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Republican space officials criticize “mindless” NASA science cuts

4/24/2025 12:23 AM

Skip to content “Heliophysics is the most unknown—and underrated—part of NASA’s science program.” In the nearly two weeks since Ars reported on the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts for NASA’s science programs, scientists and Democratic lawmakers have both expressed deep concerns about the future of the space agency. However, in a pattern consistent across a […]

4chan may be dead, but its toxic legacy lives on

4/24/2025 12:22 AM

My earliest memory of 4chan was sitting up late at night, typing its URL into my browser, and scrolling through a thread of LOLcat memes, which were brand-new at the time. Back then a photoshop of a cat saying “I can has cheezburger” or an image of an owl saying “ORLY?” was, without question, the […]

Bicycle bling: All the accessories you’ll need for your new...

4/24/2025 12:22 AM

To accompany our cargo bike shopper’s guide, here’s the other gear you’ll want. Credit: LueratSatichob/Getty Images If you’ve read our cargo e-bike shopper’s guide, you may be well on your way to owning a new ride. Now comes the fun part. Part of the joy of diving into a new hobby is researching and acquiring […]

Tesla’s Q1 results show the financial cost of Musk’s support...

4/24/2025 12:22 AM

For Q1 2025, Tesla took in $595 million in regulatory credits. Net income amounted to just $409 million. None of this should be cause for concern, unlike the many times in the past that Tesla almost went out of business, Musk told investors on a call last night. “It’s been so many times. This is […]

Universities (finally) band together, fight “unprecedented government overreach”

4/24/2025 12:22 AM

We speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education… We must reject the coercive use of public research funding… American institutions of higher learning have in common the essential freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom… […]

Neuroscientists are racing to turn brain waves into speech

4/21/2025 9:05 PM

Many thousands of people a year could benefit from so-called voice prosthesis. Their cognitive functions remain more or less intact, but they have suffered speech loss due to stroke, the neurodegenerative disorder ALS, and other brain conditions. If successful, researchers hope the technique could be extended to help people who have difficulty vocalizing because of […]

Women rely partly on smell when choosing friends

4/21/2025 9:05 PM

For their study, Gaby et al. organized an on-campus “Speed-Friending” event for 40 female volunteers, consisting of four distinct phases. First, participants had their headshots taken. Next, they looked at pictures of all the other women participating and rated friendship potential based solely on visual cues. Then the women wore a T-shirt for 12 hours […]

Trump’s tariffs trigger price hikes at large online retailers

4/21/2025 9:05 PM

Popular online shopping meccas Temu and Shein have finally broken their silence, warning of potential price hikes starting next week due to Donald Trump’s tariffs. Temu is a China-based e-commerce platform that has grown as popular as Amazon for global shoppers making cross-border purchases, according to 2024 Statista data. Its tagline, “Shop like a billionaire,” […]

Cupra is all about affordable cars, funky styling, electrified performance

4/21/2025 9:05 PM

“So we are part of Volkswagen Group. We have factories all across the whole planet. We have Mexican factories. We have US factories. Even Volkswagen Group is ramping up additional factories in the United States. We have European factories,” Schuwirth said. The original plan was to import one model from Mexico and one model from […]

Nintendo raises planned Switch 2 accessory prices amid tariff “uncertainty”

4/21/2025 9:05 PM

The Switch 2 hardware will still retail for its initially announced $449.99, alongside a $499.99 bundle including a digital download of Mario Kart World. Nintendo revealed Thursday that the Mario Kart bundle will only be produced “through Fall 2025,” though, and will only be available “while supplies last.” Mario Kart World will retail for $79.99 […]

Will the future of software development run on vibes?

3/6/2025 5:05 PM

Accepting AI-written code without understanding how it works is growing in popularity. To many people, coding is about precision. It’s about telling a computer what to do and having the computer perform those actions exactly, precisely, and repeatedly. With the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, it’s now possible for someone to describe a program […]

You knew it was coming: Google begins testing AI-only search...

3/6/2025 5:05 PM

Google has become so integral to online navigation that its name became a verb, meaning “to find things on the Internet.” Soon, Google might just tell you what’s on the Internet instead of showing you. The company has announced an expansion of its AI search features, powered by Gemini 2.0. Everyone will soon see more […]

Yes, we are about to be treated to a second...

3/6/2025 5:05 PM

Because the space agency now has some expectation that Intuitive Machines will be fully successful with its second landing attempt, it has put some valuable experiments on board. Principal among them is the PRIME-1 experiment, which has an ice drill to sample any ice that lies below the surface. Drill, baby, drill. The Athena lander […]

Brother denies using firmware updates to brick printers with third-party...

3/6/2025 5:05 PM

Skip to content 3-year-old Reddit post sparks uproar Brother: Updates aren’t behind degradation of quality or removal of features. A Brother MFCL3750CDW laser printer. Credit: Brother Brother laser printers are popular recommendations for people seeking a printer with none of the nonsense. By nonsense, we mean printers suddenly bricking features, like scanning or printing, if […]

AMD Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT review: RDNA 4...

3/6/2025 5:05 PM

Skip to content For $549 and $599, AMD comes close to knocking out Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5070. AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT are its first cards based on the RDNA 4 GPU architecture. Credit: Andrew Cunningham AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT are its first cards based on the RDNA 4 GPU […]

Copilot exposes private GitHub pages, some removed by Microsoft

2/28/2025 8:46 PM

Screenshot showing Copilot continues to serve tools Microsoft took action to have removed from GitHub. Credit: Lasso Lasso ultimately determined that Microsoft’s fix involved cutting off access to a special Bing user interface, once available at cc.bingj.com, to the public. The fix, however, didn’t appear to clear the private pages from the cache itself. As […]

Microsoft brings an official Copilot app to macOS for the...

2/28/2025 8:46 PM

It took a couple of years, but it happened: Microsoft released its Copilot AI assistant as an application for macOS. The app is available for download for free from the Mac App Store right now. It was previously available briefly as a Mac app, sort of; for a short time, Microsoft’s iPad Copilot app could […]

New AI text diffusion models break speed barriers by pulling...

2/28/2025 8:46 PM

These diffusion models maintain performance faster than or comparable to similarly sized conventional models. LLaDA’s researchers report their 8 billion parameter model performs similarly to LLaMA3 8B across various benchmarks, with competitive results on tasks like MMLU, ARC, and GSM8K. However, Mercury claims dramatic speed improvements. Their Mercury Coder Mini scores 88.0 percent on HumanEval […]

Google will finally fix awesome (but broken) song detection feature...

2/28/2025 8:46 PM

Google’s Pixel phones include numerous thoughtful features you don’t get on other phones, like Now Playing. This feature can identify background music from the lock screen, but unlike some similar song identifiers, it works even without an Internet connection. Sadly, it has been broken for months. There is some hope, though. Google has indicated that […]

The PlayStation VR2 will get a drastic price cut, but...

2/28/2025 8:46 PM

Sony’s first PlayStation VR for the PlayStation 4 hit stores at the right price at the right time and ended up being one of VR’s biggest hits. The PlayStation 5’s PlayStation VR2? Not so much, unfortunately. In either an effort to clear unsold inventory, an attempt to revitalize the platform, or both, Sony has announced […]

Amazon’s subscription-based Alexa+ looks highly capable—and questionable

2/27/2025 1:58 AM

Alexa+ will be free for Prime members, $20/month for everyone else. NEW YORK—After teasing it in September 2023 and reportedly suffering delays, Amazon today announced that its more capable and conversational version of Alexa will start rolling out to US Prime members for free in the next few weeks. Those who aren’t Prime subscribers will […]

Pixel Watch 3 gets FDA approval to alert you if...

2/27/2025 1:58 AM

Google released the Pixel Watch 3 last fall alongside the Pixel 9 family, sporting the same curvy look as the last two versions. The Pixel Watch 3 came with a new feature called Loss of Pulse Detection, which can detect impending death due to a stopped heart. Google wasn’t allowed to unlock that feature in […]

Single-fiber computer could one day track your health

2/27/2025 1:58 AM

Imagine heading out for a run on a cold winter day clad in athletic gear with sensors and microelectronics woven into the very fiber to constantly monitor your vital signs, even running the occasional app. MIT scientists have manufactured a single fiber computer embedded with all the components to do just that, according to a […]

Automattic’s “nuclear war” over WordPress access sparks potential class action

2/27/2025 1:58 AM

WordPress software, Keller’s complaint explained, “has long been promised to be free and available to everyone forever.” This promise propelled WordPress’ popularity to, by its own estimates, “encompass more than 40 percent of all websites in the world,” his complaint said. In the 10 years Keller used WPE, he never had any issues accessing the […]

Bitcoin plunges as crypto fans didn’t get everything they wanted...

2/27/2025 1:58 AM

The price of bitcoin hit a record high of $109,114.88 during intraday trading on January 20, the day of President Trump’s inauguration, but has plummeted since and went as low as $83,741.94 during today’s trading. That’s a 23.3 percent drop from the intraday record to today’s low, though it was back over $84,000 as of […]

How North Korea pulled off a $1.5 billion crypto heist—the...

2/25/2025 12:36 PM

The cryptocurrency industry and those responsible for securing it are still in shock following Friday’s heist, likely by North Korea, that drained $1.5 billion from Dubai-based exchange Bybit, making the theft by far the biggest ever in digital asset history. Bybit officials disclosed the theft of more than 400,000 ethereum and staked ethereum coins just […]

Claude 3.7 Sonnet debuts with “extended thinking” to tackle complex...

2/25/2025 12:36 PM

An example of Claude 3.7 Sonnet with extended thinking is asked, “Would the color be called ‘magenta’ if the town of Magenta didn’t exist?” Credit: Benj Edwards Interestingly, xAI’s Grok 3 with “thinking” (its SR mode) enabled was the first model that definitively gave us a “no” and not an “it’s not likely” to the […]

Nothing on Phone 3a Pro design: “Some people will hate...

2/25/2025 12:36 PM

Nothing, the smartphone venture from OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, is on its third generation of Android smartphones. The Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro will be officially announced on March 4, but there won’t be much left to reveal. Not only has Nothing teased the phones a few times, there’s also a new video highlighting […]

The revolution starts now with Andor S2 teaser

2/25/2025 12:36 PM

Diego Luna returns as Cassian in the forthcoming second season of Andor. The first season of Andor, the Star Wars prequel series to Rogue One and A New Hope, earned critical raves for its gritty aesthetic and multilayered narrative rife with political intrigue. While ratings were a bit sluggish, they were good enough to win […]

Judge: US gov’t violated privacy law by disclosing personal data...

2/25/2025 12:36 PM

“The plaintiffs have made a clear showing that they are likely to suffer irreparable harm without injunctive relief,” the order said. “DOGE affiliates have been granted access to systems of record that contain some of the plaintiffs’ most sensitive data—Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, income and assets, citizenship status, and disability status—and […]

In a last-minute decision, White House decides not to terminate...

2/19/2025 12:16 PM

So what changed? It was not immediately clear why. A NASA spokesperson in Washington, DC, offered no comment on the updated guidance. Two sources indicated that it was plausible that private astronaut Jared Isaacman, whom President Trump has nominated to lead the space agency, asked for the cuts to be put on hold. Although this […]

Nvidia’s 50-series cards drop support for PhysX, impacting older games

2/19/2025 12:16 PM

Nvidia’s PhysX offerings to developers didn’t always generate warm feelings. As part of its broader GamesWorks package, PhysX was cited as one of the reasons The Witcher 3 ran at notably sub-optimal levels at launch. Protagonist Geralt’s hair, rendered in PhysX-powered HairWorks, was a burden on some chipsets. PhysX started appearing in general game engines, […]

New Grok 3 release tops LLM leaderboards despite Musk-approved “based”...

2/19/2025 12:16 PM

Potential opinionated output aside, early reviews of Grok 3 seem to position the model family favorably against its competitors. For example, the model is currently topping the LMSYS Chatbot Arena leaderboard, which ranks AI language models in a blind popularity vibemarking contest.

Streamer completes hitless run of seven FromSoft Soulslikes without leveling...

2/19/2025 12:16 PM

What now? In a follow-up stream on Monday, Nico called his latest gaming achievement “by far the most difficult run I have ever completed. We did the same run leveled, but it is not even close to as difficult as the level 1 run. The level 1 run, the difficulty level is just insane.” Aside […]

Acer CEO says its PC prices to increase by 10...

2/19/2025 12:16 PM

PC-manufacturer Acer has said that it plans to raise the prices of its PCs in the US by 10 percent, a direct response to the new 10 percent import tariff on Chinese goods that the Trump administration announced earlier this month. “We will have to adjust the end user price to reflect the tariff,” said […]

Moon rocks reveal hidden lunar history

2/17/2025 4:27 PM

That mission, and the 2020 Chang’e-5 robotic mission before it, are the first to return lunar rocks to Earth since the 1970s. Together they are building on what scientists learned from Apollo-era missions, helping to unravel mysteries about how the Moon was formed and why it looks the way it does today, and providing clues […]

Asahi Linux lead resigns from Mac-based distro after tumultuous kernel...

2/17/2025 4:27 PM

Working at the intersection of Apple’s newest hardware and Linux kernel development, for the benefit of a free distribution, was never going to be easy. But it’s been an especially hard couple of weeks for Hector Martin, project lead for Asahi Linux, capping off years of what he describes as burnout, user entitlement, and political […]

After 50 years, Ars staffers pick their favorite Saturday Night...

2/17/2025 4:27 PM

“Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.” American musician Stevie Wonder (left) appears on an episode of ‘Saturday Night Live’ with comedian and actor Eddie Murphy, New York, New York, May 6, 1983. Credit: Anthony Barboza/Getty Images American musician Stevie Wonder (left) appears on an episode of ‘Saturday Night Live’ with comedian and actor Eddie Murphy, […]

What we know about AMD and Nvidia’s imminent midrange GPU...

2/17/2025 4:27 PM

The GeForce RTX 5090 and 5080 are both very fast graphics cards—if you can look past the possibility that we may have yet another power-connector-related overheating problem on our hands. But the vast majority of people (including you, discerning and tech-savvy Ars Technica reader) won’t be spending $1,000 or $2,000 (or $2,750 or whatever) on […]

AI used to design a multi-step enzyme that can digest...

2/17/2025 4:27 PM

Skip to content Enzyme mechanisms can be complex, and getting them to work is tricky. Enzymes are amazing catalysts. These proteins are made of nothing more than a handful of Earth-abundant elements, and they promote a vast array of reactions, convert chemical energy to physical motion, and act with remarkable specificity. In many cases, we […]

H5N1 testing in cow veterinarians suggests bird flu is spreading...

2/14/2025 7:46 PM

Three veterinarians who work with cows have tested positive for prior infections of H5 bird flu, according to a study released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The finding may not seem surprising, given the sweeping and ongoing outbreak of H5N1 among dairy farms in the US, which has reached 968 herds […]

Streaming used to make stuff networks wouldn’t. Now it wants...

2/14/2025 7:46 PM

Opinion: Streaming gets more cable-like with new focus on live events, mainstream content. A scene from The OA. Credit: Netflix There was a time when it felt like you needed a streaming subscription in order to contribute to watercooler conversations. Without Netflix, you couldn’t react to House of Cards’ latest twist. Without Hulu, you couldn’t […]

Condé Nast, other news orgs say AI firm stole articles,...

2/14/2025 7:46 PM

Condé Nast and several other media companies sued the AI startup Cohere today, alleging that it engaged in “systematic copyright and trademark infringement” by using news articles to train its large language model. “Without permission or compensation, Cohere uses scraped copies of our articles, through training, real-time use, and in outputs, to power its artificial […]

Burning in woman’s legs turned out to be slug parasites...

2/14/2025 7:46 PM

It started with a bizarre burning sensation in her feet. Over the next two days, the searing pain crept up her legs. Any light touch made it worse, and over-the-counter pain medicine offered no relief. On the third day, the 30-year-old, otherwise healthy woman from New England went to an emergency department. Her exam was […]

Apple teases launch for “the newest member of the family”...

2/14/2025 7:46 PM

Big news for people who prefer their product announcements to be pre-announced: Apple CEO Tim Cook says that the company has something brewing for Wednesday, February 19. Cook referred to “the newest member of the family,” suggesting a launch event focused on a single product rather than multiple refreshes throughout its product lineup. Most rumors […]

When software updates actually improve—instead of ruin—our favorite devices

2/12/2025 2:02 PM

Opinion: These tech products have gotten better over time. The Hatch Restore 2 smart alarm clock. Credit: Scharon Harding For many of us, we dread software updates to our favorite gadgets. Updates to a beloved gadget can leave us outraged, whether it’s because we’re frustrated with bugs or we’re Luddites and tech enthusiasts averse to […]

Tariffs will “blow a hole” in the US auto industry,...

2/12/2025 2:02 PM

The US has had to pause some of these new tariffs almost immediately, and the proposed 25 percent tariffs against any Canadian or Mexican imports have been delayed for a month. But yesterday, the president imposed 25 percent tariffs on any imported steel or aluminum. When last in office, Trump also imposed tariffs on steel […]

New hack uses prompt injection to corrupt Gemini’s long-term memory

2/12/2025 2:02 PM

INVOCATION DELAYED, INVOCATION GRANTED There’s yet another way to inject malicious prompts into chatbots. The Google Gemini logo. Credit: Google In the nascent field of AI hacking, indirect prompt injection has become a basic building block for inducing chatbots to exfiltrate sensitive data or perform other malicious actions. Developers of platforms such as Google’s Gemini […]

Judge orders Trump admin. to restore CDC and FDA webpages...

2/12/2025 2:02 PM

“Irrational removal” In his opinion, Bates cited the declarations from Stephanie Liou, a physician who works with low-income immigrant families and an underserved high school in Chicago, and Reshma Ramachandran, a primary care provider who relies on CDC guidance on contraceptives and sexually transmitted diseases in her practice. Both are board members of Doctors for […]

Verizon beats lawsuit from utility worker who said lead cables...

2/12/2025 2:02 PM

However, Ranjan found that Tiger lacked standing to bring the lawsuit. It is not clear that Tiger’s symptoms were caused by working with lead-covered cables, and everyone is exposed to lead to some degree, the ruling said. “Given the naturally occurring lead levels in the environment and in our bodies, and the fact that individuals […]

22 states sue to block new NIH funding policy—court puts...

2/11/2025 5:26 PM

By contrast, the states argue, there’s no significant foundation for the 15 percent indirect rate. “The Rate Change Notice is arbitrary and capricious in, among other ways, its failure to articulate the bases for the categorical rate cap of 15 percent,” the suit alleges, “its failure to consider the grant recipients’ reliance on their negotiated […]

OpenAI’s secret weapon against Nvidia dependence takes shape

2/11/2025 5:26 PM

OpenAI is entering the final stages of designing its long-rumored AI processor with the aim of decreasing the company’s dependence on Nvidia hardware, according to a Reuters report released Monday. The ChatGPT creator plans to send its chip designs to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) for fabrication within the next few months, but the chip […]

After Trump killed a report on nature, researchers push ahead...

2/11/2025 5:26 PM

Skip to content “What does nature mean to you?” Major report was designed to answer the public’s biggest questions on nature. The first-ever National Nature Assessment—which was based on significant public feedback and strove to reveal how nature loss influences climate change and impacts humanity—may still see the light of day after the Trump administration […]

What you need to know about the T-Mobile Starlink mobile...

2/11/2025 5:26 PM

Starlink for your smartphone Details on beta registration, prices, compatible phones, and technical limits. T-Mobile marketing image for its Starlink texting service. Credit: T-Mobile T-Mobile yesterday announced more details of its new service powered by Starlink and said Verizon and AT&T customers can use the satellite offering, too. The standard price will be $15 a […]

Handful of users claim new Nvidia GPUs are melting power...

2/11/2025 5:26 PM

The 12VHPWR and 12V-2×6 connectors are both designed to solve a real problem: delivering hundreds of watts of power to high-end GPUs over a single cable rather than trying to fit multiple 8-pin power connectors onto these GPUs. In theory, swapping two to four 8-pin connectors for a single 12V-2×6 or 12VHPWR connector cuts down […]

H5N1 bird flu spills over again; Nevada cows hit with...

2/6/2025 2:12 PM

The spread of H5N1 bird flu in dairy cows is unprecedented; the US outbreak is the first of its kind in cows. Virologists and infectious disease experts fear that the continued spread of the virus in domestic mammals like cows, which have close interactions with people, will provide the virus countless opportunities to spill over […]

DOJ agrees to temporarily block DOGE from Treasury records

2/6/2025 2:12 PM

Elez reports to Tom Krause, another Treasury Department special government employee, but Krause doesn’t have direct access to the payment system, Humphreys told the judge. Krause is the CEO of Cloud Software Group and is also viewed as a Musk ally. But when the judge pressed Humphreys on Musk’s alleged access, the DOJ lawyer only […]

Chat, are you ready to go to space with NASA?

2/6/2025 2:12 PM

The US space agency said Wednesday it will host a live Twitch stream from the International Space Station on February 12. NASA, which has 1.3 million followers on the live-streaming video service, has previously broadcast events on its Twitch channel. However, this will be the first time the agency has created an event specifically for […]

AMD promises “mainstream” 4K gaming with next-gen GPUs as current-gen...

2/6/2025 2:12 PM

AMD announced its fourth-quarter earnings yesterday, and the numbers were mostly rosy: $7.7 billion in revenue and a 51 percent profit margin, compared to $6.2 billion and 47 percent a year ago. The biggest winner was the data center division, which made $3.9 billion thanks to Epyc server processors and Instinct AI accelerators, and Ryzen […]

Not Gouda-nough: Google removes AI-generated cheese error from Super Bowl...

2/6/2025 2:12 PM

Blame cheese.com While it’s easy to accuse Google Gemini of just making up plausible-sounding cheese facts from whole cloth, this seems more like a case of garbage-in, garbage-out. Google President of Cloud Applications Jerry Dischler posted on social media to note that the incorrect Gouda fact was “not a hallucination,” because all of Gemini’s data […]

Drones are now launching drones to attack other drones in...

2/5/2025 2:24 PM

Skip to content Under the pressure of war, the pace of innovation is quick. Last time we checked in on terrifying drone developments in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainians were dropping molten thermite along Russian trench lines and attaching surface-to-air missiles to naval drones. Possessing a far smaller population than Russia, Ukraine has […]

Internet Archive played crucial role in tracking shady CDC data...

2/5/2025 2:24 PM

Internet Archive makes it easier to track changes in CDC data online. When thousands of pages started disappearing from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website late last week, public health researchers quickly moved to archive deleted public health data. Soon, researchers discovered that the Internet Archive (IA) offers one of the most […]

Framework Laptop’s RISC-V board for open source diehards is available...

2/5/2025 2:24 PM

We’ve covered the Framework Laptop 13 primarily as a consumer Windows laptop, reviewing versions with multiple Intel and AMD processors. But the system’s modular nature makes it possible to expand it beyond Windows PC hardware, as we’ve seen with experiments like the (now-discontinued) Chromebook Edition of the laptop. Today Framework is expanding to something even […]

Europe has the worst imaginable idea to counter SpaceX’s launch...

2/5/2025 2:24 PM

It is not difficult to understand the unease on the European continent about the rise of SpaceX and its controversial founder, Elon Musk. SpaceX has surpassed the European Space Agency and its institutional partners in almost every way when it comes to accessing space and providing secure communications. Last year, for example, SpaceX launched 134 […]

$42B broadband grant program may scrap Biden admin’s preference for...

2/5/2025 2:24 PM

US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has been demanding an overhaul of a $42.45 billion broadband deployment program, and now his telecom policy director has been chosen to lead the federal agency in charge of the grant money. “Congratulations to my Telecom Policy Director, Arielle Roth, for being nominated to lead NTIA,” Cruz wrote last night, […]

Popular Linux orgs Freedesktop and Alpine Linux are scrambling for...

2/4/2025 2:04 PM

Having worked “around the clock” to move from Google Cloud Platform after its open source credits there ran out, and now rushing to move off Equinix, Tissoires suggests a new plan: “[H]ave [freedesktop.org] pay for its own servers, and then have sponsors chip in.” “Popular without most users knowing it” Alpine Linux, a small, security-minded […]

Concern about SpaceX influence at NASA grows with new appointee

2/4/2025 2:04 PM

Like a lot of the rest of the federal government right now, NASA is reeling during the first turbulent days of the Trump administration. The last two weeks have brought a change in leadership in the form of interim administrator Janet Petro, whose ascension was a surprise. Her first act was to tell agency employees […]

Bonobos recognize when humans are ignorant, try to help

2/4/2025 2:04 PM

The key question, then, was whether the bonobos acted any differently when the experiment was set up behind the solid partition compared to when their human partner could see where the food was hidden. The answer was yes. When the partition was solid, bonobos were quicker to start pointing to where the food was hidden, […]

Anthropic dares you to jailbreak its new AI model

2/4/2025 2:04 PM

An example of the lengthy wrapper the new Claude classifier uses to detect prompts related to chemical weapons. An example of the lengthy wrapper the new Claude classifier uses to detect prompts related to chemical weapons. Credit: Anthropic “For example, the harmful information may be hidden in an innocuous request, like burying harmful requests in […]

“Zero warnings”: Longtime YouTuber rails against unexplained channel removal

2/4/2025 2:04 PM

Artemiy Pavlov, the founder of a small but mighty music software brand called Sinevibes, spent more than 15 years building a YouTube channel with all original content to promote his business’ products. Over all those years, he never had any issues with YouTube’s automated content removal system—until Monday, when YouTube, without issuing a single warning, […]

Rocket Report: SpaceX tosses away a Falcon 9; a Somalian...

2/3/2025 1:54 PM

All the news that’s fit to lift “It was the perfect partnership and the biggest softball of all the opportunities.” Falcon 9 launches the SpainSat NG I mission to orbit from Florida on Wednesday. Credit: SpaceX Falcon 9 launches the SpainSat NG I mission to orbit from Florida on Wednesday. Credit: SpaceX Welcome to Edition […]

The Severance writer and cast on corporate cults, sci-fi, and...

2/3/2025 1:54 PM

The following story contains light spoilers for season one of Severence but none for season 2. The first season of Severance walked the line between science-fiction thriller and Office Space-like satire, using a clever conceit (characters can’t remember what happens at work while at home, and vice versa) to open up new storytelling possibilities. It […]

Ford made a NASCAR Mach-E, but it’s not sure what...

2/3/2025 1:54 PM

Ford’s no stranger to the NASCAR life. Ford driver Joey Logano was the 2024 Cup Series Champion in one of the company’s Mustang-bodied machines. He’s currently leading the 2025 series, too. However, the Blue Oval and its Ford Performance division are going into uncharted territory with its new prototype, an all-electric Mach-E built atop elements […]

In Apple’s first-quarter earnings, the Mac leads the way in...

2/3/2025 1:54 PM

Apple fell slightly short of investor expectations when it reported its first-quarter earnings today. While sales were up 4 percent overall, the iPhone showed signs of weakness, and sales in the Chinese market slipped by just over 11 percent. CEO Tim Cook told CNBC that the iPhone performed better in countries where Apple Intelligence was […]

How one YouTuber is trying to poison the AI bots...

2/3/2025 1:54 PM

If you’ve been paying careful attention to YouTube recently, you may have noticed the rising trend of so-called “faceless YouTube channels” that never feature a visible human talking in the video frame. While some of these channels are simply authored by camera-shy humans, many more are fully automated through AI-powered tools to craft everything from […]

It seems the FAA office overseeing SpaceX’s Starship probe still...

2/2/2025 10:45 PM

The political winds have shifted in Washington, but the FAA hasn’t yet changed its tune on Starship. Liftoff of SpaceX’s seventh full-scale test flight of the Super Heavy/Starship launch vehicle on January 16. Credit: SpaceX The seventh test flight of SpaceX’s gigantic Starship rocket came to a disappointing end a little more than two weeks […]

Treasury official retires after clash with DOGE over access to...

2/2/2025 10:45 PM

“This is a mechanical job—they pay Social Security benefits, they pay vendors, whatever. It’s not one where there’s a role for nonmechanical things, at least from the career standpoint. Your whole job is to pay the bills as they’re due,” Mazur was quoted as saying. “It’s never been used in a way to execute a […]

Buoy meets satellite soulmate in Love Me

2/2/2025 10:45 PM

a postapocalyptic love story about transformation Ars chats with directors Andy and Sam Zuchero and props department head Roberts Cifersons. Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun star in Love Me Credit: Bleecker Street There have been a lot of films and television series exploring sentient AI, consciousness, and identity, but there’s rarely been quite such a […]

Dell risks employee retention by forcing all teams back into...

2/2/2025 10:45 PM

In a statement to Ars, Dell’s PR team said: “We continually evolve our business so we’re set up to deliver the best innovation, value, and service to our customers and partners. That includes more in-person connections to drive market leadership.” The road to full RTO After Dell allowed employees to work from home two days […]

Research Roundup: 7 cool science stories we almost missed

2/2/2025 10:45 PM

Peruvian mummy tattoos, the wobbly physics of spears and darts, quantum “cat states,” and more. Lasers revealed tattoos on the hand of a 1200-year-old Peruvian mummy. Credit: Michael Pittman and Thomas G Kaye It’s a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories each month. In the past, we’ve […]

VGHF opens free online access to 1,500 classic game mags,...

1/31/2025 1:41 PM

In the intro video, Salvador talks about looking through their archives and stumbling on the existence of Pretzel Pete, a little-remembered early 3D driving/platform game. Despite its extreme obscurity, the game is nonetheless mentioned in the 1999 E3 catalog and an old issue of PC Gamer, both of which are now memorialized forever in the […]

Report: DeepSeek’s chat histories and internal data were publicly exposed

1/31/2025 1:41 PM

A cloud security firm found a publicly accessible, fully controllable database belonging to DeepSeek, the Chinese firm that has recently shaken up the AI world, “within minutes” of examining DeepSeek’s security, according to a blog post by Wiz. An analytical ClickHouse database tied to DeepSeek, “completely open and unauthenticated,” contained more than 1 million instances […]

OpenAI teases “new era” of AI in US, deepens ties...

1/31/2025 1:41 PM

On Thursday, OpenAI announced that it is deepening its ties with the US government through a partnership with the National Laboratories and expects to use AI to “supercharge” research across a wide range of fields to better serve the public. “This is the beginning of a new era, where AI will advance science, strengthen national […]

I agree with OpenAI: You shouldn’t use other peoples’ work...

1/31/2025 1:41 PM

Skip to content Op-ed: OpenAI says DeepSeek used its data improperly. That must be frustrating! Credit: Benj Edwards / OpenAI ChatGPT developer OpenAI and other players in the generative AI business were caught unawares this week by a Chinese company named DeepSeek, whose open source R1 simulated reasoning model provides results similar to OpenAI’s best […]

Microsoft now hosts AI model accused of copying OpenAI data

1/31/2025 1:41 PM

Fresh on the heels of a controversy in which ChatGPT-maker OpenAI accused the Chinese company behind DeepSeek R1 of using its AI model outputs against its terms of service, OpenAI’s largest investor, Microsoft, announced on Wednesday that it will now host DeepSeek R1 on its Azure cloud service. DeepSeek R1 has been the talk of […]

Weight saving and aero optimization feature in the 2025 Porsche...

1/29/2025 11:39 PM

Among the changes are better aero, shorter gearing, and the return of the Touring. The Porsche 911 GT3 is to other 911s as other 911s are to regular cars. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin The Porsche 911 GT3 is to other 911s as other 911s are to regular cars. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin VALENCIA, SPAIN—A Porsche 911 is […]

Democrat teams up with movie industry to propose website-blocking law

1/29/2025 11:39 PM

US Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) today proposed a law that would let copyright owners obtain court orders requiring Internet service providers to block access to foreign piracy websites. The bill would also force DNS providers to block sites. Lofgren said in a press release that she “work[ed] for over a year with the tech, film, […]

Stem cells used to partially repair damaged hearts

1/29/2025 11:39 PM

Skip to content Patches of stem-cell-derived heart muscle improve damaged hearts. When we developed the ability to convert various cells into a stem cell, it held the promise of an entirely new type of therapy. Rather than getting the body to try to fix itself with its cells or deal with the complications of organ […]

The long-planned return of two astronauts from space is now...

1/29/2025 11:39 PM

On Thursday NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are scheduled to don spacesuits to exit the International Space Station. However, despite a plea from President Trump to bring them home as soon as possible, the pair won’t be coming home just yet. This will be a routine spacewalk outside the space station. In the […]

Trump cribs Musk’s “fork in the road” Twitter memo to...

1/29/2025 11:39 PM

Federal workers on Reddit slam Office of Personnel Management email as short-sighted. Echoing Elon Musk’s approach to thinning out Twitter’s staff in 2022, Donald Trump’s plan to significantly slash the government workforce now, for a limited time only, includes offering resignation buyouts. In a Tuesday email that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent to […]

AI haters build tarpits to trap and trick AI scrapers...

1/29/2025 12:28 AM

Making AI crawlers squirm Attackers explain how an anti-spam defense became an AI weapon. Last summer, Anthropic inspired backlash when its ClaudeBot AI crawler was accused of hammering websites a million or more times a day. And it wasn’t the only artificial intelligence company making headlines for supposedly ignoring instructions in robots.txt files to avoid […]

Apple chips can be hacked to leak secrets from Gmail,...

1/29/2025 12:28 AM

MEET FLOP AND ITS CLOSE RELATIVE, SLAP Side channel gives unauthenticated remote attackers access they should never have. Apple is introducing three M3 performance tiers at the same time. Credit: Apple Apple-designed chips powering Macs, iPhones, and iPads contain two newly discovered vulnerabilities that leak credit card information, locations, and other sensitive data from the […]

Senator Ted Cruz is trying to block Wi-Fi hotspots for...

1/29/2025 12:28 AM

Ted Cruz vs. Wi-Fi hotspots Cruz: Hotspot lending could “censor kids’ exposure to conservative viewpoints.” Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at a hearing on Tuesday, January 28, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Tom Williams US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is trying to block a plan to distribute Wi-Fi hotspots to schoolchildren, claiming it […]

States say they’ve been shut out of Medicaid amid Trump...

1/29/2025 12:28 AM

Amid the Trump administration’s abrupt, wide-scale freeze on federal funding, states are reporting that they’ve lost access to Medicaid, a program jointly funded by the federal government and states to provide comprehensive health coverage and care to tens of millions of low-income adults and children in the US. The funding freeze was announced in a […]

For the first time, a privately developed aircraft has flown...

1/29/2025 12:28 AM

A new generation of companies, including Boom Supersonic, are aiming to meld new ideas, technology, and a commercial approach to develop more cost-effective travel at supersonic speeds. The significance of Tuesday’s flight is that it marks the first time one of these companies has built and flown its own vehicle above the speed of sound. […]

3D-printed “ghost gun” ring comes to my community—and leaves a...

1/27/2025 2:15 PM

It’s a truism at this point to say that Americans own a lot of guns. Case in point: This week, a fire chief in rural Alabama stopped to help a driver who had just hit a deer. The two men walked up the driveway of a nearby home. For reasons that remain unclear, a man […]

WHO starts cutting costs as US withdrawal date set for...

1/27/2025 2:15 PM

“Just stupid” On January 23, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sent a memo to staff announcing the cost-cutting measures. Reuters obtained a copy of the memo. “This announcement has made our financial situation more acute,” Tedros wrote, referring to the US withdrawal plans. WHO’s budget mainly comes from dues and voluntary contributions from member states. […]

Nvidia starts to wind down support for old GPUs, including...

1/27/2025 2:15 PM

Nvidia is launching the first volley of RTX 50-series GPUs based on its new Blackwell architecture, starting with the RTX 5090 and working downward from there. The company also appears to be winding down support for a few of its older GPU architectures, according to these CUDA release notes spotted by Tom’s Hardware. The release […]

Anthropic builds RAG directly into Claude models with new Citations...

1/27/2025 2:15 PM

Willison notes that while citing sources helps verify accuracy, building a system that does it well “can be quite tricky,” but Citations appears to be a step in the right direction by building RAG capability directly into the model. Apparently, that capability is not a new thing. Anthropic’s Alex Albert wrote on X, “Under the […]

Couple allegedly tricked AI investors into funding wedding, houses

1/27/2025 2:15 PM

To further the alleged scheme, he “often described non-existent revenue, inflated cash balances,” and “otherwise exaggerated customer relationships,” the US Attorney’s Office said, to convince investors to spend millions. As Beckman’s accomplice, Lau allegedly manipulated documents, including documents allegedly stolen from the venture capital firm that employed her while supposedly hiding her work for GameOn. […]

Girl strangled by her own wheelchair as bus monitor texted,...

1/17/2025 8:21 PM

Cell phones are magnets for our attention, but you can, of course, face significant legal jeopardy for giving them that attention. Just ask the “safety driver” of an Uber self-driving vehicle, which hit and killed a pedestrian in Arizona in 2018. According to authorities, the driver was watching The Voice on Hulu just before the […]

FCC chair makes one last stand against Trump’s call to...

1/17/2025 8:21 PM

FCC not the president’s speech police (yet) Chair: Complaints “seek to weaponize the licensing authority of the FCC.” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel testifies during a House hearing on Thursday, May 16, 2024. Credit: Getty Images | Tom Williams Taking action in the final days of the Biden administration, the Federal Communications Commission dismissed three complaints […]

Google is about to make Gemini a core part of...

1/17/2025 8:21 PM

Google has added AI features to its regular Workspace accounts for business while slightly raising the baseline prices of Workspace plans. Previously, AI tools in the Gemini Business plan were a $20 per seat add-on to existing Workspace accounts, which had a base cost of $12 per seat without. Now, the AI tools are included […]

GM patents a dual-port charging system for EVs with vehicle-to-load

1/17/2025 8:21 PM

The battery system on an electric car can either charge—from regenerative braking or an external power supply—or discharge—powering the EV’s motor(s) or supplying that power via so-called vehicle-to-load. As a rule, it can’t do both at once, but General Motors has some thoughts about that. The patent analysis site CarMoses spotted a recent GM patent […]

Home Microsoft 365 plans use Copilot AI features as pretext...

1/17/2025 8:21 PM

Microsoft hasn’t said for how long this “limited time” offer will last, but presumably it will only last for a year or two to help ease the transition between the old pricing and the new pricing. New subscribers won’t be offered the option to pay for the Classic plans. Subscribers on the Personal and Family […]

Buyers of Razer’s bogus “N95” Zephyr masks get over $1...

1/15/2025 1:32 PM

Skip to content $1 million total sent to 6,764 consumers due to Razer settlement with FTC. The Razer Zephyr mask. Credit: Sam Machkovech The Federal Trade Commission said yesterday it is sending over $1 million in refunds to 6,764 consumers who purchased Razer Zephyr masks that were deceptively marketed as providing N95 protection during the […]

Ban on Chinese connected-car software is almost ready

1/15/2025 1:32 PM

However, the ban, as written, is not absolute. Companies can seek authorization to import software or hardware that would otherwise be outlawed, but the request would need to satisfy the US government and possibly be subject to conditions. There are also exemptions for software for vehicles older than model year 2027 and hardware for vehicles […]

Up close and personal with the stag beetle in A...

1/15/2025 1:32 PM

It’s just one of the many fascinating insect species featured in the second season of this NatGeo docuseries. A female giant stag beetle Credit: National Geographic/Darlyne A. Murawski A plucky male American stag beetle thinks he’s found a mate on a rotting old tree stump—and then realizes there’s another male eager to make the same […]

Parallels can finally run x86 versions of Windows or Linux...

1/15/2025 1:32 PM

Virtualization software like Parallels and VMware Fusion give Mac owners the ability to run Windows and Linux on top of macOS, but for Apple Silicon Macs, that support was limited to the Arm-based versions of those operating systems. And while Windows and Linux both support some level of x86-to-Arm app translation that attempts to maintain […]

Elon Musk could be China’s pick to buy TikTok, report...

1/15/2025 1:32 PM

TikTokers could also flock to YouTube, which remains one of the most profitable platforms for creators on the planet. But that would surely rile some YouTube users who dislike YouTube Shorts clogging up the homepage. Rather than move to a popular US app, however, many contrarian TikTokers are eyeing other Chinese-owned apps, including ByteDance-owned Lemon8. […]

Archaeologists just mapped a Bronze Age megafortress in Georgia

1/10/2025 7:39 AM

pastoral nomads, please stop here This recently mapped Bronze Age fortress is just one among hundreds. This orthographic photo shows the inner fortress walls and some nearby structures. Credit: Erb-Satullo et al. 2025 A sprawling 3,500-year-old fortress offers tantalizing clues about a culture that once dotted the southern Caucasus mountains with similar walled communities. Archaeologists […]

Here’s how hucksters are manipulating Google to promote shady Chrome...

1/10/2025 7:39 AM

Skip to content How do you stash 18,000 keywords into a description? Turns out it’s easy. Welcome to the Chrome Web Store The people overseeing the security of Google’s Chrome browser explicitly forbid third-party extension developers from trying to manipulate how the browser extensions they submit are presented in the Chrome Web Store. The policy […]

Italy’s plan to buy Starlink data deals a serious blow...

1/10/2025 7:39 AM

Developed by the European Union and European Space Agency, with Italian participation, this constellation of 290 satellites is planned to come online by 2030 at a development cost of $10.5 billion. During the lengthy negotiations, Italy even managed to secure one of the three primary ground stations in the Abruzzo region of the country. The […]

It’s remarkably easy to inject new medical misinformation into LLMs

1/10/2025 7:39 AM

Changing just 0.001% of inputs to misinformation makes the AI less accurate. It’s pretty easy to see the problem here: The Internet is brimming with misinformation, and most large language models are trained on a massive body of text obtained from the Internet. Ideally, having substantially higher volumes of accurate information might overwhelm the lies. […]

Gentrified Doom remake trades chainsaw for cheese knife

1/10/2025 7:39 AM

Just when you thought you had seen every possible Doom mod, two game developers released a free browser game that reimagines the first level of 1993’s Doom as an art gallery, replacing demons with paintings and shotguns with wine glasses. Doom: The Gallery Experience, created by Filippo Meozzi and Liam Stone, transforms the iconic E1M1 […]

Honda shows off “nearly production” EVs and new operating system...

1/8/2025 10:04 PM

Honda shows off “nearly production” EVs and new operating system at CES Production of the Honda Zero SUV begins in Ohio in 2026. We expect some details to change as the Zero Saloon morphs into its production version. But perhaps not that much. Credit: Abigail Bassett We expect some details to change as the Zero […]

As US marks first H5N1 bird flu death, WHO and...

1/8/2025 10:04 PM

The H5N1 bird flu situation in the US seems more fraught than ever this week as the virus continues to spread swiftly in dairy cattle and birds while sporadically jumping to humans. On Monday, officials in Louisiana announced that the person who had developed the country’s first severe H5N1 infection had died of the infection, […]

Nearly two years after its radical pivot, Fidelity slashes Relativity’s...

1/8/2025 10:04 PM

For several years, an innovative, California-based launch company named Relativity Space has been the darling of investors and media. Relativity promised to disrupt launch by taking a somewhat niche technology in the space industry at the time, 3D printing, and using it as the foundation for manufacturing rockets. The pitch worked. Relativity’s chief executive Tim […]

US sues six of the biggest landlords over “algorithmic pricing...

1/8/2025 10:04 PM

The Justice Department says that landlords did more than use RealPage in the alleged pricing scheme. “Along with using RealPage’s anticompetitive pricing algorithms, these landlords coordinated through a variety of means,” such as “directly communicating with competitors’ senior managers about rents, occupancy, and other competitively sensitive topics,” the DOJ said. There were “call arounds” in […]

Bye-bye Windows gaming? SteamOS officially expands past the Steam Deck.

1/8/2025 10:04 PM

Almost exactly a year ago, we were publicly yearning for the day when more portable gaming PC makers could ditch Windows in favor of SteamOS (without having to resort to touchy unofficial workarounds). Now, that day has finally come, with Lenovo announcing the upcoming Legion Go S as the first non-Valve handheld to come with […]

Ars readers gave over $39,000 in our 2024 Charity Drive

1/7/2025 3:49 PM

Last month, we asked readers to donate to a couple of good causes in our 2024 Charity Drive sweepstakes. And boy, did you deliver. With the drive now complete and the donations all tallied, we can report that Ars Technica readers gave an incredible $39,047.66 to Child’s Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in this year’s […]

Check out this awesome Street Fighter II car dashboard mod

1/7/2025 3:49 PM

The car in question belongs to Michael Uehli, and it’s quite far from stock. Originally a twin-turbo model, it now sports a Toyota 1.5 JZ straight six, variable valve timing, a new Garrett turbo, and some other bits and bobs that endow the car with 510 hp (380 kW) and 499 lb-ft (677 Nm). But […]

Cold-weather range hits aren’t as bad for EVs with heat...

1/7/2025 3:49 PM

“I’m not gonna lie, I was nervous about it,” said Malmgren, who works as the senior policy director for Plug In America, another EV advocacy organization. “But it was a complete non-issue. We charged once along the way.” Malmgren said her experience is a common one for first-time EV buyers. A recent Plug In America […]

Intel fills out Core Ultra 200 laptop CPUs with hodgepodge...

1/7/2025 3:49 PM

Core Ultra 200U, 200H, and 200HX will all fall short of Copilot+ compatibility. The new additions to the Core Ultra 200-series lineup today are in the U- and H-series, which Intel slots in below and above existing Lunar Lake-based Core Ultra 200V CPUs. HX-series CPUs also bring Intel’s desktop silicon to high-powered laptops. Credit: Intel […]

Microsoft would really like you to replace your old Windows...

1/7/2025 3:49 PM

Last January at CES, Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi declared 2024 the “year of the AI PC.” And whether you believe that prediction came true or not—many new PCs come with AI-accelerating neural processing units (NPUs) onboard, but far from all of them—you can’t deny that Microsoft did try very hard to make it […]

Bob Dylan has some Dylanesque thoughts on the “sorcery” of...

1/5/2025 5:58 AM

We might expect someone like Dylan, immersed as he has always been in folk songs, old standards, and American history, to bemoan the corrupting influence of new technology. And he does offer up some quotes in that vein. For example: Everything’s become too smooth and painless… The earth could vomit up its dead, and it […]

One less thing to worry about in 2025: Yellowstone probably...

1/5/2025 5:58 AM

There’s not enough melted material near the surface to trigger a massive eruption. It’s difficult to comprehend what 1,000 cubic kilometers of rock would look like. It’s even more difficult to imagine it being violently flung into the air. Yet the Yellowstone volcanic system blasted more than twice that amount of rock into the sky […]

Do Kwon, the crypto bro behind $40B Luna/Terra collapse, finally...

1/5/2025 5:58 AM

The US government finally got its metaphorical hands on Do Hyeong Kwon, the 33-year-old Korean national who built a financial empire on the cryptocurrency Luna and the “stablecoin” TerraUSD, only to see it all come crashing down in a wipeout that cost investors $40 billion. As private investors filed lawsuits, and as the governments of […]

VW will offer “highly competitive” leases on ID.4 as sales...

1/5/2025 5:58 AM

Last September, faulty door handle hardware caused Volkswagen to take the rather drastic steps of suspending sales and production of the electric crossover, as well as recalling almost 100,000 customer cars. Now, it says it has new parts that will allow it to fix existing cars, lift the stop-sale order, and soon, resume production at […]

Instagram users discover old AI-powered “characters,” instantly revile them

1/5/2025 5:58 AM

Skip to content Your bots are spam, our bots are glam But the social networking giant still has big plans for AI content across its services. The AI character “Liv” introduces herself to the world of Instagram, and the world of Instagram responds in kind. A little over a year ago, Meta created Facebook and […]

Final Reminder: Donate today to win swag in our annual...

1/3/2025 9:04 AM

How it works Donating is easy. Simply donate to Child’s Play using a credit card or PayPal or donate to the EFF using PayPal, credit card, or cryptocurrency. You can also support Child’s Play directly by using this Ars Technica campaign page or by picking an item from the Amazon wish list of a specific […]

Almost the entire US South is now being blocked by...

1/3/2025 9:04 AM

It’s getting harder to access popular adult sites in the US South. On Wednesday, Pornhub’s owner, Aylo, kicked off the new year by blocking two more states that implemented age verification laws requiring ID to access porn, Florida and South Carolina. According to 404 Media, these states are now among 16 states where Aylo sites, including […]

Using 2D materials on chips without destroying the wiring

1/3/2025 9:04 AM

2D materials are typically made at temperatures that wreck silicon chips. Believe it or not, this chunk of mineral contains lots of individual layers that are atomically thin. Credit: Kwisky Silicon chip manufacturers like Intel and TSMC are constantly outdoing themselves to make ever smaller features, but they are getting closer to the physical limits […]

Tesla sales fell for the first time in over a...

1/3/2025 9:04 AM

Tesla sold almost 1.8 million cars in 2024, according to data released by the company this morning. Unfortunately for the electric automaker, it sold more than 1.8 million cars in 2023, beating this year’s effort by 19,355 vehicles. But unlike last year, it sold more cars than it built, with production falling by 4 percent […]

Russia just launched the 2,000th Semyorka rocket—it’s both a triumph...

1/3/2025 9:04 AM

The Russian space program reached a significant milestone over the holidays with the 2,000th launch of a rocket from the “R-7” family of boosters. The launch took place on Christmas Day when an R-7 rocket lifted off, carrying a remote-sensing satellite from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. This family of rockets has an incredible heritage dating back […]

Power company hid illegal crypto mine that may have caused...

12/31/2024 4:25 PM

But Russia presumably gets no taxes on illegal crypto mining, and power outages can be costly for everyone in a region. So next year, Russia will ban crypto mining in 10 regions for six years and place seasonal restrictions that would disrupt some crypto mining operations during the coldest winter months in regions like Irkutsk, […]

Evolution journal editors resign en masse

12/31/2024 4:25 PM

an emerging form of protest? Board members expressed concerns over high fees, editorial independence, and use of AI in editorial processes. Over the holiday weekend, all but one member of the editorial board of Elsevier’s Journal of Human Evolution (JHE) resigned “with heartfelt sadness and great regret,” according to Retraction Watch, which helpfully provided an […]

Frogfish reveals how it evolved the “fishing rod” on its...

12/31/2024 4:25 PM

In most bony fish, or teleosts, motor neurons for fins are found on the sides (ventrolateral zone) of the underside (ventral horn) of the spinal cord. The motor neurons controlling the illicium of frogfish are in their own cluster and located in the dorsolateral zone. In fish, this is unusual. “The peculiar location of fishing […]

Trump told SCOTUS he plans to make a deal to...

12/31/2024 4:25 PM

Several members of Congress— Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Representative Ro Khanna (D-Calif.)—filed a brief agreeing that “the TikTok ban does not survive First Amendment scrutiny.” They agreed with TikTok that the law is “illegitimate.” Lawmakers’ “principle justification” for the ban—”preventing covert content manipulation by the Chinese government”—masked a “desire” […]

Whistleblower finds unencrypted location data for 800,000 VW EVs

12/31/2024 4:25 PM

Connected cars are great—at least until some company leaves unencrypted location data on the Internet for anyone to find. That’s what happened with over 800,000 EVs manufactured by the Volkswagen Group, after Cariad, an automative software company that handles much of the development tasks for VW, left several terabytes of data unprotected on Amazon’s cloud. […]

Tech worker movements grow as threats of RTO, AI loom

12/29/2024 8:57 PM

Advocates say tech workers movements got too big to ignore in 2024. Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images It feels like tech workers have caught very few breaks over the past several years, between ongoing mass layoffs, stagnating wages amid inflation, AI supposedly coming for jobs, and unpopular orders to return to office that, for […]

Could microwaved grapes be used for quantum sensing?

12/29/2024 8:57 PM

The microwaved grape trick also shows their promise as alternative microwave resonators for quantum sensing applications, according to the authors of this latest paper. Those applications include satellite technology, masers, microwave photon detection, hunting for axions (a dark matter candidate), and various quantum systems, and driving spin in superconducting qubits for quantum computing, among others. […]

FTC launches probe of Microsoft over bundling

12/29/2024 8:57 PM

John Lopatka, a former consultant to the FTC who now teaches antitrust law at Penn State, told ProPublica that the Microsoft actions detailed in the news organization’s recent reporting followed “a very familiar pattern” of behavior. “It does echo the Microsoft case” from decades ago, said Lopatka, who co-authored a book on that case. In […]

Magnetic shape-shifting surface can move stuff without grasping it

12/29/2024 8:57 PM

A kirigami design where the cuts’ length-to-width ratio was six was way more responsive to magnets, and that, in turn, enhanced an effect known as magnetically induced stiffening. With no magnets around, the kirigami disk was way more compliant than one without cuts. But when a magnetic field was applied, it became more than 1.8 […]

Craving carbs? Blame an ancient gene.

12/29/2024 8:57 PM

“This observation is concordant with the recent evidence of Neanderthal starch consumption, and perhaps the availability of cooked starch in archaic hominins made possible through the domestication of fire,” the researchers said in a study recently published in Science. Out of eight genomes examined, multiple copies of AMY1 were found in two Eastern Neanderthal genomes, […]

The 20 most-read stories of 2024 on Ars Technica

12/25/2024 5:37 PM

Ars looks back at the top stories of the year. Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Hey, look at that! Another year has flown by, and I suspect many people would say “good riddance” to 2024. The 2020s have been quite the decade so far. No matter what insanity has transpired by a particular December […]

Why The Long Kiss Goodnight is a great alt-Christmas movie

12/25/2024 5:37 PM

Skip to content Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson are sheer perfection as an amnesiac former assassin and PI who foil a terrorist plot. Everyone has their favorite film that serves as alternative Christmas movie fare, with Die Hard (1988) and Lethal Weapon (1987) typically topping the list—at least when all you want for Christmas […]

Health care giant Ascension says 5.6 million patients affected in...

12/25/2024 5:37 PM

Health care company Ascension lost sensitive data for nearly 5.6 million individuals in a cyberattack that was attributed to a notorious ransomware gang, according to documents filed with the attorney general of Maine. Ascension owns 140 hospitals and scores of assisted living facilities. In May, the organization was hit with an attack that caused mass […]

How the worlds of Dune: Prophecy got their distinctive looks

12/25/2024 5:37 PM

a peek behind the curtain Ars chats with Dune: Prophecy lead cinematographer Pierre Gill about color palettes, lighting, and other challenges. Credit: Attila Szvacsek/HBO Director Denis Villeneuve’s stunning two-part film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune has received many well-deserved accolades—with Dune: Part 2 being crowned Ars Technica’s top movie of 2024. The films also spawned […]

China’s plan to dominate legacy chips globally sparks US probe

12/25/2024 5:37 PM

Under Joe Biden’s direction, the US Trade Representative (USTR) launched a probe Monday into China’s plans to globally dominate markets for legacy chips—alleging that China’s unfair trade practices threaten US national security and could thwart US efforts to build up a domestic semiconductor supply chain. Unlike the most advanced chips used to power artificial intelligence […]

Film Technica: Our favorite movies of 2024

12/23/2024 9:30 PM

Skip to content lighting up the silver screen This year’s list features quite a bit of horror mixed in with the usual blockbuster fare—plus smaller hidden gems. Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Editor’s note: Warning: Although we’ve done our best to avoid spoiling anything too major, please note this list does include a few […]

Human versus autonomous car race ends before it begins

12/23/2024 9:30 PM

A2RL admits that this is a hard problem, and that’s refreshing. A2RL chose the Super Formula chassis to install its autonomous driving tech. Recently, an A2RL car went to Suzuka in Japan to try and race against a human-driven version. Credit: Roberto Baldwin A2RL chose the Super Formula chassis to install its autonomous driving tech. […]

Ars Technica’s top 20 video games of 2024

12/23/2024 9:30 PM

Skip to content A relatively light year still had its fair share of interactive standouts. Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images When we introduced last year’s annual list of the best games in this space, we focused on how COVID delays led to a 2023 packed with excellent big-name blockbusters and intriguing indies that seemed […]

New AA-powered AirTag case promises 10-year lifespan

12/23/2024 9:30 PM

On Wednesday, Elevation Lab announced TimeCapsule, a new $20 battery case purported to extend Apple AirTag battery life from one year to 10 years. The product replaces the standard CR2032 coin cell battery in the Bluetooth-based location tracker with two AA batteries to provide extended power capacity. The TimeCapsule case requires users to remove their […]

Google will apparently offer “AI Mode” right on its main...

12/23/2024 9:30 PM

Google will soon take more steps to make AI a part of search, exposing more users to its Gemini agent, according to recent reports and app teardowns. “AI Mode,” shown at the top left of the web results page and inside the Google app, will provide an interface similar to a Gemini AI chat, according […]

Bird flu jumps from birds to human in Louisiana; patient...

12/15/2024 3:14 AM

A person in Louisiana is hospitalized with H5N1 bird flu after having contact with sick and dying birds suspected of carrying the virus, state health officials announced Friday. It is the first human H5N1 case detected in Louisiana. For now, the case is considered a “presumptive” positive until testing is confirmed by the Centers for […]

Yearlong supply-chain attack targeting security pros steals 390K credentials

12/15/2024 3:14 AM

Screenshot showing a graph tracking mining activity. Credit: Checkmarx But wait, there’s more On Friday, Datadog revealed that MUT-1244 employed additional means for installing its second-stage malware. One was through a collection of at least 49 malicious entries posted to GitHub that contained Trojanized proof-of-concept exploits for security vulnerabilities. These packages help malicious and benevolent […]

Werner Herzog muses on mysteries of the brain in Theater...

12/15/2024 3:14 AM

That mind is partly revealed through Herzog’s running narration, such as when he muses about collective behavior and whether fish have souls—a digression sparked by his interview with Siri co-inventor Tom Gruber. “In the background, I saw his TV screen still on, we didn’t switch it off, and I saw some very, very strange school […]

Elon Musk slams SEC as agency threatens charges in Twitter...

12/15/2024 3:14 AM

An SEC spokesperson told Ars today that the commission’s policy is “to conduct investigations on a confidential basis to preserve the integrity of its investigative process. The SEC therefore does not comment on the existence or nonexistence of a possible investigation.” A Reuters source confirmed the settlement offer. “The SEC sent Musk a settlement offer […]

Don’t use crypto to cheat on taxes: Bitcoin bro gets...

12/15/2024 3:14 AM

A bitcoin investor who went to increasingly great lengths to hide $1 million in cryptocurrency gains on his tax returns was sentenced to two years in prison on Thursday. It seems that not even his most “sophisticated” tactics—including using mixers, managing multiple wallets, and setting up in-person meetings to swap bitcoins for cash—kept the feds […]

Are LLMs capable of non-verbal reasoning?

12/13/2024 4:18 PM

In the researchers’ COCONUT model (for Chain Of CONtinUous Thought), those kinds of hidden states are encoded as “latent thoughts” that replace the individual written steps in a logical sequence both during training and when processing a query. This avoids the need to convert to and from natural language for each step and “frees the […]

Character.AI steps up teen safety after bots allegedly caused suicide,...

12/13/2024 4:17 PM

Following a pair of lawsuits alleging that chatbots caused a teen boy’s suicide, groomed a 9-year-old girl, and caused a vulnerable teen to self-harm, Character.AI (C.AI) has announced a separate model just for teens, ages 13 and up, that’s supposed to make their experiences with bots safer. In a blog, C.AI said it took a […]

Critical WordPress plugin vulnerability under active exploit threatens thousands

12/13/2024 4:17 PM

Thousands of sites running WordPress remain unpatched against a critical security flaw in a widely used plugin that was being actively exploited in attacks that allow for unauthenticated execution of malicious code, security researchers said. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-11972, is found in Hunk Companion, a plugin that runs on 10,000 sites that use the […]

Report: AT&T, Verizon aren’t notifying most victims of Chinese call-records...

12/13/2024 4:17 PM

Telecom companies aren’t required to notify customers about every breach. A Federal Communications Commission order in December 2023 adopted a “harm-based notification trigger” in which “notification of a breach to consumers is not required in cases where a carrier can reasonably determine that no harm to customers is reasonably likely to occur as a result […]

Generating power with a thin, flexible thermoelectric film

12/13/2024 4:17 PM

Skip to content Device could be integrated into clothing, harvest body heat to power gadgets. The No. 1 nuisance with smartphones and smartwatches is that we need to charge them every day. As warm-blooded creatures, however, we generate heat all the time, and that heat can be converted into electricity for some of the electronic […]

Russia takes unusual route to hack Starlink-connected devices in Ukraine

12/12/2024 1:22 PM

“Microsoft assesses that Secret Blizzard either used the Amadey malware as a service (MaaS) or accessed the Amadey command-and-control (C2) panels surreptitiously to download a PowerShell dropper on target devices,” Microsoft said. “The PowerShell dropper contained a Base64-encoded Amadey payload appended by code that invoked a request to Secret Blizzard C2 infrastructure.” The ultimate objective […]

Errant reference in macOS 15.2 seems to confirm M4 MacBook...

12/12/2024 1:22 PM

The macOS 15.2 update that was released earlier today came with a handful of new features, plus something unexpected: an apparently accidental reference to the upcoming M4 MacBook Airs. MacRumors reports that the “Mac16,12” and “Mac16,13” model identifiers reference 13- and 15-inch models of the M4 Air and that both are coming in 2025. That […]

Photobucket opted inactive users into privacy nightmare, lawsuit says

12/12/2024 1:22 PM

Skip to content Class action could foil Photobucket’s plan to turn old photos into AI goldmine. Photobucket was sued Wednesday after a recent privacy policy update revealed plans to sell users’ photos—including biometric identifiers like face and iris scans—to companies training generative AI models. The proposed class action seeks to stop Photobucket from selling users’ […]

TCL TVs will use films made with generative AI to...

12/12/2024 1:22 PM

Advertising has become a focal point of TV software. We’re seeing companies that sell TV sets be increasingly interested in leveraging TV operating systems (OSes) for ads and tracking. This has led to bold new strategies, like an adtech firm launching a TV OS and ads on TV screensavers. With new short films set to […]

Google goes “agentic” with Gemini 2.0’s ambitious AI agent features

12/12/2024 1:22 PM

On Wednesday, Google unveiled Gemini 2.0, the next generation of its AI-model family, starting with an experimental release called Gemini 2.0 Flash. The model family can generate text, images, and speech while processing multiple types of input including text, images, audio, and video. It’s similar to multimodal AI models like GPT-4o, which powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT. […]

Startup will brick $800 emotional support robot for kids without...

12/11/2024 7:50 AM

In addition to the robot being bricked, Embodied noted that warranties, repair services, the corresponding parent app and guides, and support staff will no longer be accessible. “Unable to offer refunds” Embodied said it is “unable” to offer most Moxie owners refunds due to its “financial situation and impending dissolution.” The potential exception is for […]

AI company trolls San Francisco with billboards saying “stop hiring...

12/11/2024 7:50 AM

Artisan CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack defended the campaign’s messaging in an interview with SFGate. “They are somewhat dystopian, but so is AI,” he told the outlet in a text message. “The way the world works is changing.” In another message he wrote, “We wanted something that would draw eyes—you don’t draw eyes with boring messaging.” So […]

Micron’s $6B CHIPS funding should have more strings attached, critics...

12/11/2024 7:50 AM

Micron’s NY fabs are the only CHIPS projects undergoing full environmental review. Micron Technology will receive more than $6.1 billion after the US Department of Commerce finalized one of the largest CHIPS Act awards ever to “the only US-based manufacturer of memory chips,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a press statement. Micron will use […]

Location data firm helps police find out when suspects visited...

12/11/2024 7:50 AM

The intake form “was included in an email thread between a Fog representative and Bryan Kimbell, chief human trafficking investigator at the Office of the Attorney General in Georgia,” according to 404 Media. Services like Fog Data Science have triggered concerns about how police might use location tracking to prosecute abortions. “For several thousand dollars […]

Amazon starts selling Hyundai cars, more brands next year

12/11/2024 7:50 AM

Fear not—there’s no one-click option, so no one should be in any danger of absent-mindedly buying a brand-new Palisade. Instead, there’s a “Begin Purchase” button, at which point you can choose to pay the entire amount or finance the purchase. Here is a huge difference to the traditional dealership experience: There’s no negotiation, no browbeating […]

The shadow’s roots take hold in Wheel of Time S3...

12/9/2024 2:17 PM

The Wheel of Time returns to Prime Video in March. Prime Video released a one-minute teaser for its fantasy series The Wheel of Time at CCXP24 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The series is adapted from the late Robert Jordan‘s bestselling 14-book series of epic fantasy novels, and Ars has been following it closely with regular […]

Innie rebellion is brewing in trippy Severance S2 trailer

12/9/2024 2:17 PM

Severance returns to Apple TV+ in January for its sophomore season. Severance was one of the most talked-about TV series of 2022, receiving widespread critical acclaim. We loved the series so much that Ars staffers actually wrote a group review so that everyone could weigh in with their thoughts on the first season, pronouncing it […]

TikTok’s two paths to avoid US ban: Beg SCOTUS or...

12/9/2024 2:17 PM

“What the Act targets is the PRC’s ability to manipulate that content covertly,” the ruling said. “Understood in that way, the Government’s justification is wholly consonant with the First Amendment.” TikTok likely to appeal to Supreme Court TikTok is unsurprisingly frustrated by the ruling. In a statement provided to Ars, TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes confirmed […]

Your AI clone could target your family, but there’s a...

12/9/2024 2:17 PM

The warning extends beyond voice scams. The FBI announcement details how criminals also use AI models to generate convincing profile photos, identification documents, and chatbots embedded in fraudulent websites. These tools automate the creation of deceptive content while reducing previously obvious signs of humans behind the scams, like poor grammar or obviously fake photos. Much […]

Rocket Report: NASA delays Artemis again; SpinLaunch spins a little...

12/9/2024 2:17 PM

All the news that’s fit to lift A report in which we read some tea leaves. Look a the rocket which has now launched 400 times. Credit: SpaceX Welcome to Edition 7.22 of the Rocket Report! The big news is the Trump administration’s announcement that commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman would be put forward as the […]

Teen creates memecoin, dumps it, earns $50,000

12/8/2024 1:09 PM

dontbuy. Seriously, don’t buy it Unsurprisingly, he and his family were doxed by angry traders. On the evening of November 19, art adviser Adam Biesk was finishing work at his California home when he overheard a conversation between his wife and son, who had just come downstairs. The son, a kid in his early teens, […]

2025 Lamborghini Urus SE first drive: The total taurean package

12/8/2024 1:09 PM

A 789-horsepower Goldilocks moment Adding electric power and a battery turns the Urus from hit-or-miss to just right. The original Urus was an SUV that nobody particularly wanted, even if the market was demanding it. With luxury manufacturers tripping over themselves to capitalize on a seemingly limitless demand for taller all-around machines, Lamborghini was a […]

Google’s Genie 2 “world model” reveal leaves more questions than...

12/8/2024 1:09 PM

Making a command out of your wish? Long-term persistence, real-time interactions remain huge hurdles for AI worlds. A sample of some of the best-looking Genie 2 worlds Google wants to show off. Credit: Google Deepmind In March, Google showed off its first Genie AI model. After training on thousands of hours of 2D run-and-jump video […]

After critics decry Orion heat shield decision, NASA reviewer says...

12/8/2024 1:09 PM

“If this isn’t raising red flags out there, I don’t know what will.” NASA’s Orion spacecraft, consisting of a US-built crew module and European service module, is lifted during prelaunch processing at Kennedy Space Center in 2021. Credit: NASA/Amanda Stevenson Within hours of NASA announcing its decision to fly the Artemis II mission aboard an […]

US to start nationwide testing for H5N1 flu virus in...

12/8/2024 1:09 PM

So, the ultimate goal of the USDA is to eliminate cattle as a reservoir. When the Agency announced it was planning for this program, it noted that there were two candidate vaccines in trials. Until those are validated, it plans to use the standard playbook for handling emerging infections: contact tracing and isolation. And it […]

Microsoft discontinues lackadaisically updated Surface Studio all-in-one desktop

12/7/2024 7:48 AM

The longest-lived Studio desktop was the Surface Studio 2, which was released in 2018 and wasn’t replaced until a revised Surface Studio 2+ was announced in late 2022. It used an even higher-quality display panel, but it still used previous-generation internal components. This might not have been so egregious if Microsoft had updated it more […]

Lizards and snakes are 35 million years older than we...

12/7/2024 7:48 AM

Lizards are ancient creatures. They were around before the dinosaurs and persisted long after dinosaurs went extinct. We’ve now found they are 35 million years older than we thought they were. Cryptovaranoides microlanius was a tiny lizard that skittered around what is now southern England during the late Triassic, around 205 million years ago. It […]

The 2025 BMW i5 M60 review: An EV that makes...

12/7/2024 7:48 AM

Not quite an electric M5, it’s a good driver’s car. Car people, like most flavors of enthusiasts, are often given over to ideological purity tests. Car X is better than car Y because it’s naturally aspirated, not turbocharged. Hybrid Q is a pure series hybrid and is thus better than hybrid R, which sometimes operates […]

Booking.com says typos giving strangers access to private trip info...

12/7/2024 7:48 AM

For Booking.com, it’s essential that users can book travel for other users by adding their email addresses to a booking because that’s how people frequently book trips together. And if it happens that the email address added to a booking is also linked to an existing Booking.com user, the trip is automatically added to that […]

Lower-cost sodium-ion batteries are finally having their moment

12/7/2024 7:48 AM

In contrast, a sodium-ion battery relies on an element—sodium—that you can find in table salt and ocean water. Among the other benefits, sodium-ion batteries perform better than lithium-ion batteries in extreme cold. CATL has said its new battery works in temperatures as low as -40° Fahrenheit. Also, a sodium-ion battery has much lower risk of […]

Join us today for Ars Live: How Asahi Linux ports...

12/5/2024 4:15 AM

One of the key differences between Apple’s Macs and the iPhone and iPad is that the Mac can still boot and run non-Apple operating systems. This is a feature that Apple specifically built for the Mac, one of many features meant to ease the transition from Intel’s chips to Apple’s own silicon. The problem, at […]

Seagrass is fantastic at carbon capture—and it’s at risk of...

12/5/2024 4:15 AM

An underwater gardening experiment along the East Coast aims at restoration. A crab inhabits a bed of eelgrass at Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts. Eelgrass provides critical habitat for hundreds of species. Credit: Holly Plaisted/National Park Service In late September, seagrass ecologist Alyssa Novak pulled on her neoprene wetsuit, pressed her snorkel mask against […]

ESA workers face a maze of non-compete clauses and service...

12/5/2024 4:15 AM

Contracts limit mobility and career advancement, and ESA policy limits local laws. The facade of the European Space Agency headquarters in Paris. Credit: LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images The facade of the European Space Agency headquarters in Paris. Credit: LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images A system of non-competition clauses enforced by the European Space Agency’s […]

HowStuffWorks founder Marshall Brain sent final email before sudden death

12/5/2024 4:15 AM

Brandon Kashani, a former student of Brain’s and startup mentor at NC State’s entrepreneurship clinic, recalled to the Technician about how he met with Brain on November 15. “He felt like his reputation was tarnished, like everything he worked for was ruined, and the root of all that was he didn’t get any support from […]

Russian court sentences kingpin of Hydra drug marketplace to life...

12/5/2024 4:15 AM

Available over the Tor network, Hydra was a bazaar that brokered not just drugs but also fake documents, cryptocurrency laundering services, and other illicit goods and services. Nine months after Hydra was taken down, authorities came for Bitzlato, a cryptocurrency exchange that laundered “a substantial portion of the cryptocurrency that Hydra received.” In all, authorities […]

Supermassive black hole binary emits unexpected flares

12/3/2024 8:32 AM

Skip to content Their orbit periodically takes them through a cloud of gas, triggering flares. What happens when a gargantuan cloud of gas swallows a pair of monster black holes with their own appetites? Feasting on the gas can cause some weird (heavenly) bodily functions. AT 2021hdr is a binary supermassive black hole (BSMBH) system […]

It’s (still) Black Friday, and here are the best shopping...

12/3/2024 8:32 AM

Vende animam tuam pro commercio Cyber Monday cybers into view, and we’ve got all the cyber deals The day’s half-over, but we keep adding stuff—come see if anything speaks to you! Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays this courier from the swift completion of his appointed rounds. Credit: bowie15 / […]

How should we treat beings that might be sentient?

12/2/2024 1:34 AM

Being aware of the maybe self-aware A book argues that we’ve not thought enough about things that might think. What rights should a creature with ambiguous self-awareness, like an octopus, be granted. Credit: A. Martin UW Photography If you aren’t yet worried about the multitude of ways you inadvertently inflict suffering onto other living creatures, […]

Biased AI in health care faces crackdown in sweeping Biden...

12/2/2024 1:34 AM

Prior authorization Elsewhere in the over 700-page proposal, the administration lays out policy that would bar Medicare Advantage plan providers from reopening and reneging on paying claims for inpatient hospital admission if those claims had already been granted approval through prior authorization. The proposal also wants to make criteria for coverage clearer and help ensure […]

After telling Cadillac to pound sand, F1 does 180, grants...

12/2/2024 1:34 AM

The United States will have a second team competing in Formula 1 from 2026, when Cadillac Formula 1 will join the sport as its 11th team. The result is a complete 180 for the sport’s owner, which was highly resistant to the initial bid, first announced at the beginning of 2023. “As the pinnacle of […]

Player 456 is back for revenge in Squid Game S2...

12/2/2024 1:34 AM

Lee Jung-Jae returns as Player 456 in the second season of Squid Game. The 2021 Korean series Squid Game was a massive hit for Netflix, racking up 1.65 billion viewing hours in its first four weeks and snagging 14 Emmy nominations. Fans have been longing for a second season ever since, and we’re finally getting […]

Code found online exploits LogoFAIL to install Bootkitty Linux backdoor

12/2/2024 1:34 AM

Normally, Secure Boot prevents the UEFI from running all subsequent files unless they bear a digital signature certifying those files are trusted by the device maker. The exploit bypasses this protection by injecting shell code stashed in a malicious bitmap image displayed by the UEFI during the boot-up process. The injected code installs a cryptographic key […]

Flour, water, salt, GitHub: The Bread Code is a sourdough...

11/29/2024 3:24 PM

One year ago, I didn’t know how to bake bread. I just knew how to follow a recipe. If everything went perfectly, I could turn out something plain but palatable. But should anything change—temperature, timing, flour, Mercury being in Scorpio—I’d turn out a partly poofy pancake. I presented my partly poofy pancakes to people, and […]

Rocket Report: A good week for Blue Origin; Italy wants...

11/29/2024 3:24 PM

Blue Origin is getting ready to test-fire its first fully integrated New Glenn rocket in Florida. Blue Origin’s first fully integrated New Glenn rocket rolls out to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Credit: Blue Origin Welcome to Edition 7.21 of the Rocket Report! We’re publishing the Rocket Report a little […]

Smart gadgets’ failure to commit to software support could be...

11/29/2024 3:24 PM

Makers of smart devices that fail to disclose how long they will support their products with software updates may be breaking the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warned this week. The FTC released its statement after examining 184 smart products across 64 product categories, including soundbars, video doorbells, breast pumps, smartphones, home […]

OpenAI is at war with its own Sora video testers...

11/29/2024 3:24 PM

“We are not against the use of AI technology as a tool for the arts (if we were, we probably wouldn’t have been invited to this program),” PR Puppets writes. “What we don’t agree with is how this artist program has been rolled out and how the tool is shaping up ahead of a possible […]

Man suffers chemical burn that lasted months after squeezing limes

11/28/2024 3:20 PM

If Margaritaville were a real place, it should definitely keep a few dermatologists on hand. In a case of an oft-overlooked food preparation risk, a 40-year-old man showed up to an allergy clinic in Texas with a severe, burning rash on both his hands that had developed two days earlier. A couple of days later, […]

What fossilized dino feces can tell us about their rise...

11/28/2024 3:20 PM

Paleontologists have long puzzled over how the dinosaurs—originally relatively small and of minor importance to the broader ecosystem—evolved to become the dominant species some 30 million years later. Fossilized feces and vomit from dinosaurs might hold important clues to how and why this evolutionary milestone came about, according to a new paper published in the […]

Found in the wild: The world’s first unkillable UEFI bootkit...

11/28/2024 3:20 PM

Over the past decade, a new class of infections has threatened Windows users. By infecting the firmware that runs immediately before the operating system loads, these UEFI bootkits continue to run even when the hard drive is replaced or reformatted. Now the same type of chip-dwelling malware has been found in the wild for backdooring […]

Teaching a drone to fly without a vertical rudder

11/28/2024 3:20 PM

We can get a drone to fly like a pigeon, but we needed to use feathers to do it. Pigeons manage to get vertical without using a vertical tail. Credit: HamidEbrahimi Most airplanes in the world have vertical tails or rudders to prevent Dutch roll instabilities, a combination of yawing and sideways motions with rolling […]

FCC approves Starlink plan for cellular phone service, with some...

11/28/2024 3:20 PM

Eliminating cellular dead zones Starlink says it will offer texting service this year as well as voice and data services in 2025. Starlink does not yet have FCC approval to exceed certain emissions limits, which the company has said will be detrimental for real-time voice and video communications. For the operations approved yesterday, Starlink is […]

ISPs say their “excellent customer service” is why users don’t...

11/27/2024 3:20 PM

Broadband customer service ISPs tell FCC that mistreated users would switch to one of their many other options. Credit: Getty Images | Thamrongpat Theerathammakorn Lobby groups for Internet service providers claim that ISPs’ customer service is so good already that the government shouldn’t consider any new regulations to mandate improvements. They also claim ISPs face […]

Licking this “lollipop” will let you taste virtual flavors

11/27/2024 3:20 PM

Demonstrating lollipop user interface to simulate taste in virtual and augmented reality environments. Credit: Lu et al, 2024/PNAS Demonstrating lollipop user interface to simulate taste in virtual and augmented reality environments. Credit: Lu et al, 2024/PNAS Virtual reality (VR) technology has long sought to incorporate the human senses into virtual and mixed-reality environments. In addition […]

The Atari 7800+ is a no-frills glimpse into a forgotten...

11/27/2024 3:20 PM

Awkward controls and a lack of features make a device for Atari completists only. Shiny and chrome? In this economy? Credit: Kyle Orland Like a lot of children of the ’80s, my early gaming nostalgia has a huge hole where the Atari 7800 might have lived. While practically everyone I knew had an NES during […]

NASA awards SpaceX a contract for one of the few...

11/27/2024 3:20 PM

Notably, the Dragonfly launch was one of the first times United Launch Alliance has been eligible to bid its new Vulcan rocket for a NASA launch contract. NASA officials gave the green light for the Vulcan rocket to compete head-to-head with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy after ULA’s new launcher had a successful debut […]

QNAP firmware update leaves NAS owners locked out of their...

11/27/2024 3:20 PM

A recent firmware pushed to QNAP network attached storage (NAS) devices left a number of owners unable to access their storage systems. The company has pulled back the firmware and issued a fixed version, but the company’s response has left some users feeling less confident in the boxes into which they put all their digital […]

OpenAI blamed NYT for tech problem erasing evidence of copyright...

11/26/2024 5:14 PM

It’s not “lost,” just “inadvertently removed” OpenAI denies deleting evidence, asks why NYT didn’t back up data. OpenAI keeps deleting data that could allegedly prove the AI company violated copyright laws by training ChatGPT on authors’ works. Apparently largely unintentional, the sloppy practice is seemingly dragging out early court battles that could determine whether AI […]

Raw milk recalled for containing bird flu virus, California reports

11/26/2024 5:14 PM

Pasteurization The milk-related risk of H5N1 is only from raw milk; pasteurized milk does not contain live virus and is safe to drink. Pasteurization, which heats milk to a specific temperature for a specified amount of time, kills a variety of bacteria and viruses, including bird flu. Influenza viruses, generally, are considered susceptible to heat […]

Supreme Court to review 5th Circuit ruling that upends Universal...

11/26/2024 5:14 PM

The US Supreme Court will hear appeals of a 5th Circuit ruling that called Universal Service fees on phone bills an illegal tax. The US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled in July that the Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund is unconstitutional and that the fees on phone bills are a “misbegotten […]

Keanu Reeves voices archvillain Shadow in Sonic 3 trailer

11/26/2024 5:14 PM

In addition to Reeves, new cast members include Krysten Ritter as Director Rockwell; Alyla Browne as Maria, a young girl from Shadow’s past; and Sofia Pernas, Cristo Fernandez, James Wolk, and Jorma Taccone in as-yet-undisclosed roles. Sonic 3 will also introduce the Chao creatures of Chao Gardens. A tragic backstory Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles are captured. […]

Sony is reportedly working on a PS5 portable

11/26/2024 5:14 PM

Bloomberg reports that Sony is “in the early stages” of work on a fully portable console that can play PlayStation 5 software. The device is still “likely years away from launch,” according to “people familiar with its development” that spoke to Bloomberg anonymously. The report comes less than a year after the launch of the […]

Survivors mark 20th anniversary of deadly 2004 tsunami

11/25/2024 3:19 PM

In the wee hours of December 26, 2004, a massive 9.2 earthquake occurred in the Indian Ocean, generating an equally massive tsunami that caused unprecedented devastation to 14 countries and killed more than 230,000 people. Twenty years later, National Geographic has revisited one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history with a new documentary: […]

What delusions can tell us about the cognitive nature of belief

11/25/2024 3:19 PM

Natalie also recalled other beliefs, including that she was dead (known as Cotard delusion), which she did not share with clinicians at the time. She noted that she entertained this idea due to the failure of other explanations to account for her strange experiences and an idea from a television show. Natalie said she eventually […]

Elizabeth Warren calls for crackdown on Internet “monopoly” you’ve never...

11/25/2024 3:19 PM

US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Congressman Jerry Nadler of New York have called on government bodies to investigate what they allege is the “predatory pricing” of .com web addresses, the Internet’s prime real estate. In a letter delivered today to the Department of Justice and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a branch […]

Ancient fish-trapping network supported the rise of Maya civilization

11/25/2024 3:19 PM

Skip to content The Maya were landscape engineers on a grand scale, even when it came to fishing. The Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary is a biodiverse wetland in what’s now Belize—but the precursors of the Maya turned it into an industrial-scale fishing operation. Credit: Fernando Flores On the eve of the rise of the Maya […]

Our Universe is not fine-tuned for life, but it’s still...

11/25/2024 3:19 PM

Our Universe is not fine-tuned for life, but it’s still kind of OK Inspired by the Drake equation, researchers optimize a model universe for life. Physicists including Robert H. Dickle and Fred Hoyle have argued that we are living in a universe that is perfectly fine-tuned for life. Following the anthropic principle, they claimed that […]

Qubit that makes most errors obvious now available to customers

11/21/2024 8:34 AM

Can a small machine that makes error correction easier upend the market? A graphic representation of the two resonance cavities that can hold photons, along with a channel that lets the photon move between them. Credit: Quantum Circuits We’re nearing the end of the year, and there are typically a flood of announcements regarding quantum […]

Google stops letting sites like Forbes rule search for “Best...

11/21/2024 8:34 AM

Under the strength of Forbes’ long-existing and well-linked site, Forbes Marketplace/Advisor has dominated the search term “best cbd gummies” for “an eternity,” according to SEO analyst Lily Ray. Forbes has similarly dominated “best pet insurance,” and long came up as the second result for “how to get rid of roaches,” as detailed in a blog […]

Study: Why Aztec “death whistles” sound like human screams

11/21/2024 8:34 AM

Aztec death whistles don’t fit into any existing Western classification for wind instruments; they seem to be a unique kind of “air spring” whistle, based on CT scans of some of the artifacts. Sascha Frühholz, a cognitive and affective neuroscientist at the University of Zürich, and several colleagues wanted to learn more about the physical […]

Microsoft pushes full-screen ads for Copilot+ PCs on Windows 10...

11/21/2024 8:34 AM

Windows 10’s free, guaranteed security updates stop in October 2025, less than a year from now. Windows 10 users with supported PCs have been offered the Windows 11 upgrade plenty of times before. But now Microsoft is apparently making a fresh push to get users to upgrade, sending them full-screen reminders recommending they buy new […]

SpaceX just got exactly what it wanted from the FAA...

11/21/2024 8:34 AM

Skip to content “All pertinent conditions and requirements of the prior approval have been met.” SpaceX’s Starship vehicle takes flight for the sixth time on Nov. 19, 2024. Credit: SpaceX SpaceX’s Starship vehicle takes flight for the sixth time on Nov. 19, 2024. Credit: SpaceX A day after SpaceX launched its Starship rocket for the […]

A year after ditching waitlist, Starlink says it is “sold...

11/20/2024 4:47 AM

The Starlink waitlist is back in certain parts of the US, including several large cities on the West Coast and in Texas. The Starlink availability map says the service is sold out in and around Seattle; Spokane, Washington; Portland, Oregon; San Diego; Sacramento, California; and Austin, Texas. Neighboring cities and towns are included in the […]

Musi fans refuse to update iPhones until Apple unblocks controversial...

11/20/2024 4:47 AM

“The public interest in the preservation of intellectual property rights weighs heavily against the injunction sought here, which would force Apple to distribute an app over the repeated and consistent objections of non-parties who allege their rights are infringed by the app,” Apple argued. Musi fans vow loyalty For Musi fans expressing their suffering on Reddit, […]

Microsoft and Atom Computing combine for quantum error correction demo

11/20/2024 4:47 AM

New work provides a good view of where the field currently stands. The first-generation tech demo of Atom’s hardware. Things have progressed considerably since. Credit: Atom Computing In September, Microsoft made an unusual combination of announcements. It demonstrated progress with quantum error correction, something that will be needed for the technology to move much beyond […]

Niantic uses Pokémon Go player data to build AI navigation...

11/20/2024 4:47 AM

Last week, Niantic announced plans to create an AI model for navigating the physical world using scans collected from players of its mobile games, such as Pokémon Go, and from users of its Scaniverse app, reports 404 Media. All AI models require training data. So far, companies have collected data from websites, YouTube videos, books, […]

Automatic braking systems save lives. Now they’ll need to work...

11/20/2024 4:47 AM

Otherwise, drivers will get mad. “The mainstream manufacturers have to be a little careful because they don’t want to create customer dissatisfaction by making the system too twitchy,” says Brannon, at AAA. Tesla drivers, for example, have proven very tolerant of “beta testing” and quirks. Your average driver, maybe less so. Based on its own […]

This elephant figured out how to use a hose to...

11/13/2024 6:45 PM

Skip to content An elephant never forgets A younger rival may have learned how to sabotage those showers by disrupting water flow. An elephant named Mary has been filmed using a hose to shower herself. Credit: Urban et al./Current Biology Mary the elephant shows off her hose-showering skills. Credit: Urban et al./Current Biology […]

New secret math benchmark stumps AI models and PhDs alike

11/13/2024 6:45 PM

Epoch AI allowed Fields Medal winners Terence Tao and Timothy Gowers to review portions of the benchmark. “These are extremely challenging,” Tao said in feedback provided to Epoch. “I think that in the near term basically the only way to solve them, short of having a real domain expert in the area, is by a […]

For the second time this year, NASA’s JPL center cuts...

11/13/2024 6:45 PM

“This reduction is spread across essentially all areas of the Lab including our technical, project, business, and support areas,” Leshin wrote. “We have taken seriously the need to re-size our workforce, whether direct-funded (project) or funded on overhead (burden). With lower budgets and based on the forecasted work ahead, we had to tighten our belts […]

What if AI doesn’t just keep getting better forever?

11/13/2024 6:45 PM

For years now, many AI industry watchers have looked at the quickly growing capabilities of new AI models and mused about exponential performance increases continuing well into the future. Recently, though, some of that AI “scaling law” optimism has been replaced by fears that we may already be hitting a plateau in the capabilities of […]

There are some things the Crew-8 astronauts aren’t ready to...

11/12/2024 4:04 PM

“I did not say I was uncomfortable talking about it. I said we’re not going to talk about it.” NASA astronaut Michael Barratt works with a spacesuit inside the Quest airlock of the International Space Station on May 31. Credit: NASA The astronauts who came home from the International Space Station last month experienced some […]

FTX sues Binance for $1.76B in battle of crypto exchanges...

11/12/2024 4:04 PM

Lawsuit seeks “at least $1.76 billion that was fraudulently transferred” by SBF. Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao arrives at federal court in Seattle for sentencing on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. Credit: Getty Images | Changpeng Zhao The bankruptcy estate of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX has sued the company’s former rival Binance in an attempt to […]

Is “AI welfare” the new frontier in ethics?

11/12/2024 4:04 PM

The researchers propose that companies could adapt the “marker method” that some researchers use to assess consciousness in animals—looking for specific indicators that may correlate with consciousness, although these markers are still speculative. The authors emphasize that no single feature would definitively prove consciousness, but they claim that examining multiple indicators may help companies make […]

Man gets 10 years for stealing $20M in nest eggs...

11/12/2024 4:04 PM

A Nigerian man living in the United Kingdom has been sentenced to 10 years for his role in a phishing scam that snatched more than $20 million from over 400 would-be home buyers in the US, including some savers who lost their entire nest eggs. Late last week, the US Department of Justice confirmed that […]

Air quality problems spur $200 million in funds to cut...

11/12/2024 4:04 PM

Diesel equipment will be replaced with hydrogen- or electric-power gear. Raquel Garcia has been fighting for years to clean up the air in her neighborhood southwest of downtown Detroit. Living a little over a mile from the Ambassador Bridge, which thousands of freight trucks cross every day en route to the Port of Detroit, Garcia […]

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