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VR’s prop hunt is superb but virtual yard work isn’t for me – my favorite Meta Quest 3 games and apps for May 2024

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Howdy folks, I’m back to run you through some of the best Meta Quest 3 games and apps I’ve been playing over the past month so you know which ones you might want to pick up and try in May.

Since my last roundup, I’ve completed a month-long VR fitness experiment – where I worked out exclusively in VR for 30 days. It was a great experience, and I’ve since kept up with the apps I relied on (I even talk about one of them down below). I also moved across the country to a new home. It meant I had a little less time to enjoy my Meta Quest 3 recently, but I still made time to give these three titles a whirl.

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Computers

C’mon, Why Isn’t the New Apple Pencil Pro Backward Compatible?

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But what’s grinding my gears is that the new Apple Pencil Pro works only with the new 2024 iPad Pro and iPad Air models. Yes, even if you spent $1,099 on the 2022 iPad Pro two years ago, you cannot use this new “Pro” stylus on that model. You’ll have to upgrade. This is probably a good time to mention that the 2024 iPad Pro models are more expensive across the board, starting at $999 for the 11-incher and $1,199 for the 13-inch model (a $200 and $100 jump, respectively).

Know what’s worse? If you thought you could upgrade to the new iPad Pro or iPad Air from an older iPad and keep using the second-gen Apple Pencil you already own, think again. The new iPad Air and iPad Pro tablets only work with the two newest styli: the Apple Pencil (USB-C) that came out last year and the new Apple Pencil Pro. So if you are an avid Pencil user and want one of the new slates, you probably have to buy a new Apple Pencil.

Apple would not comment on the record about this when I attended an iPad hands-on event today. The company’s marketing materials do highlight a “new magnetic interface” for the Apple Pencil Pro, which is the interface the Apple Pencil uses to recharge, pair, and stay attached to the tablet. However, there are no details on what exactly is “new” about this interface besides the fact that Apple had to move its placement slightly to accommodate the iPad’s front-facing landscape camera. The new interface doesn’t offer faster or more efficient charging, faster pairing, or more secure magnets—nothing of the sort. It feels practically identical to the existing system.

And the Apple Pencil is a stylus. For the love of god, it should be one of the easiest things to make backward compatible. So what if the Squeeze gestures might not work on an older iPad? I don’t think it’s difficult to indicate that certain new features won’t be available on older tablets; Apple already does this with its software updates. Certain new features in iOS don’t work on older iPhones, even if the hardware is still supported. At the very least, let the customers who have bought your stylus from years past use it on the new models. I can’t find a good reason why a second-generation Apple Pencil would just not be compatible at all.

Person writing on an iPad with the Apple Pencil Pro

You can’t use this Pencil on older iPads.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

The only answer I am coming up with is the lack of processing power on older slates, but if the M2 chipset inside the 2022 iPad Pro is already not powerful enough to handle a few new stylus tricks, that doesn’t speak very well to the performance prowess of Apple’s silicon.

It’s all very silly. The Apple Pencil Pro, second-gen Apple Pencil, and USB-C Apple Pencil at the least should work on all of Apple’s current lineup, regardless if certain functions are not available. There probably also shouldn’t be four Pencils to choose from in the first place.

“It just works” is the motto often equated with everything Apple. Not so with the Apple Pencil.


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Featured

The UK’s quest to boost digital surveillance in 2024 isn’t over

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The King officially gave his final approval: the controversial reform to the UK’s Investigative Powers Act (IPA) is all set to become law. The government seeks to widen its digital surveillance capabilities “to protect the British people” in spite of technological change. Technologists and digital rights experts foresee a rather different outcome, however, reminiscent of a privacy nightmare. 

The so-called “Snooper’s Charter” is already highly controversial, experts say, and these amendments are seen as “significant privacy-weakening changes.” Worse still, this reform isn’t the only legislative effort to broaden the UK’s surveillance laws. With two more proposals on the table and the danger of the Online Safety Bill’s new powers looming in the background, it looks like we are only at the tip of the UK Surveillance State iceberg—which not even security software like VPN services can shield us from. 



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Life Style

Retractions are part of science, but misconduct isn’t — lessons from a superconductivity lab

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Growing superconductor crystals. Growing superconductor crystals. Infrared furnace used to grow superconducting crystals. This furnace focuses infrared light onto a rod, melting it at temperatures of about 2200 degrees Celsius.

Superconductivity has been demonstrated at extremely low temperatures, but it remains elusive at room temperatures.Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory/SPL

Research misconduct is hugely detrimental to science and to society. Defined as “fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results” by the US Office of Research Integrity, it violates trust in science and can do great harm to the wider public, scientific institutions and especially co-authors and students who had no part in the wrongdoing. In cases involving public funds, it squanders resources that could have been allocated to other research and it can erode lawmakers’ support for science.

Does the scientific community, as a whole, have appropriate processes for reporting, investigating and communicating about instances of potential misconduct? This question is not new. At Nature, we’re asking it again, after two separate studies that we published were subsequently retracted.

The studies1,2 were originally published in October 2020 and March 2023. The first was retracted in September 2022 and the second in November 2023. The corresponding author on both papers was Ranga Dias, a physicist studying superconductivity at the University of Rochester in New York, and a recipient of grants from the US National Science Foundation (NSF).

The papers by Dias and his co-authors claimed to report room-temperature superconductivity under extremely high pressures, each in different materials. Room-temperature superconducting materials are highly sought after. They could, for example, transform the efficiency of electricity transmission, from the smallest to the largest application. But high-pressure experiments are difficult and replicating them is complex.

Nature initiated an investigative process that resulted in the 2020 paper being retracted after members of the community told the journal they were troubled by aspects of the data being reported. Nature also initiated an investigation into the 2023 paper. However, this article was retracted at the request of most of Dias’s co-authors while the investigation was still ongoing.

Many details about this case came to light thanks to continued questions from the research community, including during post-publication peer review. Much credit must also go to the persistence of science journalists, including members of Nature’s news team (which is editorially independent of Nature’s journal team) and those from other publications.

What can journal editors, funding organizations and institutions that employ researchers learn from such cases? We have the same goal: producing and reporting rigorous research of the highest possible standard. And we need to learn some collective lessons — including on the exchange of information.

The University of Rochester conducted three inquiries, which are a preliminary step to making a decision about whether to perform a formal investigation into scientific misconduct. The inquiries were completed between January and October 2022. Each concluded that such an investigation was not warranted.

Earlier this month, Nature’s news team uncovered a 124-page report on a subsequent confidential investigation, performed at the NSF’s request. In it, a team of reviewers concluded after a ten-month assessment of evidence that it was more likely than not that Dias had committed data fabrication, falsification and plagiarism. The report is dated 8 February 2024, and the determination is regarding the two Nature papers, a 2021 study3 published in Physical Review Letters and a 2022 study4 in Chemical Communications — both of which were also retracted. However, the investigation has not yet officially been made public.

Some researchers have asked why Nature published Dias’s second paper in March 2023, when questions were being asked about the first one. Others have asked why the retraction notices didn’t spell out that there has been misconduct.

It’s important to emphasize that it’s Nature’s editorial policy to consider each submission in its own right. Second, peer review is not designed to identify potential misconduct. The role of a journal in such situations is to correct the scientific literature; it is for the institutions involved to determine whether there has been misconduct, and to do so only after the completion of due process, which involves a systematic evaluation of primary evidence, such as unmodified experimental data.

Access to raw data is fundamental to resolving cases of potential misconduct. It is also something we constantly think about in relation to publishing. Indeed, for certain kinds of data, Nature requires authors to deposit them in external databases before publication. But there must be more the research community — including funders and institutions — can all do to incentivize data sharing.

Another question is whether the matter could have been dealt with more quickly. Nature’s editors have been asking the same question: specifically, could there have been more, or better, communication between journals and institutions once evidence of potential misconduct came to light?

Last month, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), a non-profit organization that represents editors, publishers and research institutions, updated its guidelines on how publishers and universities could communicate better. The guidelines are full of important advice, including that institutions, not publishers, should perform integrity or misconduct investigations. Investigators require access to primary evidence. As employers and grant-givers, institutions are the appropriate bodies to mandate access to unmodified experimental data, correspondence, notebooks and computers and to interview relevant staff members — all essential parts of an investigation.

But often, journals need to start a process that could lead to retracting a study in the absence of an institutional investigation — or while an investigation, or inquiry, is ongoing5. Are cases such as this an opportunity for journals and institutions to discuss establishing channels through which to exchange information, in the interest of expedited outcomes — as part of due process? Nature’s editors would be willing to play a part in such discussions.

Retractions are part of publishing research, and all journals must be committed to retracting papers after due process is completed. Although a paper can be retracted for many reasons, when the cause is potential misconduct, institutions must conduct thorough investigations.

This case is not yet closed. Both the university and the funder need to formally announce the investigation’s results, and what action they intend to take. They should not delay any more than is necessary. When there is credible evidence of potential scientific misconduct, investigations should not be postponed. There is strength in collaborating to solve a problem, and nothing to be ashamed of in preserving the integrity of the scientific record.

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Rebel Moon Part 2 isn’t the epic sci-fi sequel we hoped for – here are 3 better sagas to stream

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Rebel Moon – Part 2: The Scargiver, the second instalment in Zack Snyder’s Star Wars-scale epic, is getting some decidedly mixed reviews. The Guardian says that while it’s fun, it’s also bombastic and derivative, Variety says the story’s worse than the first one but the battles are better, and Empire Magazine pretty much cuts it in half with a laser sword that just happens to resemble a lightsaber. 

According to the film magazine, the sequel is “marginally better than Rebel Moon – Part One, but still a weird, messy and humourless sci-fi”. Empire isn’t exactly waiting with bated breath for more movies, describing the tease of further adventures as “half-arsed” and saying that the second movie “gives you little reason to cheer the potential continuation of this Snyderverse“. 

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Windows 11 24H2 isn’t even here yet but Microsoft is already working on its follow-up that could pave the way for Windows 12

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Microsoft is already working away at what could be the first Moment update to follow the big Windows 11 24H2 update.

Currently, work is ongoing with finishing the 24H2 update which lands later this year – most likely it’ll roll out from September – but Microsoft is already looking past that upgrade to the first Moment update it’ll deliver for that release, likely early in 2025. (Assuming the Moment name is kept, and we’ll come back to that).

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Annual cybersecurity training isn’t working, so what’s the alternative?

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Cybersecurity and compliance training programs are now big business. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, the security awareness training market hit $5.6 billion in 2023 and is expected to surpass $10 billion in the next four years. This market boom is no surprise: cyber threats are rampant and large-scale attacks continue making headlines, most recently hitting the British Library, just to name a UK example, and disrupting their ability to function. All of this proves that every organization, no matter its size, is at risk of a breach.

Social engineering techniques, where an attacker targets the people who have access to systems (rather than the systems themselves) and manipulates them into handing over control, were the most popular malicious tactics in 2023. Businesses are therefore correct to recognize that people are a key vulnerability.

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AI isn’t a silver bullet – but it can get close if you consider the right AI tools

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AI and the way it shapes our society has come a long way from the early days in Alan Turing’s labs, from totally replacing smartphone apps to generating incredible new images in under two seconds. It’s no wonder then that many businesses are bought into and benefitting from AI-based tools and platforms. In fact, a recent IDC report found that 71% of businesses are already using AI while 22% plan to in the next 12 months.

However, to truly realize the benefits of AI, businesses need to carefully consider how much they are reliant on humans to assess the output of AI tools and solutions, and if this is actually enabling them to gain business value or make a meaningful difference. From this will come the opportunity to explore exactly how human beings and technology working in tandem is the answer to unlocking real AI implementation value.

So why aren’t businesses seeing gains from AI?

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You’re not wearing Vision Pro wrong and Apple isn’t hiding anything

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I would be lying if I said that wearing Apple Vision Pro feels like you’re wearing nothing, so I’m not surprised that some overly enthusiastic wearers are complaining of headaches, neck aches, and even black eyes. It’s enough to prompt me, if not Apple to say, “You’re wearing it wrong.”

Apple is not saying that, though. In fact, after Marketplace published its report on Wednesday, Apple didn’t respond directly to the claims but did point to its Vision Pro guidelines.

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Could Tesla be about to make its own silicon? Even Elon Musk isn’t sure — but let’s wait and see if it wants to take on Samsung and TSMC

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Although tech giants like Samsung and TSMC currently dominate the silicon landscape, Elon Musk has hinted that Tesla could potentially make its own chips in the future – and while the idea remains a tentative one, it’s certainly not beyond the realms of possibility.

Tesla spends a fortune on silicon. Its Dojo ExaPod supercomputer boasts a staggering 1.1 exaflops of computing power dedicated to training machine learning models for Tesla’s self-driving technology. Musk said in February 2024 that the company will spend “over a billion dollars” on Nvidia and AMD hardware this year just to stay competitive in the AI space. Making its own AI chips would be impossible for Tesla, but it could potentially produce chips for its cars.



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