WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 14: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) talks to reporters during a ... [+] news conference at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center on February 14, 2024 in Washington, DC.) The Speaker is currently working to pass a continuing resolution to prevent a government shutdown.Getty ImagesCongress is poised to deliver physicians their fifth consecutive Medicare pay cut.The recent congressional spending package failed to adjust physician reimbursement rates, leaving doctors to absorb a 6.3% reduction in compensation. This comprises a direct 2.8% pay cut and a 3.5% increase in medical inflationor the rising costs of operating a practiceas calculated by Medicares economic indices.However, House Republican leadership has now assured the GOP Doctors Caucus that they will block these physician payment reductions in the upcoming budget reconciliation process.Will this commitment suffice to preserve Medicare access for patients?How Is Congress Going To Cut Physician Pay?Congress did not enact new legislation explicitly reducing physician pay; instead, it permitted a scheduled Medicare payment cut to proceed through inaction in the forthcoming continuing resolution. This passive approach effectively endorses a decline in reimbursement rates, exacerbating financial pressures on physicians.Physicians across the country are outraged that Congresss proposed spending package locks in a devastating fifth consecutive year of Medicare cuts, threatening access to care for 66 million Medicare patients, noted Bruce Scott, MD, President of the American Medical Association. Despite repeated warnings, lawmakers are once again ignoring the dire consequences of these cuts and their impact both on patients and the private practices struggling to keep their doors open.The ripple effects reach beyond physicians, endangering patient care continuity as practices confront closure or consolidation. Rural providers, often in traditionally Republican districts and already operating with limited resources, may disproportionately shoulder this burden, exacerbating healthcare access disparities. The lack of inflationary adjustments in Medicares physician fee schedule intensifies this crisis, threatening the programs sustainability and equity.Why Is Congress Planning To Cut Physician Pay?The Republican-led House prioritized other concerns, such as defense spending and border stability. Balancing tax cuts with the preservation of government programs consistently presents a political challenge. Moreover, carving out an exception for physicians in the continuing resolution could complicate matters, potentially inviting demands from other interest groups.Cuts to physician payments emerge as the most politically feasible short-term solution, given constrained fiscal resources. Indeed, Congressional Budget Office analysis indicates that Republicans cannot meet their budget targets without reducing Medicaid or Medicare access cuts.Reducing tangible benefitsbeyond mere waste and fraudrisks touching a political third rail. Physician payment cuts offer both direct and indirect cost savings. The direct benefit stems from the obvious and pragmatic reduced reimbursement rates, while the indirect advantage arises again from downstream ripple effects: fewer patients seen, surgeries performed, and medications prescribed. Although physicians account for only 20% of healthcare spending, their clinical decisions drive substantial system-wide costs. For instance, if a surgery is not performed, there is no need for anesthesia, hospital admission, medications, rehabilitation or diagnostic imaging, amplifying the fiscal impact of these reductions.Why Do Medicare Cuts Matter To Physicians?Physician payments remain untethered from inflation adjustments under current Medicare reimbursement frameworks. Meanwhile, hospitals receive regular market-based annual update to offset rising operational costs, including a 2.9% increase in 2025. In contrast, physicians face static rates constrained by budget-neutrality provisionsarchaic rules embedded in a convoluted policy landscape. Consequently, real physician compensation has plummeted 33% since 2001 when adjusted for inflation, while hospital payments have surged 60% over the same period. Escalating practice costs exacerbate this disparity, delivering a dual blow to providers. Moreover, again this ripple effect extends beyond physicians, ultimately jeopardizing patients access to care. This systemic imbalance demands urgent reform to align reimbursement with economic realities and safeguard Medicares foundational promise.GOP leadership has the opportunity to pivot toward equitable policy solutions, prioritizing sustainable physician payment structures to preserve patient-provider ecosystems. Without intervention, access gaps will widen, undermining the programs efficacy.In the end, this wont be about doctors it will be about patients.Why Do Medicare Payment Cuts Matter To Patients?Medicare patients will face escalating barriers to care access due to systemic reimbursement disparities. Private insurance consistently outpaces Medicare, reimbursing physicians approximately 43% more for identical services, despite anchoring its rates to Medicares benchmarks. No sustainable business model can endure perpetually increasing demands for diminishing returns. Consequently, physician practices face closure or consolidation into larger healthcare conglomerates, eroding independent care delivery.This especially hits the rural areas harder where more patients tend to have Medicare insurance. A survey from the AMA in 2025 is that 20% of rural providers are planning to leave patient care in the next two years. They dont have the margin.Another often-overlooked aspect of this issue is that physician practices frequently operate with reduced staff. Practices with leaner teams, unable to fully fund operations amid stagnant reimbursements, often struggle to maintain quality customer service. This manifests in an overreliance on automated phone systems, fewer receptionists, longer office wait times, delays in prescription processing, and slower responses to routine test resultseffectively spreading unchanged workloads across a diminished workforce. Such conditions undermine the success of the patients-physician relationship.Without policy recalibration, these trends threaten Medicares accessibility mandate.Will Republicans Save The Day With A Party Line Bill?Politico reported that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) have assured a key member of the GOP Doctors Caucus that they will address physician pay during reconciliation. This effort would be embedded within the broader framework of President Trumps key agenda items. The proposal would take the form of a party-line billone that party members are expected to support out of loyalty or ideological unity, typically reflecting the partys core priorities or platform. For physicians, this integration could prove to be beneficial. With cautious optimism, it could be a welcomed long-term integration for physicians.However, this approach implies that physicians would face a pay cut during the continuing resolution process or the immediate vote on a temporary funding measure to keep the government operational. Nevertheless, this could ultimately benefit physicians if long-term, permanent changes are implemented, as suggested by Rep. Gregory Murphy, M.D. (R-N.C.). Rep. Murphy, a physician himself, has spearheaded efforts to ensure patient access and adequate Medicare reimbursement. "Doctors in America are struggling like never before because of ongoing Medicare cuts, and thats putting millions of seniors at risk of losing access to affordable, quality health care," Rep. Murphy previously stated in a Forbes interview.The GOPs reconciliation pledge offers a potential lifeline, intertwined with partisan priorities. This is not mere budgetary fine-tuningits a high-stakes gamble on whether doctors and their patients can withstand another blow before the healthcare system buckles.

The one-person unicorn model doesnt eliminate teamsit reimagines them.

WTF?! Have you ever wished that your monitor contained an air purification unit? Probably not, but this seemingly niche product has become a reality thanks to Asus, which is making three of these displays measuring different sizes and priced from $130 to $359. Asus says its new VU Air Ionizer series is designed to enhance users' well-being. The main attraction is the air ionizer found in each of the monitors. Asus claims it effectively removes pollen, allergen, and other pollutants, and reduces 90% of airborne dust in just three hours.The ionizer has an effective coverage area of 1m, which should be enough for anyone sitting in front of one of these monitors. It doesn't require filters, either.The displays themselves are available in 23.8-inch, 27-inch, and 34-inch sizes. The two smaller models feature an IPS panel, 1080p resolutions on the 16:9 screens, and 250 nits brightness. They also offer 1,300:1 contrast ratios, 178 viewing angles, and up to 100Hz refresh rates.The 34-inch Asus VU34WCIP-W monitor uses a VA panel and has a 3440 x 1440 (21:9) ultrawide resolution, a 3,000:1 contrast ratio, and reaches 300 nits. The 100Hz refresh rate and 1ms MPRT response times remain the same.Another interesting feature of these monitors is their packaging. Asus says that rather than just throwing the cardboard boxes away for recycling, as is the norm, they are designed to be folded into different shapes and repurposed as desk accessories.The packaging for the smaller models can be folded into a phone holder, desk organizer, and a small laptop stand, while the larger monitor's box can turn into a phone holder, desk organizer, a laptop stand, and a file holder. The laptop stands and phone holders have been designed to promote proper posture and reduce neck and back strain, according to Asus. // Related StoriesOne could argue that with some spare time and a few materials, most packaging could be turned into similar accessories, but being designed specifically for this purpose is a nice touch.If you do want to breathe easier at your desk, the 23.8-inch Asus VU249HFI-W starts at just $129.99. The 27-inch Asus VU279HFI-W is $159.99, and the 34-inch Asus VU34WCIP-W is $359.99. Buyers also get one free month of Adobe Creative Cloud to sweeten the deal.Asus is no stranger to adding unconventional features to traditional PC hardware. Last month, the company revealed a scented wireless mouse that emits a customizable aroma.

Rumor mill: Apple is undertaking one of the most significant software overhauls in its history, aiming to revamp the user interface across iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices. This ambitious update, set for release later this year, will fundamentally transform the look and feel of Apple's operating systems, enhancing consistency and the user experience. The updates are part of iOS 19 and iPadOS 19, codenamed "Luck," and macOS 16, dubbed "Cheer," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. He cited sources who requested anonymity since the project has yet to be officially announced. These major upgrades will introduce a new design language while simplifying navigation and controls.Apple's push for consistency across platforms aims to create a seamless user experience when switching between devices. Currently, applications, icons, and window styles vary significantly across macOS, iOS, and visionOS, leading to a disjointed experience.For example, visionOS features circular app icons, a simplified window management system, and an immersive interface with 3D depth and shadows. While some of these elements won't directly translate to the 2D environments of iOS and macOS, they have influenced Apple's design direction, Gurman noted. Despite lower-than-expected Vision Pro sales, its software has provided valuable insights into crafting more engaging interfaces.Apple is stopping short of merging its operating systems a strategy adopted by other tech giants. Instead, the company believes that keeping them separate allows for better device-specific design while encouraging consumers to buy multiple Apple products.The software overhaul has become a major focus for Apple's engineering and design teams. It is led by Alan Dye, a veteran Apple executive with a background in fashion and design. Dye, who played a key role in developing the Apple Watch's operating system and iOS 7, now oversees a team of over 300 software designers. His influence has grown since the departure of legendary design chief Jony Ive in 2019. // Related StoriesThe stakes are high for Apple as it seeks to reignite demand following a period of sluggish growth. Despite strong first-quarter 2025 results driven by services and Apple Intelligence, iPhone sales Apple's largest revenue source unexpectedly declined during the 2024 holiday season.The upcoming software updates are expected to be a centerpiece of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

Developer ZA/UMs next game is C4, as brand new espionage game that received a cryptic teaser today. In a press pre-briefing before its announcement, ZA/UM confirmed that while the game builds on what the studio has done in previous games, C4 is not Disco Elysium 2.C4s announcement comes over five years after the release of Disco Elysium, the RPG that propelled ZA/UM to stardom in 2019. While the studio had reportedly been working on a sequel to that game at some point, as well as a DLC, those plans changed amid a flurry of legal troubles and layoffs at the studio. Now, ZA/UM has revealed that its been working on an entirely new game.Recommended VideosSo, what is C4? Its first teaser trailer doesnt reveal too much. We get a cryptic monologue about spies over some surreal imagery. It doesnt explain much, but it certainly seems to retain Disco Elysiums signature style.PROJECT [C4] - Teaser TrailerDigital Trends learned a bit more about the project in a press briefing ahead of its reveal. What we know for sure is that its an espionage game inspired by the works of John le Carr and Park Chan-wook. ZA/UM notes that the game doubles down on what the studio does well, but stressed that its a brand new game, not Disco Elysium 2. Players can expect another dialogue-driven RPG with tabletop elements, as encounters are determined through dice role.Please enable Javascript to view this contentThe one other detail we did learn is that failure is a big part of C4. ZA/UM describes it as having a fail forwards mentality that rewards players rather than punishing them, much like Disco Elysium. The studio also stresses that its take on spies wont be in the vein of James Bond. Thats all we have to go on for now.C4 comes after years of trouble behind the scenes at ZA/UM. In 2022, the studio parted ways with several of the creative forces behind Disco Elysium, including designer Robert Kurvitz. That kicked off a complicated legal war between the former employees and ZA/UM. While that brewed, ZA/UM reportedly cancelled both Disco Elysium 2 and a DLC for the first game, codenamed X7. Last year, the studio laid off roughly a quarter of its staff, leaving its projects in limbo. In the fallout, threeDisco Elysium spiritual successors have been announced at other studios.Editors Recommendations3 Disco Elysium spiritual successors announced on the same day

Kicking off the 2025 OLED TV release schedule, LG has announced the pricing and availability for its two most popular TV series the premium-tier G5 and step down C5. Both TV series are historically on our best TVs list, and after seeing both of them in person last week for LGs reviewer workshop in New Jersey, we fully expect repeat performances.The most notable improvement to LGs OLED technology is the move from a three-layer panel with MLA (micro lens array) to a four-layer panel structure. The four stack includes layers for each primary color one for red, one for green, and two for blue instead of two blue and a single red/green/yellow layer in the old design. The new G5 uses what LG calls Brightness Booster Ultimate technology with the 55-, 65-, 77-, and 83-inch versions (the 97-inch G5 uses Brightness Booster Max) which is three times brighter than the B series and 45% brighter than the G4 OLED. That increase is not only on peak brightness, but full-field white brightness as well. At the reviewers workshop, LG lined up the G5, G4, and two top-tier competitors from last year to show off the brightness improvements on the G5, and the results were pretty remarkable.John Higgins / Digital TrendsThe G5 has two certifications from UL Solutions Perfect Black, which indicates black levels at or below 0.24 nits up to 500lux (meaning in the room), and Perfect Color, signifying color consistency levels over 99% up to 500lux. The certification is meant to show the consistent performance in both dark and light viewing situations.Recommended VideosBeing introduced this year is Filmmaker Mode with Ambient Light Compensation. This works the same as other ambient light modes (which we generally recommend you turn off), but linked with a Filmmaker Mode option.Please enable Javascript to view this contentBoth the G5 and C5 have AI Picture Wizard and AI Sound Wizard which allow you to customize your picture and sound profile to your liking. The preference information is linked to your login profile with Voice ID and stored in the cloud, so if you go to a friends home and want to call up your picture and sound preference modes, you can sign in with your account and use your settings while your account is active (each TV can have a maximum of 10 accounts logged in at a time).This year also brings a redesign to the Magic Remote, which is smaller and slimmer with fewer buttons. The remote is backwards compatible with the past couple years of LG TVs.LGPricing for the G5 series (available in March 2025) is as follows:55-inch LG OLED55G5WUA: $2,49965-inch LG OLED65G5WUA: $3,39977-inch LG OLED77G5WUA: $4,49983-inch LG OLED83G5WUA: $6,49997-inch LG OLED97G5WUA: $24,999LG is reverting to its old stand/wall mount strategy. Unlike last years G series, the 55- and 65-inch sizes will not come with a table stand and instead be shipped with a wall mount, as will all the sizes of the G series. A table stand will be available as a separate purchase (although in the past its usually been difficult to find them in stock at online retailers).LGThe C5 series (also available in March 2025) will be available in six sizes:42-inch LG OLED42C5PUA: $1,39948-inch LG OLED48C5PUA: $1,59955-inch LG OLED55C5PUA: $1,99965-inch LG OLED65C5PUA: $2,69977-inch LG OLED77C5PUA: $3,69983-inch LG OLED83C5PUA: $5,399Customers who purchase a G5 or C5 OLED TV from lg.com before the end of March 30 can receive a free wall mounting or stand setup by Handy, as well as being eligible for money off of an LG soundbar. The eligible soundbars are the S95TR ($200 off), the SC9S ($200 off), S90TR ($100 off), S80TR ($100 off), and S70TY ($50 off). The soundbar offer is available until April 6, 2025.Editors Recommendations

air extraordinaire Apple M4 MacBook Air review: I have no notes The only things missing from these Airs are some Pro-only bells and whistles. Andrew Cunningham Mar 11, 2025 9:00 am | 29 Apple's 15-inch M4 MacBook Air in Sky Blue. Credit: Andrew Cunningham Apple's 15-inch M4 MacBook Air in Sky Blue. Credit: Andrew Cunningham Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreA year ago, we called the M3 version of the MacBook Air "just about as good as laptops get."The "as good as laptops get" part was about the qualitative experience of using the laptop, which was (and is) good-enough-to-great at just about everything a general-purpose laptop needs to be able to do. The "just about" part was mainly about the cost because to be happy with it long-term, it was a good idea for just about everybody to spend an extra $200 upgrading it from 8GB to 16GB of RAM. Apple also kept the M2 version of the Air in the lineup to hit its $999 entry-level price point; the M3 cost $100 extra.Apple fixed the RAM problem last fall when it increased the minimum amount of RAM across the entire Mac lineup from 8GB to 16GB without increasing prices. Though Apple probably did it to help enable additional Apple Intelligence features down the line, nearly anything you do with your Mac will eventually benefit from extra memory, whether you're trying to use Photoshop or Logic Pro or even if you're just opening more than a couple of dozen browser tabs at once.The new M4 Air also starts with 16GB of RAM. And Apple is launching it at $999 ($1,199 for the 15-inch), ditching the M2 and M3 versions of the Air. It's hard not to be impressed with a laptop that addresses our two biggest substantive complaints about the previous version.The laptop is still expensive, insofar as it is still a $1,000 laptop. But Apple is selling a laptop for $999 that would have cost you $1,399 a year ago. In a time of constantly rising prices, that's a pretty rare thing.The MacBook Air, again The Air's keyboard and trackpad are comfortable and functional. Credit: Andrew Cunningham This is the third iteration of the MacBook Air's M2-era refresh. Apple originally introduced the design in the middle of 2022, and it was joined by a similar 15-inch iteration in the summer of 2023. For owners of Intel or M1 Airs or any other laptop, here's a brief recap: Apple got rid of the Air's tapered design for this one, in favor of a laptop that's still thin but has a uniform thickness throughout (0.44 inches for the 13-inch Air, 0.45 inches for the 15-inch model).The laptop comes in four finishesthe traditional silver, the gold-ish Starlight, Midnight (still a bit smudge-prone), and a new Sky Blue option that replaces Space Gray. I like Sky Blue, and it's probably my favorite of the three light-colored options, though I do wish it was more saturated. It's similar in hue to the blue finish Microsoft offers for its Surface devices, but I prefer Microsoft's version because it's more noticeably blue.The Air still takes a minimalist approach to ports, with a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports (both on the left side) and a headphone jack (on the right). You can free up one of those ports for other things if you use the laptop's resurrected MagSafe connector, but you can continue to charge it using USB-C power bricks or monitors. At this point in the USB-C transition, I've almost never used MagSafe outside of testing it and taking photos of its color-matched cable. But it's nice to have it back as an option. Ports: Magsafe and two Thunderbolt 4. Credit: Andrew Cunningham The weirdest thing about it relative to those older pre-M2 Airs is still the display notch, a small cutout at the top of the screen that houses the camera. In practice, you mostly stop noticing it after a while. But the way macOS handles it makes the strips of screen space on either side mostly useless for anything other than the menu barmost apps in full screen mode simply turn that part of the screen into non-functional black strips.Speaking of the webcam, it's one of the few material changes from last year's model. It's now a 12 megapixel webcam, up from 1080p (about 2 megapixels). Like the webcam in the Studio Display, the M4 iMac, and the MacBook Pros, it has a wide field of view that it uses to support the motion-tracking Center Stage feature and Desk View mode, as well as preserve a bit more detail than the old webcam. You probably won't notice a difference when you're a tiny fraction of a window in a big Zoom call, thoughwhite balance and color all look about the same, and you need to get close to see the difference in detail.The M4 Air does two new things that might help talk you out of a MacBook Pro if you were thinking of buying one. For one, the maximum amount of RAM has increased from 24GB to 32GB. Second, the laptop can support up to two 6K external displays at 60 Hz without having to turn off the internal display. For both the M1 and M2 Airs, the limit was one external display. The M3 Air could support two external screens, but only if the lid was closed and the built-in screen was turned off. This finally gets the Air's external display count back up to where it was during the Intel era. Sky Blue looks nice, but it's not particularly saturated. Next to one of Microsoft's blue Surface PCs, it almost looks silver. Credit: Andrew Cunningham There are still features you'll need to buy a MacBook Pro to get, though. Those include the nano-texture displaya matte finish that Apple sells as an add-on for the iMac and MacBook Prosand ProMotion, Apple's branding for screens that refresh at 120 times per second instead of 60. Given that it's available in the iMac, the absence of nano-texture is particularly annoying, though the Air's glassy screens still use Apple's anti-reflective coating. The 500 nits maximum brightness and DCI-P3 color gamut coverage are unchanged from previous models.All the other fundamentals here remain solid, as they have been for years now. The scissor-switch keyboard has a comfortable amount of travel and will be a huge improvement for those who are still using butterfly-era Mac laptops. Trackpads are as large as they reasonably can be, but I haven't had problems with palm rejection. Neither laptop is setting records for thin-and-light-ness, but at 2.7 pounds and 3.3 pounds for the 13- and 15-inch models, they're light enough that your back and shoulders won't complain about having to schlep them around in a bag. And the silent fanless design remains a selling pointeven the Arm laptops in Windows-land still mostly come with cooling fans.Performance and power: An M4, but fanlessApple's M4 is a thoroughly known quantity by now thanks to the M4 MacBook Pro, the M4 iMac, the M4 Mac mini, and (to a lesser extent because of the software differences) the M4 iPad Pro.The M4 added two extra efficiency cores to its CPU, bringing the total number of cores to 10 (four P-cores and six E-cores). The number of GPU cores is still 10, the same as the M2 and M3. The basic $999/$1,199 models have an 8-core GPU instead, so note that the performance in our graphics benchmarks below will be slightly lower on those models.The big difference between this M4 and the one in all the other Macs is that the Air still doesn't include an active cooling fan. For Apple's chips, this usually means that they can run at full speeds for a few minutes under a sustained heavy CPU or GPU load, but that performance can slow down a bit once the chip gets too hot to run at full speed.Note that Apple provided us with the 15-inch version of the Air to test and that the 13-inch version may throttle a bit more aggressively, depending on how well its heatsink dissipates heat.The Air's M4 performs identically to the actively cooled versions in many of our lighter benchmarks, including Geekbench, single-threaded Cinebench tests, and even most of our graphics benchmarks. It's only in heavier, longer-running tests like our Handbrake video encoding tests that it begins to slow down significantly compared to the actively cooled versions of the chip. This is pretty consistent with what we've seen in the other Apple Silicon MacBook Airs; the kinds of workflows that will really challenge the Air are the ones that you don't really buy a MacBook Air to handle regularly.Compared to older Macs, the M4's CPU is about 15 or 20 percent faster than the M3 in single-core benchmarks and 20 or 30 percent faster in multi-core benchmarks, thanks to its pair of extra CPU cores. The GPU's performance improvements are better in some tests than others, though somewhere in the 10-to-20-percent range is pretty typical. Apple is gradually working toward doubling the performance of the original M1, but we're not there quite yetthe M4 is somewhere between 50 and 70 percent faster than the M1 across the board, depending on what benchmark you're comparing. The M1 still feels good for most day-to-day computing, especially if you sprang for 16GB of RAM, but the M4 is noticeably snappier.The M4 remains impressively efficient, using less energy than the M3 (and M1) to perform the same amount of work and consuming less power on average under load, something that should help its battery life. Apple still says that both Air sizes are good for "up to 18 hours" of battery life, the same broad estimate it used for the M3 and M2. In our days with the laptop, battery life felt about the same as it did for older Air modelsthe laptop can easily make it for a couple of full work days between charges, and for intermittent use, you can go days without plugging it in.A laptop you dont have to think about Apple's M4 MacBook Air. Credit: Andrew Cunningham If I had a criticism, it's that there are a few nice-to-have features that Apple only offers on its Pro laptops. A display with a higher-than-60-Hz refresh rate and a nano-texture display option would both take the Air to the next level, even if they were both sold as separate add-ons. And the display notch still feels silly, given that the Mac never added Face ID and things other than the macOS menu bar can't really do anything with that top strip of screen space.But other than pointing out things the Aircould also have, there's just not a lot to say here. For anyone other than people whoabsolutely need or require an operating system that isn't macOS, this is the default laptop. And it's not even "this is the default laptop, but you should really pay at least $200 to upgrade the RAM if you want to be happy long-term." The vast majority of people can just navigate to Apple's site, pick the size they want, and buy the base models without needing to worry about it much. I have been writing about Apple's products for many years, and I am here to tell you how weird and rare that is.If you aren't included in "the vast majority of people," Apple's upgrade prices are still Where They Get You. Want 24 or 32GB of RAM? 512GB or more of storage? Apple will charge you $200 for every 8GB of RAM you buy, between $200 and $800 for storage upgrades (you do at least get the M4's two missing GPU cores, a $100 standalone upgrade, for "free" when you buy more RAM). Like with the Mac mini, what feels like an uncharacteristically good value for the base model fades a bit for power users who need upgrades.But again, for the vast majority of MacBook Air buyers, they won't need to worry about Apple's excessive upgrade pricing because they mostly won't need to worry about upgrading. It's a good value, hitting at a time when many people could be convinced to open their wallets for a new MacBook. For existing Mac users, maybe you're worried about the end of Intel Mac support, or you have an M1 Air that's starting to show its age. If you're a PC user, maybe the collection of minor annoyances that come with Windows 11 have you thinking about a switch. Whatever the reason, there's almost never been a better time to be considering a MacBook Air.The goodSturdy, functional, familiar design that gets all the basics rightM4 is a solid performance increase over M3 and older Apple Silicon chipsGreat battery life16GB of RAM and M4 in the $999 base model, $300 less than the equivalent configuration would have cost a year agoSky Blue looks niceThe badNotch is still sillyLimited port selectionThe uglyHaving to buy a MacBook Pro to get a nano-texture display finishAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology ReporterAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology Reporter Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. 29 Comments

cache-in Ryzen 9 9950X3D review: AMD irons out nearly every single downside of 3D V-Cache Not a lot of people actually need this thing, but if you do, it's very good. Andrew Cunningham Mar 11, 2025 9:00 am | 12 AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D. Credit: Andrew Cunningham AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D. Credit: Andrew Cunningham Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreEven three years later, AMD's high-end X3D-series processors still aren't a thing that most people need to spend extra money onunder all but a handful of circumstances, your GPU will be the limiting factor when you're running games, and few non-game apps benefit from the extra 64MB chunk of L3 cache that is the processors' calling card. They've been a reasonably popular way for people with old AM4 motherboards to extend the life of their gaming PCs, but for AM5 builds, a regular Zen 4 or Zen 5 CPU will not bottleneck modern graphics cards most of the time.But high-end PC building isn't always about what's rational, and people spending $2,000 or more to stick a GeForce RTX 5090 into their systems probably won't worry that much about spending a couple hundred extra dollars to get the fastest CPU they can get. That's the audience for the new Ryzen 9 9950X3D, a 16-core, Zen 5-based, $699 monster of a processor that AMD begins selling tomorrow.If you'reonly worried about game performance (and if you can find one), the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the superior choice, for reasons that will become apparent once we start looking at charts. But if you want fast game performanceand you need as many CPU cores as you can get for other streaming or video production or rendering work, the 9950X3D is there for you. (It's a little funny to me that this a chip made almost precisely for the workload of the PC building tech YouTubers who will be reviewing it.) It's also a processor that Intel doesn't have any kind of answer to.Second-generation 3D V-Cache Layering the 3D V-Cache under the CPU die has made most of the 9950X3D's improvements possible. Credit: AMD AMD says the 9000X3D chips use a "second-generation" version of its 3D V-Cache technology after using the same approach for the Ryzen 5000 and 7000 processors. The main difference is that, where the older chips stack the 64MB of extra L3 cache on top of the processor die, the 9000 series stacks the cache underneath, making it easier to cool the CPU silicon.This makes the processors' thermal characteristics much more like a typical Ryzen CPU without the 3D V-Cache. And because voltage and temperatures are less of a concern, the 9800X3D, 9900X3D, and 9950X3D all support the full range of overclocking and performance tuning tools that other Ryzen CPUs support.The 12- and 16-core Ryzen X3D chips are built differently from the 8-core. As we've covered elsewhere, AMD's Ryzen desktop processors are a combination of chipletsup to two CPU core chiplets with up to eight CPU cores each and a separate I/O die that handles things like PCI Express and USB support. In the 9800X3D, you just have one CPU chiplet, and the 64MB of 3D V-Cache is stacked underneath. For the 9900X3D and 9950X3D, you get one 8-core CPU die with V-Cache underneath and then one other CPU die with 4 or 8 cores enabled and no extra cache. AMD's driver software is responsible for deciding what apps get run on which CPU cores. Credit: AMD It's up to AMD's chipset software to decide what kinds of apps get to run on each kind of CPU core. Non-gaming workloads prioritize the normal CPU cores, which are generally capable of slightly higher peak clock speeds, while games that benefit disproportionately from the extra cache are run on those cores instead. AMD's software can "park" the non-V-Cache CPU cores when you're playing games to ensure they're not accidentally being run on less-suitable CPU cores.This technology will work the same basic way for the 9950X3D as it did for the older 7950X3D, but AMD has made some tweaks. Updates to the chipset driver mean that you can swap your current processor out for an X3D model without needing to totally reinstall Windows to get things working, for example, which was AMD's previous recommendation for the 7000 series. Another update will improve performance for Windows 10 systems with virtualization-based security (VBS) enabled, though if you're still on Windows 10, you should be considering an upgrade to Windows 11 so you can keep getting security updates past October.And for situations where AMD's drivers can't automatically send the right workloads to the right kinds of cores, AMD also maintains a compatibility database of applications that need special treatment to take advantage of the 3D V-Cache in the 9900X3D and 9950X3D. AMD says it has added a handful of games to that list for the 9900/9950X3D launch, including Far Cry 6,Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and a couple of Total War games, among others.Testbed notesAMD AM5Intel LGA 1851Intel LGA 1700AMD AM4CPUsRyzen 7000 and 9000 seriesCore Ultra 200 series12th, 13th, and 14th-generation CoreRyzen 5000 seriesMotherboardASRock X870E Taichi or MSI MPG X870E Carbon Wifi (provided by AMD)MSI MEG Z890 Unify-X (provided by Intel)Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master X (provided by Intel)Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero (provided by Asus)RAM config32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo (provided by AMD), running at DDR5-600032GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo (provided by AMD), running at DDR5-600032GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo (provided by AMD), running at DDR5-600016GB Teamgroup T-Force Vulcan Z, running at DDR4-3600Common elements to all the platforms we test in our CPU testbed includea Lian Li O11 Air Mini casewith an EVGA-providedSupernova 850 P6 power supplyand a280 mm Corsair iCue H115i Elite Capellix AIO cooler.Since our last CPU review, we've done a bit of testbed updating to make sure that we're accounting for a bunch of changes and turmoil on both Intel's and AMD's sides of the fence.For starters, we're running Windows 11 24H2 on all systems now, which AMD has said should marginally improve performance for architectures going all the way back to Zen 3 (on the desktop, the Ryzen 5000 series). The company made this revelation after early reviewers of the Ryzen 9000 series couldn't re-create the oddball conditions of their own internal test setups.As for Intel, the new testing incorporates fixes for the voltage spiking, processor-destroying bugs that affected 13th- and 14th-generation Core processors, issues that Intel fixed in phases throughout 2024. For the latest Core Ultra 200-series desktop CPUs, it also includes performance fixes Intel introduced in BIOS updates and drivers late last year and early this year. (You might have noticed that we didn't run reviews of the 9800X3D or the Core Ultra 200 series at the time; all of this re-testing of multiple generations of CPUs was part of the reason why).All of this is to say that any numbers you're seeing in this review represent recent testing with newer Windows updates, BIOS updates, and drivers all installed.One thing that isn't top of the line at the moment is the GeForce RTX 4090, though we are using that now instead of a Radeon RX 7900 XTX.The RTX 50 series was several months away from being announced when we began collecting updated test data, and we opted to keep the GPU the same for our 9950X3D testing so that we'd have a larger corpus of data to compare the chip to. The RTX 4090 is still, by a considerable margin, the second-fastest consumer GPU that exists right now. But at some point, when we're ready to do yet another round of totally-from-scratch retesting, we'll likely swap a 5090 in just to be sure we're not bottlenecking the processor.Performance and power: Benefits with fewer drawbacksThe 9950X3D has the second-highest CPU scores in our gaming benchmarks, and it's behind the 9800X3D by only a handful of frames. This is one of the things we meant when we said that the 9800X3D was the better choice if you're only worried about game performance. The same dynamic plays out between other 8- and 16-core Ryzen chipshigher power consumption and heat in the high-core-count chips usually bring game performance down just a bit despite the nominally higher boost clocks.You'll also pay for it in power consumption, at least at each chip's default settings. On average, the 9950X3D uses 40 or 50 percent more power during our gaming benchmarks than the 9800X3D running the same benchmarks, even though it's not capable of running them quite as quickly. But it's similar to the power use of the regular 9950X, which is quite a bit slower in these gaming benchmarks, even if it does have broadly similar performance in most non-gaming benchmarks.What's impressive is what you see when you compare the 9950X3D to its immediate predecessor, the 7950X3D. The 9950X3D isn't dramatically faster in games, reflecting Zen 5's modest performance improvement over Zen 4. But the 9950X3D is alot faster in our general-purpose benchmarks and other non-gaming CPU benchmarks because the changes to how the X3D chips are packaged have helped AMD keep clock speeds, voltages, and power limits pretty close to the same as they are for the regular 9950X.In short, the 7950X3D gave up a fair bit of performance relative to the 7950X because of compromises needed to support 3D V-Cache. The 9950X3D doesn't ask you to make the same compromises. Testing the 9950X3D in its 105 W Eco Mode. Testing the 9950X3D in its 105 W Eco Mode.That comes with both upsides and downsides. For example, the 9950X3D looks a lot less power-efficient under load in our Handbrake video encoding test than the 7950X3D because it is using the same amount of power as a normal Ryzen processor. But that's the other "normal" thing about the 9950X3Dthe ability to manually tune those power settings and boost your efficiency if you're OK with giving up a little performance. It's not an either/or thing. And at least in our testing, games run just as fast when you set the 9950X3D to use the 105 W Eco Mode instead of the 170 W default TDP.As for Intel, it just doesn't have an answer for the X3D series. The Core Ultra 9 285K is perfectly competitive in our general-purpose CPU benchmarks and efficiency, but the Arrow Lake desktop chips struggle to compete with 14th-generation Core and Ryzen 7000 processors in gaming benchmarks, to say nothing of the Ryzen 9000 and to say even less than nothing of the 9800X3D or 9950X3D. That AMD has closed the gap between the 9950X and 9950X3D's performance in our general-purpose CPU benchmarks means it's hard to make an argument for Intel here.The 9950X3D stands aloneI'm not and have never been the target audience for either the 16-core Ryzen processors or the X3D-series processors. When I'm building for myself (and when I'm recommending mainstream builds for our Ars System Guides), I'm normally an advocate for buying the most CPU you can for $200 or $300 and spending more money on a GPU.But for the game-playing YouTubing content creators who are the 9950X3D's intended audience, it's definitely an impressive chip. Games can hit gobsmackingly high frame rates at lower resolutions when paired with a top-tier GPU, behind (and just barely behind) AMD's own 9800X3D. At the same time, it's just as good at general-use CPU-intensive tasks as the regular 9950X, fixing a trade-off that had been part of the X3D series since the beginning. AMD has also removed the limits it has in place on overclocking and adjusting power limits for the X3D processors in the 5000 and 7000 series.So yes, it's expensive, and no, most people probably don't need the specific benefits it provides. It's also possible that you'll find edge cases where AMD's technology for parking cores and sending the right kinds of work to the right CPU cores doesn't work the way it should. But for people who do need or want ultra-high frame rates at lower resolutions or who have some other oddball workloads that benefit from the extra cache, the 9950X3D gives you all of the upsides with no discernible downsides other than cost. And, hey, even at $699, current-generation GPU prices almost make it look like a bargain.The goodExcellent combination of the 9800X3D's gaming performance and the 9950X's general-purpose CPU performanceAMD has removed limitations on overclocking and power limit tweakingPretty much no competition for Intel for the specific kind of person the 9950X3D will appeal toThe badNiche CPUs that most people really don't need to buyLess power-efficient out of the box than the 7950X3D, though users have latitude to tune efficiency manually if they wantAMD's software has sometimes had problems assigning the right kinds of apps to the right kinds of CPU cores, though we didn't have issues with this during our testingThe uglyExpensiveAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology ReporterAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology Reporter Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. 12 Comments

The Canadian robotruck startup Waabi says its super-realistic virtual simulation is now accurate enough to prove the safety of its driverless big rigs without having to run them for miles on real roads. The company uses a digital twin of its real-world robotruck, loaded up with real sensor data, and measures how the twins performance compares with that of real trucks on real roads. Waabi says they now match almost exactly. The company claims its approach is a better way to demonstrate safety than just racking up real-world miles, as many of its competitors do. It brings accountability to the industry, says Raquel Urtasun, Waabis firebrand founder and CEO (who is also a professor at the University of Toronto). There are no more excuses. After quitting Uber, where she led the ride-sharing firms driverless-car division, Urtasun founded Waabi in 2021 with a different vision for how autonomous vehicles should be made. The firm, which has partnerships with Uber Freight and Volvo, has been running real trucks on real roads in Texas since 2023, but it carries out the majority of its development inside a simulation called Waabi World. Waabi is now taking its sim-first approach to the next level, using Waabi World not only to train and test its driving models but to prove their real-world safety. For now, Waabis trucks drive with a human in the cab. But the company plans to go human-free later this year. To do that, it needs to demonstrate the safety of its system to regulators. These trucks are 80,000 pounds, says Urtasun. Theyre really massive robots. Urtasun argues that it is impossible to prove the safety of Waabis trucks just by driving on real roads. Unlike robotaxis, which often operate on busy streets, many of Waabis trucks drive for hundreds of miles on straight highways. That means they wont encounter enough dangerous situations by chance to vet the system fully, she says. But before using Waabi World to prove the safety of its real-world trucks, Waabi first has to prove that the behavior of its trucks inside the simulation matches their behavior in the real world under the exact same conditions. Virtual reality Inside Waabi World, the same driving model that controls Waabis real trucks gets hooked up to a virtual truck. Waabi World then feeds that model with simulated videoradar and lidar inputs mimicking the inputs that real trucks receive. The simulation can re-create a wide range of weather and lighting conditions. We have pedestrians, animals, all that stuff, says Urtasun. Objects that are rareyou know, like a mattress thats flying off the back of another truck. Whatever. Waabi World also simulates the properties of the truck itself, such as its momentum and acceleration, and its different gear shifts. And it simulates the trucks onboard computer, including the microsecond time lags between receiving and processing inputs from different sensors in different conditions. The time it takes to process the information and then come up with an outcome has a lot of impact on how safe your system is, says Urtasun. To show that Waabi Worlds simulation is accurate enough to capture the exact behavior of a real truck, Waabi then runs it as a kind of digital twin of the real world and measures how much they diverge. WAABI Heres how that works. Whenever its real trucks drive on a highway, Waabi records everythingvideo, radar, lidar, the state of the driving model itself, and so on. It can rewind that recording to a certain moment and clone the freeze-frame with all the various sensor data intact. It can then drop that freeze-frame into Waabi World and press Play. The scenario that plays out, in which the virtual truck drives along the same stretch of road as the real truck did, should match the real world almost exactly. Waabi then measures how far the simulation diverges from what actually happened in the real world. No simulator is capable of recreating the complex interactions of the real world for too long. So Waabi takes snippets of its timeline every 20 seconds or so. They then run many thousands of such snippets, exposing the system to many different scenarios, such as lane changes, hard braking, oncoming traffic and more. Waabi claims that Waabi World is 99.7% accurate. Urtasun explains what that means: Think about a truck driving on the highway at 30 meters per second, she says. When it advances 30 meters, we can predict where everything will be within 10 centimeters. Waabi plans to use its simulation to demonstrate the safety of its system when seeking the go-ahead from regulators to remove humans from its trucks this year. It is a very important part of the evidence, says Urtasun. Its not the only evidence. We have the traditional Bureau of Motor Vehicles stuff on top of thisall the standards of the industry. But we want to push those standards much higher. A 99.7% match in trajectory is a strong result, says Jamie Shotton, chief scientist at the driverless-car startup Wayve. But he notes that Waabi has not shared any details beyond the blog post announcing the work. Without technical details, its significance is unclear, he says. Shotton says that Wayve favors a mix of real-world and virtual-world testing. Our goal is not just to replicate past driving behavior but to create richer, more challenging test and training environments that push AV capabilities further, he says. This is where real-world testing continues to add crucial value, exposing the AV to spontaneous and complex interactions that simulation alone may not fully replicate." Even so, Urtasun believes that Waabis approach will be essential if the driverless-car industry is going to succeed at scale. This addresses one of the big holes that we have today, she says. This is a call to action in terms of, you knowshow me your number. Its time to be accountable across the entire industry.

The Trump administration has frozen foreign aid and killed USAID programs that administer humanitarian assistance across the world. We break down what this means for global stability in a video collaboration between Politico and Business Insider.Read the original article on Business Insider