hours and execute trades with absolute perfection. 

That said, with so many monitors flooding the market, finding one suitable for your trading style and preferences is nothing short of daunting. 

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China–US climate collaboration concerns as Xie and Kerry retire

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John Kerry, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua at the UNFCCC COP28 Climate Conference in Dubai.

John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua’s friendship kept US–China climate negotiations rolling even when the two countries disagreed on other matters.Credit: Fadel Dawod/Getty

Researchers are regarding the parallel retirements of the US and Chinese climate envoys with apprehension, saying that the change could rattle the current co-operative spirit between the world’s two biggest carbon emitters.

John Kerry’s term as US climate envoy ended on 6 March. In January, his counterpart in China, Xie Zhenhua, also officially retired as climate envoy.

The friendship between the two men was seen as integral to maintaining an open door on climate issues, even when the powerful countries did not see eye-to-eye on other matters. “We are indeed turning a page when it comes to the US–China climate relationship,” says Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub, Asia Society Policy Institute, in Washington DC. “I hope it still remains one of the rare bright spots.”

But bigger concerns for researchers in the year ahead are US elections and broader geopolitical tensions, which they say could undermine progress towards achieving global climate goals.

A workable, healthy relationship between the United States and China is a prerequisite for collective climate action, says Li. It was crucial to the success of the 2015 Paris climate agreement and will play a defining role as countries finalize their climate commitments, which are expected to be submitted by early 2025, he says.

Climate veteran Xie has been replaced by Liu Zhenmin, a diplomat. In Kerry’s place, John Podesta, a strategist for the Democratic party, has been appointed senior advisor to the president for international climate policy, according to a spokesperson for the US Department of State. The role is not a direct replacement of Kerry’s position, but Podesta will dedicate significant time to international climate policy working with the special climate envoy office, and continue to oversee implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, a massive climate and tax bill signed by current President Joe Biden in 2022, the spokesperson said.

In a public interview on 1 March, Kerry said that he and Xie will continue to maintain connections through their respective work at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Good friends

Xie and Kerry’s friendship and understanding of climate issues allowed them to broker agreement, “despite the vicissitudes of the US–China relationship”, says Barbara Finamore, who studies environmental policy and law with a focus on China at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in the United Kingdom, and who is based in Londonderry, New Hampshire.

Kerry visited China three times as climate envoy, including at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when China had imposed strict restrictions on travel.

The two found ways to engage even when tensions escalated, says Fan Dai, director of the California–China Climate Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. For example, in August 2022, Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the US House of Representatives, made a high-profile trip to Taiwan. China responded by imposing a year-long freeze on climate talks with the United States. During that time, Xie and Kerry remained in contact so they could be “instantly ready” to restart official talks when the situation improved, says Dai.

And in November 2023, the two met in Sunnylands, California to re-establish formal dialogue on topics such as energy policy and transportation. During their tenures, they facilitated stronger cooperation between cities, provinces and regions in the two countries. “Their work tried to carve out a special space for climate policy,” says Li.

Xie and Kerry are considered “heroes”, says Gang He, an energy-systems modeller at Baruch College in Manhattan, New York City. “They represent the height of what can be achieved with climate diplomacy.”

Timeline: a decade of US–China climate relations

November 2014: Then-US-President Barack Obama and Chinese president Xi Jinping make a US–China joint announcement on climate change, including setting post-2020 targets, and expanding joint research on clean-energy.

December 2015: John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua represent their nations and sign the Paris climate accord.

June 2017: Then-US-President Donald Trump announces US withdrawal from Paris agreement.

January 2021: Newly elected US President Joe Biden rejoins Paris accord on his first day in office.

January 2021: Biden appoints Kerry special presidential envoy for climate.

February 2021: Xie Zhenhua is appointed China’s special climate envoy.

April 2021: Kerry visits Shanghai, China — the first official in Biden’s administration to make an official visit to China. Following the visit, the two countries sign a joint statement to co-operate on climate change.

April 2021: President Biden hosts a Leaders Summit on Climate, attended by Xi.

August–September 2021: Kerry visits China for a second time as climate envoy.

October 2021: United States and China agree to monitor and control methane emissions at the Glasgow climate meeting.

August 2022: Nancy Pelosi, then -speaker of US House of Representatives, visits Taiwan, and China responds by suspending climate talks.

July 2023: Kerry visits Beijing for the third time as climate envoy.

November 2023: United States and China announce that they will enhance co-operation to address the climate crisis, and restart formal working groups, in a joint statement signed at Sunnylands, California.

December 2023: Xie and Kerry meet at the climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, their last conference as climate envoys.

January 2024: China officially announces the retirement of Xie, and names his replacement as climate envoy to be Liu Zhenmin.

March 2024: Kerry’s term as climate envoy ends. John Podesta assumes role as Senior Advisor to the President for International Climate Policy, leading the administration’s international climate agenda.

New envoys

Researchers say that Xie’s and Kerry’s departures bring uncertainty, but are reassured by the climate credentials of their replacements. Still, it remains to be seen how well they will work together, they say.

Liu is a long-time foreign-services bureaucrat, who has worked at the United Nations and been involved in climate negotiations since the mid-1990s. “He is not a stranger to climate issues,” says Li. But engaging in detailed negotiations in a highly politicized environment will be a “learning process”, for Liu, says Wang Yi, who studies energy and environment public policy at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institutes of Science and Development in Beijing, and who has been a member of the Chinese delegation in global climate negotiations.

Dai will pay close attention to how Liu responds to unfriendly questions from journalists about China’s climate actions. Xie always responded in a “sophisticated” way, relying on lots of data, she says.

Another challenge for Liu will be co-ordinating multiple agencies, Dai says. Climate change is an issue that cuts across energy, natural resources and the economy. In China, it falls under the remit of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, which typically has had a narrow scope of environmental protection, pollution and enforcement, says Dai.

Podesta has advised multiple US presidents, including on clean-energy innovation for Biden, and founded a think-tank, the Center for American Progress in Washington DC. “He is brilliant on climate issues,” says Finamore.

The good personal relationship between Xie and Kerry made engagement easier, but behind these individuals are the interests and powers of the countries they represent, says Wang. For now, the United States and China have shown their willingness to co-operate on climate. “They could have decided not to appoint any successors,” says Finamore. “The fact that they are even there is very important.”

US elections

But the two won’t have much time to get to know each other before what researchers see as a major hurdle comes into view — the US presidential election in November 2024. “The biggest uncertainty is American politics,” says Wang.

Biden’s predecessor and 2024 election opponent, Donald Trump, withdrew the United States from the 2015 Paris climate agreement when he was president. “I’m hoping that history will not repeat again,” says Wang. Biden rejoined the agreement on his first day in office.

“We definitely have more hope for a Biden world, because that means more consistency,” says Dai.

Others worry that geopolitical tensions and a focus on competition could scupper progress. “The climate agenda remains rather fragile in the context of the broader US–China relationship,” says Li. “What if another Pelosi-like event happens?”

But researchers say that a lot of progress has been made to formalize ties that should withstand a change in administration and be resilient to geopolitics. Dai lists several initiatives occurring at the sub-national level, including between Kentucky and Shanxi; Seattle and Shenzhen; Houston, Chengdu, New York and Guangzhou. Those, and collaborations between academics and companies create avenues for technical exchange regardless of which party is in power, says Dai.

As He puts it: “if the river freezes over, water will still flow underneath”.

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AMD CEO offers to help AI Startup that uses Radeon 7900 XTX GPUs — but will it backfire for Lisa Su as she seemingly supports use of consumer parts in enterprise use cases

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We’ve written previously about tinybox. The $15,000 AI server system is powered by AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards and can reportedly deliver 37% of Nvidia H100 compute performance.

It seems however, that the creators of tinybox have run into problems with bugs affecting the Radeon-based platform. After parent company tiny corp posted several tweets expressing frustration with AMD’s AI acceleration toolkit – in which it cheekily tagged AMD rivals Nvidia and Intel – AMD’s CEO, Lisa Su, stepped in, saying her team was working to fix the issues.



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Biden seeks to boost science funding — but his budget faces an ominous future

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US President Biden arrives to speak during an event at the National Institutes of Health in 2023.

President Biden visits the US National Institutes of Health, which under his proposed budget would receive roughly the same amount of funding in the 2025 fiscal year as in the 2023 fiscal year.Credit: Chris Kleponis/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty

US President Joe Biden today proposed modest increases in federal spending on science and innovation for the 2025 fiscal year. But that doesn’t mean his new budget will face an enthusiastic reception in Congress, which decides how much the government will spend.

Biden, a Democrat, has sought increases for many agencies in previous years but has run up against opposition among Republicans on Capitol Hill. Biden’s spending proposals for the 2024 fiscal year, which began in October, fared no better: in June 2023, after months of sparring, Democrats and Republicans agreed to spending limits for the 2024 fiscal year ― and for the 2025 fiscal year, likely quashing hopes that additional money will be poured into science.

Even after the June deal, the two sides continued to wrangle over the final numbers for the 2024 fiscal year. On 8 March, the Senate finally approved a spending package that cements the 2024 budget for most of the government’s largest science agencies. The House passed the bill on 6 March, and Biden is expected to sign it into law.

Against that backdrop, Biden’s newly published budget proposal “is nothing more than a showcase for the policies and the spending that the White House would like to pursue if it had the ability to do so, which it doesn’t,” says Michael Lubell, a physicist at the City College of New York in New York City, who tracks federal science-policy issues. “My guess is that none of this is going anywhere.”

Science advocates are already expressing dismay over some aspects of the new White House proposal. For example, the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which was signed into law in 2022 to boost investments in semiconductors and science, authorized up to $35 billion in funding for science and innovation at major science agencies in the 2025 fiscal year, but the White House has requested only $20 billion, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington DC. Nor has Congress followed through on those commitments.

The political backpedalling on the CHIPS and Science commitments is disappointing, says Joanne Carney, chief government relations officer for the AAAS. “It’s sending a signal to competing nations that we are not taking this seriously.”

Here are the White House’s proposed budget numbers for fiscal year 2025 for some key science-related agencies. Also noted is how each agency’s proposed funding compares to the amount appropriated for the 2024 fiscal year. The exception is for the National Institutes of Health, whose budget is compared to the amount appropriated for the 2023 fiscal year.

National Institutes of Health: $46.4 billion, 0.6% increase

The administration’s request for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would keep the agency’s budget nearly flat for what will probably be the second year in a row. Lawmakers are still negotiating how much the NIH will receive in the 2024 fiscal year, but it is unlikely that the agency’s budget will be higher than in 2023. NIH director Monica Bertagnolli acknowledged in December that the 2024 appropriations process will be “painful”, particularly for early-career researchers. “A flat budget is a contracting budget,” she said.

In addition to the $46.4 billion the White House has requested for the agency in 2025, it has also asked for an additional $1.4 billion to support the Cancer Moonshot programme, which aims to at least halve the US cancer death rate in 25 years, and $1.5 billion for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), which was created in 2022 to fund high-risk, high-reward biomedical research. The White House has also requested that the Department of Health and Human Services, the parent agency of the NIH, receive $20 billion for biodefence and pandemic preparedness, of which $2.7 billion would go to the NIH.

But it is unlikely that Congress will fund these additional programmes in full, says Ellie Dehoney, the senior vice president of policy and advocacy at Research!America, a non-profit organization in Arlington, Virginia, that advocates for health research. Overall, “these are disappointing numbers”, Dehoney says. This is not “what the United States needs to stay in the lead” of biomedical research, she says.

NASA: $25.4 billion, 2% increase

Biden requested significantly less for NASA for the 2025 fiscal year than he did for the 2024 fiscal year, but his new request would still provide the agency with a little more funding than Congress appropriated. NASA’s science budget would increase by 3%, with much of that boost going to the agency’s earth science division for restructuring several planned Earth-observing missions. NASA’s planetary sciences division would receive $2.7 billion; one major uncertainty is how much of that would go towards retrieving rock samples from the Martian surface. Last year the sample-return mission was estimated to cost as much as $11 billion; NASA and the European Space Agency are now looking at whether they can reduce the price tag.

The proposed budget would slash funding for the operation of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, a pre-eminent telescope that has been operating since 1999. The agency would also reduce funds for the operations of the Hubble Space Telescope, though much less drastically than for Chandra.

Environmental Protection Agency: $11 billion, 20.1% increase

The White House is seeking a substantial boost for the US Environmental Protection Agency in the 2025 fiscal year, but Congress moved in the opposite direction last week: the agency’s overall budget in the 2024 fiscal year will be 9.6% lower than in the 2023 fiscal year. The picture is similar for the agency’s science and technology programmes, which are taking a 5.5% hit in the current fiscal year, leaving them with $758.1 million. The White House is now calling for an increase of 33.2% for those programmes in the 2025 fiscal year, which would bring the budget for science and technology to more than $1 billion.

National Science Foundation: $10.2 billion, 12% increase

Biden’s request for the National Science Foundation (NSF) is 12% above the funds appropriated for the 2024 fiscal year. The request includes $2 billion for priorities outlined in the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, $1.4 billion for climate research and $300 million for infrastructure for large-scale research projects. The budget explicitly supports a single US extremely large telescope rather than the two such projects sought by astronomers.

The spending bill finalized last week imposed an 8.3% funding cut on the NSF — a “catastrophic” move for science, says Matt Hourihan, associate director of R&D and advanced industry at the Federation of American Scientists, an advocacy group based in Washington DC. But Biden’s request constitutes “a good budget that takes us in the right direction”, he says.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: $9.7 billion, 5.7% increase

The Biden administration requested $9.68 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the agency responsible for protecting public health. That would be a 5.7% increase over the agency’s funding for the 2023 fiscal year, but it is a smaller request than the $11.6 billion budget that the administration proposed for the 2024 fiscal year. “The request comes from, unfortunately, a return to austerity overall for discretionary funding,” says Dara Lieberman, director of government relations at Trust for America’s Health (TFAH), an advocacy group in Washington DC.

The budget includes substantial funding for efforts to modernize public health data systems: $225 million, a 28.5% increase over the amount appropriated for the 2023 fiscal year.

Department of Energy Office of Science: $8.6 billion, 4.2% increase

The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, a major funder of research in the physical sciences, has weathered the budget storm better than most. The deal finalized by Congress last week increased the office’s budget for the 2024 fiscal year to more than $8.2 billion — a 1.7% increase over 2023 — and the White House is seeking another increase in the 2025 fiscal year.

The outlook is mixed for other parts of the DOE. The request for clean-energy programmes within the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, for example, is $5.1 billion. That is more than 46% higher than the amount that Congress appropriated for the 2024 fiscal year, but 9.4% less than the amount appropriated for the 2023 fiscal year. One clear winner is the National Nuclear Security Administration, an agency within the DOE that maintains the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons: its budget for the 2024 fiscal year is $19.1 billion, an increase of nearly $2 billion over the 2023 fiscal year, and the White House is seeking more than $19.8 billion for the 2025 fiscal year.

Urgent question

The White House proposal sets the stage for a new round of budget negotiations, but for Carney the most pressing question is how and when Congress will resolve questions about funding the rest of the government in the current fiscal year. As it stands, much of the federal government — including the National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research — is poised to shut down in less than two weeks unless lawmakers act. And according to the budget agreement reached between Biden and the Republicans last year, further spending cuts will kick in if the Congress doesn’t finalize the appropriations process by the end of April.

“The clock is ticking,” Carney says.

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Quordle today – hints and answers for Tuesday, March 12 (game #778)

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It’s time for your daily dose of Quordle hints, plus the answers for both the main game and the Daily Sequence spin off. 

Quordle is the only one of the many Wordle clones that I’m still playing now, around two years after the daily-word-game craze hit the internet, and with good reason: it’s fun, but also difficult.

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WhatsApp’s new security label will let you know if future third-party chats are safe

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WhatsApp is currently testing a new in-app label letting you know whether or not a chat room has end-to-end encryption (E2EE).

WABetaInfo discovered the caption in the latest Android beta. According to the publication, it’ll appear underneath the contact and group name but only if the conversation is encrypted by the company’s “Signal Protocol” (Not to be confused with the Signal messaging app; the two are different.) The line is meant to serve as a “visual confirmation” informing everyone that outside forces cannot read what they’re talking about or listen to phone calls. WABetaInfo adds that the text will disappear after a few seconds, allowing the Last Seen indicator to take its place. At this moment, it’s unknown if the two lines will change back and forth or if Last Seen will permanently take the E2EE label’s place.



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I watched Top Gun: Maverick on a 29-channel speaker system with 16 subwoofers at the McIntosh House of Sound, and the experience was otherworldly

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I recently attended a screening of the movie Top Gun: Maverick at New York City’s House of Sound, a showcase for state-of-the-art home theater and the best stereo speakers that was constructed from the ground up by the McIntosh Group, owner of luxury audio brands such as McIntosh Labs, Sonus Faber, and Sumiko Phono Cartridges.

Film fans will know that Top Gun: Maverick won an Oscar in 2023 for “Best Sound.” At the event, Mark Weingarten, the production mixer, was on hand to share stories about his experience on the movie. Weingarten touched on topics such as working with Tom Cruise and the rest of the cast to get clean, intelligible dialogue, often as they flew in actual high-speed fighter jets with the cooperation of the U.S. military, which I’ll discuss in more detail below.

But, let’s first back up a second. The McIntosh Group’s previous product showroom and experience center, the World of McIntosh townhouse, was closed several years ago amidst the pandemic. In September of 2023, the group renamed the showroom House of Sound and relaunched it in a gorgeous new location in New York City’s Chelsea district.

McIntosh house of sound TV over fireplace showing blue VU meter

The iconic McIntosh blue amplifier VU meter displayed on a TV at the House of Sound (Image credit: Future / Howard Kneller)

In the House 

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